It doesn't matter how many people or what kind of people moved from Reddit. I was there 14 years (Digg 4.0 exile here). They have a new group of people now. My wife and kids now use Reddit, but it's not the same type of user interaction I experienced there in the past. It's very much a mix of scrolling through TikTok videos and sparse reading of comments on an /r/askreddit thread. It's casual browsing and video content. There are still some holdouts, which I think mostly contribute to what's left of the comment section, but that's it. It sucks, because I miss the discussions there. Lemmy kind of scratches that itch, but the content is slow to come in, and the comments so few. I'm doing my part, and I am much more active here than I ever was on Reddit.
IMO the quality of discussion here is about the same on reddit. Which is to say, not very good, or very deep. It's shallow observations, memes, and one liner gut reactions to headlines. People have been conditioned over the past decade to not engage with long replies or complex thoughts. It might have to do with social media becoming more or less defined by people engaging with it on mobile devices, which don't really enable that sort of engagement. But it might also be people genuinely not giving a shit anymore and only wanting that minor degree of superficial interaction.
I get better responses here on Lemmy with my longer replies, which is great. Reddit feels overall dumber now where people will try and argue that your comment with sources is somehow less compelling than someone else’s sourceless opinion (true story).
I’m having far better interactions on Lemmy.
My favorite thing about Lemmy is that you can comment on an article that's several hours old and get responses. Reddit was so big that if you didn't comment on major articles within a couple minutes of being posted, your comment would get buried under a thousand other comments and would never be seen. Commenting became a game of which top level comment you could possibly sneak your comment as a response to, even if it wasn't really a "response" to what the person had said, just to get your comment seen and have a chance at sparking a discussion.
Same. I've had mostly positive interactions with Lemmy. The content is slow to come in, but more enjoyable to read and interact with
Honestly, the worst thing about Lemmy is Lemmy users thinking it's better than Reddit simply by the virtue of it not being Reddit.
The platform? Yes, absolutely, a much better solution with built in checks and balances to stop one greedy company eating everyone's lunch.
The content? It's identical! (Bar a few cosplay communists that stir up drama occasionally). And some things are significantly worse like the quality of content curation and moderation.
For every person writing an "ugh you must be a Redditor"/"I thought I left this behind on Reddit" type comment,I bet there are many more people rolling their eyes and at least a few of them that end up abandoning the platform entirely.
Also let's not forget that Reddit has duration as an advantage. I can look back 10 years on a tv show that is no longer airing and there will still be discussion threads from when it came out. That's literally impossible to manufacture overnight, so Reddit has a huge edge.
I was on reddit a couple times past couple of days for some specific purposes (like looking up Minecraft seeds). Checked the front page and stuff out of curiosity and I genuinely don't know if the content was already as bad when I left or if Lemmy just gave me new standards or something, but Jesus Christ. It's all just ragebait and TikTok reposts, even though everyone on reddit always claims to hate TikTok. It's like if you collected all the lowest tier posts from every other site and then gathered them in one.
Same thing for me here, so much rage bait. I was asking a specific question on Google and a reddit post had a very good answer, curiosity sent me to r/all and it is so clearly meant to get under your skin.
Exactly how I felt there too. Reddit was different. It wasn't the place where you could come and chat with strangers about things you enjoy, even the most positive subs were littered with spam and comments usually devolved into arguments.
Not saying it didn't happen here but the vibe is for sure better. Haven't logged into my reddit account since spez killed Sync.
It's a war of attrition. Slow and steady will win this race.
Lemmy, just like Mastodon has seen spikes followed by users leaving. But every spike leaves more users on Lemmy/Mastodon than previously.
Truthfully, in the event another Reddit Exodus, which will happen, we need to try and be more of a content-oriented system during that era. Making more posts and focusing on adding to niches.
Reddit is about Niche communities and Content Saturation. Lemmy isn't really about that, but it can be for moments at a time to pull users in. At some point we'll reach a critical mass of users that leads to easier justification for new users to join.
We just need a group of extremely disorganized and disagreeable people to organize and and agree on this.
oh no
Reddit also gets a little bit worse every spike, too. There are few mods remaining on Reddit who are doing anything more interesting for their communities than basic spam removal. Automod does all the work when all the largest subs just repost the same content and fake stories anyway.
It's not like going to implode or anything anytime soon but the quality (from my perspective at least) has totally flatlined since June because why would anyone in their right mind invest creative energy into cultivating a unique community? I think that eventually a Lemmy community will pop up that simply couldn't exist on Reddit and will serve to illustrate why I believe this model is better.
Another hurdle is getting game devs to treat Lemmy instances for their games as official points of contact, which is definitely something reddit still has that Lemmy doesn't, unfortunately.
My search results keep wanting me to go to Reddit. I'm trying to avoid it, but it keeps calling.
I'm not scrolling there like I did before the "Spez killed the 3rd party app migration". I miss the level of engagement and ease of finding communities. Lemmy is decent, but the post volume is lacking. If I scroll new now, and again 12 hours later, there's not much new stuff before I see the stuff from last time.
I have a similar experience, only visiting reddit for stuff like tech problems and very niche communities. I had never willingly visited the reddit homepage since.
There are a lot of posts now on lemmy compared to before the reddit fiasco but is not like the activity on reddit. The good thing though is that it made me stop my habit of mindlessly scrolling through endless content.
Lemmy will dethrone reddit once you are able to google a question and the Lemmy link is at the top as opposed to reddit
Reddit also had the ability to just type in my address bar "/r/obscurefandom" and be taken directly to the subreddit for it. Lemmy doesn't have those smaller subs yet and you have to hunt for the right instance if it does.
Whelp, better get to asking questions... Someone ask me a question to an answer someone may want to search for
Yeah, reddit admins won. Most people don't care and at this point its hard to see what the admins could do to start a real exodus. Hell, my reddit usage is way down, but I still go there for niche subjects (anime, philosophy) because nowhere else is comparable.
Are you saying anime is niche?
they may have won this battle but the war is still ongoing. reddit is a public company, and it is a modern website, which means it is going to get shittier and shittier and it is never going to stop. i still go there for sports and news but anything of substance or merit i try to share here instead because fuck them. i think over time it'll hollow itself out even more.
reddit is a public company
I don't think they are public yet, the reason they pulled their little stunt in the first place is to prep for their IPO release. I think the general uproar probably set them back a while, but I'm sure the IPO is coming.
I cant say they won all around. As a tech guy, now when i look up tech info and click on a reddit link 90% of the top answers are deleted(including all mine from the last 12 years).
Before the exidus, Reddit was already a painful hassle to use, unable to view many normal subreddits now, 80% of my screen taken up by login and cookie warnings, forcing logins, asking if you want the app multiple times. Slow, clunky, broken UI.
IF i want to give info to the Reddit people, i only post links to topics over on Lemmy.
IMO reddit won but only by engaging a new audience. It removed the 1 post per subreddit on the front page without an announcement, modified the upvote algorithm to make upvote numbers seem larger than they are, and comments per upvote are lower than 10 years ago. Basically engagement is way down for people who use it like a forum aggregate. But engagement is way up by people who are migrating off of Instagram and similar platforms. I used to feel weird about being on reddit but now I have my wife's 20 mostly female coworkers asking me about it. Reddit has a new audience it appeals to and it's creating a weird issue because for some dumbass reason they thought the unpaid engagement generators would stick around after they fucked everything up for a few short term dollars.
The only thing that keeps me going back to Reddit is extremely niche subreddits having no mass here. Honestly if the Nuzlocke subreddit had more activity, I'd probably never open Reddit
The only time I think about Reddit is when you degens bring it up. :|
Instead of complaining about why people stay on Reddit, perhaps you should focus more on improving Lemmy communities, so that people don't feel a need to return.
While I do like it here, it is very quiet, even when it comes to popular subjects like football, pro wrestling, anime, etc - the sort of stuff that Reddit still excels at.
A lot of subs never really got a foothold outside of Reddit. I tried to do what I could and I'm still trying my best but I'm only one guy and I'm not good at making content. Barely anyone from the BrandoSando subs came, the incremental games community gave up before it even started, no community that I know has had a successful offshoot in the fediverse.
Reddit didn't start that specific, the best thing to grow Lemmy is be active in broad communities, not brandosando but books. When books grows large enough then a sanderverse community can be spun off, but trying to be over specialized just dilutes the users into small inactive communities.
yeah, the sheer breadth of obscure topics that were able to form a sizeable enough group on reddit is so fragile and special and hard to replicate. such a shame.
I deleted my Reddit account but there are some subs I greatly miss. Shame the majority of their members didn't move over to Lemmy due to lack of care.
I'll be honest, I am still browsing Reddit, though in a more limited fashion. I deleted all my submissions and comments and refuse to post or comment, no matter how strong the urge to correct misinformation regarding topics I am interested in is. Communities for those topics are generally non-existent, got created and withered within a month of the 3rd-Party-Exodus, or in the case of /r/leagueoflegends and its local mirrors, are generally carried by the eSport scene and there is generally no decent discussion to be had outside of that. And I don't even know if one of the League communities here even does post-match threads.
Tbf, now that I've jumped over here and gotten comfortable, its nice that lemmee itself isnt abusive, but good god are the communists here fucking retarded. And I say this as someone who liked the ideals of communism. Its like how I liked the Idea of Telsas until I met Tesla owners
Edit: Lmao the most controversial part of this statement is merely one of the words I used. One of the things I appreciate about Lemmy is that it shows both the up and downvotes
Edit 2: Look at me! IM the controversy now!
It's actually pretty funny how many discussions about Reddit, Twitter, and Threads happening in the Fediverse.
I just deleted my Reddit account a few months ago (and my Twitter account years ago) and I don't think I miss anything.
That's how it works in most abusive relationships. The perpetrator behaves terribly and then is forgiven. Like the tide coming in each time the abuse is worse, more damaging or in this case more demeaning, but the cost of exiting the relationship is too high because it means to become alone and people hate loneliness more than being shit upon so they complain and stay and hope that this time it will be better even though if they think about it they know it won't be.
The quality of reddit has seriously gone downhill. It feels like being on Facebook or something, the comments are cringrworthy and just plain odd and the posts aren't great either.
The part of Reddit that I DO miss are the video subs. Like WTF, mildly interesting, why were they filming, etc. From my understanding, let me isn't able to host videos but why not drop links to vids🤷🏿♂️
I was mostly on Reddit for hockey game threads. Lemmy sucks for that at the moment, so... I went to discord. Fuck spez
This is me. I still go there for two or three subs that don't have critical mass here (thus no conversation). The upcoming weighted sort algo should help a little, drawing people to smaller community content.
But I also moderate a reasonably large sub there, and have stopped attempting to grow anything there -- just spam removal, manually.
But I don't post new content there. Sometimes I'll reply on a comment chain. Here I post new content and interact a lot more.
I'm using Lemmy Connect as my app (like 98% of it). What's interesting is, when I use Reddit I refuse to use their app, so I'm using old Reddit, in a browser. But I catch myself attempting to swipe on comments using the Lemmy Connect gestures.
So I've definitely flipped to Lemmy first.
As per usual, it's a matter of content.
I can't (and shouldn't have to) carry the entire weight of a fandom on my shoulders. Until there's more activity here on those subjects, I have to at least keep an eye on Reddit.
What I always do when I can however, is I try to do POSEO to raise awareness: by which I mean, I post my opinions or ideas or stories in my own site (or in my Masto main) first, and only crosslink on Reddit. I was thinking of doing the same with reply comments as well, but dunno how much would that promote interaction.
Not sure exactly when it happened, but sometime in the past 3-4 years reddit just became not-reddit. It seemed to draw a more Facebook-esque audience than in prior years. There is still some good content there, but its simply not what it used to be.
Memes
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.