I left reddit on june 12th last year in protest of spez’s decision to change the reddit api from being free as in free beer to an unbelievably expensive cost. That same day, I joined lemmy on a now abandoned account.
At first, I had a hard time adapting to lemmy’s significantly smaller community, but I got used to it and learned to embrace it. However, recently I started missing reddit a lot more, and after some consideration, made an account on the (demonic) website.
But I don’t think it felt the same way as before, sure, there was more posts, but they lacked a heart and soul, they were all so generic, as if it lost it’s spark.
Has anyone else that’s been on there noticed anything similar??
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I use it for some niche communities too. Small communities are not infected with bots fortunately. Apart from that, it sucks more than before for sure.
I can’t even use Reddit anymore wince they don’t allow VPN users in. (I won’t turn it off for them)
For me, it was not being able to use a 3rd party app. Accessing reddit through their garbage app is a painful experience. And unless I find the answer to a question via web search that’s a reddit thread, I avoid it entirely.
i stuck it out past the protest up until the day the company went public, and I can testify without any doubt that the downward spiral increased dramatically post protest. It got so bad that even though I go back to check my local sub, I haven’t once felt tempted to create a new account. I began to dread any actual interaction with other accounts
[ F U C K R E D D I T ]
It ain’t the same, and probably never will be…
I wasn’t active there before that. To me Reddit just got more and more and more annoying over the last few years.
“Recreational” communities were banned, technical communities were flooded with only slightly related nonsense, meme and fun communities felt just dumb. A lot of communities als felt unfriendly and unwelcoming. Not within two days, but it eroded over the years.
At one point it felt like a burden to go through my subscribed communities feed. So I stopped using Reddit entirely during the protests and disabled my account (and it wasn’t re-enabled by Reddit to prevent loss of users) and I do not miss it one single second.
During web research I sometimes get a Reddit result. I change to
old.reddit.comURL (I have a strict ruleset regarding cookies and JS and the normal Reddit is just shows an error message and I am not willing to change my configuration) to get the information, but that’s it. Neither do I interact with anything nor do I use any type of account.Same; if I find the answer to a technical question in a Reddit thread by searching Google I may leave a comment for others but that’s the only amount of interaction I have with the platform anymore. And I’m posting my questions to Lemmy exclusively.
Like you I left in June 2023. Haven’t been back though.
They drove away a ton of active users with the whole API thing. Makes sense conversation isn’t the same there anymore. The people posting and commenting left with the apps that make it convenient to… post and comment. Such an own goal by reddit.
I go back to Reddit now from time to time. Mostly to ask specific questions in communities that are niche and don’t exist on here. They are the only good interactions I see that are just as good as here. Elsewhere it’s just different. I’ve not been able to put my finger on why, myself like. But it’s definitely not the same.
Facebookification should be a term. I think every platform that tries to grow at any cost will attract a certain audience that will ultimately make the platform less desirable. Like those spamming pins in facebook comments to get updates on the post instead of turning on updates in a context menu.
I refer to it as the social graph. When a site starts using metadata to map how users are related on a social platform. And then implementing features based on that. It’s not a buzzword but that’s the technical root that stems everything that makes an enshittified Facebookified site.
Unfortunately when reddit started becoming a social graph based site, the technical literacy of the user base also plummet. So nobody knew wtf a graph structure is.
No need to create a word for something that falls within the definition of another word or turn of phrase. Reddit has certainly followed Facebook down the inevitable march of the Enshitification of the Internet.
I would say enshitification is more specifically about a product or service getting worse itself, whereas they were talking more about the audience. The enshitification had very much lonely caused the “facebookification” of Reddit but i would say by their definition they are not one and the same. They can happen independently as well as because of one another.
Touché good man.
Before I do that I usually try to ask the question here to generate some content and interaction. If it’s for some niche community that doesn’t exist I ask the question in a more general community. Usually works out pretty good.
If there was a relevant one here I’d post here for sure. Reddit is a last resort or if I really need a response from someone sooner than later, cause there’s still more eyes on Reddit.
works out pretty well*
thanks
I only use Reddit for one small niche hobby. And given that a bunch of those people still use Facebook, I’m not that surprised they haven’t relocated to Lemmy.
Some things cannot be replaced. Spez destroyed something wonderful. There’s no going back.
there’s still some great subreddits, but many of the mainstream ones have devolved into right wing cesspools
its all bots now. like its been getting worse and worse and i’m not surprised if theres now a much higher percentage of bots in there compared to that time.
Curiously I’m not a bot, but I keep getting banned.
only bots allowed
have you tried digging out your morality centre and posting nothing but propaganda for corporations?
That’s good advice
The only places there that haven’t changed are the tiny game subs, to my limited willingness to use the site. I have checked the niche subs I used to moderate, and all but one is swamped with bullshit. Even that one has changed some. The only ones of those unchanged are the ones I had set to private ages before spez threw his little hissy-fit. The ones that were public are either dead, botted, or just unchecked insanity with bad moderation. Spam everywhere.
I see more racism, sexism and other bigotry than before. Although there certainly was a lot of that back then as well. Also bots.
Yeah, the incel type have overrun the advice communities and it’s a shit show whenever anything that could be vaguely perceived as negative toward a man gets dogpiled. There’s always some pushback, but the consensus ends up being a coin toss whether it’s actually useful or just blaming the victim for everything
Yes, incels and just angry, bitter people everywhere! For a good time, go to a relationship sub and ask for basic relationship advice for an easily solved problem, like how to communicate to your boyfriend that you don’t want to have sex, and watch your post go down in flames.
Yeah, feels like most of the big and medium subs have devolved into karma farms. Zero substance.
