this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Reddit Migration

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### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/

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Prior to the protest reddit was in full support of the protest. Most polls on subs supported a shutdown. Now, seemingly every community cant understand why the protest was needed and they're calling it a mod power trip. There is a 3rd possibility. This is an unfounded conspiracy but reddit themselves could be manipulating scores.

See the NFL thread if you don't mind sending traffic

https://reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/14b11kh/were_just_here_so_we_dont_get_fined/

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[–] [email protected] 166 points 1 year ago (16 children)

I've been on reddit for 13 years. My wife finally got an account last year. She cannot understand any of the fuss. She didn't know there were apps outside the official app. She never used RES. She just scrolls and never comments or posts. I would be surprised if she even upvotes or downvotes. She's not a monster, she just doesn't reddit like I do.

95% of users are like my wife. 5% of users are like me. I haven't even tried to explain this whole Lemmy/Kbin experiment to her yet.

But the thing is, if 50% of the 5% of us who are active posters (e.g., 2.5% of total users) are now over here on Kbin/Lemmy, the 95% who are left are going to notice a huge difference in the experience of the site. Conversations will be dull. New posts will be more ad-focused. They may not be able to explain what happened, but they will notice that Reddit is not as fun as it used to be.

Will this stop spez from getting stupid rich? Probably not. Will my wife switch to Lemmy or Kbin? Never gonna happen. But the people who want to be part of the old culture will find their way here. The stuff that made reddit great is already happening over here. Reddint will not die anytime soon, but it will cease to be relevant. Think of how long yahoo lasted even though no one cared about it. Reddit is going to be like that.

I haven't yet deleted my reddit account. It will probably happen. But I also haven't missed it. I've actually been excited to come over and see what's happening every day in the fediverse! I'm posting more, and considering modding for the first time.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I pretty much agree with this. If you look at the accounts of the people complaining, how many of them have posts hitting the frontpage? I'm not saying I have any data, I'm just speculating that most people who are power users, whether they use 3rd party apps or not, can recognize how shitty reddit went about this and won't complain about the protest.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Same. I've been redditing since 2012 and have tailor made a select group of subs I follow for all of my hobbies. I was an avid commenter, with reply's as long as your own. It was definitely my most visited site. It was as much for stupid pictures when I was going to bed as it was discussing things with fellow collectors or getting advice or tech support. Old.Reddit on my Desktop, RIF on my phone. I am one of the people this hooplah affects. And it makes me mad.

I know a lot of people who reddit in real life, but most of them might use it for 10 minutes a day on the toilet or while on the bus. They primarily lurk and stick to a lot of the easily accessible and fun subs. They also just use the official App, or they just look at it in their phone browser. Like you said, this whole thing doesn't affect most of them.

I'm now spending a lot of time trying to find new communities in kbin and lemmy. But I have to admit the specialty subs I follow either don't have a community here (like Moon Knight stuff) or very small communities (functional print, comic book collecting, etc). I'm sticking to the protest as long as makes sense to me (it still does). But I have a feeling reddit might die before these niche communities find purchase elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Almost exactly same situation as you. I'm mad, it hurts, I've already purged my Reddit account of all content on it, multiple times since the most recent posts kept getting restored. The account itself isn't deleted yet, I still think I'll keep coming back for some stuff that just isn't here on Lemmy or kbin yet... But as for participating in discussions and communities, I'm now 100% here.
It's just sad. I've met the majority of my current online friend group that I chat with everyday on Discord, through Reddit. I hope at some point that becomes a real possibility in the Fediverse too. That we gather enough weirdos that are way too much into niche things that you can select which of them you'd like to be friends with.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even if I'm not totally off of Reddit, recent events got me out of a rut for a bit and that's good. Already, the threads on Reddit/all seem stale and even in the past 24 hours what I see on kbin and lemmy.world is starting to give me the tingle I hadn't felt since the early Reddit days or even the period before when I used to browse multiple sites so in a way this is going back to my Internet roots, surfing across multiple sites for nuggets and truly browsing and not doom scrolling a single website aggregator. It's a breath of fresh air.

It's like having gotten used to a favorite diner with a massive menu but when the classic joint starts going off the rails, one decides to explore, finding new culinary niches, pop ups, and little shops with unique offerings. It's no longer as convenient, but then again, maybe it shouldn't be.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I've hard avoided Reddit this week to break the habit and help keep traffic numbers down for their metrics. Will I return to some of my small subs later? Maybe. Kbin and Lemmy have already done a great job at providing more content than I can really engage with already, so there's not a huge need for me to go back. The only time it's a struggle is when the Kbin servers are hugged to death, but I've been lurking squabbles during those dark times.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep this is the truth. The vast majority of users just go there and scroll and click through stuff. They don't really care. They were inconvenienced by the blackout and want it back to normal.

The real consequences are that a significant chunk of the active and power users have left the site now.

I haven't deleted my reddit account either. I have definitely noticed that my feed on reddit has less interesting content now.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So in other words reddit's conversations will become as dull as Facebook.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I also choose this guy's wife.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 1 year ago (2 children)

While it’s possible that Reddit could be rigging the scales, I think the simplest answer is that the people most critical of Reddit have already left Reddit. Vice versa, everyone here is clearly in favor of boycotting Reddit because well… we’re here now.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Its a classic case of people having no fucking clue about scale, bias, the vocal majority and silent minority.

For every loud reddit dissident, there is 100 people who just heard about reddit and grabbed the official app from the store. They dont comment, they dont post, they dont give a shit. If reddit went down they wouldnt question it, they would just grab a 9gag app or something and continue on consuming content. They dont block ads, they dont get invested in net neutrality or anything else the EFF are involved in, they dont mod the UX, they dont dig into dodgy shit going on behind the scenes. They dont give a shit.
In other words, they are the perfect community for a corporate social media.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm interested to see what happens when the third party apps actually die. And old.reddit.com obviously

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I read somewhere that a shim was being developed to allow reddit apps to join a lemmy instance. Not sure how practical it would be, or how far off it is, but its an interesting idea. Would obviously need to be implemented by the original reddit app dev, or a forked version if open source.

I imagine at least a couple of developers will migrate over here. If they update their app to the fediverse, join in on other open source projects, or just leave the scene is yet to be seen though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If Sync ever did that, I would be over the moon. That app made browsing a genuine joy with how good the UI is and how customizable it is. I really hope the devs for the existing third party apps repurpose them or make a version for the fediverse.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

My partner still hasn’t left Reddit yet, but because it’s a habit for her now AND Apollo still works… once Apollo is gone she’s already signaled she is moving on.

I wonder how many others are just waiting for the third party’s to be killed before moving on?

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I mean the truth is 95% of redditors didn't use apps and don't care about this at all.

It's like if your local street had a protest for sheep shearing, preventing you from going to the park or movies. It's irrelevant to you and the large majority would want it over.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No it's not like that.

It's like the people keeping your city clean can no longer use tools and have to use their bare hands unless they pay a bunch of money. That's what it's like. Sure for a while it will be ok, but the shit will build up, it will get worse and worse, and the city you once loved will be a shit hole of trash. The workers are literally protesting to have better tools and access to keep your city clean, and you're saying it doesn't matter. OH BY THE WAY THE WORKERS DON'T GET PAID.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Yes this is a good analogy. Rome was neither built in a day nor destroyed Ina day.

We are thinking Reddit will turn out to be like MySpace or digg but it will be more like Facebook. It will exist but filled with clueless people consuming garbage.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I would have thought most people would be using an app. Most people access the Internet through their phone.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Yeah, I'm not buying Reddit's statistics. 90%+ of mod actions on desktop web and official app? I can see plenty of use for old Reddit, but they have locked quite a few mod actions behind the new interface recently. Likewise the more and more spez feels the need to mention that there was no real consequence from the blackout makes me question the validity of that statement. We're all aware what a lying jackass he is.

I'm sure that the majority of people will continue to use Reddit regardless. I'm just not sure that the majority is as major as they are presenting it to be.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think a lot of mods probably use RES on desktop, which will still be functional after this. But yeah, statistics say that 3PA are only used by about 5-10% of users

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Agreed. they also know RES only works as long as old.reddit.com works, and once that's done, desktop is shit.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Once they kill third party they will go for old reddit. Definitely

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

As a moderator of a small subreddit, when I checked roughly 75% of our traffic was from mobile. It doesn't distinguish beyond that but the mobile browser experience is so shockingly bad I think it's safe to say that is almost entirely app usage. Since there is only official app & Apollo on iOS, that means it's one of those two... but the way Huffman tells it, Apollo has less than 5% of the install base of the official app on iOS. If that's the case I don't really understand his argument that they're bleeding Reddit dry. But that's a separate issue.

But, based on the responses we had before the blackout and the responses we got in the last few days "after" in the discussions around opening back up, I can say he appears to be right. Most people just want to use the main app, don't want to learn anything about third party apps, don't care why they exist, just want everyone to shut up and move on.

I did find the total 180 very odd. Vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the protest beforehand. Overwhelmingly in favor of going back to normal after. But it was different people. And it wasn't just random one-week-old accounts that had never posted on the sub before, it was regulars, old accounts, or both, both times.

I'm proud of the properly big subs for continuing their protests. Our community was not strong enough.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I would agree but many sub reddits had polls before locking and the majority were always in favor.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

One thing to keep in mind is that there is an active minority of users who are content generators who are much more likely to vote on stuff like that. Then there are a ton of mostly silent read-only users (most of whom don't even have accounts). If you inconvenience the mostly silent users who are just there for cat pics on their lunch break, some of them will suddenly put in the effort to complain. But they'll never build a community, you need the active users for that.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Yeah, good luck to the read-onlys when the content creators are gone.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I.e the 90-9-1 rule of internet culture.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I think the only people left heavily skew as the people who didn't care. Case in point, the discord for my kebble sub saw a LOT of new members as those who didn't like the way reddit was handling it prepared other ways to contact each other. That was and still is very much in favor of the protest and they're still working out a platform to move everyone to.

The actual reddit sub for the kebble has turned on a DIME about it and is now infighting between the people who do care and are only using reddit so they can speak in that particular sub, and the ones that never cared in the first place and think the act of protesting anything in general is, and I quote, "childish." Were an outsider to scroll through it, they would think we never supported it in the first place.

Before this, we were uncommonly civil towards each other, took as much text as we wanted to eplain our viewpoints properly, and usage of the downvote button was both frowned upon and extremely rare to even see. Now I'm seeing downvotes. The whole thing is causing a schism that doesn't bode well for the site in general. This will be reddit's main userbase going forward.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

I assume it's just a biased sample size? The people left on Reddit are the people that don't support the blackout. The people that do care are here instead.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Don't forget that reddit has the ability to astroturf themselves. Some of those are sock puppets. Others are a coordinated effort by accounts that have never used the subs they're bitching on before.

Check the user history of some of those. They fit the standard bot pattern

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

And I wouldn't put it past spez to deploy some secret bots just for this reason.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think there is probably a mix of things going on.

First, the angriest people already did leave.

Second, people suck at protesting. I mean, the entire reason it was a 2-day protest instead of defaulting to indefinite is because the idea of sacrificing your own habits in a protest blows people's minds. There is a reason "slacktivism" is a thing.

Third, there is probably a segment of the user base who basically got their addiction checked. Social media is addicting, and reddit is not exception, I mean, even I've kept habitually opening the site this whole week just cause that has been my browsing habit for over a decade. It's just how I've check ed news.

And then lastly, the protest reached the more casual core of people who may have not even known about the protest before hand or understood the extent of it, and they are angry that this thing that didn't affect them took away all their content.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I created a community on KBin for one of my favorite niche sub Reddits, which just came back from going dark. I shared it with them this morning and my post is getting downvoted to oblivion.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Could be a lot of bots but I won't rule out shortsightedness either.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don't know but there are already enough people here to make it interesting

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Back when it was first becoming known that Facebook was passively allowing human trafficking groups and was generating revenue from those groups, I asked around different anti-human trafficking collectives whether or not they would continue to use the platform given ad revenue from their users goes towards creating safe spaces for those bad actors. I received silence from every single one of them. They ignored that question and continued to post how we all need to fight for trafficking victims (very marketing style posts if that makes sense).

Some people are just so engrained in platforms that it doesn't matter what a platform does. When faced with a choice between comfort and ethics, they choose comfort at the expense of all else.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The truth is, most people will stay on Reddit, at least in the short and medium terms. But with each migration wave, there is a group that will stick around and make things just a little bit more active and interesting, and make it that much more appealing for the next wave.

I predict the next wave is when Reddit inevitably announces the shutdown of old.reddit. Now there will be a more viable alternative for that migration wave, and so on, until we hit critical mass.

That's the hope, anyway.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I'd estimate that the next wave will be sooner, at the end of the month when the 3rd party apps shut down and a lot of people suddenly realise they have to use the official app and go "oh wait, is this what that protest thingy was all about?" It probably won't be the critical-mass point (at a guess that would happen around the time old.reddit is closed), but it will likely make some big waves

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I think it's mostly Reddit addicts being mad they can't see their memes anymore. The support I think is still there and you can see it in the polls, but the ones mad about it are naturally a lot more vocal.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Reddit will fuck something else up in the future and hemorrhage more users.

I'm not too concerned, they'll figure it out. I'm enjoying learning this platform at the moment.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Of the four subs I moderate, two are restricted (i.e. read-only) with links to places off-Reddit. One support sub I handed over to my co-mod who wants to keep it going as long as possible, tho he understands Reddit is likely going down, slowly but certainly.

There's only one of my subs that's a bit problematic, with ~45% of voting users wanting to rejoin the blackout, but ~55% wanting it to remain open. There are some people really critical of my proposal to move to kbin.social, but they are largely people with very little prior activity on the sub.

Either way, unless Reddit reverses course and fires spez, I am leaving that platform.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

In that nfl thread, is it an old mod or a new one who re-opened it? Reddit is replacing the mods who shut down their subreddits with people who will re-open them.

There was always a substantial number of people who didn't care about the API. They probably only used the official app and are newer Reddit users. They were also probably not around for other mass migrations, such as from Digg to Reddit, so they don't treat Reddit any different than Facebook, where they put up with whatever bad changes are made because they see it as the only option, as if it will always be the internet's main news aggregator.

Anyone who's been around for a long time knows that Internet communities are ephemeral, so what's really popular today won't be in 10 years. It's more than people moving from Slashdot to Digg to Reddit. Search engines used to aggregate news on their home page, and lots of people used RSS feeds or StumbleUpon. The history of the Internet is splashed with sites like Reddit, and every time one dies, another pops up that is more popular.

I'm amazed that Reddit has lasted as long as it has. Whether this is its death or not, I cannot tell, but it seems clear that its days of dominance are waning.

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