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 itās about Reddit the platform/product than Reddit the social āthingā, but Iām sure a lot of people have similar experiences to mine. Maybe on some instances more than others.
Hereās 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 āWill your participation in Reddit changeā:
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 wouldnāt be against using the first party app if it wasnāt so awful to use.
Itās a massive shame that weāve 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 theyāve 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 Iāve really felt like things are moving in a direction I canāt 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 donāt 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 thatās (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 donāt mind paying now that I can afford it. But something about how itās all going down really doesnāt fill me with confidence.
Iāve been trying to write a post about this for a while now, but I havenāt 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 didnāt 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 havenāt been able to replace it outright. Iām from Lebanon, and Lebanese Twitter is (if you can imagine it) even more of a toxic cesspool than regular Twitter. Iām not on Facebook (also cesspool here), Iām not on Instagram - my point is I donāt 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 subās 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 itās just JAQing off etc, not harrassing people obviously). Then the regulars would dogpile on that userās 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 thatās okay. The fact that thereās fewer posts I think isnāt necessarily a bad thing either, I think we all preferred Redditās 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.
Iāve toyed with opening a Lebanon community here on dbzer0, having opened one on FMHY that nobody used. But it wouldnāt be the same, and I wouldnāt 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.
Iāve reactivated my old Instagram account and itās pretty ass out there. The ad/post ratio is just egregious, and theyāll just serve you random posts from random pages. I want to see my friends goddamn it, isnāt this what your platform is supposed to be for? For those of you who donāt know, the app will also send you a notification once or twice a day suggesting you look at ātodayās top reelsā. I have never watched a reel of my own will, fuck off.
Point being, the main platforms people use online havenāt 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, everyoneās favorite word, but every time I think about it for more than 2 minutes I canāt help but miss a simpler internet. Some part of me was hoping it would kickstart me āgrowing outā of spending this much time online per day (not everyone spends a ton of time online), but it hasnāt.
Also every time I ask something longer than 20 words on Discord some middle schooler will reply āyapā, even in the channels designated for questions. Discord has had its uses (yes I know thereās privacy concerns), but itās 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 havenāt really been back either, and I also miss it in some ways. I think for me I mostly miss the broader user base. Lemmy skews hard into a few interest groups, especially tech-focused ones, and while I have overlap there, I wish there were more types of people on here with less techy interests.
I tried bluesky for a little bit, but I honestly just bounce off Twitter whenever I try it, and Twitter clones have the same problem I guess. They have such a strong undercurrent of outrage and smugness, and while reddit and Lemmy could be accused of having some of this too, something about it feels much worse to me on microblogging sites.
I also miss the culture of linking to other subreddits in comments. That was a big way I found new communities on Reddit over the years, either ones I joined or just funny things you canāt believe exist. I think the lack of that on here really hurts the ability for me to find smaller communities. Thanks to federation Iām not even sure how you do it on here. Iām sure itās more complicated than L/whatever.
I actually donāt mind Instagram, but only after revancing it. š