Technology

I think many people were looking for a reason to leave but kind of felt stuck seeing all the alternatives being either dead or abrasive.

Lemmy seems to have captured the soul of what a significant portion of people have already been looking for.

A week ago: Bring down the API costs. I’d have begrudgingly accepted paying a few extra bucks a year for Apollo Ultra.

Today: Nothing. Reddit admins acted like smug children in the face of the Apollo Dev’s good faith questions, then the CEO and admins pulled the stunt of trying to act like the dev threatened them. Then the CEO doubled down on that story in the sham AMA. I don’t want to feed that machine anymore.

I have edited and then deleted all my posts and comments except for a few final ones that will go soon. I will keep the account but only as a point of contact for some people until I get them all contacting my email instead.

It's quite the opposite at this point. Reddit isn't really in control anymore. Rather, something drastic would have to happen to Lemmy to cause me to leave. Reddit is no longer the default choice.

I've only been here for a day, but the lack of homophobia and transphobia here compared to Reddit has been a breath of fresh air. I'm not afraid of posting here like I was on Reddit, where I'd actually have to debate with myself for a minute or two before posting. It's like finally leaving a bad relationship; now I'm starting to see how bad that all was for my mental health.

They’ve lost me for good. Lemmy is a huge learning curve but I’m here for it. It reminds me of an early Reddit right around the Digg era. I’m excited.

i kind of want reddit to die now. people talking to one another shouldn’t be monetized or debased through some spyware algorithm run by antisocial dickheads.

Honestly, I feel like my time with Reddit is done now. You know how when someone breaks up with you and you're in shock that it's over but then you start reflecting and realising everything that was wrong with the relationship? That. I feel like Lemmy, and the fediverse, is a really interesting alternative way of doing things, I'm not the most tech savvy (or the least) and at nearly 50 it's a bit harder for me to pick up new concepts than it was 20 years ago, but I'll get the hang of it, and I actually think that this will end up being a positive change for me. There is so much wrong with the corporatisation of the internet, and this does feel like a viable and genuine alternative to that.

I'll be real: I don't want to go back. I want a return to actual communities and comradery, and an exodus from "social" influencers, on ad-riddled and bloated soap boxes.

It’s hard to say. A change in management maybe? Reddit has already gotten worse in recent years, but with betrayal of developers and users with the API, the way Spez intentionally lied about Apollo’s developer to the public, and with the upcoming IPO, I don’t see how things will get any better. It sucks because a lot of the information and utility Reddit has, I don’t know where to find elsewhere.

That being said, I’ve grown extremely tired of how the internet has seemed to have gotten worse and worse over the past 7-10 years. To me, this decentralization/fediverse is exciting because it seems like it has the possibility of making the internet feel freeing, fun, and human again.

I think they've made it clear that even if they backpedal now, they're just testing the waters to see how much bullshit they can get away with and they're going to do the absolute most they can... Even if they completely took a 180 and said they were keeping the API entirely free, I'd still be gone.

I always found it hard to engage with larger Reddit communities anyway; Lemmy and the Fediverse as a whole are much closer to what I wanted from Reddit but couldn't get, so I'm here to stay no matter what happens. Fuck them.

u/spez fired, paid API policy reversed, NSFW policy change reversed, public apology to christian and all reddit users promoting lemmy who got banned + compensation for defamation, all decisions regarding site administration and API policy permanently democratized, so that this shit never happens again, make the whole thing open source.

I don't expect a single thing on my list to happen, but everything on that list would have to happen before I considered returning.

He accused a small 3rd party app solo developer who was working for FREE of blackmailing and threatening him. Spez would have to step down and sell Reddit to someone with better integrity and morals for me to go back.

Today's AMA was something else. I honestly don't know how a founder of reddit doesn't understand reddit users.

I really like/liked reddit. I've been on it since digg v4 happened. Rif dies, I'm done using reddit on my phone. I'm not installing their app. If old dies, then I'm completely done with reddit. I'm not using new. Chances are I'll use reddit less and less anyway though.

Reverse API changes, fire Spez, and sticky an apology to the frontpage.

But even if they did that, I'm not going back 😂

I've been tired of reddit for a while, too many bots, too many bad mods, too many psychos and trolls. Basically, it's just too crowded. It's nothing like it was when I joined in 2010. The spirit of the site died a long time ago and you can't get it back.

As someone who really only went on Reddit for memes and techie discussions, I think I can say this: for my use-case, there was nothing special about Reddit itself. In fact, one thing I have realized is just how little the nature of the host matters beyond ease of use. Sure, certain formats lend themselves better to certain use-cases, but ultimately humans are social creatures, and even in the most inconvenient of circumstances, we find a way to make it work.

And once you realize that, it becomes less about the medium, and more about the people who lead the discourse. From what I can gather, Reddit lost that discourse a long time ago. And as such, their downfall was only a matter of time.

It won't happen. Reddit is dying. The culture has had a massive shift and you simply don't recover from that. When they have their IPO it will be very telling.

But based on this fiasco, any sane investor would have some serious reservations about the leadership of Reddit but its future in the social networking space.

They pissed off a LOT of people, and those people are the ones that create all of the content.

But look across the social media spectrum. FB, Twitter, Reddit. All of them are just tanking.

We are on the precipice of a big paradigm shift in how we communicate with one another online.

What would reddit need to do?

Federate

If old.reddit.com gets taken down, I'm out for good.

As good as the fediverse is, there has to be a tremendous amount of work to make it easier for non-tech folks to participate. I am excited though, being here certainly feels like the good old simpler web.

TBH, the thing I disliked most about Reddit ended up being the community. It was nice having little niche communities, but wisps of inceldom, hivemind, and that general air of arrogance permeated the entire site. Killing the apps that made the site tolerable to use (Apollo, in my case) was just the last straw. I already used a plugin that deleted all of my posted content from the past 5 years, so I'm officially out, and it's kind of a relief. I'll stick to Discord interest servers and small communities like this one from now on.

The API change was just another nail in the coffin for me. I was running a sober and large local friend group and my account was randomly nuked for "promoting violence". I appealed it with the comment because it wasn't even close to that and then my alt was banned too. Like their moderation/appeals is just three bots in a trench coat. Fuck you Spez.

So yea I think I am officially done. I have some alts but going to either close them or get them suspended during the AMA lol.

Honestly, nothing. I was pretty hopeful to see a change of heart during the AMA, but clearly that didn't happen. Good riddance, long live the fediverse.

• 100% backpedal on all controversial changes announced within the previous 6 months; including any changes announced at the same time as said controversial changes.
• Form a task force of admins and developers to backport all; critical moderation tools and changes introduced since the new.reddit launch; to old.reddit. (Complete this task within 1-2 years.)
• Irrevocably Hard remove with no severance /u/spez from his CEO position and any position of power at reddit.
• Hire a new CEO from the pool of the community team(s).
• Cease all Dickery at once
• CANCEL THE IPO!!!!! This shit needs to wait until reddit gets it's act together.
• Prioritize hiring humans to run reddit AEO; choose them from your MASSIVE FUCKING POOL OF SUBREDDIT MODERATORS! DO NOT USE AI OR HIRE ANYONE WHO HASN'T MANAGED AT LEAST 25K USER SUBS
• Ban all forms of facism; this is including forms of EXTREME viewpoints that grossly exceed reasonable discourse, peaceful free speech, advocate for extremist governmental regulation, violence or oppression of any kind against any group or subset of people.
• fuck /u/spez - Just make sure he never gets a C-Level job again please.
• continue to build reddit out in a way that allows for fair and ethically priced services from reddit (Ads, unlimited API access, rev sharing, premium features that are cosmetic items only, etc)
• Pick up the same "Do No Evil" ethos that Google abandoned; prioritize your users and revenue equally and balance the obligations better.

At this point, it's only going to get worse. It's a very large Venture Capital backed company, on track to IPO.

Large VC/public companies goals will follow more of what we see with "mainstream" sites and social media. It'd be against their goals and their business to have less ads, less agorithms showing what their partners want to see and not what the user wants to see, less bloat on their front end. Even if the CEO wanted to go that way, he'd quickly be replaced.

It's a self sustaining movement of capital now and users are annoyances that they have to deal to achieve their goals.

I'll be honest, I started using redding decade ago because most forums were very niche, specific, with weird to follow rules, very low on users, and reddit seemed to always have a community for each topic I had an interest on. It still does, but the end is approaching fast, and I don't want to search Discord servers, social media videos, or even ancient methods that are alternatives like IRC servers, mailing lists ; search results are useless in Google due to SEO and already affect other search engines

It all comes up to finding one or more sites that don't look ancient or too mobile focused, and if enough people are going to use it and stick to it. Otherwise it'll just be another corner of the web filled with a few crazy users

I don’t think there’s anything they could do to get me to go back.

Lemmy is new yes and doesn’t have as many communities as Reddit does yet, but it’s still well in the early stages.

They’ve been moving to pushing profits for a while as they have been trying to go public, and that began a downward spiral. I was already looking elsewhere once they started putting NFTs in.

Nothing. I don't like how they treat their users and I dont trust them. It's not like they were great and this came from nowhere. Reddit has been getting progressively worse for a long time.

fortunately, we have alternatives and don't need reddit.

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.

I think (hope?) this was the push I needed to get away from reddit.

Realistically I think a lot of its "free speech" policies were pretty bad and encouraged a lot of hate. They were extremely slow to moderate what I would consider really obvious abuse and dogwhistle communities.

Them getting rid of the app I use to browse Reddit the most was certainly the straw that broke the camel's back. But it hasn't been great for awhile imho. Why not go to something better?

I never considered going back. Lemmy is forward. More power to the users and the community and less from greedy shareholders. This is the way.

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.

1. Ban the handful of moderators who run hundreds of subs between themselves, along with those responsible for moderating AgainstHateSubreddits and ShitRedditSays. Both communities in particular have done tonnes of damage to Reddit as a platform.

2. Add clear house rules that make Reddit a better place. Banning things like sexualised content of minors, involuntary/revenge porn, racial hatred, etc shouldn't come as a result of the press generating negative publicity and hurting Reddit's bottom line, they should be basic humanitarian requirements to run a social media platform. I mean look at the reason why they banned /r/NoNewNormal, they quoted some bullshit jargon statistics about vote manipulation and used that as a basis to ban them rather than doing what any sane person would do and forbid medical misinformation.

3. Make the official app actually good. There's a reason why tonnes of people use BaconReader, Apollo, Reddit Is Fun, etc, and why almost every web user prefers Reddit's old minimalistic UI, and it says a lot when a fediverse clone has a better rich text editor than the 'Fancy Pants Editor' of New Reddit...

4. Spez resigns and brings in somebody more like Aaron Swartz in terms of their beliefs on free speech to run the company.

CEO resignation. A big fuck you to IPO? Apollo continuing. None of this will happen though.

Honestly I don't think I ever will. It was already causing me issues in terms of addiction and cutting it to of my life has already had a positive effect. I'm not planning on installing Beehaw/Lemmy on my phone which also limits my time. I know its a small community but everyone has been so welcoming to all the Reddit refugees

I'm still using it because old-dot-reddit-dot-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-dot-reddit-dot-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-dot-old-dot-reddit-dot-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-dot-reddit-dot-com and v-dot-reddit-dot-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.

Reddit was dead from the day Conde Nast bought it. Every day since then was a roll of the dice as to whether they'd attempt to seize more profits and ruin it, or not. This happens to essentially every public or aspiring public company eventually. The need for perpetual growth warps decisions and guts the original mission in the end.

We call it "autosarcophagy" or "self-cannibalism."

As I understand it, Reddit also took on a lot of external capital investment, which only makes the pressure to perform financially even greater. I can't fault them for making the decisions they have to make to keep their jobs, keep their executive salaries, and so on.

Long live the sustainable, community-driven, community-funded future! Nobody can screw this up for us if we are the ones footing the bill.

For me they would need to fire spez and announce a complete rollback on all of their planned API changes. Even then I'd probably not let Reddit be my one-and-only anymore