4 ms·

The main problem with the protest is that there’s no viable Reddit replacement. Back during the Digg fiasco, it was easy for everyone to jump ship to Reddit.

vkou 3y ago
This is the root of the problem. Large communities can't meaningfully migrate off it. Small communities shouldn't migrate off it. (As they will lose discoverability.)
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  >Large communities can't meaningfully migrate off it. Yes they can, Digg migrated to reddit, Facebook migrated to Instagram. If Reddit becomes insufferable for most of their users to use they will migrate. Never forget the internet 1% rule [1], just the right set of users have to migrate to kill the site. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
  - vkou 3y ago
    Reddit was a better alternative to Digg, which is why people migrated. What is a better alternative to Reddit from the point of view of a community mod? Self-hosting a phpBB forum isn't it, it's way too much work.
    - MAGZine 3y ago
      it's not enough to be marginally better. you need to be a LOT better to overcome network effects and activation energy. reddit became substantially better when digg ruined their product. actually, digg didn't work at all when they rolled out their new version, so it was (approximately) infinitely better.
    - dbbk 3y ago
      You're not wrong, there isn't one
- gs17 3y ago
  Some large communities have migrated by force previously. Not that it's any good, but communities.win (or whatever they go by now) does seem to have maintained its population of right-wing refugees, /r/drama seems to be keeping their own site afloat. /r/startrek set up their own Lemmy instance, so we'll see how that goes over time.
marklar423 3y ago
I wondered about that myself - isn't a subreddit just ("just") a forum with 1) threaded comments like HN and 2) the ability to sort by upvotes? phpBB + a few addons might go a long way to replicating that, it just takes some effort. There's also the other aspect of combining multiple forums into one cohesive website, which mostly isn't solvable by old school forum software. For that we need a federation scheme or even just old fashioned webrings to start with.
- jacooper 3y ago
  I'm sure all the people doing the protest because of third party apps want to go back to using phpBB on mobile....

vkou 3y ago

This is the root of the problem. Large communities can't meaningfully migrate off it. Small communities shouldn't migrate off it. (As they will lose discoverability.)

whywhywhywhy 3y ago
>Large communities can't meaningfully migrate off it. Yes they can, Digg migrated to reddit, Facebook migrated to Instagram. If Reddit becomes insufferable for most of their users to use they will migrate. Never forget the internet 1% rule [1], just the right set of users have to migrate to kill the site. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
- vkou 3y ago
  Reddit was a better alternative to Digg, which is why people migrated. What is a better alternative to Reddit from the point of view of a community mod? Self-hosting a phpBB forum isn't it, it's way too much work.
  - MAGZine 3y ago
    it's not enough to be marginally better. you need to be a LOT better to overcome network effects and activation energy. reddit became substantially better when digg ruined their product. actually, digg didn't work at all when they rolled out their new version, so it was (approximately) infinitely better.
  - dbbk 3y ago
    You're not wrong, there isn't one
gs17 3y ago
Some large communities have migrated by force previously. Not that it's any good, but communities.win (or whatever they go by now) does seem to have maintained its population of right-wing refugees, /r/drama seems to be keeping their own site afloat. /r/startrek set up their own Lemmy instance, so we'll see how that goes over time.

marklar423 3y ago

I wondered about that myself - isn't a subreddit just ("just") a forum with 1) threaded comments like HN and 2) the ability to sort by upvotes? phpBB + a few addons might go a long way to replicating that, it just takes some effort. There's also the other aspect of combining multiple forums into one cohesive website, which mostly isn't solvable by old school forum software. For that we need a federation scheme or even just old fashioned webrings to start with.

jacooper 3y ago
I'm sure all the people doing the protest because of third party apps want to go back to using phpBB on mobile....