Technology

I'm Sorry Reddit, my old friend. There's no turning back now. Farewell.

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.

There's nothing they can do to get me to come back. They've shown their cards, it's obvious they don't give a shit about the community built around the site. They will always choose profits over us. I've wiped my entire 13 year history on Reddit. Fuck u/spez

Honestly I really don't see much of a future for profit-driven social media. Time and time again we've seen that power over communication is just too much power for an individual company to have. The fediverse makes a lot of sense, but I'm not sure if it's the ultimate end state. It would be very nice if it were

I'm done.

The subs I moderated have either gone dark, or are going dark in the next ciuple days.

And with that I let the mod teams I was a part of know that I am moving on. I hate what reddit did to the community, and my time feels better spent where it will be appreciated.

I've heard for a lot of time about these federated social media (lemmy, mastodon...) and I really like it. The interface is not bloated, no bullshit notifications, no ads, no damn algorithms that try so hard to spoonfeed me taking 60% of my feed, taking place for the communities I am actually interested into.

If I could put it into words, lemmy feels a lot like early 2010's social media, fewer people, less stakes, just a bunch of people enjoying some topic (it is ironic, since I started to use Reddit because it seemed to be the only mainstream place left where you can talk with real people). Anyways, I am enjoying it, more than "What would Reddit need to do to get you back?" I would prefer more posts like "What should Lemmy improve to keep you here?".

For me, it is too far gone at this point. The events of the last ~week just highlighted something that I was willfully ignorant of in that it has not been the website I joined back in 2007 for a very long time. VC-backed focus on monetization, profit, return on investment, and ipo (and everything that comes along with that) has ramped up tremendously in the last few years and I think this is now the tipping point of Reddit doing a Digg.

It's a bummer, but not shocking or surprising as it follows a long line of exactly the same pattern, across tech. I'll have fond memories for sure, but have accepted it and am ready to move on to something new.

Also, this is my first post. Happy to be here!

That's quite simple, actually. It would need to go back to what it was. It doesn't really have to be open source, it just has to be a site where its CEO's only focus isn't milking money but rather improving the site

Fire the current CEO and get a new one.

if reddit becomes federated I'll consider subscribing

I don't think there is anything they can do to get me back anymore. I have a lot of issues with the culture that exists on that site, and that's not something that can be fixed by walking back the API stuff or removing a few problematic individuals.

There’s nothing that could male go back. I’ve wanted to leave for years but there was never a good replacement. Here’s to a good future for Lemmy!

I'm wiping my account tonight and will be doing an account delete bit right before the black outs.

I honestly don't think anything would get me to go back. I don't think I'll miss my doom scroll app. Lemmy feels much more easy to actually be apart of, and my account can interact with other fedverse stuff, heck yeah.

The only subreddit I'm going to miss that I haven't seen an alternative of is r/196, so I hope that pops up.

I’ll go back to Reddit if Spez eats shit publicly and Apollo is uncanceled.

Return in all aspects to how it used to be in 2014 or earlier, but it will never happen because enshittification cannot be reverted.

That includes the bloated inefficient new design that includes an intentionally hostile mobile website that shits the bed on 3G connections, the echo chamber machinery, random layout shifts, NSFW login walls, automated censorship and shadowbanning, the privileges for the big subreddits and the big sponsored powermods.

I haven't completely left, and to be honest the only way I'd completely leave is if the niche communities I cared about died (or were active here). That being said I've noticed my reddit usage has plummeted over the last week. I used to basically live on that dumb site and now I only check it maybe once or twice a day for a couple minutes

This was the final bloodletting of my trust. There is no going back. That's why I deleted all of my content and my account

Implement ActivityPub, or I I suppose another protocol like Nostr, Ostatus, pump.io, or Diaspora*, and join the fediverse. Preferably publishing their code under the AGPL, but even if they kept it as non-free software I'd still probably get back on. I suppose if they did end-to-end security truly decentralized, like Scuttlebutt or Status, I'd do that too.

Im leaving beacuse it's too far gone to ever recover.

Too late, I've invested too much time, money, and effort into setting up my own Lemmy instance so I can share the love of open source and federated projects with others. What happens if lemmy.ml is overloaded? Go somewhere else and set up an account, and you can reduce the load on their servers.

Start with canning Spez. Dude's been a walking liability for them for at least the 12 years I've been on reddit, and everyone knew it back then.

Pay off all my debt. And take me out to a fancy dinner. Wine and dine me, Spez. Then I'll use reddit again. (I would still use lemmy secretly on the side)

Too late, found something better.

For a while I thought "fire Spez", but after giving it some more thought....

NOTHING! and I'll elaborate on why. The community of people makes or breaks social media platforms (see, Twitter as prime example). If the owner(s) aren't interested in the well being of the community / communities, then I have no interest in being there.

They would probably have to drop their plans of going public for me to reconsider. Of course I know this is never ever gonna happen in this reality…

Honestly, if the key smaller communities that I'm in on Reddit don't migrate away to another platform, then I don't know that I'll even fully leave. Assuming the site doesn't completely implode at this point, of course. For as many subs as I subscribe to, I really only find myself on a handful each day.

That said, spez has really soured my taste for Reddit with the AMA. I only really use old.reddit on desktop, but I've used mainly third-party apps over the years, like most people, I would assume. Even if they lowered API costs to be more reasonable AND third-party app devs decided to come back, they're still limiting NSFW access to third-party app API calls anyway, so a lesser experience either way.

At the end of the day, I'm going to be where the community is, be that here, kbin, or whichever one rises up and has staying power and growth over the next couple years.

I'm not gone yet and I don't know if I actually will be. No matter how frustrated I am with the platform and have been for years now, I don't feel that anything else is ready to replace it.

I wish Lemmy the best but I have my doubts as to how well it'll take off. I remember when Digg died, Reddit was already popular enough to make jumping ship a no brainer for just about everyone. Lemmy is not there yet, and I don't know if it ever will be. It's much smaller than Mastodon/Fediverse, and that's been very slow to pull users away from the even more hated platform it wants to challenge. Can Lemmy achieve the critical mass it needs to succeed?

What's mainly keeping me on Reddit is certain small subs for niche hobbies. Only on the largest platforms is it possible to find people who share my microinterests. Reddit and Discord are it, and Discord really only works as an ephemeral chatroom, it's terrible for news or threaded discussion. Not to mention how much of a problem it is that Discord isn't indexed by search engines.

Nothing. They've burned too many bridges and have lost all faith the community had in them. Without a community, they are nothing.

I absolutely loved reading wholesome content like this. That's a great idea! We should collectively work together to shape how we want our future year to be!

I'm honestly not "gone" yet, this is my first day on Lemmy. I'm still a little uncertain. Here's what's on my mind:

• Reddit isn't, and never has been, profitable. That means that things we don't like are only going to get more and more likely for them to do, because eventually investors will stop paying for them to do the same thing, which we mostly do like.

• Lemmy looks like a good alternative, and I'd really like to see reddit die faster so all the content I like moves here.

• At the same time, decentralization isn't a silver bullet. It doesn't mean my experience on Lemmy will get better, it just means the individual server I pick has a lot more control over me. Will I lose my identity / get booted off the server because someone decides to stop operating it? Or doesn't like a comment I write? Etc etc

It couldn't. The enshittification has long since begun.

At this point in time, they have a lot to prove to get me to go back. The site itself has already felt like a lot of recycled content is coming up more and the conversations in some of my favorite subs have already become less deep and engaging. The recommendations and discovery have become kind of subpar and don't even get me started on the native app and website. I work in the development field and the treatment of the third party developers has been garbage, unless there is a major overhaul of the leadership and some really sincere apologizing to those that have mistreated, I just don't see an avenue back at this point.

Even if they revert the API changes, I know It's only going to get worse when the IPO happens, so I don't think I could ever come back. I also like the federated approach more anyways 🤷

Reverse the api changes, convince Selig to keep Apollo going, fire spez. Than MAYBE.

I'll go back if Reddit:

• Makes it feasible for 3rd party apps to continue on the platform. This could be a revenue-sharing agreement, a set price that's not prohibitively expensive but still fairly compensates Reddit, a flat-out exemption from the Enterprising Pricing, doesn't matter. These apps have been around far longer than Reddit's own app, and provide tools (and general polish) the Official App has yet to match seven years in. They deserve to stay and to make a living off of their continued contribution to the community.
• Restores parity access to NSFW content via the API. It's essential for moderation bots to combat spam, it helps 3rd party apps stay afloat, and it serves a large part of the community. I get that Reddit wants to sanitize the site in preparation for an IPO. I get that advertisers are wary of NSFW posts. That's not an excuse for removing it from the API. The official ad-supported Reddit app will continue to serve up porn, and the currently proposed API prevents 3rd party clients from using ads anyway. Reddit is making a bad-faith argument that harms moderation bots' ability to do their job, and cripples any 3rd party app that isn't driven from the platform based on price (including 2 "accessibility only" apps they were forced to allow during the AMA).
• Apologizes to the Apollo dev for Spez's libelous statements, and starts a good-faith negotiation with developers to open access for things like the enhanced query system that the 1st party app enjoys, usage statistics that will help devs improve API request efficiency, and revenue sharing where devs can monetize using ads or any other method they choose so long as Reddit gets a cut.

But even if I go back, it will be with one foot out the door. The dam has broken, and I plan to campaign hard for alternatives and switch to whichever one hits critical mass first.

This is kind of like the Wizards of the Coast / OGL situation for me - just enough to make me consider the alternatives, and realize that the alternatives are a better long term solution.

Reddit has become overrun with crypto scam spammers, and they don't appear to be making any attempt to control it. We'll see if the fediverse can do a better job.

I've been enjoying reddit less and less for a couple years already, the site is too big and there is so much junk on there to wade through

it is refreshing to see a smaller community elsewhere, and I like the concept of a fediverse more and more

I'm going to replace the subreddits I used to visit with communities and people on lemmy, mastodon, etc

reddit served its purpose (a digg replacement back in the day), now is the time for a new replacement

Be usable and intuitive on mobile, including NSFW, no subscription (one-time purchase is ok), no/limited unobtrusive ads, no excessive data consumption. That's what the 3p app I used was.

I don't socialise on Reddit. Whenever I do, I almost always regret it. But I do kill time while in queues, or on the bus, or on break at work. That needs to be on mobile. Or to 'kill time' at home. That needs to include NSFW. And I want to be seeing the content I went there to see, not miles of ads and promoted posts. And I definitely don't have the budget to pay for it over and over and over. Mobile data is also capped and very expensive here.

It's still usable on desktop, but... I don't use desktop on the bus. It's still available on mobile, but... I don't want to load 5 different resolutions of each video on my limited mobile data.

I wouldn’t because I like it better here. It’s easier to engage because it’s not so huge and there’s less toxicity. I like the software better and that nobody is trying to push certain content in front of me or trying to get me to spend more time on the site. I’ll still go to Reddit on occasion, but that will be because it’s useful for finding information. It won’t be because I want to be part of that community.

Speaking of me, nothing. I erased my history, deleted my account.

Reddit should go his path chosen, don't hold back travelers.