I feel like lemmy is actually really amazing and has a lot of smart discussion happening instead of the constant circlejerking that happens on Reddit. I also feel the community here is a lot more hopeful/helpful! That’s all, thanks for reading 😄
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
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.
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.
Circle jerking about Lemmy while complaining about Reddit circle jerking is peak social media. :)
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
Reddit just removed NSFW access from everything else but their official app… Fuk em…
Hopefully lemmy will grow strong in that aspect…!
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
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.
I’ve been using reddit for over 12 years. That site is a steaming pile of shit compared to what it once was. I’m done.
I’ve been on there about 14. It’s gradually gotten worse and worse in terms of culture and content, but what really shows their doom is how awful the ‘new reddit’ interface is. It has now been years and they haven’t fixed it, show no signs of plans to rethink it, or any understanding of how bad it is.
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.
