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.
Thanks!
Not a mass exodus. Call it a brain drain, if you will. The churn includes those who posted or were moderators. Since those who stayed are directly or indirectly supporting practices that most of us find unacceptable, Reddit will probably forever have that sour taste. It will gradually turn into a pale reminder of what it once was, and it will lose its spark. The sheer volume, quality, and length of posts in the Fediverse is indicative of new user profiles. I am so glad I took the plunge!
Not a mass exodus. Call it a brain drain, if you will. The churn includes those who posted or were moderators.
That’s key, it’s quality over quantity. Those who put a lot into Reddit were also going to be those disproportionately hit by the API changes. Enough of them make the jump and it degrades the quality of Reddit and his a big effect on Lemmy and the alternatives. By the next time Reddit messes up, and they will, the next batch of escapees will find a much more fleshed out set of alternatives, which will make leaving there and staying here easier. Rinse, wash and repeat.
We’ll never get the absolute numbers Reddit has but that’s the kind of aim of a corporate entity that wants to grab as many eyeballs as possible so they can mine the data and serve ads. That’s not what the Fediverse is about. All it really needs is the critical mass of people to make it viable and I think we’re already there.
By the next time Reddit messes up, and they will, the next batch of escapees will find a much more fleshed out set of alternatives, which will make leaving there and staying here easier. Rinse, wash and repeat.
I don’t think that even matters from a business point of view. Even if people aren’t leaving, the problem is that Reddit is not a place new people see as valuable after all the bad press. If they don’t grow, they fail.
It’s not a mass exodus. There was a sizeable influx of people from Reddit to Lemmy/kbin, sure, but that’s measured in the (low) hundreds of thousands. Reddit has hundreds of millions of active users.
The reality is it’s not even close to a mass exodus, not yet.
Yeah, but a sizeable increase is still very important. These days, Mastodon, Lemmy and so on have decently sized communities everywhere so that you don’t feel like just talking to yourself and a couple of friends anymore. And that’s kind of a tipping point.
“Mass migrations” happen slowly, anyway. A lot of people are very hesitant to leave big social hubs just because of the value there is in having so many people around. But in the end, you have to. We can’t stay on these proprietary social networks forever. Social networks and communication channels in general need to be non-proprietary, decentralized and open, without the ability of companies manipulating what you see and don’t see. And without risk of losing everything when the one big company falls. It’s a fundamental problem of all proprietary social networks.
While true, I would like to point out who is leaving: The vocal community.
When you see a reddit post and it has 1000 Upvotes and 50 comments, than this means that a couple thousand people saw it, over 1000 votes on it (up and down) and 50 made a comment, and some even commented on a comment. Most people are lurker and are just passive and enjoy the contribution by OP posting it, people curating it by voting for it and giving the topic traction by commenting on it (maybe even provoking another thread of the same topic or adding another thought in another post in the next hours/days or turning it into a meme).
The people, who are leaving - as far I as I see it - are the vocal active people. Not the lurker. So it might not be a mass exodus, but those who are active and vocal about their unhappiness and who are actively searching for alternatives and are now here on Lemmy, are the heart of the buzzing culture of reddit. Those are the ones who bring in new posts, vote actively and comment massively. Not the lurker. So who is left behind on reddit is mostly lurker who are now missing a good part of the active community who commented and voted for them. And I think this is visible on reddit and can accelerate reddits decline.
Its not the mass of the people that is important, but the engaging force that is driving the discourse in a community by being active and vocal.
And I think Lemmy got a good heap of those people.
The Great Digg Migration was way bigger and Digg was never the same after that. If Lemmy gets a couple more big waves from Reddit, it could mean the end for Reddit as it currently is.
I doubt Reddit has hundreds of millions. For ‘big social media’, Reddit was pretty niche until recently. I’d be surprised if they had more than a hundred million.
But that aside, the users that are leaving Reddit are their most important ones. Mods and the people who spent the most time on Reddit. This definitely has the the potential to cause substantial harm to the platform.
White the absolute numbers aren’t so huge, it’s more about the kind of people who are leaving Reddit. Many if those are former mods or people who create a lot if content. I do think this will lead to an appreciable lots in overall quality of Reddit. Not that the quality they’re had been anything to write home about. But the downward trajectory continues.
We could get many users providing useful content thats why I recommend checking out these subs:
Fix problems and errors !techsupport@lemmy.world
Find the best products by Lemmy users reviews !recommendations@lemmy.world
Find the best software options !softwareoptions@lemmy.world
And more (if you know more I will edit to add them)
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.
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.
Interesting, didn’t know that was MBA textbook strategy. Makes much sense, however.
It depends on what you mean by “mass exodus”.
There has been a mass exodus, in the sense that a mass of people have exited the site and moved elsewhere in a very short period of time. There has not been one, in the sense that the majority of users have left the site.
I get that the people most affected by changes may want to feel like literally everyone and their dog pulled up stakes to follow them. That they’d want that sense of solidarity, and the feeling that they’re giving a proper “Fuck you” to the people that ruined their good time. And I get that people who are just exploring new spaces want to feel like they’re choosing the “winning” side.
But that isn’t the way these things work.
Habits are sticky. Familiar spaces are sticky. Most people do not like change, and will coats to momentum for as long as that momentum exists. They’re not going to migrate until Reddit is completely crumbling.
And maybe we don’t want them to.
This space is not ready for 50 million people. The moderation tools aren’t there yet. The infrastructure to keep them from just jumping on a single server isn’t there yet. The tools and documentation to help people easily set up new instances are still new and being stress tested.
The goal of killing a billion dollar company, or three of them even, isn’t within reach. That’s not a thing that happens overnight. But this is the ground work for taking on that task.
The first thing people need before they can even consider leaving is a viable alternative, and that’s what we’re making here by being active, and interesting.
