what would Reddit need to do to get you to go back
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?
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.
This lifecycle has a name now and it's enshittification :the cycle of internet platforms starting out as open seamless spaces of discourse to lure users and then welding the gates shut to then appease advertisers and shareholders drastically lowering the quality of life and discourse
I'll miss my niche subs that Lemmy/alternatives don't have the userbase to support, like dedicated subs for each app/game/sub-genre of media, but for things that niche, Discord is a reasonable, if not ideal, alternative.
For all the "front-page"-style content, it seems like the Federated model is likely better than any centralized option could ever be, assuming it can scale and keep costs covered.
I'll need to look into how to start these things; maybe if I make a space for my topics of interest it will encourage others to join?
Overall, I'm hopeful for the future, and happy to be off Reddit. My first day here has pretty much convinced me to delete my 12½ year old account, but I'll wait until July 1st to see. Maybe they'll retract all the API changes. (Although after the AMA, I put that at near 0% chance.)