So I've switched to lemmy since the reddit meltdown started, experienced quite some withdrawal symptoms, occasionally turned back to reddit, more often logged out than logged in. Now I am merely using Lemmy occasionally and by far not as often as I used reddit before. No more doom scrolling.
So far so good.
Today I went on reddit for the first time in like 3 weeks straight (I couldn't do that for the last years... yeah, I was very addicted in hindsight). I just... I don't know what it is.
Reddit just isn't fun anymore.
I turned away after maybe 5 minutes. There were maybe 2-3 repost-worthy pics, one interesting video and a few small niche discussions that all went straight tits up within a few replies.
If I ask a question on lemmy, it usually is a straightforward, honest discussion. Almost no blaming of the posters or answerers misunderstandings or senseless answers. It goes a bit back and forth usually and people tend to thank each other for corrections.
I can't remember when that happened on a reddit discussion. Maybe years back? Anyway, I'm not going back there anymore, not because I hate the CEO, but because reddit is not fun anymore. Lost all interest in it.
Did anyone of you have a similar experience?
It's really different, that's for sure. The front page is full of subreddits I've never seen much (or any) of before. Comments on posts seem lower by an order of magnitude on the most popular ones. I don't know about site visits but engagement seems way down. How u/spez will spin it for the IPO remains to be seen.
I looked at subreddit stats and comment rates dropped significantly across ~10 subreddits I checked (both small and large) in about mid-July, and the up vote count in a small sub (weekly posts, each got a consistent amount of up votes) dropped by about half around the same time. I haven't gone back except to some niche communities that haven't gained traction on lemmy, but at least based on the data things did change.