this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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I've never been sentimental about a social media site but it's sad for me to see reddit so clearly killing itself. Pushshift is already banned and Apollo is soon to follow. Reddit will either pivot fully to a mainstream audience or die out. It's just sad for me to see it doing it to itself.

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[–] scrollbars 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe not mourn but I did have an "oh shit" moment today over a couple smaller communities where I don't know where people might scatter to. It finally sank in.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it's the little niche communities that I'm sad about:

An arborist spent 4 years helping me take care of an elm tree. They'd PM me every May to ask how it was doing, and I'd start another thread and send them pictures so they could tell me how to fix the roots or change the guy wires or prune the branches. When it got complicated, another arborist popped out of the woodwork to offer a second opinion and more advice.

I helped a person on oscilloscopemusic breadboard a little 2 channel opamp buffer/amp so they could use a CRT to make shapes from music instead of needing to buy a scope.

I won't miss reddit, but I will miss interactions like that.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm going to miss the Star Trek sub but I am hoping the Lemmy one will pick up.

Overall, Reddit has suffered over the years allowing blatant right wing build ups to take root. My old local sub was seeing dog whistles pop up and general quality of the sub sufferes, even more so when the local football people came over and brought their 'banter' with them along with shit posts. The mods didn't really do anything to guide the quality of the sub and I left it last year. Today I deleted my account. No regrets.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Been on Reddit for 15 years. Will probably hang on to a few communities that only exist there for a while longer.

I was sad and sentimental about it when it started dying years ago. The desperate "must grow until implode" path that all corporate owned platforms follow, is inevitable. At some point it'll suck too much for you to tolerate.

Make a first-party mobile app for a site that would be fine on web. Sell premium subscriptions. Sell microtransactions. Insert ads. Insert more ads. Insert ads inbetween content. Make the ads look like content. Put usability features behind Premium subscription and forbid integrations that do similar things. Try to be tiktok? Try to be a social network. Short videos! Try to be Youtube? Try to be Twitch!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I'm still expecting a relatively slow death for Reddit, perhaps even not a total one like with Digg's quick and complete collapse. I'll be sticking around Reddit past the June 30 horizon, I'll just be doing it entirely via my desktop browser. I'll probably only stop going once they get rid of Old Reddit.

This means that there'll be a gradual winding down of the communities I pay attention to, accompanied by a gradual migration to places like here. Hopefully little will be lost in the process.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Someone mentioned poop knife, cumbox and more over at Reddit today, so much memories were made there, the place will certainly be missed.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I’m mostly just upset about the fact that healthy niche communities that existed on Reddit are likely to die rather than migrate in earnest. Reddit itself has been feeling downhill pretty much from the moment I joined, but it was the only service that managed to have not only very specific niche communities, but a wealth of active ones with quality contributors.

I just joined here and haven’t lurked too much, but the format here looks nice to foster that type of growth over time. I just hope it can be rebuilt to even a portion of what I’m leaving behind.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m still in denial. I know Apollo is going away, I know I’m deleting my Reddit account on June 30. But I still don’t feel like any of it is real. Reddit has become such an integral part of my online life that I’m not sure how to even process this whole thing.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I feel like reddit dying could be a positive thing for me. For years now I have felt the negative influence that its toxic environment - fueled by impersonal, discordant interactions - had on me. Not to mention the complete destruction of my ability to concentrate caused by the micro dopamine hit targeting of social media UX. I'm hoping that moving to a smaller platform will help with some of that pervasive anger I feel as a result of constant reddit usage.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Reddit in general was never really a good place in my opinion. There are some really great subreddits with a nice community and good moderation. But Reddit in general? There’s far too much racism and misogyny covered up or even encouraged by the admins.

I’m going to miss what it could have and me leaving the site has begun years ago when I left all default subreddits. All this now is part of the enshittification of the internet and most people don’t seem to care. They still use Twitter, they continue using Instagram and they will continue using Reddit because they prefer what the companies tell them is a good user experience. They now prefer ads and an easy onboarding process to enhanced privacy and some missing features.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mourn the site that allowed toxic subs like the_donald or worse to recruit and prosper? Hell no. I will mourn small communities if they leave, but I don't believe they will. Lemmy is a good idea, but judging from the twitter / mastodon migration (or lack thererof) I am not holding my breath. The fact Lemmy's main devs are tankies makes mass adoption even less likely

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

the huge user base allowed for niche communities to form. if lemmy (or any alt) ever makes it to that size, i fear it'll be a while

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I think what I'm most sad about is losing easily searchable information. Finding an obsscure thread about some weird question I had is great. Maybe that will be preserved somehow. Idk. That and the more unhinged reddit posts and copypastas throughout history.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am a little. I already deleted Apollo to break the habit. One might as well dive into the deep end. I'm all in on Lemmy now. I mourn the critical mass of Reddit but I'm hopeful Lemmy will rise to fill the void.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Reddit is the new facebook

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's the helpful communities that I would really miss. Like /r/skyrimmods as an example with wonderfully done community guides. Those type of resources would be a shame to lose, since even if you aren't interested in socializing they are an amazing resource.

And I had done a lot of searches including reddit as a keyword, since there'd often times be a helpful comment regarding what I had a question about.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I was there from 2009, when they welcomed me and asked me to do an AMA while Fark mods temp-banned me accidentally. lol. I spent a lot of the last 14 years on reddit creating some communities, moderating default subs, stepping away twice, but going back each time.

Well, this is finally it. I'm an old.reddit user, so not directly impacted by this, but it's just a sign that reddit is dead. It's been dying.

I got into tildes thankfully, as the discussion there is great. And now I'm over here, as I know there's a large influx from reddit, so hopefully these two sites will fill that gap. :)

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

There's definitely some stages of withdrawal going on for me. Having relied on that site for many years as a source of information, commentary, and just plain ol' entertainment scrolling on my lunch break, I definitely feel the sense of loss.

But that AMA yesterday with Spez really enforced that the site's not going to be at all what it used to be.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I think it's a bit too early for that for me. Currently I'm starting to participate in beehaw as well as use reddit on Apollo, so I don't mind if I don't see stuff here that I have(had) on reddit, but once Apollow shuts down, I'd be using beehaw/lemmy more than I use reddit, and at that point I might mourn some nice things that were destroyed by the reddit admin team.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I think, at a fundamental level the Reddit I am mourning isn't Reddit as it exists now, but perhaps how I imagine it did ten or so years ago, the so called "Early Days". We're all here now because Reddit at is now is unsustainable and actively hostile against it's users. The contradiction between the need for monetization of the userbase and the userbases disgust at being monetized. This isn't a recent occurrence but sometimes we need to get a bit of a kick to realize how bad its been, in retrospect.

I do know, as many fellow tech people do, whenever I have to look into a problem I haven't encountered before, appending "Reddit" to the search often leads me closer to an answer. I will miss that, as it had become so well indexed. Lemmy isn't there yet in terms of being indexed.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I felt this way about Twitter early on because Twitter for me was the third social media platform I ever experienced growing up, only with MySpace and Facebook before it.

It's sad to see Reddit go this way, but my solace is that the communities that make Reddit will survive one way or another. I'm just hoping Lemmy sees a better adoption than Mastodon has so far. I want both to thrive but I'm especially hoping for Lemmy since I spend/spent more of my time on Reddit.

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

Yeah I feel like Mastoden tries to do too many things at once. It feels like twitter and discord put together.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

If enough people comes to lemmy it will be the same content. No need to mourn a big centralized social media platform.

[–] freshhotbiscuits 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Federated is the way that Reddit needed to go, so the transition from Reddit to Lemmy is just what we needed. Now, whoever wants to create a community and moderate it according to their own rules can do so.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Been mourning for years. I'm finally over it.

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

I've been there since the Digg Exodus and I am so, so happy that it's finally ending. It was only ever "good" to the degree that the parent company didn't give a shit and let us do what we wanted. It's been gradually changing but I've always known that one day, that would change entirely, and so would Reddit.

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

No I don’t mourn it, it became mainstream around 2014 and went downhill from there imv. The front page was full of rage politics and the comments became really toxic. Everyone got drowned out, spreading that audience across multiple sites might be a good thing in the end. End the hive mind

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nah, reddit is a lame horse long past the point of getting put down being a merciful thing to do. The only reason it lasted so long is that there wasn't a viable alternative because everything else that cropped up got overran by nazis or tankies (mostly nazis from what I've seen) and that's why I'm glad reddit is cannibalizing itself. It's going to give rise to the fediverse because it can't be overran by either side of the damn horseshoe and it can't be overtaken by corporate interest which is going to attract the middle of the road user that makes up the majority; yeah it'll take some time but it'll happen and I'm not saying it'll be the main thing, I'm just saying it'll be a viable alternative.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I subconsciously open Sync for Reddit and start scrolling about 50 times every day. Just joined here and installed Jerboa to try to supplement the habit. I love the environment here, but boy is it clunky and the content is so much more limited than Reddit. I'm definitely going to miss it, but I'll adapt.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If by 'mourn reddit' you mean 'process the idea that reddit is as good as dead' then yes.

I'm not missing it much, though. I like the social engagement part, and I like the getting news part. I used the time-killing part. Lemmy is social engagement and so far it feels much more engaged, more concentrated, less fluff. And the news in Reddit is 1) mostly America-centric anyway and 2) linked from other sources of questionable repute. And time-killing is something I should do less of.

It's a nice place to find answers and guides, enough so that I use 'reddit' as an additional search term if I want relevant, accessible answers that are willing to call out a product's design for being at fault (if relevant) and suggestion unaffiliated alternatives.

But the communities, the content? I'd barely been engaged there for a year. I loaded it a lot, almost every day; I read it plenty. But I didn't actually enjoy it very much.

Leaving it behind completely will be difficult when it's still the best aggregate of user-generated content, at least for now. But actually commenting or posting in it... I'll be fine.

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

Yup. I've been on reddit for the past decade, on and off, through a couple of different accounts (got banned from r/comicbooks for posting a spider-man comic in its entirety), and I discovered so many great books, movies, tv shows through it. I gave therapy a shot because of people on r/getting_over_it, and it's made a significant difference in my life.

It just sucks how much awesome stuff and communities are going to be destroyed because of corporate greed.

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

Nah, I was pretty much just using Reddit with a "its the least bad and more tolerable for me compared to the other social media sites" mentality so I didn't feel a strong loyality to it. Using it til it either imploded or something better came along, or both in this case!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Beginning to? No. That happened years ago. It was clear several years ago that they were taking the site in a direction I didn't like. Around the time that "new" reddit was released along with the official app.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Exact same for me, the re-design and the official app were major red flags but since they kept old.reddit and my 3rd party app (RIF) I was still happy even though the community of reddit was obviously degrading... I feel like having an alternative that is viable that is completely free of the commercial trappings such as lemmy here is something that is super appealing to me. I think lemmy is still in a very early phase and I am glad to be here to see what happens.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I didn't mourn Digg, I won't mourn Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I miss the community and the excitement it brought me to discover something new. That faded a long time ago. I think it’s a good thing to just let it die.

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