Yesterday I read the excellent article by Cory Doctorow: Let the Platforms Burn and this particular anecdote The thing is, network effects are a double-edged sword. People join a service to be with the people they care about. But when the people they care about start to leave, everyone rushes for th...
The link contains db0's views on the ongoing state of Reddit, and I think that it's worth sharing here - both to document a piece of opinion, and as food for thought. The main points are:
a comparison between the current state of Reddit vs. Myspace near collapse;
the illusion that everything is fine based on "raw" numbers like engagement;
that Reddit was never a "good" site, but it had two positive points (open API and hands-off approach to communities), destroyed by the current events;
the ongoing progression of the Fediverse as alternative to Reddit;
the change in quality in both the content and the behaviour of the people still there.
EDIT: I hope that the author doesn't mind, but I'll copy the contents of the article inside the spoilers below. Hopefully for mobile users it'll be a bit more accessible.
since I’ve started using Lemmy full-time, I’ve seen the improvement in engagement and quality in real time.
This, more than anything happening at Reddit, demonstrates to me that people are leaving Reddit in droves.
Just weeks ago, Lemmy was slow, quiet place; it was rarely worth visiting more than once a day in terms of new posts. Since the Reddit protest, Lemmy has had a sea-change in volume, and that bespeaks a major migration.
I joined Lemmy 2 years ago and it was pretty much a desert, except for communities like privacy. I left after asking for a feature (a local intance feed, which has been implemented a while back!), because there wasn't much else to do. Almost forgot about it until the whole reddit fiasco happened. I'm now so thrilled that threaded discussions are taking off in the fediverse!
I was really active on reddit, especially in a local city community. Answering tourist's questions, posting local news, engaging in many conversations. I knew the regular's usernames, I am sure many recognized mine. I haven't posted since I've left and it honestly hurts a little, but I can't go back anymore. Reddit is dead, it just doesn't realize it yet. I'm happy to be a part of building Lemmy up.
I joined 3 years ago when I first heard about it in a zealous enthusiasm for open source projects, but quickly I realised it was just too small of a community for proper engagement - and the communities that were there felt a bit impenetrable with more close-knit and small userbases.
Now I can use Lemmy like I used reddit, for (reading and participating in) discussions with a semi-anonymous crowd on a multitude of topics and for looking at silly memes. And the future so far only looks more promising when it comes to the multitude part of topics available to discuss.
I didn't really start to use Lemmy until after the API shutdown. And even in that length of time it's been remarkable. The first week without reddit Lemmy wasn't really able to keep me death scrolling, which was a good thing probably. I eventually used revanced to get Sync working again on my phone. Since doing that I've spent maybe 3 hours on Reddit and probably 3 or 4 times that on Lemmy as the communities get more active and I find more communities I want to be a part of.
This gives me real, concrete hope that Lemmy is the future. I’m seeing it transform just in the last couple of weeks.
Also the old memes thing is funny af.
Yeah I've personally witnessed the growth in real time. I got on lemmy when the Reddit API changes where announced, and I was checking in on it at least once a day, because that was all there was to see.
