This place has roughly 3,000 people and was intended to be an entire replacement for DaystromInstitute and StarTrek as they were going dark indefinitely. Well, within 4 days the moderators have walked back those statements and opened both subreddits up. I see no incentive for people to come to this website now and while a few may come here in the future, most people will go to r/startrek with 600,000 people.
This was just the dress rehearsal, it seems like people forgot that. The protest isn’t the event, the policy changes are the event. The protest was just to let them know that the users do care about the impending policy changes. When those changes take effect, lots of people are going to discover that the app they use to browse reddit doesn’t work anymore. Some will install the official [cr]app and go on with their lives, but some won’t. It won’t be a mortal wound, but a lot of users will be lost at that moment. That’s when a wave of users looking for a new permanent home will arrive. Since Lemmy has been mentioned all over reddit, and in articles about the reddit drama, a lot of the trekkies among them will end up here. All we have to do is wait. Lemmy may not be the site/network with the biggest trek presence (yet), but i’m confident it will grow to a healthy size in short order.
It’s also worth mentioning that there are users, such as myself, who want to set up their own instances and play with the technology. The stats of what you see for user volume and using that as a metric to determine engagement is pre-federation thinking (both literally and figuratively). More numbers = more safety in a false scarcity environment right?
Anyhow, this site is federated and it’s not alone. I’m excited to be here.
yes, but i would like to add that the thing most people will get is bad moderation. I dont think the people will change 180° on the moment the changes happen but it will be a malicious long term effect where spam, shitposts on good communities and co will get stronger. And when people realize this they either have to accept shitty reddit or come over to an alternative.
At least i think the long term is the worst part for reddit.
Edit: as you can see on the stats below the growth of lemmy slows down at the moment but they dont sink so there is a deciline of new new users but there is less hype because: we cant reach anyone, some of the blackouts are going online and we already joined.
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
Yeah not all at once of course. I think there will be a noticeable wave right away, but greater numbers will trickle in over the following months. And hopefully in that time there will be some more mobile apps popping up that work with Lemmy.