I feel like lemmy is actually really amazing and has a lot of smart discussion happening instead of the constant circlejerking that happens on Reddit. I also feel the community here is a lot more hopeful/helpful! That’s all, thanks for reading 😄
I’m having the same experience on Lemmy that I had on reddit 13 years ago. It’s fucking awesome
I actually said the same a few days ago. Lemmy now is how reddit was back in the beginning.
The question that remains to be answered is, are the normies that moved to Reddit responsible for what it became? Or was it a product of the corporate profit driven manipulation of the platform? Time will tell…
Edit: It’s worth noting, I don’t mean to say ‘normies’ a a pejorative term, just the most casual way to differentiate the more tech-savvy, active early adopters that I find many people currently using the platform are, versus those who are simply doom scrolling content on social media.
I think it’s probably both.
I think the biggest decline was just before the 2016 US election.
That seemed to be the point at which the site hit “mainstream” and with that came a huge influx of new users, and with the influx of new users came the increase of corporate interest to advertise to the new massive audience.
r/all switched to be almost nothing but arguing US politics.
Definitely, astroturfing/Cambridge analytica/Russian bot farms coming up on the 2016 US election were the major causes of a shift in the paradigm. The actual results of the election and Brexit then influenced a strong divisive change in society globally. The pandemic brought even more people online who were dropped right into this chaotic chapter in Internet/cultural history.
Gonna be some really interesting studies in the future looking at how all of this played out.
Removed by mod
We’re not even close to being huge yet and the lizard king already has ideas of capitalizing on us. Let’s not pretend that this fediverse would ultimately become the utopia Reddit failed to be, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
It’s most likely a combination of both. I’m not a huge fan of the divisive “normies” vs “whatever the hell we are” stance, but Reddit became what it is because it was poorly designed from the beginning to handle how rapidly it needed to scale. It was never envisioned when the project started as an internet killing behemoth, but ultimately that’s what it became. Without in-built tools to manage that growth, Reddit succeeded because the community willed it to be and in spite of its own codebase.
What’s happened to it now is likely correlated to a number of factors:
- Significant user growth as the popularity of the site among habitual internet users grew over time
- Positioning within popular culture - namely the practice of appending Google search queries with ‘reddit’ to improve results, which is common among people who otherwise don’t browse the site at all
- Unchecked bot traffic with limited mechanisms to control or curtail the propagation of duplicative, low effort / value, incorrect, harmful, or misleading information on a massive scale
- A philosophical pivot from being a community driven by community to a company driven by a desire for profits
- Algorithmic manipulation of how content is displayed to maximize advertiser return at the expense of organic community dynamic shifts a combination of 1- a rapidly grown userbase, 2- positioning within popular culture (vis a vis, appending Google search queries with reddit to improve the results is common even among people who otherwise don’t use Reddit)
- The hurt feelings of a CEO with an easily bruised ego
Don’t forget a complete failure to ever monetize the site correctly. They’ve never made a profit lol.
All I’ll say is The time r/funny became a default sub, things started to go downhill and I had to start blocking subs from my page
It’s both. The normies are the reason the content and vibe sucked, and the corporate manipulation is what filled it with normies. Reddit had hit Eternal September for me nearly 6 years ago. I only stayed because there was literally nothing better at the time.
I keep seeing your username everywhere, how the hell do you put those emojis on there
Display name. Anything can go in that field. :)
depending on how you see it, that’s nice and cool or dark
For me it’s cool. Back in the days, Reddit was an inviting place like Lemmy where you could have intelligent conversations. Now… Forget about it…
My experience with Lemmy so far is awesome.
I didn’t realise how much I’ve missed this feeling, as a former redditor of 12 years
Totally agree. I started very sad to lose Reddit but honestly a blessing.
I’m upvoting your post because the headline/title gave me an aneurysm. I’ve read it twice now and still don’t understand it. 😀
“I still see a lot of angry posts about Reddit because people were essentially forced out. However…”
Yeh that’s what they were trying to say, their punctuation was atrocious though.
The reason I’m using Lemmy is that it’s better than reddit. If it wasn’t better, I’d still be on Reddit.
And what’s better isn’t Lemmy itself, it’s the people here.
Yeah. I’m very happy with lemmy so far especially now that the interface of lemmy.world is so smooth
I was really upset about the poor performance of .world and how Beehaw had good performance but defederated, but the devs have fixed .world performance overnight and I haven’t had any issues yet today.
Overall I’m happy with how it turned out for me joining .world :)
Yeah Lemmy has totally exceeded my expectations, I thought leaving Reddit would be a compromise for the sake of privacy, but I was so glad to be proven wrong
Circle jerking about Lemmy while complaining about Reddit circle jerking is peak social media. :)
I was just trying to be positive instead of the usual Reddit hate we see. It feels like most comments about Reddit were mad they had to be here on lemmy, but lemmy is legitimately a great place. Wasn’t trying to circle jerk sorry
There is no need to apologize. I was just making a joke. In fact, unless you deliberately insult someone or in some rare edge cases I’d argue there is never a need to apologize for something you write.
On reddit I didn’t comment much at all, because it mostly felt like posting things into the void.
Here there are mostly not so many comments that a single one gets lost and I’ve already had a few plesant discussions!
Same :) i enjoy the cozier feeling that many of the threads have. And the local threads of people on my instance really give a feeling of community since i belong to a smaller one.
Does it get any more cozy than
HogsmeadeLemmy?
It’s really fascinating watching something new grow
I’m not entirely sold on the fediverse as a feasible, long-term solution - there are definitely going to be hard truths, disappointments and lessons along the way… but I’m up for the ride, come what may
The fediverse is definitely not perfect, but centralized monopoly social networks are extremely far from perfect too. In comparison, with all the growing pains it still might be better than the alternative
Reddit just removed NSFW access from everything else but their official app… Fuk em…
Hopefully lemmy will grow strong in that aspect…!
I just pulled up NSFW through old.reddit
Once they kill old reddit, which they likely will if they’re truly worried about data scraping by AI companies, it’s over.
There is no stopping AI data scrapers without also preventing users from accessing that data. Even with rate limiters, whatever that rate is tied to can be duplicated or faked such that the tech will affect normal users more than scrapers.
This will especially be the case once language models can truly pass the Turing test, though they are already most of the way there. Using proxies/VPNs and multiple accounts, give the AIs “browsing habits” and there won’t be any way to tell the difference between bots and real people. The rate that they can scan comments might still be lower in that case than it is now and legally riskier, but it will still happen.
Bots will probably have an easier time navigating the new site, too. They might even have to be limited in that regard so that they don’t look different from real people.
It takes people about two weeks to get inconsolably nauseated from seeing people bitch about their ex. We’re not even halfway for the most recent group.
Yeah, it’s fun watching this community grow. I’m not looking back
There is already a ton of subs I’ve had to unsubscribe/block because it’s essentially shitposting. The internet is a crowded place.
I’ve noticed a lot of the same circlejerks in political channels. I don’t dislike Lemmy. If Reddit caved and RiF came back tomorrow, I’d probably still switch back. But the longer I’m away from Reddit, the less likely I am to return.
I’m done for good. The core underlying issue that got me here is that Reddit has demonstrated that there is no ethical standard worth sticking to for them if it means slightly more money. Community building is about care and curation. Reddit doesn’t want to foster community building and their entire draw is community hosting. Why would I stick around?
You can actually use rif still, as well as a few other reddit apps that officially closed shop, but it’s not gonna last forever.
Personally, I’m sticking around (via rif), partly to keep up with a few communities I care about, and partly to watch reddit burn as they keep fueling the fire.
Weirdly, I increasingly feel like I won’t even miss reddit all that much. More precisely, I already missed what reddit once was.
I’ve been using reddit for over 12 years. That site is a steaming pile of shit compared to what it once was. I’m done.
I’ve been on there about 14. It’s gradually gotten worse and worse in terms of culture and content, but what really shows their doom is how awful the ‘new reddit’ interface is. It has now been years and they haven’t fixed it, show no signs of plans to rethink it, or any understanding of how bad it is. I’ve entirely removed reddit from my life and had zero problems doing it. Now when I go read comments on there, it’s clear how wretched it is… so many people are so nasty to each other in city subs, for instance.
And we all have to expect that at some point the old interface is going to get removed. Before this whole blowup, I was already expecting it.
Oh, absolutely. I’m sort of surprised it’s even still there. They’ve updated it a tiny bit here and there but it seems clear they’ll remove it or it will just stop working at some point. When I’ve tried using the new interface it’s been torturous. So… if they hadn’t screwed over 3rd party apps, if they removed old reddit, I’d find an app I liked, but… can’t do that now, of course! So I’m glad to have already jumped ship before being forced to.
Yeah, it’s got a different atmosphere here, a bit more chilled and friendly. I miss the bigger community of Reddit but it reached its peak a while back; this place has a lot of exciting potential
Lemmynites, assemble!
