Even worse is the wealth of knowledge that exists in random discord servers...
At some point, we didn't even notice, we stopped building a library. :(
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2026
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Privacy
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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I hope people learn. Stop using reddit.
How does that fix the issue OP is writing about? The knowledge no longer accessible from a simple web search?
Someone posted the question on reddit and someone answered. This happened on the wrong platform, so now they (or other people) have to do it again on a (hopefully) better platform.
Sure, it sucks that reddit has stolen our archive, but this was always in the cards for them, and we willingly played along. It has been clear for a long time that reddit's top interest is profit, so you don't even get to be surprised.
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You don't fix, you learn and in the future you try not to make the same mistakes. And Reddit is not the only example.
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This is the reason I don't like discord (alongside its lack of privacy, ownership).
I am aware they announced recently that the info will now be searchable (for servers that allow), but I consider it an information black hole.
So many people decide to use it and all that information is not searchable. It's also lost if discord ever desires it, or the server admin bans you, or wtv.
Moving to a more open internet has to come from the masses, but the masses like Facebook so here we are.
I don't think the masses like Facebook. I think they hate it, and hate reddit's new policies. But they're also distracted / lazy and ignorant and neither understand the alternatives, nor are willing to invest time to discover and learn to use them. I'm also very sure the average person scores significantly lower on both intellectual curiosity and reading comprehension than the average Lemmy user.
When Trump 2.0 started, there was a massive uptick in people attempting to learn about cyber privacy, public infrastructure and other was to be safer and more in control of their digital lives. But most of them couldn't sustain it and it petered out after about 8 months. It will probably surge back if fascism does massive, rapid bullshit, but as long as they keep turning up the temperature slowly, the frog will just boil to death while doomscrolling and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.
I don’t think the masses like Facebook. I think they hate it, and hate reddit’s new policies.
I think the way Cory Doctorow put it is Facebook is betting people love their friends and family more than they hate Mark Zuckerberg.
You can tell reddit got dumber because of posts complaining about ads, which is the bare minimum level needed for tech literacy.
Which is why reddit has turned into being reposts of twitter, tiktok, and facebook as the general userbase became the bulk of the audience and biggest sign is the anti science demographic sharing the space that amazes you that they can even type.
It's also why reddit has been able to get away with their changes.
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What I really don’t like about discord is I have to have an account to use it and I can’t separate my accounts across spaces.
I might be part of some really weird spaces I do not want remotely associate with open source or even professional discussion and support groups. Why those tins are on discord I don’t know, but they are.
Moving to a more open internet has to come from the masses
100%. Your frustration is mine too.
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"Ooopsie, gotta enclose the commons again!"
Social products and resources can't remain accessible to all of society, where's the profit in that?
We did this dance with Experts Exchange.
They managed the prefect balance: They left various work-arounds working, so that search would work, and they dwindled to irrelevance while presumably bleeding money.
As plans go, it is reliable.
AI scrapers are the fire that consumed the library of alexandria.
I personally use RedReader (signed out) and "share to" Linkora to save useful threads.
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.sakethh.linkora/
That works for now. If redreader stops working... 🤷 bye Felicia. I don't visit Reddit much anyway.
I've replaced "sitting at PC, nothing to read" with neal.fun, Atlas Obscura, Smithsonian Smart News and Lemmy 🤣
PS: IIRC, you can download a good chunk of reddit as an archive to search against.
https://github.com/ArthurHeitmann/arctic_shift
https://github.com/19-84/redd-archiver
I think the full pushshift reddit archive (to 2024?) was 4TB, but you can just grab smaller useful subsections. So it's less of a workaround and more a "tube is out of the toothpaste, suck shit Spez".
Actually, redd-archive (which is up to end of 2025) has an MCP, so you could point your local LLM at it and get it to find the info you need, all off line.
Last I checked, it even let you grab snapshots of particular subreddits of your choice, so you're not grabbing multiple terabytes. 2026 snapshots aren't out yet IIRC
This is a good reason to delete posts and stop contributing to reddit.
If people want old info they can use old archives that harvested all the content. It's easy accessibility of content that has led to people putting up with reddit becoming anti user removing third party apps, making UI worse, and login requirements.
If using reddit just lurk and delete content. Don't contribute.
While I do agree, reddit has been shown to un-delete comments that were mass deleted in the past if the user used a script
That's why you don't delete your account. You rewrite then delete and keep your account to monitor it.
Either way, it is new content that people mostly use reddit for that is keeping the site alive.
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The people capable of giving those answers aren't gone forever, tech is prob the one case where lemmy should suffice already, ask the question, you'll be the first now.
I cant even getting a log in. I was banned about 18 months ago and no matter how I create a login (using a VPN/10-minute email) they still figured out it was me.
Then I discovered this place and thought fuck it.
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In addition to the more utilitarian aspect of Reddit soon-to-be wallgardened, I’m sad that the cultural, community aspect may be as well. While one could argue that certain communities could theoretically be replicated here, it’s just very difficult without significant mass.
I'll miss the Arthurian and Latin subreddits in particular. Not sure if they'll ever be here, and I am often busy with school so not sure if I can do moderation. Plus I'm not the most knowledgeable in those subjects.
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I generally agree with your sentiment. But let's see some possibly positive sides at the same time:
- Maybe this will encourage or entice people within or outside that wall to come to places like Lemmy.
- And maybe will encourage people on Lemmy and similar platforms to share even more.
- As time passes, a lot of that knowledge and information there becomes obsolete. This is something I'm strongly noticing also on StackExchange for example.
It's why I'm testing out piefed.
But I've also been in software dev for 20yrs and am not your average user...
Went from MySpace, to Digg, to Reddit, now looking for new place for news feed that isn't tainted by the great algorithm.
Can somebody explain to me the differences between Lemmy and Piefed? It seems I am unable to access Piefed communities but they are amongst us. Has this to do with my specific instance not being federated with them or am I missing something else?
This page has a full list of differences: https://join.piefed.social/features/
tl;dr is that:
- It's written in a different language, so appeals to different developpers, also claims to be easier to maintain and more efficient, but I can't judge that.
- Has Post & User Flairs
- Has emoji reactions
- Has polls
- Has Post & User Flairs
- Has multicommunities
- A chat feature
- Better moderation
- a more feature-rich and (subjective) nicer default UI with stuff like consolidated comments,
I can access piefed communities and posts from my lemmy instance: PieFed link: https://piefed.zip/c/fedilytics@piefed.zip/p/1963727/growth-of-the-fediverse-20261102 Lemmy link: https://lemmy.zip/post/74312955
Most popular communities are lemmy ones, so it might just be that you haven't seen one yet, they should be perfectly cross-compatible (minus the extra features), since they're both threadiverse software.
I think I figured it out. Seems like due to my instance not being that active, many PieFed communities are not searchable because nobody interacted with them from my instance. After I input the specific community in the URL, and thén try to search, i can find it through the search function on my instance…
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Reddit was dead after it had a hit piece written about it all those years ago. Granted the hit piece was very justified but it was all downhill after that.
This has happened to me on iPhone Safari and Firefox for the past few months. This will seal the deal for me against Reddit.
Looking forward to freeing up a couple more hours of my week!
But seriously, finding search results of use is going to be even more painful.
Information wants to be free
I hate to sound like I'm victim blaming, but this kinda sounds like a Leopards Ate My Face kind of situation. How can anybody trust Reddit to do what is good for the people that use the site? Anybody who writes software for Reddit must expect that it will be a cat and mouse situation where the community UX is deprioritized to chase money.
Why isn't lemmy searchable?
It is. And many even popular search engine searches will give results from a lemmy instance.
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