this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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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] 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.