Reddit

I think you're going to know by one metric. Quality of content over the next ~3 - 6 months. Whether subs stay or go is one thing, that's been part of Reddit for the 12 years I used it. What would get folks to leave is when the communities they are interested in aren't supplying content.

So if you lose some lurkers, that's not gonna matter because they didn't post anyways. If you start losing power users, who regularly feed your community content, what's going to drive you to stick around? If you ask me, I think the fact we are even having this conversation means Reddit is losing in this equation.

I can actually see plenty of people and communities permanently migrating over to Lemmy instances. Some are actually creating their very own federated Lemmy instances.

So now, for those who created their own instances, there will be no more censoring and imposing from a higher organization.

I don't see why to not use Fediverse, Mastodon apps are great already, and Lemmy apps are getting updated and improved as we speak.

Yes, the web front-end still needs work, and yes, Lemmy still lacks in some features, but that is being worked on as we speak, and I believe that some of the users migrating over, are devs, that will actually help to improve Lemmy, which is Open Source. So, if there's a feature you'd like Lemmy to have, just open a Pull Request!

Personally, I’m happy where things are now. I came over to Lemmy because of Reddit Third Party App drama, and now I’m staying because I realized that I’m spending much less time on my phone using the less popular Lemmy.

Reddit will probably go through with its plan to charge third party apps large amounts of money for API access. (75%)

The Reddit blackout protest might cause changes to their upcoming API update. (42%)

Reddit will probably not IPO in 2023. (34%)

Meanwhile, as the subs are down there are people attempting to replicate them here.

So if you like Dadjokes, hop over to DadJokes

As a few people have said already, I think it'll slowly become more crap and alternatives will slowly bring in people who get sick of it.

They're hoping for IPO and once that's done, they'll be much less forgiving when it comes to cash grabs. I can imagine them doing things like getting rid of old.reddit, not allowing the hiding of suggested posts, ads which are very targeted and intrusive.

I saw an article on the official Reddit Inc website talking about the use context in advertising, where advertiser's can change their ad based on the context of the thread. It doesn't say how they're implementing this but I could imagine a situation where they put ads directly into threads. Either way you'll start to see ads using wording which mimics the subreddits you're in or the comments you write.

I have the feeling the reddits decisions are just going to get worse as long as they can get away with it.

A return to normality is impossible since there will be no more third party apps. It may seem like things are as they were besides that, but the progressive move by Reddit to ignore Reddit's core value proposition (link aggregation and commenting) will continue, only to be replaced by attention towards monetisation-centric features no one asked for like NFTs & followers (which the third party apps ignored, gee I wonder why).

Reddit has a cancer. You can either stay in denial and experience the terminal death in slow, painful motion, or you can just move on now.

Why did anybody expect reddit to back down on this. Unless reddit loses a significant portion of its user base then they have no reason to care. Currently, there really isn't any viable alternative infrastructure that could absorb millions of new users. People are going to make a fuss for a bit, but if they enjoyed using reddit before then they'll come back to using it sooner or later.

Frankly, I don't know why people keep fixating on this. I've been using Lemmy for over three years. I use it because I enjoy the community here, and I don't really think about what reddit is or isn't doing.

Personally, I will only be going back to Reddit if I need help with some specific thing and I can't find it in Lemmy anywhere. And only for that thread.

I don't think a consensus alternative is necessarily required. It might be best for the masses to be split amongst the many alternatives giving each one an opportunity to grow, improve and potentially rise up as a result of this event. I for one will not be using Reddit at all except for very specific sources of information which I will probably just scrape and store offline anyway.

I also like the concept of fediverse instances being local, meaning the internet is becoming truly more physically decentralized with local home based servers providing a base for local user registration and content creation/consumption. This has the potential for users to start 'filtering' their online experience to content created by the people in their local communities versus just a vast pool of global users.

How do I think this ends? I think it won't matter to their bottom line. Although I am happy with the participation thusfar, Reddit benefits not only from the current use, but the redirecrion from every Google search toward Reddit. Unless moderators deleted the content before they leave (idk if even possible), the impact is but a blink in a profit report. And the CEO will use their stability as a personal reinforcement.

That said, good riddance, I don't want those willing to stay to be a part of communities I'm in anyway. So far the new life here on Lemmy seems to be very cooperative and positive-- I hope this is maintained.