this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
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I'd bet my left nut reddit will survive for quite a while yet, probably do even better over time
The kind of people who end up here just aren't the target demographic for them anymore
Maybe… but I’d guess in the same sense that Digg is still around. You’re right about the type of people migrating here, though - Reddit no longer cares about intelligent discussion, it’s all memes and snark and political outrage. They don’t want an informed populace, they want a populace that can be steered toward whatever they want.
This is not the first mass migration I’ve seen from Reddit, but this is the first one that feels like it might actually stick, for a couple of reasons: First, Lemmy finally feels like a viable alternative. Previous alternatives like Voat were quite abrasive - like I’m all about free speech, but I don’t want to see a bunch of hateful content just for the sake of being shocking. Second, this time they’re fucking with the mods. And while a lot can be said about the quality of the moderation over there, people abhorr being asked to do more with less, especially when they’re working for free. Lose the mods and the site is DONE. It will be overrun with spam so quick it’ll make your head spin, and then the last exodus will occur, quietly. And Reddit cannot afford to replace the unpaid mods with paid mods, they simply don’t have the resources.
It will be interesting to see how things go with Lemmy, but I have hopes - with it being decentralized, if a community becomes toxic or overly-censored it seems easy enough to spin up a rival on a different instance and filter the bad actor. At least that seems to be the pitch, let’s see how things shake out over the next year or two.
I’ve been on Reddit for nearly 15 years (since just prior to the digg migration), but it is nothing like what it used to be - it’s changed, man, and not at all for the better. Lemmy definitely feels more like Reddit of old, and I’m excited to be here - now I just need to find my hobby communities and I’ll have my new internet home. But the communities will come, the apps will come, and I have high hopes. Let’s go!
I'd add a third reason that killing the apps materially affects all the people who were die hard app users. Previous proposed reddit boycotts were over some issue like the site firing the woman who organized the AMAs or some other moderation issue that for the most part didn't impact the rest of the experience of browsing. It's easy to forget how one subreddit got ruined or some admin drama because it feels distant from day to day browsing. Taking away the apps is impossible to avoid. App users can't just shrug about all this drama and go back to browsing the way they are accustomed to. Opening that official app is going to be a constant reminder of how ugly all this was. It will make sticking to a boycott much easier I think.
💯
I'm just hoping that most of my favorite niche subs move to something more decentralized; Reddit has a bunch of specialized communities that I'd hate to lose.
FB and twitter are losing users, but very slowly. Reddit will go out the same way... It'll be a whiny, decades-long, fading away into obscurity, while still retaining lots of assets.