I don’t remember what caused the Voat’s origin, except it involved Reddit HQ. And then it went under in 2020.

What’s different about this time and with Lemmy to make it a feasible alternative to Reddit? Is it random chance?

  • Biscuit@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I don’t know, I was there in the beginning. I think it died because it had no real content, compared to reddit. And, all anyone talked about was reddit, or reposted stuff from reddit, just like we’re seeing here. I think this might stick a bit better because reddit is way bigger than it was back then, so even if the same super small % of users came over, it would still be quite a bit more content.

    For comparison of how negligible all the Lemmy fediverse is, there are ~40k active users this month. Reddit has over 50 million active users. So, that’s around 0.1% of reddit users. Literally 99.9% of reddit are not here.

    I think it’s probably doomed. It’ll never overtake reddit. But, it’ll be a nice, quiet, alternative.

    edit: Here’s a quick litmus test for all the downvoters. How many times have you gone to reddit today?

    edit: I was part of this attempted migration, not the hate one. This isn’t the first blackout for reddit being shitty.

    • entropicshart@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Honestly - I agreed with the first paragraph of your comment and was going to upvote, but all the edits made me reconsider; this is a place to share our thoughts, not worry about how many people up/down-ticked our comment.

      Throw out a thought and forget the “karma”!

      • Biscuit@kbin.social
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        but all the edits made me reconsider
        not worry about how many people up/down-ticked our comment.

        The first was an afterthought that I wanted to include. The second was because I realized my time trying Voat was close to the hate subs that the majority of the comments here are about. Neither were about up/down, I was just trying to be polite by making the additions clear, since there’s no indicator in my UI.

        The last one was a lighthearted joke. I thought the last few sentences of it, and the first few, and the middle ones, would make that clear. With an empty /m/funny and /m/jokes, and a /m/memes full of constipation, I’m beginning to suspect my humor may not be well align here.

        But, I do think it’s silly that given an opinion about my experience, on a question requesting an opinion about that event, results in downvotes. I guess I don’t get the point of this place.

    • CheshireSnake@iusearchlinux.fyi
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      2 years ago

      I think it’s probably doomed. It’ll never overtake reddit. But, it’ll be a nice, quiet, alternative.

      Why is it doomed? I think if it becomes a small alternative to reddit, it’s a win. Killing reddit was never on the table - it’s just too big and mainstream for that to happen (see Facebook and Twitter). Will it be more successful than Voat? If we can sustain the community/activity that we have now, then yes.

      Here’s a quick litmus test for all the downvoters. How many times have you gone to reddit today?

      I’ll go over that. It’s probably a week since I last went to reddit (this includes teddit and those other ways to go there). I don’t even have an account or reddit app anymore. All the reddit news I get are from here and discord. Last time i went there was to delete my accounts and use Power Delete.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Killing reddit was never on the table - it’s just too big and mainstream for that to happen (see Facebook and Twitter).

        Sure it is (see Digg).

    • DaniAlexander@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      I suspect your downvotes are due to your ridiculous all or nothing speculation. No one can base the future on what’s happening right now. Yet you’re speculating it’s already failed. What a shit take.

      We don’t know if the fediverse will succeed yet on a larger scale. Sometimes migration is instant, like with digg, sometimes it takes time, like with Facebook exodus which is continuing as i type this. Not to mention people weren’t prepared for this migration so none of the tools to make it a replacement have been in place. But now people are actively working on building out the community. Maybe we’ll know in a couple years if this is a successful endeavor on a Reddit type scale. But we don’t know yet.

      • Biscuit@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        your ridiculous all or nothing speculation

        How is it ridiculous? It’s my 2 cent opinion, lightly founded in observation of when this happened several times in the past, with reddit and several other platforms, to a question in a forum about questions, that requires speculation about the future.

        There’s not a correct or incorrect answer here, just a bunch of idiots guessing. Feel free to influence the future with downvotes though. I’ll continue enjoying reading what people have to say.

    • Bucket_of_Truth@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      The reasons were less tangible before. Taking away popular apps will have a much bigger impact than some subreddit drama.

      • Biscuit@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        Taking away popular apps to a social network that doesn’t have any yet? What? Most users won’t see that as a positive, in the medium term.

        We would have to see the user stats related to reddit app usage, to talk in an informed way about this, along with the assumption that reddit doesn’t improve their app, which will probably be forced onto spez (assuming he isn’t kicked out as an atonement/scape goat).

        edit: Here’s a quick litmus test. How many times have you gone to reddit today?

          • Biscuit@kbin.social
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            2 years ago

            Ok, now let’s ask the 99.9% of Redditors that aren’t here. You take the left 25,000,000, I’ll take the right, meet back in 5. Go!

            edit: Oh man, I’m out of breath. We might need help. How about every single lemmy user helps us! That’s only about 1,300 people we each have to ask! Well, 1,299 for me. At 4 seconds each, that’s should only be about 1.5 hours. See you all soon!

            • BlackCoffee@kbin.social
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              Should we care that other people still use reddit?

              Do you have to chose one or the other?

              Why are people so hell bent to “take over” Reddit?

              I found an alternative in Kbin and Lemmy that suits my needs and focuses on user experience and growing communities instead of growing the pockets of a handful of people.

              I decide to not use Reddit anymore because the upper echelon can go fuck themselves.

              Is it so weird to have a set of values and stop using a service/product, because they cross the boundaries one has set for themselves?

              I have used Reddit for more than a decade and I haven’t missed it all.

              I am here because I enjoy it and not because I have a deeper desire for Reddit to evaporate out of nowhere.

              • Biscuit@kbin.social
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                2 years ago

                I think most of the answers to your questions can be answered by the question that this comment section is responding to, to understand the framing that I’m commenting in:

                What’s different about this time and with Lemmy to make it a feasible alternative to Reddit? Is it random chance?

                But, this is the first and last Reddit related thread that I plan on participating in, so I’ll be cheering with you, if we ever get the miracle of reddit evaporating. Although, I would be worried where they would all end up.

                • BlackCoffee@kbin.social
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                  2 years ago

                  It is Random chance.

                  I have read your comments;

                  “I think it’s probably doomed. It’ll never overtake reddit. But, it’ll be a nice, quiet, alternative.”

                  No one knows if it is doomed.

                  You have to start somewhere but you can’t expect a platform that has seen an huge influx of users the past weeks to immediately operate on the scale of what Reddit does.

                  “I humbly apologize for my personal, speculative, opinion about the unknowable future. The downvotes have made me realize my math was wrong, my opinion is wrong, and I am wrong. My corrected opinion is that Lemmy will overtake Meta, Mastadon, Twitter, and Google (wtf is reddit!?), and every upvote will be worth $1000, making everyone rich! Or, we can have fun guessing, and wait and see how things go. I hope they go well!”

                  Who is claiming the above?

                  The fun thing is that Mastodon is in your list and before the fuckery with Twitter it didn’t really have traction.

                  Why can’t lemmy/Kbin be the same in a year from now?

                  The problem for Reddit, is that it made people actually look for alternatives. It is stupid for a competitor to make it’s customers aware of the competition, but Reddit did exactly that.

                  Maybe it flops, maybe it stays “niche”, maybe it explodes in popularity.

                  I think it is indeed random chance and just being at the right place at the right time.

            • GunnarRunnar@kbin.social
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              2 years ago

              What are you on about? Yeah obviously people still visit Reddit, it was stupid of you to ask in the first place. I thought this kind of idiocy would’ve stayed at Reddit.

    • gk99@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      edit: I was part of this attempted migration, not the hate one. This isn’t the first blackout for reddit being shitty.

      It’s the first one where average users were affected beyond the blackout, though. Other than the alt-righters nobody wanted there and weren’t going to follow when they left. Patriots.win isn’t a real community either, it’s just constant Trump, Biden, and “democrats bad” content.

      • Biscuit@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        It’s the first one where average users were affected beyond the blackout, though.

        I think this makes the very big assumption that the average user uses third party apps. All of the polls on reddit, that I saw, suggested this is not true. For example. If that’s true, then the average Redditor is only being inconvenienced by the blackout and related shenanigans.

        Was there a wider poll that showed non-negligible third party usage?

        • Joe@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          The blackouts showed that the majority of people actually contributing to the site use third party apps

    • HelixDab@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      I haven’t logged into reddit since overwriting and deleting 12 years of content. So, I dunno man. I also haven’t logged into Twitter since Musk took over.

      I think that you’re right, that reddit won’t die. But I think that things like this, if not this exact thing, are going to be reasonable alternatives for many people.

    • Mereo@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I used the internet since 1998 and I remember when Reddit was this little known site with not a lot of users. It took years for Reddit to get where it is right now.cl Lemmy will likely take that trajectory or perhaps, be a second Reddit but with better discussions.

      For Lemmy, if all goes well, will take years to have a significant amount of active users. Perhaps subreddits will slowly deteriorate, pushing more people toward Lemmy… No one knows what the future holds…

    • refugeered@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      I do not know how to solve this but the disagree = down vote thing has gone crazy. It seems to have become next to impossible to have a civil discussion online nowadays about an alternate opinions. It feels like everyone just wants to have their beliefs confirmed and never have their opinions questioned.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I’ve had plenty of civil discussions online where I had an alternate opinion from the zeitgeist. On Reddit.

        Generally speaking, if you aren’t alt right scum, people are agreeable. If you believe people should be allowed to live how they want as long as it isn’t hurting people, and nobody should be treated differently because of an inherent, born characteristic, people may not be happy with your opinion but they’ll at least listen to you.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Or maybe up and downvotes are meaningless and karma has no value. I think it’s a way of polling opinion on a topic. Lemmy is not Reddit. Users have no accumulated karma, downvotes don’t hide comments and Post’s default comment sort is by New.

        • TheDeadGuy@kbin.social
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          People are really bent out of shape with others disagreeing with them. You aren’t being silenced, you’re being polled and that’s not a problem.

          Now if you are harassed because of it, that’s a different subject than a simple downvoted. That’s why I love the transparency here

      • Biscuit@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        There was a time when messages didn’t have scores. ;)

        I like the idea of the score modifying placement in the comment tree, but not being visible. I also like the idea of a more expressive score (maybe normalized), I suppose like the emoji systems do, to indicate funny, angry, etc, rather than some silly binary.

    • BlueForestDev@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      tbh the culture here is reddit in its purest form right now. once they start sanitizing everything here again I’m out. One opinion allowed ONLY and if you dont align you’re a NAZI and FAR RIGHT TROLL

      • Biscuit@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        I’m seeing red whistles and hearing dog flags coming from you! Am I doing it right?

        • BlueForestDev@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          Perfect. ‘Downvote’ me too so you can really show it to me how WRONG I am.

          If you want to see what happens if this culture permeates here just look at Mastodon. Negative growth, barely any interaction and it’s the same few people shouting into the void. I checked some mutuals who proudly announced they’d move to Mastodon and most haven’t posted anything this year. Still posting regularly on Twitter tho :clownface:
          A lot of users here are the same, ‘move’ here to show they’re protesting and then stop posting in a few weeks or months and back to reddit.
          Some clown mod made over 50 magazines/subs on kbin. Hasnt posted 1 comment since a little over a week. Bio reads: ‘Proud owner of xxx communities.’ lol

          If there is no unique culture/point to this platform and it’s just reddit 2.0 then people will simply go back to reddit.

      • goat@sh.itjust.works
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        2 years ago

        Having been called fascist, troll, sealion, and all manner of insults because I dared disagree – Yeah, you’re totally right.

        People gotta learn to deal with speech they dislike or disagree with. That’s the beauty of democracy.

        • Falmarri@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          This is the least self aware post ever. You should learn to deal with speech you dislike instead of complaining about being called a fascist