Yikes. It does not sound pretty. For them at least, but indeed, Lemmy is a whole other deal. It seems to mainly just need some polish? Especially easing in new people, if increasing the numbers is really the goal.
Old-Reddit's days are numbered... so we'd best prepare for the next incoming migration.
Remember the defamation lawsuit where spez lied about what the third-party app dev said, so the dev released the recording of the call proving it?
Also, the other time that happened as well? If you bought the company for a few million, $5 might be all you end up left with! (I hope!:-) 😂
In short: fuck spez.
You're going to need more than that to cover the legal liability of the lawsuits brought against the company. You could easily end up in the negative, with a mess like that!
Hey, it's not just bots! It also serves as a home for trolls and whiny children too.:-)
I hope you know what I mean when I say that Reddit is dead, but Long Live Reddit! :-P
No it does not indeed.:-|
It's worth noting that Reddit changed too, permanently, both in terms of ease of use (not only 3rd-party apps, but also the mobile and desktop browser routes too) and in how many content creators simply left - who knows what they are even doing now (reading books, touching grass, some came here ofc). Even many niche subs over there are empty, dead, or one may consider them dying from lack of interesting content (though those people still there I expect would be resistant to admit that).
And it will be interesting to see how that changes further, the moment they get their IPO and thus can finally kill off old-Reddit, which still allows you to block ads iirc? That will drive additional content creators away. Perhaps they will come here - despite how we are not ready for that.
Anyway, the old Reddit is just flat gone, for many people, and there is no going "back", ever, even if you wanted to, it's not there to return to, especially after the IPO changes it still further.
I've never used Mastodon, but from what I've heard it's an entirely different ballgame where you basically need to go where the people are. e.g. artists seeking commission work need more rather than less people, and if you want to follow a particular someone, you go to where they are not the other way around.
And if their servers have anywhere close to the level of technical glitches that we do here on Lemmy... well it is quite off-putting, especially to non technically minded people.
Once bitten twice shy. Except some people refuse to learn entirely so be glad that your attitude allows you to not fall into that camp.
I don't know how liberals will react tbh. Usually they try to work within the system, but if that should ever prove to become impossible... I haven't studied enough history to get any kind of accurate impression, but it's worth noting that nothing like it has been needed (within the USA) in the last hundred years or so, so whatever might come seems hard to predict.
I should add that Democrats are also cowards too, as are most individuals - neither side holds a monopoly on that. That's what makes this all so dangerous: if something could be accomplished behind the scenes, then 99.9999% of Americans will simply go along with the flow. Exactly like within Russia, even the thinnest vernier of respectability would be enough to forestall a large-scale conflict. So the "constitutional crisis" might take the form of a fairly bloodless (in the wider sense) coup.
Or Republicans could just keep turning the ratchet, making steady gains wherever they can, then locking in those gains and turtling, obstructing as best they can whenever they do not hold a majority, as they have been doing for decades now. In one sense that's even entirely fair - a democracy should reflect the majority will of the people - except Republicans are aware that white people are becoming in the minority now and so have been changing more and more over time who gets to be counted as "people". e.g. gerrymandering, with the stacked Supreme Court members not opposing it so now it's "legal". Though even that is becoming not enough lately thus they are having to adjust the stakes higher, possibly doing away with voting altogether (yes they are literally talking about that, hence all this discussion about Civil War). They have already been allowed to push that far, which leaves fewer options for them to move forward with short of something drastic.
The trick is that to the uninitiated, much of it sounds reasonable at first - e.g. "states rights" means that we all get to choose our own paths, and what is wrong with that, isn't that "freedom" in the truest sense of the word? The trouble is how the lie is delivered along with the truth: for one, the means by which those gains were achieved has enormous implications, which feeds into two, it was actually always a lie bc they never stop there and always push forward after people accept the first push. i.e., if only appeasement would ever actually work! However, like that famous saying "first they came for...", where even if you don't care about those first few that were come for, eventually they will come for YOU too, and if you had been paying attention then there would be no need to be shocked, shocked I tell you, shocked! Leopards eat faces off, and just bc one hasn't eaten YOUR face off, yet, doesn't mean that it never will. They tend not to change their spots, only their current targets. Like Brexit, many people in the USA won't know what's happening anytime before, during, or somehow even after it has happened.:-(
And some are even joining in with the leopards, neither realizing nor seemingly caring that they are just being saved as future meals for those who are true predators. These "facilitators", together along with the much more numerous "collaborators", collectively are bringing literal (neo-)Nazis back into power.
"Will"? Check the news... it's been happening for awhile, just not terribly successfully. I think we get something like at least one such event every other month.
I read how most experts agree that there will be some kind of "constitutional crisis" within the next decade. The impeachment 1, impeachment 2, and January 6 attacks already show the rumblings of what is to come.
Personally I find it doubtful that a full civil war would be the means though bc of the disparity b/t military resources at the federal vs. lower levels. Thus, probably something else, perhaps extremely mundane e.g. Trump runs for President, and bc of the Israeli conflict in Gaza and whatever else Russia manufactures between now and then Biden loses, then Trump simply declares himself Emperor.
Or maybe even that much paperwork will not happen and the government will simply never pass another federal budget again, thus ending the federal level by default of obstruction.
So probably not Civil War, at this time and over this event (no matter how much the clickbait media tries to get its clicks), but even so... something is coming indeed, down the road in some form.
The system works as intended then.
It makes a twisted kind of sense: if you believe that "free speech" = you should be allowed to vote with your dollars, as in you having more dollars than most others (those who you choose to surround yourself with anyway, bc despite the facts of how millionaires are absolutely dwarfed by billionaires, somehow they don't seem to see that) should mean then your votes count more. And thus an enterprising little turd could sit there at the center of it all collecting the toll for all that "free speech". Within that worldview, it's entirely consistent.
It is only when that interfaces with the real world that it breaks down: bc no matter how much Nazis pay Musk to advertise their propaganda, we still don't have to choose to listen.
It's all advertising, all the way down.
Thank you, that's helpful to know:-). Kbin had MANY issues and that was the closest I'd seen.
It seems to confirm that what is holding Mastodon back isn't technical at all but just the design - i.e. like if people are on X then that's where most other people want to be, similar to Windows where it is not technologically superior, just the default for some reason.