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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Not an expert, but it boils down to two main factors for me:
The biggest factor is the nature of the userbase that migrated. As with Voat, there are (i) people driven here by ideological means ("it doesn't affect me but I believe the change is wrong"), and (ii) people who have no other option ("I need a new home because the change makes reddit less useful for me"). Of all the folks who belong to (i), i wouldn't be surprised if majority move back to reddit quietly over the next 2 months. The reality is that people are used to reddit, and it contains a decade's worth of information and social networks that lemmy doesn't have. It's simply easier to find info on reddit. That leaves (ii), which will probably make up the majority of long-term migrants. Unfortunately for Voat, (ii) was comprised of people who post/read actively on hate subs. /v/fatpeoplehate was one of the top, er... subs? at Voat. When your userbase is gathered around one specific, kinda-toxic purpose, it's hard to see it succeed. For lemmy, (ii) consists of people with strong preferences for third-party mobile apps. I don't know for sure, but I think these folks are (like me) long-time redditors, power users, and generally contribute more than usual. Third-party users are also more diverse, and don't have one specific interest. That is a more self-sustaining community.
A smaller factor is the nature of the site. Voat was basically reddit, with less moderation. Literally no other improvements. The fediverse is interesting, and I think it's better. Even if you disagree, it's still objectively different. A relatively small site can't succeed against a behemoth if it's exactly the same.
I don't use 3rd party apps, but still left. Partly it's due to the (i) listed above, but it's also due to the fact that I can see where this is headed. I rely on mods to keep the worst of reddit at bay, and if they either leave due to being treated like "noise" or because their unpaid job just becomes too much trouble without 3rd party tools, reddit will become an unbearable cesspool. I thought about how bad it is now and how much worse it would be if the good mods left. No thanks!
It's so surprising that reddit didn't learn from the past. There was another uproar over mod tools in the last few years.
Executive teams tend not to learn from the past because they think either:
When the chips fall it's never the former and rarely the latter.
I think you have a good point here. The type of user that migrates. Plus, since the api changes makes moderation harder, there might be a bunch of mods moving over, whom would tend to have a greater impact on their communities ( may it be more activity, or modding, etc )
we'll only find out in a month or two!
I generally agree with your statement. In addition to the hateful community, voat was being manipulated (IMO) by external organization(s) to amplify the hate. Possible reasons were that voat was a honeypot for law enforcement and that a free voat was a threat to the already controlled corporate sites like reddit. Perhaps I'm being overly paranoid, but the antisemitism in particular never seemed entirely organic.
In the end, voat still had potential but it died for the same reasons reddit is failing - centralized ownership. The voat owner / host eventually just called it quits and shut it down. Why? Perhaps voat outlived it's usefulness to the big three (CIA / FBI / NSA).