First all the bs with Twitter and Elon, then Reddit having an exodus to Lemmy (not complaining lol), then Twitch. Are we like, in an alternate self healing dimension or something?
This Lemmy migration does feel like waaaaay more positive of a result than I ever expected from reddit getting worse.
I’ve always appreciated the idea of the fediverse, but mastodon and the twitter-style of social media has never appealed to me, and Lemmy used to be so tiny and niche, so I didn’t invest much time in it until now. But this sure is nice, comparatively. I’m probably on here too much though!
I think we do have a sufficient number of users now to keep going irrespective of how reddit fares. Communities are beginning to form and even if there is no futher mass exodus from reddit, I think Lemmy will be fine and will see organic growth over time.
I’ve already noticed I’m spending more time of Lemmy than reddit since the past few days.
It’s easier to spend time on Lemmy for me because the comments are actually worth reading. Seems like the type of person who’s drawn here are actually interested in holding a conversation vs. reddit where it’s about saying something witty or whatever to get them upvotes
Some people have come up with the word “enshittification” to describe the basic cycle of modern web services.
The cycle consists of three parts:
- You make the service that attracts new users by providing what they want. Often you do that at a loss, because your goal is to gain a big enough userbase for steps 2 and 3.
- Once there’s enough users, you shift to attracting commercial interests instead – vendors if you’re running a store, advertisers or celebrities or other “big clients” if you’re a social network, etc.
- Once both users and commercial interests are hooked, you can start tightening all the rules and switching completely to profiting yourself and your shareholders.
I am under the impression that the term was popularized, if not invented, by Cory Doctorow. See his many writings on his ad & tracker-free website; https://pluralistic.net/tag/enshittification/
Wiktionary gives him the invention credit (although its source does seem to be KnowYourMeme).
That is a spectacular definition though! Spot on!
“entshittification” is such a terrible word, can’t believe that a professional writer came up with it
Doctorow’s Enshittification describes it pretty much dead-on. It’s basically the cancerous form of late-stage capitalism that we’re living under now.
Spot on! We are seeing it happen before our eyes and I love it!
Definitely accurate to the situation lol
Thank you for this! I never really thought about late stage capitalism but this post helped a lot.
Wow that’s a great read!
The line has to go up.
The issue is that big companies have shareholders, and those shareholders don’t demand that the company stay solvent, but that they achieve year-over-year growth. Even minimal growth like 2-3% over LY is considered a failure to most shareholder groups, depending on the size of the company. So eventually they have to squeeze every last drop out of the userbase/product to keep the line going up, so shareholders don’t sell and bail.
Now, with Twitter there’s a whole litany of poitical tin-foil hat theories I can shout out, but this isn’t the place for it.
Reddit, Facebook, and Twitch: it’s money.
Reddit is getting as much money as it can shored up with Venture Capital before it brings out it’s Initial Public Offering (basically going public for people to buy stock in). High IPO, more perceived value, more space for advertisers, people are going to buy in. EDIT: I believe this is why they’re making their API pricing so high (hence the whole current Reddit situation right now) so that they can get more ads viewed.
Facebook: I don’t even know why people use FB, but im going to guess it’s just ads.
Twitch: Again, Ad revenue. Slam as many first-party ads as you can so you get the money from advertisers. Keep the space clean and homogenized so Pepsi doesn’t feel bad about putting ads in a video before a hot-tub streamer. (not that they’re a bad thing, just using an example)
Everything comes down to the line. And it has to keep going up.
Yep, it’s this. Despite how it seemed in the 2010s investor capital is not free money. Investors want it paid back many multiple times over and they’ll risk destroying the underlying product if necessary.
Facebook: Mainly because of Facebook groups. They’re pretty whacky, have a lot of fun normie non-degenerate drama, and a well moderated facebook group is more wholesome than any reddit sub in my experience.
It is relaxing to not have the hivemind like reddit or having users constantly one-up each other like twitter. Also wayyy less bot accounts in Facebook groups.
Although it is declining because of FB’s shitty censors and bans, the group scenes are very much alive and fun.
Surely wouldn’t it be easier for them to just inject ads into the API and keep it cheap?
IF that’s something they can do? I don’t know. I don’t know a thing about backend work on third-party programs.
There’s a part of the that thinks Reddit is the same way and just went “Hell with it, use us or nothing at all” and nukes the whole API except for the big-rollers.
I wouldn’t even know who would pay such a high price for that anyway, outside of advertisers and algorithm scrapers.
I hate how much of the entire internet experience is focused on ads, ads, ads. I go out of my way to block trackers so the ads often aren’t that relevant and really transparent. Buy, consume, give us your data, repeat. But what would the alternative look like?
I don’t think all that many redditors are moving to Lemmy. Judging by the stats on join-lemmy, there are only several thousand monthly Lemmy users, which is nothing compared to reddit which had tens of millions daily users
When I joined lemmy.ml and beehaw.org, the stats on join-lemmy.org were just over 100/month.
Now it’s at 1K/month for beehaw and 1.6K/month for lemmy.ml
There’s also a HUGE list now, where as when I joined last week there were maybe 8?
Small numbers, ya, but Reddit still hasn’t done anything. I am sure July 1st will bring a huge wave of people who are still sticking with Reddit since apps still work.
I came here from Reddit in preparation for it getting whack… ready to make a jump to something closer to how old school reddit was. I think we’ll see a lot more people who are like minded coming over too.
I feel like reddit power users are the only ones who might switch, normal people simply won’t care. However, power users are already well aware of the coming changes, and have likely already looked for alternates by this point.
Ive seen so many reddit posts on where people are like “what’s wrong with the official reddit app, it’s all I’ve ever used”… Lemmy is much better than the official reddit experience - the issue is most niche communities that exist on Reddit have ~1-5 subscribers here, makes it kind of a hard sell.
Personally i’d way rather be in a small community filled with frequent commenters and posters than a big one where all you see is reposts and ads, however.
Counting methods are probably different, Lemmy stats only count users that posted at least once in the interval. I assume Reddit counts anyone who opens the site.
I agree. A few more people will learn about Lemmy and come over, but to call it an exodus is probably nowhere near accurate. I just don’t think most people care enough. Yes Reddit will suffer. I’m just not convinced Lemmy will benefit that much.
That said, I think we will benefit in the sense that there will now be enough people to sustain some nice communities.
Disclaimer: I’m new here, so obviously talking somewhat out of my lower bode parts here.
Reddit may not even suffer if it primarily loses users that browse with third party apps or on desktop with adblock. That would be a net benefit for reddit based on average revenue per user.
That’s fair to point out, but it implies the only utility users provide to the site is ad impressions. I see a couple of reasons this is not the case.
Mods make up a tiny portion of users but are disproportionately 3rd party app users and rely on 3rd party tools. But if any meaningful portion of the mod community leaves? The remainder were going to have a much bigger job without the tools. To attempt the bigger job with a smaller workforce is a double-whammy. Their only option will be to focus on their favorite subs and elevate more members to mods. The inevitable result will be experienced mods being far outnumbered by new mods, all of whom will have to stick to tedious tasks for subs to not be overrun by spam and hate speech. It’s hard not to predict the same result as what’s happened to Twitter’s content.
Now consider nsfw content, which has always made up a huge chunk of reddit’s traffic. Moderation is even more difficult there to begin with and could easily melt down for the same reasons, even setting aside reddit’s growing distaste for it. Reddit is largely young and male and while many users may have no interest in it, the combination of nsfw imgur links going dead, moderation challenges, and the likelihood of reddit cracking down on nsfw is a combination that may cause reddit to be less attractive for many of the young, male userbase to visit.
I think your point still has merit - reddit won’t miss many of the users seeking alternatives. I would say reddit’s casual “I didn’t even know there were 3rd party apps / old.reddit.com” users are also likely to be turned off by the ultimate results of their changes.
Oh, that’s a point. Do third party apps not show those sponsored posts that look like a discussion, but are actually an ad?
RIF is Fun does not show sponsored posts.
I think the Lemmy userbase stands to gain much, while Reddit Inc probably won’t feel a gut stabbing loss.
I commented similarly elsewhere, but the “power user” content creator types on Reddit actively avoid r/all for being a dumpster fire. This disconnects them from the fact that there is an absolutely massive userbase on Reddit who scroll the frontpage and keep coming back to that low quality content.
When power users threaten with “if we leave who will create content?” they are not understanding that their content isn’t relevant. R/all is full of low quality reposts, and political ragebait. My own original content probably cracked about 4K upvotes at highest. It was never going to go to the frontpage. When I deleted it, frontpage users never noticed.
That kind of content is more fit for smaller spaces that have not become the self perpetuating juggernaut that the Reddit front page is.
Lemmy and other sites will gain the quality from exiting power users, and Reddit Inc won’t feel it in the way they care about.
I guess the question is: Do you care more about having a good online experience and not thinking about Reddit, or about burning Reddit to the ground? Because the later I don’t think happens from an exodus.
Oh, I’m not saying it’s not good for us (or maybe I did. Badly worded in that case). I just don’t think Reddit cares or will notice to be honest.
I think we are agreeing in high view concept, just expressing it differently.
The timeline split after harambe. This is known
It is known.
I wonder what our alternate timeline selves are doing. Good for them, right?
In Timeline-α the Visitors didn’t turn away in disgust and Contact was approved. The Uplift process is well underway, environmental conditions have been stabilized and restoration is progressing well. Space travel is still restricted to the Solar System but Humanity is on track to full Membership. Ambassador Harambe has resumed his duties on the Council.
Facebook dies due to privacy concerns and misinformation. Twitter under threat because Elon. Imgur just deleted their NSFW content. Reddit with its API pricing. Twitch executives also getting greedy. Youtube has been going down for years.
It feels like we’re seeing the natural life-cycle of social media companies in real time.
TikTok might be the next
I very much like the community aspect of TikTok; is there anyone working on a Fediverse alternative to it? Or perhaps adding its features to PeerTube?
PeerTube could, but it needs more people to develop the Shorts feature, as well as proper client for mobile.
Is there any work being done on a proper mobile client? I also wasn’t aware of the Shorts feature on PeerTube, but then again, I haven’t checked the site in a minute. Might want to look into publishing videos on an instance sometime.
TikTok is literally owned by China.
One can only hope.
I have a sinking feeling that these moves are not about money, but more about power and manipulation. If you squeeze these user bases such that the savviest users are forced out, those more likely to ask “Why?” about damn near anything, you will own access to a group of people that can be influenced to think/do/buy whatever the top management and/or majority shareholders want. If you lose a few million users, what does it matter if they were dissidents to your goals?
This is where my mind goes. Kinda convenient that Twitter and Reddit, both likely particularly dangerous to those seeking power happen to be destroyed seemingly intentionally in the same year ahead of a sure to be insane U.S. election season.
Hmm, kinda interesting. A lot of Trump shit was spread on Reddit during the 2016 election, makes sense they would try to get rid of anyone who would oppose that content
Big sites have made surfing the web so boring. I will end up spending the day on 2-3 sites. All this shake up will hopefully force me to look at more websites again.
You are right actually. I just find myself reloading reddit and the guardian. But the reason for that is that it’s hard to find good sites that have constantly updating and changing content. I will try my luck on the fediverse but I’m bummed about it. I hope I find some good stuff here.
It’s up to us to make the web/Internet not boring again. There are many ways to do so:
- Participating in the Fediverse
- Building your own web page and adding it to a webring
- Using alternative protocols, namely gopher, gemini, IRC, NNTP
- Using alternative search engines (wiby, marginalia, etc)
- Bulletin board systems
I just got into gemini! Sorta, just have a gemlog on gemlog.blue. I have to remember the early internet days where you just had to go from link to link to find interesting pages and check them again at my own will, but it is a nice little break from the everything that is the modern internet.
Agreed. I really miss stuff like StumbleUpon and Google Reader which were my mainstays before Reddit.
Course-correcting, maybe? Web 2.0 really overstayed its welcome with Facebook/Twitter/Reddit being such dominant websites over the past 15+ years. Various reasons of greed, narcissism, and other factors finally popped the bubble.
I’m really enjoying the Feder-verse or whatever we’re calling it since decentralization can prevent a lot of this nonsense from ever occuring. It feels like a new approach to the late 90’s era of message boards and such.
Hey I’m new to Federverse, and trying to get my bearings. How can I bring value/help this alternative thrive? Any tips?
Just interact with it. Share your thoughts, post comments, make threads. Be nice. Bring friends if you like it.
Interest rates stayed at or around 0% for a decade or so. VC money was flowing like beer at a frat party. COVID accelerated that trend and probably pushed sites that had somehow not taken a bunch of VC investors into doing it as everything went online. Now the interest rates have spiked and the VCs want a return on their money.
Their death is waaaay overdue. We literally jumped one cycle because the 2008 financial crisis and 0% interest rate.
Now there is no free money, and they need to extract value to seem a good investment, so they canibalize themselves and turn into shit.
Most of Elon stuff is doomed once reality catches on. Same with Uber. Same with streaming platforms. Same with Meta.
Also there is a new/old boy in the bubble and burst town, Microsoft and their AI push. It’s going to destroy them pushing them into overspending to keep up.
COVID.
COVID changed everything. In an attempt to recover quickly, companies ramped up their abuses to new levels. While billionaires defending them all had their masks removed as the world collectively realized that it’s impossible to make a billion without exploring others.
Toss in back to the office mandates and rising costs while those same companies post record profits…all while the population is Uber sensitive to that kind of thing, and we’re in the middle of a not so quiet proletariat revolution.
Thanks to COVID a lot of people realized that despite the elites best efforts, the enemy isn’t left or right, it’s us versus the super rich. And it’s having a trickle down effect.
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Theres many different lines to be on though.
You know what, I never thought of it this way. Your timeline is definitely accurate.
I HATE PUBLICLY OWNED COMPANIES I HATE PUBLICLY OWNED COMPANIES I HATE PUBLICLY OWNED COMPANIES
Hell, any such company is going to pursue infinite growth and always aim to squeeze as much money as possible from it’s costumer base in the short term.
My guess is that because there is currently a big possibility of economic turmoil and these companies are appealing to investors, advertisers,etc. and trying to gain as much capital in order to look stable.
As soon as you go public, your stock is your main product. Sucks every time it happens.
Couldn’t have said it better myself
Making it so that companies prioritize their own shareholders in the short term above all else, even the companies long term health, has become an absolute disaster for humans
Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter seemed more like an extremely elaborate shitpost that went horribly wrong. It’s like Musk never intended to buy them in the first place but was legally forced to do so (he tried to back out of the deal beforehand.)
As for Reddit, that place has been going down the shitter since around 2016. Power users have ruined that site, especially the handful of moderators that control hundreds of subreddits between themselves. Spez is a blithering idiot who has done more to censor and subvert the site than Ellen Pao ever did (ironically, everyone accepted it and didn’t revolt against him because he wasn’t a woman.)
That being said, I really hope Steve Huffman doubles down on the API changes and kills Reddit as a platform. Nothing would make me happier.
Twitch and YouTube literally think they’re too big to fall and work actively to fuck over the content creator, when decent competitors like Rumble and Kick are coming along. Mixer could have been decent but Microsoft’s strategy was literally to offer two streamers nine-figure contracts and somehow think this would drive people to their Twitch-clone. At least Rumble and Kick are competently run.
That being said, I really hope Steve Huffman doubles down on the API changes and kills Reddit as a platform. Nothing would make me happier.
I think this all depends on their reaction to the blackout planned for the 12th. If Reddit starts taking over the default/large subs that shut down it’s 100% going to crash and burn. Not backing down on their API changes I think is an optimistic 60/40 in favor of Reddit chugging along albeit just a bit crappier for it all. (The 40% being a Digg situation that hopefully blows up their IPO plans and VC funding.)
I can certainly see Reddit’s admins staging a hostile takeover of all large subreddits, banhammering any moderator who takes part in the blackout, and installing their own yes-men.
But can you imagine the PR shitshow that would occur if Reddit suddenly deposed its most powerful users? Imagine if a major content creator like Linus Tech Tips, SomeOrdinaryGamers, Penguinz0 or Asmongold jumped on the ‘fuck Reddit’ bandwagon. It would be a major PR boost for any competitor.
If I remember he said no once he had a closer look at the financials and cybersecurity reports under NDA, but at that point in a merger and non-compete it’s basically telling you “good, you’ve bought it, here’s what to plan for” - it’s not something a competitor can just peek in and then back out of.
Thanks for Rumble and Kick, first time I hear about them
Rumble is “that place which welcomed Andrew Tate and Sneako” after they both got banned from mainstream social media. They’re the right-wing free-speech platform.
Kick was formed by a former Twitch streamer (TrainwrecksTV) cause he thought that Twitch went too far in banning gambling streams. Plus he got the backing of Stake, a cryptocurrency-fuelled slot machine website, who are the main investors bankrolling his company.
Thanks for the context, doesn’t seem as appealing anymore ha ha
The valuation of a lot of these sites was grossly inflated by the market, so when the largest shareholders saw their billions halve and know what the future holds, they start doing things to temporarily boost their profit margins and sell off the company.
