Think about things from the point of view of someone who has never used Reddit or the fediverse, but you've heard about them both from recent news articles and want to see what they are about.
Reddit:- You Google Reddit and your first result is Reddit.com. You click the link and are presented with the front page. You from scroll from a few hours and end up signing up and staying.
Lemmy:- You Google Lemmy and your first result is a wiki article for Lemmy Kilmister... Your second result might be join-lemmy.org, which you're smart enough to realise it's probably more likely what the news is about.
You click join-lemmy.org and are presented with a page of information about the fediverse, links to set up a server and pictures of code...
There is very little chance you're going to investigate further.
If we want the fediverse to replace Reddit then either
A) Lemmy needs to improve its initial impression and Search engine optimization
B) We should be promoting a different platform with a better initial first impression.
I'd recommend kbin personally as it gives the same sort of experience as Reddit from the initial interaction.
@Fizzee
Agreed, once you're familiar with it and on board, Lemmy is fairly familiar to reddit users, but the onboarding experience for non-technical users is, frankly, horrendous. And that's true of most of the fediverse. Kbin's is the best that I've seen so far - part of why I came here instead - but it's also quite small/niche compared to others at the moment and not getting as much publicity it seems.
The question does need to be asked though: Do we truly WANT something to replace reddit, and not just because we've developped a habit for using it? And how exactly are we defining reddit in this context? Just "Social Network site with millions of active users" or is there a more specific target we're aiming for here? Personally I don't think trying to emulate reddit to the point of it being a "drop in replacement" functionality wise is a good move. Reddit isn't dead, and even if traffic drops by 90% they're still an order of magnitude larger than the fediverse, and a few orders larger than individual instances/services. So if you want something that is essentially the reddit experience, Reddit is still very much the app/service to use for that. Will be interesting to see the long term knock on effects, but if Digg and Yahoo still exist, I don't think Reddit will well and truly die/shrink enough for there to be a market for a truly drop in replacement to succceed. As such, Aiming for parity/full on clone of Reddit seems il-advised.
Part of what has me excited about all of this is what new paradigms, communities, systems, services, experiences, etc we can build and maintain (in or out of the fediverse) now that the walls of some of the social media giants seem to be crumbling. Genuinely haven't felt anything I could attribute as "optimism" regarding social media since like 2015? Not to say there aren't positives about social media, just that I felt the general trend in that space (until now) has not been a good one. Which is kinda nice.
for me, it was community I was seeking, and honestly not finding on Reddit. this, for me, may be what I wanted Reddit to be all along. taking that into consideration makes this less a replacement and more of what was missing. what I did love about Reddit was answers. content. we will get to watch that blossom. it's kinda exciting. also, I got my old username for the first time in 2 decades.