Is there any one else who feels like their life has been disrupted by this whole debacle with Reddit.
I really do like KBin and Lemmy and the fediverse on the whole, but development is still young and the userbase still growing. KBin is still basically early access, and Lemmy is buggy. I spent alot of time in reddit and I'm feeling the pain of trying to ween myself from it. Just wanted to here community perspectives and see how other's are taking it.
For me, I feel a bit of a sore hollow spot for what reddit used to be and watching it implode is not fun for me.
Reddit was something unique and personal to each user. Some it was new, some it was the only place to find specific tech or other advice that wasn't corrupted by ads and algorithms on goggle and other big corporations.
Reddit was my way of disengaging from world news before I knew about anxiety, and how things could affect me and become personal even though I had no way to help world events. So I used it to personalize my mental diet, if I was creative I could sub to many craft subs like leather or metal etc, it's where I went to get other perspectives on movies and content that I didn't fully understand.
End of the day, is all that possible still on Reddit, kinda, but it's going away, and they pushed me personally to leave as I could see it was becoming google/Facebook, ad algorithms to push what people pay for or get paid for. So time to reset.
Become involved, I'm way more involved and adding to discussions on the new sites I'm on. Everyone adding comments and posts and perspectives and opinions are building this up from bottom up.
You are the future, make your perspective part of the future by helping guide these new sites to something we can be proud of.
The whole social media collapse has been crushing for a recluse like myself. I mean, I might as well come out straight and say that. I'm not tactile and I don't socialize, so the internet is my main source of communication with the outside world. I'm guaranteed to find people who share my interests, people who "get" me, people who don't act like I came from Venus when I finally open up to them. When that all folds in on itself, or mutates into something that would make the monstrous works of HR Giger look like HR Puffnstuff, yeah, it's kind of painful. Like living through your own digital 9/11. That sounds dramatic, and I mean it to be, but yes, losing social networks that were trusted sources of discussion has been like a sledgehammer to my mental health.
TMI, sorry. I do leave my house when needed, but it's more business than pleasure. (There's very little pleasure involved.)
I've been on Reddit for 14 years now. I honestly don't know where else to get tailored news and discussion on niche topics, particularly ones too niche to establish a userbase here on the Fediverse yet. I expect I'm just going to be out of the loop on things from now on as I live like a hermit in the mountains.
Yes absolutely. I miss so many subreddits so dearly, and some of them aren't leaving reddit and I feel too guilty to go back there even though I'm a PC user. I'm really sad about everything, and I feel really lonely and awful. I've been super active in both the /kbin and Artemis communities, and they're both wonderful, so I'm making new friends, but nothing's going to fill the void truly.
I mean, it sucks, but to some extent -- I had hoped not to this degree -- life was going to get worse when Reddit shifted over from growth to monetization.
And I used Reddit when it was far smaller and less-featureful than the Fediverse is today (not to mention with worse uptime...it used to die on a regular basis or start acting weird as the devs worked on scaling it up early-on.). It didn't have subreddits then, much less all the niche stuff that exists today. Riding another network through growth is okay with me.
Oh absolutely, Reddit's value was partially due to its years of user curated content. It'll take a while to build the alternatives up to a similar level.
One benefit at least is that this shift allows for changes to be made that Reddit never would have done.
I still have my Reddit account with ~20 multireddits and countless subs. I enjoy the new experience on kbin and Lemmy, but I also miss my niche subreddits and the weird awe that I get occasionally from the mainstream subs.
I hope the typical offsite humour and the in-depth discussions will also migrate to kbin and Lemmy.
In the meantime, I urge everyone to create magazines for their niche interests to prepare this platform for more exiles and give them a homely start 👍
I felt this way at first but the more time you spend away from reddit the more you realise how toxic of a place it is. I initially had planned to stay on there because I have communities on reddit that don't exist here. But I just couldn't do. The vibe on kbin / lemmy is just so much better and it feels refreshing to explore the internet in a new way. Reddit feels stagnant and gross in comparison now.
I feel it for sure. I’m kinda using it as an opportunity to take a break from socials for a bit to be honest. I’m excited about kbin and lemmy but I’m also happy to have the clunkiness of the sites be a reason for me to be outside more
I feel like someone who has just woken up from cryo-sleep or a soldier who's finally come out of the jungle after twenty years.
The 90s were great for the most part. The Internet was free and open, and there were zillions of forums and personal websites. I call this period the Genesis of the Web.
Then, things got bad. Microsoft monopolised the Web with its shitty IE 6 browser, websites were riddled with malware and popup ads, and you needed an antivirus and an anti-adware on your PC to be safe. I call this period the dark age of the Web. Most search engines died out, and Google became the king of search.
A couple years into the new millennium, Firefox and HTML 5 came about. There was hope again. Mozilla was fighting the good fight to keep the Web open, and new Web development techniques were developed (jQuery, CSS3, Dojo toolkit, Ajax became easier, etc). As a Web developer, this period was very exciting. You just couldn't keep up with the new stuff. Firefox's market share kept increasing, and new websites appeared on the scene: myspace, youtube, thefacebook (basically, proto-social media). Google released their Chrome browser, and IE was dying a slow death. This was the golden age of the Internet.
Then, things got bleak. Apple released their iPhone, and Google released Android. By this time, most personal websites were gone, social media was on the rise, Firefox became less and less relevant, and by the end of the 2010s, the Web had become just a shell of itself. The 'Web' was now just a dozen websites owned by powerful corporations. Engagement algorithms were developed to keep people hooked, and Google analytics tracked everything. Privacy was gone for good. This is the period we are currently in. I call it Corpo Web or the Dystopian Web. Some of us did not want to participate in this version of the Web, so we lived in a separate world (what we call the small web).
Finally, someone came up with the idea of Fediverse; platforms that can communicate with each other through open protocols. Corporate social media platforms are falling apart (reddit, twitter, facebook, etc), and Fediverse is exploding. Each Fediverse instance has its own personality, and it reminds me of web rings in a way. There is always something new to discover, be it a new community or a new instance of Lemmy/Mastodon/etc.
What I would love to see though, is a way to Lemmy instances more unique (custom designs, chat system, games, etc). This would encourage people to visit other instances. Also, we should be able to categorise communities and group them together (like a traditional forum).
I have a hole in my heart, absolutely. I moved over to kbin on June 12, and I hoped that my grief would have subsided over the following 2 weeks, but I feel just as displaced.
I echo what others have said that at least here in the Fediverse, it feels safe enough to comment without getting trolled or dogpiled, so I have been much more engaged here than the last 6 years of my time on reddit, combined. But there are barely enough users here to even have a repartee. 😓
Yeah, I'm gonna miss the level of community engagement from my favorite subs. NCD, RoughRomanMemes, and Shermanposting. We likely won't get that level of activity here for a long time. Also gonna miss updates from r/Ukraine, though I get most of the big news from ISW, the human interest stories shone most on Reddit.
I still have my reddit account to keep track of a few niche communities that can't survive the move, but I haven't commented or doomscrolled since I left for Kbin.
Reddit in general has been in a fairly steady state of decline. Certainly recent events haven't made things any better, and I've been openly critical.
However, I more or less gave up on participating on Reddit during the pandemic. The sheer number of people constantly online at that point while actively in the era of brigading, having any kind of counter opinion on Reddit ended in you just getting shamed and downvoted. I'm not talking about unpopular, right-wing stuff, but stuff like having an opinion on a hockey player leaving a team for another was enough to garner literal death threats.
I more or less resolved to stop actively participating when I went to a support forum and got buried and (again) shamed for trying to get help with a question. Instead they dangled the answer in front of me. The answer, by the way, wasn't possible in any of the ways they were trying to suggest, as the method no longer worked. So not only were they actively being jerks, they weren't gatekeeping valid information. Forget it, why bother?
Reddit WAS amazing. But like everything else, it gets ruined. I don't want to be all negative, but history has consistently repeated itself. Hopefully the Fediverse can withstand it's own weight, especially if big players like Meta plan on getting involved. I hope it's robust enough to withstand, I WANT it to be robust enough.
I actually kind of feel the opposite way. While Kbin is young, and will certainly be more optimised with time, it works more than well enough to satisfy my want to interact with the world the same way I would through Reddit - though interactions feel more personal. Just in this thread I recognise a couple of names of those I've chatted with before.
Additionally, moving to Kbin finally gave me a chance to do some spring-cleaning on my browsing habits. Where I used only stick to my subscribed feed on Reddit, I find myself much more on All on Kbin, exposing myself to more (though I do stay away from NSFW, unlike what I did on Reddit).
Unfortunately, the blond piggy was right; it'll all blow over.
Most of the people getting riled up over reddit's antics will remain there out of convenience and/or habit.
It's like with video games. People shit on EA and other AAA developers but still preorder their games.
At the end of the day, all of the internet's content trickles from platform to platform, it's just a matter of where in this chain you are.
It was just a location, and it got burnt out like every other spot for the past ???,000 years. I go where the shitposting goes, everything else will follow. As it always does.
I've just realised that I haven't viewed a single tiktok video since leaving reddit. So I guess I haven't missed them. I never posted anything on reddit, I mostly lurked - as a passive consumer of other people's content. That's the biggest difference I guess. Here I have several different logins on various servers, and I've posted a few times in niche communities. It feels like a mini adventure!
You're not alone. People have a natural propensity to form groups and create connections with other people. Historically those connections have evolved from small and localized tribes to communities, and eventually to cities, city states, and regional/national cultures. It's in our DNA to want to be with other people, even if we joke about how we sometimes do not. We are a social species, and that quality has played a critical role in how our species developed.
We have all done this before, and we'll all do it again and again. Our interests change over time. We move to new communities. Where (and with whom) we spend time changes as we live out our lives. The way we socialize, and the people we socialize with, will change many times. The communities with which you belong never really stay the same. Change is genuinely one of the only true constants. Rather than facing it as an impediment or a loss, we can view it as an opportunity.
Change is difficult, but it can be a very good thing. Change is really the only way we grow. If we retain what's familiar and comfortable then we will never experience anything new. You're better than that. We're all better than that. This is an opportunity that is so rarely afforded to a community like ours to do something different. Don't lament on what was lost, but seize this as an opportunity. Let's make this new community everything you'd hoped the last one could be but wasn't.
This isn't a time to think about what has been lost, but the greatest of opportunities in front of us. Seize it. Seriously. The sooner we turn our other cheek on where we were and focus on where we are and where we can be, the faster this community will begin to truly emerge and transform from being quite simply a refuge for former Redditors, to whatever it is that we want to make of it. It's all about perspective. This is an opportunity for us all. Let's make something of it. Let's do it together.
I'm generally a lurker but have been more active here on kbin. Lurking for 11+ years on reddit I've seen a lot of changes. It was only getting worse for years by the time this all went down. I saw the same thing over and over and over and over. I'm liking this space a lot more but I don't feel like my life has been disrupted, at least in a negative way. I do spend less time on "social media" but everything feels more organic here, at least so far, and I'm happy with my choice to delete and move on from reddit.
I've been on reddit for more than 15 years at this point. I definitely feel like there's a big gap now. I think Kbin/Lemmy will be able to fill it eventually, though.
My "life being disrupted" is a tad dramatic, but it's certainly changed my downtime scrolling habits. And there are some niche interests that I can't participate in the discussion of anymore since deleting my Reddit account, because there's not the user base here to support the communities. Mostly, I can't wait until KBin isn't just a place where the most active conversations are about Reddit. I think RedditMigration is the most populated overall magazine, and I really hope that's not a lasting situation.
After 6-7 years on reddit via Boost. It really was a big part of my life and it all falling apart really bothers me. Especially since it helped me mentally so much on so many levels.
Also I'm having a really hard time dealing with all the alternatives. I'm trying to get used to kbin but while I know it's still the early stages of the product, as a UX Designer, it just doesn't feel good to use at all at this stage. And it's still a big question mark if the communities and niches I enjoyed on reddit will even grow or thrive on any of the alternatives. Which again really sucks.
But despite the disruption it's caused, fuck reddit and fuck spez. No going back.
Fingers crossed that the alternatives grow and thrive.
First, I’m still new here so having to scroll past all the other comments to post a comment is lame.
Most relevant and importantly though, if you feel like your life is “disrupted” by the actions of a social media company, you might want to reassess your life.
I mean, are you serious? Think about the nature of this “issue”. Anyone of this mindset (aside from the developers who were not given enough time to deal with changes) strikes me as exceptionally childish.
What people should have a problem with is the vast number of bot accounts posting content to drive engagement. Reddit is trash. It’s full of click bait and rage bait just like very other “social media” entity.
What’s awesome here is the segment of people searching for smaller more supportive communities built around their hobbies and interests.
Hail to those who’ve been maintaining Vanilla Forums, etc and creating communities in the fediverse. You’re doing it because you care and believe in passions shared by your community.
I have a small business and about 20-30% of my traffic/sales came from Reddit. That's completely disappeared. I've seen a huge impact on my business already
I've just realised that I haven't viewed a single tiktok video since leaving reddit. So I guess I haven't missed them. I never posted anything on reddit, I mostly lurked - as a passive consumer of other people's content. That's the biggest difference I guess. Here I have several different logins on various servers, and I've posted a few times in niche communities. It feels like a mini adventure!
I was very active on Reddit for a long time so it's really hard for me to let it go. But let it go I will. They're fully on the path of enshittification and I'm not going down that one with them.
I feel more like we're experiencing a new epoch of the internet and society really. It's not just reddit changing it's API, it seems that everything is changing around us and reddit is just one facet of that. The pandemic ending, the rise of AI, new threats of war, fentanyl cheaper than soda, and unprecedented corporate greed are creating a world that we haven't seen before and it's strange for everyone.
I pretty much only engaged actively with niche videogame subreddits and absolutely zero of them have made the move over to kbin. I don't know if they'll ever pop up here unless there's another general exodus from reddit. Will the starcraft community move over? Barotrauma? Mechabellum? Monster Hunter?
And what about the niche dumb memey communities like DesirePaths, or toolgifs, or StupidDoveNests? Do those even have a chance of cropping up unless the mods over on reddit decide to unilaterally move their communities over?
I genuinely don't think so, so I'm a little lost right now.
I lost faith in Reddit after Aaron Swartz died. The biggest lesson I learned in HS was that knowledge was real power and trust fundies will always try to take access to it and that’s what’s going on in the social media sphere these days.
I definitely get it. Reddit provided a gateway into a lot of communities that either sparked my interest in, or gave me information on the various topics I'm interested in. Hell, some of the communities provided me with support during some rough times
From a developer standpoint, Reddit was the first platform that I used which had an open API that I could play around with (such as Python + PRAW) so seeing the (what is basically) a shutdown of their API felt like a stab in the back. I never ended up creating anything substantial for Reddit, but my heart goes out to the devs of the various third party applications who practically had their hard work and labor snuffed out for no good reason.
But as the years started to pass, Reddit became a place that I started to withdraw from. There were countless times where I'd felt like there was just no point in engaging anymore with people, I'd step into a conversation looking for a well thought out argument just because it went against the "hivemind" and that pretty much always turned out to be a mistake. The gaming community on Reddit was especially terrible for this...
That's fine though, I walked away learning that I don't actually have to put up with "fights" anymore. If I think that someone is responding to me in bad faith, I'm just not going to further engage anymore.
There are some communities I'll miss though, and while I do not think I'll completely withdraw from them if there are no alternatives, I will more or less just be an observer rather than an active participant.
I am a bit surprised however as to how far the drama with Reddit has reached. My mother asked me today whether I was aware of what was going on, I was even more surprised to hear that she uses old Reddit and she told me she knew that they'd be going after that next and when this happens she'd be dropping Reddit as well. I briefly brought up the Fediverse and gave a very quick explanation of Mastodon, Lemmy, and Kbin (and how they can all talk with each other) - I don't know if she'll pop up somewhere on the Fediverse anytime soon but maybe one day.
Oh well, time rolls on. We'll all just have to mark this chapter, turn the page, and move on (if that is what you want of course) to the best of our abilities.
My life has been enhanced actually. Some disruptions in life are good, they cause us to re-evaluate ourselves and our goals, and send us in directions we might never have anticipated. Honestly i'm excited for the future of the Fediverse and it's potential.
No. Reddit had turned into doomscrolling for me instead of a place I enjoyed spending time. I would find myself feeling worse after having browsed reddit, not better.
Switching to KBin has totally changed that, it's more like a forum I go to see stuff and chat with people instead of a hellscape of depressing news and vitriol. I do not miss reddit in the slightest and I can live without the one or two communities there I actually participated in.
I guess im just gonna help less people with their 3d printers now. I mostly want to keep up with arcade sticks and the subreddit didn't really seem to move unfortunately. So I'll still need to check back in every blue moon.
To elaborate a bit more, social networks like Reddit are good for interacting with people you normally wouldn't interact (and give you a small soapbox), but I think it's good to do other things as well. I'd say if it's affecting you that much, it's a sign of being too reliant on that. Take the time freed up to do other things that interest you. Read a book, play a game, go do some exercise, pick up a new hobby, get in touch with some friends you haven't met for a while, etc.