This might be the beginning of the end for Reddit. Or perhaps this is a rebellion of the 1% of tech geeks 🤓
Well I wouldn’t class myself as a huge tech nerd, more a person who can work a computer and has an interest in computers etc. But yes this is primarily an exodus of users who actually engage in the platform. Those who lurk and make Reddit ad revenue will remain for much much longer Its just another hit to the quality of content and moderation on the platform
If that’s what ultimately happens, that’s OK. A worst case scenario is them back peddling enough to keep things going and just roll out their plan over a longer duration to avoid a mass exodus of the contributing users.
I’ve seen enough Reddit exoduses in the last decade to know it’s just another part of their community gone. Even the vast majority of people who “quit reddit move to lemmy” will likely return in a few months, and that’s what Reddit’s banking on.
But with each successive generation of exodus, more contempt to the platform grows. Maybe another 3 or 4 before they controversy themselves into a backwater website nobody wants to touch like 4chan.
Even the vast majority of people who “quit reddit move to lemmy” will likely return in a few months, and that’s what Reddit’s banking on.
Even with third-party apps gone I don’t expect to leave reddit entirely. But I will certainly be on reddit a lot less if there’s no usable phone app.
i’m with you. i don’t think there’s a good existing alternative. even if a mass exodus happens the lemmy devs have said the site will crash due to traffic. kinda sucks because at that point lemmy will be passed over. how do we replace the wealth of content and community? reddit has a stranglehold on the formula and no existing alternatives could handle an exodus at this point.
i think you’re right that although the API change has made a lot of noise, this won’t be the exit folks are talking about. i think the straw that breaks the camels back will have to be a particularly egregious change, a change that affects the casual user.
Edit: more words
After Reddit changed their upvoting to not be a 1:1 (meaning 1 upvote means 1 person liked it), I kind of started wanting to move away. It made it really hard to track how popular something is vs how promoted it is.
It really became brain dead and the same as YouTube post dislike removal era. There was no way if it was 20 upvotes with 0 downvotes or a 5000 upvote (via bots) down voted by 4999 people post.
That wasn’t a bug, that’s exactly why that was done. So you can’t tell what’s actually popular with folks vs. something promoted.
Glad they did it. It’s helped Lemmy tremendously.
