this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Technology

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It’s not even June 12 for me, yet I suspect many subreddits went dark based on UTC.

I moved to Reddit during the Digg migration. Thus, I got the default subscriptions from back in the day. Over the years, I’ve unsubscribed to things I felt were crap, and I’ve added a number of subreddits.

Already, many have gone dark. My old.Reddit.com homepage already looks much different than normal, and I know that a few subreddits that do show have announced they’ll go dark. I assume they are US based and timing that locally.

I’ve spent more time in the Lemmy fediverse than on Reddit since joining, but I’ve spent time on both.

I’ll admit to cynical skepticism of the impact of the darkening. I still don’t think it will make a difference in Reddit policy, but I now believe it will have a larger impact on Reddit traffic than I imagined.

I still expect it to have no change in Reddit attitude or really in Reddit users.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I certainly don't think Reddit is going away forever, but I do think it will push a lot of the OG users out for sure. I just deleted my 10 yr. old account tonight and am just finding out about Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

hey dude, I did this in Friday night and spent all weekend getting in deep with Lemmy. If you are coming over from Apollo, try the beta iOS app, Mlem.

I really like the communities I found in beehaw but have been steadily exploring.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Replying from Mlem now, really digging it so far. Can’t wait to see what’s coming in the future!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Same. However something about Beehaw and their moderators unnecessarily overt political views really puts me off and I do not know what nor can I point my finger on it why.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Beehaw didn't seem too bad, what's up with them?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also feel something similar with their long posts about the ‘philosophy’ of this site that I honestly don’t get. But at the same time, they banned lemmygrad and I haven’t really noticed if they are promoting any view or gatekeeping the site for those who don’t share the same views.

Also, this place is bound to attract a certain type of political alignment since we are all here trying to escape the capitalist greed that’s consuming other sites.

It is still too soon, but so far I’m satisfied.

I’ll be monitoring the new socialism community though, because as soon as I see pro-russian crap or similar, I’m getting the hell out of here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As someone who registered under Beehaw (and thus, a potentially biased party), Beehaw isn't exactly looking to be a 1-to-1 replacement for Reddit from my understanding. It's more looking to create an actual community, similar to how online communities were once upon a time. I don't foresee pro-Russia sentiment taking hold there (especially since they apparently defederated with Lemmygrad, which is where a lot of tankies live), but I understand the concern.

For what it's worth, the Socialism community is essentially a transplant of the subreddit /r/LeftWithoutEdge, which I would lurk from time to time while I was still on Reddit, and it was one of the few leftist subreddit where I didn't feel shunned for being a veteran. A lot of other leftist subreddits would do stuff like pre-emptively ban anyone who posted in a military subreddit, so I think Beehaw's Socialism community has a great foundation to work off of at the very least.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's very reassuring to read. Hope it keeps being that way then.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I quite like Beehaw and their Be(e) nice philosophy. Angry online arguments aren't for me personally and it's nice to be part of a space that promotes a more chilled out vibe. Plus it seems there are plenty of other instances that are OK with the usual online bickering we've all become accustomed to over the years so if I ever want to read another heated argument about what constitutes a grilled cheese I know where to go haha!

[–] possiblyadude 4 points 1 year ago

Just wanted to say thanks for pointing out Mlem!

[–] phase_change 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, my hope is the small learning curve to join the fediverse means we don’t end up with the bulk of the active posters on reddit.

My fear is that Lemmy is about to see some attacks the fediverse isn’t ready to defend against.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Incidental ddos is a possibility as well if the hype builds enough.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ddos is the least of its worries.

A coordinated astroturf attack by various interests will be it's real telling moment and has already claimed previous attempts like Voat.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Voat died because it was a cesspool of the worst of the internet. I checked it out a bit after it's formation and the last thing the world needed was another haven for pedos and alt-right sorts.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A Reddit alternative that had a chance but couldn't handle the influx so it ended up with just the hatorade free speech absolutists as reasonable people just went back to Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Important to note the influx in question was caused by reddit banning hate subs and reasonable people also saw there was a forum to leer on children and left on the spot.

[–] supro47 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Digg is technically still around even though it doesn't resemble anything close to the "Digg" I used before the migration. I suspect Reddit will go in the same direction. They will keep pushing ways to monetize it, pushing out a lot of people who just want to chat and argue with strangers on the internet until it basically just becomes a website with a bunch of sponsored links and articles and no real user engagement.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yep. Places like Reddit don't "die" by going from existing to nonexisting. They "die" by going from "Reddit" to "Did you know Reddit still exists?".

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The official Reddit app reminds me of that vibe in that it's trying to be an algorithm-based feed of /r/all garbage to piss you off in the name of engagement and doesn't resemble the Reddit I originally fell in love with years ago.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Algorithmically directed social medias such as Facebook are repulsive to me, so when I started using Reddit, I chose that place precisely because you could control what’s in your feed. It felt refreshingly different. Now Reddit is trying to become the next Facebook, so it’s pretty clear that it’s no longer the place for me.

The same thing seems to apply to the history of YouTube as well. Nowadays that site is trying to become just like TV, so perhaps sooner rather than later that site won’t be for me anymore.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Delete your history and be very selective in what you watch, and YouTube is pretty decent... At least for a few months. After that, either you stuck to your preferences and end up looping over the same content, or you branched out and now it keeps trying to feed you rants full of dog whistles

I use Firefox and containers along with unlock origin - by using the containers strictly for several narrow interests, YouTube acts like ad free tv for me - perfect background noise

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is why Apollo was the only thing keeping me on the site. I took advantage of its filters. I had an extensive list of keyword filters, and over the years had filtered probably several thousand subreddits. I could actually browse r/all and find interesting and unique new to me subreddits. It was great.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I solved that problem by using multireddits, and never visiting r/all. I had one for uplifting stuff, another one for science stuff and so on. In Narwhal and Slide, and they both made it possible to put multireddits in the center stage. Then I tried the default reddit app, and multireddits were hidden behind so many taps, that they must be about remove that feature soon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I had multireddits for my subscriptions, but I liked discovering new things. With the extremely amount of trash filtering I did to r/all, it allowed me to discover interesting places I’d have never found on my own.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That is a good point. I would discover interesting new places when people specifically mention them. When someone did that, I would go to that sub, sort by top of all time and figure out if I actually care about that place or not. The trouble is, I didn’t bump into cool new subs very frequently.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yea, similar to Tumblr, they fell hard and now people use it dramatically less than before their NSFW decision to the point that now that they’ve allowed that content again no one really cares. Tumblr will always be seen as “the website that died after banning NSFW content.”

It’s quite possible Reddit will be seen as “the website that died because they backstabbed third party developers.”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Funny I know somebody who has decided to switch back to tumblr mad their time sink because of all the Reddit drama.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I'm hopeful Lemmy turns into something near what I used to love about Reddit. It needs critical mass for that to happen. FWIW, I kept my Reddit account but I deleted all of my posts and comments.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Mine's been pending for two days. No automated process should take that long, so now I worry it's in the queue of some recently fired employee.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If you want, you can also use a script like Power Delete Suite to overwrite all your old comments and posts with whatever copypasta you want, or to mass-delete (it does miss a few posts/comments though! be sure to double check), and/or you can use Redact to overwrite them with nonsense and then delete.

It used to be recommended to edit all comments at least 24 hours before deleting the account so that reddit would only have the edited, useless versions of the comments stored, but I don't know if that works anymore, they might keep the pre-edited versions anyway now. I'm not sure.

Anyway, regardless, be aware that when you delete a reddit account they keep all your posts and comments, without the option to delete them after you account is deleted. If you want those deleted, you have to delete them first, then delete the account after. Also, if you want to use one of these deletion scripts, use it by June 30th, before the API change breaks them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

👍🏻 found out two days ago and it’s only getting livelier here.

The concept of a decentralized link aggregator fits much more than the centralized Reddit system which brought everything to a fall

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago