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I'm having the same experience on Lemmy that I had on reddit 13 years ago. It's fucking awesome
I actually said the same a few days ago. Lemmy now is how reddit was back in the beginning.
The question that remains to be answered is, are the normies that moved to Reddit responsible for what it became? Or was it a product of the corporate profit driven manipulation of the platform? Time will tell..
Edit: It's worth noting, I don't mean to say 'normies' a a pejorative term, just the most casual way to differentiate the more tech-savvy, active early adopters that I find many people currently using the platform are, versus those who are simply doom scrolling content on social media.
It's most likely a combination of both. I'm not a huge fan of the divisive "normies" vs "whatever the hell we are" stance, but Reddit became what it is because it was poorly designed from the beginning to handle how rapidly it needed to scale. It was never envisioned when the project started as an internet killing behemoth, but ultimately that's what it became. Without in-built tools to manage that growth, Reddit succeeded because the community willed it to be and in spite of its own codebase.
What's happened to it now is likely correlated to a number of factors:
- Significant user growth as the popularity of the site among habitual internet users grew over time
- Positioning within popular culture - namely the practice of appending Google search queries with 'reddit' to improve results, which is common among people who otherwise don't browse the site at all
- Unchecked bot traffic with limited mechanisms to control or curtail the propagation of duplicative, low effort / value, incorrect, harmful, or misleading information on a massive scale
- A philosophical pivot from being a community driven by community to a company driven by a desire for profits
- Algorithmic manipulation of how content is displayed to maximize advertiser return at the expense of organic community dynamic shifts a combination of 1- a rapidly grown userbase, 2- positioning within popular culture (vis a vis, appending Google search queries with reddit to improve the results is common even among people who otherwise don't use Reddit)
- The hurt feelings of a CEO with an easily bruised ego
Don't forget a complete failure to ever monetize the site correctly. They've never made a profit lol.
I think it's probably both.
I think the biggest decline was just before the 2016 US election.
That seemed to be the point at which the site hit "mainstream" and with that came a huge influx of new users, and with the influx of new users came the increase of corporate interest to advertise to the new massive audience.
r/all switched to be almost nothing but arguing US politics.
Definitely, astroturfing/Cambridge analytica/Russian bot farms coming up on the 2016 US election were the major causes of a shift in the paradigm. The actual results of the election and Brexit then influenced a strong divisive change in society globally. The pandemic brought even more people online who were dropped right into this chaotic chapter in Internet/cultural history.
Gonna be some really interesting studies in the future looking at how all of this played out.
We're not even close to being huge yet and the lizard king already has ideas of capitalizing on us. Let's not pretend that this fediverse would ultimately become the utopia Reddit failed to be, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.
It's both. The normies are the reason the content and vibe sucked, and the corporate manipulation is what filled it with normies. Reddit had hit Eternal September for me nearly 6 years ago. I only stayed because there was literally nothing better at the time.
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All I'll say is The time r/funny became a default sub, things started to go downhill and I had to start blocking subs from my page
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I didn't realise how much I've missed this feeling, as a former redditor of 12 years
Totally agree. I started very sad to lose Reddit but honestly a blessing.
Circle jerking about Lemmy while complaining about Reddit circle jerking is peak social media. :)
Ahah! Yeah you're right we are better than them
I also agree that the others are so dumb and we are so right! Hahahahahh
I was just trying to be positive instead of the usual Reddit hate we see. It feels like most comments about Reddit were mad they had to be here on lemmy, but lemmy is legitimately a great place. Wasn’t trying to circle jerk sorry
There is no need to apologize. I was just making a joke. In fact, unless you deliberately insult someone or in some rare edge cases I'd argue there is never a need to apologize for something you write.
Reddit just removed NSFW access from everything else but their official app.. Fuk em..
Hopefully lemmy will grow strong in that aspect..!
I just pulled up NSFW through old.reddit
Yeh, but you KNOW that's next on the chopping block.
Not sure if I'd support old.reddit for premium only users. I'm really enjoying Lemmy, and the genuine conversations that are happening
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Once they kill old reddit, which they likely will if they're truly worried about data scraping by AI companies, it's over.
There is no stopping AI data scrapers without also preventing users from accessing that data. Even with rate limiters, whatever that rate is tied to can be duplicated or faked such that the tech will affect normal users more than scrapers.
This will especially be the case once language models can truly pass the Turing test, though they are already most of the way there. Using proxies/VPNs and multiple accounts, give the AIs "browsing habits" and there won't be any way to tell the difference between bots and real people. The rate that they can scan comments might still be lower in that case than it is now and legally riskier, but it will still happen.
Bots will probably have an easier time navigating the new site, too. They might even have to be limited in that regard so that they don't look different from real people.
I've noticed a lot of the same circlejerks in political channels. I don't dislike Lemmy. If Reddit caved and RiF came back tomorrow, I'd probably still switch back. But the longer I'm away from Reddit, the less likely I am to return.
I'm done for good. The core underlying issue that got me here is that Reddit has demonstrated that there is no ethical standard worth sticking to for them if it means slightly more money. Community building is about care and curation. Reddit doesn't want to foster community building and their entire draw is community hosting. Why would I stick around?
You can actually use rif still, as well as a few other reddit apps that officially closed shop, but it's not gonna last forever.
Personally, I'm sticking around (via rif), partly to keep up with a few communities I care about, and partly to watch reddit burn as they keep fueling the fire.
Weirdly, I increasingly feel like I won't even miss reddit all that much. More precisely, I already missed what reddit once was.
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On reddit I didn't comment much at all, because it mostly felt like posting things into the void.
Here there are mostly not so many comments that a single one gets lost and I've already had a few plesant discussions!
Same :) i enjoy the cozier feeling that many of the threads have. And the local threads of people on my instance really give a feeling of community since i belong to a smaller one.
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It’s really fascinating watching something new grow
I’m not entirely sold on the fediverse as a feasible, long-term solution - there are definitely going to be hard truths, disappointments and lessons along the way… but I’m up for the ride, come what may
The fediverse is definitely not perfect, but centralized monopoly social networks are extremely far from perfect too. In comparison, with all the growing pains it still might be better than the alternative
I'm upvoting your post because the headline/title gave me an aneurysm. I've read it twice now and still don't understand it. 😀
"I still see a lot of angry posts about Reddit because people were essentially forced out. However..."
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There is already a ton of subs I've had to unsubscribe/block because it's essentially shitposting. The internet is a crowded place.
Totes, we're right where we should be 👍
The reason I'm using Lemmy is that it's better than reddit. If it wasn't better, I'd still be on Reddit.
And what's better isn't Lemmy itself, it's the people here.
Yeah. I’m very happy with lemmy so far especially now that the interface of lemmy.world is so smooth
I was really upset about the poor performance of .world and how Beehaw had good performance but defederated, but the devs have fixed .world performance overnight and I haven’t had any issues yet today.
Overall I’m happy with how it turned out for me joining .world :)
It takes people about two weeks to get inconsolably nauseated from seeing people bitch about their ex. We're not even halfway for the most recent group.
Yeah Lemmy has totally exceeded my expectations, I thought leaving Reddit would be a compromise for the sake of privacy, but I was so glad to be proven wrong
Yeah, it's fun watching this community grow. I'm not looking back
Lemmynites, assemble!
They are pretty clear with their intentions to disregard the opinions of the users who produce all the content and generally give it a reason to exist. And mods who did countless hours of work for free probably getting it worse.. It's never getting better.
A real shame but it just shows that its a model that will fail at some point. As long as sombody can make a load of money by advertising and selling stuff a community makes than it'll go that way (see all previous times it's happened).
Yeah, it's got a different atmosphere here, a bit more chilled and friendly. I miss the bigger community of Reddit but it reached its peak a while back; this place has a lot of exciting potential
eh, there's always some vocal minority when major change occurs. ignore them.
Being angry at the users, or powerusers, who left reddit is like being angry at ants for fleeing their home after a flood for higher ground and starting over somewhere else. It ain't the ants that decided to drool all over its hill/colony before even IPO'ing all the work they had done.
Amazing to me that it was Spez that screwed reddit over BEFORE selling reddit out. Usually people like Spez are at least smart enough to keep things running smoothly up and until they sell it off - but I am sure the potential investors will appreciate the depreciated value of reddit. 😂
If I could award some sort of idiot currency or lemmy currency to mock Spez I would. The guy really takes the cake on being inept at what would have kept Reddit highly valued imo in the short, mid and long term.
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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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