Happened to me a few days ago, and I just can’t believe how bad this redesign is!!
It’s hard to comprehend what goes into the heads of that dev team, but they basically ruined everything nice about the platform. The API changes were pretty much a fatal shot already, but this new redesign seems to be what tipped the scales for me, and hopefully many more.
It’s a great time to switch to Lemmy, and I think I’m going to make the effort to stick around and abandon the habit of opening reddit multiple times per day.
Do you think forcing this re-design will bring more people here? I’m hoping for that. Reddit betrayed us and I can’t find it me to keep forgiving them for every horrible, anti-user decision.
I noticed in some moderator subreddit, that it is planned to kill new.reddit.com as well. Old will likely stay for longer, but new is what I got used to, and if they take it down I won’t bother getting used to the newer, garbage UX.
Yet without an audience, it’s just people posting into the void.
I think we need to accept that we aren’t going to become Reddit pt. 2 anytime soon. Smaller steps might be a good way to go - e.g. if a small sub dedicated to a single game is too small, then post in a medium level one like its genre.
But also, the main reason I stopped recommending the Fediverse to people - well aside from the fact that nobody was listening:-P - wasn’t just lack of content, and instead mainly bc there are so very many technical glitches. I eventually left Kbin entirely bc it never seemed to progress anywhere, but everywhere I’ve gone on Lemmy, while it has been better, is still far from perfect. For instance, I have to re-login every single time I come here - even on the same day, and sometimes also just randomly while browsing, both mobile browser and also desktop.
We who are here are okay that it is alpha version software, but the kind of people on Reddit who have remained are not. Consent matters: we haven’t enticed them here, and we need to be okay with that, or else do a LOT better job trying - which will take time and effort, which is underway - and either way it would help to accept the situation as it is not just how we might dream that it could be otherwise.
Chicken and the egg. Nobody is posting or commenting because nobody is posting or commenting.
I’ve decided to ignore waiting for others to post and just post. Some communities I’ve done this in are still voids. Others have actually come to life somewhat. Still slow, but at least other people are now consistently engaging.
The one thing I have noticed is the proliferation of overly niche communities rather than congregating in larger hubs and then organizing into smaller communities as the userbase scales.
I do believe that was an early mistake made throughout the platform.
Since it is functionally unreversible, my personal solution has been to try and make networks of these communities by encouraging sidebars to reference each other, share mods, and partake in cross posting.
They can also just merge like the cooking communities did some weeks ago
That’s what I was suggesting yeah:-). That’s awesome that you are following through, and hey if it is working then that’s the proof!:-P
I would presume that it is attracting existing Lemmies to those new communities (well, new-to-them, or at least far healthier than the used to be), though my point about technical issues applies more to people who remained on Reddit. Especially those who already tried Lemmy but didn’t like it and thus left, which could be for both reasons - lack of content and technical capabilities.