Technology

I'm Sorry Reddit, my old friend. There's no turning back now. Farewell.

I've heard for a lot of time about these federated social media (lemmy, mastodon...) and I really like it. The interface is not bloated, no bullshit notifications, no ads, no damn algorithms that try so hard to spoonfeed me taking 60% of my feed, taking place for the communities I am actually interested into.

If I could put it into words, lemmy feels a lot like early 2010's social media, fewer people, less stakes, just a bunch of people enjoying some topic (it is ironic, since I started to use Reddit because it seemed to be the only mainstream place left where you can talk with real people). Anyways, I am enjoying it, more than "What would Reddit need to do to get you back?" I would prefer more posts like "What should Lemmy improve to keep you here?".

Just not kill 3rd party apps. Though at this point I want Reddit to destroy itself. I have been hoping for the fediverse to take over ever since I learned of Mastodon and Matrix.

We need to go back to how things were 20 years ago when services like email, IRC, XMPP, icecast, etc. were all decentralized.

Reddit is not what it ought to be. It's overwhelming toxic environment just ruins what could have been a great forum. But it is what it is and for that reason, I'm out.

Going back at this point would be like returning to an abusive partner and thinking that the relationship could actually be better this time.

if reddit becomes federated I'll consider subscribing

I haven't completely left, and to be honest the only way I'd completely leave is if the niche communities I cared about died (or were active here). That being said I've noticed my reddit usage has plummeted over the last week. I used to basically live on that dumb site and now I only check it maybe once or twice a day for a couple minutes

I don't think there is anything they can do to get me back anymore. I have a lot of issues with the culture that exists on that site, and that's not something that can be fixed by walking back the API stuff or removing a few problematic individuals.

I'm still using it because old.reddit.com still works, and until it doesn't, I probably will. That said, I'd rather the fediverse thrive than the increasingly corporate-beholden reddit does, so I'll favour what sparse engagement I make to a lemmy instance first.

I think what's hardest to replace from reddit is the absolutely monstrous archive of posts and discussions, which seems to be a bit of a two-edged sword for them (if the official statements are to be believed) - it costs a tonne in hosting, but makes them the most relevant source for real human discourse. This needs to be handled better, and ideally I'd want to see:

• Some sort of archive.reddit.com. Minimal, flat html, ideally anonymised as much as computer-ly possible to help with the inevitable privacy issues this would raise.
• Some sort of mobile.old.reddit.com, as they seem incapable of making an app without bloaty (both visual and bandwidth wise) "features". Call me a boomer, but if I can do something without a specific app, I would rather do it that way.
• Separate i.reddit.com and v.reddit.com into different companies from the main reddit, reddit should be link aggregation and discussion, content hosting seems like a costly thing to try and monopolise.
• If it really costs so much to run the APIs, I'd rather see more user-based rate limiting than price gouging to discourage bad actors. I do not think that is why they are price gouging, but am trying to assume good faith on their part for discussions' sake.

I know I'm an idiot, and some of these are possibly already done and I just haven't looked hard enough, probably some are impossible for obvious reasons I haven't seen. Though even if reddit as a company turned around and tried to become a curator of the discussions it holds rather than milk it's current audience dry with ads, I'd still rather see lemmy out-compete it. Protocol > Platform.

There’s nothing that could male go back. I’ve wanted to leave for years but there was never a good replacement. Here’s to a good future for Lemmy!

That's quite simple, actually. It would need to go back to what it was. It doesn't really have to be open source, it just has to be a site where its CEO's only focus isn't milking money but rather improving the site

I'm wiping my account tonight and will be doing an account delete bit right before the black outs.

I honestly don't think anything would get me to go back. I don't think I'll miss my doom scroll app. Lemmy feels much more easy to actually be apart of, and my account can interact with other fedverse stuff, heck yeah.

The only subreddit I'm going to miss that I haven't seen an alternative of is r/196, so I hope that pops up.

Nothing. They've burned too many bridges and have lost all faith the community had in them. Without a community, they are nothing.

Too late, I've invested too much time, money, and effort into setting up my own Lemmy instance so I can share the love of open source and federated projects with others. What happens if lemmy.ml is overloaded? Go somewhere else and set up an account, and you can reduce the load on their servers.

I’ll go back to Reddit if Spez eats shit publicly and Apollo is uncanceled.

Even if they revert the API changes, I know It's only going to get worse when the IPO happens, so I don't think I could ever come back. I also like the federated approach more anyways 🤷

Fire the current CEO and get a new one.

Return in all aspects to how it used to be in 2014 or earlier, but it will never happen because enshittification cannot be reverted.

That includes the bloated inefficient new design that includes an intentionally hostile mobile website that shits the bed on 3G connections, the echo chamber machinery, random layout shifts, NSFW login walls, automated censorship and shadowbanning, the privileges for the big subreddits and the big sponsored powermods.

Im leaving beacuse it's too far gone to ever recover.

This is kind of like the Wizards of the Coast / OGL situation for me - just enough to make me consider the alternatives, and realize that the alternatives are a better long term solution.

Reddit has become overrun with crypto scam spammers, and they don't appear to be making any attempt to control it. We'll see if the fediverse can do a better job.

I think that the CEO would need to step down at this point. This has been handled completely inappropriately and he's ultimately responsible. Then they would need to rollback the API changes and approach that change in a more structure community lead approach.

I've been enjoying reddit less and less for a couple years already, the site is too big and there is so much junk on there to wade through

it is refreshing to see a smaller community elsewhere, and I like the concept of a fediverse more and more

I'm going to replace the subreddits I used to visit with communities and people on lemmy, mastodon, etc

reddit served its purpose (a digg replacement back in the day), now is the time for a new replacement

At this point in time, they have a lot to prove to get me to go back. The site itself has already felt like a lot of recycled content is coming up more and the conversations in some of my favorite subs have already become less deep and engaging. The recommendations and discovery have become kind of subpar and don't even get me started on the native app and website. I work in the development field and the treatment of the third party developers has been garbage, unless there is a major overhaul of the leadership and some really sincere apologizing to those that have mistreated, I just don't see an avenue back at this point.

At this point - nothing. I've been less and less happy with that place lately, and this is just the final push. Hopefully I'll find a lot of the same things either here, or somewhere else, or just not at all I guess.

I absolutely loved reading wholesome content like this. That's a great idea! We should collectively work together to shape how we want our future year to be!

For me, it is too far gone at this point. The events of the last ~week just highlighted something that I was willfully ignorant of in that it has not been the website I joined back in 2007 for a very long time. VC-backed focus on monetization, profit, return on investment, and ipo (and everything that comes along with that) has ramped up tremendously in the last few years and I think this is now the tipping point of Reddit doing a Digg.

It's a bummer, but not shocking or surprising as it follows a long line of exactly the same pattern, across tech. I'll have fond memories for sure, but have accepted it and am ready to move on to something new.

Also, this is my first post. Happy to be here!

I'm not gone yet and I don't know if I actually will be. No matter how frustrated I am with the platform and have been for years now, I don't feel that anything else is ready to replace it.

I wish Lemmy the best but I have my doubts as to how well it'll take off. I remember when Digg died, Reddit was already popular enough to make jumping ship a no brainer for just about everyone. Lemmy is not there yet, and I don't know if it ever will be. It's much smaller than Mastodon/Fediverse, and that's been very slow to pull users away from the even more hated platform it wants to challenge. Can Lemmy achieve the critical mass it needs to succeed?

What's mainly keeping me on Reddit is certain small subs for niche hobbies. Only on the largest platforms is it possible to find people who share my microinterests. Reddit and Discord are it, and Discord really only works as an ephemeral chatroom, it's terrible for news or threaded discussion. Not to mention how much of a problem it is that Discord isn't indexed by search engines.

Implement ActivityPub, or I I suppose another protocol like Nostr, Ostatus, pump.io, or Diaspora*, and join the fediverse. Preferably publishing their code under the AGPL, but even if they kept it as non-free software I'd still probably get back on. I suppose if they did end-to-end security truly decentralized, like Scuttlebutt or Status, I'd do that too.

For a while I thought "fire Spez", but after giving it some more thought....

NOTHING! and I'll elaborate on why. The community of people makes or breaks social media platforms (see, Twitter as prime example). If the owner(s) aren't interested in the well being of the community / communities, then I have no interest in being there.

Pay off all my debt. And take me out to a fancy dinner. Wine and dine me, Spez. Then I'll use reddit again. (I would still use lemmy secretly on the side)

Be usable and intuitive on mobile, including NSFW, no subscription (one-time purchase is ok), no/limited unobtrusive ads, no excessive data consumption. That's what the 3p app I used was.

I don't socialise on Reddit. Whenever I do, I almost always regret it. But I do kill time while in queues, or on the bus, or on break at work. That needs to be on mobile. Or to 'kill time' at home. That needs to include NSFW. And I want to be seeing the content I went there to see, not miles of ads and promoted posts. And I definitely don't have the budget to pay for it over and over and over. Mobile data is also capped and very expensive here.

It's still usable on desktop, but... I don't use desktop on the bus. It's still available on mobile, but... I don't want to load 5 different resolutions of each video on my limited mobile data.

This was the final bloodletting of my trust. There is no going back. That's why I deleted all of my content and my account

I'm honestly not "gone" yet, this is my first day on Lemmy. I'm still a little uncertain. Here's what's on my mind:

• Reddit isn't, and never has been, profitable. That means that things we don't like are only going to get more and more likely for them to do, because eventually investors will stop paying for them to do the same thing, which we mostly do like.

• Lemmy looks like a good alternative, and I'd really like to see reddit die faster so all the content I like moves here.

• At the same time, decentralization isn't a silver bullet. It doesn't mean my experience on Lemmy will get better, it just means the individual server I pick has a lot more control over me. Will I lose my identity / get booted off the server because someone decides to stop operating it? Or doesn't like a comment I write? Etc etc

Too late, found something better.

Reverse the api changes, convince Selig to keep Apollo going, fire spez. Than MAYBE.