Six verified Reddit employees discussing the current atmosphere at the company. Featuring "First the company needs to get rid of Steve", "It's garbage", and actively hoping to be laid off
I had heard of lemmy but not checked it out until this debacle made it clear that jettisoning reddit was the right move. It's been a lot of fun so far. It reminds me of the earlier days of the internet, which is a breath of fresh air.
The culture on reddit has been clicheed for a long time now. At least people stopped saying 'the narwhal bacons at midnight', and 'and my axe' is only ironic now, but the pun threads, the Ouija chains, the silly automods and bots - I had enough of that. Also it's absurd to try to comment on a post that has 6,500 or whatever replies already.
What would make me hard quit a thread was when somebody would comment a quote from a show that was actually relevant & funny to the topic at hand, but then it would create an endless chain of reply comments of completely irrelevant quotes from the same show. Like, ok we get it, you got the joke, please stop.
I think it is very plausible that the numbers only appear to be back to normal. I agree probably nothing will change but at the very least I am not using reddit any more - and I feel like I have seen a similar sentiment from other users of Lemmy/kbin.
Yeah, I think at this point, regardless of what happens on Reddit, Lemmy/KBin seem to have a decently active base and speaking only for myself, I'm not planning on even lurking on Reddit ... the most I'll do is hit a link that I find on Google or that gets linked elsewhere.
For me, there is plenty of new content popping up in the Fediverse to keep me interested, I'd just like too see more people commenting. Then, I realize I need to be the change I want to see, so am attempting to become more active than I was on Reddit and actively engage in more conversations (ex: this post :-D ).
True, but reddit's portion of bots is also massive. Anecdotally I saw bots constantly in reddit's comments. I have yet to see one in the fediverse so far.
Personally I think things have changed for the better, I’ve been waiting for a Reddit alternative for years and only found kbin through the blackout. Seems we’ve got sustainable numbers and a decent community.
A small win but still a win.
Reddit lost some of it's most committed users, though. It's also solidly not 'cool', not that it was ever cool-cool, I mean that it's reputation has been harmed among their target market.
It seems likely since they already have or will end up with executives or shareholders in pretty much the same group as other SV tech companies. It seems like reddit has fair potential for growth ahead of it though, while Zuckerberg copies or purchases other apps in light of Facebook's old core product and users essentially dying out, and the unpopularity of facebook with younger people.
Wait and see what happens when the third party apps don't work. Sure some will install the crappy official app being forced upon them but the cool kids will be looking for the next big thing.
I'm enjoying Lemmy, but I think perhaps it needs to do more to differentiate itself from Reddit by being better in some major way if users are going to move to it. Right now it's essentially just decentralised Reddit, but if it develops in the right way, that could be enough. I think it depends on how easy it is to find and filter content, contribute and avoid seeing the things or people you don't want to, as well as what kind of communities grow around major instances.
I just wish everyone would quit trying to turn this into Reddit. We left Reddit because we don't like what it is/is becoming. Let's not rush to make this an identical copy, ya know?
I'm curious about the normal numbers thing. I left the website (I needed to anyway, was obsessively checking it in my free time) and I figure there must be at least a few like me. So if that's true, how could it be back to original numbers after such a fiasco?
Most users don't know a fiasco happened, or care, really. You gotta remember your average user doesn't comment at all and really just scrolls while upvoting posts every once in a while. Their engagement is far more casual.