Long before the APIcalypse, I was thinking of quitting Reddit. Now that everything went downhill, that decision became super easy.
I wasn’t really getting that much benefit out of Reddit, so it wasn’t a big deal. Spending time there was more like bad habit to me. The mere thought of paying for a bad habit sounds so absurd that quitting would have been absolutely mandatory at that point.
Fortunately though, Reddit already made the process so much easier simply buy kicking out my favorite client app.
I know, right? It was like a steady stream of assholes, habitual doom scrolling, and occasionally a few good topics or people chatting.
I made a pact to stop using Reddit as soon as Infinity stopped working for me. It worked for months, but when it stopped, I held myself to it. Not only did I deactivate my account, I used a service to overwrite all of my content, and also then delete it beforehand. My mental health has been recovering steadily ever since.
Even if I did get something positive out of it, I refuse to be part of an ecosystem run that treats it’s users and volunteers with such open hostility. The whole saga with Spez lying and bullshitting to make other people look bad, and the pro-corporate bots that popped up from time to time turned me off it entirely. I miss it sometimes, but what’s the point of having a sense of ethics or personal conviction if you shrug your shoulders and do what you want regardless of whether you know you should?
It’s like someone claiming to be a vegetarian, but they eat meat whenever they feel like it because it tastes good.
When I joined Reddit I noticed that it’s too easy to end up doomscrolling and arguing with idiots. That’s why I stayed away from r/all and any sub that’s all about news and/politics. The only exception was r/europe, because I think it’s good to know something about the region that actually influences my life.
In order to avoid wasting time on stupid idiont nonsense, I focused on science and technology subs along with some very specific niche subs. That way Reddit was actually able to provide some benefit from time to time.
I made a Lemmy account before the Reddit Blackout, and I’ve been here ever since. After the blackout ended, I visited Reddit every week at first, but now it’s more like once a month at most. In order to make the transition faster, I unsubscribed from everything except all the protest, blackout, API etc. related subs. So if I go to Reddit now, I’ll just see people complaining about Reddit. If I go to r/all it’s about as useless as it was years ago, so there’s no reason to spend time in there.
Must be fucking tragic still developing for reddit ecosystem. All of your subscriptions go straight to Reddit, who graciously gives you access to user generated content curated by unpaid mods.
I checked out Narwhal 2, and the app is a goddam jewel. I’d have paid $30 or $50 for it (like I did with Bean for Lemmy). It almost convinced me to go and make a reddit account again, but then I saw reddit recently stopped letting you opt out of ad personalization anymore, and it was easy to run back to lemmy. Reddit does not want 3rd party apps. Eventually they’ll look for ways to fully block access.
Reddit has a lot more tracking and fingerprinting going on in their own app too that they obviously want you there for. Once you log into multiple accounts, it fingerprints you as the same user on all accounts. I had a few accounts; a work related one and a couple personal ones. Ended up with a temporary ban on one from a dick head mod, and ALL of them got banned together for 7 days because of that with a message (forget the exact wording so I’m paraphrasing) basically saying “don’t try to make another account to get around the ban because we’ll still know its you”. They’re mining the shit out of user data now, and also really starting to connect the dots on multiple account holders which I’m guessing will be to “deal with” people who detract from their IPO goals. Glad I left.
I wonder if those devs, still playing along with Reddit Inc. outrageous prices, aren’t coding access to other platforms behind the scenes. It would be a decent approach to retain their userbase, while gently encouraging it to migrate.
That’s what BOOST did. Basically a 1:1 transition from reddit to lemmy after the API died.
For some reason, Spaz thinks he’s Musk. It’s funny that Spaz is destroying reddit the same way Mush destroyed twitter, well… not funny “ha ha”, but funny ‘odd’.
How stupid must they be?
It’s a paradigm that defeats itself. Reddit is basically reselling access to shit that users freely submit. They start removing access from users who don’t want to pay or use the official (bad experience) app, and they will necessarily have fewer submissions and less content.
If its a hassle to go there and use it, and the payment structure disincentivizes their young demographic from using it, it is no longer the “cool kid” corner of the internet, which further removes the reason why other people would want to pay for it.
Imagine I’m a hypothetical Reddit user under the new model - what would be my incentive to pay them for the privilege of posting links, quality text posts, my girlfriends tits, or anything else for that matter?
Wow that sucks, It just sucks even more that a good portion of the Reddit Fanbase doesn’t want to even try other platforms such as Lemmy which give much better user experiences in the end.
Lemmy not pulling in Reddit’s general audience and Lemmy having a better user experience than Reddit are highly correlated.
Someone should put together some lists of instances to block for new users. Only English for example. Lemmy seems like opposite reddit, you block communities not subscribe to them. It’s taken me months to block enough that my feed has mostly things I care to look at. My blocked list is miles long, I think I’ve subscribed to 50 but I never browse it, it’s so slow moving.
Idk honestly. Lemmy is quite an echo chamber in terms of tech stuff especially. I think reddit having much more content of all different types can make it a better user experience for most people. I find it hard to suggest lemmy for the average user who just wants to see memes and discussions based on their hobbies and interests. Lemmy is a lot less diverse.
@Neve8028@lemm.ee I know I for one have been trying to fix it in the gaming sense talking about the games I enjoy on communities I rather find or make myself. Hopefully more topics get explored and filled in the near future.
yeah I wish we had more variety unfortunately I don’t have time to commit myself to be a mod for a community here
You’re 100% right about that. Try mentioning a web browser that isn’t Firefox for a good example.
actually you should be using waterfox / librefox
I hope the people who are willing to pay a monthly subscription on reddit are a very miniscule portion of the user base.
Here’s the thing, reddit hopes so too. Reddit’s goal isn’t to make money on 3rd party apps, it’s to price the api high enough to draw people to their free ad riddled dumpster fire of an app. It’s the same reason you can’t get nsfw subs on the api.
For once I’m with reddit (on people using third party apps but reasons are different where reddit wanted to no longer compete with third party apps, and I don’t want people giving reddit money after the end of the protest). I’d prefer third party apps be dead for good if mobile plan type subscriptions are necessary to exist (by this I mean the third party apps need subscriptions to exist because of reddit’s decision to charge for api which they aren’t going to change because people were unwilling to quit during the protest, and showed reddit they are too addicted to stay away. So now the aftermath for users is either pay or don’t, and I’d rather people not pay reddit money. Better off quitting mobile use than pay money is my stance.).
So the few hold outs now either give into using reddit app like reddit wants or go through the process of getting third party apps to work for free. Or use the website or preferably move to not contributing to reddit anymore through mobile, and just moving to lurker status through rss or accountless apps like Stealth for Android.
Reddit is doing better than Lemmy. Have you seen Lemmy statistics lately? 📉
Edit: Lemmy users mad about facts.
