Reddit is getting worse - both the software and the content - a tipping point has been reached.
Posted by A_norny_mousse@reddit | RedditAlternatives | View on Reddit | 85 comments
This is not a rant.
I have been thinking about this for a long time.
I have used old.reddit for the longest time and there's always been some glitches, most notably: the comments rendered under a post do not correspond to the number of comments counted at the top. There seem to be delays, and they're getting longer. Whether this is just old.reddit or in general, I do not care.
There are other indicators that reddit isn't interested in keeping old.reddit working. It's just a question of time.
Then there's bots, including wetware bots. Whether they're just re-posting to farm karma or actively flood certain topics with vile opinion or - after a noticeable delay that has nothing to do with timezones - tip the up/downvote balance in their favor: they are here, and it's not getting better.
I am signing up for various federated reddit alternatives as per this list.
Since I'm new to the fediverse: how can I use my existing Mastodon account instead of creating a new one for, say, Lemmy?
victoryismind@reddit
I am mod on a sub and apparently I'm supposed to be OK with people throwing abuse at me without being able to block them and continue moderating the sub for free.
What to expect when they banned tools that made mods live easier a few years ago, causing many mods to walk out.
DurgeDriven@reddit
Don't let the door hit you on the way out
Bunch of whiny little bitches
Mindestiny@reddit
Honestly, fuck all the comments and "engagement"
I miss RSS feeds. Curated news about topics I care about from trusted sources delivered right to my inbox. Essentially Twitter for just news feed links without all the Twitter bullshit
Delicious_Ease2595@reddit
RSS is still alive lol, many good RSS readers out there
Wingzerofyf@reddit
Does a good modern RSS reader even exist?
After Google Reader shutdown I tried using RSSOwl and it just wasn’t cutting it 😔
bengrulz@reddit
I've been happy with Feedly over the last few years
S4L7Y@reddit
Inoreader has been pretty good so far, although feels like since Google Reader I’ve been searching for alternatives as well.
AmbitionSufficient12@reddit
The tipping point was the ellen pao bullshit.
You’re seeming the maturity of reddits decline right now.
Still no viable alternatives. Honestly I just think this is how the internet is these days. Startups can’t happen anymore because they are immediately overwhelmed by Nazis and Pedos to the point they can’t keep services up.
Uncrustworthy@reddit
There needed to be a way to create enforcable laws and accountability for people's behaviors online but for some reason everyone believes it should be a lawless pile of garbage speen forth from anyone anywhere for any reason and this is just "the price we pay for true freedom" or some shit
AmbitionSufficient12@reddit
What you have on Reddit is enforceable laws. The decline of this place is perfectly collated to censorship. It totally eliminated all diversity and everything interesting.
People don’t really need laws. They do just fine on their own for the most part. It’s when you start punishing 99% of people for the 1% that behaves poorly that you have a problem. The solution is to just accept that 1% will be shitty and ignore it.
PuddingFeeling907@reddit
Lemmy, Mbin and Piefed are the viable alternatives.
A_norny_mousse@reddit (OP)
I'm intrigued. What was that?
AmbitionSufficient12@reddit
The decline of reddit has been a long story with many chapters. Ill give you an overview of the whole thing. To understand this, you need to turn on old reddit so you can see things in discrete pages.
Reddit used to be super nerdy. /r/programmerhumor was the most popular sub. it was a bunch of computer nerds and nothing else.
2008 reddit was beautiful. Content was rich. I pretty much parented myself and learned 99% of my life skills off of reddit from 2008-2012. /r/all actually displayed, organically, the top posts from every single subreddit, so it was an outrageously useful tool to get exposure to new ideas, hobbies, etc that you didnt even know existed. To put this in context: I would spend hours on reddit and never make it past the front page of /r/all because 95% of the posts were interesting and the average comment was a paragraph or two thoughtfully discussing the post.
2010: The Digg migration. Digg.com used to be the most popular news aggregator. It had progressively gotten shittier as power users and other idiots took over. In 2010, digg inflicted a new layout and model on eveyone that just solidified its enshitification to a social media platform and pretty much killed the sight overnight. Millions of users moved over to reddit in a day, probably like 70% of digg. Reddit's servers were overwhelmed and the site was down A LOT for months. These users definitely dropped content quality of OG reddit, but I think they brought a much needed boost in diversity and the thinned out the overbearing nerdiness on this site before this.
Starting in 2012 There were then several cycles of bannings, purges, etc. This was when "safe spaces" became a thing and reddit really leaned into that. They started purging ANYTHING controversial. 99% of reddit was fine, but there were serval subs that started getting disproportional attention. Subs literally called coontown and fatpeople hate. The jailbait sub got put on blast on CNN. The Admins responded as you would expect, with total and complete cowardice. They just banned everyone involved despite them using these communities to grow their popularity for a decade.
The content quality noticeably dropped each time there was a ban/change. I was now scrolling through 10-12 pages of reddit in hours and learning less and less.
Ellen Pao era: In 2014, the stupid "safe spaces" culture had really taken hold. "Micro-aggressions" were now a thing..... The bannings and purges hit a climax through the hiring of Ellen Pao as Reddit's CEO. I am 100% convinced she was hired as a scapegoat, which is exactly what she ended up being. EVERYONE hated her on here. She took the fall for implementing a ton of purges, banning, censorship, etc etc. Then resigned a year later, taking all the user hate with her. She left, and no one was pissed at the site admins anymore.
Content quality got so bad that people started abandoning reddit just like they did digg. Everyone was predicting reddit's demise. VOAT.com popped up as the "next reddit" and was AMAZING. It was just like 2010 reddit before all the shit started. Reddit users were getting shadow-banned for mentioning voat in reddit posts. It was really messed up. I got to enjoy vote for about 3 months (totally stopped using reddit) until voat died. heres why it died:
Pao banned (took the blame for banning) the last strongholds of controversial content on reddit, which included several hate subreddits. Reddit was able to remain fully functional with these communities in tact because they were heavily diluted by the other 98% of users. But when this 2% got banned, they all went to voat. Voat was MUCH smaller and this 2% of reddit was now 80% of Voat. So Voat died essentially overnight with just awful, awful content. Just admining the child porn posts overwhelmed the site and they had to shut down.
Reddit after 2015 when Pao stepped down is not really worth talking about. The culture and goals of reddit were set: Monetize at the expense of running a quality website. The Admins have been making changed to distances advertisers from the porn that drives the majority of Reddit's traffic. Implementing stupid grift schemes like reddit gold. Alienating their base users by changing APIs. Banning subs, mods, and users willy nilly who disagree with them, controversial or not. And that has driven reddit to where it is today: A wasteland of thoughtless, stupid, and unjustifiably enraged users who consume and publish total garbage content. Users cant maintain a long-term reddit account because you get perma-banned for no reason at all. You cant post on a sub without resubmitting 50 times to contort your post to fit all these weird rules. etc, etc.
The worst part is, no good reddit alternates are possible because of the same thing that happened to VOAT. They are immediately inundated with crazy people and can not scale their platform to a level where the crazies are diluted enough to attract normal people.
___astral@reddit
This was really hard to read... purely because of how true it is. How good the internet of old was, and how shit it is now.
Great summary.
AmbitionSufficient12@reddit
Yeah man it’s tragic.
__Pendulum__@reddit
Goodness I can't believe it's been so many years.
Ellen Pao ended up being the scapegoat, and thrown under the bus by other staff and owners. And people celebrated when she left, but failed to notice that none of the controversial changes were wound back. She was a blood sacrifice to keep them.
AmbitionSufficient12@reddit
Yep. It worked too. Only intelligent thing the admins have ever done.
__Pendulum__@reddit
Made me remember this classic/nightmare https://youtu.be/TB9qKvk9mZs
Back then we all felt the world was divided but looking back it didn't seem so. I wonder if 11 years from now we'll fondly wish for the days of now when things felt "less divided"
A_norny_mousse@reddit (OP)
Thanks for these insights. I came late to reddit, cannot directly relate. But even so, I have noticed a decline. Or maybe as I got more familiar with the undercurrents I started noticing more shit.
AmbitionSufficient12@reddit
Its once or twice a year that things get noticeably worse. One decline is always in May. The other is in Decembers. I always wondered if that followed some internal 6-month release schedule that reddit admins have.
But yes. Ive noticed things get worse every 6 months or so. Its pretty unbearable at this point.
BlazeAlt@reddit
Lemmy "extreme" users and communities have already been diluted, the platform now has 48k monthly active users.
Feel free if you have any questions
AmbitionSufficient12@reddit
lol. Idk why you’re getting triggered by this.
And Reddit had 100s of millions MAUs when all this was going on with voat. 48k is not “diluted”, at all.
A 2% purge like Reddit’s would mean over a million MAUs flooding lemmy. That would completely crush your 48k
So yeah. Maybe do some research next time before getting outraged.
BlazeAlt@reddit
I'm not triggered, I was just refuting your statement about "no good reddit alternates are possible"
Reddit alternatives are possible. Reddit purging 2% of its sub would not flood Lemmy, as Lemmy wouldn't allow "crazy people".
AmbitionSufficient12@reddit
Okay….. I really don’t care about you being wrong. Have fun
Erocdotusa@reddit
If i remember correctly I think she started the purge of many subreddits that were considered problematic and not friendly for attracting advertisers
BlazeAlt@reddit
You can use your Mastodon account to browse Lemmy, but the experience would be subpar.
Here is an example of the same thread on both platforms (the first one is Sharkey rather than Mastodon, but you'll get the idea):
Lemmy, Mbin or Piefed allow you to browse the platform in a similar way to Reddit. Mastodon or Sharkey would be more similar to Twitter, you wouldn't be able to see "subs" as easily.
If you want both at the same time, then Mbin should be for you, they have both views.
A few recommendations for instances - Lemmy: https://lemm.ee/ - Mbin: https://fedia.io/ - Piefed: https://piefed.social/
Coolerwookie@reddit
What happens if whoever is hosting that instance takes it down?
BlazeAlt@reddit
This is always a risk. The usual recommendation is to go for a server that is managed by a few admins (https://feddit.org went the extra mile and is managed by a non profit: https://fediverse.foundation, https://lemmy.ca as well with https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started) and have contact information and status pages in their sidebars (example for lemm.ee: https://status.lemm.ee/ and feddit.uk: https://stats.uptimerobot.com/XzEqqSB3Ay).
Most of the instances listed above have been around since July 2023 and the API fiasco. The cost to host an instance is quite low (can go as low as 0.03€ per user per month https://feddit.org/post/2600584) and admins may ask for small donations if needed.
Coolerwookie@reddit
I don't understand why all the instances sync. It move the instance-Management away from the user and remove that barrier.
Can you tell me why that's not possible?
BlazeAlt@reddit
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understood your questions.
Instances synchronize continuously to offer the same content to everyone, but if your instance goes down you wouldn't be able to login in anymore
Coolerwookie@reddit
Everything that happens in one instance, login details, posts, votes, modding, etc, should automatically sync across all instances. Similar to how internet nodes sync - if that's an apt analogy.
BlazeAlt@reddit
Most of the things you mention are indeed synced. See this thread as an example:
All the content is replicated.
What is not replicated is accounts themselves, but that makes sense as a user belongs to one instance, so a user can only log in to that one instance.
You may be thinking about redundancy, but that's handled separately by each instance using whatever strategy they want, the same way a centralized website would handle it.
Coolerwookie@reddit
Why not the accounts too?
chesterriley@reddit
Because the main feature of Lemmy is that if you get banned on either a community or whole instance, you can just create an account on another instance and resubscribe to what you had before.
Coolerwookie@reddit
I see the pro side of that. Con side is, account doesn't transfer with history, and those valuable Internet karma points.
I really do hope it gets more traction. Easier for a layman to use.
chesterriley@reddit
I don't care at all about karma points or history.
Coolerwookie@reddit
A fair number do. That's why they post. But hey, if Lemmy is winning regardless of all these missing features, then what do I know, right?
BlazeAlt@reddit
Lemmy doesn't have karma. Avoids karma farming.
BlazeAlt@reddit
Accounts are linked to an instance. That's how a user can access the network, they need an instance. If the instance goes down, that account is gone.
That also protects the accounts from admins from other instances to interfere. If any admin from any instance could remove any account, that would be a mess.
Coolerwookie@reddit
People get quite attached to their account. There should be better safeguards. Losing an account, and where their accounts are will have sentimental value.
BlazeAlt@reddit
Skype is shutting down in May, all those accounts will be lost, that is not specific to Lemmy.
The usual recommendation is to go for a server that is managed by a few admins (https://feddit.org went the extra mile and is managed by a non profit: https://fediverse.foundation, https://lemmy.ca as well with https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started) and have contact information and status pages in their sidebars (example for lemm.ee: https://status.lemm.ee/ and feddit.uk: https://stats.uptimerobot.com/XzEqqSB3Ay).
Most of the instances listed above have been around since July 2023 and the API fiasco. The cost to host an instance is quite low (can go as low as 0.03€ per user per month https://feddit.org/post/2600584) and admins may ask for small donations if needed.
A_norny_mousse@reddit (OP)
So I must create an account to get the reddit-like experience on Lemmy instances, got it.
If I may ask further: do I need to repeat this for every Lemmy instance I want to use? (shit, I know how naive I sound)
Thanks for the recs, 2 were already on my personal list.
silverionmox@reddit
You only need one lemmy account, an then you can also access other lemmy instances that instance federated with... and can also lose that access if they defederate. That's a feature to allow communities to manage their user base and find a better matchup between user base, style, content, and purpose of that instance.
I expect it to end up as a few big continents of instances that represent mainstream users, with a lot of small islands for niche users or people who just want a limited userbase for a limited purpose.
nicheComicsProject@reddit
And the biggest instances will defederate anyone they disagree with and anyone who doesn't also defederate all those instances. Lemmy is 1000x worse than reddit. At least reddit needs to make money so they can't ban literally all dissenting voices.
A_norny_mousse@reddit (OP)
Thank you!
BlazeAlt@reddit
No, you only need one Lemmy account. For instance, lemm.ee allows you to see the same thread I posted above via https://lemm.ee/post/56885951
There are a few defederation decisions, but lemm.ee is still federated and federates by pretty much everyone
Feel free if you have any other questions
A_norny_mousse@reddit (OP)
Thank you, and I will.
__Pendulum__@reddit
Hey Blaze. Just wanted to thank you for your super helpful and insightful comments about Lemmy.
Ultimately it wasn't the environment for me - would have taken a lot more user curation than I have the energy for. Not that Reddit is much better admittedly.
But your comments always make me wish it was right for me and I'm sure have helped a lot of people find their online home <3
BlazeAlt@reddit
Hey!
Thank you for your nice comment! If you ever want to come back, https://piefed.social/ has built-in keyword filters that can help with the curation of the content.
man_and_life@reddit
I run my own forums . Traditional forums. Don’t really like social media sites. Full of ads, trolls and rude people.
ScienceOverNonsense2@reddit
Also getting younger and younger. Too many posts sound like something you could overhear in a middle school lunchroom.
ThorsRake@reddit
Bots, bullshit and so, so many ranking posts. Every fucking day 'ok let's do this' - posts some ranking list that's been on a thousand other subreddits.
So dull.
coldrolledpotmetal@reddit
Wait I just looked at the profile of someone who posted one of those to /r/sacramento, and it looks like they’re just doing it all over reddit? Why would anyone waste time on that
plunki@reddit
Bots do it to get easy karma, then thdy sell the account.
Absentfriends@reddit
Who buys it?
AradynGaming@reddit
On top of plunki's answer, they drown out competing voices & make things look one sided. Essentially, they create an echo chamber with tons of similar comments created by bots, where you can only hear their echo and no one elses. Anyone with a dissenting opinion gets thousands of down votes immediately dropped. They avoid getting banned because they have karma (all farmed via other bots). Big giant circular mess.
plunki@reddit
They are used for marketing/astroturfing, propaganda, tons of stuff
Absentfriends@reddit
TIL
KingLouisXCIX@reddit
How does one sell an account?
sneakpeekbot@reddit
Here's a sneak peek of /r/Sacramento using the top posts of the year!
#1: Restaurant surcharges will be illegal July 1st | 862 comments
#2: [ Removed by Reddit ]
#3: Can we do this too? | 59 comments
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^Contact ^^| ^^Info ^^| ^^Opt-out ^^| ^^GitHub
I_Hate_Reddit_56@reddit
Something is up with the algorithm. I get local subs all over the country poping up in my feed. Maybe because it's all the same anti trump post for each city . Like when "ice watch" posts were going around.
black_pepper@reddit
Where are the memes? Where did they go?
1ns_0mniac@reddit
Me, a lurker of r/meme, was so happy scrolling through so many memes. Now where are you guys, what happened, migrated somewhere leaving me behind?
Howrus@reddit
Thing is - it's not an Reddit issue, it's any popular platform issue.
This is the modern internet, and there will be no popular place that are safe from it.
threelonmusketeers@reddit
Fediverse alternatives like Lemmy, Mbin, and Piefed are pretty resistant to it.
Howrus@reddit
Because there's not that many people there.
As soon as majority of users move to Lemmy - bots will find a ways.
threelonmusketeers@reddit
Many Lemmy instances require manual approvals for new accounts, which, while not perfect, does provide some safeguards against bots.
mastervadr@reddit
See ya!
Secret300@reddit
I switched to Lemmy. I'm only on reddit rn because I clicked a link then said eh sure I'll check out my homepage.
The more people switch to Lemmy the better it'll be. Literally the only thing it's missing is more users but it's plenty active already. Just missing those niche communities.
snowflake37wao@reddit
wait I just checked old reddit on my mobile browsers and cant access it at all. Perhaps it is me, or Apple? it isnt just my iOS, I cant access old.reddit from any browser on my iPad either
AlissonHarlan@reddit
Nothing makes meore mad than spending time writing a funny and meaningfull comment for it to just bé erased after i post it !!! Not only i feed reddit for free, but they does not thé even want my free content
Cursed_Creative@reddit
what about rouge moderators permanently banning people without recourse? it's eggshells around here. fuck that.
WaterMittGas@reddit
I just wish one of the other options were even a quarter as good, but they sadly are not.
PuddingFeeling907@reddit
That's not true, Lemmy, Mbin and Piefed are perfect drop-in replacements for Reddit.
PuddingFeeling907@reddit
Reddit has too many corporate lackeys these days.
AlpacaM4n@reddit
What are wetware bots?
A_norny_mousse@reddit (OP)
I guess they're included in the now common definition of bot: actual people doing bot-like stuff like karma farming.
DoctorQuarex@reddit
Nested comments and free platforms are both bot friendly, just saying
One-Candle-3938@reddit
Reddit is so leftist it censors anything that isn’t fully liberal
BlazeAlt@reddit
Lemmy has 48k monthly active users
Feel free if you have any questions
fruitybrisket@reddit
Liberal and leftist are not the same thing. Reddit is very leftist.
Electronic-Phone1732@reddit
Hey, I recognise you from a lot of subreddits,
you can post to a lemmy community by "mentioning" it at the end of a post. You can follow a lemmy community, but it boosts comments as well for some reason. If replies are missing on a post, I follow the community on a burner account, which will make all replies get fetched.
Also, the inaccurate numbers thing is from removed comments.
A_norny_mousse@reddit (OP)
Sometimes. Sometimes there's nothing, while it says "nn comments" at the top. I was trying to phrase this as broadly as possible.
It's a bit hard to pin down, but reddit the software has never been very good, and while old.reddit should be more robust, they keep adding features to new reddit without integrating it. I'm pretty sure old.reddit is staying alive with an absolute minimum of maintenance, if any.
Electronic-Phone1732@reddit
There was a golden year or so in 2022/2023 where new reddit seemed to work fine. The sh reddit (the current redesign - sh.reddit.com ) would break weirdly every week or so, and old reddit would go down with it, but new.reddit.com (doesn't work anymore) worked fine. Always come off as weird.
Syndicalistic@reddit
Wow, so it's not just me
Fuck reddit