You’re preaching to the choir here, but you are absolutely right. Reddit’s value comes from its users. If people remove themselves, as many here have already done, then Reddit would be forced to correct course or burn.
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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If I post this on reddit, will probably get downvoted. The support for the protest really died down. Not sure if because people gave up, or the ones who haven't given up already left. Probably a mixture.
Unfortunately there are many people who simply don't care. People got used to apps being crap and many don't even understand the fundamental concept of using third-party clients.
Some people just don't care but there's also a lot of propaganda to make protesters look bad, I don't exclude there could be bots doing it.
I created one of the "big subs" on Reddit, and have felt particularly frustrated that whether I protest or don't, I will still get angry messages from both mods and users either way. Which makes the whole "you're not even paid for this" hit much harder. But here I am on Lemmy with a username different than my Reddit account breathing fresh internet air where no anonymous strangers yell at me
It's really sad to hear that, harassment is always despicable no matter how you look at it, some people just don't get it unfortunately.
I mean, there was even a post on 3rdpartyapps inciting people to spam mods calling them cowards if they didn't participate in the protest, how can they be so thick?
Anyway, I'm happy you found a better place to be :)
The protest has been already very successful IMO, for once, we showed we can literally crash the entire platform just by flipping a switch.
Then there's the significant drop in ad revenue as you said (there was a Verge article about it) and we probably also ruined the IPO (Reuters, I mean fuc*king REUTERS, said the IPO is premature and reddit should reconsider for the time being).
But the most important thing, the protest made people aware of valid alternatives, I didn't know anything about the fediverse before the protest begun and now I'm happy to be here, many other people like me.
I think people saying the protest is not working are those hoping reddit changes, they're being delusional, reddit won't change, but even it they did change, I really can't grasp how some people want to be treated like sh*it like reddit has done so far.
Reddit is being abusive towards their users and that alone should be more than enough a reason for moving out.
The only good move is to leave
I do miss having all my content right there and being able to mindlessly scroll. The fediverse gets better daily but I can't exist the way I did on Reddit.
That being said, that's not necessarily a bad thing lol. I deleted my posting account on Reddit and I haven't logged in days
It’ll take some time, but I think we’ll get there. Lemmy kind of feels like Reddit did to me when I first started using it. Some cool memes, some simple commentary on big news events, cat photos, etc.. The biggest thing missing is the critical mass that allows some of the niche communities to come together and be reasonably active. I think Lemmy also needs some refinement on the back-end. Things like user-level blocking of instances(just because I don’t want to see something doesn’t mean I think it needs to be completely defederated), something equivalent to multi-reddits to browse sets of communities/instances, maybe a method to publish/subscribe to user’s blocklists. Can definitely feel the beginning of something awesome, hopefully it works out for a while.
Reddit is nothing without users posting and upvoting posts and comments. If all, or a large proportion of the users stopped using the site, reddit would have to listen or they'd stop being useful. I think there are two problems:
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As you said, users don't realize the power they have. It's a bit more nuanced than that, they do realize the power of the collective, but don't think the collective will exercise that power, and thus won't act individually. It's the same as "my vote doesn't matter, it's just one vote". This is obviously a self-fulfilling prophecy because they are making it happen, they simply need to follow what they think is right.
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A lot of users don't care. Again, a bit more nuanced than that, most users probably have a preference reddit listens to their users, keeps the 3rd party app access, etc. But they don't care enough to do anything about it, which in effect means in any practical way, they don't care. I'm guessing that to them this feels a bit of a "niche" problem and will use the official app. There are a small amount of users, like me and probably you reading this who've left reddit and won't go back.
The protests have worked. They've moved a motivated minority over to lemmy and we're creating communities, posts and comments, contributing to apps and running instances. We'll spend our time and effort improving the tools and communities for the fediverse ready. Hopefully, with enough of reddit being reddit causing more waves of people in the future to seek another platform, the fediverse will grow and reddit will dwindle. That's my hope anyway.
The big picture here is we are escaping slow enshitification.
Reddit is incentivised to make a worse user experience.
Fediverse is incentivised to make a better user experience.
For now, the UX of reddit overall is probably still better than that of the fediverse for casual users. We are here now because we are either a) not a casual user, or b) anticipating the trend.
Most people are neither of these things. We have to accept it. And it's ok! This is how all movements start and look like from the inside, including the internet and Reddit itself.
OP If you want Lemmy to grow do your part to make it welcoming. Make an app or submit a PR. Volunteer to moderate. Post. Comment. Even just upvoting helps. Make the place welcoming.
We are early adopters. We have to make good content for more people to switch. Reddit will getting even worse in the near future.
It’s insane. People have forgotten protests actually do work. It’s not easy, but it very often get results.
What doesn’t give results however, is doing nothing.
I think the most annoying part was users flip flopping about the protest in the anti-protest camp
First it was that the blackout would be pointless and for the protest to succeed it would need to be more disruptive
Once subs tried to remain indefinitely closed, allow no new posts, allow NSFW content or only allow posts of a joke nature. Suddenly the anti-protest group said it was too far, ruining the site for regular users etc
Instead of deleting my Reddit account, I'm replacing all my posts/replies there with, "edit: // I've moved to Lemmy //"
😁
It seems like post-2010 users see the internet as a completely different beast. Those of use who know the world wide web as it was in the before times have this mental image of it as places we built.
Post-2010 they seem to have a mental image of spaces that snapped into existence. They have no concept of every day people in real life making a new forum/board/subreddit then seeding the content themselves. Over the years fostering a community. Building up the network effects.
I saw so many comments on reddit from ignorant indifferent users saying just open another sub then. Who will do that? Who will foster it? You? To which they're like, 'lol no'.
Such is the corporate internet. Users of the corporate internet see communities as big established companies with store fronts open 24/7. Always stocked, always clean, up kept by invisible staff out of sight out of mind. That's not how any of this works...
Users absolutely make or break the platform, they are the product. But, power users mean fuck all lol. Reddit could remove every single Moderator and chronic uploaders from the site overnight and the quality would go up.
I think at this time only new users and bootlickers are staying on Reddit permanently.
I think there are many users who simply don't care as long as there are memes and content. They won't leave for a long time. But as users who do care leave, the content will decline and others will follow.
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