Hello. This is my first contact with Lemmy, and I’m happy to see that it’s growing faster and faster. However there’s one thing that’s blocking me for now from completely abandoning Reddit after API changes.
There are thousands of various bigger and smaller communities on Reddit. Many of them are participating in the blackout, and more and more are deciding to stay blacked out indefinitely after recent CEO’s memo leak. I was using Reddit for almost 7 years, and before the drama started it was one of my most viewed websites.
For 99,9% of the time spent on Reddit I was lurking and browsing small or small-to-medium sized subreddits - some of them for very specific content, some for various tech or non-tech related communities (like AI or emulation). While a good number of these subreddits already have alternatives on Fediverse, for now most of them are not very active, some of them even empty, and some content related to these communities is buried in larger, more general communities. Another number of subreddits whose doesn’t have alternatives on Lemmy/Kbin have alternative communities on Discord, but on Discord it’s somewhat hard to read live discussions, search options are limited, and some servers tend to be toxic - it’s a messaging platform after all, not discussion and content website.
Don’t get me wrong - as a 3rd party app user myself (Sync FTW) I completely despise planned Reddit API changes and support the blackout, but sometimes I fear that if many users from smaller Reddit communities decide to leave altogether, and if some of them which chose to participate in the blackout indefinitely will not return, then these communities which I watch will just disappear with no easy way to browse and search past content and discussion from them. That being said, Lemmy and Kbin are promising alternatives that shed light for the future, but I’m concerned that some smaller communities will never blow up on there, and will ultimately move to messaging platforms or stay a thing from the past.
There is one good thing though - seeing all those post about planned changes are finally convinced me to get more active on discussions I read, and I hope that Lemmy will appeal to me in this regard.
TL;DR: I fully support Reddit blackout and migration to Lemmy, but I fear that it may spell an end to some smaller and specific communities.
Reddit will survive. But without some if it’s most active users, and without proper mod tools - what’s left will be a wasteland.
No mod wants to open a janky app riddled with ads to delete spam. Which means that Reddit will get more ads, more phishing, more OnlyFans bots, more instances of hate speech and abusive content. All the while, the app will be continuously redesigned so you click on those ads rather than seek information and engage in communities.
Effectively, Reddit will turn into Facebook. That’s the business model they’ve been trying to emulate and that’s what they think is going to generate them money.
It might work and become profitable. And if so, then hey - Spez technically did his job. But at the cost of the world’s great community platform, it’s so damn short sighted.
Reddit is a space where you can learn languages, learn about other cultures, learn how to fix things around the house, share personal music, share art, share stories, make friends, find love, find housing, find recipes, find a fetish, sell stuff, buy stuff, become a celebrity, make a great travel itinerary, find health and fitness resources, adopt a pet, etc.
Pretty soon, all it’ll be good for is validating your racist uncle - all so a few Silicon Valley execs could afford yet another golden toilet.