I hear you. Opening Apollo was basically the first thing I did when waking up (don’t judge me Lol). I’ve been on reddit for over 10 years and I credit it as playing a major role in pulling me away from the far right. I’ve learned so much on it, and it really feels like the end of an era. You can’t help but get a bit emotional. Anyway I hope that lemmy can fill that gap, I’ve been really enjoying the community here, everyone is quite friendly.

federation helps a great deal to mitigate this type of centralized power abuse. communities built up reddit, communities will build up Lemmy. honestly, Lemmy (the network) is much more important than reddit (the site)

Same, I am going through the same exact feeling as you are. I had similar existential thoughts on how everything is temporary and fleeting, websites and life… (please don’t judge haha, I really had these thoughts)

In a way, Lemmy is exciting and I’ve got used to it very quickly. It feels like the reddit of old and is surprisingly comfy. However, reddit was a part of some of the best years of my life and helped me become what I’m today personally and professionally. There is a wealth of information on reddit and I hope that doesn’t go away.

I will really really miss using reddit, and it will hurt in the short term, but I believe it will be a good thing eventually, especially if the Fediverse replaces it (at least to some extent). Hopefully then we can avoid this happening again and end this cycle.

Some of us have been through this sort of thing before. At the end of the day, it’s a normal and predictable result of using a corporate/walled garden website. The great news is that there is a shift for many toward alternatives in the fediverse. Not to say that content loss is never going to be an issue again, but since everything is open-ended, it should be a bit more resilient to various “business decisions” that can cause it to be lost.

I hope it motivates many to become web archivists. If anybody is able to financially invest in digital storage, I encourage them to join up at !datahoarder@lemmy.ml and keep copies of all the good stuff you find, including YouTube channels!

I think that when it comes to video content, that is generally the most difficult to store and distribute. Peertube exists and the fediverse equivalent for free as in freedom and beer content, however creators who want to monetize their content are also finding paths that they are in control of which is also great. By that I mean services like Nebula and CuriosityHub. Paywalls aren’t so bad if everyone behind it is putting out premium level content (although I do have some bones to pick with those services in their existing state).

It’s a bummer, but I have a little bit of a different perspective because I’m an old techy. I first started getting into online communities in the late 80s on CompuServe. I was big into Roger Ebert’s showbiz media forum, and had friends if talk to every day there (often including Roger) but as that got expensive, I started moving to Bulletin Board Systems in the early 90s. This is before most people had dedicated Internet (it was all dial-up), and before there was much web content.

I got really into the BBS scene (even met my wife on one), and that’s where I’d talk to people. But as the web took hold of the Internet, the BBSs started dying. I ended up transitioning over to fark.com, and spent a lot of time there. But the fark admins started making changes that were annoying, and the community there started to stagnate, so I got into Reddit maybe eight years ago. We know what happened there, and just the other day I got on here.

Each of these transitions was sad for me, mostly for similar reasons. But I’ve been through it so many times now that I know it’s just a new phase and it will be fine. There are always things I miss about the last place and things I appreciate about the new.

This is all just part of what happens with online communities.

I’ve been on the internet since pretty much the start so I’ve seen dozens of great communities come and go. Normally they reach some kind of malthusian breaking point where they collapse under their own weight, I think this is the first time where sheer greed caused the end though.

So yes, this is the cycle of the internet. Death is actually good for an ecosystem though, it means that new things can evolve, such as the fediverse.

I do feel sad for what will be lost though, and every time I load Apollo to remember this great app with all the care and attention put in to it will be gone at the end of the month.

Reddit pulled me away from the far right as well!

I expected to feel a lot of grief, but Lemmy has matured extremely quickly even since I joined like 4 days ago or so and at this point I’m just excited.

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I’m a bit sad (mostly for the reasons you already described), but it’s also new and exiting. Interestingly, I’m having more fun here than I’ve had on Reddit in years. Not only was it cool to set up my own instance, I also notice I’m contributing far more then I ever did on Reddit. Maybe it’s because the communities are a bit smaller, so there’s a better chance of someone actually reading your comment.

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I’ve seen many things come and go from the internet so I’m actually glad big tech is in decline. Those companies have way too much power.