The Reddit blackout was pretty underwhelming
In the last 3 days I’ve been paying attention to r/all, expecting several posts about it and… Yeah Wasn’t expecting the website to literally shut down nor to monopolize r/all, because 3rd party users are the minority, but I hoped for more than whatever this was. At least there’s a silver lining, I discovered new alternatives that have healthier communities
I didn't go and check things out. But I gotta say, before I was an only Reddit user. Now I don't expect to totally forgo Reddit forever, but I now know there are alternatives and it is a nicer community so far here.
At least here I'm not getting spammed with bots and "Satan Gets Us" ads.
Have you ever added the word Reddit to a web search so you could find an answer online without a lot of digging?
Stuff like that I imagine got hit hard. There will always be core communities that either stay up or are easy replicate but I imagine they'll be losing a lot of smaller communities.
The question is basically, how many mods and power users moved to other platforms. It was clear that Reddit would not die over night or that the Fediverse would be able to take on all the users of Reddit.
But without much of the volunteer labour, Reddit will enter a slow death spiral of worse and worse subreddits and the remaining users will slowly leave as a result.
It went about as expected, IMO. 90% of redditors just don't care that much - even if they agreed with the blackout in principle, most of them were likely just waiting patiently for their favourite subs to reopen so they could go back to browsing as usual. A quick browse through some of my subscribed (and still open) subs revealed a lot of commenters weren't even clear about what was going on.
But it has had the effect of essentially kickstarting a community here which seems to be taking shape nicely and there's finally a (small but growing fast) alternative to reddit - which didn't really exist before. I can see the following months and years seeing a gradual shift in user base from reddit to here.
Reddit's not going to die overnight; that was never going to happen. But it's possible it's the beginning of the end of their empire and the slow decline to the ranks of the remember-that-website-whatever-happened-to-that club. Time will tell I guess.
@Hypx same with Tumblr. It exists, but the core reason I used it is now gone and so are many of its members.
As a Gen-X parent, I've abhorred the look and feel of Facebook even from the beginning. When I first made an account I got connected with old high school people and thought it was pretty neat. But then I tried to share some thoughts for discussion like one would do on a BBS/forum/Reddit, and realized that wasn't what it was for. That was the last I posted. I know I'm in a minority and people who love it have a need for sharing everything they do, but that isn't me.
There's a saying I like: "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." I don't think this means that a person can only be one of those, but that in discussions there is a level of thinking going on with the category. I prefer the first one more, and even Reddit had places where you aren't going to find that...but it had some, and I enjoyed my time there.
Oh, and get off my lawn. You too, boomers. Everyone get off the damn lawn!
There are dozens of us!
I like that saying, by the way. I want to discuss everything, but when someone is limited to that lower level it's quite disappointing.
Reddit isn't going to disappear, but that doesn't mean it won't die. Going public will kill Reddit. The parent company isn't profitable, and the product isn't profitable, and public investors will only tolerate that if growth suggests future gains.
Those future gains will be had by strangling Reddit and twisting its corpse into something much less useful, interesting, and fun.
Reddit's animated corpse will carry on for years, but that IPO will be a poisoned pill for what we know and recognize as Reddit.
Yep! Reddit won't die. It is becoming (and in some ways has been for some time) one of a very limited number of sites that the majority of the interconnected globe uses to exchange information, like Facebook. Even if it loses .5% of its current userbase to some alternative, it's barely a drop in the bucket to Reddit, but that number is HUGE if it's mostly dorks like us setting up a new home here in the Fediverse.
It's a win-win; we want quality discussion here. Your average modern Reddit user wants the information drip. (And I should say, it's entirely possible to be someone who uses both during this transition phase)
I'm actually pretty surprised with, despite how few people there are by comparison, how active and useful this has already been. And I'm expecring it to only continue to get better. Pretty sure I'll have little reason to go back to Reddit except for some useful historical posts.
Especially after apps are shut down I'm expecting another flood of new users. And the numbers keep climbing (today kbin alone has gone up another at least 10%)
What I'm most happy about is that the Fediverse so far seems to be mostly actually pretty good people (though I've been largely chilling in kbin since the blackout started -- it only just turned on federation). Most past attempts to abandon reddit only saw the most toxic, horrible people leave. Sites like Voat were never an option because the users were awful. It's nice that so far, I haven't really seen any of that. In fact, it feels the opposite, with the people who left reddit being disproportionately great people, with the toxic people being more likely to stay on reddit.
I wonder if it'll last? I hope so. I wanted to leave reddit in the past but never felt like there was anywhere comparable to go that wasn't shit.
There's a decent chance it will. The fediverse is—generally speaking—a fairly friendly and welcoming place. That's in part to it's decentralized nature and individual moderation tools. Bad actors can be blocked on an individual level (I just blocked /u/donaldtrump last night because I do not want to see stupid parody accounts and just like that he's gone) as well as on an instance level for anyone not following the rules.
Each instance has their own rules about how to behave, so the bigots and whatnot get booted if they cause problems. Eventually they find an equally terrible server that will have them and once they start up again, that instance can be defederated, which is basically like cutting off the bridge to their island… no way to communicate. Eventually they end up alone or with equally terrible people on other instances.
That's not to say that the fediverse doesn't have it's share of problems or is perfect, but we're working hard to try and keep this a decent place to be.
Yeah, I don't think people realize that cashing out in the IPO is likely the end goal in itself.
But I like it here, it's exciting!
The black out is still happening right now.
There are subs who are blacking out indefinitely still.
But I don't know what people expected to happen after 48 hours?
The subreddits who participated already told that it was a "warning shot" and new actions were to be taken accordingly after.
And r/all is not Reddit.
r/all is the tumor of Reddit itself. It is the instagram and facebook equivalant of the "feed page". It doesn't define what makes Reddit...Reddit.
Again something that RIF did for me, it made r/all bearable to scroll through.
It are the communities underneath who provide advice, information and a sense of comradery who define Reddit.
When those communities leave, then you can fasten your seatbelts.
Reddit and it's userbase are not gonna survive of what is happening on r/all.
It will be a marathon and we should probably see in a year or maybe 2 if what is happening was effective.
I see your point but I think you misunderstand me a bit.
r/all is somewhat of a "front", it can show that the place is vibrant and that there is something to do and something to scroll through.
But for example I never saw anything from r/mealprepsunday on my r/all and when I had reddit it actually was an subreddit that I was subscribed to and used frequently.
If the subreddit above gives me a reason to stay on reddit and it would dissapear then an vibrant r/all isn't an incentive for me to stay.
Can you see where I am coming from?
a page like r/all has it's use. It can reel people in and give direction but it will not be the reason people will stay.
I've seen posts already asking where to find lists of communities to join
I have seen a lot of that, too, but I view that as a plus. I mean, you have all these people wandering around here, asking for directions to the equivalents of all their old digital gathering places, but they are engaging. Like, actually having conversations and building camaraderie and all that jazz that happens when you build a community, and that's just awesome to see, man. Where we all come from wasn't like that at all; smaller subreddits aside, it was like shouting into the crowd at a frickin Kid Rock concert, y'know? The atmosphere wasn't exactly conducive to conversation. Not to say good conversation was impossible in big threads; it happened all the time. But it was always just so frickin loud and obnoxious in there, ya know?
And now we have this new space, and its newness is forcing people to talk, and...ah fuck, I forgot where I was going with this. Um... Reddit bad! Me like Kbin! Or something. Have fun with settling in, and I mean that sincerely.
There are several points to be made:
The Old Reddit, whatever it means, is long gone forever. Aaron is gone. Spez does not care. No apologies or retracting will be made and that's it.
Reddit must have calculated that there are enough 'casual' crowd (not a long timer, does not use or care about 3rd party apps or the old interface, comes for the quick laughs and watches ads) so they could withstand whatever pressure the 'hard-core' crowd (long timer, uses and cares about old UI and API changes, does not generate ad views in general, spends long hours in site) generates.
Reddit must have also considered the possibility of the second crowd simply going away. I suspect Spez or the investors simply does not give a damn about it. Ad revenues are everything and there's a loud minority that threatens to leave? Why should they care, after all? All they see is a potential for "more" growth.
What they do and must care is the eventual entrance of a sizeable competition that eats into their revenues - less visitors mean less ad revenues. Lemmy and Fediverse, as much as I love it and will keep using it, is not that threat - yet.
What will probably happen is that the wider internet will label the riot (as of now) a massive failure, laugh at the "bravery" of slacktivism or whatever the latest meme can be slapped at.
Despite that, it should mark the emerging of a sustainable group of Reddit-like communities that could, in one day, become the competition Digg never thought they would face.
No, I don't think Lemmy is perfect. I do have an issue with the dev's political stance. But as long as they don't become the Spez of what was supposed to be the Federation, and the software and the protocol and the community can sustain and rule themselves, things might be alright.
Reddit will eventually die, like many other internet websites. Perhaps not now. They won't go out in a spectacular way the Digg v4 happened, but simply wither away like Facebook. But we have another home, and it's all that matters.
Aaron is gone.
;_; RIP.
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