While I don’t expect there’s going to be any meaningful impact on Reddit once the dust settles, I do think this will bring a lot of new users to the Fediverse.
Reddit losing a few hundred thousand users is a drop in a bucket given their user base, but it is a significant boost for us.
I think things will probably slow down a bit again after the initial euphoria is over, but yes, I think this has brought a lot of attention to Fediverse alternatives.
The same happened with the migration to Reddit from Digg. It wasn’t all overnight, some people switched early as Reddit got more users, and for a while people used both, etc.
But I think things are in a pretty good state (especially if 0.18 fixes some of the UI issues), I see no reason to go back to Reddit.
Mainly that as more of the contributors and technical users switch to Lemmy, there’s less of what you’d want to see on Reddit anyway. This is exactly what happened to Digg over 6 months or so.
That’s a good thing, and after slowing down instance admins can focus on improving the experience for existing users.
Reddit blackouts were the kick the Fediverse needed to reach a critical mass. Fediverse sites are already starting to appear in Google search and join-lemmy.org is the third result when you look up “lemmy”.
I’m seeing it the same way. We got a critical mass of not just users, but smart internet types.
However the platform is still very raw. After the migration slows, it’s actually beneficial to have some time for the devs to patch things up to a level more suitable for normies.
Then, with a solid core community and a functioning UX, we can begin to aggressively advertise the Fediverse via coordinated campaigns. It’s not going to happen overnight but there’s a clear path laid out before us.
also laymen (normies) need to get used to the rules of how distribution works and not to expect a megacorporation to interfere
That’s never going to happen. Capitalism runs too deep and the average person is too dumb. But we need to push them in the right direction