So, with news of Reddit making deals to sell user data for AI training, I think we should really start organizing ourselves for an effective migration campaign.

I believe one of the (many) reasons that the summer protests failed was its lack of focus. There was an overall idea of “going dark” as an attempt to get Reddit to backtrack on some of its decisions, but once they double down on their decision there was no followup and creation of a credible threat, so only the more strong-willed really stuck by their principles and left reddit, the majority just shrugged it off and went back to their niche communities.

This long tail of niche communities is Reddit’s biggest strength. There are plenty of places where people can find general news or share memes, but there is only one place that can connect people with its many different interests. This is why so many of you surely went to Reddit, despite our best efforts to bring enough people around here.

So, how about we change the strategy? If the general “spray and pray” approach only managed to bring 0.008% of Reddit’s userbase to Lemmy, how about we put our focus on bring as many people as possible from a single one?

We should look into a subreddit with the following characteristcs:

  • Not too big in size, around 100k - 300k subscribers.
  • Still fairly active.
  • Very specific in focus. Ideally, it would be a local community, but we could also think of a not-so popular subreddit dedicated to a niche hobby.
  • The moderators of the subreddit need to be willing to participate, and follow through with the migration. That means, they need to keep promoting the Lemmy alternative until our corresponding community is at least as big as the Reddit one.

I’m thinking one potential candidate would be /r/adelaide (158k subscribers, multiple posts per day) but I haven’t talked with any of the moderators so I don’t know how that would go. (Any admins from aussie.zone that could chime in?) Of course, this is just an idea and if any would you think of another sub that could also work better we can talk about it. The important thing is not to spend too much time worrying on what subreddit we are going to push, just that we need to choose one and only one.

Once we find a subreddit that fits the bill, then our efforts go to supporting the subscribers to help them find a client, setup their account, subscribe to the new community and unsubscribe from the subreddit.

We don’t even need to encourage them to leave Reddit altogether, we just need to get them to go through the motions of setting up Lemmy for one community. I think if we do that, it will be a lot easier to keep us all focused on the goal, the overall network effects won’t be such a problem and the coming users will be more likely to stick.

This is already a wall of text, and I’m sure there will be plenty of people who will shoot this idea down for numerous reasons, but overall I really haven’t given up hope on the Fediverse as the future of the Internet. We just need to work a bit for it.

  • OtterEnglish
    5•9 months ago

    Picking specific subreddits is my preferred method as well. It takes time and effort, but it has a better impact.

    The biggest selling point to most users might be having an official backup community.

    • Reddit goes down? Check for updates here
    • Reddit does something you don’t like? Move here

    The problem I’ve faced is that even if the subreddit wants to build up a community here, users eventually stop posting if no one from their original community is seeing the content. I still post on Lemmy fairly often, but I don’t post anything (expect big announcements) to !ubc@lemmy.ca for example.

    However, I think a mirroring tool has a good chance of solving that issue. We’ve seen some mirroring projects pop up with different implementations, but I still think that it could help a lot if implemented correctly. My vision for what that involves consent at every level, otherwise it will run into the same issues as the previous ones:

    • During setup, the mods of BOTH the Lemmy community and the subreddit need to manually establish a connection. Both should have the ability to end the connection. I’m thinking a bot account on each side should do the trick.
    • Users should manually flag their post when they want the bot to mirror it. The tool should check if the OP of the post included a flag (ex. !mirrorMeBot or !mirrorBridge) either in the title, post body, or as a top comment. When triggered, the bot’s counterpart in the other community will make the post, then post a link to that post as a reply to the first one.

    This feels like the best way to get cross-pollination going. Users will be able to use the platform they prefer, while constantly having access (and being reminded of) the other community. There will be next to no downside for posting in Lemmy over Reddit. It would also be an easy first step to get the ball rolling on future collaborations.

    Now the biggest issue here (and with any collaboration tbh) is malicious use of the tool. Having the tool be opt in could be a start, otherwise maybe account age / karma filters?

    • @rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
      3•9 months ago

      The problem I’ve faced is that even if the subreddit wants to build up a community here, users eventually stop posting if no one from their original community is seeing the content.

      They were not opt-in (and I’m firmly in the camp that believes that “opt-in” bridges are a bad idea), but that was the second most important pain point that I wanted to solve with the alien.top bots (behind it being a tool to help one-click migration).

      The tool should check if the OP of the post included a flag (…) either in the title, post body, or as a top comment.

      This feels like it can become a brittle solution and can get way too complicated fast. My plan for fediverser now is to let people create bridges by authenticating with their Lemmy and Reddit account, and then specify what type of bridge. E.g, users could choose if want their responses in Lemmy to become a response on Reddit, or just to send a PM to the OP indicating the Lemmy link.

      In any case, I’d personally favor any approach which establishes that the net flow of content is out of Reddit, not in. If we keep mirroring the content from here to Lemmy, the people there will have even less incentive to leave, but if we use the intolerant minority strategy we might end up forcing the majority to migrate as well.