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I think this post makes a good point. Reddit doesn’t have to collapse overnight to become irrelevant. They’ve made a huge mistake by upsetting enough people t

I think this post makes a good point. Reddit doesn’t have to collapse overnight to become irrelevant. They’ve made a huge mistake by upsetting enough people to cause the exploration of alternatives. I spent a couple hours browsing Lemmy instances today and I was shocked at how few users are needed to create replacement communities. Communities with about 2k users feel sparse, but good enough IMO. I now think Reddit is 100% replaceable, at least for me, and I really hope that more focused community aggregators like programming.dev catch on.

nucleative 3y ago
The subreddits with the most focused discussions are often those with just a few thousand subs. Perhaps the tipping point is around 10k users... when conversations become much less personal.
dumpsterlid 3y ago
> I spent a couple hours browsing Lemmy instances today and I was shocked at how few users are needed to create replacement communities. Communities with about 2k users feel sparse, but good enough IMO. It has become a joke on the fediverse that it is going to die any moment, tech journalists have written article after article over the years saying mastodon failed, it is going to die, it will never virally scale like venture capital funded corporate social networks did… What they never understand is the localized perspective of someone in one of the small communities on the fediverse. Who individually actually cares if 1000, 5000, 100,000, 2 million…… or whatever abstractly large number of users are active on the fediverse? If you look up and see a handful, perhaps 60 active users who all genuinely engage with you and are interesting to talk to then the presumed fantastical future of a freer, fediverse of connected social networks existing outside of the rat race of corporate, consumption focused social media is already here… Yes a small minority of people are currently experiencing that future, but it becomes undeniable that future can exist for everybody, it is a matter of simply more people waking to it when they please. The fediverse can exist as just a pebble on the shore of a corporate internet that dwarfs it, yet the potential always persists that the fediverse could destabilize and overthrow it all by virtue of being enough, just as a mere pebble, to bring meaning to the very next person who stumbles upon it.
chaosjevil 3y ago
I've been among those users creating replacement communities. Mostly about topics that I wanted to speak about, even in Reddit, but prevented myself to do so to not feed that awful company and environment. It feels good - you feel yourself important (I'm not important though), contributing with something. I don't even use mobile, mind you. But I know that a company showing some users its middle finger will eventually show it to me. It did in the past, but sadly it was simply "casual abuse", not a big screwing up pissing multiple users at the same time. And while anecdotal, this highlights for me: 1. The importance to keep a good relationship with your users. Trust is hard to measure through A/B testing; people might tolerate some abuse, but they won't forget about it. And once you do something that might look inconsequential, but breaks that trust a tiny bit further, it's "just enough" to make them leave, or fight back. Perhaps if Reddit hasn't been so abusive towards its users, people would look at the third party apps dying and say "oh well, I'll install the official app". 2. That that trust is also broken if you tell people blatant lies. If Reddit Inc. was actually honest with their intentions ("we want 3rd party apps gone"), or said nothing at all, people wouldn't be as pissed. It shows that the company expects them to be stupid, and not even the stupid like to be treated as such. 3. That some users are more important to keep happy than others. You definitively don't want to piss off the users necessary for your business model.
tommica 3y ago
How does one explore those instances?
- donmcronald 3y ago
  Try this: https://lemmyverse.net/ https://lemmyverse.net/
  - tommica 3y ago
    Thanks
_8j50 3y ago
Yes, but how will lemmy cope with abuse, I am waiting for like a year to see where it gets.
mypastself 3y ago
Can you view content on Lemmy without a registered account?
- nerdbert 3y ago
  Yes.
- DANmode 3y ago
  For the reader, this question is similar to "do I need to make an account to get files via BitTorrent?"
- chaorace 3y ago
  Yes. Instances are also publicly indexible by search engines.
aranelsurion 3y ago
> I spent a couple hours browsing Lemmy instances today and I was shocked at how few users are needed to create replacement communities. Mirrors my experience today as well. Dare I say, some communities like r/selfhosted seem to be better off in their Lemmy/kbin counterparts, these kind of communities benefit from the more dedicated posters anyway, and reddit alternatives seem to attract the right kind of people for them.
BoxOfRain 3y ago
I like the BeeHaw instance, it's probably not everyone's cup of tea but the tone of the place is just so much more pleasant than Reddit has got over the last few years.
crossroadsguy 3y ago
What reddit became was actually because it was a centralised place. Everybody had be on one platform with just one account and easily connect and the platform was cared for and tended (albeit with VC money and eventually that became the undoing it). Anyway with this fragmentation I doubt we will get anywhere. Users will be scattered across non-federated silos (and not in a good "different special interest corners of the Internet" way, but just lost and disconnected). If it was easily doable on fediverse I'd have loved that but it is not. I am just happy Facebook and Instagram are not going to be that place. I would rather root for the return of forum era - maybe not federated. But then that kind of forum thing gave birth to one giant Reddit (I was a pre-teen back then so do not clearly remember how it started; so maybe this is totally incorrect).

nucleative 3y ago

The subreddits with the most focused discussions are often those with just a few thousand subs. Perhaps the tipping point is around 10k users... when conversations become much less personal.

dumpsterlid 3y ago

> I spent a couple hours browsing Lemmy instances today and I was shocked at how few users are needed to create replacement communities. Communities with about 2k users feel sparse, but good enough IMO. It has become a joke on the fediverse that it is going to die any moment, tech journalists have written article after article over the years saying mastodon failed, it is going to die, it will never virally scale like venture capital funded corporate social networks did… What they never understand is the localized perspective of someone in one of the small communities on the fediverse. Who individually actually cares if 1000, 5000, 100,000, 2 million…… or whatever abstractly large number of users are active on the fediverse? If you look up and see a handful, perhaps 60 active users who all genuinely engage with you and are interesting to talk to then the presumed fantastical future of a freer, fediverse of connected social networks existing outside of the rat race of corporate, consumption focused social media is already here… Yes a small minority of people are currently experiencing that future, but it becomes undeniable that future can exist for everybody, it is a matter of simply more people waking to it when they please. The fediverse can exist as just a pebble on the shore of a corporate internet that dwarfs it, yet the potential always persists that the fediverse could destabilize and overthrow it all by virtue of being enough, just as a mere pebble, to bring meaning to the very next person who stumbles upon it.

chaosjevil 3y ago

I've been among those users creating replacement communities. Mostly about topics that I wanted to speak about, even in Reddit, but prevented myself to do so to not feed that awful company and environment. It feels good - you feel yourself important (I'm not important though), contributing with something. I don't even use mobile, mind you. But I know that a company showing some users its middle finger will eventually show it to me. It did in the past, but sadly it was simply "casual abuse", not a big screwing up pissing multiple users at the same time. And while anecdotal, this highlights for me: 1. The importance to keep a good relationship with your users. Trust is hard to measure through A/B testing; people might tolerate some abuse, but they won't forget about it. And once you do something that might look inconsequential, but breaks that trust a tiny bit further, it's "just enough" to make them leave, or fight back. Perhaps if Reddit hasn't been so abusive towards its users, people would look at the third party apps dying and say "oh well, I'll install the official app". 2. That that trust is also broken if you tell people blatant lies. If Reddit Inc. was actually honest with their intentions ("we want 3rd party apps gone"), or said nothing at all, people wouldn't be as pissed. It shows that the company expects them to be stupid, and not even the stupid like to be treated as such. 3. That some users are more important to keep happy than others. You definitively don't want to piss off the users necessary for your business model.

tommica 3y ago

How does one explore those instances?

donmcronald 3y ago
Try this: https://lemmyverse.net/ https://lemmyverse.net/
- tommica 3y ago
  Thanks

_8j50 3y ago

Yes, but how will lemmy cope with abuse, I am waiting for like a year to see where it gets.

mypastself 3y ago

Can you view content on Lemmy without a registered account?

nerdbert 3y ago
Yes.
DANmode 3y ago
For the reader, this question is similar to "do I need to make an account to get files via BitTorrent?"
chaorace 3y ago
Yes. Instances are also publicly indexible by search engines.

aranelsurion 3y ago

> I spent a couple hours browsing Lemmy instances today and I was shocked at how few users are needed to create replacement communities. Mirrors my experience today as well. Dare I say, some communities like r/selfhosted seem to be better off in their Lemmy/kbin counterparts, these kind of communities benefit from the more dedicated posters anyway, and reddit alternatives seem to attract the right kind of people for them.

BoxOfRain 3y ago

I like the BeeHaw instance, it's probably not everyone's cup of tea but the tone of the place is just so much more pleasant than Reddit has got over the last few years.

crossroadsguy 3y ago

What reddit became was actually because it was a centralised place. Everybody had be on one platform with just one account and easily connect and the platform was cared for and tended (albeit with VC money and eventually that became the undoing it). Anyway with this fragmentation I doubt we will get anywhere. Users will be scattered across non-federated silos (and not in a good "different special interest corners of the Internet" way, but just lost and disconnected). If it was easily doable on fediverse I'd have loved that but it is not. I am just happy Facebook and Instagram are not going to be that place. I would rather root for the return of forum era - maybe not federated. But then that kind of forum thing gave birth to one giant Reddit (I was a pre-teen back then so do not clearly remember how it started; so maybe this is totally incorrect).