I think for certain technology and privacy focused individuals, Mastodon and Lemmy are the way forward. Some people will always prefer a centralized solution or just don't care enough to make the switch. They will continue to be the userbase of websites like Digg, Reddit, and Twitter.
And to be honest, I don't see that as a bad thing. I find the content here is actually worth reading through almost every comment, whereas on Reddit/Digg/Twitter I'd scroll past hundreds at a time because of how low-quality they looked.
Yeah I think a bit of a barrier to entry is actually a good thing, in a way. Keeps low quality content to a minimum and the discussions more authentic. At least this is what reddit (or even the Internet, in general) was back in the day.
It actually makes me realise - back in 2016 when thedonald was constantly making its way to the top of reddit, none of the people at the top did anything.
Now with these API changes, you barely hear about them despite the threads being heavily upvoted.
I look back on that shitshow with even more pennies dropping.
Well, if we decide we like the official name, we call communities "communities". Hence the /c/ in "https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy" and the link up the top.
My hope is that someone (Mozilla? Apollo devs?) stands up a Lemmy instance “for the average user” similar to what Mozilla did for Mastodon. It’ll take moves like that to get some degree of critical mass and help the average user switch to federated apps like Lemmy. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-social-mastodon-private-beta-announcement/
Yes, if mozilla makes an instance the game will be changed. The biggest problems I'm seeing people on reddit say is that making an account is awful and picking an instance is too hard. Please mozilla
Earlier this year I s/twitter/mastodon/ to good effect. I don't think s/reddit/lemmy/ will happen anytime soon; the numbers are too small for any real network effect.
For example, the subreddit I spend the most time in has >2million readers. There are enough posts daily that my niche interests come up regularly and I contribute to those discussions.
Tbh I have no idea, I stumbled across Lemmy from a random Reddit post. However, getting out of Reddit for a bit and looking around what's here now, it reminds me of the early days, and maybe I'm just old, but I think they were better. Maybe at Reddit's scale + the way the web is now just isn't something that scratches that itch for me. If not Lemmy I hope to find another alternative for that. But in order for this to work, you're right, it does need a certain number of users, we'll have to see how that pans out I guess.
It's the size of the site. Reddit has too many users and has lost what once made it special. Everyone wants this place to grow to astronomical numbers, but I guarantee it will start declining once that happens. Smaller, more tightknit communities are much better imo.