this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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They didn't win, they just didn't fail as badly some had hoped. What was accomplished was spreading out a fair portion of their user base. Maybe not a huge percentage of it, but enough that they don't have the same level of monopoly. People are more aware of other options (and Reddit's flaws), and more will depart in time.
Reddit assisted their competition. Lemmy use doubled.
Doubled? I see posts with user engagement and it's a wall. Low, low, low, and then boom, astronomical.
It's still a drop in the ocean for reddit and the people who left (or just spend less time on it) were never the target audience of this "new course". Reddit will be just fine.
I'm not sure I'd call it a drop, Reddit has a large number of users yes, but most of those are not active users (post or participate daily.)
And that is not touching the massive number of bots that just recycle old content and mass upvote or downvote when they see keywords to drive a narrative.
Reddit isn't gonna collapse any day now, but what remains now is a lot of rot. What actual users are left are likely going to notice and start to migrate away towards alternatives with actual user interaction and not just a series of bots and trolls spewing the same predictable results.
I'd argue a lot of the people who actually add value and produce content (for fun, rather than for profit) have left or want to. And those people are what grew reddit in the first place by making it somewhere worth going.
Perhaps reddit will end up just like all those sites that just repost shit from reddit... Except it won't be reddit anymore.
Haha dude, I was a MAJOR contributor on Reddit. I spent HOURS each day posting fresh new content for people to read on various subreddits.
Drop in an ocean or not, if all the content creators stop doing it, the content stops.
Imagine YouTube without LinusTechTips, or Hollywood without any actors. They are, as you say "a drop in the bucket", a tiny percentage of overall YouTube users.
But that doesn't matter because most people on Reddit and TV viewers, are passive consumers. The statistics showed that less than one half of users were actually logged in, and a third or less ever posted anything (non-comments).
Trust me, Reddit is hurting. They haven't won. They think they've won but that's just shock and adrenaline before it wears off.
The users are the content, and if they all leave, there's nothing left. Digg and MySpace know this.
Most of my YT usage is watching music videos or random clips. I don't think I ever watched LinusTechTips, or any other vlogger, on purpose for that matter so it would remain the same for me. People use platforms in different ways for them.
Yeah I was a big contributor too. Doesn't matter if they cease to exist, as long as I get enough joy out of Lemmy and contribute back in return
And let's face it. Even if they only lost 3% or whatever of their user base to Lemmy, it was definitely the coolest, smartest, best-looking 3%.
"the coolest, smartest, best-looking"
Crap, I didn't realize there were prereqs...
Well put. I think there was permanent damage done to user's trust, but don't see many of the smaller subreddit communities migrating away yet.
I worry that Lemmy is even more an echo chamber with a handful of default communities, I hope it grows to the point where I don't feel obligated to join the popular communities so there is actual content to scroll through.