Is there any evidence that Reddit has suffered at all from the exodus to Lemmy?
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...
This didn't happen quickly with Digg either. This won't be as substantially decimating to the platform as the Digg exodus was, because reddit is WAY bigger than Digg was.
I'd say it took me about 3-4 years to fully migrate away from Digg to reddit, and that process was very similar to today, where there were a ton of platforms gaining steam (even while it was pretty clear that reddit was where the party went).
I think reddit's quality of content will deteriorate over time, and the moderation will suffer. It is going to die a death of 1000 paper cuts. The API change was just reddit saying "Hey, come stab us with your paper knives!"
idk. Reddit in 15 years will probably look a lot like newspapers do today. Kind of a joke, but somehow still standing.
And on top of that, it's good that it takes time. The fediverse is still maturing. The slow changeover gives the new people time to contribute and make the place beter, and build capability for when serious numbers start to migrate.
People can contribute ideas, feedback, code, money for server costs and obviously content so when there is a bigger exodus there's something here for new people to absorb.
This seems to me similar to what building dual power looks like, it's just this is the digital version. A single cataclysmic moment of rupture isn't a good thing unless there are structures in place strong enough to pick up the pieces.