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 miss some Reddit communities, to be honest. There are no communities here for most of my hobbies and that brings down my enjoyment of the platform. Most things that spark joy in my life are not here.
Another thing that has been bumming me out is that people are way more aggressive now. Lemmy was a very friendly and welcoming environment, even in the most toxic topics you could think of. Lately I find a lot of elitist comments where anyone that doesn’t have the same opinion or needs is objectively an idiot.
On the positive side, I switched to Linux because of Lemmy! And I’m (still) learning Rust!
Make sure you dye your hair a fun color when you get to a comfy point with Rust, that way people know you’re a serious Rust dev (/s).
There are no communities here for most of my hobbies and that brings down my enjoyment of the platform. Most things that spark joy in my life are not here.
Which kind of hobbies do you have? There might be other people interested in them too
My experience on lemmy has been very similar to my experience working in a startup. I’m constantly concerned that I’ve picked a sinking ship, and concerned that the people I’m on it with are not the people I’d want to sink with. But there’s excitement around being a part of something that’s still playing out, and being able to influence the long term trajectory.
I don’t think the small community is a detractor, though. I’ve felt for a long time that large social media circles quickly fill with the worst kind of content, and normalizes the worst kind of behavior.
Anyway, I think the thing that makes this worthwhile is the decentralization and the knowledge that it’s (for now) safe from corporate capture. I’m happy to be contributing to an alternative to for-profit social media, and that makes all the worst parts of it worth enduring
I’m off Twitter and on Mastodon since November 2022. Mastodon is such a chill place once you’ve found people to follow and made sure the trolls are blocked. Staying off Reddit has been harder, but it’s also a shadow of its former self. Lemmy isn’t quite what Reddit used to be, but neither is Reddit these days. Too much noise, not enough signal
For the first half of my transition over to Lemmy, I found myself talking and commenting more, even if I got into fights with Tankies a decent bit. I thought that once I blocked enough tankies and their instances my experience would get a bit better, and for a while it did, but then as time has gone on, I have begun to see that federation kind of makes good moderation extremely hard and rare, and if I try to use general feeds instead of curated ones, the amount of rage bait articles making it to the top has steadily started to increase, and this is finally pushing me away from Lemmy, and unfortunately back to Reddit since someone suggested Dig at one point, and good god its UI looks like I am constantly being fed ad after ad. I may eventually transition back to Gaia Online since I’m not super happy about going back to Reddit after all the shit Reddit has pulled, but I’m missing having a source of random information gain, that isnt hardcore tailored to rage bait.
lemmy still is full of weirdos who get pissed off on one comment you made on one instance and community… and will follow you around to others to harass you until you block them. it’s miserable and weird.
at least they can’t get you banned site-wide like they can with reddit.
That’s crazy, sad to hear
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.
Similar reason to why I’ve backed way off to mostly lurking. That and most of the subs I was on in like aviation, space, other technology and engineering things don’t exist here. But I’m happy to give it time. Reddit took a long while to build those communities too.
Isn’t !space@lemmy.world a thing? Probably still in the early beginning, but hopefully it will indeed come
Everything is fucking star trek, linux, and communism. The only women here are trans women.
100% agree on this, and I guess it’s because nerds are the first ones to discover and use new tech. It also gives a sense of real community since everyone speaks the same language. But of course this means that people outside the circle will wonder what the fuck is going on. :)
About teenagers and people attacking you, yeah, that’s how some of them are. I get comments where they intentionally misunderstand something just to be able to copy/paste some default snarky response, because that’s how they have fun feeling superior. :).
It’s never original because they are not very bright, it’s just quotes and oneliners they saw online and now they use them because they like them. Doesn’t bother me, I just don’t respond and continue in other threads instead. I honestly just smile about it and move on. You should try it.
You have to realize that lemmy is just entertainment and some people get entertained if they can make you upset and angry.
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.
Just wanted to back you up on this. I’m also very outside the techy core of people on here and have been hoping for more diversity to join as well. There’s at least two of us!
I am a very “techy person” (in fact Y-Combinator’s Hacker News has been a partial Reddit replacement for me), but like you, I too cringe at Lemmy’s constant stream of shitty star trek memes, repetitive “this is what living with ADHD is like”, and posts with days-old news items from 3rd rate wannabe-journalism sites. I mean a quarter of this site is literally screenshots of Twitter posts.
The obvious answer to the shitty content here would be to stop complaining and just start posting the things I’d want to see. But there’s a sense of futility in throwing good things into what feels like a giant pool of detritus.
Anyway one of the great things about old reddit was that, overall, the site (or rather the reddit hive brain) did a decent job at pushing the good stuff to the top. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, that doesn’t seem to be happening as much here on Lemmy.
Anyway one of the great things about old reddit was that, overall, the site (or rather the reddit hive brain) did a decent job at pushing the good stuff to the top. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, that doesn’t seem to be happening as much here on Lemmy.
Discoverability of niche communities is pretty lacking. And I guess some people browsing All by New are turned off by the amount of news / memes content and don’t vote the good stuff
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
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
Another normal person checking in. Sadly I don’t comment much for all the reasons you mentioned. It is some comfort to know there are a few of us around.
I was on reddit within their first year. It was very much like you just described the lemmy community. The posts were all linux, communism, libertarians, lgbtq, typical nerd media discussion (star trek/wars, dr who, etc), and fringe communities. However, when I started, there was no commenting. That changed a few months later, and there were no sub reddits so it was just like /all and that is it.
This type of community was exactly what I was expecting. Early 4chan was this too. It just seems that these are the people that adopt new social media, and websites, early.
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
Lemmy is great for general shit… News, memes, generic hobbies like cooking that most people might do, etc.
I miss being able to go to /r/Game_Name and being able to talk specifically about that one title. The generic “Gaming/Games” communities are mostly just news about the industry as a whole, which doesn’t really get discussion about the games themselves.
IDGAF though if nobody else uses it, come June 21st, I definitely will be practically spamming the only Elden Ring community on Lemmy with stuff from the DLC as I play through it. Add “Lemmy” to the online group keyword thing in-game :P
Basically reddit stole a huge amount of soul from many communities that were convinced of its good intentions. It was just gathering and still is gathering data to train AI to then use it against us later. There’s no room in my mind to ever go back to that shit hole.
I definitely will be practically spamming the only Elden Ring community on Lemmy
Please do! I try to keep !baldurs_gate_3@lemmy.world alive, not an easy task he he
I just realized the reason I don’t see much activity in the one I was thinking of is because it’s on lemmy.ml and I blocked that instance. I wonder if I could get mod access to the lemmy.world one and fix it up… 🤔
Edit: I did 😃
I wish I could be like some of the other commenters here and say that leaving Reddit has been good because of the time suck that it was, or that I’m self-hosting xyz, but I can’t. And I am truly jealous.
I’m still looking to scratch that itch and there’s…nothing. I’m just very bored now but I haven’t gone back because I’m so angry at the way it ended. I do like Lemmy a lot, and Mastodon since I also gave up Twitter, but for better or worse they were a big part of my life and I’m not doing amazing things and coming to wonderful realizations now that they’re gone. It’s just depressing all around.
I volunteer in disaster response, and hurricane season started today and Reddit and Twitter were huge resources for us. Do you know how much of a loss that is? That can’t be replaced…entire communities, regions, parishes, counties, cities, states…they aren’t going to magically swap from one service to another because spez and Space Karen are assholes.
I’m sorry for the rant but enshittification sucks and I am sad.
TLDR I agree with you, OP.
In terms of boredom, it’s a healthy thing! Boredom is what pushes people to learn new skills, find new hobbies, and just generally do things. I think the demonization of boredom is very bad for society.
In terms of disaster relief, that sucks. If you have to use Reddit for that, then so be it. People getting the help they need in an emergency is more important than sticking it to spez.
It was the one thing that consistently relieved some of my ADHD boredom though, which is priceless lol
Haha ya, I totally get that. For me: I’ve been doing more little projects on my phone (designing games on my off time, researching work problems, etc), started carrying around a journal to write in on my bag, I downloaded the Shonen Jump app and started reading manga for anime I’ve wanted to watch but haven’t gotten around to, and I listen to podcasts not just when I’m driving. Hope some of those suggestions help or kickstart your own idea.
I also want to start carrying a book around with me like I did when I was a kid, because I have such a big list to get through and I have lots of pdfs for rpg books I’ve downloaded but haven’t read. I’ve tried to read them on my phone, and I succeeded with one book but the screen is so small lol. Maybe I need to look for a good e-reader that reads pdfs without straining my eyes, like I heard e-ink readers or something like that do, but apparently not with pdfs, I guess?
Thanks for the suggestions, I appreciate it! I can only listen to podcasts when I drive really, it’s the only time I’m able to focus on them. I can’t turn one on at home and just…listen. Maybe if I’m cleaning or something but I prefer music to do that for motivation.
I have a Kindle Oasis and I LOVE it! It’s the perfect size to slip in my purse, it’s thin, and I have multiple books with me at all times. I highly recommend it!
Thanks! I’ll look for that one! And you can tell, I really want to avoid returning to my reddit level of online addiction I was at previously. I’m close with Lemmy, but there’s not enough content for me to get there yet lol.
Makes perfect sense…good luck in your journey :)
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.
This was a really big one for me, it was the clearest indicator that something had fundamentally changed on that site.
I lucked out in this regard.
I was able to join up on sopuli, a local Finnish instance with a small but active number of users, who post about and occasionally comment on local things in !suomi@sopuli.xyz. It’s still quieter that reddit in that regard, but I do at least get some local news.
I’ve also made a huge effort to bootstrap an active anime community here on lemmy, and luckily I’ve not been alone in that. !anime@ani.social has been growing steadily. Instead of getting my anime fanart on reddit like I used to, I upped my usage of pixiv significantly, and then translated that into several communities and activity on lemmy.
If you can, try and get your news from local outlets, and if you actually get into that habit, set up a community for your local area, and start curating articles worth sharing, and posting them there.
I have been trying to cut down my social media use. Leaving reddit was a big part of that. What actually happened was I spend time here and on YouTube, and occasionally I load up old reddit!
I’m trying guys, but it’s hard.
I’ve been preferring it actually! There’s a sense of calm I get from scrolling through my frontpage and being out of posts at some point, usually like 20mins. I used to spend hours and hours on Reddit, just because it was so easy to keep scrolling infinitely.
At first I thought I should subscribe to more communities to have more content but it’s actually kinda nice to be limited.
I also found a great female weightlifting guide over on hexbear, so I’ve been building muscle since November. Someone must really care to post guides here, so my confidence in it has been a lot better from the start.
And I recently took the plunge and opened a community for posts about Royal Pythons. I’m still the only poster, but it will catch on eventually, and I’ll cultivate it to be better than r/ballpythons from the start. Some of the posts on that subreddit are simply scary haha
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 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.
Werid, I brought up the notion that I don’t agree with transgenderism and was permabanned from Reddit admins. I didn’t said hate or kill or die or insult them, just don’t agree with it.
Reddit is dead and buried, what’s left are bots and teenagers. Those yappy discordians now run the show, most of us 10+ reddit veterans either came to lemmy, or gave up on “the internet”. I’m pretty sure you’re not the only one who considered reddit to be the internet at that point.
Most power users, myself included, spent 5+ hours per day there, at times more so than at their paid careers. Especially the mods (I’ve been moderating 6 subs, two of which had over 1M and 5M users).
I do miss some of those communities. I don’t miss modding. Leaving reddit showed me what ungodly amounts of time I sunk into that platform, now that I had to fill other means to close the gap. With Lemmy it’s 20-30 min a day, often spread out over 5+ sessions since there’s not much to say or see that takes me more than 5 min at a time.
I’ve stayed on some of the moderator discord channels since those are fine folks, and chat with them in the off-topic rooms. Which shows me that reddit has gone off the deep end once and for all. With many decent folks leaving, ads and bots exploding all over the place, only the die hard shitposters and radical opinion leaders stuck around. They might not have had a digg moment, but are going the way of tumblr, which is arguably worse.
What I’m trying to say is that while Lemmy isn’t the arch we wanted it to be, going back isn’t possible either since the harbor burned down.
Personally, I’ve started a PhD just about a year ago at the time I left, and it does plenty of filling the gap in my daily calendar…
