I never liked Reddit. I used to only use it for an hour or less a day to follow tech and IT communities.
But now, after the blackout, I can't leave Lemmy. I'm on it about 5-6 hours a day to find communities, read news about Reddit blackout and Lemmy's future. I think going back to Reddit will be good for me. It will take less of my time, especially after a lot of people quit Reddit.
Edit: Thank you for your nice answers and advice. I think all the good people of Reddit are here at Lemmy and kbin.
5-6 hours seems excessive... If you have other issues that are the root cause, maybe deal with those first, but if it's a self-control issue (which it was for me sometimes) there are great browser plugins to block certain sites after a certain amount of time.
I use LeechBlock for firefox and after my "self allotted time" it locks down reddit and lemmy for me so I can't access it any more.
There are similar plug ins for other browsers, I can really recommend it!
Ps: But to answer your original question, from an ideological standpoint, definitely stay on lemmy.
If you go back to Reddit you will probably end up spending hours reading about the protests anyway. Even if you stopped using all social media, chances are you're going to end up reading and thinking about the latest Reddit drama anyway, because it's making a new headline on at least one of the tech news sites each day.
Lemmy, kbin and the wider fediverse have attracted a lot of my own attention recently, but that's because I find it interesting and genuinely exciting for a new community to form and develop. Because of that I don't think it's a bad use of my time, so long as I still keep life generally in balance. Perhaps you should ask yourself the same question.
You know, with Reddit, I didn't even have an account. Just browsing for a bit and done. Now look at me. Account made, leaving comments. What's next? Making posts?
I think the fact you use it more than you would expect is expectable with the fact it's new to you and the blackout is still going for half of the subreddits, looking at the stream - that's captivating. Also Reddit already has estabilished communities while here is the Wild West, revolution is... revolving. We're here for it.
But never think you're missing out, whether you'll spend here 5 minutes or hours. In the end does it really matter you know what Reddit CEO said this morning? And this platform is decentralised and open source, whatever wouldn't happen there will always be an instance.
If you feel too distracted by this place (don't blame you, I've just joined and I'm like wow) and you feel that it will be better for you, feel free to look at Reddit
...but maybe actually take a break from both. while exciting, social media can be a bit stressful and if you feel like you could be doing something productive, dedicate your time to that. if you just want to waste your time a bit, maybe try sketching or a little code - it feels good to create something
I suppose each to their own, but I wasn't an intensely committed redditor outside a few select communities, and that mostly recently. I mostly lurked and used the site to aggregate news and gather a rough idea of the major zeitgeist reactions. I may continue to do that occasionally - like I occasionally do with facebook these days.
I can't see myself really wanting to comment on the selected forums I was participating on - and have found myself reading posts, thinking of a response, and consciously choosing not to post because I just don't want to generate content for reddit any longer, even in my limited capacity.
I would aim to find a healthy way to use Lemmy instead. Given you said you usually only follow it I might make an argument that there is just a massive it event currently Happening on Lemmy. As such your following it. I don't know that going back to Reddit will make much of a difference to you if you already have those habits. Try to limit your social media use and find a healthy way to interact with social media.
Personally, spez's decisions have turned me off of it entirely and I've decided to hard close that door. I'm not going back. I've had more fun on kbin in the ~24 hours I've been here than I ever did on reddit, and I can feel better about where I'm putting my time, energy, and engagement.
Same. I needed to get off Reddit anyway, the content has been a slow downward slide for a long time and I’ve been spending way too much time reading inane comments from teenagers…
I know what you mean. There’s nothing wrong with being young, of course, but I really cut back on my interaction on Reddit when I realized a while back just how many people there are teenagers or in their early twenties.
Even if they’re not actually trolling, there’s an awful lot of attitude motivated by ignorance. It got really frustrating being downvoted for simply explaining some actual verifiable fact about the early development of JavaScript.
Basically when posting on Reddit for last year or so my inbox is just people queuing up to tell me I am wrong. It is not good. only a couple of niche subs seems worth it.
You're probably more active now because it's a major event and things are changing. Would it be any different if it was some breaking tech news happening that was interesting and Reddit was like before? Maybe you find Lemmy more involving because the content is different than Reddit had been providing.
I mean I'm not gonna tell you what you can or cannot do, but if you wanna support the protests, you should use an ad blocker when using reddit, that way they can't get ad revenue.
If social media addiction is the problem, you might wanna go outside.
Is that also the case with third party apps like Apollo? I mean, at least until the 30th.
For the record, the last time I closed the Apollo app was on Sunday night, and haven't gone back since, so I'm asking on behalf of others who might feel the temptation to go there again.