this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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It's good to see the subreddits fight a bit, but the internet of today is not the liquid ever changing space it was 10 or 15 years ago. Websites like reddit facebook and twitter are full on mainstream. Their userbase is huge many of which lurkers who dont pay attention or engage with a lot of the content.
Reddit especially is so compartmentalized that they helped kill off message boards and are essentially a series of small esoteric forums into themselves. At the end of the day there is a lot of value in being able to get pretty much any hobby and find a little active community for it and that really cant be replicated elsewhere. Much like how Facebook has been controversial for years the exodus did nothing because for a lot of people facebook is the internet. Twitter is a cesspool and even the mainstream is clowning on it, and yet it still lives and thrives.
There will be a bit of an exodus, but many of those people will likely begrudgingly go back home to reddit, and even for those that go away forever there are enough users that wont notice or care. Heck look at the new reddit/reddit mobile fiasco. A lot of noise and lots of "Im never going to use anything else". In spite of that you see tons of people with avatars and newreddit style profiles, and you see lots screenshots shared showing the official app and people outright surprised that there even are alternatives when they complain about it. Reddit is too big to fail.
That said enough people will leave and seek alternatives to finally kickstart alternatives in a serious way. I know Ive taken a look at lemmy in the past a few times but upon exploring found instances with double digit monthly user counts that were mostly dead. I dont mind a smaller site and in fact reddit got too big a long time ago, but it needs to be semi active and Im not interesting enough to do it myself. The threats alone have added quite a few users already.
Reddit wont die it will burn on, but the embers it sheds thanks to these events will finally ignite other alternatives.
The fact that we’re having a conversation like this on Lemmy, proves to me that Lemmy is ready. There are enough users already that I can make the switch today.
I haven't used reddit in 3 days now, completely fine with the great community here.
Right? I'm kinda surprised that I haven't looked at Reddit once today.
@lemillionsocks @anji I think that's a bit pessimistic. Reddit is nowhere near a Facebook or even a twitter, and its owners seem to have forgotten it got where it is now when digg's owner lost the curators. I doubt it'll die as quickly as some predict but I also don't think it'll survive unharmed. The truth is probably in between.
A quick google search(so take this number with a grain of salt) tells me that reddit has 52 million daily active users and 430 million monthly active users monthly active users.
Reddit is BIG. Really big. And websites just dont die or pop up the way they used to because of how theyre designed and because of how the current era of the internet has matured.
That said I wouldnt call my take pessimistic. Reddit has gotten too big and there is an appetite for many users to leave for greener pastures but there just wasnt enough momentum to breath more life and activity into the alternatives. New reddit will chug on but enough people will leave that alternatives will sprout and grow. Whether that is Lemmy or something else it's hard to say this early on, but it means that reddit alternatives will have enough users to thrive.
@lemillionsocks now look at the size of twitter and the size of the hole its new owner put in it and tell us that can't happen to reddit because of size?
True, but I agree with lemillionsock's core point. Nothing short of Reddit pulling the plug on the servers will cause 430 million monthly active users to shift in any short time-frame. However, what is likely to happen is a sharp decline in quality as the core content contributors move on, then a slow gradual decline as the remaining users go "Where'd all the content go?".
This is inspiring. I'm here from Reddit. I just joined, and it feels very familiar. I just hope an influx of reddit users won't make things worse for the regular Lemmy users.