I left reddit on june 12th last year in protest of spez’s decision to change the reddit api from being free as in free beer to an unbelievably expensive cost. That same day, I joined lemmy on a now abandoned account.
At first, I had a hard time adapting to lemmy’s significantly smaller community, but I got used to it and learned to embrace it. However, recently I started missing reddit a lot more, and after some consideration, made an account on the (demonic) website.
But I don’t think it felt the same way as before, sure, there was more posts, but they lacked a heart and soul, they were all so generic, as if it lost it’s spark.
Has anyone else that’s been on there noticed anything similar??
there’s still some great subreddits, but many of the mainstream ones have devolved into right wing cesspools
I’ve felt that the popular subreddits were on a decline ever since Reddit was featured in so many YouTube slop videos, but with time the effect of identity loss is becoming increasingly obvious. The crowd on there is not what it used to be. Gone is the desire for accurate information, meaningful comments, sources, and giving credit. Reddit is no longer a niche product but a mainstream one that my parents and “normie” friends know and it reflects in the lower quality content and user participation.
I use it for some niche communities too. Small communities are not infected with bots fortunately. Apart from that, it sucks more than before for sure.
I still use Reddit for queer nsfw content (for now) and r/all is getting worse by the day, and it was already pretty bad for years
Yea anything big and mainstream just seems super shallow.
I’m not on top of things to compare accurately, but it was always kinda like that (and is like that here sometimes too). But whenever I’ve gone back, I’ve definitely felt like it has gotten somewhat worse. Some of that could easily be a shifting standard from spending more time on other less “mainstream” platforms though.
The only places there that haven’t changed are the tiny game subs, to my limited willingness to use the site. I have checked the niche subs I used to moderate, and all but one is swamped with bullshit. Even that one has changed some. The only ones of those unchanged are the ones I had set to private ages before spez threw his little hissy-fit. The ones that were public are either dead, botted, or just unchecked insanity with bad moderation. Spam everywhere.
After I left I noticed how much of my Reddit feed was and is garbage. Most are meaningless memes. That’s after removing meme subs.
For me, it was not being able to use a 3rd party app. Accessing reddit through their garbage app is a painful experience. And unless I find the answer to a question via web search that’s a reddit thread, I avoid it entirely.
08 reddit was vastly different than 12 reddit which was vastly different than 16 reddit which was vastly different than 20 reddit which was vastly different than 24 reddit.
For what it’s worth, they’re all terrible in their own unique ways. Aside from a brief window some time after 16 but before 20, during which bots and hate speech were both heavily moderated. Except in conservative spaces, but there’s no polishing those turds.
I see more racism, sexism and other bigotry than before. Although there certainly was a lot of that back then as well. Also bots.
Yeah, the incel type have overrun the advice communities and it’s a shit show whenever anything that could be vaguely perceived as negative toward a man gets dogpiled. There’s always some pushback, but the consensus ends up being a coin toss whether it’s actually useful or just blaming the victim for everything
Yes, incels and just angry, bitter people everywhere! For a good time, go to a relationship sub and ask for basic relationship advice for an easily solved problem, like how to communicate to your boyfriend that you don’t want to have sex, and watch your post go down in flames.
Haven’t been back there other than for some old post that came up in google search, i used to dwell in my country sub since 2017 or something, back then the community is around or below 10k, and it feels, emm, non time-wasting? Then it growth into 200k in just a few years. A year before the API fiasco even happen, i noticed something off, the people who frequent there is getting younger and angrier, bad behaviour irl is lauded, dumb and edgy and joke opinion is upvoted, discussion tend to lead to shouting match very quickly. At that moment i felt that the community isn’t like what it used to be and started to feels like maybe i should quit. Fast forward to the API fiasco, lot of pushback against blackout from terminally online folks who can’t even stop using reddit for 2 days, i took the jump to lemmy and never looked back. I don’t miss that shitty platform one bit.
Not saying Lemmy doesn’t have any problem, but it doesn’t have as much rage bait content here.
I had been active on Reddit for close to 15 years, and left due to the API decisions. That move feels more justified every time I bump into Reddit, from being unable to view programming questions from a work VPN, to the emails begging me to invest in their IPO, to their exec pay fiasco.
Reddit is a shell of what it was, but I think this is largely due to stepping away from it. I know several people that use it religiously, and they don’t notice it as much as I do.
In a similar vein, Lemmy can have some absolutely batshit views too, and can also be incredibly toxic at times. We just don’t notice it as much because we’re used to it, but I bet some people new to Lemmy would see some posts/comments and think “eh, no thanks”. I won’t say that Lemmy is as toxic as Reddit, but the community size makes it more obvious on Reddit.
Toxic users are everywhere, that’s not why I left reddit. I left reddit because management was toxic (since forever, but with the API it was too much) and they were actively making things worse.bibwas forbidden from using my RIF mobile app, so fuck reddit
I haven’t gone to reddit.com and browsed around since I left.
But one thing that HASN’T changed is I’ll search ddg for an answer to a random problem and the most helpful link is a reddit post, either from long ago or recently.
Yeah, feels like most of the big and medium subs have devolved into karma farms. Zero substance.
Honestly this is probably how I subconciously felt on reddit for maybe a few years before I left. In all the slightly larger subreddits you could mostly predict how the comment section would look like. Mostly the same jokes and the same answers. The best posts also felt like they were made by people who put in a lot of time to figure out how to get to the frontpage and once you yourself made a post it would mostly be removed for some reason or buried. On Lemmy it is also much easier to see other opinions that are not directly downvoted into oblivion but rather discussed and as long as the person does not behave like an idiot the discussion is interesting.