or is there another platform that is…
The most popular Reddit alternative is day drinking and screaming racist abuse at passers by on the street.
Not exactly the answer to the question but I do want to comment that I think a lot of people went to sites that aren’t Reddit-like if they left Reddit. My husband went to Bluesky.
I’m pissed that so many people went to Bluesky instead of Mastodon
I like Bluesky a lot, but it’s more a Twitter replacement than Reddit. Harder to talk to dedicated communities for things on there. Like if want show recommendations, I’d rather go to a community/subreddit that has 92k members than asking the 80 followers I have on Bluesky (only like 10 or less aren’t bots I’m pretty sure or would even see my post) with the small chance a couple non-followers would see it and maybe comment.
I’ve looked on and off for a couple years now and Lemmy has the most momentum that I’ve seen.
I use hackernews as well but it’s more tech industry focused. Not really a replacement for reddit since there are no subreddits. It is run by a big evil company though if that gives bonus points.
The fediverse is your alternative, particularly Lemmy and PieFed. Welcome.
Probably. I went searching specifically for reddit alternatives. Found Lemmy immediately and haven’t bothered to go looking for others. I assume many here followed the same path I did.
We’re pretty lazy as a species.
There is lobste.rs which I see in Google search sporadically, but I think that is because it favors common domains and Lemmy content is spread out over thousands of indivdual domains
I don’t think lobsters is a direct alternative to Reddit since its main topic is tech-related stuff and Lemmy’s more like general-purposed. Also it’s invite only so I guess hackernews is more appropriate?
lobsters is invite-only so… the definition of “reddit alternative” will vary per person in this case.
the fediverse is the most popular reddit alternative.
the individual platforms, like lemmy, are a part of an ecosystem.
I know you rehearsed this and everything but I don’t think it quite fits
Sure it does - it doesn’t really make sense to separate Lemmy, Piefed, and Mbin as separate Reddit alternatives, since you can generally access the same stuff from all three of them. Although arguably it would make sense to say “the threadiverse” since most of the other fediverse software isn’t really Reddit-like.
maybe we could also say lemmy+fediverse, like we say GNU+Linux
That’s the distinction I would draw. Mastodon is not a Reddit work-alike.
eyy thats a good call on the threadiverse bit… lemmy is missing half the content
i have nothing but anecdotal evidence to go off of but just today i saw a lemmy post used as a source in a news article, which i can’t say i’ve ever seen of any other “link aggregator” aside from reddit. so it’s certainly up there!
and like others said, the activitypub interoperability certainly helps. i’m an mbin user but i’d wager more than half of my subscribed “magazines” are actually lemmy communities
404media is exactly the site I would expect to be aware of Lemmy among the semi-mainstream tech outlets (along with TheVerge to a lesser extent).
I saw Lemmy on an Instagram meme page, and I haven’t seen any other reddit alternative (unless you count 4chan technically)
Holy shit that’s pretty sweet
Based on users yes, but also checkout PieFed. I switched to it a few months back, it’s like Lemmy but better. (for me at least)
For OP’s purposes they’re probably identical.
What makes piefed better than Lemmy?
The main ones for me are
It’s got on boarding and de-duplication, on PieFed if I view eg. this post https://piefed.social/post/749818#comment_6102866
It combines/aggregates it with cross-posts/reposts
So I can see it in one place, and see all the comments in one place.So if you comment there, where will it end up?
That does sound quite nice actually
Along with the compatible platforms like PieFed, Mbin, Friendica, nodeBB, etc., this seems to be the biggest general-purpose with communities
It’s nice that we can all work together. And the networking effect helps out quite a bit. We are not in competition, we are a collaboration.
I couldn’t figure Friendica out. I’ll see myself out.
Atleast of which i know of and its good enough i guess. Its not perfect but its all i got and its not horrible so i’ll take it.
Lemmy: The 3.6 Roentgen of social media.
That’s not great but not terrible.
For sure. If you check out the subreddit for alternatives it’s basically: posts advertising Lemmy, posts complaining about Lemmy, and posts for new alternatives with like 5 users, typically by the founder who appears to be engaged in some get-rich quick scheme.
Oh and people who for some reason buy the BS from Digg.
I confess, I’ve been cautiously optimistic about the new old Digg. What’s BS about it in your view?
Another corporate platform whose goal is to make its owners rich. It might look good in the early days when they need to attract users, but once they gain dominance, they will start to extract more and more value from you, just like Reddit is doing. And if they don’t reach that critical mass of users, it will simply fail. There is simply no pathway for a healthy, sustainable platform under corporate ownership.
The nature of walled gardens greatly limits user bargaining power, allowing owners greater latitude in abusing their users. This is why the fediverse is a much better model. And why I’m here even though I think the Lemmy developers are just as despicable as the people who started Reddit and Digg.
You can move to PieFed or mbin and still access the same content, without using tankie software.
Well there’s Dread, the most active subdread has almost 500k subscribers
How many active users currently? That’s a more important metric than total subscribers, because there’s no way to tell how many of them may be dormant.
Yeah I wanted to check for that but didn’t find it in ~60 seconds of clicking around
But your question prompted me to ask Perplexity, who said:
Estimating the active number of users on Dreaddit (usually called “Dread”), the darknet’s Reddit-style forum, is challenging due to the platform’s anonymous and illicit nature. However, several reputable reports, including cybersecurity analyses and investigative journalism, provide the most credible figures currently available:
User Estimates: As of late 2023, Dreaddit/Dread reportedly surpassed 200,000 registered users. This figure comes from contemporary cyber intelligence briefings and video analyses, which note that while this community size does not rival mainstream platforms, it is substantial for a darknet forum accessible only via Tor or I2P.
Growth and Activity: Dread reached 12,000 users within its first three months in 2018, and by June 2018, it cited 14,683 users. Since then, significant growth has occurred, with user counts likely fluctuating in response to cybercrime trends, law enforcement actions, and DDoS attacks, but reliable reporting indicates the active number has stabilized in the six-figure range since 2022.
Is it Onion only?
Yep.
That’s sort of its whole point, yes
I feel like that would severely limit its reach as a Reddit alternative, then
I forgot abou that years ago
lemmy, mbin, piefed all aggregate the same stuff and its all reddit like. people make places to discuss particular things.
