Been thinking of making a post like this for some time, apologies if some of this is not completely relevant: this community seems more like it’s about Reddit the platform/product than Reddit the social “thing”, but I’m sure a lot of people have similar experiences to mine. Maybe on some instances more than others.
Here’s the one of the last comments I wrote as a regular Reddit user, on the eve of the blackout (almost a year ago to the day), under a post titled “Will your participation in Reddit change”:
My comment
I will keep searching Google for Reddit help threads, but as a cultural and news aggregator I think this is the end for me. Maybe I will check it every so often. On desktop. On the old site. Until they sunset that too.
I wouldn’t be against using the first party app if it wasn’t so awful to use.
It’s a massive shame that we’ve all collectively agreed that Reddit is the de facto way to create open communities online. There were so many forums that could fill the void left by Reddit for things like tech and art and they’ve all shut down in the past decade.
I try not to be too negative about the evolution and constant growth of the userbase of the site and of the internet as a whole, but I’ve really felt like things are moving in a direction I can’t even be cautiously optimistic about lately.
I think of all the mod tools that will be defunct. The commonly cited example is that people who comment excessively on adult subs are automatically barred from commenting on the teenagers subreddit. Sure the admins can whip up functionality to do this, but this site was built on custom tools and custom CSS and all that. I think the API was one among the many secret sauces that give Reddit this staying power. These sites and forums I talked about - I used to hop from one to the next year after year. Until I found Reddit a decade ago.
I like that I choose my subs and that I don’t get algorithmically ordered sludge designed to game the algorithm on my homepage. Yes the sensibilities of the lowest common denominator redditors are gamed by people posting, but that’s (in my opinion) acceptable.
Frankly if they kept the old Reddit Gold pricing (4 bucks per month/30 annual) and gated unrestricted API access behind it I would have been inclined to finally give Reddit money. I use it a lot, I don’t mind paying now that I can afford it. But something about how it’s all going down really doesn’t fill me with confidence.
I’ve been trying to write a post about this for a while now, but I haven’t felt like it was relevant. Thanks for asking here
Reading through this is a bit funny, in retrospect, seeing how Reddit-centric my understanding of the internet had become at the time. I am happy to report that I have checked the home page maybe a half dozen times since the blackout, instead of once or twice a week like I expected. I suppose the disgusting state of the heavily astroturfed worldnews sub was a big part of it as well: for me Reddit was the one big online platform where the average visible user didn’t seem to be very misinformed about Palestine (at least not by default), and it was frankly very sad to see where it got in the past few months.
I do miss Reddit, I haven’t been able to replace it outright. I’m from Lebanon, and Lebanese Twitter is (if you can imagine it) even more of a toxic cesspool than regular Twitter. I’m not on Facebook (also cesspool here), I’m not on Instagram - my point is I don’t get anything about my country on ostensibly user-curated social media. /r/Lebanon was very far from perfect, but it was nice to get a trickle of local news with users who were more in line with my own politics. The local news outlets focus on a lot of irrelevant crap, the sub’s news feed was a bit more interesting.
One thing I loved about that subreddit was that users with more mainstream views in my country (eg. transphobia-as-default) were allowed to spout their bullshit in the subreddit with little mod pushback (if it’s just JAQing off etc, not harrassing people obviously). Then the regulars would dogpile on that user’s post - very refreshing! And very validating I would imagine for anyone who is used to hearing this shit everyday.
I was applying to be a mod to help keep the sub moving, at one point, but hey. Maybe that headache was never worth it. Still, I felt like I lost one of my online homes.
More generally, I have enjoyed my first year on Lemmy, although the experience has been lacking in many ways. For one, while Reddit has a reputation as a meme cemetery, the memes here are generally a bit moldier. But that’s okay. The fact that there’s fewer posts I think isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, I think we all preferred Reddit’s slightly slower homepage in 2013 than the one we left in 2023, that would regurgitate more and more from the bottom of the barrel if you were willing to keep scrolling.
I’ve toyed with opening a Lebanon community here on dbzer0, having opened one on FMHY that nobody used. But it wouldn’t be the same, and I wouldn’t know how to populate it. I posted maybe 2 non-question posts on Reddit in my decade+ of being a regular user, but I wrote tons of comments. It also helped keep my English sharper, I think.
I’ve reactivated my old Instagram account and it’s pretty ass out there. The ad/post ratio is just egregious, and they’ll just serve you random posts from random pages. I want to see my friends goddamn it, isn’t this what your platform is supposed to be for? For those of you who don’t know, the app will also send you a notification once or twice a day suggesting you look at “today’s top reels”. I have never watched a reel of my own will, fuck off.
Point being, the main platforms people use online haven’t been up my alley. I can only hope the zoomer dumbphone pushback keeps expanding, and that social media starts being seen as something for older generations. Wishful thinking?
This is just a post about enshittification, everyone’s favorite word, but every time I think about it for more than 2 minutes I can’t help but miss a simpler internet. Some part of me was hoping it would kickstart me “growing out” of spending this much time online per day (not everyone spends a ton of time online), but it hasn’t.
Also every time I ask something longer than 20 words on Discord some middle schooler will reply “yap”, even in the channels designated for questions. Discord has had its uses (yes I know there’s privacy concerns), but it’s hardly a replacement for Reddit, or forums. Both of which are/were searchable. But enough yapping from me.
Thoughts? How has the exodus been for you? Is this how Digg users felt?
Feel lost still, very much miss the population on reddit. I browsed a lot of gaming subreddits, and the ones with dozens of daily posts there get maybe one per month(!) on their lemmy equivalent, and more niche subs don’t even exist here. It sucks. Yes, I try to make posts, but I alone wont change things.
Dont use reddit for entertainment but still have to use it for tech support or product reviews, there is 0 competition in that regard. Tried using a site that searches through multiple reddit-esque sites for questions like this but gave up bcs 10/10 times the only answers were on Reddit.
Conversation is usually higher quality, but there’s not a high enough population to sustain niche topics. It’s pretty easy to be exposed to obnoxious and unwanted topics, like man bear discourse, to an extent that Reddit would have filtered. Global news subs are thankfully not captured by warhawks
Yeah I’m having trouble filtering out the nonsense here and the extremist crazies seem to dominate the postings. So I comment on something I think is interesting and next then I know all the replies are harassing comments, not discussion.
For people missing small communities, maybe try starting them?
I still poke around on there now and again, but not as much as I used to. The day they kill 3rd party apps and the old site will be the day I completely stop using it - namely because neither their app nor their redesigns are actually useable. I have no idea how people tolerate them - they are absolutely garbage. Their latest trick is adding a bunch of metadata crap in their search links completely breaking most 3rd party apps still kicking.
Next time you see a /s/ in a URL, just watch how much it expands when you visit it 🤢
I divested myself of Twitter a couple of years ago (which is how I ended up on the fediverse in the first place) and then in the last 18 months or so, Reddit, Facebook and Discord have all been given the boot too (and for a bonus, Windows as well)
I’ve found replacements for all of them in self hosted and/or community ran alternatives. It’s quieter, and missing content, yet at the same time, it’s far more personal than the sites I left behind. In many ways, it feels like the old IRC days, with smaller communities, but where people knew each other somewhat.
I wish they were a bit more active, and that some of the niche stuff existed, but at the same time, I feel quite at home with my alternatives, rather than lost.
I used reddit is fun, haven’t really been back outside the occasional Google search that links a post. It sucks and I do miss it, kind of like an old ex you look back fondly on but things just didn’t work out. I used to spend HOURS on the site and while lemmy is nice for keeping up with general world events and memes it just isn’t the same.
I like to rationalize that it helps keep me in the real world instead of spending most of my time on an app. Oh and sticking to a principle and trying to support those 3rd party app creators.
This is a minor point but on Instagram if you press the logo in the top left you can pick Following and it shows you a chronological timeline of only those accounts you actually follow. Instead of the usual shitshow set of reels.
Lemmy is pretty much exactly the same as reddit, but without so much advertising and a much smaller user base.
Some people get pissed about that being said, but most users know it’s true. There are still overzealous mods and instances pushing and controlling agendas. As it gets more popular, more ai bots will start spamming stuff. In the meantime, it’s not bad. I’ve almost completely stopped using reddit after about 16 years. I still hop over if I need or want certain bits of information. It’s easier to get info/advice from 100,000 subscribers than it is from 100.
For the most part though, I’m happy with lemmy and have no plans of returning to reddit. It is kind of a dumpster fire over there.
Holy crap! It’s been a year and I forgot about the advertising I had to ignore every 3 posts. Thank you for reminding me lol.
I still use old because the technical scene here in Lemmy is not as good as Reddit. I unsubscribed from all /r/ in my account except for technical ones. I haven’t used /r/all since RIF broke.
Same. I still have RIF on my phone hijacking Reddit links. It’s a nice little interruption as if to say “can you really be arsed with Reddit?” and unless it’s a discussion about an obscure technical problem or something my wife sent me, I always click the back button.
reddit it still useful for small-medium sized communities but large subs are slowly becoming botfests and not worth using at all
The only thing I miss is /r/listentothis. I would open rif and vanced in split mode on my phone and sort by hot/month. I could then easily start playing a song on my TV and continually add songs to the que. Now they changed it so that posts with a YouTube video didn’t even give you a YouTube link. It embeds the video in the Reddit post so you have to go into the post and then click play in order to open the video in YouTube. Way too many steps and I’ve never been able to figure out a way to quickly get a list of links to create a playlist on YouTube or VLC.
Lemmy is missing the small communities and frankly, most of the medium sized communities that Reddit has. I don’t find the userbase that toxic but of course there is the occasional twat to deal with, luckily the blocking system is more robust than Reddit’s. Hopefully user growth will continue and people that still use Reddit will promote Lemmy and the Fediverse there enough to feed the exodus.
I used to go to Lebanon all the time. Now that I’m back in America, it’s hard to get back. I loved it there despite the political and economic realities.
Would happily settle there if it ever became stable.
I couldn’t give it up. My baby bump group and parents of multiples group are too valuable a resource. The general parenting sub on lemmy isn’t active, much less such niche things. The main alternative to them is Facebook groups, which I’m even less inclined to deal with than reddit.
Honestly I spend less time on it and that’s a good thing. I read more news, blogs, use other sites etc
If I want to see stuff from my own country I’ll read the local news
I don’t treat Lemmy like some Omni platform like reddit was, but more of a niche platform like all the others. I don’t use Twitter, Instagram kr anything either.
Reddit has been a huge part of me growing up.
Watching the site self-destruct has been… painful.
