It’s not even June 12 for me, yet I suspect many subreddits went dark based on UTC.
I moved to Reddit during the Digg migration. Thus, I got the default subscriptions from back in the day. Over the years, I’ve unsubscribed to things I felt were crap, and I’ve added a number of subreddits.
Already, many have gone dark. My old.Reddit.com homepage already looks much different than normal, and I know that a few subreddits that do show have announced they’ll go dark. I assume they are US based and timing that locally.
I’ve spent more time in the Lemmy fediverse than on Reddit since joining, but I’ve spent time on both.
I’ll admit to cynical skepticism of the impact of the darkening. I still don’t think it will make a difference in Reddit policy, but I now believe it will have a larger impact on Reddit traffic than I imagined.
I still expect it to have no change in Reddit attitude or really in Reddit users.
You must log in or register to comment.
I just hope that most of the people who migrated here to Lemmy will stay and not just go back to Reddit like nothing ever happened.
The huge activity in even small communities is what always kept me on Reddit, and I really look forward to see if Lemmy continues to grow to become what we all hoped Reddit would be for us.
I’ll be abondoning Reddit completely and deleting everything as soon as RiF stops working.
I’m sure there are many like me who have not had fun on Reddit for a long time and were sticking around because they weren’t aware of a better alternative for relatively anonymous social media. I’ve been wanting to step back away from the internet monoliths for a long time and the fediverse has been pretty promising to me so far.
I was a Sync user. Decided to not even wait. Account deleted, app uninstalled. Fuck em
Did the same this morning, down to the same app
Heard a rumour that the Sync dev was thinking of making Sync for Lemmy. Just read it in a comment on here and can’t find any proof so don’t get too excited yet, but that would be fuckin awesome.
That would be amazing, he could probably even reuse a lot of the UI elements even.
based on mastodon servers blowing up when people “left” twitter, like 90% of new users will be gone in a couple weeks
To replace Twitter you need public figures, celebrities, sports teams, etc. to move to the new site, unfortunately I don’t see them moving to a federated system like mastadon. Reddit would be easier to replace, as you follow communities rather than content publishers.
The Twitter migration will probably be to Meta’s new app once it comes out, it’d be an easy port since most of the accounts people follow on Twitter already have the Meta products.
I followed George Takei on mastodon when he announced he was leaving Twitter and I haven’t seen a post of his ever 😔
I see his stuff all the time: https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei
Oh damn, maybe my feed is just drowning him out or something, thanks!
I’m probably going to end up back on Reddit to some extent, but I think Lemmy will stay in my rotation of stuff I open when I’m bored. Or until they inevitably kill old.reddit.com, then I’ll be outta there for good…
A weird side-effect of Lemmy being 1000x smaller than Reddit is that I lurk less and contribute more. So there’s that!
I actually… recognize you! Lol. I never got that familiar with other users on reddit
Wait what? How? Shiiiet
Maybe its time to use Lemmy less lol.
Maybe its the avatar support.
It’s the avatar. Don’t worry, you’re not overdoing anything!
Completely agree! I think I’ve made more comments here in the last twelve hours than I made on reddit within the last two years! I love chatting with you all!
Yeah but why do you think that is
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but Reddit can be pretty hostile almost everywhere other than small niche subs with consistent communities. Before posting a comment, I would always have to consider whether I was willing to fight about it with someone likely to snidely dismiss it through the most paper-thin lazy rhetoric. Sometimes the answer would be yes but too often it would be no.
Oh for sure. There have been countless occasions where I’ve written out a reply, only to hit
Cancelwhile telling myself “Nope, its just not worth it”.Honestly just a good practice to have anywhere, thinking about what you say before you say it.
I agree with that! Sometimes I feel like I overthink it, if anything. I try to make it a principal of mine to have some sort of logical process that determined anything I write/say (even if said logic doesn’t make sense to everyone at first glance).
Works great in some cases, and not so much in others… but that’s a whole other spiel to go over more later on haha.
Oh man so much this. I felt like I could never post a comment without getting into an argument with someone about it.
For me it’s the same reason I’m more likely to contribute in smaller subreddits and that is noise.
Kind of pointless in replying to something that has been active for 8 hours and has 2,000+ posts. And god help you if you sorted by rising and got in early then you get 100 of the same reply or irrelevant stuff latching onto your comment for visibility.
Even if you wanted to discuss on larger subreddits the content of comments would be people falling and tripping overthemselves to make the same low effort shitty joke.
It feels much more like reddit did during the digg migration. Every thing still feels like you’re interacting with real people and a much smaller community.
I first started browsing reddit in late 2011 and even by then it felt a little like I was arriving at a party that had already been going a while and people had their in-jokes and cliques (to a way lesser extent than today).
In the best possible way, Lemmy/kbin feels a lot like we all arrived early and the host is still running around trying to make sure everything’s ready.
Lol true. As it is right now out comments aren’t just a piss in the ocean. I prefer smaller communities and am not sure how I got sucked up into reddit considering I can just get that content from imgur and if I can’t find it here… to think I left imgur for reddit because their app was garbage but it’s nothing compared to the reddit app. And at least blocking ads makes the imgur app usable lol… Anyway, I like this way better lol.
I feel the same way. I think it’s a little less intimidating as most postshave less comments so I feel like I’ll be lost in the crowd less. I also feel like if we want to make lemmy the reddit replacement we have to use it so other people thinking of switching will see that it is active.
It’s more the latter for me. Lemmy (and navigating the fediverse) is a UX disaster for normal folk, so contributing content is the best thing I can do to make up for it haha
I think there is a good balance to be had. I find after 600 or so comments, a thread on reddit is just difficult to navigate.
Unless you use… Apollo!
RIP 😭
Huh, same for me. Weird feeling now that I think about it
I’m expecting the CEO to push back the date of the API implementation by a month or two (still a bit doubtful) but I don’t see him changing his original stance given his narcissistic attitude.
I’m expecting the API change to happen exactly as planned. As a result all 3rd party apps will die by the end of this month, and the user count will take a severe hit. Many essential mod tools will stop working, so those who actually found the default app tolerable, will get to see all subs go downhill since they aren’t really being moderated anymore. As a result, the user count will continue to decline in the following months as people come to terms with Reddit sucking harder than before. Oh, but then it gets even worse when the spam bots and official ads start taking over every sub. Most likely the next year is going to be very rough in terms of user count.
Unlike other social media sites, where people stick around because of family and friends, at reddit-like sites, people stick around for the content and discussion. Once the content gets taken over by spam-bots, it’s over.
As far as I’m concerned, Reddit just died today. It’s game over now. Time to start over somewhere else.
Judging by the amount of activity on here versus even yesterday, I suspect you are right.
Just came from reddit after 12 years. Deleted all my comments and then my account.
Hoping Lemmy can continue to grow and doesn’t grow stale and stagnate. I’m really digging the whole Fediverse thing. Deleted my Twitter after Elon bought it and joined a Mastodon instance as well.
If we can realize this trend of decentralized social networks it would be huge.
Personally, I believe that keeping the social media platforms federated is the way to go in the long term.
Honestly, this seems like the better way to go. Back in the myspace days, we probably should have gone down this route instead of jumping ship to facebook. It would have been really cool to see how things would have turned out if it had been federated between universities from the get-go
Hoping Lemmy can continue to grow and doesn’t grow stale and stagnate. I’m really digging the whole Fediverse thing.
Still learning, but as far as I understand, that’s one part of the beauty of it. If Lemmy goes bad for whatever reasons, switching to another part of the fediverse is a much smoother transition than to/from reddit or any other monolithic service. It might be possible to keep your account, or to keep some content.
I didn’t reddit will go away for a while. It’s almost too big to fail. The large reddit run subs are still live and active. Users who don’t sub to any subs that went dark may not even know anything happened. I have to imagine reddit knew they would lose users of 3rd party apps so it likely isn’t a large portion of where they make money. I think there will probably be a decline in content for a short time, then we will see new subs emerge with people who don’t care about the API lock down, ads, Chinese investors, bots, and reposts.
Yep. My guess is that there’s going to be so much karma farming bots and reposts, that it’s going to be absolutely wild.
It’s already happening in the subs that are moderated by the admins, like r/programming. The comment sections are filled with replies generated by ChatGPT. It’s so blatant.
I can’t believe that they didn’t do at least some research on how many people use 3rd party apps and account for those losses. The question is really how many will leave vs how many will just switch to the official app. I suspect most will just switch. It’s sad really. Hopefully Infinity for Reddit (and other 3rd party apps) will support Lemmy. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I think they did do research and third party app users make up a small enough portion of their user base that losing them is okay to Reddit.
Keep in mind how popular Reddit is – for the most part the people left will be content with the karma bots reposting memes for the thirtieth time and there’s always going to be somebody racing to be the first to post some news to a related subreddit.
I doubt it’ll affect their bottom line too much and in a week it’ll be back to business as usual for most subreddits.
Sadly, I think you are right about that.
I don’t have any faith they’ll even push it back. That “ama” was such a disaster, spez is a complete narcissist.
I think so too. Spez will delay the change to get everyone to calm down, then implement later, or possibly roll it out in smaller chunks to control the outrage.
I pulled an all nighter and went to check on PoE2 trailer thoughts and was hit with private sub. So I spent a couple hours setting up my instance instead lol.
So far I haven’t felt any overt political views other than be respectful of other people.
I used to be pretty extreme on the free speech side (a la Ellen Pao saga), but I think the biggest lesson I learned is that unfettered trolls just drive out solid content and create very toxic communities.
Free speech absolutists have nothing to do with free speech.
These just want to say what they want without having to bear the consequences.
The right to say what you want is a good thing. But in the end it doesn’t mean that the other side should be accepting of the speech you deem free.
If one is spouting vitrol/hate/intolerance towards a group of people under the banner “free speech” then don’t look up weird when the affected are not accepting of that speech you deem free.
For me the whole idea free speech is to express yourself how you want to (within what is reasonable, use your common sense) without the police and/or government knocking at your door.
At that point my boundary is at spewing or pushing for intolerance. I refuse to be be tolerant towards intolerance.
The most aggressive free speech advocates I know are also some of the most horrible human beings I’ve ever met. They believe horrible shit. They want free speech because they know what they say is horrible, and want to be able to continue to say it with no real consequences other than being socially ostracized.
I certainly don’t think Reddit is going away forever, but I do think it will push a lot of the OG users out for sure. I just deleted my 10 yr. old account tonight and am just finding out about Lemmy.
I’m hopeful Lemmy turns into something near what I used to love about Reddit. It needs critical mass for that to happen. FWIW, I kept my Reddit account but I deleted all of my posts and comments.
Yeah, my hope is the small learning curve to join the fediverse means we don’t end up with the bulk of the active posters on reddit.
My fear is that Lemmy is about to see some attacks the fediverse isn’t ready to defend against.
👍🏻 found out two days ago and it’s only getting livelier here.
The concept of a decentralized link aggregator fits much more than the centralized Reddit system which brought everything to a fall
hey dude, I did this in Friday night and spent all weekend getting in deep with Lemmy. If you are coming over from Apollo, try the beta iOS app, Mlem.
I really like the communities I found in beehaw but have been steadily exploring.
Same. However something about Beehaw and their adnin/moderators unnecessarily overt political views really puts me off and I do not know what nor can I point my finger on it why.
Do a request for all your data first! https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request
5497/7047 subreddits are currently dark.
Absolutely amazing show out so far. Actually pretty proud of the Reddit community
It’s astounding how consensus can be achieved on certain topics. Our planet is burning, yet we struggle to come together and agree on the urgent need to take action. However, when it comes to a change in Reddit’s API plan, we suddenly find ourselves capable of mobilizing en masse for a common cause. Humans are truly peculiar beings.
Over 90% dark at this point.
I really dont want to go back
I love how many of the subreddits are going dark for this protest. The community IS reddit. It is NOT the assholes who took VC-backed money to fleece crypto bros out of money. It’s idiotic. I hope everyone understands that you can find quality discussions in the fediverse and leaves reddit accordingly. They’re not the gatekeeper of good conversation online.
Looks like Reddit is down at the moment. I wonder if they’re making any large changes today to take advantage of the blackout distraction.
Yeah, the past two days on reddit have been quite barren from my perspective.
Just switch to lemmy(this is my first comment!) And I’m still figuring it out.
I used RiF for years, so there’s gonna be a bit of adjustment. But I can say without any doubt it already better than the official reddit app, functionality wise. Would like some more customization options. Hopefully in the near future!
welcome :)
Even a change in atmosphere with communities from this would be substantial, though - even if there isn’t a day and night change with active users, if enough of the power users have left and discussions don’t really meet the “vibe check”, that’ll just naturally kill off user activity and it’s pretty much the same result
Yeah, I’m only seeing plumbing and homeimprovement subs. :)
And a lot of people posting “hey, what happened to <sub>?”. Like… have you been living on the sun the past two weeks?
Crowds of people can be incredibly clueless. Before the blackout, there would be stickied posts explaining the whole situation in plain language, and then dozens of comments like “What’s going on I don’t understand???”
I just deleted both my reddit accounts but overwrote years worth of comments and posts first
