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I would agree that that's currently true, however now there's suddenly a lot of pressure to get a viable alternative up and running at the scale necessary to ab

I would agree that that's currently true, however now there's suddenly a lot of pressure to get a viable alternative up and running at the scale necessary to absorb a critical mass of redditors. At the time when reddit absorbed digg users after the redesign it had a fair amount of downtime as part of its growing pains, I'd expect to see the same for all the proposed alternatives in the next few months. With how thoroughly reddit is screwing the pooch here though I think it's a matter of if and not when.

dredmorbius 3y ago
Having been through a few large community migrations ... sudden pressure is a very poor stimulus for an effective transition. Good and viable platforms tend to already exist and be highly stable. What I witnessed most especially as Google+ shut down is that a number of options were floated and promoted. Some were largely vapourware (e.g., TBL's Solid), there were any number of opportunistic sites which emerged, and often fringe and distinctly problematic services (e.g., MeWe) were strongly advocated by a small but vocal contingent. What is most effective is to plan ahead, communicate clearly, maintain a diverse set of online presences, and to spec out possible migrations in detail. If subreddits started making such plans, their bargaining power over Reddit would be much, much stronger. For online presence, major online services (FB, Twitter, Instagram, and these days probably TikTok etc.), a dedicated and fully-controlled website, and an email list (or lists) would be a very good starting point. Good discussion sites are surprisingly difficult to find, and the basic options are fairly thin pickings. Old-school forums (e.g., phpBB), blogs (Wordpress, Dreamwidth, Drupal), and several of the federated platforms are probably the strongest options. I've helped curate a selection here: <https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Platforms_and_Sites https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Platforms_and_Sit...> Attempting to migrate to a not-yet-developed / early-beta project ... tends not to go very well.

dredmorbius 3y ago

Having been through a few large community migrations ... sudden pressure is a very poor stimulus for an effective transition. Good and viable platforms tend to already exist and be highly stable. What I witnessed most especially as Google+ shut down is that a number of options were floated and promoted. Some were largely vapourware (e.g., TBL's Solid), there were any number of opportunistic sites which emerged, and often fringe and distinctly problematic services (e.g., MeWe) were strongly advocated by a small but vocal contingent. What is most effective is to plan ahead, communicate clearly, maintain a diverse set of online presences, and to spec out possible migrations in detail. If subreddits started making such plans, their bargaining power over Reddit would be much, much stronger. For online presence, major online services (FB, Twitter, Instagram, and these days probably TikTok etc.), a dedicated and fully-controlled website, and an email list (or lists) would be a very good starting point. Good discussion sites are surprisingly difficult to find, and the basic options are fairly thin pickings. Old-school forums (e.g., phpBB), blogs (Wordpress, Dreamwidth, Drupal), and several of the federated platforms are probably the strongest options. I've helped curate a selection here: <https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Platforms_and_Sites https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Platforms_and_Sit...> Attempting to migrate to a not-yet-developed / early-beta project ... tends not to go very well.