Sad to see Reddit go

I’m sad too. I grew up in the early 1970s loving newspapers and oddly loving the classified ad sections (that sounds strange, but reading scattered somewhat classified content still is pleasing to me. That is how my carefully curated Reddit home feed felt.) As newspapers died, I realized that my small metro area had no good written way to interact or hear about local issues. Our local subreddit became my best source.

And I loved reading subs such as /nursing and /medicine and /talesfromyourserver not because I work in those areas, but because they are IRL communities that I count on for my quality of life and hearing their stories helped me empathize with them and (I think) made me a better human.

If I woke up in the middle of the night, I could read something to get my mind off of whatever was running through my head.

Other than paying for my Apollo subscription, making about 25 comments a year, and using the upvote function liberally, I didn’t interact much. My almost 10 year old account is very shy. I was always wary of being attacked or ignored. Oddly, IRL, I’m very apt to dive into any conversation.

I’m tentatively trying to be more interactive here. Smaller groups feel safer.

As someone who worked at a major U.S. newspaper in the late 90s, I think the world needs more people who think the way you have just expressed... valuing local information, empathizing with people outside your circle, and considering how your words will be received. I hope you find Lemmy to be a place where you feel comfortable contributing.
- For now it’s great! I loved newspapers and was a co-editor on my high school paper. Reading and writing have always been favorite things for me to do. Thanks for your time in the newspaper business. Wonder how many here still seek the goodness of that medium that was also largely lost?

The biggest thing I'll miss isn't actually being on reddit but the fact that basically any time you needed to look up somthing you could just google it and add site:reddit.com and find some good threads about it.. it's been a valuable knowledge base.

Agreed, I feel like the social part of reddit is pretty easily replaceable but the amount of niche and specialised information was incredible
Agreed, although I do love that their own search engine was complete dogshit. That said, many of the posts I found really useful were at least five years old, sometimes as old as 12. In some ways it may be good for the knowledge base to update a bit. Actually, are Lemmy posts searchable the same way as Reddit?
Isn't there the reddit archive project?
- I bet there's multiple. I know of the-eye.eu
- Really don't know tbh, could be useful but extremely storage heavy.
I also do this, but even before the recent turmoil I started losing confidence and trust. Brands know about this trick and they know how much consumers trust honest reviews by real people.
Generative AI like ChatGPT makes it easier than ever to flood subs with search-engine friendly posts and comments how awesome product X is...
- True.. look at reviews too for instance. Feels like more and more of them are generated by their owners in different ways to trick people. Same with tracks on spoitfy and so on as well, companies script playing their tracks all the time so they'll end up higher in rankins.
  It's really starting to be hard to find anything that's honest these days.
Here’s the thing, as much as I’m going to miss the convenience, I’m willing to suffer thru discomfort for not having that information readily available. LLMs now paired with web searches should be able to serve such content, and in the interim, I want something like Lemmy, a decentralized collection of instances with user generated content to grow, so that a single asshole ceo cannot ruin it for everybody else, particularly when the content in question is user generated and managed.
Absolutely the best way to get answers to specific things. Avoids any paid blogs and questionable answers. Not to mention perfect for getting actual recommendations and reviews on things.
- The only thing that's usually better is the Arch Linux wiki but you sadly can't use that for everything. :)

Be the change you want to see. Start a community, advertise it, start bring the reddit folks over here.

i miss the memes, the rest of it is toxic

Personally I'm eagerly awaiting Reddit's demise.

I prefer non-corporate alternatives, like lemmy or mastodon. However, if it's going to last, users are going to have to contribute what they can to keeping the lights on, otherwise, if lemmy grows, they'll have to resort to things like ads to cover their costs and it will become reddit all over again.

Well, we are on the ground floor here. Let's find something that keeps the lights on and gives everyone the incentives they need to make a great community!
Perhaps a good start would be a page that gives statistics about the time and money required to run an instance. I really appreciate those who have dedicated their time money and reputation to start things up. Lets find a way to build a better social media experience together.
I think many of us would be OK with a number of different models, donations, non-intrusive ads, reasonable subscription fees, etc. Perhaps there could even be incentives for people who put time into building communities by moderating or other tasks. The important thing in my opinion is that everyone feels they contributed to the structure in a way that they want to keep participating.
Edit: I found a budget page from the donation link on the side bar of the main page of lemmy.world.
At least with Lemmy there's lots of different servers, each with their own running costs.
Each could try a different way of keeping the lights on. Some could run on donations only, some could use small unobtrusive ads on the side, some could do lots of ads. If any server does too little they'll go down due to lack of funding, if any server does too much the users will migrate elsewhere, as it's quite easy to make a new account on another instance and keep following the same communities.
Even if we end up with some large-scale instances with big servers, millions of users and serious money involved, they won't have a monopoly on all the content like with reddit, so the competition should keep them from doing anything stupid.
- That's true. That's definitely why I prefer open source and federated models. No one can have a monopoly.

Yeah, to be honest, I used the reddit mobile app and I loved reddit and I'm also sad to see it go. However, nothing lasts forever.

I'm feeling pretty good about Lemmy, honestly. I wasn't sure how I was going to fill my downtime, but this and mastodon may just pan out for me

I've been on Reddit for almost 15 years and it's just gotten too big and too moderated for me.

It was their crappy mobile UI and app that drove me to Relay for Reddit. Now that they're getting pushed out I'm done, it's going to hurt a bit but it's the right thing to do.

Reddit has always had a massive problem with misogynists, racists, pedophiles, etc. and the staff never does anything about it until there's media attention. They monopolized the web forum medium which basically forced communities to have to exist on that extremely toxic, hate-filled website.

I'd say I'm elated to see it go, but to be honest I don't think it is going anywhere. With any luck, Lemmy will become a vibrant community while all the assholes stay on the site they deserve.

Edit: Also, Reddit is designed to be addictive and has a reputation for it's negative, doomscroll-inducing atmosphere. Then there's the whole race-to-the-top karma system that ensures that Reddit has a monoculture where all the replies are predictable and similar.

Fediverse platforms aren't built around being addictive and in general tend to be more positive and diverse, making them feel large in spite of actually being significantly smaller than mainstream platforms.

Glad to see it go. It was not as useful as it once was and the community had grown very angry and bitter.

Yeah, it's a bummer Reddit went the way it did. But here we are. I'll miss it to a point. Still figuring out Lemmy, we'll see how it goes. I've tried Mastodon a bit as well but it feels more like Twitter to me, which I used for maybe a week years ago. No thanks.

well, for me at least, Mastodon IS an alternative to twitter, though it may change since it is federated (?) with lemmy? And yeah, my mastodon account is just collecting virtual dust there lmao
I never got into Twitter and was freaked out by the content on Mastodon. I just want a nice chill community that shares interesting information/news/facts/pics.
- Freaked out by the content? What was there?

I'm actually kinda glad reddit is dying, this seems like a much better place. Short term it's a pain but long term I have a good feeling about this platform

Life on the net is the life of a nomad fleeing a string of manmade apocalypses.

Missing Reddit is better than mourning what it'll end up as when the screws start to tighten (when you have a captive audience, stage 2 is ramping up the ads).

Your first sentence was actual poetry.
- Their username checks out.

For sure, but what makes Reddit special are the users, the content, and the discussions. The admins add no value.

We can recreate the communities in a distributed and federated way so that we never find ourselves in the same situation again.

This. One thousand percent - this.
We are ground floor. Be active! Make this the community you want it to be!
Pretty sure community admins add value in well run subs, but I take your point.
- Those are moderators, not admins. The moderators add a ton of value, both on Reddit and here.
  The admins (Reddit corporate employees) do not add value.

I left reddit bc the very users that came to reddit pushed all the stuff that made it cool out. Conspiracy was big stuff when I used to go, but the userbase started to defend the corperations and mock conspiracies as if they where fake. Also all the real users got banned for daring to say anything against the norm.

I'm sad too. What's with these tech companies making the shittiest changes lately? I thought I'd be fine deactivating my Discord after their horrendous username change since I'd still have Reddit but now Reddit is going to become lower quality. I'll be active on here and Twitter since its fandoms are similarly, like Reddit, seperated by subtwitters (communities)

What was so bad about the Discord username change? I literally just dropped the number they had forced on me.
- This won't work for a lot of people though.

Eh, I've left other sites. Reddit has been going downhill for years.

Fuck u/spez

I also feel sad about leaving Reddit. It's been a constant in my routine for almost a decade. If I needed anything - opinions, suggestions, advice - about literally anything I'd immediately head to Reddit. It's bittersweet having to leave, but I know deep in my heart there was no other way especially with how it was going and how it was treating its users. But honestly seeing a new, fresh feed actually felt... nice. I don't see much negativity. I actually see people replying to each other mostly decently. There's not a lot of trolling or passive aggressiveness. I feel hopeful that this will be the start of seeing healthier communities and more positive interactions. In any case, if you're here anyway, you're a part of the group of people who don't think what's happening on the other side is acceptable, so it's already a pretty great filter if you think about it.

I love the thrill of discovering something new on the internet, and then sharing the content with my friends.

Reddit substituted that thrill by localizing it through all the niche subreddits, but as time went on it was obvious how dangerous that can be.

I'm personally excited to get back to exploring.

The downside is that the internet of 2023 is not the internet of 2013, and definitely not the internet of 2003 - but that doesn't have to be encumbering.

But I understand that most people don't want to work for that shit. Hopefully the added competition spurs innovation from all over.

It is tragic. But on the plus side I think this transition will be a lot smoother than trying to leave twitter since here you don't have to individually find everyone you want to follow, just show up at the proper forums.

idk, i'm having kind of a hard time. i have a lot of niche subs on reddit that don't seem to be on lemmy. i feel like i did when i first started reddit and just saw all the default pics/music/gaming subs
- You can still use Reddit, just now many users have a motivation to diversify their information platforms. Fediverse does that, and only ask that your new content, discussions, and questions be added in the fediverse instead. To help growth here.
  For example, I curious about SFF PC building and, yup, Reddit already had a sub for that. If I have future questions I'll just post them on /m/technology instead.

I'm glad to be a part of something new. Still confused a little bit that's part of the excitement lol

Me too!
I felt kind of bad last night knowing I might not ever be able to see my favourite subreddits again but honestly, I just moved to Lemmy and so far the community seems super nice and it's nice to be a part of something new and refreshing.
People actually feel like people here, not some randoms, if you know what I mean. Reminds me of the good old days where I had a bunch of forums I frequented instead of just Reddit. I like it!
Im just a few minutes in but I really like the layout in the comments that let's you see which comment someone replied to on the mobile app Jerboa.
- I'm using Jerboa, too! It's quite nice and I look forward to seeing future developments

This reminds me so much of the mass digg exodus of 2010. It's going to be interesting to see how this goes.

Tricky thing is going to be the onboarding process for laypeople. Problem with the fediverse is helping people wrap their heads around servers. People think the server is the "community." And it kind of is, and it kind of isn't. Servers are a community of people, but severs also host capital C "Communities" within them.
This is probably the biggest thing holding back the adoption of the fediverse. This user experience problem hasn't been cracked. Onboarding isn't intuitive.
- The confusion is the signup process and front page
  If when you joined instead of picking a user name it was username @lemmy.world or @beehaw.org then people would see it more like an email address.
  Then when you reach the front page instead of showing server admin picks, it should show a list of popular communities across servers and then the alternative local version with some text at the top explaining multiple versions of some communities exist and you can subscribe to both.

You know it's funny, I thought I would be sad to see Reddit go but I've been lurking here on Lemmy for a day or two and I've realised that Reddit actually was a pretty toxic environment a lot of the time.

I will miss some of the long running in-jokes (broken arms, coconuts etc.) but overall maybe moving on from Reddit is a good thing.

I hope Reddit doesn't die entirely though. It does have some uses, particularly if you need help on a. particular topic. The specialist subreddits have a large amount of knowledge available through their subscribers and I've often turned to them for help on a tech issue when I have something I can't answer with a quick Google search (for example, a weird issue with Sonarr which wasn't covered by the *arr wiki) and it would be great if this doesn't go away.

What I am sad about is seeing the demise of some great 3PA (I was an Apollo user). The amount of work put in by the devs is huge, and this is their livelihood being destroyed. So for folks like Christian I do feel bad.

I'm interested to see how Reddit comes out of the other side of the blackout. Wait and see I guess.

The Narwahl Bacons at Midnight
- Thank you very much for this meme. Gonna try and bury that one deep into my memory so I never forget :D
- Orangered
I've been active on reddit for 8 years and I have no idea what those in-jokes are. Care to fill me in?
- Oh man, idk about the broken arms one but the coconut one is LEGENDARY
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5OOCMsNMhYA

It's how the old saying goes: out with the old in with the new!

But what is the new saying?

I’m sure it’s a pipe dream atm, but I’m just hoping fediverse will have a unified method to look up archived posts across all platforms. Unfortunately, it’s probably very difficult to set up because indexing would take forever given the exponentially increasing amount of content. I used to use Reddit to look up a lot of video game info/memes. Reddit’s search engine was garbage, but at least I could find info from older game guides from 10+ years ago. My main concern is that a lot of indie game devs are directing people to talk about their games on Discord, which is terrible for archiving information.

With Google getting increasingly worse, reddit is usually where I find what I'm looking for in a sea of blog spam. And while I personally think Discord is absolutely great as a chat plaform it is nowhere near close as being a reddit replacement. Everything posted in there is silo'd and not searchable from outside.

At this point I'm wondering whether people will stick to reddit even if they pull a 180 on api pricing and all. The whole smear campaign against Apollo and others just underlines they can't be trusted.

I'm pretty sure most redditors won't care enough to leave. I predict the only people actually leaving will be old guard (like 35+) and FOSS nerds who pine for the good old days of the internet and/or otherwise have ideological qualms with the changes. Everyone else will just grumble and get the ad infested, inferior official app.
- I want the more the merrier as long as we can moderate the more toxic tendencies, but at this moment I'm also pleased that much of the folks and vibes are much like reddit when i first joined

I just logged out of my account and uninstalled the app (Sync) for the protest, only to realize that I needed an ELI5 30 minutes later... Hopefully my favorite/most useful subreddits manage to join Lemmy as well!

What do you need explaining? I am curious.
- I need an ELI5 of how the fediverse and federated networks work. I'm trying to make some kind of guide/explanation (a "dumbed down" version so other people that are highly confused (like at was at the beginning) can understand, but I realized that I don't really understand it fully yet, so I needed some help from ELI.
  But I'm in complete refusal and denial to enter Reddit at least until a week goes by.