Honestly I don't think so. I want the fediverse to grow, but the vibe here can be exhausting sometimes. Whenever I say I can't use Linux because I'm blind I get a bunch of downvotes. Whenever I say I'd love to talk about cats or vintage computers without someone bringing up Trumpa-Lumpa in the comments I get shouted down as well. I can't imagine Joe Social Media User wanting to be around people like that. I could say a ton more but I've rehashed it elsewhere.

And that's not getting into the (comparatively) high friction nature of first choosing an instance to sign up to. Heck, I didn't understand how the fediverse worked for a while, and I'm in IT. The world is full of people who don't have that background that will find the very concept impenetrable.

I don't want them to. Reddit refugees have already long trashed Lemmy and they've been working around trashing other parts of the fediverse, proving that Reddit doesn't exist for any good purpose.

Of all the reddit replacements, Lemmy has the most staying power because of its federated nature. It's not dependent on a single source of administration or funding. Voat, for example, went to shit because it ended up full of Nazis that got ran off of reddit and then they ran out of money. While this same fate could potentially befall any individual Lemmy instance, the platform as a whole can react and continue.

The Facebook population won't, but all the cool people who made 2014esque Reddit good will or already has. Lemmy will never be the front page of the internet.

Nah. Lemmy/fediverse will evolve and then that will become the thing. Tech literacy is going down, so something either has to drive it back up, or people are gonna need a lazier solution.

Reddit actively removes posts mentioning lemmy. And google specifically pushes posts from reddit. It’s gonna be an uphill battle but slow and steady will win the race. the more valuable content that gets posted here the stronger lemmy gets. One thing hurting is a good native app for lemmy.

I actually don't think they will, they'll go for an alternative that has a big ass marketing budget and backed by a large corporation next.

I think it'll remain niche, but it'll slowly grow in popularity

Yes, I think it will grow organically, and often in bursts when Reddit does something particularly publicly stupid or frustrating. We've seen this before, we'll see it again. I don't know if we'll ever see a mass exodus. I don't know if this will ever "replace" Reddit per se. Obviously it has for me, but on a whole, I think it will continue to be a niche community, and I'm fine with that. There are good people here, my kind of people, and I like it for what it is, not for what it could become. I really don't need the tiktok-memelord-masses and the teenagers and the onlyfans trolls in my life. I think they'll find their own places to congregate and feed off each other, and I don't think it will ever be here, no matter how shitty reddit and tiktok and whatever other dumb apps they use become.

I don't want the Fediverse to be massively exclusive but it doesn't need to be massively inclusive either. Its nature means it can be inclusive, and I welcome any community who really feels like they belong here. But I'm realistic about who is actually going to feel included here, and I don't think we need to go out of our way to "attract" more users, we just need to do enough that the people who want this sort of thing, can find it.

Lemmy can't grow niche communities without significantly larger number of users.

Lots of users will not replace Reddit with Lemmy without access to the niche subreddits they're active in.

Personally, I still use Reddit for niche communities that just aren't present on Lemmy.

Although, if they ever shut down RedReader's API access that would force my hand, as the official app is unusable IMO.

It's nice to have an option that isn't one of the corporate overlords. I want it to be successful, but I also don't want it to be mainstream, because that brings mainstream level problems too.

Probably not materially faster than they leave - over the long run.

This first graph is mostly dominated by mastodon obviously we don't know who did or did not use reddit previously, but its a general pattern. https://fediverse.observer/stats&months=96

Similar pattern in monthly active users for lemmy specifically. https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats&months=96

I don't know about newer versions like pieface or whatever - but since the total fedi population is fairly stable any specific software is probably mostly shuffling the same people around.

Though maybe the dataset doesn't crawl stats for newer ones, I don't really know - but it feels pretty stable population with inflows and outflows more or less matching.

I just did.

So far really enjoying.

Reddit i really changed... forcing the app

Some will, but if they haven't left yet I don't see why they would. We'll continue to get stragglers that get banned from reddit.

Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

i think we need more users

there i made a sticker. now i've gotta stick it somewhere

I hope so. It's a more open platform and in some ways the interface is better (but as with most of fediverse tools it requires a wee tiny bit of learning to undo the programming of using proprietary webpages).

I hope so. My only issue so far is the lack of content

They are moving very slowly, which is a good thing.

It depends.

If we're lucky and lemmy is more of less left to its own devices then we'll probably get a few more users as Reddit keeps getting more and more awful.

If we're not lucky then either Reddit or Meta will decide that lemmy needs to be somehow incorporated into their services wether we like it or not and we'll be inundated with a deluge of the worst possible kinds of users. Spam bots, trolls, scammers, people trying to use it for their crappy MLM schemes etc.

Only time will tell!

I think more of them will just quit using reddit and not come here either.

When you want to sign up for lemmy, there are questions and questions are friction. That feels easy for us because obviously we did it, we picked an instance, we got our approvals, we're here, but I've seen it firsthand trying to get people to use lemmy and for a lot of types of people that you would want for establishing more variety in communities, that initial friction is more than enough to drive them away.

Reddit doesn't even make you pick a username, they've gone almost as far as you could with making account creation frictionless. If we want to stay in our echo chamber with everyone who thinks that's not a big deal then someone else who solves that friction is probably going to eventually be the real reddit replacement. Seriously y'all, know it's been awhile, but people were picking discord as an alternative to reddit to move to instead of lemmy during the apicalypse and they barely even compare.

With all that said though, giving up the idea of Lemmy being a major competitive platform is not the worst thing in the world.

More? Yes. All? Probably not. Time will tell but I think the internet will fragment again, at least to some degree. It wasn't healthy to have it all consolidated around a few mega-sites.

I come across many users less than 3 months old, and they tend to introduce themselves occasionally on !reddit@lemmy.world.

It's fine if they come over a little at a time or in large waves or even if they don't. I do worry about sometimes there are periods where discussion feels a little more toxic, bandwagoney and rigid, and others where people allow themselves to be a little more nuanced when discussing with each other. I like this site more when the latter is happening. Maybe new users need a little time settling down into a slightly different culture which is normal and expected.

I would like to see more niche communities here. That's tthe only reason I still visit reddit. I do not know whether more reddit users will find their way here, but I sure do hope that their niche communities will migrate with them.

I sure hope so, and yes it is.

I just joined. I was a lurker and effectively banned. Honestly wish I would have done it sooner!

Absolutely.

It's a good thing and a bad.

Bad:

• I don't really like the prevailing philosophy of redditors. If Redditors(TM) are around, i don't like talking to them.
• a small nunber of people who get banned and come here were genuinely being terrible and won't stop once they're on lemmy. Those people usually aren't drawn to smaller less public sites like this, however.

Good:

• People who get banned tend to be quite fun, and active users. A lot of people find themsekles banned from reddit essentially for 'posting too much', e.g they make a joke that a mod doesn't like, temporary ban makes multiple accounts flag up, user gets banned on all of them.
• i think the vibe of the site you're on governs how you behave a littke bit. People will fall into communicating with you in a way you're comfortble with.

I have a headache and can't make the lists longer, oops

Given the out of control censorship and normative thought dogpiling that continually occurs over there, we can only hope more and more users leave reddit. It is now known as one of the most censored websites. Now combine that with all the paid posters and bot content, and it's a recipe for little user reward.

Yes, especially right now. Reddit is revoking API keys that made third party reddit apps work. And the reddit app sucks, switching to that is a lot of friction so the friction of switching to Lemmy will be smaller

Doubt it. Maybe a few but nothing huge

If they come, it will be a trickle. There isn't that much left for Reddit to do which would significantly harm the user base as a whole to force a migration. At best, one sub might get banned and come to Lemmy as a way to continue. Whether that community will be accepted by the current Lemmy federation is up in the air.

Regarding future growth, Lemmy isn't ready for it. The moderation and admin tools need work if the platform were to 10x, let alone see greater growth. I expect if that growth were to happen, federation would fracture further. You would also see some Reddit items come here as a way to moderate like becoming more dependent on a karma score and requiring more for signing up.

Yes and yes.

It'll happen repeatedly.

It'll be a good thing and it will be a bad thing.

Growth brings more content and communities but there's a point where popularity can start to hurt the quality or authenticity of the communities.