this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Technology

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It’s not even June 12 for me, yet I suspect many subreddits went dark based on UTC.

I moved to Reddit during the Digg migration. Thus, I got the default subscriptions from back in the day. Over the years, I’ve unsubscribed to things I felt were crap, and I’ve added a number of subreddits.

Already, many have gone dark. My old.Reddit.com homepage already looks much different than normal, and I know that a few subreddits that do show have announced they’ll go dark. I assume they are US based and timing that locally.

I’ve spent more time in the Lemmy fediverse than on Reddit since joining, but I’ve spent time on both.

I’ll admit to cynical skepticism of the impact of the darkening. I still don’t think it will make a difference in Reddit policy, but I now believe it will have a larger impact on Reddit traffic than I imagined.

I still expect it to have no change in Reddit attitude or really in Reddit users.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just hope that most of the people who migrated here to Lemmy will stay and not just go back to Reddit like nothing ever happened.

The huge activity in even small communities is what always kept me on Reddit, and I really look forward to see if Lemmy continues to grow to become what we all hoped Reddit would be for us.

I'll be abondoning Reddit completely and deleting everything as soon as RiF stops working.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm probably going to end up back on Reddit to some extent, but I think Lemmy will stay in my rotation of stuff I open when I'm bored. Or until they inevitably kill old.reddit.com, then I'll be outta there for good...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Most people will go back to reddit in two day. I just hope the whole ordeal seeds Lemmy with enough of a community to grow so one day, it will have feature parity with reddit and an actual community. This probably won't be a Digg like migration, but maybe it's the beginning of a myspace to Facebook like migration.

Digg seems like it went down overnight lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I left, I dont plan to go back. Joined Lemmy today, spun up an instance last night.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not those of us who exclusively used the 3rd party apps. Former RiF user here, reddit for 12 years. Not doing it on their app, you couldn't pay me to tolerate that experience. Using Jerboa right now and with a couple tiny improvements, I got no problem switching.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

100%, I was almost 12 years and have always used RES and Apps. Reddit has been going downhill since they "had" to make money and this was the last straw.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I certainly don't think Reddit is going away forever, but I do think it will push a lot of the OG users out for sure. I just deleted my 10 yr. old account tonight and am just finding out about Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Digg is technically still around even though it doesn't resemble anything close to the "Digg" I used before the migration. I suspect Reddit will go in the same direction. They will keep pushing ways to monetize it, pushing out a lot of people who just want to chat and argue with strangers on the internet until it basically just becomes a website with a bunch of sponsored links and articles and no real user engagement.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep. Places like Reddit don't "die" by going from existing to nonexisting. They "die" by going from "Reddit" to "Did you know Reddit still exists?".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The official Reddit app reminds me of that vibe in that it's trying to be an algorithm-based feed of /r/all garbage to piss you off in the name of engagement and doesn't resemble the Reddit I originally fell in love with years ago.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Algorithmically directed social medias such as Facebook are repulsive to me, so when I started using Reddit, I chose that place precisely because you could control what’s in your feed. It felt refreshingly different. Now Reddit is trying to become the next Facebook, so it’s pretty clear that it’s no longer the place for me.

The same thing seems to apply to the history of YouTube as well. Nowadays that site is trying to become just like TV, so perhaps sooner rather than later that site won’t be for me anymore.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Delete your history and be very selective in what you watch, and YouTube is pretty decent... At least for a few months. After that, either you stuck to your preferences and end up looping over the same content, or you branched out and now it keeps trying to feed you rants full of dog whistles

I use Firefox and containers along with unlock origin - by using the containers strictly for several narrow interests, YouTube acts like ad free tv for me - perfect background noise

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is why Apollo was the only thing keeping me on the site. I took advantage of its filters. I had an extensive list of keyword filters, and over the years had filtered probably several thousand subreddits. I could actually browse r/all and find interesting and unique new to me subreddits. It was great.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I solved that problem by using multireddits, and never visiting r/all. I had one for uplifting stuff, another one for science stuff and so on. In Narwhal and Slide, and they both made it possible to put multireddits in the center stage. Then I tried the default reddit app, and multireddits were hidden behind so many taps, that they must be about remove that feature soon.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I had multireddits for my subscriptions, but I liked discovering new things. With the extremely amount of trash filtering I did to r/all, it allowed me to discover interesting places I’d have never found on my own.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That is a good point. I would discover interesting new places when people specifically mention them. When someone did that, I would go to that sub, sort by top of all time and figure out if I actually care about that place or not. The trouble is, I didn’t bump into cool new subs very frequently.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm expecting the CEO to push back the date of the API implementation by a month or two (still a bit doubtful) but I don't see him changing his original stance given his narcissistic attitude.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m expecting the API change to happen exactly as planned. As a result all 3rd party apps will die by the end of this month, and the user count will take a severe hit. Many essential mod tools will stop working, so those who actually found the default app tolerable, will get to see all subs go downhill since they aren’t really being moderated anymore. As a result, the user count will continue to decline in the following months as people come to terms with Reddit sucking harder than before. Oh, but then it gets even worse when the spam bots and official ads start taking over every sub. Most likely the next year is going to be very rough in terms of user count.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unlike other social media sites, where people stick around because of family and friends, at reddit-like sites, people stick around for the content and discussion. Once the content gets taken over by spam-bots, it's over.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's some apps I hate like Instagram and WhatsApp, but stick around because it's the only way I can contact some friends and family. The network effect is strong and I can't really leave.

With Reddit, I don't care. If there's enough content somewhere else, even if it's a fraction of the volume (there was no way I could get through everything on Reddit anyway) then it's an easy switch.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just revolted and said, if anyone wants to communicate with me, they need to use e.g. Signal.

I'm absolutely not installing this spyware on my phone

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A good chunk of my close family all use iPhones and iMessage to communicate with each other - but they won't add me to any group conversations because "green bubbles bad"... I spun up a Matrix server, created an account for everyone, pre-joined them to a room with all of us in it and sent everyone their credentials along with a link to Element for iOS so that all they had to do was download an app and copy/paste into two fields.

This worked great for about two or three months until most of them went back to their group chats over iMessage and I was back to being excluded. Only one of them still uses Element to communicate with me, but I suppose that's still somewhat a victory since previously we were using Facebook Messenger (bleh) to chat.

I guess there are some sayings that still ring true, such as "Old habits die hard" or "Humans are creatures of habit"... 😮‍💨

It sucks, because it's incredibly difficult for me to not take that personally as "They don't seem to care about me to try to meet me half way to keep in touch". I don't know what more I could do aside from purchasing an iPhone, which is just not going to happen.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

maybe I'm just very stubborn, but I already let the complete family of my girlfriend switch to Signal, because else I wouldn't communicate with them.

I think, I'm just projecting some work frustration into my private life and don't want to eat shit anymore. so, if I'm not worth enough for them to choose a medium, I'm fine with, I accept, that they don't want to talk with me. I do have no problem with less communication - it's their problem, when I don't show up to happenings.

But I understand you, I also take it somehow personally, when people tell me "what do you have to hide?"
As I was part of the founders of a pirate party in my country, I'm maybe more loaded with arguments, but I'm just fed up with this shit and I just don't take it anymore.

in situations of being left alone, some lovely Punk music always helps me - and my girlfriend is on my side, so that's a major influence as well of course

but hey, if everyone just looks for convenience, I can do too

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, hey Punk is my favorite type of music as well! I get it though - honestly I feel like I'd be a little more at ease if I could just explain it logically. If there was a feature that iMessage had that no other platform had then as much as I'd still have some disdain for Apple and the situation they've created, then I could still explain it. But no, I specifically chose Matrix/Element because it could do what iMessage does (well aside from the weird "apps/games" thing they've got, which to my knowledge no one, let alone any of them, use...) and no one pointed out any issues with it. I wouldn't even mind if they had another preference like Discord or What'sApp - just something cross platform...

I just hate it so much. One of my siblings just got married and I was the last to find out because of this. Another one just graduated from high school last month. I also have had so many issues with my health over the last few years and have had a terribly high amount of time spent in the hospital, and during those times it'd certainly be nice to talk to them and let them know I'm okay directly, rather than by proxy of one person.

Its so strange just how far we've come with tech, and yet still run into such simple roadblocks that should be easily avoided... but no.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I complete get the frustration, I've just grown stubborn ;⁠-⁠)

and very nice to meet another Punk connoisseur!