I guess it’s self explanatory but I keep seeing all this stuff about how everyone is moving from Reddit to lemmy and I’m wondering if anyone knows if that’s really what’s happening. If you have numbers that’s even better.
I doubt a “mass exodus”, most people probably stayed and it will take time before there’s a mass exodus from the platform. As apparent as it is to many of us that Reddit has gone to shit, for the vast majority of users, they just saw it as another meme-able moment, just another one of those reddit dramas that flares up and dies down eventually in time fort he next trend to hit.
For them though, maybe it’s died down already and it’s back to business as usual, maybe not, but the casual users aren’t going to see the true effects for some time I think. As a lack of moderation, a lack of content, an increase in bots, spam, and extremism start to take hold on the platform, users will start to realize that something is not quite right, it’s not the same reddit it used to be. They’ll start to get an inkling of what we’ve already seen and maybe at that point they’ll start branching out to Lemmy or some other platform. This may cause Reddit, the company, to start acting out in desperation to try to keep users from leaving and/or protect its potential profits, which may in turn cause a feedback loop wherein more users leave and Reddit gets stupider and stupider (similar to what we’re currently seeing with Twitter). It’ll be awhile before there’s a true mass exodus from the site.
As an aside and since you’re here, I’d like to mention how you nailed it with how you foresaw, prepared, and executed your sub move to Lemmy while admin weaselly went about their weak plays in your direction, forever making noises about wanting it shut down and then frantically backpedaling and changing course every few days when you finally did.
Watching them was like watching a hooked flounder flip about in the bottom of your boat as you continued to sail the high seas. Absolute masterclass in strategy.
Haven’t read your blog post yet, but knowing what you’ve already done tells me it’s likely to be a good read.
People have become more open to “testing the waters” of other apps. Sure they are still using Reddit and Twitter etc… but many have also started playing with lemmy, mastodon etc… I have no idea where this will end up but there is a shift of willingness to try something else and that is good start.
From Reddit’s PoV I don’t think that there is a mass emigration; it’s just that the most engaged sectors of the community left, so the 99% left don’t give a damn about it. Over time I predict that it’ll be a slow drain, not a mass exodus.
However from Lemmy/Kbin’s PoV there is a mass immigration. And the users are disproportionally active; for example a comm with 3k subscribers getting 1k upvotes in a post, stuff like this.
It’s a strategy straight out of MBA textbooks: Once you’re above a certain size and have a large “common consumer” base, you kick out everyone who would complain about shitty practices and exploitative behaviour. Then you squeeze out all the money you can over a year or three before the rest realize and leave.
It’s fast ROI at the cost of customer retention and long term profits. And investors literally don’t care if the company goes bankrupt as long as they get that money. Because they’ll just move on to the next company and do the same thing all over.
I am seeing precisely this in my workplace. A global company, bought by an investment fund for billions.
The fund cuts away anything that does not directly generate revenue, like product development, maintenance, support. So many people have been let go, the few remaining are unable to keep the ship afloat.
Fund doesn’t care because the numbers are amazing (income vs expenses) and they just want to sell before it sinks.
No care for the livelihood of thousands of employees, or the many very large customers. They will practically die, and that’s okay to the ones in charge.
Ditto Sync for Lemmy. Once the API shit started going down and I first started using Lemmy, I would not have dared to hope that any of the third party apps would migrate here too, let alone multiple.
Same, after more than a decade I kinda floated in limbo for a bit after Reddit is Fun was killed, but finally decided to just make the leap to Lemmy. No idea if it’s going to be the place that replaces Reddit, seems a little too messy, but I’m tired of every social media becoming trash after everyone gets comfortable using it and they start start trying to squeeze more money out of everything.
Given how Reddit had managed to hit the sweet spot of a company that doesn’t pay for its content, doesn’t pay for its self-regulating communities, and has hundreds of millions of users whose data it sells, it’s honestly shocking that they managed to mess things up so much.
It’s hard to get an exact number but you can extrapolate based on the growth of Lemmy in the last few weeks. While not record-breaking, it is quite an impressive growth.
Also note that not everyone who left Reddit came to Lemmy. There is also Kbin, Tildes and alternative. Some never really left at all.
I think the real damage done to Reddit (ultimately by themselves) is showing the world that there are real alternatives (even if a bit rough around the edges). They are materializing and growing as threats and if Reddit doesn’t step up their game, they could be in some real trouble.
The other possibility is that some other company might step up and build a Reddit clone, much like what Meta’s Threads is to Twitter, once they see that there is blood in the water and a potential to displace Reddit as the “frontpage of the Internet”. Heck, even Threads is built on the Fediverse, maybe a bigcorp-backed Reddit clone might be as well.
Reddit will mess up again, and when they do, those fresh batch of refugees will find plenty of alternatives to choose from thanks to the current batch of refugees accelerating developments of various Reddit alternatives.
Yes, it’s a positive feedback loop - people leave, start building alternatives, next round of leavers find the alternatives and start adding to it, next round find the alternatives are actually quite attractive, etc, etc.
In the end it’ll just be karma grinders and those who value convenience over pretty much anything else.
Yep, 100% agree. Reddit’s biggest mistake this time is mishandling PR so bad that they basically gave Lemmy, kBin etc a seat at the table for free. And with the poor management at the helm, it’s going to be a pattern of bad behaviors and Reddit is bound to mess up again.
Accidental Renaissance on Reddit was set to private by its mods, who opened up here instead. I don’t know how subscribers on Reddit there was, but yesterday’s surge now means there’s 1659 Lemmy subscribers.
So yes, there’s some movement, but I doubt it’s a “mass exodus”
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Awesome, thanks for pointing me to the new Accidental Renaissance community! I subscribed to the old one on Reddit but haven’t looked for all the Lemmy replacements yet.
When the app I used to access Reddit, Joey for Reddit, went down yesterday I moved to Lemmy. They were working with Reddit to setup paid API access and Reddit shutdown their access mid negotiation. I already had a Lemmy account but didn’t use it til now. I know a lot of other Joey users that did the same.
The best thing to happen from the exodus regardless of it’s size is that there is now an active, popular, and viable Reddit alternative with better mobile support than Reddit. Reddit will likely never die, but users who get sick of their BS now or in the future have legitimate options with enough active users to keep them busy
Dig never died. We still moved to Reddit. What calls my attention is that most of us left Reddit when they changed the site UI combined with their insistance on banning people posting the Blue ray decoding key. Reddit has been way worst recently so my guess is that Lemmy is maturing enough to lure all those not happy with Reddit.
No and no, it’s just hype IMO. But the trickle of new users seems sufficient to make Lemmy a more interesting place to be and a more viable platform long term. That’s already quite good if you ask me.
Mass exodus maybe in terms of power users. The average Reddit user used the official client before the api restrictions. My guess is that many people who posted good stuff ditched Reddit.
Oh got it. So it’ll be interesting to see how Reddit does without those people, whether others will step up or whether it’ll just lose all that content.
No, they won’t loose all content. I think the quality will just get worse and worse depending on what you view as quality. For the average social media user it probably will be good enough, or it will develop into reposts from other mainstream platforms.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a mass exodus. If we want to use that word: It’s not like all of Egypt left Egypt because of the Pharaoh…this is still a good place to be in. Away from the pettiness I see in the main media.
In terms of overall users, probably not. In terms of valuable, knowledgeable and hardworking users? Totally.
Take r/AMA for instance. The place was a gigantic draw for Reddit as a space for trustworthy, verified celebrity interactions. The entirety of that work was done by volunteers who have since left that work behind. As such, the place literally can not function as it was.
Another example I saw much closer is r/piracy. Despite what astroturfing bots and Spez Stans would have you believe, Reddit absolutely wanted that sub opened because of what a huge draw it is. Just looking at what they did is enough to prove that. They removed the top mod, manually un-privated the sub, then removed the next top mod for continuing to protest before installing their own. The place is open now and working “normally.” Despite this, there’s really no one knowledgeable left over there. I looked recently, and I found a lot of highly-upvoted, really awful advice. Like, some borderline dangerous stuff.
They’d been preparing for the eventuality they’d have to leave Reddit for a while, foreseeing the day Reddit would throw them to copyright wolves and shut down the sub. Though I doubt they had “Reddit imploding” on their list of possible reasons to leave, all that prep worked out really well.
That was fun, watching Reddit admin twist and squirm and repeatedly fishflop over r/piracy until they got their scabs in permanently. Like you I wouldn’t touch the Reddit sub now, and don’t recommend anyone else trust it either.
What kind of dangerous stuff? Like holding their sword in their mouth as they climb rigging with the sharp side towards them? Not taking all of their vitamins?
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I doubt a “mass exodus”, most people probably stayed and it will take time before there’s a mass exodus from the platform. As apparent as it is to many of us that Reddit has gone to shit, for the vast majority of users, they just saw it as another meme-able moment, just another one of those reddit dramas that flares up and dies down eventually in time fort he next trend to hit.
For them though, maybe it’s died down already and it’s back to business as usual, maybe not, but the casual users aren’t going to see the true effects for some time I think. As a lack of moderation, a lack of content, an increase in bots, spam, and extremism start to take hold on the platform, users will start to realize that something is not quite right, it’s not the same reddit it used to be. They’ll start to get an inkling of what we’ve already seen and maybe at that point they’ll start branching out to Lemmy or some other platform. This may cause Reddit, the company, to start acting out in desperation to try to keep users from leaving and/or protect its potential profits, which may in turn cause a feedback loop wherein more users leave and Reddit gets stupider and stupider (similar to what we’re currently seeing with Twitter). It’ll be awhile before there’s a true mass exodus from the site.
There’s was/is an absolute exodus of power users. It’s now a matter of time until the rest move. Not if. When.
My thoughts in detail: https://dbzer0.com/blog/reddit-is-a-dead-site-running/
Thank you for your blog post!
As an aside and since you’re here, I’d like to mention how you nailed it with how you foresaw, prepared, and executed your sub move to Lemmy while admin weaselly went about their weak plays in your direction, forever making noises about wanting it shut down and then frantically backpedaling and changing course every few days when you finally did.
Watching them was like watching a hooked flounder flip about in the bottom of your boat as you continued to sail the high seas. Absolute masterclass in strategy.
Haven’t read your blog post yet, but knowing what you’ve already done tells me it’s likely to be a good read.
Thanks for your kind words
People have become more open to “testing the waters” of other apps. Sure they are still using Reddit and Twitter etc… but many have also started playing with lemmy, mastodon etc… I have no idea where this will end up but there is a shift of willingness to try something else and that is good start.
From Reddit’s PoV I don’t think that there is a mass emigration; it’s just that the most engaged sectors of the community left, so the 99% left don’t give a damn about it. Over time I predict that it’ll be a slow drain, not a mass exodus.
However from Lemmy/Kbin’s PoV there is a mass immigration. And the users are disproportionally active; for example a comm with 3k subscribers getting 1k upvotes in a post, stuff like this.
Oh interesting, yeah. That makes sense. Thanks!
It’s a strategy straight out of MBA textbooks: Once you’re above a certain size and have a large “common consumer” base, you kick out everyone who would complain about shitty practices and exploitative behaviour. Then you squeeze out all the money you can over a year or three before the rest realize and leave.
It’s fast ROI at the cost of customer retention and long term profits. And investors literally don’t care if the company goes bankrupt as long as they get that money. Because they’ll just move on to the next company and do the same thing all over.
Interesting, didn’t know that was MBA textbook strategy. Makes much sense, however.
It’s called “locust capitalism” in some languages.
Since they literally just consume everything and move on to new things with zero regard for anything they affect after the fact.
I am seeing precisely this in my workplace. A global company, bought by an investment fund for billions.
The fund cuts away anything that does not directly generate revenue, like product development, maintenance, support. So many people have been let go, the few remaining are unable to keep the ship afloat.
Fund doesn’t care because the numbers are amazing (income vs expenses) and they just want to sell before it sinks.
No care for the livelihood of thousands of employees, or the many very large customers. They will practically die, and that’s okay to the ones in charge.
Brazen but unsurprising to have that in a business text book. Does that strategy have a name?
I refuse to go back to Reddit. Can’t wait until Boost for Lemmy to come out.
Ditto Sync for Lemmy. Once the API shit started going down and I first started using Lemmy, I would not have dared to hope that any of the third party apps would migrate here too, let alone multiple.
And Sync!
After 10 years on Reddit I’ve made the jump to Lemmy. There’s the odd Reddit link I click on when doing a Google search
Same, after more than a decade I kinda floated in limbo for a bit after Reddit is Fun was killed, but finally decided to just make the leap to Lemmy. No idea if it’s going to be the place that replaces Reddit, seems a little too messy, but I’m tired of every social media becoming trash after everyone gets comfortable using it and they start start trying to squeeze more money out of everything. Given how Reddit had managed to hit the sweet spot of a company that doesn’t pay for its content, doesn’t pay for its self-regulating communities, and has hundreds of millions of users whose data it sells, it’s honestly shocking that they managed to mess things up so much.
It’s hard to get an exact number but you can extrapolate based on the growth of Lemmy in the last few weeks. While not record-breaking, it is quite an impressive growth.
Also note that not everyone who left Reddit came to Lemmy. There is also Kbin, Tildes and alternative. Some never really left at all.
I think the real damage done to Reddit (ultimately by themselves) is showing the world that there are real alternatives (even if a bit rough around the edges). They are materializing and growing as threats and if Reddit doesn’t step up their game, they could be in some real trouble.
The other possibility is that some other company might step up and build a Reddit clone, much like what Meta’s Threads is to Twitter, once they see that there is blood in the water and a potential to displace Reddit as the “frontpage of the Internet”. Heck, even Threads is built on the Fediverse, maybe a bigcorp-backed Reddit clone might be as well.
deleted by creator
More like the backpage of the Internet.
For you and for me maybe. For many others, they are still happily scrolling away on the official app.
We’re in a bit of a glass house here on that front. The pornsick losers have definitely made themselves at home here.
They don’t even call themselves that anymore…
Reddit will mess up again, and when they do, those fresh batch of refugees will find plenty of alternatives to choose from thanks to the current batch of refugees accelerating developments of various Reddit alternatives.
Yes, it’s a positive feedback loop - people leave, start building alternatives, next round of leavers find the alternatives and start adding to it, next round find the alternatives are actually quite attractive, etc, etc.
In the end it’ll just be karma grinders and those who value convenience over pretty much anything else.
Yep, 100% agree. Reddit’s biggest mistake this time is mishandling PR so bad that they basically gave Lemmy, kBin etc a seat at the table for free. And with the poor management at the helm, it’s going to be a pattern of bad behaviors and Reddit is bound to mess up again.
Accidental Renaissance on Reddit was set to private by its mods, who opened up here instead. I don’t know how subscribers on Reddit there was, but yesterday’s surge now means there’s 1659 Lemmy subscribers.
So yes, there’s some movement, but I doubt it’s a “mass exodus”
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Awesome, thanks for pointing me to the new Accidental Renaissance community! I subscribed to the old one on Reddit but haven’t looked for all the Lemmy replacements yet.
When the app I used to access Reddit, Joey for Reddit, went down yesterday I moved to Lemmy. They were working with Reddit to setup paid API access and Reddit shutdown their access mid negotiation. I already had a Lemmy account but didn’t use it til now. I know a lot of other Joey users that did the same.
So Joey was willing to pay for API access and Reddit still shut them down?
Yep
https://lemmy.world/post/1491774
That’s not really surprising or unexpected though. Most businesses won’t just let you access their paid product for free while in negotiations.
The best thing to happen from the exodus regardless of it’s size is that there is now an active, popular, and viable Reddit alternative with better mobile support than Reddit. Reddit will likely never die, but users who get sick of their BS now or in the future have legitimate options with enough active users to keep them busy
Dig never died. We still moved to Reddit. What calls my attention is that most of us left Reddit when they changed the site UI combined with their insistance on banning people posting the Blue ray decoding key. Reddit has been way worst recently so my guess is that Lemmy is maturing enough to lure all those not happy with Reddit.
No and no, it’s just hype IMO. But the trickle of new users seems sufficient to make Lemmy a more interesting place to be and a more viable platform long term. That’s already quite good if you ask me.
Mass exodus maybe in terms of power users. The average Reddit user used the official client before the api restrictions. My guess is that many people who posted good stuff ditched Reddit.
Oh got it. So it’ll be interesting to see how Reddit does without those people, whether others will step up or whether it’ll just lose all that content.
No, they won’t loose all content. I think the quality will just get worse and worse depending on what you view as quality. For the average social media user it probably will be good enough, or it will develop into reposts from other mainstream platforms.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a mass exodus. If we want to use that word: It’s not like all of Egypt left Egypt because of the Pharaoh…this is still a good place to be in. Away from the pettiness I see in the main media.
In terms of overall users, probably not. In terms of valuable, knowledgeable and hardworking users? Totally.
Take r/AMA for instance. The place was a gigantic draw for Reddit as a space for trustworthy, verified celebrity interactions. The entirety of that work was done by volunteers who have since left that work behind. As such, the place literally can not function as it was.
Another example I saw much closer is r/piracy. Despite what astroturfing bots and Spez Stans would have you believe, Reddit absolutely wanted that sub opened because of what a huge draw it is. Just looking at what they did is enough to prove that. They removed the top mod, manually un-privated the sub, then removed the next top mod for continuing to protest before installing their own. The place is open now and working “normally.” Despite this, there’s really no one knowledgeable left over there. I looked recently, and I found a lot of highly-upvoted, really awful advice. Like, some borderline dangerous stuff.
Yeah, the real r/piracy is now here on the Fediverse:
/c/[email protected]
They’d been preparing for the eventuality they’d have to leave Reddit for a while, foreseeing the day Reddit would throw them to copyright wolves and shut down the sub. Though I doubt they had “Reddit imploding” on their list of possible reasons to leave, all that prep worked out really well.
That was fun, watching Reddit admin twist and squirm and repeatedly fishflop over r/piracy until they got their scabs in permanently. Like you I wouldn’t touch the Reddit sub now, and don’t recommend anyone else trust it either.
Arrrrrrrr, thankee lad
What kind of dangerous stuff? Like holding their sword in their mouth as they climb rigging with the sharp side towards them? Not taking all of their vitamins?
No, it’s not a mass exodus.