I didn’t notice it until recently, but I whole-heartedly believe that Reddit was bad for my health.

To be perfectly honest, Lemmy has had staggering growth regardless of the lack of media attention. And I’m not entirely certain that’s a bad thing.

Look at my home instance of lemmy.world, for example. When I joined pre-blackout, we had around 800 members. Now, two server upgrades later, we’re at nearly 18,000. If only a fraction of those newcomers stay, it’s still enough to jumpstart organic growth, even if it’s slow. And it gives us time to really develop.

Maybe that’s a glass-half-full outlook, but I’m optimistic.

Yeah, I can understand that frustration. I haven’t been on Reddit much at all leading up to the blackout, and not at all since it started, but I imagine there are more holes than there used to be. On the other hand, though, can you really blame them? Reddit is trying to monetize all of the organic human content there and refusing to listen to the people that help to organize and curate it. I think it’s reasonable to want to take that back given the circumstances. But you’re right in that it still doesn’t make it less inconvenient.

The number of times I accidentally wasted three or four hours reading hundreds and hundreds of comments is way higher than I’d care to admit.

You are heard! Lol.

Just hopping into the chain to say that I appreciate you and all of your hard work! This place—Lemmy in general, but specifically this instance—has been so welcoming and uplifting. Thank you!

I’m one of those people. I hate Edge. Like, with a disproportionate amount of vitriol.

But it actually doesn’t have anything to do with its functionality (though I’m not thrilled with the privacy concern OP linked), but rather the fact that I get bombarded with “IT’S BETTER IN EDGE! MAKE EDGE YOUR DEFAULT BROWSER! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!.” It’s the most asinine, annoying bullshit.

In all fairness, I did finally figure out how to make it stop. It’s just ridiculous that I have to go through all of that every time I’m on a new PC. Let me browse the way I want to, damnit.

I don’t know. My best bet is that it’s a happy coincidence for them. It’s probably just an actual accidental outage, but it can be spun in a few different ways. Given their push for an IPO, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is an excuse for lower traffic numbers. “Hey, look, these guys all went to protest but there was an outage. Nothing correlates the numbers. Now that we’re back up on XYZ date, everything is returning to normal! It was no big deal!”

If it actually turns out to be something more nefarious, I can’t say I’d be surprised, but I sincerely hope that isn’t the case.

+1 for both MaliciousCompliance and restofthefucking owl. Loved those subs. restofthefuckingowl has given me hours of entertainment.

There’s also a Twitch stream linked at the top of the page. Join us in sitting around, watching, and chatting as the proverbial shit hits the fan!

You’re telling me. Lol.

Fortunately for everyone, though, the most complicated part is getting started. It may be a barrier of entry for some, but just googling “join Lemmy” will get you where you need to be without much fuss. And as this community grows naturally, features and QoL improvements will come with it.

I wish I had more tech knowledge to contribute with, but maybe I’ll eventually get a poetry community rolling.

I think u/spez on reddit has done a phenomenal job helping to increase Lemmy’s appeal as of late. Maybe someone should give him a job?