I came here to write pretty much what everyone else is saying. Reddit is imploding.
I came here to write pretty much what everyone else is saying. Reddit is imploding.
I found Reddit about 6 years ago, took a little while to understand what it was about but when I finally got it, I felt like I had found the best place on the internet. Somewhere I could be my true self without being myself. Every time I logged in, I felt free. Like solo roaming the streets of a new city in a foreign country for the first time. Intellectual conversation, assistance on vague problems, sharing life experiences, advice, watching porn you didn’t know existed, and then slipping out the back door when you were done.
As many here already know, those days are gone. The freedom is gone, it feels like a communist regime and it seems that their success is their downfall. The entire personality of Reddit has changed and will never come back, it even shows in the users. The community is broken, unauthentic and the Truth has left the conversation. Freedom is dead over there. What a shame. It’s like my favorite bar burnt down.
But the thing that really gets me is that it didn’t just change, it became the exact opposite. It has become the exact reason why someone built it, in the first place.
I read that it’s attracting the most new users of all the social apps. Best performing app, which means the end is near. Soon it will just be a limb of the pretend society that we used to hide from behind the walls of Reddit. And for some reason, I just want to see it burn.
also reddits going the low hanging fruits of bots/spammers, of fans and link farmers. while doing nothing against propagand abots.
And we arent even allowed to delete our content it stays up forever lol
Forever could online be a few more years for them. And good, l hope they enjoy my tales of 7 day coke benders.
So where is everyone going because it's not Lemmy. And Reddit still is huge. I don't understand the "it's so bad, everyone is getting banned" but also the site keeps growing.
i went to another forum about social media/evasion it was quite interesting insight how they are doing it, and how they have increased thier bans.
The most vocal does not necessarily represent the majority
prob digg, need paid moderation and more ppl, it looks like a decent reddit clone, will prob have a higher population than lemmy just going off early adopters, reddit just needs competition, once ppl try one alternative theyll be open to trying more like lemmy
I have been off reddit since the api thing so I'm way out of touch with the current content and status.
It just seems odd all these posts about Reddit dying and it makes me think of the people that loved reddit aren't all here on Lemmy, so did they quit all of it or went somewhere else?
No one I know in person switched away, technical or not, they still use reddit. The whole situation is just not adding up.
most of the people here were part of the ban purges done by reddit, and particular over-agressive purge than normal.
Bots. I swear its all bots reposting content from 10 years ago that people might not have seen yet or rewording old posts/comments. Check the account history and posts if something seems suspicious. Usually those people have lived all over the place, are different genders and have lives different time lines... Unless reddit is now all whovians... im calling bots
Twitter had a suspiciously convenient massive uptick in bots that conveniently hid the shrinking user base from investors. I expect Reddit to conveniently have the same "problem".
Xitter is a given, considered its owned by nazi musk. and REDDIT is owned by a nazi lover, spez who loves musks. and the bots make up half of reddit, im not surprised, if it only increased, and its not the good kind of bots, because reddit has been aggressively banning normal users and non-propaganda bots.
everything you said is correct, except replace communist regime with christofasism/capatilism. The rich are tired of the poors again.
You never lived in a totalitarian communist country, did you?
It was a sign the moment they suppressed Luigi news in December, just one week after CEO"s death
Ive been around long enough to know its an inevitable cycle, hopefully federation saves lemmy from the same fate.
That was my next question… is it inevitable? Like the fall of every major power in human history. At some point they break.
Expect some (additonal) really nice privately owned Federated instances to launch after Reddit finally dies. (Embrace - Twitter and Mastodon are far enough along that Bluesky exists, already.)
They will have all the usual features, but also a few surprisingly nice additonal (closed source, added by corporate sponsors) features. It will cost some mild annoyance when visiting from an open source truly free federated instance. (Extend)
Eventually the new features will result in lost compatibility with the rest of the fediverse. Users on the new platform can enjoy the rest of the fediverse, but other fediverse users cannot reach any content contributed by users of the new platform. So everyone needs an account on the new platform, to enjoy it. (Extinguish)
Then the new platform enshitifies. (Enshitify)
This prediction is primarily based on how Google managed "Google Talk" when it joined XMPP. Many feel XMPP did not survive it. I still use XMPP, but many folks I talked to on XMPP do not.
The recipe is: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, Enshitify.
The freedom is gone, it feels like a communist regime and it seems that their success is their downfall.
Much like the current American hellscape, you're thinking of fascism, not communism.
Fascism and communism both lead to a major loss in freedom.
Hehe thanks I’m not to clued up on my ‘isms but I know it’s something I don’t like! I am watching the American story with an outsiders perspective and it’s doesn’t look good. I’ve never been deep into data, but I have seldom gone wrong by reading the people. And the people are spelling downfall, I think it’s further down the slope than people realise and the opposition smell blood. Just like Reddit.
I’ve been on there for 12 years and it’s been a pretty steady decline since then. It was actually even worse before I joined, like a free range cesspool of edgelords, bigots, and adults wanting to fuck teenagers. There was a period where a lot of the shit was chased off before it started heading towards the corporate direction; that was probably when Reddit was at its best
all adults are banned lol, its just a fresh pool of teenagers every year woth just enough karma to start commenting/posting
I made my first account which I forgot like 11 years ago. I only realized it was there, when I received multiple ban messages out of the blue on my emails. This when I first realized they were massively purging accts early this year, after visiting a completely non lemmy forum about evading reddit bansm
I was there from day one.
When Spez implemented user registration, I was like the 5th sign up and I ended up mailing him his own source code because he had his server misconfigured to report verbose errors.
All this to say, the site has always sucked. From day one it has sucked. It has never not sucked.
Edit
I feel like Reddit in general is remembered far more fondly than it ever has a right to.
For those that believe Reddit was some bastion of intellectual discourse, it never was! The very first or second conversation I was involved in (remember it didn't even have users or comments at one point) immediately devolved into people calling each other robots and morons.
It just immediately cast my mind back to the BBS days where there was some cool techy people but lots of people that were just... there... And bored... And stupid.
I didn't never really changed from that formula. Reddit grew somewhat in tandem with overall NA society's ability to just get on the Internet. And it was always just a slice of society, never really any special qualifications or commonalities generally speaking. It's very naive and myopic to think that it was a Tech community. It's every dingbat you've ever met in your life and all the cool people as well in a giant heap. Please don't kid yourself.
Politics immediately took over the site. And as most people know, the dialogue surrounding American politics is most dignified by taking place within a monkey house at the zoo.
Politics was immediately quarantined into its own special sub thingy.
Spez being the absolute moron that he was, implemented communities instead of tags which is what the fking site actually needed. It was very obvious he had bananas in his ears at that point, and he did not want to give selective content control to the users. He didn't even want to implement communities, he was that against it.
They refused to show at the outset that giving users the ability to categorize content mattered. They wanted it to be a fire hose of content right from day one.
Later, they did an amazing public relations job of faking community and faking community spirit, while they had secretly embedded social media managers from outside agencies plugging most of the content onto the front page.
I can't remember the first time Reddit lost its virginity or perhaps had its heart broken, maybe first coming of age... when we collectively rooted out that one of the biggest community builders and participants was actually a plant! I might be wrong but somewhere in the back of my mind I remember the username Sahadra(?).
Reddit died when they killed 3rd party apps and removed mods who protested, but it has been on the decline for a long time since Spez decided that reddit has to be transformed into something that shits money for him
Edit: Insert obligatory "Fuck Spez" here
Suppressing whitepeopletwitter was pretty much which side Reddit was supporting . That sub is back, but I'm betting itd on thin ice
The freedom is gone, it feels like a communist regime and it seems that their success is their downfall.
OP,. you're not thinking of communism. You're thinking of authoritarianism and hierarchy. This is what happens to all hierarchies. Go to almost any for-profit corporation, and the same stifling of freedom will be on display. Marxist-Leninist regimes are hierarchical and authoritarian, which is why they act the same as any corpo, but that's not due to "communism"
Please scroll up to read my acceptance of failure to correctly identify the name of the crappy thing that Reddit is doing. Thanks for the correction, and I’m glad you could still figure out what I meant dispite my use of correct terminology 🤝 I’m really good at other things though haha
Exactly. Not communist though, fascist. Communism is something entirely different.
But its also clear that this happened because to thrive in the capitalfascist system, you need to adhere to the rules:
- strong hierarchy
- ideologically homogenous
- strictly controlled ingress
- constant fear of being excluded
- pushing individualism and competition
Its the same everywhere and it is scary.
Hahaha I should have listened more in history class. I’m being corrected all over the place, but you can be sure I will go read about it and accept my shame and embarrassment for about an hour or so. It’s the “something entirely different “ that is spotlight on my miseducation 🤣 but you know what I meant though!
I don’t think anyone is going to survive Reddit, at some point the rules will get you, regardless of your contributions, age on the platform or any other credibility you have gained. It’s gonna eat itself.
Well, actually that is pretty much what you learn in history class. Its just not true. If you read anything about communism that is not western education, you get an accurate picture. Marx for example.
The idea of communism (and anarchism btw) is to have a classless, stateless society. Both are left wing extremists and incredibly dangerous in their constant, violent fight for human rights, equality and against discrimination. (/s)
Jokes aside. Especially german government owned media and state documentation portrays both as dangerous which is hilarious.
Exactly. Not communist though, fascist.
Was going to say this, lol.
Completely agree otherwise with the op.
I know you didn't likely put too much specifically pointed thought into your phrasing of 'feels like a communist regime', but please do realize you are describing a hypercapitalist, shareholder driven, investment seeking and profligate monetization enacting regime, governance structure, moderation style.
Reddit is now the Pepsi Ad with cops and protesters getting their Pepsis and singing kumbaiyah... and then the after credits scene is the cops finish their Pepsis and beat everyone's heads in.
This is enshittification.
This is the relentless and ultimately brutish and stupid drive to extract as much wealth as possible out of anything, in a way that actually destroys the thing, manifest in an online message board.
Lure in the user base, lock down the market demographic, destroy competition as much as you can, and then squeeze every penny out of em when they have no alternatives.
Fuck Spez, RIP Aaron.
EDIT: Oh also, you are a lemm.ee user, your instance is shutting down at thr end of June, you may want to look at setting up another user account on another instance.
Yes listen, I got it wrong, I took art instead of history and my knowledge of politics and such terms is limited. I generally get my ideas across with emotion and action, but I can’t help admire those who can articulate themselves through words. I also sense the passion in your response, you care about these things, and I’m sure you’ve destroyed a few opponents in a debate.
I like that we both exist, and you shared something that is useful to me. Thank you.
Second part: any suggestions for an alternative to lemme.ee thanks for letting me know. Will I lose all my data?
Hey friend, no problem!
Yes, I am passionate about these things... got one degree in econ, another in poli sci, and a good deal of work experience in the tech sector... fun how all these things are increasingly intermingled and also unavoidable these days, eh?
A lot of people who spend waaaaay more time online that normal people (I'm counting myself in that group)... often forget that most people have not spent the last decade or two having online political arguments... we get used to the idea of people using terms somewhat incorrectly as being a sign that they are doing so intentionally, as a rhetorical tactic to confuse a topic or argue in bad faith... as opposed to the possibility that someone just isn't as well versed in the topic at hand and is more or less using terms very colloquially.
But some of us can be friendly and at least pretend to be normal, lol!
As for an instance recommendation?
I'd go with .zip, my old, now inactive account is still sitting there, good admin and mod team, decently sized, and they're federated with basically every other lemmy instance... which i think is good for a newbie to lemmy, as that way you can learn for yourself if there are communities or other instances you want to avoid or block, instead of having your instance have already done that for you preemptively.
As for... losing your data, like your account data?
Yeah I think that will end up happening. Though it may be theoretically possible to migrate a user account to another instance... I don't think anyone ever actually does this?
Basically, just make a new account on a new instance, and re subscribe to your favorite communities from your lemm.ee account, and/or block ones you don't like, while your lemm.ee account still exists.
Hopefully this won't be too difficult as your account is fairly new.
There... may also be some kind of thread addressing these concerns on lemm.ee somewhere?
I'd think that if an instance is shutting down, the prudent thing for the mods to do would be to set up some kind of sticky or megathread to give general advice and answers to these kinds of questions?
to this i'd like to add that when i browse there sometimes i keep seeing people saying things like "this is reddit libs are everywhere" "this is reddit even slight conservatism will make people call for a death sentence" or "this is reddit you can't say anything non-progressive" and those are getting many upvotes, whilst anything said that'd paint you as anywhere left of centre will get you downvoted.
it seems like the conservatives have taken over and yet they still feel like they're surrounded
Phrasing like that reminds me of all the "this is the commu-social-marxism the libs want" and it's just a picture of current capitalism.
I'm being nice because this person is a refugee, the fact that they are here, describing what they've experienced and witnessed, realizing that it is bad and another place could be better... it means they've got a good head on their shoulders trying to escape the hivemind.
Please don't lose them in the pattern buffer, O'Brien =P
And for some reason, I just want to see it burn.
Technology under capitalism will be used first and foremost for the violent enforcement of capitalism. While extreme censorship is a relatively mild form of "enforcement", it's still a fundamental tool. The hegemonic narrative must be defended at all costs. Just look at the media, politicians, corporations, etc. It's all the same tales.
Reddit died in June of 2023.
it died the moment trump got 1st elected.
Bot posts, upvotes, comments from 1d accounts quadruppled since I'm very sceptical about the projected stats. It's like the first human users setup a social culture and as time progresses new users see the potentials and become the first "parasites" of a settled community. A bot army is just a tool.
It's like the first human users setup a social culture and as time progresses new users see the potentials and become the first "parasites" of a settled community.
We did.
I was one of them.
I had a reddit account before I had a facebook account, back when digg still actually existed, and reddit was basically just trying to be a better version of digg.
It was good for a while, and now its run its course, corrupted by ... so many different things, insane mods, insane political movements, and of course, money money money.
The internet utopia dreamed of in the 90s has crashed and burned and warped into a dystopian panopticon of hate, misery, greed and lies that a younger and more optimistic me was convinced could only happen in cyberpunk fiction...
' I had dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me. '
it feels like a fascist regime
Fixed. Pete boy wants to get rid of the progressive content he deems offensive, so that he gets better showing with the other white techbros come shareholder day.
Spez loves musk, that tells you what reddit is.
This post feels like something I wanted to write. I agree 100% I want to see that shithole burn
6 years ago? Shit. You must be a lot younger than me 😂.
I should actually go see when I joined to verify, but reading through the comments I joined well into the decline already . Social media didn’t grab me like the rest of the world, I didn’t like the lack of privacy and, joined Facebook like 10 years in or so, because I went traveling and wanted to connect with my family. I stumbled upon Reddit basically.
I had searched a few forums for some answers to random things that Google directed me to, but other than that knew nothing about what was attractive about them. I immediately found the real life experience advice on subjects from normal people very interesting and unique, that’s what got me to create an account. Then I stayed for the subreddits of the things I was in to and contributing felt good.
I really liked the fact that you could almost find a subreddit about anything, 5 people in it with the last comment being 5years old, but still it was amazing to me. The authenticity that people allowed themselves to show ( some were definitely lies) but i felt like I was engaging with people on a different level than real life, small talk BS. Anyway I’m probably older than you and if you’ve read this whole thing then bless you, I’m probably just using this as therapy 😂
I read that it’s attracting the most new users of all the social apps
Most of those are not real users and never have been.
By reddits own admission 50% we're all bots. I think it was reported in the tech sub like years back. Reddit wants to be a Facebook clone.
By 2015 it was already a hollow shell of what it had once been, and by 2020 it was spiritually completely dead. Now it's just shocking how far it's continued to decline, far past what I'd come to think of as rock bottom
I really feel like it peaked in 2012 or 2013. Hot on the heels of the "rally to restore the sanity" (which proved the true power of Reddit, but was co-opted and defanged)
Lots of big AMAs but they could be very chaotic.
Allowed content wasn't quite as wild as two years previous but it was still possible to find some real taboo/NSFL/disturbing/subversive communities of all sorts.
The userbase was large but still most of your friends would make fun of you for going there, and your parents didn't even know it existed.
The admin team was still pretty small and they even would make a point to hire users who understood the culture and spirit of the site.
I'd agree that it peaked a long time ago. I joined in 2008 or so because my teenage sons had joined. We didn't know each other's IDs, I wanted to know what they were interested in and found a couple communities I liked for myself. Every year it got less inclusive and the toxicity that was contained to some communities started to spill over. I had already left when the corporatization started in earnest.
Eff reddit. They ban me anytime I say shit about trump or musk.
God forbid you dislike h1b visas, my parents are literally immigrants, no one likes the ppl that come here exclusively to work and send money back home, taking jobs away while not investing any money back into the economy, actively talking shit constantly and claiming that they dont put effort into their work for whatever reason. This is just ppl speaking in hindi using english alphabet in the reddit communtiies.
Its just a way to pay our tech employees less and hire less americans who have the power to quit and go elsewhere without being deported if they dont find a job in 2 months, plus they ofc get better pay than back home so theyll put up with worse conditions than we would making things worse for everyone, why are we even looking to hire outside our country like we dont have ppl here struggling to find jobs in the same field. I had a mild rant and then a one week ban, got perma banned later for alleged subreddit ban evasion, but I think they just wanted an excuse. Outsource excess work not work that we don't have, and they wanna get rid if all the immigrants doing the labor no one wants to do, pulling up on farms.
Now you don't need to say sht they will ban you.