That’s a great piece of text - thanks for sharing.
Here’s my prediction: I think that the Reddit→Lemmyverse* move will be proportionally way, way stronger than the Twitter→Mastodonverse* one. Spez is trying to pull out a Musk, without taking into account the fact that Reddit and Twitter work differently. One can bend a bit to Musk, with a few cracks here and there; the other will simply snap out.
Some reasons why I’m saying this are addressed through the text:
- Twitter never relied on voluntary moderation
- Twitter, unlike Reddit, has anchor users that keep other users there
- Twitter, unlike Reddit, didn’t thrive off small communities
Plus a few additional ones, from my own:
- Network effect is stronger in Twitter than in Reddit, due to the “clean” categorisation of the content. It’s easier to migrate your subreddit than it is to migrate the amorphous mass of people that you’ve been following in Twitter. And it’s easier to migrate the content itself, as Reddit content is a bit less time-sensitive than the Twitter one.
- The content in Twitter is created mostly by the “upper cultural class”, that was kind of unaffected by Musk. In Reddit however it’s created by the “middle cultural class”, who got far more pissed at Spez.
- Platform size. It’s foolish to pretend that Reddit and Reddit Inc. are as relevant as Twitter and Twitter Inc. They’re weaker, thus easier to replace.
*I’m using those -verse words for the collectives of instances behaving in one or another way, to tell them apart from the flagship instances (lemmy.ml and mastodon.social respectively).
@lvxferre @Generator While I can see a reality wherein this could happen, I believe that most users simply don’t posess the drive and passionate disdain for the platform required to understand and migrate to Lemmy from Reddit, especially compared to Lemmys growing but currently still vastly inferior content stream. Thus most, even if they sign up, will not stick with Lemmy.
In the running would also be the classic “strike while the iron’s hot” capitalist move of creating a reddit alternative that is more uniform and appealing to end users but with the funding to make sleek apps and functional content rec algos.
No doubt, Reddit is kind of dead in the water the way things have been going and theres no shot things go back to the way they were, but I would be surprised if Lemmy fills those shoes. Lemmy inherently appeals to a different audience that reddit formerly encompassed, but reddit also appealed to a whole dirth of other users that will have no good reason to come to Lemmy.
That’s the thing - your typical user doesn’t need to have disdain towards a platform, or the drive of switch, in order to drop it. Just show him enough content that he’s uninterested in (let’s call it “junk”) and he’ll simply stop interacting with it, and some will eventually find their way into platforms filling a similar niche. That applies to both Twitter and Reddit.
However, if my reasoning is correct (I don’t know), Spez’ actions will create proportionally far more junk in Reddit than Musk’s actions in Twitter, due to the demographics that each pissed off, and the role of people vs. content in each platform being different. This difference in roles also affect the cost of leaving - there’s a small barrier to leave Twitter (actual relationships), but no similar barrier in the content-centric Reddit.
I would be surprised if Lemmy fills those shoes.
I don’t know if Lemmy will fill those shoes, but I think that it has a better chance to do so than Mastodon filling Twitter’s shoes.
IMO, Lemmy will never grow as big as Reddit cause of the obvious voluntary hosting/maintenance of the servers. It’s inevitable that sooner or later, the number of users joining will reach a plateau and then decline gradually — this might happen in the first and second week of August — and it’ll just be a viable option as a Reddit alternative, just like Signal is to WhatsApp.
It’s like a mall that closed its doors to new vendors.
Its a closed system now, and naturally it will decay.
It doesn’t help that, ime, the people who have moved here, are seemingly more intelligent in some overarching way, perhaps mindfulness?
Transitioning online discussions away from for-profit shopping malls into spaces designed for constructive conversation is a good thing not just for humanity’s ability to cooperatively solve problems, but for the oft-disregarded mental health of the individuals who’s content contributions power the platforms.
Very well stated. What a great article! People should bookmark it and share it with people that ask, “Why should I join this’Fediverse’?”
