This place has roughly 3,000 people and was intended to be an entire replacement for DaystromInstitute and StarTrek as they were going dark indefinitely. Well, within 4 days the moderators have walked back those statements and opened both subreddits up. I see no incentive for people to come to this website now and while a few may come here in the future, most people will go to r/startrek with 600,000 people.
Reddit is dying. Its goals as a growth-oriented corporation are inherently contrary to its original nature as a community center. I have to give them props for dragging it out as long as they have (and will). All the factors that made Reddit possible and desirable still exist; in fact, the ActivityPub federation protocol enables an even more powerful form of collaboration that transcends a lot of the negative aspects of Reddit’s design.
Give it time. Make content! Tell people about this wonderful new generation of media. Consider it an opportunity to engage with the glory days of a new form of internet media. Which it is.
Exactly, it’s going to be a long slow process. This will have slow bursts like we’re seeing now as reddit makes their app shittier and shittier, but we’re never going to see an exodus like Digg again, Reddit is 100s of times bigger now.
It’s going to look like Facebook, where over time people leave as they realize they don’t need it anymore, and eventually all that will be left are stubborn people, the people in admin/mod positions that refuse to give up power, our moms, the people who think Minions memes are funny, and the thousands and thousands of bots talking to each other about how great lysol cleaners are.
Honestly the only people that will remain there are, as you said, either very stubborn, or too young to give a damn. There’s a community that I was a part of for a long time that I loved deeply, it was a very warm and inviting place. When the sub went on blackout and took a poll to extend indefinitely, I made a passionate plea to the sub to really consider what’s at stake, even though so many of them felt like it was pointless. I wasn’t rude, I wasn’t callous or pessimistic, I just wanted people to know that whether something seems hopeless or not isn’t the point at all, but rather taking a stand for something you believe in should be the point.
I was promptly met with a barrage of downvotes and someone replying to me spewing vitriol and telling me to touch grass, with another person just shrugging and saying they just want things to go back to the way they were (by ending the blackout). It’s weird but I was honestly pretty hurt by that response. This community that I came to know and love turned on me the moment I suggested we take a stand.
There really is no persuading people like that unfortunately. But, hopefully, slowly, change will still happen.
I had the exact same response from my favorite sub too, was honestly pretty hurt by it. Then the mods removed it after enough downvotes.
Like guys I love this community, at least I thought I did, I just want to see it continue without being held hostage by Reddit. Same thing, I didn’t get angry, didn’t push people to switch over, was more like “Hey we have a community over here, if anyone feels like they need to leave Reddit, here we are”, like “here’s a safe landing spot for you”. I’d never seen my favorite community, where I had tens of thousands of karma from, get so angry.
Yeah for me I made the transition today feeling the same way as you. It sucks that just because mods try to go on strike, on behalf of everyone really, the users try to help reddit instead.
For me I’m making the change after being sure I won’t regret/miss too much the content on reddit. I might still go back sometimes for a google search (appending reddit), but for the most part, I’m not using it as a platform I browse.
Even if this fediverse stuff doesn’t pan out, I’m happy to tread these waters and see if it’ll be our future solution to avoiding these greed induced social media self destructions.
Today was the first day I just felt so sickened by how reddit just wouldn’t budge, no matter how disatisfied its users are. I just didn’t even feel good about using the site anymore, even if I love the content/lazy content there
Strikes almost always get people lashing out against them, and in favour of the Evil Empire. People just love being crabs in a bucket, dragging each other down, ensuring that nothing gets better, all because they don’t want to think long term about things.
All they see is that someone is trying to restrict what they can do right now. The reasons, or the long term consequences, be dammed.
My response to that would have been something along the lines of: Things going back to the way they were is what we all want, but the company’s changes mean we won’t get that again at reddit. So fuck reddit, join the growing communities elsewhere.
Wacky Tic-Tacs!
I don’t know if reddit it’s dying but it will be a worse place for sure (and it was quite shitty since years)
Yes, I regret using the sensationalized language. Reddit is not “dying” so much as it is “continuing its transition into the same homogeneous para-social media service as the other tech giants in that space.” The elements that made Reddit special are continuing to slip away in a series of predictable corporate moves. Everybody taking out their frustrations on Huffman is par for the course, but it’s not his fault. This is just the way of the Eternal September. It will come for the ActivityPub systems eventually. The people who created ActivityPub (the federation protocol underneath Lemmy, Kbin, et. al.) have actually already moved on to the “next next” generation of social media architecture: https://spritely.institute/
I wasn’t subbed to either of the communities that the op said this was originally for, and I found kbin whilst searching for a Reddit alternative. I like the whole federation thing, it’s new and interesting, for now at least.