I’ve seen that some subreddits went dark and said they’d come back in 2 days (June 14th), and others said they’d go dark indefinitely, until the API changes are rolled back. I’d like to make an appeal for the admins who’re willing to go back: please don’t.
I think Reddit wouldn’t withstand 2 weeks to a month without their largest subreddits, and maybe they’d change their minds about API changes. Some may say they’d just make the subreddits public again and promote someone to mod (which I totally agree, they’ll probably do that if the blackout endures for too much time), but I think most people don’t realise the PITA it is to be a good mod, and just want to be one because of the status (I’m not an ex-mod btw, I just heard it is very complicated to moderate and I believe it really is).
Secondly, there’s no guarantee that Reddit won’t pull the rug again. Even if they roll back the changes and everyone goes back, they’ll probably come up with this strategy again some time in the future. So instead of going back, stay in the Fediverse: all applications are open source AFAIK; you can run your own instance if you wish; you can defederate other instances if you wish; you can contribute with new features you miss or create a fork aplication of your own if you want to; heck, you could create your own Fediverse application if you want. And there won’t be a scumbag to come and try stop you.
I’m not really fussed about the wiki’s and historic data but the fractured communities are a sore one.
I suspect after the blackout has eased it may be time for some evangelism about the fediverse on Reddit. But before evangelizing to anyone I need some experience of the platform and how it relates to the other areas of the fediverse to see if this is a realistic option for the majority of people who want something that ‘just works’.
I heard quite a few subs mentioning backup Discord & Telegram groups and it would be nice if we could sell the fediverse to these groups as I’d really rather not deal with Discord, Telegram & Reddit regularly. I will tolerate it, like I do Whatsapp, as a tool to communicate with worthwhile people who don’t really care about my views on software, if the alternative is a social media stream that’s 95% free software enthusiasts.
I like your idea of evangelizing people on Reddit, but I’m kinda concerned with how we’d keep this infrastructure up and running in the long term. I don’t think everyone would like to donate some bucks to help keep their home instance running, and the massive migration has already made some instances to upgrade their servers, raising their cost.
I’d love to see the Fediverse expand as a whole, but it must be a sustainable growth if we want to get somewhere.
The longterm is anyone’s guess. There’s a lot of people not happy with Reddit and Spez at the moment and a viable alternative could see a rise in funding in the short term alongside the increased activity due to this.
I may be overly optimistic but suspect if Reddit refugees found a safe space they may donate a few pennies to the cause.
The reddit blackout is a nice stress test for Lemmy. I have to say after joining on lemmy.fmhy.ml everything has been really smooth from the server side, no complaints there. My main issue is that even fairly techy friends would find it confusing atm, I couldn’t go onto r/randonsubreddit and explain Lemmy is a simple alternative everyone on the sub can easily migrate to.
