It can go one of a few ways.
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Apart from the few subs that remain offline, it’ll basically be back to normal. Those that do remain offline indefinitely just get forcibly reopened or recreated by admins, especially huge subreddits like /r/videos. Smaller ones just get redicted to /r/topicnew or some other creative name.
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A lot of subreddits and more importantly moderators and users leave the site permanently. In order for this to happen however, there’d have to be a consensus alternative, which there isn’t ATM. Otherwise, these communities are pretty much lost forever unless the mods put a message to go to X alternative service in the “subreddit is private” banner. Tbh, I don’t think people are gonna stomach losing years of their lives in an instant so they’ll just re create subreddits unless the mods provide an alternative.
No matter what though, they’re not backing down on the effective removal of the API (still leaving the sneaky clause “you can pay us if you want but it’ll be a king’s ransom” for AI, even though they can just trawl the web manually lol). They’ll probably announce some crappy customization features to hoodwink those who don’t know what an API is and lie to them and say it’s “API v2” or whatever.
I just honestly don’t know how it’s going to shake out and I’m scared im going to lose these communities. I don’t give a single solitary fuck about Reddit the company anymore, and I never did really. I just hope all of the subreddits find a new home and don’t just shrug their shoulders and say “welp, guess that’s it guys”.
Squabbles seems to have not hit user critical mass. Tildes looks like it’s doing well.
The Lemmy + Kbin fediverse seems to be taking off like a rocket and has the best overall chance IMO of becoming the home for the best parts of Reddit’s community.
I want to add, that my wife has been a “scab” throughout all this and has been active on reddit, trying to show me memes and such.
The content she’s been showing me has been stale, old stuff I saw back in 2020. Same recycled jokes, same memes. Reddit is in a mode of hard cope right now and I doubt it gets better if we don’t return.
My wife was on Reddit for about 9 years when she got hooked on TikTok about a year ago. In her words, Reddit had become boring. She still checks the local community sub, but that is about it. Just worth pointing out that Reddit is facing pressure from two ends. A lot of the more casual users, and the popular content creators, are on TikTok and other video centric platforms. Reddit can’t compete there, as much as they try. The dedicated users they did have, those interested in community and discussion, well Reddit just angered much of that group.
Prior to the blackout, I was angry with Reddit. Since the blackout I’ve taken a step back and realized how much garbage Reddit is filled with (ads, shitposts, promoted content, etc), and how much I want to find something better. Before the blackout I was planning to quit Reddit out of anger. Now I plan to quit because, as my wife said, Reddit is boring and I’m excited to explore what comes next.
I want to add, that my wife has been a “scab” throughout all this and has been active on reddit, trying to show me memes and such.
Seems like grounds for a divorce.
I kid of course! My girlfriend is staying off Reddit, but she’s definitely missing it and hasn’t found a good substitute for her mix of subreddits yet. It’s especially rough since twitter’s gone downhill, and that was her other main scrollable content.
For the first 12 hrs or so it was just a bunch of as reddit posts. Like 20 pages of it and a few political
Squabbles
Isn’t this developed by one person, isn’t open source and forbids NSFW in general? That is never going to go well.
Tildes
No mobile app and no
ActivityPubso it’s a very specialised. Additionally I don’t like the UI at all and I’ve read this in multiple threads here as well.Lemmy + Kbin
Both are show the same content as they are federated so it’s up to who prefers what really. I prefer Lemmy, but anything is fine.
re Squabbles: yes, hard agree.
re Tildes: yes, also hard agree. The invitation-only method of growing the community also is draconian and it’s going to hit all the scaling problems a traditional site does.
These and others are why you’re finding me with you here in the fediverse. I am with you mi beratna.
These and others are why you’re finding me with you here in the fediverse.
I’ve been here for a week and it already feels like home!
I’ve been here for a week and it already feels like home!
Two days and same!
While I’m enjoying my time here and I’m honestly shocked with the amount of engagement so far, I just don’t see the “fedaverse” ever gaining any mainstream traction. It’s unintuitive and the barrier of entry is way too high. Even googling “Lemmy” doesn’t bring up useful results.
Something like squabbles has a better chance for mainstream appeal, but it would need a miracle as it’s only one duder
That being said, I’ll still be here!
Honestly, the lack of mainstream appeal is part of why I like it.
Just remember - as content is generated SEO is naturally going to improve, which will start to bring people into kbin/lemmy via Google.
As people spend time here marketing types will start to notice. Shortly thereafter we will see bots. To me, how we as a community handle those bots will be the real “does this experiment survive” test.
Me too. No large corporations guiding the communities and more open discussions can be had without fear of being banned.
more open discussions can be had without fear of being banned.
Not sure about that. I saw a post today about lemmy.ml’s admin, who’s also one of the main lemmy developers, banning people who said something bad about China for “orientalism”, then doubling down in it in the comments. Apparently mod logs for any instance can be accessed by any mod of any other instance. Otherwise I wouldn’t have even known. Not sure how I feel about using a service developed by someone so toxic, who’s also in charge of a big chunk of user accounts.
If you dont like the moderation here you can use a different instances. Thats the main reason why Lemmy has federation. And our job is to build this software, not be perfect moderators who somehow make everyone happy.
And if I want to participate in a community that’s hosted on lemmy.ml I’m still under his jurisdiction. Besides, someone this banhappy being in charge of the development doesn’t fill me with much confidence. Nothing stops them from implementing some hidden change that prevents sharing something they don’t like.
Not sure about that. I saw a post today about lemmy.ml’s admin, who’s also one of the main lemmy developers, banning people who said something bad about China for “orientalism”, then doubling down in it in the comments.
yeah when you get used to reddit sinophobia (which is a product of their “policy” department that’s aligned with the atlantic council and other quasi-government think tanks) anything else feels like oppression.
Even googling “Lemmy” doesn’t bring up useful results.
It’s not helped by the fact that it has the same name as a famous musician. Googling for Lemmy just brings him up — the Fediverse doesn’t show up unless you scroll down a ways, if it even shows on the front page at all. Same with Tildes and Squabbles, both being already existing words. Branding is important for recognizability, and “Reddit” has the advantage of being a unique name.
This isn’t going to be a great migration. More of a great fragmentation.
Which is what should happen in my opinion.
Let small communities be small, let them govern themselves.
It would not crash and burn but rather be messy and decrease in quality gradually over time. Sort of like Twitter.
Digg still exists, so I have no doubt that reddit will continue to have its rotting corpse propped up and picked at, even after a lot of its biggest contributors have left the site
Digg doesn’t even look like any sort of user-genetated content anymore. Same news layout of something like The Register or the Verge
I’m honestly done with Reddit and I really hope enough people find a new home outside of it when this is all said and done. Hanging out on here has made me realize how toxic and mentally draining Reddit actually is.
I think Reddit will continue to grow into a normie cesspool of children and mentality I’ll folks and will eventually go the way of FB and Twitter where the interesting and saine folks will dig out new communities in some other place to be determined
I couldn’t agree more with your opinion on Reddit. Over the past 10 years it has become so much more toxic and unwelcoming. It is hivemind culture and it is only going to get worse over time. The reporting on the Boston bombings should have been writing on the walls and that was a good while ago. Looking at it now, I just can’t believe how depressing it was just doom scrolling on that app daily.
According to Reddit’s internal memo, they expect this to blow over Wednesday with most subreddits returning, and they reported no drop in revenue so far. So they’re not likely to give in yet.
What needs to happen is that the blackout needs to continue indefinitely, and more communities need to start migrating to lemmy/kbin. If we move the content here, people will move too.
I’m voting for #1. Even the subs that remain offline will be replaced.
But there’s a caveat-- I think Reddit will start to suck more quickly than it has, and, without some core mods and content providers, will become pretty much a shell of itself in a few years. Maybe it’s before it’s public; maybe it’s after.
Probably this, yeah
Yeah if the whole Netflix thing has taught us anything it’s that people don’t want to change and will put up with being treated like absolute garbage to remain in their comfortable space. Reddit will be fine. But I do hope enough people leave and stay here to start a new thriving community long term.
I think you’re wildly overestimating that timetable - over on that site I’m a member of a sub where you need intimate knowledge of the subject to moderate it effectively (and because of the nature of the subject it gets a lot of trolls to put it mildly). With no community mods that sub would become a cesspit within days, as would subs that are currently the focus of the alt-right, such as science, LGBT subs etc. It’s going to be a bin fire if the community mods leave - you’ll feel so dirty you’ll have to take a shower after every visit to your previously favourite subs…
Hard agree. A few years back I was a member of a local subreddit that only had one mod. It was small enough that they were able to keep up with spam/moderating. Then one day it started getting brigaded by one of the racist subreddits. One of the many ones that had an unrepeatable name (variant on a racial slur) that’s since been banned.
We later found out that sole mod had gone camping for a few days, so there was no one to remove all the explicit racism and ban people. They immediately cleaned up and notified admins when they got back, but I can see how quickly a community can turn awful if you don’t have dedicated mods.
I honestly hope that some kind of community remains here
It will. I’ve been on Reddit 16+ years and I have no itch to return or reopen the app. Meanwhile I’m getting nothing done for work because I have Mastodon, kbin, and lemmy open. The sticky/addictive power is here already.
Ooof yes! The “lemmy post” mantra is really sticking for me and it has being and simple to do that here , scary but like accelerating. Never dared to participate on reddit and now here is so fun to so. Only in time we will now how thing pan out but here , in lemmy, is fun. Hope to see you guys around.
I’m an old head Reddit user like you. Are you feeling like Lemmy is feeling like the early days of Reddit. Smaller, more of a community feel?
I’ve been with Reddit for 10 years, and Lemmy feels like what Reddit was around 8-7 years ago. Reddit front page posts used to be in 3-4 digit upvotes max before they changed the vote counting mechanism. Lemmy is already having 3 digit upvoted posts with hundreds of comments. My complaints of Lemmy are purely technical, and hope they get resolved before people get frustrated enough.
I definitely agree that lemmy needs some polish. I can’t really recommend it in its current state but I’m definitely having fun here
I think the missing element for fed sites is creating a level of experience that works seamlessly for users that are not tech savvy at all. The really big genuine innovation that Reddit made was bridging the gap between “the internet” and “regular people”, which granted access to an enormous wealth of information that more tech focused sites aren’t ever going to be able to achieve because those totally non technical users DO have a shit ton of other knowledge and value to bring.
More attention means more open source developers, biggest effect in QA, so hopefully soon.
I think we’ll see a temporary “return to normalcy” after the protest finishes and most subs come back online. But come June 30 and the end of third-party apps, we’ll see a bunch of users come back to Lemmy/Kbin again.
In a way, this seems like the best way of driving things. The protest has raised awareness and got a ton of development work going, and then there’s going to be a respite giving instances time to prepare themselves for the second surge.
I think the mod tools are what will blow reddit up ultimately. It’s why I’m here.
The third party apps are a hard self own, but I don’t use reddit because of third party apps. I use third party apps because the reddit official app is… Special. If they’d forced me to sue their app I would be annoyed, but still interested in reddit.
If you destroy the key tools that enable volunteer moderators to manage communities, the community will die. Example: two of my favorite subs were legaladvice, and bestoflegaladvice. Both required extensive moderating to function (and even then, it was prone to shit shows particularly at LA). No mod tools would make it unmoderatable… Which turns you into Voat pretty fast.
So, I don’t think reddit dies July 1. I think reddit spends the next year turning into Twitter, and lemmy has to run as fast as it can to scale.
Hopefully, this is my last post on lemmy talking about reddit, but I doubt I’m that lucky.
A return to normality is impossible since there will be no more third party apps. It may seem like things are as they were besides that, but the progressive move by Reddit to ignore Reddit’s core value proposition (link aggregation and commenting) will continue, only to be replaced by attention towards monetisation-centric features no one asked for like NFTs & followers (which the third party apps ignored, gee I wonder why).
Reddit has a cancer. You can either stay in denial and experience the terminal death in slow, painful motion, or you can just move on now.
In my view this isn’t the end of Reddit, but it is the beginning of the end. This situation will probably pass, but the lemmy devs and instance owners have already gotten useful feedback about how to handle situations like this, and what kinds of things would help lemmy and the fediverse grow. The next time something like this happens (and there will be a next time) they’ll be just that little bit more ready.
Although for me specifically, I don’t actually care too much if Reddit dies. I’m happy as long as there’s a community here. The best thing that seems to be coming out of this situation so far is that many subreddits are now getting lemmy community analogs for people to move to.
I want reddit to die. It had its day, and what we have now is a poor reflection on what it was and what it’s supposed to be. Change is a good thing, it leads to improvement and making things better.
I unfortunately think 1 is the most likely, at least for now. A one-time disruption won’t be enough to sink Reddit. What could permanently change things is the sustained build-up of viable alternatives over time. So I guess you can look at the blackout stuff not as the end for Reddit, but maybe the canary in the coal mine for a gradual descent.
Reddit was never going to just shut down overnight, but it’s more or less done for me (barring some sudden change with the API stuff, but even then I’d make an effort to use it less). I’ll keep my account around and might occasionally go to it to look up specific things or visit more niche communities that don’t have much of a presence here or on other alternatives yet, but I’m done with just generally browsing reddit or providing any content for them. I’m enjoying it here and hope the boost in activity allows for continued growth and filling out of communities for more specific topics.
you cant really return to normalcy from this, but i dont think most users care. whenever i get into a casual convo about the fediverse online, the general consensus from people is ‘yeah reddit isnt going to die, i’ll stay on reddit for my communities’. so if the majority think reddit isn’t going to die and continue using the site, it probably wont die! it’ll just go back to normal with a few million less users (which actually isnt that much for a big site) unless spez hilariously fucks up
really the fediverse is just a lot of people who like tech at the end of the day, not the average web user
I think no matter what Reddit won’t be exactly the same. The smaller the community the bigger the impact.
I’ve just resigned myself to needing to make a big change.
It’s going to end with a relatively small reddit exodus with most returning to reddit in a few weeks. People are lazy, and will concede to the API changes just like they all did with Twitter. Remember when Musk took over and made all those dramatic changes heavily monetizing the platform? Everyone was crying how Twitter will die and that they were all quitting. Well guess what? Almost all of them went back to Twitter anyway and now use the official app just like Musk wanted. Reddit will be no different sadly.
I’ve been off Twitter and on mastodon for a long time now so take this with a grain of salt.
November changed mastodon forever. It’s 5-10x more active with a much broader userbase. Sure it’s gotten quieter than it was in December, but it went from ‘weird nerd twitter’ to ‘small social media’.
The events of this month have brought lemmy from ‘alpha demo of activitypub groups’ to ‘weird nerd reddit’
