Technology

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.

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.

Spez resigning and free API access to all third party apps as it was before.

Honestly though? Lemmy is reminding me of old reddit and I'm enjoying it so who knows if I'd even go back if this site keeps growing at the rate that it is.

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.

if reddit becomes federated I'll consider subscribing

while i have been liking my time here, i can’t say i’ll never go on reddit again. i’d like for lemmy to become my primary browsing platform, but there simply isn’t my favourite niche communities on here- in particular r/namenerds, r/battlejackets, r/posthardcore, and all the bullet journalling subs. unless those communities migrate, i’ll still go on reddit (yes, mobile) to engage with them, since those are some of my favourite hobbies, even if i’m hoping to spend more time with lemmy.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

become a 501(c)(3)

At this point, me run out of alternatives worth trying. Just signed up for a lemmy instance today, and liking what I'm seeing so far (even if communities are quite a lot smaller than I'm used to at the moment), but there are other sites that might scratch the reddit itch that I'll try even if the fediverse stuff doesn't take off. Reddit has shown that that they're a) greedy, and b) incompetent at being greedy. And I'm not going to contribute to them again until I'm well and truly out of other options.

• 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.

Reddit as an entity is just frustrating. Not just the recent debacle, but the pattern of getting slightly more awful with each passing minute. I'm hoping I enjoy my stay here well enough that I never feel the urge to go back. Unfortunately, it's less about what Reddit can do to get me back and more about what the Fediverse can do to keep me.

I liked seeing and engaging with unlimited new things with each passing moment. It would not be very satisfying for me to lose that. Time will tell.

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.

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.

I haven't left reddit, but I am sure I will be spending more time here in the fidiverse than sites like reddit and twitter.

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

Not ruin the site with pointless features and keep old reddit/third party apps the way they were.

Probably need to open source at least their core software and algorithm. Allow third party app to exist. It would be best if they turn into non-profit, but I am not against for-profit organization.

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.

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.

bring Aaron Swartz back to life and make him the CEO

Nice try, /u/spez…!

But seriously, I guess none of any further actions to try to fix the whole thing would change that bad gut feeling of being held as a fool that I now have. Mostly due to how they treated Christian Selig.

Pay me 1 dollar for every comment and 10 dollars for every post

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.

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 🤷