Im joining in on the reddit ditching thing, and was kinda worried at first that i wouldnt be able to like use it the way i did reddit as it feels like a whole new place, but after engaging with posts and people and actually being a part of lemmy rather than being lurk mode all the time i was pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to become a member of the community, theres a reasonable amount of subs (or whatever the other word for em is) that fit my interests, enough linux content and shitposting for my liking, and the overall random posts made by people equally fed up with Leddit. (also i admit i used reddit a little cus there was this post on the fedora sub showing how to fix a sound issue i been having after a recent update)
Seems interesting, UX could be a lot better (Logging in via jerboa app is hidden behind 2 seperate menus for example).
Main issue is lack of content so far but honestly that is probably just me learning how to use it and subscribe to what I want. 3 pages deep into “Hot” and about 2 of those pages consist of posts from one…instance? Sub Instance? whatever we call them :D
Also probably my own limitation for now, but the constant refreshing of pages is annoying, if I stop to read a post and go back, everything scrolls automatically, depending on time spent on post I could completely lose where I was.
Overall, I unfortunately think its not a threat to Reddit in its current state, it takes too much effort to understand what is going on for most people and even if the features I complained about above are avoidable it should not take effort or experience to figure out how, but I will stick around anyway, as it seems fun. I would think a lot of users will migrate back to Reddit after the blackout.
The logging in confused me too. When I’m accidentally not logged in things don’t load very well either.
Reddit has such a huge community and so much existing content that it’ll take a lot to be a threat to that aspect of it, but I don’t think that should be (or needs to be) the goal, short or midterm anyway. It can fill a more niche market for now and grow from there.