Technology

For me, it is too far gone at this point. The events of the last ~week just highlighted something that I was willfully ignorant of in that it has not been the website I joined back in 2007 for a very long time. VC-backed focus on monetization, profit, return on investment, and ipo (and everything that comes along with that) has ramped up tremendously in the last few years and I think this is now the tipping point of Reddit doing a Digg.

It's a bummer, but not shocking or surprising as it follows a long line of exactly the same pattern, across tech. I'll have fond memories for sure, but have accepted it and am ready to move on to something new.

Also, this is my first post. Happy to be here!

Honestly I don't think I ever will. It was already causing me issues in terms of addiction and cutting it to of my life has already had a positive effect. I'm not planning on installing Beehaw/Lemmy on my phone which also limits my time. I know its a small community but everyone has been so welcoming to all the Reddit refugees

I've heard for a lot of time about these federated social media (lemmy, mastodon...) and I really like it. The interface is not bloated, no bullshit notifications, no ads, no damn algorithms that try so hard to spoonfeed me taking 60% of my feed, taking place for the communities I am actually interested into.

If I could put it into words, lemmy feels a lot like early 2010's social media, fewer people, less stakes, just a bunch of people enjoying some topic (it is ironic, since I started to use Reddit because it seemed to be the only mainstream place left where you can talk with real people). Anyways, I am enjoying it, more than "What would Reddit need to do to get you back?" I would prefer more posts like "What should Lemmy improve to keep you here?".

I'm Sorry Reddit, my old friend. There's no turning back now. Farewell.

if reddit becomes federated I'll consider subscribing

I'm still using it because old-dot-reddit-dot-com still works, and until it doesn't, I probably will. That said, I'd rather the fediverse thrive than the increasingly corporate-beholden reddit does, so I'll favour what sparse engagement I make to a lemmy instance first.

I think what's hardest to replace from reddit is the absolutely monstrous archive of posts and discussions, which seems to be a bit of a two-edged sword for them (if the official statements are to be believed) - it costs a tonne in hosting, but makes them the most relevant source for real human discourse. This needs to be handled better, and ideally I'd want to see:

• Some sort of archive-dot-reddit-dot-com. Minimal, flat html, ideally anonymised as much as computer-ly possible to help with the inevitable privacy issues this would raise.
• Some sort of mobile-dot-old-dot-reddit-dot-com, as they seem incapable of making an app without bloaty (both visual and bandwidth wise) "features". Call me a boomer, but if I can do something without a specific app, I would rather do it that way.
• Separate i-dot-reddit-dot-com and v-dot-reddit-dot-com into different companies from the main reddit, reddit should be link aggregation and discussion, content hosting seems like a costly thing to try and monopolise.
• If it really costs so much to run the APIs, I'd rather see more user-based rate limiting than price gouging to discourage bad actors. I do not think that is why they are price gouging, but am trying to assume good faith on their part for discussions' sake.

I know I'm an idiot, and some of these are possibly already done and I just haven't looked hard enough, probably some are impossible for obvious reasons I haven't seen. Though even if reddit as a company turned around and tried to become a curator of the discussions it holds rather than milk it's current audience dry with ads, I'd still rather see lemmy out-compete it. Protocol > Platform.

I'm done.

The subs I moderated have either gone dark, or are going dark in the next ciuple days.

And with that I let the mod teams I was a part of know that I am moving on. I hate what reddit did to the community, and my time feels better spent where it will be appreciated.

Im leaving beacuse it's too far gone to ever recover.

Too late, I've invested too much time, money, and effort into setting up my own Lemmy instance so I can share the love of open source and federated projects with others. What happens if lemmy.ml is overloaded? Go somewhere else and set up an account, and you can reduce the load on their servers.

I haven't completely left, and to be honest the only way I'd completely leave is if the niche communities I cared about died (or were active here). That being said I've noticed my reddit usage has plummeted over the last week. I used to basically live on that dumb site and now I only check it maybe once or twice a day for a couple minutes

I don't think there is anything they can do to get me back anymore. I have a lot of issues with the culture that exists on that site, and that's not something that can be fixed by walking back the API stuff or removing a few problematic individuals.

Start with canning Spez. Dude's been a walking liability for them for at least the 12 years I've been on reddit, and everyone knew it back then.

There’s nothing that could male go back. I’ve wanted to leave for years but there was never a good replacement. Here’s to a good future for Lemmy!

That's quite simple, actually. It would need to go back to what it was. It doesn't really have to be open source, it just has to be a site where its CEO's only focus isn't milking money but rather improving the site

I'm wiping my account tonight and will be doing an account delete bit right before the black outs.

I honestly don't think anything would get me to go back. I don't think I'll miss my doom scroll app. Lemmy feels much more easy to actually be apart of, and my account can interact with other fedverse stuff, heck yeah.

The only subreddit I'm going to miss that I haven't seen an alternative of is r/196, so I hope that pops up.

Return in all aspects to how it used to be in 2014 or earlier, but it will never happen because enshittification cannot be reverted.

That includes the bloated inefficient new design that includes an intentionally hostile mobile website that shits the bed on 3G connections, the echo chamber machinery, random layout shifts, NSFW login walls, automated censorship and shadowbanning, the privileges for the big subreddits and the big sponsored powermods.

This was the final bloodletting of my trust. There is no going back. That's why I deleted all of my content and my account

Be usable and intuitive on mobile, including NSFW, no subscription (one-time purchase is ok), no/limited unobtrusive ads, no excessive data consumption. That's what the 3p app I used was.

I don't socialise on Reddit. Whenever I do, I almost always regret it. But I do kill time while in queues, or on the bus, or on break at work. That needs to be on mobile. Or to 'kill time' at home. That needs to include NSFW. And I want to be seeing the content I went there to see, not miles of ads and promoted posts. And I definitely don't have the budget to pay for it over and over and over. Mobile data is also capped and very expensive here.

It's still usable on desktop, but... I don't use desktop on the bus. It's still available on mobile, but... I don't want to load 5 different resolutions of each video on my limited mobile data.

For a while I thought "fire Spez", but after giving it some more thought....

NOTHING! and I'll elaborate on why. The community of people makes or breaks social media platforms (see, Twitter as prime example). If the owner(s) aren't interested in the well being of the community / communities, then I have no interest in being there.

Implement ActivityPub, or I I suppose another protocol like Nostr, Ostatus, pump.io, or Diaspora*, and join the fediverse. Preferably publishing their code under the AGPL, but even if they kept it as non-free software I'd still probably get back on. I suppose if they did end-to-end security truly decentralized, like Scuttlebutt or Status, I'd do that too.

I'll go back if Reddit:

• Makes it feasible for 3rd party apps to continue on the platform. This could be a revenue-sharing agreement, a set price that's not prohibitively expensive but still fairly compensates Reddit, a flat-out exemption from the Enterprising Pricing, doesn't matter. These apps have been around far longer than Reddit's own app, and provide tools (and general polish) the Official App has yet to match seven years in. They deserve to stay and to make a living off of their continued contribution to the community.
• Restores parity access to NSFW content via the API. It's essential for moderation bots to combat spam, it helps 3rd party apps stay afloat, and it serves a large part of the community. I get that Reddit wants to sanitize the site in preparation for an IPO. I get that advertisers are wary of NSFW posts. That's not an excuse for removing it from the API. The official ad-supported Reddit app will continue to serve up porn, and the currently proposed API prevents 3rd party clients from using ads anyway. Reddit is making a bad-faith argument that harms moderation bots' ability to do their job, and cripples any 3rd party app that isn't driven from the platform based on price (including 2 "accessibility only" apps they were forced to allow during the AMA).
• Apologizes to the Apollo dev for Spez's libelous statements, and starts a good-faith negotiation with developers to open access for things like the enhanced query system that the 1st party app enjoys, usage statistics that will help devs improve API request efficiency, and revenue sharing where devs can monetize using ads or any other method they choose so long as Reddit gets a cut.

Yes, these demands go further than a simple rollback of the new API policy, but at the same time they don't. Reddit's originally stated goal for this change was to keep 3rd party apps around because they add tremendous value to the ecosystem, while stopping the LLM training bots from getting off rent-free when they try to train their AI models off of our hard work. I love that goal. It's something we can all get behind. I just wish they'd actually do it.

But even if I go back, it will be with one foot out the door. The dam has broken, and I plan to campaign hard for alternatives and switch to whichever one hits critical mass first.

Too late, found something better.

Honestly, if the key smaller communities that I'm in on Reddit don't migrate away to another platform, then I don't know that I'll even fully leave. Assuming the site doesn't completely implode at this point, of course. For as many subs as I subscribe to, I really only find myself on a handful each day.

That said, spez has really soured my taste for Reddit with the AMA. I only really use old.reddit on desktop, but I've used mainly third-party apps over the years, like most people, I would assume. Even if they lowered API costs to be more reasonable AND third-party app devs decided to come back, they're still limiting NSFW access to third-party app API calls anyway, so a lesser experience either way.

At the end of the day, I'm going to be where the community is, be that here, kbin, or whichever one rises up and has staying power and growth over the next couple years.

At this point in time, they have a lot to prove to get me to go back. The site itself has already felt like a lot of recycled content is coming up more and the conversations in some of my favorite subs have already become less deep and engaging. The recommendations and discovery have become kind of subpar and don't even get me started on the native app and website. I work in the development field and the treatment of the third party developers has been garbage, unless there is a major overhaul of the leadership and some really sincere apologizing to those that have mistreated, I just don't see an avenue back at this point.

Nothing. They've burned too many bridges and have lost all faith the community had in them. Without a community, they are nothing.

I'm not gone yet and I don't know if I actually will be. No matter how frustrated I am with the platform and have been for years now, I don't feel that anything else is ready to replace it.

I wish Lemmy the best but I have my doubts as to how well it'll take off. I remember when Digg died, Reddit was already popular enough to make jumping ship a no brainer for just about everyone. Lemmy is not there yet, and I don't know if it ever will be. It's much smaller than Mastodon/Fediverse, and that's been very slow to pull users away from the even more hated platform it wants to challenge. Can Lemmy achieve the critical mass it needs to succeed?

What's mainly keeping me on Reddit is certain small subs for niche hobbies. Only on the largest platforms is it possible to find people who share my microinterests. Reddit and Discord are it, and Discord really only works as an ephemeral chatroom, it's terrible for news or threaded discussion. Not to mention how much of a problem it is that Discord isn't indexed by search engines.

I'm honestly not "gone" yet, this is my first day on Lemmy. I'm still a little uncertain. Here's what's on my mind:

• Reddit isn't, and never has been, profitable. That means that things we don't like are only going to get more and more likely for them to do, because eventually investors will stop paying for them to do the same thing, which we mostly do like.

• Lemmy looks like a good alternative, and I'd really like to see reddit die faster so all the content I like moves here.

• At the same time, decentralization isn't a silver bullet. It doesn't mean my experience on Lemmy will get better, it just means the individual server I pick has a lot more control over me. Will I lose my identity / get booted off the server because someone decides to stop operating it? Or doesn't like a comment I write? Etc etc

I think that the CEO would need to step down at this point. This has been handled completely inappropriately and he's ultimately responsible. Then they would need to rollback the API changes and approach that change in a more structure community lead approach.

I wouldn’t because I like it better here. It’s easier to engage because it’s not so huge and there’s less toxicity. I like the software better and that nobody is trying to push certain content in front of me or trying to get me to spend more time on the site. I’ll still go to Reddit on occasion, but that will be because it’s useful for finding information. It won’t be because I want to be part of that community.

Reverse the api changes, convince Selig to keep Apollo going, fire spez. Than MAYBE.

Even if they revert the API changes, I know It's only going to get worse when the IPO happens, so I don't think I could ever come back. I also like the federated approach more anyways 🤷

I've been enjoying reddit less and less for a couple years already, the site is too big and there is so much junk on there to wade through

it is refreshing to see a smaller community elsewhere, and I like the concept of a fediverse more and more

I'm going to replace the subreddits I used to visit with communities and people on lemmy, mastodon, etc

reddit served its purpose (a digg replacement back in the day), now is the time for a new replacement

Pay off all my debt. And take me out to a fancy dinner. Wine and dine me, Spez. Then I'll use reddit again. (I would still use lemmy secretly on the side)

Fire the current CEO and get a new one.

I absolutely loved reading wholesome content like this. That's a great idea! We should collectively work together to shape how we want our future year to be!