Anyone else enjoying the Internet better, now that they’re off Reddit?
Anyone else enjoying the Internet better, now that they’re off Reddit?
Hadn’t realized how reliant upon Reddit I’d become for news and interesting things until after it turned to shit and I quit it. I’ve rediscovered RSS for ex., using reader apps to scan sources directly and read without all the noise—that actually came from someone’s recommendation here in the comments. I’ve found several new sites with deep, knowledgeable articles and discussions, like https://theconversation.com/us (free! No ads! Also discovered through the comments here), and my engagement with articles and their sources has gone WAY up. I’ve stopped reading garbage comment sections, too, and I’m just feeling better mentally as a result, disengaging from the endless, low effort memes/jokes and the mean, toxic comments*. Anyone else?
(Thanks again, admins—really enjoying and appreciating how Beehaw is run!)
Honestly? No. I like Beehaw. But it's less convenient, with less content. I would rather stop using Reddit, but ultimately I'm just doing the same stuff here that I was there. Then again, I saw little toxicity in the subreddits I was in. Also, adult content is far less accesible.
Again though, I'm pretty happy with Beehaw/Lemmy. I'm sure they will only improve with time.
Same here. The lack of content is noticeable and it sucks that I have to participate instead of lurking. 😅
Oh definitely, looking back I did a lot of doom scrolling and I didn’t realize how much it was affecting me. So happy to be off or Reddit
Yeah so did I. Somehow I got a kick / dopamin rush when reading /r/all and all the negative posts there. Glad to be gone!
Yes, Reddit was another corporate tool to make us addicted to.
I've noticed I'm spending more time looking at content that I actually want to engage with.
I've also been on a huge FOSS hyper-fixation for the past week after replacing reddit with Lemmy. I've stopped using Youtube in favour of an open-source front end (Piped), I finally ditched Windows as my main OS and set up EndeavourOS, found an open-source Spotify front-end for desktop (psst) as well as an alternative for mobile (ViMusic).
If anyone has any other open-source software to recommend, hit me up!
For email, Thunderbird has done a complete re-write, and it’s excellent: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/download/beta/
Ummm...
I too have (now) found the new front end! Woot woot!
And now I need to check out ViMusic...
You bad person who has taken more of my time! Thanks 😀
Oh bugger. Vimusic is not Spotify:(
If you're on Android, take a look at f-droid. Kind of like Google Play Store, but for FOSS.
Ive been using Unraid (not FOSS), and there are a Ton of FOSS containers that I play around with all the time. I have one for budgeting, hosting a website, updating Dynamic DNS (website), and a whole bunch of others.
I'd recommend Joplin for notes!
I love it when I'm already using something open source without even knowing it's open source! Joplin is a great recommendation, I've always struggled finding note taking apps that strike a good balance between power and convenience.
AntennaPod - my favorite app for podcasts.
Wow thank you for the vimusic recommendation. And available on f-droid, perfect.
Antennapod for podcasts!
What I liked about Reddit was the balance of content and community. There's nothing on the Internet that hits the same balance for me. Lemmy feels like the early days of Reddit, in that way it's refreshing. But I miss being able to read through dozens of comments.
Not sure if 2011 counts as early days or Reddit, but yeah this feels like that. I’m glad that I’m spending less time scrolling, and more time reading books, articles, and comics. But I do miss the endless stream of content, and putting ‘site:reddit.com’ in my Google searches.
Same herd, however as there are less comments I feel more interested into writing comments, instead of reading.
I am absolutely loving it. Truly does feel like the old days in a good way. Where communities were made of good people and chatted about whatever random stuff they were interested in.
I agree. At first, I felt bereft that I couldn't discuss xyz niche topic. Now, I'd rather find friendly people in whatever topic area.
This might sound weird, but bare with me!
I save funny stuff, goofy things, and positive content in a folder for my son to browse through, which keeps him from looking for content himself in parts of the internet unknown. He loves it, and I had been able to keep the folder updated with a good amount of new images daily, thanks to R×ddit.
However, lately that has changed. Posts deemed as "wholesome" and "made me smile" now increasingly have the edge of a dystopian nightmare ("look at this father reuniting with his son who he thought was dead amidst this war-torn country! Awwww! Wholesome!" and "this teacher was surprised when his students gave him something that his paycheck should have been able to adequately provide but he is not actually paid enough to afford it! Awww! Made me smile!"). I'll find animals doing something "cute", only to realize that behavior is caused by bad or abusive care.
Now I struggle to find things that are actually funny or nice without having a sexist edge, a horrifying implication, sexual undertones, or some kind of underlying dark tone.
I am finding less content here, but the content I am coming across seems to be much more genuine! I've actually saved quite a bit more things than I've seen on R×ddit within the past year.
I've been doing so many things for kbin, it has literally reignited my passion to code. I'm having a blast
Oooh, what have you been working on?
I've been working on a browser extension that makes easier the navigation between communities from different instances by adding an icon to the start of a community name or link.
So for example if you have !technology@lemmy.ml or https://lemmy.ml/c/technology clicking the icon will take you to https://beehaw.org/c/technology@lemmy.ml. It's a small thing but very useful for us kbin users, however it works with lemmy as well.Also I'm working on a bot for kbin, specially made for subreddit mods that want to get content from their subreddits into a magazine, to help a little with the lack on content.
Would love to hear about what kinds of things you've been doing!
Check my response to Lionir above (or below?) :)
I could always add 'Reddit' to a Google search and get information from real people. With the rise of bot sites/articles, this was my way of getting answers online.
Lemmy is great for learning new or interesting things, and I'm glad it's here. I just am not sure how to get answers from real people anymore
I really hope Lemmy becomes searchable. That's an amazing draw from Reddit. Other than Quora, I haven't seen it yet.
Man, I'm enjoying life since I got off Reddit, which was when they first announced the API changes. Deleted my account there and then. Same goes with Twitter.
Turns out all these places just churn dumb online drama that is so inaccessible to the general public, that I ended up being a bit withdrawn because I had all this online drama in my head and I couldn't really talk to folks about it.
Now I'm ironically much more sociable that I've moved over to the fediverse. Outside of the reddit drama, conversations have been much more human. And even with the drama, I've learned to stop caring about such things - everything is in change, it will be okay. Companies don't matter - people do.
This is gonna sound dumb but I love how much slower it is. I use to refresh R/politics sorting by controversial just to lurk and like get angry. I don't know why. But since switching to Kbin I haven't wanted to do that. Even the serverag has been kind of nice, I just click something and it takesonger so I might read a page or two of my book then check back.
It's a dopamine hit. That's why you did it. I'm finding myself reading whole news articles instead of the first paragraph and then two pages of other people's comments about it, so that's probably good for my overall mental health.
Well, I'm enjoying the Internet now that I'm here on Beehaw. I stopped actively browsing Reddit years ago, only ever using it for web searches and the sidebar/wikis for niche topics. The vibes were bad. Normal subs had too many chuds and lefty subs had too many tankies, and comments felt insincere and sarcastic. So my social media usage has increased a little, but I like it here. Good project y'all are running.
Edit: /u/mochi@kbin.social - It keeps hanging up when I try to reply to you. Tankies are people who advocate for authoritarian governments that are "communist" in name only, like Russia and China. In reality they are essentially fascist. Genocide denial is a quick way to spot them.
Normal subs had too many chuds and lefty subs had too many tankies
Yep. I was initially attracted to the users that were present from 2014-2017. Over the years I noticed that the communities I had frequented, both leftist and tech subs, had hollowed out and become shells of their former selves. I spent a year and a half wondering where the users I liked had migrated to and searching for them. Search engines are increasingly useless these days as everything retreats behind walled gardens and SEO gentrification runs wild. I had been a Mastodon user for years and I recently noticed at the time that they implemented the ability to follow hashtags, so I tried that out and started building a feed. To my surprise, I found them at last. In hindsight, it makes sense. The Fediverse are FOSS platforms that are decentralized. Mastodon in particular also opts you out of search engine indexing by default. But yeah, feels nice to be reconnected with the demographics I liked.
What's a tankie?
Left wing person who defends authoritarian regimes.
The term comes from when the Soviet Union rolled tanks into Budapest in 1956 to crush the Hungarian revolution, which aimed to end bureaucratic despotism and place power with the workers. Many Western communists were horrified by the slaughter, but some supported what happened & continued to back the USSR.
Today "tankies" tends to refer to people who support China & Russia, and sometimes even North Korea & Iran, often because they take the view that anti-Western == good, ignoring that these are highly oppressive, exploitative regimes which have nothing in common with typical left wing values.
Some are just naïve about the reality of these governments, others just think of it as an "enemy of my enemy" utility against neoliberalism & Western imperialism, but some seem attracted by the idea of being authoritarian themselves or believe that a left wing future can only be achieved & maintained through authoritarianism.
Online, it is probable that some tankies are working for China or Russia and that others are working for Western organisations seeking to disrupt & discredit left wing movements. Others have just been persuaded by tankie arguments.
As a caveat: sometimes "tankie" is used to describe left wingers who aren't like those described above, but who prefer the idea of imposing socialist reforms through force with a vanguard party at the helm, over achieving reform through anarchist organising without hierarchical enforcement.
Less content less advertisement and less time on the app
It’s goodHonestly? It feels a bit mid for me. I keep reflexively opening the app, and there's still a lot of smaller communities I peek at. I try to keep time-burning scrolling here, but it doesn't feel the same.
I feel like if your someone who enjoys smaller corners of reddit, it might feel odd until you find a place on here. Because there is a higher chance what you enjoy isn't on here yet, or it might not have enough traffic yet.
I was reflexively opening Reddit too. I combated that by putting a link to kbin.social where I had my RIF app on my phone. So the reflex lands me here now.
@SemioticStandard I’ve felt a similar way since I’ve stopped using Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter over the last few years. I feel like those websites have so much petty drama that feels like it’s desperately trying to persuade you to be on the website all day for the next brief burst of satisfaction, and it unfortunately works on a lot of people. I’ve seen people run back to Twitter because people aren’t constantly arguing with each other on the Fediverse alternatives.
You know, I never quite realized that, in fact, reddit does front-load lots of petty drama to keep me on there. I've basically been little better than someone watching the Kardashians or something.
Crap.
You're right - I was one of those people (Not running back though) I sometimes fell into the trap of just going to Reddit /r/popular and scrolling. After many attempts of telling myself "No, I will just have a nice curated feed on home instead, with only hobbies and interests, and I'll only look at the end of the day"
Next thing I know I've gone and clicked /r/Popular again and I'm scrolling down. And it was bad because while, sure, I sometimes saw some cool or wholesome stuff, I also saw a lot of bad. People being cruel, drama nonsense, even more extreme stuff like death and gore. It all bubbles up there in some way. It was not healthy for me to keep visiting it.
Once I ditched those platforms - things started looking up, and I've even gotten way more productive too.
Oh yes, absolutely. I spend a lot more time watching tutorials on YouTube, because I'm not having pointless discussions with people who automatically hate me and dismiss me as soon as they learn my age (I'm ten years too young to be a "Boomer", but to the kids on Reddit a "Boomer" is apparently anyone over 40). Also, of course, I've discovered Beehaw, which is awesome and far more chill. I'm not sure if I got away from ageism, but hopefully?
I've also done a lot more reading. I've finished two books in the last three days, which would have been the norm for me pre-Reddit. Recreational reading had fallen by the wayside for far too long.
got away from ageism
No way, old man winter!
Just kidding! I remember being on a gaming forum back in the early 00s and having a couple of "old" guys on (in their 30s-40s). We'd always give them shit, but at the same time looked up to them and thought it was cool they were still gaming.
They also had great perspective and wisdom to share with us teenage idiots.
Now I get to be the 'old' guy in my 30s. It's fun to engage with the younger crowd, and not dismiss them because of their age, because the younger generations have interesting perspectives too. I'm like paying it forward.
I joked to my friend that worldwide productivity would spike once the blackout started. I notice myself, I love Lemmy but feel less "addicted" to it than I did to Reddit if that makes sense and I've found myself doing more IRL as well.
Also, I hear you on the age thing.
Definitely in a better overall mood without the doom scrolling. Also, haven't had to see a single He Gets Us ad which is very nice.
OMG! For that reason alone Lemmy is better.
Absolutely, I don't miss 99% of reddit but I have to admit I miss the smaller communities. Most game subreddits I follow are small on reddit in the first place so none of them have moved elsewhere, most don't even participate in the protests, the few that do just link to their discord instead. Many of these subreddits have devs commenting there as well so it's not something that you can replace.
I'm really enjoying it honestly - I didn't realize how many great forums were still out there.
I'm waiting for my data request to go through, then I might delete my account. Although there isn't much of a point if they are restoring comments..
You might want to keep your account so you can go back and delete your data as they restore it. I nuked all of mine, but every day maybe three or four things show back up again. It's very strange. Almost like a rolling backup being restored.
I'm glad there are other people out there that enjoy looking for content they want to see rather than having it fed to them from an endless scrolling pipe and from repost bots.
I did until I got into Lemmy and tildes, now I'm mindlessly refreshing a different app now 🙃
Yep, same here 😂
I feel a lot less stressed overall and feel good about deleting my reddit account!
I have become addicted to exploring the Fediverse. I enjoy reading articles and interacting. I even love Mastodon now that I have been mysteriously banned from Twitter (after not using it for months).
It might be a coincidence, but this week I've been sleeping better than I have been able to for months.
It feels different to use fediverse-based forum sites, but they're growing rapidly, and you find new communities/magazines pretty much every day, and even though there's some fracturing going on (need I remind you of Beehaw defederating from .world).
I like this a lot more than the social media-esque approach of modern Reddit. It has very much become like Twitter, with it's endless feed of dopamine-inducing algorithms and whatnot. The blackout is a bit annoying, but I agree with the fact people should protest decisions if they ruin things for people.
I'm liking the experience so far.Definitely a hard habit to break but it does feel good removing my need for that screen time. Since things move slower here I don’t feel like I’m “missing out” per se - you can usually jump into a convo at any time
#Threadiverse is fresh and Vulcan loves how the community can band together in the federation of discussion and link aggregators.
I think I have just been wasting less time. I usually check lemmy throughout the day. But just in bursts. I’ve for sure been more productive and happy with the new normal.
No. I didn't have such a problematic relationship that I didn't control my usage.
I do feel sad about such a great app RiF dying and the deterioration of communities I found great. Also the pattern of googling plus Reddit giving you insights. It was a convenient default which I think will die/deteriorate for a while.
I am excited to see what opportunities arise from this. Very much so.
Since April my social media usage has been 90% Fediverse 10% Reddit, and that 10% is dwindling fast. Once I settled into a corner I liked and got my feed set up to my liking, I found myself logging off in a good mood. This is in contrast with Reddit where I find myself surrounded by garbage content, garbage users, garbage admins, and a sense of feeling stuck because all the alternatives were either dead or regressive. The grass really is greener.
It does feel like conversations are more genuine and less meme-y. I'll be honest, I do like shitposts from time to time.
As do I, but too many subs became flooded with them, in every thread
The downfall of Reddit has increased my usage of the Fediverse, namely Lemmy, but it has also reduced my usage of Twitter as I've moved to Mastodon. I barely used Reddit prior to the API announcement, but now I don't want to use it at all. I still have Infinity downloaded on my phone which I intend to delete on the 30th.
ETA: I pretty much only use Twitter to promote content things I'm doing and that's only because there are people still on Twitter.
It is like a treasure hunt, makes me feel like a kid again.
I have been getting back into webcomics and RSS. Which, you know, works well, because most of hiveworks' comics still have rss. So much amazing stuff to catch up on and then follow forever.
Me and a friend are lazily trying to compile news sites rss feeds into an OPML, too. It's going slow but it keeps us busy.
I like how I have to open my browser manually to browse lemmy
Hell yes :)
I wouldn't necessarily say I am enjoying the internet more but I am using it less, especially the doom scrolling but to be fair I've hardly used much since April and have been watching Star Trek and reading since April instead.
I've noticed an improvement in my mental health overall and I really like how Beehaw operates Vs Reddit with the more polite discussions. Definitely has a positive impact.
How do you set up to receive RSS feeds on your phone?
Search the App Store for RSS readers.
I started using RSS again when I realized that I was done with Twitter. Inoreader has been pretty useful for me. I like that it syncs to my iPhone.
Another voice here for Inoreader! Care to share any interesting feeds that you are subscribed to?
I'm better informed, but I can't say I'm happier. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. I'm frustrated by enshittification and embrace expand extinguish, idiotic and/or evil rightwing politicians and stuff like Musk wanting to implant chips into people's brains. Before, I could go to /r/Eyebleach and other cute/pet subreddits or be entertained by tales from various industries, but those communities are still way too small in the fediverse, if they exist at all, and I end up on the main page even if I'm trying to de-frustrate.
Hah, I’ve done the exact same thing you did - I find myself commenting and thinking more about my discussions, and also turning to RSS feeds for my info. Life is quieter. Simpler. Less filled with bullshit.