Dear User,
We will soon begin rolling out changes to Reddit’s User settings. It is getting a refresh that includes changes to ad personalization, privacy preferences, and location settings.
As part of these changes, we are retiring a setting that you have previously turned on that limited how we used your activity from the Reddit platform to personalize ads. We have replaced the setting with a new option to select categories of ads that you may not wish to see.
More details are available in our announcement and help center.
These changes are rolling out starting today and you may see the changes over the next few days.
Users will be tracked with no opt out. Posts may be monetized, which will make content even worse No refund or any type of usable credit for users that spent hundreds on Reddit coins The entire vibe has done a 180° since all these new “positive changes” are rolled out.
I’m not spending much time on Reddit these days but in no way is this the end for Reddit. The VAST majority of the user base just doesn’t care. We may see more users trickling in and Lemmy is sure more ready now than ever but people are so used to being advertised to, that this won’t be a big issue long term. People are dumb.
Idk man, literally asked a bunch (3) of friends how reddit is lately who had no idea what was going on this summer with the API changes and didn’t care when I told them. Here are there responses:
“They’ve gotten really bad at putting relevant shit in front of me”
“Been a ton more ads lately”
And
“dude thank you for telling me reddit had porn lol”
I always wondered if there were people oblivious to porn on reddit. It always seemed like common knowledge those days.
It’s not the usual manufactured porn by companies, it’s usually people showcasing a video of themselves.
The amount of porn on reddit is astonishing.
Just go to r/randnsfw a few times.
The hope is that the non-dumb people will leave for here, and that they’re the ones who make quality content.
One thing I hadn’t thought much about until recently-- the quality of comments is so much higher here, and I don’t have to typically scroll through a wasteland of dudebro jokes to get to relevant replies.
So, comments are also ‘content,’ and from what I’m seeing, Lemmy already has a distinctly smarter / more mature userbase.
This is for sure the final nail, it’s going to collapse just like Facebook and Google did after all that ad stuff. Profiting off a user data is clearly a failed business model and we see that time and time again.
I completely agree with this!
Also, it’s an unfortunate rule of thumb that, when you see a sensationalized headline, most likely it won’t have the effect it claims to have…
Well, let’s hope there’s a steady migration to Lemmy (though numbers are small here)
Edit: added last line
No opt out? Expect trouble from the EU.
Fingerprinting is mostly pointless once you’re logged into the site.
You can use Mullvad which is TOR but without the TOR.
Can you explain more about Mullvad wrt Tor? I’m shopping for a new VPN & looked into Mullvad extensively because it’s my #1 choice so far. What about it specifically makes you say that?
you underestimate people’s complacency and inertia, in no way this is end of reddit
Yeah, people think tracking you for ads will dissuade anyone? Like, Instagram has a content to ad ratio of 33%, and people give zero fucks.
I don’t think people will ever leave, and I don’t think we should want them to leave either. We can build better, smaller platforms much more easily than we can’t fix the world’s attitude and consumption trends towards the large ones.
I mean, having some users isn’t the same as having a ton of users using the product for hours a day. They can still say people are using it, but it’s far from how it used to be (actually goes for Instagram and Facebook as well). There will always be people still using them, but for less time and getting less enjoyment out of it. The majority of users will not use it much at all, only out of some sense of necessity. Instagram and Facebook are literally unusable in my opinion due to ads and sponsored content, most people I know that used to spend hours on those two sites now barely use them at all, and that’s the direction Reddit wants to head in.
No, this won’t kill Reddit. If they can essentially remove every third-party app, they’ll easily be able to start selling user data. Whether we like it or not, the majority stayed on Reddit.
Nothing short of somehow breaking through ad blockers like Twitch did will make people stop using it, even if that.
Facebook kind of died and used the momentum it had to reinvent itself. Back in the day I used to see updates from my friends, and I used to interact with them. I stopped using Facebook at some point a few years ago and recently got back to it. I use Marketplace, and in my country people with the same hobby as me seem to interact over Facebook more than anything else. Younger people rarely upload except for a few very active outliers. Most of the content is these clickbaity short videos of 5-minute crafts or live-feeding frogs to slightly larger frogs because Facebook thinks I’m into it for some reason. They just made an addictive never-ending stream of content.
If you have irl friends/family that’s only on facebook you can’t really leave.
they can all still talk to you via phone, text, email, in person, etc. that is what i told all my family when i hopped off facebook
Whether we like it or not, the majority stayed on Reddit.
The fight may not be over though.
Where people didn’t really care about an API change for third party apps, they may care a lot more about having ads shoved in their faces whether they like it or not.
It’s all about breakings their inertia to change.
People en mass make “economic” decisions. If they view an alternative such as lemmy as too difficult to use, or their communities are not here they will rather tolerate the ads. Learning to use a new app or having to start the community themselves is too much effort for most people.
If there are still Facebook and Twitter users, of which we know there are, nothing will kill Reddit.
However, I’ll say I’m someone not good at change but am agoraphobic, so my only “connection” was Reddit, and I finally gave in and deleted for good.
Still getting used to this platform, but hopefully can find less toxic users here. Social media seems to be made special for bullies.
Thanks for bringing up Twitch. I’m one of the folks who quit using the site after the ad block changes. Did an alternative ever come along?
This would’ve resulted in my leaving if I hadn’t left in June.
Saved me 3.5 months.
the announcement was finally the one that made me leave. better late than never i guess!
Right? I hope more and more people leave. It’d be great if more users came to lemmy, but I’d be content just seeing people leave that putrid site
