I remember when Reddit announced it would begin charging commercial developers for access to its API, and in response, thousands of subreddits went dark in protest. I think it lasted for a couple of weeks. The CEO threatened the Reddit mods that he would replace them if they didn’t reopen the subs, so nearly every mod reopened and everything went back to normal. The CEO won easily without offering anything, and he was right when he said that ‘this too shall pass.’ Those third-party apps offered accessibility features for disabled people that Reddit still hasn’t implemented today. Now Reddit is getting even worse. How come there wasn’t a protest like that when they made even worse decisions?
Problem is reddit has the mass appeal that is missing here.
There are a dozen of useful/interesting things posted here while reddit has many times that.
Plus look at any game or other niche and you’ll find much more activity for it on reddit than here.
I stopped using reddit when moving here and use it a ton less after 3rd party apps stopped working (and now mobile experience is horrific with their forcing their app)
But many search results still bring you there and for any discussions about products leads there too. Lemmy is still pretty lacking in many areas unfortunately
But you know what we do have?
Freedom. Fuck spez.
Fuck spez and his comment editing.
True. Fuck Spez and everyone who supported him.
Showing up on search results is the main advantage it has for drawing in new users. If the fediverse could show up higher in search results it’d get much more traffic.
The best thing anyone can do to fix that is comment and post.
Comments are in greater demand than posts because they drive further engagement and give posters more reason to post.
If you see a post with 0 comments, go comment on it and help the Threadiverse.