I’m not trying to convince anyone to go back i promise, quite the contrary actually cause I think spez plans to just decrease the cost of the API and act like it was a bargain deal sacrifice while not solving any of the issues at all
But, when I think about it even if spez did actually listen and reverse all changes I don’t think i want to go back to Reddit cause from what Ive seen Lemmy is just friendlier and less :Be Corporate Friendly: I would honestly love it if Lemmy did a project like r/place one of these days so we could see what the internet is actually like instead of what happened in 2022 (I really did enjoy what a bunch of communities did but when the mods started abusing their powers to make it corporate r/place lost so much meaning) but i am curious since i’m not going back is there anything Reddit can do to make you go back to Reddit?
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.
Lemmy in it’s current state feels very similar to reddit did ~14 years ago.
I am just smitten. I’ll never go back.
Exactly. Lemmy is great, and is essentially all I wanted from Reddit without the Reddit
Exactly! And like McDonalds, McFapper is loving it. Now bring on the NSFW instances.
I’ve only found one NSFW community so far.
Your name checks out with what you said 😂
Could not agree more.
This describes me perfectly. Most of the alternatives I saw previously just ended up being coopted by the alt-right crowd who got chased off of Reddit. Lemmy (so far) represents what I want from an online community.
Its so weird that the alt right hasn’t tried to seize Lemmy yet from my experience it was always the immediate fate of Reddit alts in curious if the alt right is too busy over at truth social (or rumble) oh could we please get a youtube alt next that would be so great
The structure of the fediverse (lemmy/kbin/mastodon etc) makes it really difficult for alt-right and troll instances to find a meaningful presence.
Truth Social for example is just a mastodon instance, but everyone immediately defederated (blocked) them, so they have no reach. Hateful ideologies want a large audience on which to inflict their bullshit, and the federated model makes it really easy to cut them off.
The alt-right is so strange it used to be that they wanted to be popular so they would invade subreddits and start cultivating hate until either they took over the subreddits or got expelled (almost like how a virus spreads actually)
But now its like they decided to pretend to be popular and are kinda imploding a bit
They are out there… I was doing some exploring of instances the other day. If you look at what instances are blocking it’s pretty easy to see what is out in the fediverse.
You want to know why the alt right haven’t seized this place and won’t? It’s in the name. The fediverse. We’re all a bunch of feds!
Or it’s because Lemmygrad fought them off.
Sadly its both welcome to the secret FBI army, IRS branch you’ll get your paperwork and stapler in the mail in 21 business days
21 business days? Now I know you’re not a fed!
So you know you can trust me with your SSN :D /j
Ah shit I didn’t know we were patriot front
Peertube is a good federated alternative to Youtube, it also connects to the Fediverse and there is a central search engine called Sepia Search, which makes it easier to find content on the different instances.
Was looking at Peertube earlier, but it seems much harder to pick an instance than it was with Lemmy or Mastodon for me.
I have to agree with you on that I saw a comment earlier about the people who left Reddit being a loud minority but something feels off about that
Lemmy’s community feels so familiar I sadly just can’t find the right words to describe it though
It feels oddly nostalgic. I think it reminds me of the fun I used to have when I first joined reddit.
Rather than just mindlessly scrolling with a couple “hehs” or a blowing air out my nose slightly faster than normal.
It reminds me of forums I signed up for as a teen.
Let’s hope it stays that way and grows!
I agree. Now don’t tell the others
Spot on. Lemmy is how the Internet was supposed to be.
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.
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.
Use the report button if you see any of that too, we will not tolerate it here.
Reddit thrives off of letting homophobes and transpbobes ruin everyone’s day, because it drives up their engagement numbers. We aren’t going to allow that here.
That’s a real relief to me. I see enough of that living in a very red town in a red state. Online communities are one of my only ways to talk to people who don’t want me gone.
There are lemmy instances hosting that kind of scum… but your instance can defederate (block) that whole server. BeeHaw does it pretty proactively.
This is so relieving tbh its mindboggling to me why all these massive sites never took a stance against homophobes/racists/transphobes like this. its been proven to hurt profits when hate is allowed on any site as people dont like being abused like i swear it cant just be that the CEOs were complacent although its sadly a dumb enough reason to be true.
Also been loving your app Dessalines its been great so far :D (if you tab out of the screen while writing though it does delete text but that aint a real issue though lol)
Thanks! Ya spending any amount of time on reddit or in youtube comments is a hair-pulling experience.
Huffman was always a white supremacist libertarian (and one of those ultra-rich preppers
Oh my lord was he one of the idiots that tried to get a study on how to force a militia group to serve them after an apolcolapse? I remember that story from years ago
Yep. My personal “favorite” quote from that article is incredibly telling of how spez thinks of himself.
“Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.” - Steve “spez” Hoffman
Wth no wonder he stayed off the site I think half of Reddit would drop kick him for being in a thread
It’s so interesting to me to hear things like this, because I have to guess you’re in completely different subs than I was / am in. I never saw anything like that, but I also don’t recall seeing very much “cesspool” on reddit either. Of course, I only went to 4 subs regularly and a total of maybe 15 ever?
Which is kind of the hard part for lemmy is the “niche” stuff (like photography is much smaller here, and the main photo sub is like one or two pics per day, so we really need something like ITAP or photocritique), multitools, etc.
The worst of it, by far, is of course the front page. But some of the subs I can think of off the top of my head where I encountered trans or homophobia are r/Science and even r/Pathfinder2e (if you know anything about the Pathfinder universe, this might seem mind boggling). There was pro LGBTQ+ support in many of these subreddits, but there was always a comment or a debate or whatever in every queer related thread.
The subreddit for the state I live in, while generally supportive, has numerous comments debating my right to exist as a queer person in most threads even vaguely LGBT related. It’s frustrating knowing I could basically only find refuge in LGBT subreddits. Everywhere else, there was always someone making a jab or starting an argument. It’s exhausting.
Wow - I’m so glad I never got into the front page at all, or looked for subs based on location. I always thought that was a Facebook thing (and I don’t use facebook). I suppose the only place I would have seen anything like that was in changemyview which is where you go to have an argument anyway.
I joined my state’s subreddit to keep an eye on local happenings. Our news outlets aren’t the best, so it was a good way to hear what was going on. For the most part, it was a good community. But there was always a handful of people who had to argue equal rights every time it came up and it was disheartening to see the same hate every single time.
Apparently I should get into photography, because your experience on Reddit sounds so chill! LOL
Well, we just argue a lot about sensor size / format, is Canon or Sony better and how many thousands of dollars we spent on cameras and lenses. Many people have opinions. I guess it’s not attacking anyone’s identity, unless you think Sony Fanboy is a critical part of your person. Kind of like the IT OS wars lol.
But yes, that and like multitools - we’re arguing about Victorianox vs Leatherman… These sorts of subs are pretty chill, and not a lot of drama that I can remember. I think things that are about something you’re a fan of, rather than location or very broad seem to be a lot better experience on reddit. And sadly, these are the communities I mostly access on my phone via RedReader and that I either would be spamming or just confusing many members if I said come on over to the lemmyverse. There are some standalone forums from long ago though that still run, so I might have to go over there if I care enough.
I’m all for a good debate. I frequented the technology subreddits since they’re related to my work and I love a good OS or language debate. I’ve learned a lot from hearing other people’s arguments. So that all sounds like friendly banter to me!
I do think the smaller the subreddit, the safer you are. Most of my best experiences are in those subreddits. I just found myself wishing I could explore Reddit a bit more without walking away bummed out by all the hate. It’s hard finding a good subreddit.
I can imagine that - I just never really felt the need to explore reddit, which might be my loss, and also why I don’t get a lot of “how reddit is”. I’m painfully out of touch for being so online (never did facebook or twitter at all), and really prefer stuff that is open…
So I’m aware I have a weird view of the online world - but I guess it’s also why I’m incensed about killing third party apps. I hate the change away from protocols where you could choose how you interacted with the net to products where the UI changes on a whim, usually for the worse, and you’re “running in place” just to do today what you did yesterday. What pisses me off the most is there’s no reason the world needs to be this way - Companies sold new cars every year without swapping around the pedals ever other year. Most home improvements are improvements but aren’t changing the UI for the house. LED bulbs don’t actually require an app for instance. We’ve had chainsaws for decades and even the electric ones work the same way and look about the same.
I don’t know why computers and the net can’t be like that. Why can’t I use Thunderbird or Vivaldi while you use Outlook and Firefox but we aren’t cutting each other off? This is why I like the fediverse. It’s why I liked IRC, and e-mail. It’s one of my main reservations about even otherwise good tools like Signal.
And it’s not like usenet providers or e-mail servers don’t make money. But back to my main point that people won’t pay for access, though I think if we went back to something more like usenet where you paid for “all the groups” rather than on a per site / per forum basic might work or again get bundled with your ISP like email and usenet were.
For me, you are perfectly describing my move from Twitter to Mastodon. It was such a relief and I am currently in a much better headspace. All because I moved to Mastodon.
You deserve some good internet points!
Oh geez. Twitter is such a nightmare. I had to quit last year when things started getting bad. I haven’t dipped my toes in Mastodon. Has your experience been much more positive? I’m scared I’ll end up stuck in a bad server!
I’ve been on Twitter since '09, so I’ve seen a few things ;-)
But, I friggin’ love it! The people I follow (and follow me back) on Mastodon, are super chill. It’s like S-tier! It truely is.
If you are worried about being stuck on a bad server. Mastodon nowadays has a “covenant” which basically revolves around the following points;
- Active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia.
- Daily backups
- At least one other person with emergency access to the server infrastructure
- Commitment to give users at least 3 months of advance warning in case of shutting down
So as long as you pick one of the servers there, you are pretty much golden. The server list can be found here: https://joinmastodon.org/servers
I am on mastodon.online (one of the servers by Mastodon itself) which has been a blast, but I can also vouch for mstdn.social. The admin of mstdn.social, “Stux” is a super great guy!
Is my understanding correct that from certain instances of Lemmy I can also access mastodon’s federated links?
Actually, as long as the Mastodon and Lemmy servers are federated with each other, you can access Lemmy from Mastodon (and the other way around). If they aren’t federated yet, you can ‘force’ that federation by visiting a community via the search engine. That should start the whole federation process, unless of course either one of the servers has decided to ‘defederate’ with the other server.
But in Mastodon you can use
@community@server
in the searchbar, and you will see all the responses on Mastodon. So for example,@lemmy@lemmy.ml
or@Technology@beehaw.org
.
That’s a relief to hear. There’s been a Twitter shaped hole in my heart since I quit. I think I’d been a Twitter user since my freshman year of college and I’m in my 30s now. LOL
You’ve convinced me to give Mastodon a chance! Thank you for your reassurance. It really does sound like what Twitter should have been.
I can completely understand that hole in your heart ;-) You’ve basically been on Twitter as long as I was. LOL.
You’ve convinced me to give Mastodon a chance! Thank you for your reassurance. It really does sound like what Twitter should have been.
It really is and you are welcome! 😊
This would be huge. The first instance I joined on lemmy has been down now for a few days. Don’t even know how to reach the guy that runs it. It was not some super small one based on the site recs at the time.
I’m a sysadmin by trade and considered just building my own but don’t have the time to solo run it should it gain traction
Yeah! I can also imagine Lemmy introducing something like that. As a somewhat ‘soft’ endorsement of a particular server.
I think setting baselines like that, would improve servers a lot and sets out standards within communities.
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 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.
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 agree, though I’m a bit scared that the large, sudden influx of people will mean there will be an influx of bots similar to the number of bots on reddit, and that would be a mess
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.
Bingo. That’s me too.
I never realized just how tired I was of social media until Reddit blew themselves up. I had already quit Zucc’s armoury of social media tools a few years ago. I’ll be glad if I don’t ever have to go back.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
It’s a pipe dream but at this point that’s the only thing that would bring me back
Open sourcing won’t do much because the value of reddit are its users, not the code.
They would have to join the fediverse to rebuild to trust but of course there is 0% chance of that because their focus is $$$.
I agree with you that the feeling of no keymaster if very liberating.
same here, that’s the only thing that would make me even consider coming back.
also just better management in general is desperately needed, spez needs to go.
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.
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.
I think one of the issues for me is they’ve revealed in their pricing exactly how much value they think there is in all the content we have created over the years for free.
Someone suggested that their immediate business plan is to fleece all the AI developers looking at that rich history as training data for their new models. It may well be that spez and co are hoping to have a couple of crazy years of taking that cash and then bail out to leave the ruins of Reddit to the spammers, haters and bots.
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.
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.
Funny, I was just having that discussion with someone.
I think the problem is all these platforms think the platform is the value and not the content made by the users.
And of course, since they have the best platform, it’d be inconceivable that anyone would ever leave because they’re the best.
Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, and Twitch are all doing exactly the ‘value is the platform’ while taking a massive shit on the creators and users that made the platform have any value in the first place, then acting confused why people are angry about how they’re behaving.
No actual human gives a crap about the platform: nobody goes to these sites to go to the site, they go there for the content from someone they like.
This is exactly correct, and herein lies the problem: how do you monetize content creation from people you don’t pay?
Louis Rossman said it best: when you look at a lot of content platforms, you realize their business models don’t make sense. The people managing these companies are riding on VC money knowing full well there isn’t any long-term return. They want to cash out and dip.
This is why I feel like a Federated, user-maintained system is probably best for the long term sustainability of a community. People want a place to enjoy something or someone? Let’s make it happen, by our own means
Agreed. The community MUST own it’s own platform or else they’re just renters that can be evicted the minute someone thinks they can make money from them.
This also isn’t just an online issue (though my view is US-centric). There’s been a lot of talk about the decline of a ‘3rd place’ and its loss impacting social gatherings. You have your house, work, and then your social spaces, and there’s a very big lack of social places where gathering and relaxing are acceptable without also having to engage in buying permission to be there.
This carried over into a lot of people going online to find the same social gatherings, and then seeing the gathering places turned into profit centers for the owners without any discussion with the users of the space, and now they’re finding that they don’t have anywhere to go be social, and the online places that filled that gap are now vanishing as well.
Now I’m not a sociologist (just a simple country computer janitor), but it strongly feels like a lot of the hyper-tribalism and aggressiveness that people are exhibiting are a direct result of having all the social spaces torn away and turned into profit centers, with zero regards for the people who visited or contributed to them.
It just makes everyone more isolated and willing to hop on to whatever the next big ‘social trend’ that some algorithm drops in front of them, and I think at this point it’s pretty unarguable that what the algorithms are doing is not always benign. You gain a place to belong, even if what you’re belonging to is abhorrent and toxic.
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.