I wish there was an alternative to leaving Reddit
The biggest thing I’ll miss isn’t actually being on reddit but the fact that basically any time you needed to look up somthing you could just google it and add site:reddit.com and find some good threads about it… it’s been a valuable knowledge base.
I also do this, but even before the recent turmoil I started losing confidence and trust. Brands know about this trick and they know how much consumers trust honest reviews by real people.
Generative AI like ChatGPT makes it easier than ever to flood subs with search-engine friendly posts and comments how awesome product X is…
True… look at reviews too for instance. Feels like more and more of them are generated by their owners in different ways to trick people. Same with tracks on spoitfy and so on as well, companies script playing their tracks all the time so they’ll end up higher in rankins.
It’s really starting to be hard to find anything that’s honest these days.
But you can check people’s comment history, at least for the time being it’s easy enough to notice if an account isn’t organic.
Agreed, although I do love that their own search engine was complete dogshit. That said, many of the posts I found really useful were at least five years old, sometimes as old as 12. In some ways it may be good for the knowledge base to update a bit. Actually, are Lemmy posts searchable the same way as Reddit?
They should be when the search engines have had time to index them. You can access them without loggin in so it should be fine?
Agreed, I feel like the social part of reddit is pretty easily replaceable but the amount of niche and specialised information was incredible
Isn’t there the reddit archive project?
deleted by creator
Really don’t know tbh, could be useful but extremely storage heavy.
Absolutely the best way to get answers to specific things. Avoids any paid blogs and questionable answers. Not to mention perfect for getting actual recommendations and reviews on things.
The only thing that’s usually better is the Arch Linux wiki but you sadly can’t use that for everything. :)
Here’s the thing, as much as I’m going to miss the convenience, I’m willing to suffer thru discomfort for not having that information readily available. LLMs now paired with web searches should be able to serve such content, and in the interim, I want something like Lemmy, a decentralized collection of instances with user generated content to grow, so that a single asshole ceo cannot ruin it for everybody else, particularly when the content in question is user generated and managed.
I’m feeling pretty good about Lemmy, honestly. I wasn’t sure how I was going to fill my downtime, but this and mastodon may just pan out for me
It’s still hard to transition ! Especially with a lack of good apps on mobile (at least iOS). It’s only the beginning
PS : It’s my first comment on Lemmy (yay!)
A lot of former Digg users felt the same way when they transitioned to reddit back in the day. It was a new and scary ecosystem, but it quickly became natural to use.
Digg proved that the switching costs to a new link-sharing platform are incredibly low. Huffman is about to find out just how low those switching costs are. He’s right in the storm-eye of his Digg v4 moment, and probably only his resignation and complete re-work of the API plans can save the Reddit that was.
Reddit is dead, long live Fediverse.
Are you using Mlem on iOS? I keep switching back and forth between the mobile site and mlem. Not sure which I like better at the moment.
I finally got Mlem to work after fighting the iOS updater all night, and it’s honestly much nicer to use than the web interface. It feels extremely reminiscent of Apollo for Reddit.
I just started using it, obviously needs more features but I like it more than the mobile page, I kept getting weird little glitches and losing my place in the page
Exactly. Reddit had the most comprehensive and fleshed out (third party) apps of any other similar platform that I know of. But with the exodus, I’m really hoping we can all breathe some life into some of the apps that we do have access to that weren’t getting as much attention
I’m using mlem right now (you need to TestFlight it), and while being rough around the edges, it’s got potential, and it’s already better than the mobile web ui of Lemmy
Have you tried using the mobile site? App selection on Android isn’t the best but the mobile site is actually pretty good.
Jerboa on Android seems pretty easy to use so far.
Yeah! I’m still new to everything here, but nothing has yet broken to the point of un-usability. That’s more than I can say for the official Reddit app. Lol.
Same here. If I can’t use a 3rd party app to smooth over Reddit’s shit-filled cracks then I’m done with it. Jerboa seems ok so far. I’ve also signed up for a Mastodon account, awaiting approval, so I may end up using Fedilab
You’ll have to find me again sometime to let me know how Mastodon works for you! I’ve considered it, but I was never really that big into social media, except for Reddit. Twitter was never appealing to me, so I guess I may have some bias there, but at the same time I’d like to get more involved with the fediverse as a whole.
Best of luck to you!
the mobile site is actually pretty good.
It is, and I’m thinking about using it via the app Hermit - it’s really just a wrapper for the site, but it gives you a bit more of an app-like experience (its own icon, a customisable sidebar, various visual customisations).
I already use it for a football forum I frequent, and honestly I sometimes forget that it’s not a native app.
I’m writing this on Jerboa, and it’s pretty good, but I’m going to see if Hermit can match or better it.
EDIT - Just to add to this - since I posted I’ve discovered there’s an update to Jerboa and it’s already looking like quite an improvement.
Hello from Hermit. It works amazingly well, I’m liking it better than Jerboa
Nice one! I’ve not yet really tried it for Lemmy, Jerboa’s still doing the job for me, but I will do at some point. Glad it’s working out for you :-)
Except for the constant pestering to use the app that has been going on since about September last year. It’s why I went to Relay
I’m sad too. I grew up in the early 1970s loving newspapers and oddly loving the classified ad sections (that sounds strange, but reading scattered somewhat classified content still is pleasing to me. That is how my carefully curated Reddit home feed felt.) As newspapers died, I realized that my small metro area had no good written way to interact or hear about local issues. Our local subreddit became my best source.
And I loved reading subs such as /nursing and /medicine and /talesfromyourserver not because I work in those areas, but because they are IRL communities that I count on for my quality of life and hearing their stories helped me empathize with them and (I think) made me a better human.
If I woke up in the middle of the night, I could read something to get my mind off of whatever was running through my head.
Other than paying for my Apollo subscription, making about 25 comments a year, and using the upvote function liberally, I didn’t interact much. My almost 10 year old account is very shy. I was always wary of being attacked or ignored. Oddly, IRL, I’m very apt to dive into any conversation.
I’m tentatively trying to be more interactive here. Smaller groups feel safer.
As someone who worked at a major U.S. newspaper in the late 90s, I think the world needs more people who think the way you have just expressed… valuing local information, empathizing with people outside your circle, and considering how your words will be received. I hope you find Lemmy to be a place where you feel comfortable contributing.
For now it’s great! I loved newspapers and was a co-editor on my high school paper. Reading and writing have always been favorite things for me to do. Thanks for your time in the newspaper business. Wonder how many here still seek the goodness of that medium that was also largely lost?
For sure, but what makes Reddit special are the users, the content, and the discussions. The admins add no value.
We can recreate the communities in a distributed and federated way so that we never find ourselves in the same situation again.
This. One thousand percent - this.
We are ground floor. Be active! Make this the community you want it to be!
Hear hear!
Pretty sure community admins add value in well run subs, but I take your point.
Those are moderators, not admins. The moderators add a ton of value, both on Reddit and here.
The admins (Reddit corporate employees) do not add value.
This reminds me so much of the mass digg exodus of 2010. It’s going to be interesting to see how this goes.
Tricky thing is going to be the onboarding process for laypeople. Problem with the fediverse is helping people wrap their heads around servers. People think the server is the “community.” And it kind of is, and it kind of isn’t. Servers are a community of people, but severs also host capital C “Communities” within them.
This is probably the biggest thing holding back the adoption of the fediverse. This user experience problem hasn’t been cracked. Onboarding isn’t intuitive.
I definitely agree with this. I’m a very tech-savvy person and while I think I understand how it all works, I am confident there are plenty of people that will look at Lemmy and the fediverse and go “uhhhh…nope I guess?”
That’s unfortunate.
I guess the concept of fediverse is what will end up confusing people more than ever. There’s a very good quick starter guide published on Lemmy that I found to be incredibly helpful. Including the clarification that content is accessible across servers but users cannot log in to other servers.
I also think it will be crucial how the app ecosystem for Lemmy shapes up. Most people will just be using an app to access their communities and won’t care about the underlying fediverse structure.
Here’s hoping for all the apps, which made Reddit what it is/was, to come to roost quickly for Lemmy!
That’s a good point! Put a slick enough front end on a platform and the vast majority of new users won’t care about the back end for sure.
You’re absolutely right, the app ecosystem will be crucial to its success and keeping it around. Jerboa is fine, but it’s fairly lackluster, and is the only Android client I’ve found. Not to discredit the dev/team for Jerboa at all, it’s actually quite good, until you compare it to the various third-party Reddit clients I’ve been using for decades.
I’m hoping lots of growth for Lemmy and the fediverse and that with that, the app ecosystem scales well, too!
Here’s hoping that the Lemmy API proxy can expedite a transition to allow these apps to stay useful after June 30th. It would be a beautiful sight to have diversity of clients here, and especially supporting the fediverse answer to Reddit instead of the centralized competition.
I would even be happy to see kbin growth because we on Lemmy don’t lose out 😅
I’m pretty dumb and I haven’t been confused. I just got here, subbed to a bunch of stuff, and my subscribed list is full of clickable subs to go to.
It’s very ‘Reddity’ in that respect as far as I’m concerned. I’m not lost at all.
On the upside, it at least limits participants to people who really want to be here.
Absolutely a good point!
I completely agree. It was super confusing figuring out how to access communities from other servers, and I consider myself a very tech-literate person. The Digg -> reddit transition didn’t require understanding a whole new paradigm when signing up.
My understanding is (and if I’m wrong, someone please correct me) instances/servers are like little towns with their own communities. But you’re not limited to just your town and your communities. You’re free to visit any town and join any of their communities.
I’m sure it’s much more convoluted than that, this was just my simple understanding of it.
They are like town full of holograms of buildings in other towns.
Towns and communities is a really good analogy.
Honestly, a simple little language change like that, if adopted by the developers, might simplify onboarding a for people.
When you introduce new tech, the best way to onboard folks is to use metaphor and to reference patterns they’re already familiar with.
This explanation helped, thanks!
I think the communities within communities (multiple servers with their own communities each) issue can be abstracted away by a good app, the experience could look roughly the same as regular Reddit.
The fact that accounts are separated and individual to each server, in a way that you can’t login with your current account into a different one and someone could poach your username, is what I see as a much bigger issue for casual users in the future.
Hmm. Third party apps, you say? What an intriguing concept.
Too soon, dude. I’m still traumatised.
The confusion is the signup process and front page
If when you joined instead of picking a user name it was username @lemmy.world or @beehaw.org then people would see it more like an email address.
Then when you reach the front page instead of showing server admin picks, it should show a list of popular communities across servers and then the alternative local version with some text at the top explaining multiple versions of some communities exist and you can subscribe to both.
Oh boy, I’m more confused now!
So there are global and local communities?
well for example there is [email protected] and [email protected]
Oh, no, that’s confusing…
Fight to the death between forums I guess
Well you can subscribe to more than one, and it might be that some communities have different rules to others, for example one might be focused on news while another might allow self promotion or technical questions.
Putting it in terms of email is the simplest to me. And it works because email itself is federated.
You join a server (gmail, aol, yahoo, proton mail, whatever provider you choose), and from there you can communicate with any other email provider. You aren’t locked into only talking to gmail users.
It does make discovering new communities a little more difficult because they won’t show up for your local feed by default, but that can be handled down the road a little ways to put that all in the background and link all the servers so that the experience for the user is similar to how Reddit used to be.
Its not like email because when you open your email you dont accidentally wander into another email server where the only way to reply is by copy and pasting a nonobvious code and searching through an interface that isnt identified and doesnt work.
Email server were totally invisible to users and i wish everyone would stop bsing to the contrary. It is a backend conparison not of utility to end users.
Once subscribed to a community replies seem pretty seamless
At the moment an issue I have is links in the jerboa app don’t open the community but instead open a web link to that instance which then causes problems with replying similar to what you described
I, for one, welcome our new federated overlords
Weeeeeeellllllll, there are a lot of former Reddit users here so you won’t miss too much, I think!
Reddit’s not what it once was, and won’t be ever again if they continue towards IPO even if they walk back some or all of the proposed changes. I might visit occasionally to check up on things, but by-and-large I’m done with it.
I wonder if there will be a massive short of Reddit’s stock, like what happened with GME.
I will be shorting the hell out of any IPO, assuming one even happens at this point.
If reddit does IPO I 100% for sure am buying puts. Only enough to the point if I lose the money it wont hurt me but enough money that if reddit tanks I can make a decent chunk if change.
Once the consequences sink in for ruining Reddit’s engagement to get a better valuation, the stock price will tumble. I think it’s a terrific opportunity for some puts.
I think it’ll go up at first because they’ll convince people all the whiners are ‘just’ superusers that make up 2% of the site, then tank when they realize that 2% is 50% of content and moderation.
What’s the correlation with the IPO? Are they somehow pressurized so that IPO entry means they must get rid of third party integration and similar other feature changes?
It means their changes will be motivated to “cut waste” and squeeze every penny out of the goodwill of it’s users, in order to appear profitable (despite Steve Huffman describing Reddit to the contrary).
It means that they’re doing everything they can to be profitable
You know it’s funny, I thought I would be sad to see Reddit go but I’ve been lurking here on Lemmy for a day or two and I’ve realised that Reddit actually was a pretty toxic environment a lot of the time.
I will miss some of the long running in-jokes (broken arms, coconuts etc.) but overall maybe moving on from Reddit is a good thing.
I hope Reddit doesn’t die entirely though. It does have some uses, particularly if you need help on a. particular topic. The specialist subreddits have a large amount of knowledge available through their subscribers and I’ve often turned to them for help on a tech issue when I have something I can’t answer with a quick Google search (for example, a weird issue with Sonarr which wasn’t covered by the *arr wiki) and it would be great if this doesn’t go away.
What I am sad about is seeing the demise of some great 3PA (I was an Apollo user). The amount of work put in by the devs is huge, and this is their livelihood being destroyed. So for folks like Christian I do feel bad.
I’m interested to see how Reddit comes out of the other side of the blackout. Wait and see I guess.
The Narwahl Bacons at Midnight
Blimey I’ve not heard that phrase in a long time. Welcome fellow refugee!
Thank you very much for this meme. Gonna try and bury that one deep into my memory so I never forget :D
Orangered
I’ve been active on reddit for 8 years and I have no idea what those in-jokes are. Care to fill me in?
Oh man, idk about the broken arms one but the coconut one is LEGENDARY
Broken arms is legendary as well, tbf
What’s the broken arms about? I would just look it up but it would benefit the site to share it here!
Good god, I suppose you’re right. Basically some dude posted an AMA about how he broke both of his arms when he was 14 and his mom would help get him off.
Jesus fucking Christ, what is wrong with people. That was definitely an… Interesting watch.
How does that video only have 15 likes?
Because up until now everyone would just link to the actual post but now it’s down so I’m glad these youtube videos are still around now for sure! Also I am sad to see Reddit go BUT I like the idea of Federation much better so, all for the best!
Sure. :)
Here’s a link to some info about the broken arms story: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/reddit-broken-arms-story
Going forward any posts which vaguely related to incest or broken arms would invariably have comments referring to the original story.
As for the coconuts, there was a TIFU post about a guy who made a hole in a coconut and used ti to pleasure himself repeatedly. iirc he’d use it and then store it in his bedroom and one day he put his dick in it and it came out covered in maggots.
This link is dark but in case it comes back up: https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/6rr6ay/tifu_by_cumming_into_a_coconut/?st=JL9NG1AP&sh=cfe1e15a
There was then just a long running joke when people mentioned coconuts…
Thank you! With context I actually do recall the broken arms one. The coconuts was new to me though
Broken arms was something about a teenager who had broken both his arms. I forget the exact way the conversation arrived at this but the joke is that his mom would help him jack off since he couldn’t anymore.
I prefer non-corporate alternatives, like lemmy or mastodon. However, if it’s going to last, users are going to have to contribute what they can to keeping the lights on, otherwise, if lemmy grows, they’ll have to resort to things like ads to cover their costs and it will become reddit all over again.
Well, we are on the ground floor here. Let’s find something that keeps the lights on and gives everyone the incentives they need to make a great community!
Perhaps a good start would be a page that gives statistics about the time and money required to run an instance. I really appreciate those who have dedicated their time money and reputation to start things up. Lets find a way to build a better social media experience together.
I think many of us would be OK with a number of different models, donations, non-intrusive ads, reasonable subscription fees, etc. Perhaps there could even be incentives for people who put time into building communities by moderating or other tasks. The important thing in my opinion is that everyone feels they contributed to the structure in a way that they want to keep participating.
Edit: I found a budget page from the donation link on the side bar of the main page of lemmy.world.
Perhaps a good start would be a page that gives statistics about the time and money required to run an instance.
Yeah, that’s not not a bad idea.
I’m ok with some non-intrusive ads, also. I’d also be ok with chipping in $5 a month, or so, if it’s something I end up using a lot.
From a personal perspective, I would like to see a model where basic access is free. A 5$ a month fee is fine for you and me, but I think there are a lot of people who may not have that in their budget or who don’t want the paper trail of payments (e.g. if they live in a country that is restrictive of free speech). I am really hoping that voluntary donations are sufficient, but I guess we will see.
I am really hoping that voluntary donations are sufficient
I hope so too.
I really love that idea.
Regarding ads, I almost always turn on an ad blocker because the ads I see are over the top and either obstructive or somehow offensive, so figuring out a way to monetize that isn’t also horrible is kind of a delicate balance. Like, no autoplaying video/audio, for one.
Tip jars, things like possible user customizations allowable for those that donate above a certain threshold (so like, specific color callouts for donators of $x in the last month, or the ability to add highlights inline in comments, or something) and other incentives other than, y’know, getting your average user to understand that servers and time are things that need money to keep going. That said, that stat page would be super helpful on the main instance page, like maybe over on the side.
Yeah, reasonable ads are key. Moving/flashing things are a show stopper for me. Also, ads shouldn’t track private information, I think its fine to base them on the contents of the current public info on a page, but tracking data across sites gets creepy. I don’t like using ad blockers if I can avoid it, but many websites are completely unusable without it.
Honestly I’m fine with some amount of ads as long as they are unobtrusive and inoffensive. Either that or there’s a free tier with some minimal ads and a paid tier with no ads. Nothing outlandish though.
No instance admin should have to bear the cost.
Unfortunately with the current structure of things, that’s probably what will have to happen for a bit.
Lemmy is decentralized and federated and there are pros and cons to that system. One of those is that users expect a completely free experience. However, I have a server at home, but I have no way of scaling it. So despite there being a community I’d love to spin up, I can’t because I have no way of scaling it.
Most people are going to have to go through Cloud providers for that, which can get pricey.
Just like people share the cost for a Netflix account they could probably share the cost of their fediverse access. IF people really wanted that is.
At least with Lemmy there’s lots of different servers, each with their own running costs.
Each could try a different way of keeping the lights on. Some could run on donations only, some could use small unobtrusive ads on the side, some could do lots of ads. If any server does too little they’ll go down due to lack of funding, if any server does too much the users will migrate elsewhere, as it’s quite easy to make a new account on another instance and keep following the same communities.
Even if we end up with some large-scale instances with big servers, millions of users and serious money involved, they won’t have a monopoly on all the content like with reddit, so the competition should keep them from doing anything stupid.
That’s true. That’s definitely why I prefer open source and federated models. No one can have a monopoly.
Life on the net is the life of a nomad fleeing a string of manmade apocalypses.
Missing Reddit is better than mourning what it’ll end up as when the screws start to tighten (when you have a captive audience, stage 2 is ramping up the ads).
Your first sentence was actual poetry.
Their username checks out.
I also feel sad about leaving Reddit. It’s been a constant in my routine for almost a decade. If I needed anything - opinions, suggestions, advice - about literally anything I’d immediately head to Reddit. It’s bittersweet having to leave, but I know deep in my heart there was no other way especially with how it was going and how it was treating its users. But honestly seeing a new, fresh feed actually felt… nice. I don’t see much negativity. I actually see people replying to each other mostly decently. There’s not a lot of trolling or passive aggressiveness. I feel hopeful that this will be the start of seeing healthier communities and more positive interactions. In any case, if you’re here anyway, you’re a part of the group of people who don’t think what’s happening on the other side is acceptable, so it’s already a pretty great filter if you think about it.
I’m actually kinda glad reddit is dying, this seems like a much better place. Short term it’s a pain but long term I have a good feeling about this platform
At this point I’m wondering whether people will stick to reddit even if they pull a 180 on api pricing and all. The whole smear campaign against Apollo and others just underlines they can’t be trusted.
Even if they reneged on everything, I still wouldn’t go back. The problem with Reddit at this point is the quality of its users. It’s next to impossible to find any kind of legitimate discussion because everything is buried under reddit-comedy and virtue signaling. Most of the major subreddits have just become political tools for their mods. It scares me thinking how curated the posts are there.
That is also a criticism of Lemmy already
I’m pretty sure most redditors won’t care enough to leave. I predict the only people actually leaving will be old guard (like 35+) and FOSS nerds who pine for the good old days of the internet and/or otherwise have ideological qualms with the changes. Everyone else will just grumble and get the ad infested, inferior official app.
I want the more the merrier as long as we can moderate the more toxic tendencies, but at this moment I’m also pleased that much of the folks and vibes are much like reddit when i first joined
I’m definitely in the right age bracket… Let’s see how this goes. The good thing is that quite a few moderators are on board, so if we shut the large communities down long enough, that might flip a bunch of people over.
Not sure about that. If content and infrastructure (aka mods) leave, there is enough incentive to move away if you are a lurker.
I’d love more time to ease into the transition and let Lemmy grow more naturally. So if they did that 180 I’d probably still visit Lemmy first each day, then switch to Reddit once I ran out of new posts.
Hopefully after a few months all my favorite things from reddit would get ported over
It’s an interesting thought experiment, I even wonder that about myself. I started using reddit in 2007 and I don’t like how attached to it I am, but I also can’t deny it.
I don’t think they’ll 180 in any event unless there’s a full management change (which has still failed in the past). Their hands are being forced by angry investor money, one of the most powerful forces in the universe, and they obviously have no clue what they’re doing or how to respond… what competent business would pour gasoline on a roaring PR fire by repeatedly shoveling dishonesty and disrespect in everyone’s faces?
There’s an old saying, “don’t shit where you eat”.
Really hope people leave it to a great extent. Reddit doesn’t deserve the users if they lie like they do, and while reddit was easy and fun, a federated way of communicating seems more robust
Yep, agree. Hope the shutdown will send quite a free over…
Honestly better this way, the fediverse is much more resilient and future-proof than a site maintained by a group of people with the aim of making money and deciding the fate of their service, and I doubt that reddit becomes opensource and implements activityPub soon.
You’re using it.
Fuck u/spez
