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.

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.

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.

Everything is not awesome :(

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.

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 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).

Honestly, yes. It's a pain.

But the good news is that, due to their sudden increase in popularity, they're likely to mature much more quickly than they would have otherwise.

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.