1y ago

When old.reddit.com dies, how will Lemmy grab more users?

I don't see Old Reddit lasting long. They've cut beloved features before, and they're still calling New Reddit a "beta feature". After they've pumped enough resources into developing it, I'm sure they'll move past the "test" phase and just cut Old Reddit out entirely. That's probably going to be Lemmy's next big user surge.

Does Reddit suppress mentioning Lemmy? I remember for a while this past June 2023 there were a lot of auto-deletions for mentioning or linking to Lemmy. I was never clear on who was deleting things and where. I guess linking to the r/Lemmy subreddit (or a fediverse sub) could work as long as the subreddit doesn't get banned.

64 comments

I honestly can't see how anyone can stand the not-old reddit.
- there's lots of people who've joined after the redesign and haven't used old reddit, so it feels unfamiliar to them. some how mamy people were completely unaware of third party clients because they haven't been using reddit before the official app has been released.
- I prefer the full posts over the preview post.
  Better to scroll during lunch break.
  
  Same. I want to see the full post/picture so I can decide that I'm even interested in the comments. I actually like infinite scrolling.
  My Lemmy app (Sync) is also configured for full height and width cards.

The people that use old.reddit are a very small minority, and many are likely already here.
- I use Connect for Lemmy on my phone I switched from RIF.
  I still use old.reddit on my PC though. If old.reddit shuts down I guess I will switch to Lemmy on PC.
  
  Using boost after RIF went over to that authoritarian hell hole tildes...only time I'm on Reddit is using old.reddit as well. New reddit is just cancer.
- That small minority being a surprisingly large chunk of their volunteer moderators, which is why old reddit isn't goin anywhere.
  
  Would not be surprised if they are being dishonest about how many users are on old. I recall over a year or two ago reading a highly upvoted comment about it being less than 5% of all users, it might of been an Admin I don’t remember. New users I’ve shown old.reddit to are always so delighted. I’m sure it’s almost all OGs still on old though.
- Hi! That's me! I'm already here!
  Old.reddit + ublock + RES.
  That's my desktop setup for ages and ages.
  Once old.reddit is gone I'll not go back

Does Reddit suppress mentioning Lemmy
It does. Try commenting with https://phtn.app/ link in the comment, it will get removed instantly.
- I nuked my reddit account with PDS and a lot of my edited comments were deleted because it mentioned Lemmy.
  
  That's some 3d chess right there.
  
  We should try alternative spellings till we get a variant that goes through. like leetspeak or somethinf
  
  Is it "too late" to still do this somehow? Is there a good tutorial? Would love to get things cleaned up Re:that
- HTTP 500 🤔
  
  Me too. I dont even know what it is to check on downdetector
  
  Strange, it works for me

Honestly, I don't think users would migrate from Reddit to lemmy if they shut down old.reddit.
At this point, and after all that happened, users would switch to the new Reddit and continue using it.
Reddit has a massive amount of users and content there is generated at a huge amount. A lot of users would continue using Reddit even if they aren't happy with the interface, just for the content really.

This can probably be modeled off the Digg to Reddit transition. Digg made a couple bad decisions in a row and Reddit exploded. Reddit is making a couple potentially bad decisions in a row, so give it a year or two and the fediverse will come around.
- Yeah except Digg was a significant competitor to Reddit.
  Lemmy is good but not great. Having a crap ton of instances doesn't matter when people only use the top two, and then both go offline due to lack of redundancy.
  If there was some good webclient that fetched from multiple instances and automatically handled a downed instance, it would probably give lemmy much more traction.
  Just having multiple instance logins can be such a turnoff for people.
  Still I hope it does grow.

If it's the interface they miss, it can be duplicated on lemmy. Beehaw did a pretty good job https://old.beehaw.org/
- .world and .ca have the "old" interface as well. ( https://old.lemmy.world/ and https://old.lemmy.ca )
  
  Also https://old.lemmy.zip
- There is also https://o.opnxng.com/ that can display any instance

I used to think I'd move if old.reddit died, but I migrated here much sooner when the whole API debacle happened, and I don't know if many people who still care are still in there.

I don't think that this will be the reason for another mass migration. Maybe some users will switch but it won't be a significant number
- Reddit is going for an IPO after which it will slowly enshittify to oblivion to acquiesce to board demands.
  
  Yeah that's my hope. I don't think many people will switch because of the removal of old.reddit.com, but Reddit will probably become much shittier after going public. Hopefully that will cause more people to switch. It worked with Twitter, some people initially switched when Musk took over, but many other people switched later when the service became worse and worse.
- I think a lot more people use old reddit than used 3rd party apps, but there would have been a lot of overlap
- I think that it will, potentially worse than the APIcalypse, even if there are less desktop than mobile users. They'd be messing with whatever was left of a sane interface, that even mobile users who don't want the app use. And the alternatives (incl. Lemmy) aren't just a bunch of ghost towns any more, they'd be reaching actual communities instead of a "make your own community" place.
  
  Agree
- The migration (if there is one) will happen over a long period of time ... Months or years.
  Reddit initially had a huge growth period because there was no competition like it ... there were other platforms but none like Reddit at the time.
  Lemmy is on the same path as Reddit but with one difference, it has competition, not just from Reddit but a whole group of new platforms that are like it, or similar to it ... so the community is fractured across Reddit, Lemmy and a bunch of other platforms.
  The next two or three years will be an evolutionary period for all these platforms .... this is a bit like the Cambrian explosion (a geologic period where a bunch of new species just appeared everywhere all at once) .... all of them will fight one another and people will migrate one way or another, other factors will come in that we know about (finances, software, bandwidth, censorship, politics) as well as other factors we've yet to know about.
  In a few years, some platforms will disappear and die out, others will linger and a few will dominate.
  The evolutionary period may last a year or two or it may last longer but it won't happen any time soon and we also don't know what the outcome will be.
  Going by past internet history it will be influenced by people's choices but it will also be influenced by corporate interests once they figure out how to monetize something.

By having the same communities that reddit has. What if we all go through our subbed reddits and make them here?
Is there an official gaming community on Lemmy?
- What if we all go through our subbed reddits and make them here?
  That's exactly what I did with a fairly niche community, and so far we've got 400+ subscribers in only four months. Pretty good for Lemmy, I think.
  TBF, I think part of why it took off so well is because Lemmy's ALL stream is relatively slow enough such that small niche communities have a much higher chance of being randomly seen. Compare that to Reddit, where they'd typically be buried.
  So there's a prime opportunity right now to start a community on Lemmy and have it take off relatively easily. That might not be so true in future.

When Reddit ipos and it tanks. They’ll push more bad decisions. That’ll be when people start to leave.
- I have no experience to say whether it will succeed or tank. Why should it fail?
  To be clear, I left Reddit and am not going back, but I'm curious what are some indicators the IPO won't do well.
  
  https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/01/fidelity-reddit-valuation/
  This.
  Another issue is if you look at companies that started to push what was perceived as woke agendas, they got thrashed in the market, Target, Inbev.
  WHat will also hurt reddit the number of bots. Advertisers are taking a harder look at are their dollars effective on online platforms.
  For most the brands I saw advertising on reddit, there is no way they were getting a return on their investment.
  Once they go public, most of this information will come out.
- When Reddit IPOs, hopefully mods will wonder why they're doing free work just so spez can get rich of their backs.
  
  I think the ipo won’t do well. I think it’s going to underperform drastically. I wouldn’t invest. Too much drama and controversy to draw my investment dollars.
  I forget which bank but they already wrote off a large part of their investment.

When they removed old.compact shortly before the API debacle, which was really the only way to view a relatively functional site on mobile without a constant nag popup begging you to download the app, I knew the end was near. I had started looking for alternatives at that time. Chatter about alternatives really started to ramp up around then from what I could tell. I think everyone knew what was coming. I'm not sure there will be a surge, since most people that cared likely bailed long ago. Anyone still using old.reddit is viewing it from a desktop, and probably already has a Lemmy account.
The battle is already over. Reddit just needs to get to IPO so Spez can cash out with more than he got the first time. Then it's someone else's problem.

by existing

We could organise something to advertise Lemmy in Reddit, but I think that organic word-of-mouth is a better approach.
Instead we should make sure that the Lemmy experience is as good as possible. (Plus it benefits us "older" users regardless of any potential migration.)

MLMYM(it is a lemmy client that looks like reddit) They do suppress lemmy from time to time. Do not mention it in a post(comment about it instead)

The thing is a difficult intro, IMHO. Things like coding an instance, understanding the limits, etc. I honestly still don't know why I can't upload images to basically any community, but it prevents me from contributing.

Does Lemmy need to grab more users in the first place? I'd rather interact with people genuinely interested in such a model, not salty refugees seeing it as a compromise inferior to what they lost. Nah, I'm good as we are now.
- Yes it does need more users. If you are not into Linux, Politics, Tech, and Cats, your feed looks much less populated. I'm not saying that Lemmy needs to have hundreds of millions of users, but it would be nice for most people if the userbase grew more.
  
  Minor addition: Lemmy needs more active users. A lot of redditfugees seem to have created their own instances the moment they arrived here, only to expect other people to fill the communities with content and then abandon the site once they realised they would have to put actual work into their communities instead of just being squatters with mod rights. There are a lot of gaming-related communities here that I personally would be interested in joining if they weren't abandoned and devoid of content (like Cult of the Lamb or Spiritfarer for example).
  It would be really nice if active Lemmy users would "adopt" a few of those abandoned communities to add content and pull in more subscribers. "Only" having more people overall on the site doesn't do much if this does not lead to more content / discussions / interaction.
  
  Small self plug for morr generalist communities
  !parenting@lemmy.world
  !casualconversation@lemmy.world
  !moviesandtv@lemm.ee
  !malefashionadvice@lemmy.world
  !cooking@lemmy.world
- But there's also people saying there's not enough content here. For more content there needs to be more people.

On Lemmy, whenever I use the "back" feature of my cell phone web browser, the feed reverts to the default filter. It's probably a bug, but it prevents ne from clicking without fear that I'll lose where i was in my doomscrolling...

64 comments