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?
I much prefer the people on reddit, but hate the company, admins, and most mods. Ads and bots are getting worse, more and more communities are getting banned because advertisers don’t like them, it’s getting enshittified.
I love the software here, the whole open source federated system is genius, but the users are so awful. Everything is fucking star trek, linux, and communism. The only women here are trans women. People say shit like “just ssh the root config distro” or whatever the fuck like it’s just everyday conversation. Literally every joke has to be explained. Everyone here is either mentally a know it all teenager, or literally a know it all teenager. Don’t you dare say any one thing that could be taken slightly the wrong way or some asshole will start attacking you over it, no matter how irrelevant it is to your main point. And don’t even get me started on tankies.
I’m hanging around in hopes that there will be a wave of normal people at some point.
Fee free to join on !casualconversation@lemm.ee.
I’ve been trying to get a few “non tech/memes/news” communities lately, and this is by far the most successful
Yeah, it feels quite petulant and deconstructive at times.
But a lot of what you wrote is just a feature of any small online community. Then you end up with these bitter types who, if you rubbed them slightly the wrong way, get up at 6 a.m., downvote everything you ever wrote and report as many of your contributions as they can get away with.
I mean, downvotes and upvotes could be capped at -1 and +5, respectively, like on /. which has been going strong for more than 20 years with this concept, or there could be enforcement of some sort of netiquette, but that would put additional strain on the mods.
But a lot of what you wrote is just a feature of any small online community. Then you end up with these bitter types who, if you rubbed them slightly the wrong way, get up at 6 a.m., downvote everything you ever wrote and report as many of your contributions as they can get away with.
I mean, this is what got me to leave reddit, apart from the corporate stuff. I remember when I got sitewide banned for saying I let my cat go outdoors, and I was reported repeatedly for violence across many comments by some anti-cat nutbag who thinks I’m personally causing an Avian holocaust. My cat has never caught a bird… he mostly sits on the porch and lays in the garden and lets people pet him.
I do feel like a lot of people here are on guard and that doesn’t make for the best vibes.
My wife was asking me the other day how my “shitty Reddit” was doing. I told her it was like someone rounded up all the little twerps that require you to add fine print to everything you say on Reddit.
Also if you post more casual things to a specific sub then you’re almost guaranteed to get downvotes from people just browsing the ‘all’ feed. Like who gives a shit about downvotes but it does make it harder to gauge if they’re from people in the community not interested or just randos.
I agree with a lot of this sentiment. My goal is to try to “be the change I want to see in the world”.
So I occasionally challenge the dumb group think I see on here. Sometimes it well received but not always.
One thing Ive noticed is how reactionary and un-nuanced a lot of posts are. I guess it makes sense since a majority of the users here self-selected to leave a site in protest. There is a bias towards being “reactionary”.
But the vibe feels off on Lemmy and I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but I certainly don’t feel like a lot of my people are here. Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing different opinions and viewpoints but the way a lot of them are presented here feel very “well ackshually!” or sanctimonious. It’s less like that on mastodon, but still there. Maybe less “fun” and hearted. It’s almost too serious, but even the less serious stuff isn’t as fun/funny.
Hacker news feels better. Almost reminds me of old school reddit or even forums.
I think the fediverse and Lemmy would have been better if it was designed where each “subreddit”/channel was an instance. Basically federate the small communities but don’t make a bunch of small “reddits” where it’s fragmented and watered down.
There could be hubs with curated channels or apps that let you curate channels but each channel is effectively independent.
Anyway, I don’t know that that would even fix the vibe problem with the fediverse but I think it would help communities grow, evolve, and mature better.
