Obviously a few years ago, the API changes caused the reddit community mods to strike, and caused a mass-blackout of most reddit core communities. Eventually Reddit removed a handful of mod teams on some notable subreddits and caused the rest to chicken-out. But it did birth the Fediverse properly.
I suspect Reddit will make another step at some point which causes another comparable exodus. This time, if they do, the Fediverse is far better developed to handle it. What do you imagine it might be?
They have AI automatically banning a lot of long-term users for very odd and flimsy reasons, the appeals process is nonexistent, and the bans are permanent. Meanwhile, the site is being overrun with bots. Obviously, bots have been on the platform for a long time, but there’s been a definite uptick recently.
If they keep throwing out their real users and letting bots generate everything, people are going to exit Reddit, if for no other reason than they’re just kicked out.
Porn. It’s going to be when they get rid of porn.
It’ll be when they cave to ID verification to access the porn. Whoever doesn’t jump ship then will then do so once the porn gets banned completely.
Either way, where the porn goes, so goes the traffic. VHS, DVD, the internet/streaming. All major shifts in traffic were porn related.
I don’t think they will anymore. porn has become such a high traffic item that they’ve worked with sex workers on reddit to set up a system that accommodates them as much as possible while taking “non-US friendly” traffic offsite.
I know they’re likely to go full fash but this is a way bigger meal ticket than it used to be the last time they tried to scrub all porn (which they did, don’t let them bullshit you)
Or force something ai related.
Do … do we have porn?
I mean, there are NSFW instances. They’re often defederated, as often there are laws and procedures you have to follow when “distributing” porn - and when federated, “your” instance would mirror their content, which can be a headache for an instance admin. Try e.g. lemmynsfw
yeah. it’s all over the place in the fediverse. I mean hell you can go on almost any peertube instance and instantly find it especially if you view by trending and you know there was like one guy going ham for the night.
I used to think it would be the death of Old Reddit, but sadly they started that recently-ish and I’ve seen almost no pushback against it.
The issue is that they have a brain and are taking the slow approach, where they gradually strip away features and introduce interoperability hurdles to turn Old Reddit into the objectively worse choice so people make the switch to Shreddit of their own free will.
It started when they removed Private Messaging and made Chat, the replacement, exclusive to Shreddit. Notifications were also planned to become exclusive to Shreddit (try staying on top of replies without notifications), but new ones are still showing up in the direct messages archive for me.
Then they removed any indication of a subreddit’s size from Old Reddit (but replaced the subscriber count with an active users count on Shreddit). So if you want to know which of two subreddits on the same topic is bigger, you need Shreddit for that comparison. Then there’s the new wiki system which iirc is not backwards compatible to Old Reddit.Just like this, more and more features are turned into Shreddit exclusives, until there’ll be nothing left to use Old Reddit for. Yet people don’t seem particularly bothered by it.
The single community I’m still visiting (read-only) on old.reddit has recently dried up to tumbleweed territory. I could stop going there overnight, and not miss a thing.
The murder of “old”
It’s coming
I found the fediverse through the API fiasco. I fully migrated over here when they started mass banning. I got caught up in the ban wave; though I’m fairly certain they had their eye on me for a while since I was a very prolific bot flagger and I told everyone exactly why the bots are so bad on that platform (hint: Reddit is complicit and so are the admins).
From what I’m hearing, likely one of the next big exoduses might be when Reddit decides to kill old.reddit. Everyone and their grandma goes on about it being the last good thing that remains and if they kill it they’re gonna leave forever etc etc.
I suppose we’ll see if they have the chops to actually leave that shithole.
I’d say they will, I know three others that use it regularly enough and none of them use the app.
Yah, I agree with this one. I only now visit old.Reddit.com. If it’s gone, I can’t imagine scrolling through the shitty UI that’s left.
Well, they seem to be shadowbanning legitimate users all the time, and leaving the bots. Every post has dozens or hundreds of incoherent replies.
And now they also added some weird translation feature on new reddit, so if you’re on old reddit you start seeing posts and comments in every language with no way to easily translate it.
My old account got hacked, its history wiped and is now hawking cryptoscams. I’ve reported it long ago, but the admins don’t give a shit.
I think most of the people who are going to leave have left. Its no longer a matter of an exodus because the people who are there now aren’t the kind of people who can build a place like Reddit. Those people, we, the people, have left.
So the “next big exodus” is really about there being a newer/ better place to go for the same experience.
Killing old reddit will probably purge most of the last remaining people even slightly worth a damn from the site.
I don’t think there’s going to be another “mass exodus” again. There are people who said that they were going to leave reddit and actually did. Then there are those who said the same but didn’t. Those people will never leave until the site shuts down or they’re dead. I mean there’s not much more Reddit can do to drive people away unless they go on a massive subreddit ban wave on things that shouldn’t be banned. or they introduce a subscription plan where you have to pay to “unlock” the site and can view as much content as you want. Even then people WILL pay for that.
But even with the plethora of bots, reposts, karma farming, and power tripping mods people still stick around.
unforced? I’m sure it will be unique and hilarious as usual.
forced? governments around the world want social media platforms to be able to identify users and anonymity is a core aspect of reddit. the second they require a way to link your account with your person they will see a similar exodus, unfortunately it will have about the same impact as the API drama because the majority of people don’t fucking care.
From what I gather – I deleted my very active account there promptly with the end of Apollo support and would never have ended up on Lemmy without u/spez; I’d say “thanks u/spez”, but I’ll stick with “fuck u/spez” – from Reddit “from the outside”, those who are still there are impossible to get away. Reddit is destroying third-party apps and the official app is shit? Who cares! Reddit is only usable on a mobile web browser with great difficulty? So what? Reddit is flogging all user data to AI companies? Oh, someone probably has my data anyway.
If Elon Musk buys Reddit tomorrow (for whatever reason he’d want to) and obliges all users to buy two new Teslas, they’ll probably accept it without a murmur. They’ve all long since become jaded. Fortunately, Aaron Swartz no longer has to witness this crap.
Of all the - often eldritch - parodies of Garfield, I like this the least.
To be clear by “exodus”, I don’t mean the destruction of the platform - but simply enough that would swell the Fediverse.
I don’t mean the destruction of the platform
The platform has already been killed by u/spez. All that’s left are scorched ruins. Why would those who live in scorched ruins ever move out? No, those who did not leave will probably remain there now.
(Marginal observation: Among those who are still there, there are an astonishing number who, just a few years ago, wrote that they would never return to Reddit and would delete their accounts forever…)
I think that is happening actively since probably January this year.
So tangentially to the post, I guess the implied question is: when will Lemmy see another explosion in its userbase.
And to that…I don’t know.
I’ve been trying to get away from reddit for a while and the problem with Lemmy is two fold
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Very minor: it requires me to unblock cloudflare when I’m using noscript
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More major, I still don’t have an intuitive understanding of how lemmy works. On reddit if I was interested in knitting, going to old.reddit.com/r/knitting would be a good starting point.
I’m still confused about multiple instances, why bifurcate the community (are there multiple instances of knitting communities on lemmy?).
I (perhaps foolishly) consider myself slightly above average in terms of tech literacy; if I’m this confuse I do wonder how are others going to fare.
btw about your cloudflare issue, its only on lemmy.world and not other instances. try another one
It won’t, most likely. Old users are rather going offline than migrating. And the federated nature of lemmy and having to deal with censorhappy instance admins and dying instances keep communities lose members each time when forced to migrate.
dying instances keep communities lose members each time when forced to migrate.
!movies@piefed.social is the heir of the lemm.ee version, and is now more active that the old one used to be
As far as I know, lemm.ee was the only notable instance that was shut down - and I believe most communities on there successfully migrated to a mixture of piefed.social, lemmy.zip and a smattering of others.
Yes, our community has had the bad luck of having had to move three times. Shedding members each time. The last move was due to the sudden shutdown of lemm.ee.
Oh collapse. I also had to move, and rebuilt well enough.
I’m still confused about multiple instances, why bifurcate the community (are there multiple instances of knitting communities on lemmy?).
To prevent the centralisation of power into a single instance. If Lemmy.world was the only instance and the owners and admins would have full power. Because the fediverse is centralised, if the instance goes bad - or some moderators on communities there go bad, they can be replaced on another instance.
(are there multiple instances of knitting communities on lemmy?).
Yes, but none of them are active.
No I totally understand the benefit of decentralization; however on the user end, I just want to consume content.
To that end, can I post on one knitting instance and that’ll reach all knitting communities on Lemmy? How do I get the most engagement, which instance is the most popular
(and by the way, knitting was a random example on my end, but I am surprised that there aren’t any active instances to what I would assume, is a fairly popular hobby).
To that end, can I post on one knitting instance and that’ll reach all knitting communities on Lemmy? How do I get the most engagement, which instance is the most popular
No. Not through Lemmy. But Piefed, which reads Lemmy communities - has feeds that users can make that combines communities into a single feed. Incidentally, I have made a knitting feed.
(and by the way, knitting was a random example on my end, but I am surprised that there aren’t any active instances to what I would assume, is a fairly popular hobby).
Tbh Lemmy/Piefed is pretty nerd orientated. It is popular, but not with the audiences here. In any case, there are centralisation efforts on here from time to time designed to unify communities of the same topic across multiple instances by locking cloned communities. When there is demand, but split, this does happen.
Maybe somehow the apps should have the simplified version of that , where you subscribe to a topic , and get multiple instances. Lenny is inherently more complicated than a centralized app
Piefed is indeed better for that: https://piefed.social/feeds
You can subscribe to those feeds, and see all the communities they list in one view
Thanks, I’ll check it out
Enjoy!
I have made a knitting feed.
You might want to link it to show what it could look like
Here is the knitting feed as an example.
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I think it will take time , I personally tried to move when the api changed. But now am actively changing after Reddit getting shittier by the day. Last update they introduced games on the official app. Doesn’t make any sense. The feed they keep pushing on you sucks and honestly the content itself is worse nowadays. They have years of users content that is still a huge boost, but with time more and more users will get fed up with these tactics. If Lemmy continues on growing steadily it will eventually replace it
Last update they introduced games on the official app.
Wait, what? What does it even look like?
Have fedi numbers moved much since over the last year?
It is more active but feels like mostly the regulars
Sadly they romoved long time based statistics for specific softwares but the fediverse at least grew for the last 2 years steadily.
Over the last months something happend because a lot youned and left in a short time
https://fedidb.com/stats
Lemmy specific:
