Was there even a mass exodus? I largely avoid Reddit now, but I do kind of doubt that they’ve been hurt in any meaningful way by all the protests and people leaving…
Honestly, I don’t really care. I like it here more than reddit and if it stays like it is, awesome.
I have no desire to see reddit succeed or fail, I simply found a place I fit in better.
I agree but I still want Reddit to burn 😂. But I’m an asshole so that’s okay.
Hear, hear!
Here, here!
I didn’t leave to make the service worse.
The service got worse, and so I left.
But why not both? 😂
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Migration goes beyond sheer numbers. The 3.8k users are probably the one that were the most attached to initial Reddit, hence people who would contribute the more. I would rather be with those 3.8k users than the millions of people okay with staying on Reddit despite Spez’s decisions.
I hope that once Lemmy is a bit more polished (instance blocking, account migration, hot filtering working etc.), we will gradually see a second wave of arrivals.
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But if that were the case, wouldn’t GDPR already be used to take down TOR or torrents or any other p2p tech? All it would take is someone’s personal information being on them, right? (I’m really asking I have no idea)
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Then you adapt to that threat with user exports or built in auto migration methods.
The distributed nature makes it much harder to down the fediverse with legal claims than it does reddit/twitter/whatever already. Just being hosted in different countries makes these claims a stunning pain in the ass, as many countries do not require any compliance with the DMCA.
Sure if you want to play in a sandbox alone and have nothing but privacy and lqbgt content (nothing against them in the least bit).
That’s a good point. Right now if I send something out, even if the company I submitted it to deletes it from their servers, doesn’t mean other users will delete copies of the data I want to have deleted. Only the party I submitted it to will have to delete it.
Just take a screenshot of a tweet or a LinkedIn profile or whatever someone posts here in the Fediverse, anyone can capture a copy of it.
It’s currently impossible to follow a GDPR information delete request for example, because you can’t delete the info from other instances.
What makes it impossible? Why would any given instance maintainer be responsible for the data on someone else’s instance? Would it not fall on the GDPR requester to make that request of each individual instance?
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So then if someone requests that Gmail delete all their email data, is Google then responsible for making sure any emails sent out from it’s server to another is also deleted from those external servers?
Just in case you guys are wondering, there’s probably dozens of us enjoying the fuck out of this conversation. Thank you for asking questions I wouldn’t think of asking. On behalf of all three of us lurking.
Lol yeah this is great.
I don’t have the answer but I think of it like this.
Email is essentially a direct conversation between you and someone in the same room but you may extend (cc) to those people in the house. There is an implicit “I am including you in the conversation”
Lemmy on the other hand is more akin to talking to someone in a crowded bar but the conversation is recorded and anyone over the world has the ability to listen to the conversation at any given time.
Apples and oranges.
Interesting perspective, but then cannot we consider that Lemmy users are aware that they are including all of the Fediverse in their conversation? That way Lemmy instances could be treated in the same way email providers are
I really want to hear the answer to this
See https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/
Once the “controller has made the personal data public”, they have legal obligations. When you send an email, you are not making it public.
Essentially yes, it’s called the Right to Erasure or the Right to be Forgotten. If the user is in a country that adheres to GDPR and the company controlling the data operates in a country that also uses GDPR, then that right applies.
The only reason Google/Gmail wouldnt delete (or wouldn’t be able to delete) some of your data would be if they had a lawful or legitimate basis for holding onto it.
I can’t think of a reason Google would give for hanging on to your data but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but they’d have to notify you of that reason as part of their response to your request.
Unless these instances are showing ads and selling data, I’m pretty sure they’re protected from the law. Not only that but if you’re not hosting in the EU that law doesn’t apply to you.
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The problem here is how does that work? If I host something in the USA, how is someone going to bring a lawsuit towards me if I am also in the USA?
Asking honest questions here. As this just sounds like a lot of chest thumping from the EU.
“Provided your company doesn’t specifically target its services at individuals in the EU, it is not subject to the rules of the GDPR.”
Just say, we don’t provide or target EU individuals and you’re free.
Yeah, but if you don’t have any assets in the EU for them to seize, and if you’re not present in the bloc yourself it doesn’t matter for shit. They have no jurisdiction or ability to enforce unless you really, really want to operate inside of their market at scale.
See https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/
Once the “controller has made the personal data public”, they have legal obligations.
Yes, but “the controller” is one instance, and it’s certainly easy for one instance to allow a user to be forgotten. You can purge the user from the instance. Then they are forgotten, as far as the instance is concerned.
As an example, just because someone makes a GDPR request on YouTube to delete a video, does not require Google to actually remove the video from the whole internet. There are plenty of websites that archive content which are unaffected by that GDPR request. It’s the exact same thing with different Lemmy instances, just because you ask lemm.ee to delete your content does not mean that lemmy.world needs to delete your content.
The GPDR doesn’t require Lemmy to remove personal data from the entire internet. But when a Lemmy instance gives data to other Lemmy instance, there are legal responsibilities.
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/ Where the controller has made the personal data public and is obliged pursuant to paragraph 1 to erase the personal data, the controller, taking account of available technology and the cost of implementation, shall take reasonable steps, including technical measures, to inform controllers which are processing the personal data that the data subject has requested the erasure by such controllers of any links to, or copy or replication of, those personal data.
==========
Maybe this is open to interpretation, but I feel that the same Federation protocol that federates out my personal data (my posts and comments), should also federate out my delete requests. I’m unsure why this would be controversial.
This is a big issue of eu regulations. They are needed, but don’t account for non profit initiatives, in practice favoring big players
Well, the upside and the downside of GDPR is that if you’re not a member of the EU, you can basically just tell them to go fuck themselves because they have little to no actual power to impact you since you’re not within their jurisdiction.
I’m never to sure about GDPR. The spirit of the law is that any identifiable information has to indeed be removed.
However, does a Lemmy username really fit that definition? If John Doe has all of his Lemmy content under CoolNick89, I’m not sure GDPR applies.
Emails, especially if they contain first and last name, are a different story, but those would only be known by the host instance.
The law specifically names “online identifier”.
The data subjects are identifiable if they can be directly or indirectly identified, especially by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or one of several special characteristics, which expresses the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, commercial, cultural or social identity of these natural persons. In practice, these also include all data which are or can be assigned to a person in any kind of way. For example, the telephone, credit card or personnel number of a person, account data, number plate, appearance, customer number or address are all personal data.
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Interesting, thanks. I’ll research this further.
IP addresses make more sense, because they can be used to be cross-checked with your ISP to know who you are.
If you don’t tell anyone your username and use a VPN, there is no way for people to guess your Lemmy username
Makes me wonder if the fediverse shouldn’t be individually instanced. Like Each persons phone/browser is their own individual “instance”. Maybe a central hub/series of hubs (like instances as they are now maybe) that act like dns servers to point everyone around. No content is hosted on them, they just tell everyone’s apps where to look to the other apps for posts.
I have no idea, I’m a moron and I don’t know how the internet actually works. I’m guessing this is a problem at scale.
You’re not a moron, you were slightly right with dns. You’re idea is actually quite sound and it’s something I’m interested in also. Basically p2p social networking.
We used to be able to stream 1080p via torrent stream p2p. We could do it.
Or those 3.8k users were on Apollo, RIF etc that didn’t bring any revenue to Reddit regardless.
They could care less about these users leaving, there are plenty of new angsty teenagers to take their place
If they’re the same that generated significantly more content, then it’s still a loss for reddit
It doesn’t really matter, though. The fact that I’m here and not using reddit has netted a huge improvement in my happiness.
To be honest, I don’t really care if more reddit users come here. They can keep their bad takes and dick-swinging contests on reddit.
A very good point. To be honest, if they are happy with that new demographic, and we are happy here, everyone’s happy
Unfortunately, as one of those 3.8k daily users, I’m still using Reddit mostly. Lemmy has a long way to go before I drop Reddit all the way.
The next wave won’t come until Lemmy post are indexed by google and ranking up on the first page. Until then, searching for obscure things will still land on old Reddit posts.
Mass migration or not, I’m happier to be here with all of you.
I have to admit, when I came here I was hoping this would be a mass migration, but these days I think Lemmy is already great even without the bulk of Reddit’s user base joining. Easier to participate in conversions, less trolling, less aggression, fewer bots…
Not saying I don’t want Lemmy to grow more, but it’s a fantastic place already.
yeah people here are generally nicer. I do wish there more more active niche communities though
less trolling, less agression
less popcorn </3
But it’s manageable.
Ditto. This has been great
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I think the problem is, Lemmy’s greatest strength (Fediverse) is also the thing that’s going to hold back a mass migration at this point in time. Onboarding with Reddit is a breeze. You make an account, it asks you what your interests are and location based communities and you’re off to the races. Every community on reddit is immediately available to interact with.
When I came to lemmy I almost gave up on my initial onboarding and I’m a pretty tech savvy guy. I didn’t know where to go to start. There’s all these different lemmy sites and I didn’t know if they were the same thing or different and if I was signing up to the right one. Account creation failed initially without giving an error message (I’ll chalk that one up to just a bug). There didn’t seem to be any NSFW communities until I figured out the instance thing. You’re told you can use your account across instances but when you go to another instance via it’s domain you can’t interact with it, you have to get to another instance through your instance which is confusing as a newcomer. Any one of these issues is a falling off point for a less inclined visitor.
I’m not saying the fediverse thing is bad but the unfortunate byproduct of it is a difficult experience for newcomers, especially when you compare it to Reddit. I’m hoping growth in the community will bring in talent to solve for this initial experience or possibly apps which can handle all of this more seamlessly.
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I wonder if federated instances are something that can just become cultural knowledge over time, like any other technical piece of software. To a degree using reddit is like that to newcomers with it’s unique thread style and “independently” moderated subs. Lemmy just took it to another level.
Very good point. It will be generational maybe too. As younger people enter the Lemmy pool, they may not find it to be that unfriendly since it will be what they are used to.
I wish some of the subs I frequented the most were a bit more active here, but I guess it’s a bit chicken and egg. Need to interact more with Lemmy ourselves to motivate others to.
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How many users moved away from Lemmy.world to another instance?
Personally I came over bc the app I used stopped working (boost). Lemmy seems to have the same content I used reddit for:
- US politics headlines
- Memes
- Niche communities
I don’t plan on going back to reddit unless it’s via Boost. Fediverse is better anyway
Poor one out for Boost! I’m on the waiting list for his new Boost for Lemmy. Can’t wait.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rubenmayayo.lemmy
Pour*, but ya. I used sync and I loved it. But I also used the free version of boost. I’d probably go with whichever one came out first 😂
Sync was the first app that looked nicer AND improved usability for me, after almost a decade of RIF. So I paid for the dev version to support it, and don’t regret it even with what happened.
I have really enjoyed Jerboa while waiting for Sync, can recommend. It’s on the Play Store and native android (+ open source on GitHub)
Dang nabbit! I hate misperling easy words!
Sameee! Excited to see the finished product
Can’t wait for Boost for Lemmy to release.
The app will continue to work if you are a moderator of any subreddit… I’ve got a few subreddits that I created myself, with only me in it, and because of that I can still use the app.
Considering deleting my account however…
This is neat information but I can’t be arsed to go do all that 😂
Fair lol
Is it important that Reddit suffers? For me the important thing is that lemmy flourishes and has good oc.
I support this point of view, but at the same time I want the status quo to be disrupted and the internet to change, I’m not a fan of allowing corporations to fall into complacency when they hold so much power.
Right? Ignore them, have fun here. No reason to give any thought to them.
That’s the spirit!
This is what I wish more lemmings would grasp. I’ve commented before how there’s this disillusionment that reddit actually died when a bunch of people left. It didn’t. The sooner everyone can stop being in denial about that, the better.
The situation is really more akin to an abusive ex and the people that left realizing that they’re better off without them. You’re in a better place. Stop talking about, focusing on the drama that your ex brought and just embrace your newer better environment.
Millions of people are in that situation and don’t leave because they’ve been manipulated, they’re scared, and in this case addicted. My brother in law switched from Apollo to the official app and hates it, complains every day, and says reddit sucks now…but won’t leave.
To use your analogy of the abusive ex… would you want someone to just never talk about the abusive ex? Never process the trauma? That’s what a lot of people are doing. Noticing that the abusive ex is imploding into a death spiral is kind of validating of your decision to leave. It’s part of the process. There’s no need to shame people for it.
The post is a week old, but regardless, people have had their time to grieve and process. Your friends and family were there for you, they let you vent, they helped you make the transition away from your partner…but they’re gone. It’s time to move on. Let it go. You’re stuck in denial while most people have made it all the way to acceptance. Everyone is ready for you to stfu about your ex.
You’re also reading too much into the analogy. This isn’t really an ex, it’s a link aggregating website and online forum. Just like nobody cared if you deleted your myspace, your Facebook, digg, Tumblr, TikTok, YouTube, etc…nobody really cares that you deleted your reddit account.
They’ve had their time according to you but maybe people can make their own decisions? Also maybe just chill about it? You don’t have to listen, you don’t have to be here for any of the conversations.
Also you’ve created an entire community of family and friends with backstories so you can then tell me all these imaginary people want me to “stfu”, but apparently I’m the one “reading too much into the analogy”. I think you’re the one that just wants me to “stfu” but you don’t want to say it directly.
I think you’re the one that just wants me to “stfu” but you don’t want to say it directly.
Yes, that would be great. Stfu. Please. Thank you.
You don’t have to listen, you don’t have to be here for any of the conversations.
You seem to have missed the extreme irony in saying this whole replying to a sub comment a week after it was posted by someone who agreed with me.
If you want me to stfu you can just block me, or just stop saying things directy to me that are blatantly wrong. Up to you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And I don’t see what the age of the thread or the fact the poster agreed with you - although they don’t exactly, that’s another thing you’re wrong about - has to do with anything. I’m not here complaining about you talking, I’m pointing out how what you’re saying is wrong. You’re the one literally saying you want people to “stfu”. I’m glad you’ve at least owned it now.
Yeah, but like… I have a gf to have someone to converse with. This new gf of mine basically doesn’t speak so I’m just sitting here watching the wallpapers in silence, whereas my ex, while crazy, was very talkative and entertaining.
Ok but your ex getting hooked on heroin and ending up in a prison morgue won’t make your new gf any more interesting.
Yeah but if my current gf is just being silent I’m like… girl why are we even dating? I’ll keep dating her but damn. It’s not a great relationship and I miss the crazy hoe.
If you miss her so bad, you can just go back. It’s okay, really, I guess most people still go to both website. It’s a website after all, don’t see too much into it.
On my side I’m just reminded everytime I have to use RedReader to access Reddit on my phone that they really don’t want me there.
The thing is I can’t. Because if I do I’ll most likely inadvertently break up with my new gf, and I really do want her to succeed in life and for us to get married at some point. I’ll give her some more time.
I basically never used Reddit on my phone and on the computer it’s always old.reddit + RES. Also a reason why Lemmy feels a bit gnnnnh. Navigating without keyboard shortcuts is a paaaain.
Did you have a look at this? https://github.com/vmavromatis/Lemmy-keyboard-navigation
Also this community might interest you: https://sh.itjust.works/c/plugins
It’s petty, but I do hope Reddit suffers. Spez and co has profited off user generated content, free moderation of their communities for a decade plus. Forcing users into the Reddit app that is garbage compared to other 3rd party apps, not to mention the privacy concerns with the app which rivals Facebook.
Quote from Spez in 2016. In May, Steve Huffman said in an interview at the TNW Conference that, unlike Facebook, which “only knows what [its users are] willing to declare publicly”, Reddit knows its users’ “dark secrets”
If Reddit collapses or at the very least their IPO collapses and we can prevent another sociopath from being a billionaire I’ll be very happy with the situation.
It can be seen as a statistic for lemmy’s success
it was about hurting the reddit ? i thought it was about finding a good alternative
For me it’s both. I loved Reddit but it turned into a dumpster fire. I’ve always been a huge fan of openness, open source, freedom to the people. The fediverse is much better this time around, which I figure is more awareness of it.
I run Arch btw.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What I do know is that I’m happier having left.
I don’t know if I’d call it a mass exodus, and I don’t know that it directly has anything to do with Lemmy, but there’s been a noticeable dip in quality. Fewer posts across many of the front page subreddits, fewer votes, more bot posts, more low effort posts, less discussion in comment sections, lots of deleted comments and accounts… overall there just seems to be a dip in quality.
I was going to delete, but decided to stick around for a while first, to see how things pan out, and I’ve got to say the mobile site is even worse than expected. I get constant pop ups trying to direct me to download the app, then when I say no the website will auto reload, often sending me back to the top of the page. It’s difficult to find and respond to anyone who replies to your comments, and sometimes if you sort by top: today it won’t even show any posts. Just… blank. Clicking on a post opens it as a tab that is more like a popup, and closing it resets where you were on the page.
I could keep going but I think that pretty much summarizes what I’ve noticed. Don’t know that it’s directly related to a Lemmy “exodus,” and I’m still finding my way around here so I can’t really say, but reddit as we knew it seems pretty dead.
That’s actually what some of us were predicting would happen. We would expect a metric like “quality posts per user” to follow something like the 80:20 rule - 80% were created by 20% of the users. If those users and mods were skewed in the direction of the strongest detractors/leavers, you’d find the average quality would indeed go down.
Yeah, I got all my accounts permanently banned and the hacked app I was using was deauthorized. Tried using the mobile website and noticed all those problems also. Only use reddit now when it comes up in searches but I try to avoid it even then.
No, of course not. If you’re using Lemmy as a “protest” instead of thinking that it’s a better platform, it’s totally ineffectual and you’ll go back to using Reddit sooner or later. Personally, I think that the fediverse is a more compelling idea than the traditional internet, so I’m sticking with Lemmy for a bit in one form or another.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to protest by using alternatives, and then going back if there’s real change. (naïve, maybe)
Initially really wanted Reddit to take a hit so that they would be forced to reconsile, but I became disillusioned quite quickly. Compared to the fediverse, it is rotten; Spez is only the mouthpiece for their internal chess game.
He probably spoke the truth, when he claimed to previously having been the only one defending the third party apps.
100%. Fediverse is my jam.
Agreed, though these aren’t mutually exclusive. Lemmy as it stands is objectively a better platform in terms of mobile user experience now that third party apps were gutted for Reddit. So switching, at least for itself, is a protest using this platform while Reddit either dies a slow, painful death or takes strides to unshittify their stuff. Will probably end up using both if Reddit gets it together but that’s unlikely.
Honestly, yeah, a big part of why I started using Lemmy is that the Sync developer moved to developing a Lemmy app. I’m still active on Reddit, I’m using both, but as soon as Sync for Lemmy comes out and I can uninstall that absolutely cursed official Reddit app I’ll be here WAY more often.
We came to Lemmy for our own benefit, not just to fuck with reddit. Who cares if it hurt them or not? We’re better off without reddit, and that is all that matters.
Define mass… The giant Twitter exodus we can now know was maybe 10%, some to mastodon/fedi, the rest who knows. I’d assume the same for Reddit, pending any factual data.
And I suspect that many of those they left Reddit, reddit is better off without – super touchy argumentative people kinda made a noisy bro-ish pass through, may be starting to calm down now… I hope.
The thing is, to me, to not worry about what “other people” are doing and stfu and build community. Post what you want to read etc. We don’t need over 9000 million people we just need the right people who show and contribute and all that.
And so here we are!
The issue with that line of thinking is that it is either ignorant of or deliberately ignores the fact that Reddit actively undermines your ability to build community as you see fit. They don’t view subreddits as communities, they view them as commodities, and their users are unpaid content producers that they are happy to steamroll over the moment your “contributions” don’t exceed any impediments to monetization you may be causing.
Reddit is no longer an actually communal space. It’s a virtual sweatshop for online content so Reddit Inc can monetize ads ads ads all over.
That means we need to build the communities we want to see somewhere else, like here. Which is what that poster was saying. Don’t worry about what Reddit is doing, just build something new.
You know I haven’t really thought of it that way. A huge problem with the way people are thinking is that we want to see the other side fail or be worse off. It doesn’t really have to be like that, we can just make what we have better.
Although I gotta say, it is nice to have a service that your real life friends might use that you can discuss things with them. I find it kind of annoying sometimes that I have to explain everything that I use like the Fediverse or Matrix, or other services that I self host. But I guess that’s a price you gotta pay for freedom.
10% based on what?
Is there nowhere to see traffic to the site?
The people who don’t care how it works and just wanted it to be a doomscroll content feed for them are a ton of the ones who got mad about the protest and are still there. It’s noticably more repost bot content now. I decided to dip out cuz the content kept getting further and further from what I wanted to see anyway and then it was a sudden noticable decline.
Im working on a case study for a publishing firm about the whole API announcement and subsequent fallout so I’ve been watching all this really closely. The thing I’m most anxious for is the data on web traffic to reddit and it’s competitors, which I can only get on a monthly basis. It dropped a lot from May to June, which you could attribute to the protest or even the summer. However, Discords traffic increased during that time, and it was the only major social platform to change in either direction. I’m hoping to get some clarity once July data comes out but I don’t think we well know for sure about long term impact for a while. Reddit I’m sure knows more but definitely won’t share it publicly unless necessary, like if they do go public, but I’m not sure that kind of data would be included in a filing.
(I tracked traffic on similarweb and Semrush. Lemmy is on there too, but is tracked per server, and most were tracked starting in may or June so data is pretty limited and can’t really be compared.)
Is it possible thats it’s because Discord spawned a lot of servers related to the protest? I’m currently in 4 different discords which are related to the protests one way or another (iirc i joined eaither end of May or early June) - i have never used discord this much. Or is there a different reason for the uptick?
The content on Reddit has gotten noticeably worse - but less as a result of Lemmy’s existence and more of a reaction to killing 3rd Party Apps.
Unfortunately for me, some of my favorite communities haven’t migrated over to Lemmy. So I’m still using Old Reddit Desktop to access them.
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The first two things I noticed were that the quality of content tanked (which was already the lowest I’d ever seen before that), and unvetted racism shot up. I still access Reddit on occasion for some small communities, but I use Dystopia so I don’t provide ad revenue and I just don’t interact anymore. It’s like the active/reasonable adults left and it’s mostly kids and bots left posting and commenting.
Yeah, the comments went from jokes and memes to super aggressive threads almost instantly. Kinda crazy to see it exposed like that.
Fuck Reddit. I’m here now and it’s great.
Ya, I’m less about screwing spez and more about enjoying my niche communities. I just couldn’t enjoy it on Reddit Mobile - it’s painful, the whole ux. Then since Lemmy works great and I still have my niche groups which I enjoy interacting with. Just makes sense. Reddit made a bunch of awful decisions impacting ux and it’s unusable in my eyes.
There is a bit of me that still wants to use my old Joey app still. Hope that dev comes up with something, it was a great tool.
The effect is going to be long term. The most active users (usually 10% posters, 1% content creators and mods) were the most affected by the changes. Those are also the most vocal. And, probably the first ones to move here. Once those move reddit content will get worse over time which will make the other users move (89%) too. So yea, don’t expect short term impact. It’s the long run that matters
The short-term is that reddit is scrambling to try to maintain the appearance of normality. Calling for volunteer moderators (Always Were.meme), and talking about their decreased financial stream show this. The rest is gonna be longer term knock-on type effects.
Ultimately though, as many others have said, I’m here and I’m not going back, so while the bad news is a little cathartic, I mostly don’t care. Will they completely die, probably not, but they are dead to me.
I don’t see Reddit scrambling to do fucking aaaanythiiing. It’s impressive how goddamned daft they are being.
