Been thinking of making a post like this for some time, apologies if some of this is not completely relevant: this community seems more like it’s about Reddit the platform/product than Reddit the social “thing”, but I’m sure a lot of people have similar experiences to mine. Maybe on some instances more than others.
Here’s the one of the last comments I wrote as a regular Reddit user, on the eve of the blackout (almost a year ago to the day), under a post titled “Will your participation in Reddit change”:
My comment
I will keep searching Google for Reddit help threads, but as a cultural and news aggregator I think this is the end for me. Maybe I will check it every so often. On desktop. On the old site. Until they sunset that too.
I wouldn’t be against using the first party app if it wasn’t so awful to use.
It’s a massive shame that we’ve all collectively agreed that Reddit is the de facto way to create open communities online. There were so many forums that could fill the void left by Reddit for things like tech and art and they’ve all shut down in the past decade.
I try not to be too negative about the evolution and constant growth of the userbase of the site and of the internet as a whole, but I’ve really felt like things are moving in a direction I can’t even be cautiously optimistic about lately.
I think of all the mod tools that will be defunct. The commonly cited example is that people who comment excessively on adult subs are automatically barred from commenting on the teenagers subreddit. Sure the admins can whip up functionality to do this, but this site was built on custom tools and custom CSS and all that. I think the API was one among the many secret sauces that give Reddit this staying power. These sites and forums I talked about - I used to hop from one to the next year after year. Until I found Reddit a decade ago.
I like that I choose my subs and that I don’t get algorithmically ordered sludge designed to game the algorithm on my homepage. Yes the sensibilities of the lowest common denominator redditors are gamed by people posting, but that’s (in my opinion) acceptable.
Frankly if they kept the old Reddit Gold pricing (4 bucks per month/30 annual) and gated unrestricted API access behind it I would have been inclined to finally give Reddit money. I use it a lot, I don’t mind paying now that I can afford it. But something about how it’s all going down really doesn’t fill me with confidence.
I’ve been trying to write a post about this for a while now, but I haven’t felt like it was relevant. Thanks for asking here
Reading through this is a bit funny, in retrospect, seeing how Reddit-centric my understanding of the internet had become at the time. I am happy to report that I have checked the home page maybe a half dozen times since the blackout, instead of once or twice a week like I expected. I suppose the disgusting state of the heavily astroturfed worldnews sub was a big part of it as well: for me Reddit was the one big online platform where the average visible user didn’t seem to be very misinformed about Palestine (at least not by default), and it was frankly very sad to see where it got in the past few months.
I do miss Reddit, I haven’t been able to replace it outright. I’m from Lebanon, and Lebanese Twitter is (if you can imagine it) even more of a toxic cesspool than regular Twitter. I’m not on Facebook (also cesspool here), I’m not on Instagram - my point is I don’t get anything about my country on ostensibly user-curated social media. /r/Lebanon was very far from perfect, but it was nice to get a trickle of local news with users who were more in line with my own politics. The local news outlets focus on a lot of irrelevant crap, the sub’s news feed was a bit more interesting.
One thing I loved about that subreddit was that users with more mainstream views in my country (eg. transphobia-as-default) were allowed to spout their bullshit in the subreddit with little mod pushback (if it’s just JAQing off etc, not harrassing people obviously). Then the regulars would dogpile on that user’s post - very refreshing! And very validating I would imagine for anyone who is used to hearing this shit everyday.
I was applying to be a mod to help keep the sub moving, at one point, but hey. Maybe that headache was never worth it. Still, I felt like I lost one of my online homes.
More generally, I have enjoyed my first year on Lemmy, although the experience has been lacking in many ways. For one, while Reddit has a reputation as a meme cemetery, the memes here are generally a bit moldier. But that’s okay. The fact that there’s fewer posts I think isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, I think we all preferred Reddit’s slightly slower homepage in 2013 than the one we left in 2023, that would regurgitate more and more from the bottom of the barrel if you were willing to keep scrolling.
I’ve toyed with opening a Lebanon community here on dbzer0, having opened one on FMHY that nobody used. But it wouldn’t be the same, and I wouldn’t know how to populate it. I posted maybe 2 non-question posts on Reddit in my decade+ of being a regular user, but I wrote tons of comments. It also helped keep my English sharper, I think.
I’ve reactivated my old Instagram account and it’s pretty ass out there. The ad/post ratio is just egregious, and they’ll just serve you random posts from random pages. I want to see my friends goddamn it, isn’t this what your platform is supposed to be for? For those of you who don’t know, the app will also send you a notification once or twice a day suggesting you look at “today’s top reels”. I have never watched a reel of my own will, fuck off.
Point being, the main platforms people use online haven’t been up my alley. I can only hope the zoomer dumbphone pushback keeps expanding, and that social media starts being seen as something for older generations. Wishful thinking?
This is just a post about enshittification, everyone’s favorite word, but every time I think about it for more than 2 minutes I can’t help but miss a simpler internet. Some part of me was hoping it would kickstart me “growing out” of spending this much time online per day (not everyone spends a ton of time online), but it hasn’t.
Also every time I ask something longer than 20 words on Discord some middle schooler will reply “yap”, even in the channels designated for questions. Discord has had its uses (yes I know there’s privacy concerns), but it’s hardly a replacement for Reddit, or forums. Both of which are/were searchable. But enough yapping from me.
Thoughts? How has the exodus been for you? Is this how Digg users felt?
That’s not what i meant. Replies are just more a cesspit over here and often not worth the energy needed to read them.
Often there is no room for debate.
And that’s for sure hurting the platform.
You’re not exactly putting out a “convince me otherwise, I’ll consider what you have to say fairly”-feeling energy yourself.
My experience has been utterly different from yours, in fact your initial comment there is one of the least “cordial” comments I’ve seen. I’d posit you’re seeing a response to the way you write your thoughts. People aren’t interested in engaging with stone walls, but they will try to take a sledgehammer to the ones they think are in the way.
And that’s before I address you suggesting there’s a “middle ground” in the lgbtq+ debate. There is no “middle ground” when it comes treating people like people, and treating them in the way they need. That is, a way that doesn’t make them want to end themselves.
“As is mine” is a harrowing line in your initial comment. You are not under attack. In any way whatsoever. You are not being asked to give up, a, single, thing. The core argument is that people want to exist, and they want to be happy. That costs you nothing, at least in terms of “identity”.
It displays a seriously concerning lack of understanding of the changes that the sane people in the debate want enacted, or more charitably, that you’ve mistaken the insane ones for the ones that are considered reasonable.
If I ask for water so I can live, you don’t respond with “but how much do you really need”. You give me as much as I fucking need.
I will agree that there are lgbtq+ individuals on the fediverse that are far away from reason, because the world has severely damaged them with what they’ve been put through. And there’s more of them here because the fediverse has several corners that caters to them.
Remember, this is the group of people that has the highest suicide rate among any demo. Even among the ones that are alive, a lot of them are not gonna be ok. In response they can have overconsructed coping mechanisms, strenuous relationships with reality, etc. They can go off at the most innocent things because when the whole world feels like an enemy, its easy to assume that every person that gives you trouble, also wishes you dead. Even when they really, really don’t.
Hence you can’t look at these people and interpret all your interactions with them in aggregate. A lot of them are angry, but not really at you specifically. They have very good reason to hate “normal” society, because by default normal society treats them in a way that makes a significant portion of them choose non-existence over bearing it. And then people like you walk in and mention a “middle ground” like this isn’t an immediate matter of life and death, that needs solving ten years ago. Yeah. You’re gonna get some shit thrown your way.
Lgbtq+ people are being hurt all over the world. The ones that aren’t, almost certainly have been, and are still healing. But no-one who is thinking clearly is asking you to take their every word as absolute truth, or throw them a perpetual pity-party. If they are, they are almost certainly among the hurting.
Obviously no-one can demand the whole world treat them with special coddling, but it’s also not at all weird to see people who have been treated unfairly their whole lives, have trouble with finding where the line of “fair” actually lies. Or need a bit of extra kindness because they are in a place where they’ll interpret disdain even when none is intended.
When someone who can’t tell an actual enemy apart from someone who is just trying to change their mind on something they are wrong about, it’s better to just make sure they know you aren’t malicious. For someone like that, it’s more important to show them not everyone who disagrees with them about something, also wants them dead. In fact it kind of has to happen in that order. For your point to get through, they first have to trust people enough not to close up and stop listening the second they sense trouble. One way people become like that is when words have been used to hurt them, a lot, and often.
And honestly, reading your wording, you don’t exactly seem innocent on that front. To me, you read either intentionally unkind, or carelessly dismissive.