I wish there was an alternative to leaving Reddit
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?
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.
Agreed, I feel like the social part of reddit is pretty easily replaceable but the amount of niche and specialised information was incredible
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?
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.
Isn’t there the reddit archive project?
i miss the memes, the rest of it is toxic
Personally I’m eagerly awaiting Reddit’s demise.
Be the change you want to see. Start a community, advertise it, start bring the reddit folks over here.
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
Yeah, to be honest, I used the reddit mobile app and I loved reddit and I’m also sad to see it go. However, nothing lasts forever.
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.
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).
You’re using it.
I’ve been on Reddit for almost 15 years and it’s just gotten too big and too moderated for me.
I feel the same way. I love how reddit had very active communities for pretty much all my interests. Lemmy is not bad but you have to make it happen and who knows if it will happen…
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
Reddit has always had a massive problem with misogynists, racists, pedophiles, etc. and the staff never does anything about it until there’s media attention. They monopolized the web forum medium which basically forced communities to have to exist on that extremely toxic, hate-filled website.
I’d say I’m elated to see it go, but to be honest I don’t think it is going anywhere. With any luck, Lemmy will become a vibrant community while all the assholes stay on the site they deserve.
Edit: Also, Reddit is designed to be addictive and has a reputation for it’s negative, doomscroll-inducing atmosphere. Then there’s the whole race-to-the-top karma system that ensures that Reddit has a monoculture where all the replies are predictable and similar.
Fediverse platforms aren’t built around being addictive and in general tend to be more positive and diverse, making them feel large in spite of actually being significantly smaller than mainstream platforms.
Yeah, it’s a bummer Reddit went the way it did. But here we are. I’ll miss it to a point. Still figuring out Lemmy, we’ll see how it goes. I’ve tried Mastodon a bit as well but it feels more like Twitter to me, which I used for maybe a week years ago. No thanks.
I never got into Twitter and was freaked out by the content on Mastodon. I just want a nice chill community that shares interesting information/news/facts/pics.
