The user count at the moment of this post stands at 33279 and continues to grow!
To take the #1 spot from lemmy.ml (36185 users and no longer growing), lemmy.world just needs about 3000 new users. Given the current growth rate, it should be another day or two.
We’re building something here!
There’s a greater likelihood that the content creators are the ones moving. Most of the reddit power users likely used third party apps. Most of the reddit power users are also the ones who wrote most of the comments worth reading.
So if on june 1 most of the reddit power users flee, reddit’s enshitification will have reached a terminal stage. Eventually, reddit will stop having things worth reading, and the lurkers will all move over.
I think we’re in for a long decline of reddit a la facebook. However unlike facebook, there isn’t a market of old people/foreign markets that can fill their user numbers.
What really hurts so much about this is that Reddit is effectively a modern Alexandrian Library, and it’s burning. There’s so much content there that’s vitally important and it could all go up in smoke. Anybody know any full archival projects?
I know r/DataHoarder is working hard for it, dunno where they are storing all the data tho.
Many of datahoarders initiatives are pointless at best. Hoarding reddits data across a thousand personal hard drives that are inaccessible to anyone else is of extremely limited value. I’ve watched them perform the same action over and over, but most of the time that data never ends up in a new home. It just rots at someone’s house.
I think the biggest reddit archive initiative is led by ArchiveTeam Warrior and the data after processing ends up being accessible on Internet Archive. I’ve seen this initiative posted on DataHoarder two weeks ago.
During the protest I’ve seen several people saying they didn’t even know 3rd party apps existed, I believe we seriously underestimate the amount of people who don’t care about anything as long as they get their daily “dose” of memes.
Many power users have moved already, more will follow, but the masses? Reddit is infested with reposting bots but most people don’t even notice, they have so much content in there that it will last them for years, even if all content creators left, not to mention AI.
That’s not to say reddit will never die, but I believe it’ll take a much longer time than we think.
I honestly don’t care. If we make this thing here work, let the bots have reddit. As long as the old discussions aren’t deleted, it can be tiktok 2 for all I care (if this here growth into what it seems to grow into).
So for me, while I knew of the 3PAs I didn’t start using them until the uproar. And when I did switch, I was like “how the hell did I stay on the official app for so long!”