Can we just admit already that there isn't a good reddit alternative?
Posted by Lifeisblue444@reddit | RedditAlternatives | View on Reddit | 97 comments
Yea I know. Go ahead downvote me, ban me, slander me, etc. But I feel like down the line this is something that needs to be addressed. I've been around on reddit with multiple accounts, and I've followed this sub for a long time. It's amazing that there still isn't a viable alternative nor solution for many users.
I'm sorry to say this but I don't see a future for most alternatives. Whatever alts that do exist are just going to remain small with nothing going on. It's funny, I remember about what year or over a year ago someone had finally said how shitty the situation was and that the majority of alternatives sucked ass.
Any centralized site is gonna end up shit because the devs are a multitude of things. 1. Dumb and inexperienced. 2. Are assholes. 3. End up not being trustworthy. People keep suggesting that fediverse is gonna somehow be the answer when we all know damn well a majority of people aren't even gonna use it at all.
The truth is what nobody wants to hear....is that there isn't a ship to jump to. No other sites have the amount content, information, education, and entertainment that the main sites such as Reddit, YouTube, Tumblr, etc. Have and will continue to have.
Idk...I've browsed this sub long enough for too long. I think I'm just going to touch grass more often like I've been doing.
verisimilitude404@reddit
I miss the old vbscript forums: No voting on opinions; you could have an opinion and it not immediately be pounced upon by veriferous ideologues, you could have an upopular idea or opinion and it wouldn't be downvoted by committee, and mods were just there to close threads when things rarely devolved into bickering.
Ultimately, it's all a cycle. The internet was initially adopted by a specific type of person that genuinely fostered a certain environment.
For now, if you want to have a pleasant discussion with people a varying viewpoints, it's just gonna be a case of joining niche hobby forums. Sad really when you think about it - a tremendous tool for communication and it turns into High School.
Captain_Parsley@reddit
Ben shapero
Raymond-L-Yacht@reddit
The culture that allowed reddit to take off in the first place in its original form just no longer exists. Most people won't quit reddit for the reasons you guys want to, they don't care about the things you care about. The average user on this site is now just the same as the average tiktok or twitter user, and what they consume here is just as shallow and braindead. They're content with how things are, theres never gonna be a mass exodus.
Terewawa@reddit
How do you manage to be so optimistic and upbeat?
iiioiia@reddit
How much have you used TikTok?
Do you understand how it works?
bri35@reddit
I'm not OP and I have never been on TikTok, but I'm genuinely interested in your opinion on it. Could you share what you like and/or dislike about it?
I left FB and Insta years ago, bad for my mental health (comparative mind, esp when I was going through tough shit). I'm so over reddit at this point but I don't know how else to even begin to enjoy the Internet anymore.
iiioiia@reddit
I believe it to be the most potent technology for the spread of ideas in existence, head and shoulders above any other platform. Why do you think the US Government wants to take it out?
TikTok! Tune your feed, and enjoy!
Stolles@reddit
Uh, because of china. Not because of trying to silence the spread of ideas, how moronic holy shit. Literally all of the internet has spread ideas MASSIVELY, like M A S S I V E L Y since its inception and major things have happened due to that, before tiktok was even a fucking twinkle in chinas eye.
As a tiktok user, I will say it can definitely spread BAD and misinformation to kids who don't know any better and warp their mindset which is not something we want. People who don't study psychology, don't understand how fragile the minds are of people, but especially kids. We are not rational, we are not logical or strategic by design, we are first and foremost emotional and idea generators. Our prefrontal cortex, the thinky thinky rational part of our brain is the newest addition evolutionarily speaking.
Tiktok has some of the most embarrassing and disgusting things you'll come across online. It doesn't matter how much I tune my feed, I'll get weird ASMR bullshit, people dunking themselves in water, pretending to sleep on stream for peoples amusement, people profiting off showing their really really deformed poor children for monetary gain, people pretending to be NPC characters (by far the weirdest imo) and people who act like they are jerking off just off screen. Tiktok is literally half lies and bullshit being fed to you for money on their end. I don't trust 99% of the shit on there.
Want to know how that compares to what china sees on their lives? It's all super educational. We might be more free than china, since they have banned almost fucking everything from their people, but they are learning and we are laughing at people exploding a water balloon over their head and feeding them money, only for them to keep saying they will do something if only 2 more people like or join the live (and people fall for it), only to get blue balled for the next 4 hours for them to make an excuse and come back tomorrow.
We are getting fucking dumb and as an american, our feelings on independence and pure unadulterated freedom is hindering our ability to see the bad things for us and when we're being manipulated.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/10/chinas-tiktok-might-as-well-be-designed-as-a-weapon-against-our-teens/
https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-between-tik-tok-in-china-and-the-us/#:\~:text=Although%20they're%20owned%20by,t%20offered%20in%20the%20U.S.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/tiktok-ban.html
HQuasar@reddit
Why should that be a good thing? Twitter can spread "ideas" just as fine although with a more limited reach, but most of the time it's verbal diarrhea and shallow opinions.
iiioiia@reddit
Our current ideas seem to be causing the planet to get hot.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
HQuasar@reddit
And TikTok is the solution? lmfao
iiioiia@reddit
You know it to be not do you?
Lamow
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
Exactly. I feel like this subreddit keeps being delusional about it. I think many agree, but I think people are trying so hard to keep some sort of....hope? Optimistic perspective? I won't shame them for that because I get it. But I've been on this site for years with many, and I mean many accounts! The only good use reddit has for me and those many accounts is to take a shit, find information and get educated, etc.
Not trying to sound like an asshole but what else could compete!? These alternatives don't give enough initiative for people (not talk
Aukstasirgrazus@reddit
I'm not sure I understand you.
Do you want alternatives to current Reddit? Go to Imgur, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Tiktok, Instagram, they're all the same.
Do you want alternatives to the original reddit? That's Lemmy, with tons of niche communities with not a ton of people in them.
ColdFeetHoldPee@reddit
Honestly I want an alternative to the current Reddit but top decision makers care community.
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
I think I speak for the rational people too when I say this...I personally don't want another reddit clone. I don't know if you were here for when Ruqqus was a thing, and please don't ask me to explain what went wrong because that's a story that's been told too many times.
I would just like for once to see a site competently made with actual good effort, and content that people can enjoy. It feels like a lot of alternatives just end up devolving into nothing but politics of right wing rejects.
Don't get me wrong I understand that people have a right to express themselves and enjoy their freedom of discussions, but it becomes ridiculous when all the damn site is a landfill of the same right wing nazi shit. It's bad enough reddit is a leftie nazi shithole.
And even with the smaller alternatives that I'm trying to be on, it always seems like there's just nothing. Idk how I feel about fediverse but as I said most people aren't going to leave reddit that already has a bunch of information established on it.
I'm pretty much on a lot of alternatives and different sites. For me personally it would just be nice to have a site that functions and isn't a censorship, or a whole free for all voat ship that never goes any place.
Then again social media hasn't really been for me I suppose...But as I stated in my post it's been YEARS! Yet not one alternative has managed to even generate the possibility of being an alternative most people can enjoy.
Yes I know Saidit.net is a thing. I browse from time to time. But how many people are actually using it? Shit, do most people even remember Saidit exists!?
Sorry for rambling. I'm ok with a centralize site but it always seems to disappoint because there's just not much to do for some people with specific interests. Why? Idk guess everyone is too busy with politics and/or shit nobody cares about.
I hate to say this, the only reason the me, reddit users, and YOU! Is because reddit still has stuff we can enjoy. It's still a shit place. RedditAlternatives wouldn't exist right now if there was a good alternative.
And if Lemmy and the fediverse is so good then why the fuck are people still here!?
Aukstasirgrazus@reddit
Buddy, I was here when Voat was a thing.
Far right ideas always devolve to extreme racism and all that shit, always. Lemmy is what reddit was in 2010 or so, when karma points were meaningless and communities were tiny.
chesterriley@reddit
With hundreds of thousands of users.
I feel like all the "let's all stay on reddit" posts are precisely because many on reddit fear the exodus that is shrinking reddit.
Foxy_Mazzzzam@reddit
I wish there was a good one. Communities that used to be small and supportive have been taken over by judgmental assholes hiding behind their phones and computers. It doesn’t matter what subs you follow because Reddit just shows you whatever it wants anyway. I’m over it. But there’s no alternative, I just want to find interesting news stories, videos and links that I otherwise wouldn’t know to search for.
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
Exactly! Politics has invaded everywhere. Almost every alternative is an alt right hive mind while reddit remains a leftist hivemind.
Even now on this subreddit people are finally admiting that Lemmy is shit and isn't as good as everyone else kept hyping up.
There is no alternative. Social media has been so corrupted over the years it's damn near impossible to fix it. It's not like it was when internet was a niche thing, and only a few people used it.
Not only that, there's too much censorship everywhere. Unfortunately, I've said before that the type of people on a site as a community can easily break your site. Yet, nobody wanted to listen to what I said. Even when all these alternatives were being infiltrated by all the banned extremist people who were unhinged.
Me personally, I'm annoyed how we have to pick a side and can't just mind our business anymore on shit. Honestly, all you can do is pick your poison, it's all gone to shit.
I participate here and a other few alternatives. It sucks but oh well. :(
poompasanator@reddit
Reddit went to shit.. unsupervised mods ruined it
Kaixoeztia@reddit
No. Join lemmy.world
magnora7@reddit
saidit.net exists for 5 years now
FishTank_Earth@reddit
Right now, SaidIt is a real pain to use - because of (an over-active) cloud-flare - the pill becomes the poison.
prototerminal@reddit
After getting burned on Squabblr by the dev’s heel turn and not finding the Lemmyverse enjoyable I’ve found myself lurking here again, but barely more than before. In other words I spend less time on social media as a whole. I also have Twitter and Bluesky accounts but I rarely use Twitter because it is an utter hellsite, and while Bluesky is pretty nice right now it’s also still invitation only and has only about 1.1 million users right now, so when it’s finally open to the general public it probably will go down hill and start to resemble Twitter more and more.
I have slowly started to accept that social media is a genuinely bad thing for me, so maybe the best Reddit alternative is touching grass. I hope other people here find a new place to hang their hat online if that’s what they really want. But I’m done looking.
Bbarryy@reddit
Me too. & most of what you find on the alternatives are the same news. politics, tech & people beating their chests about stuff. I'm sad to say that I haven't found anywhere that compares to Reddit for science, the arts & other niche groups. I worked hard to build up some interest groups on Squabblr but left in disgust when Jay sounded the dog whistle.I tried to start again on Discuit but jut wasn't inspired & it was even smaller & the people even less interested in the things I like than Squabblr.
I use my browser, Firefox, on both my phone & laptop to visit Old Reddit with RES.
4tran13@reddit
What happened to squabblr? (is it even the same thing as squabbles?)
cj_plusplus@reddit
Yep it's the same site.
It was rebranded to Squabblr and then the creator said it was "now a free speech platform"; his admins all left as well as all of the power users. It's now a bit of a stagnant wasteland with barely any new users.
charts_and_farts@reddit
Admins didn't leave, Jayclees removed them because he knew that they would disagree with his decision to make Squabbles "free speech".
4tran13@reddit
lol self #rekt
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
God it all ends up being the same shit everytime doesn't it? I don't care if there's politics but damn if it doesn't get tiring when the entire site just focuses on it. It's bad enough reddit does it.
I remember when Comet was a thing I tried supporting it. Then the owener decided to shut it down because he went to work for discord. He was gonna try to make Comet into a discord + reddit combination...didn't work out because discord wouldn't allow him to work there while he was doing that because some legal reasoning or some shit?
Idk. I've lost faith in this sub and reddit.
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
That's how I feel right now. Honestly, what's the point? It feels like the same shit anyway. Try out a site, it falls apart. Try another one, jt fails. I'm all for freedom of speech and right to enjoy discussion. Problem is nobody knows how to do that. It just spirals into the same unhinged people that just wanna spam slurs and other god awful shit. The lack of maturity is astounding. Whatever. I'm only keeping these big sites for my mental health because there's still some good hidden information. My other accounts business and hobbies because that's the only good use social media has for me.
I feel like intense breaks from the internet are very important. I gave up too because I'm tired of waiting years for a damn alternative to prevail.
markzzy@reddit
Definitely agree with you and I'm not against taking breaks. But have you and others (/u/prototerminal and /u/Bbarryy) tried RSS feeds? They've been so much better at keeping up with everything--Reddit and even the alternatives like Discuit, Lemmy, etc--in a centralized feed. I know many sites don't have RSS feeds, but Open RSS (a nonprofit I co-own, btw) is filling that gap and providing RSS feeds for websites that don't support them yet. RSS feeds are also a good way to control your level of engagement on the platforms and makes it easier to take breaks. Not saying its a 100% replacement, but may be something to look into as an option.
Bbarryy@reddit
That sounds interesting. I never used RSS. I've been online a long time (I used to use Usenet) but I never got into it. How to get started?
markzzy@reddit
Yeah RSS feeds used to be very popular when internet first took off. But Big Tech has slowly removed their RSS feeds and made all their content inaccessible to RSS feed users. You can start with this page that explains what RSS feeds are and then you can start using them from there. But feel free to DM any questions you may have and I can try my best to answer them!
tunachilimac@reddit
I sub here to keep up for possible new sites but I've said for awhile now that I think the idea of these giant sites is a flawed model. No one site should try to be all things and serve everyone, it just lowers the quality across the board.
I know it's more of an effort but I wish people would go back to using single topic forums.
boxer_dogs_dance@reddit
Someone needs to fix search so that forums and blogs can be found by strangers.
westwoo@reddit
Add "forum" or "blog" to your search request
omfgcow@reddit
Google used to favor blogs, forums, and personal sites without appending specific terms. Currently ordinary folk are being accustomed to SEO spam.
westwoo@reddit
True. Google is killing its own free content cash cow
But also, those blogs and forums used to actually deliver ad profits. But now that everyone uses adblock, only predatory SEO sites can squeeze enough ad impressions out of the remaining people for Google to have a profitable business model
Afaik, when it comes profits, Google's cloud business now becomes the main one. In a way, adblock killed the internet we knew and loved
zero-evil@reddit
In a more accurate way, relentless commercialization kills the soul of everything subjected to it.
westwoo@reddit
Relentless commercialization is what gave us google in the first place
zero-evil@reddit
Exactly. Google basically made the internet 10% as useful and 1000% more aggravating.
Altavista was a real search engine, honest and super useful. No agenda. Google is a garbage dispenser, AND heavily curated. But armies of simpletons preferred the simplicity of the dispenser and enabled it to pretty much scuttle everything else.
You not even realizing the loss is tragic. You can even imagine the way it really was, much less how it should be.
westwoo@reddit
Nah, altavista sucked compared to google. You should remember that google's growth was really organic and people really just liked to use it. That whole do no evil stuff seemed valid at first because they actually were a good company, and even their ads were more ethical and convenient and better than other ad networks
zero-evil@reddit
Maybe you weren't using Altavista right dude, it absolutely shredded Google even in their early days. Like no comparison. Though I will grant you that Google is oh so much worse now than in those days. I would even use Google back then, if I was lazy and it was mainstream whatever I was looking for. Altavista required effort, but it paid off. Especially when you were looking for specs of insightful data, pieces to build into a glimpse of the truth of things, altavista was by far the best way. The whole internet, indexed. And you're going to come at be with Google is better.. seriously? Google began curating that stuff very early. If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, they you couldn't really make good use of altavista. The search-fu was legit.
The shameless search result manipulation today is the result of a snowball effect which started at exactly the time of the rise of Google. Yknow, back when they all pretended it wasn't true. The internet became overrun with people who didn't understand tech, and their value was directed at the simplicity of Google. They didn't care about crucial values necessary to protect the integrity of data, and their money talked. And that's one of the many ways commercialization destroys anything good. The people who care, who are integral to why he's great, are just drowned out by slack jawed tourists who have no appreciation for what makes a thing special.
westwoo@reddit
Can you provide some examples of queries you were doing on altavista?
zero-evil@reddit
Oh sure, just let me check my records
hogg2016@reddit
I don't know why this keeps being parroted. Which forum is not discoverable through a simple Web search (using, you know, the complicated keyword 'forum' like Westwoo said) and the reading of a few search results?
Meanwhile, on Reddit, discoverability is abysmal and search generally crappy.
westwoo@reddit
That's literally true. Google had to reveal in a recent lawsuit that it started changing your search request to a similar one with higher ad profits
So you have to make your search request more specific to hinder that partially. Which is why you have to do "blah blah blah reddit" searches now
It affects different search queries differently, so it may not be as obvious to some people
more_beans_mrtaggart@reddit
Any site that gives people what they want (ie lots of good content, good management, no assholes) is going to become a “giant site”.
The trick is to find a small well-managed site (ie not federated) that’s not going to explode into something giant.
Yep.. compromises.
Efficient_Star_1336@reddit
Fedi as a collection of single-topic forums could be interesting, but the thing about convenience is that the ratchet never turns the other way. Nobody wants to create multiple accounts anymore.
PUBLIQclopAccountant@reddit
Those people aren't worth talking to, anyway.
Efficient_Star_1336@reddit
It's a universal thing. Maybe there are a few people who wouldn't mind, but even they want to go to communities that are actually inhabited.
Absolutely everyone wants the ability to ask a question about any niche thing and get some kind of answer. Reddit is what provides that, and that's its killer app.
tunachilimac@reddit
One thing I dislike about the fediverse and reddit and the like is the lack of barrier to entry for communities. It's too easy to disrupt and ruin niche communities.
An example is like there will be a popular askreddit post "What is your favorite small subreddit?" and then suddenly the mountain of people from askreddit descend into a small subreddit without understanding the culture at all. Their voting power overwhelms the existing people and can permanently change what made the subreddit great in the first place.
That's why I think having each forum as a standalone site with it's own login but then they're all tied together in your app is the ideal solution. There's a small barrier to entry to hop communities in that you have to have the interest to sign up, but then everything you're subscribed to can still feel as one environment on the user side.
Efficient_Star_1336@reddit
Barrier to entry was viable in the old internet, where websites were few and far-between, and people were willing to go the extra mile to have someone to talk about Battlestar Galactica with.
Now, though? A site with barrier to entry just won't have any users at all.
Die4Ever@reddit
Lemmy can do that. I've tried Jerboa and Boost and both apps are very good at switching accounts.
westwoo@reddit
Forums never went away
Pick a random hobby, say, knitting. Search for knitting forums - voila, multiple forums, some probably local ones, some international. Click on something, say, https://www.knittingparadise.com - it's a giant ass active forum with millions of posts and extremely active community
The decentralized alternative to reddit is the entire internet where people are free to host whatever they want on their servers
tunachilimac@reddit
Yeah not all of them went away but a good chunk of them did. Most of the ones I used to frequent died out or closed and put a message linking to the FB group or subreddit they moved to.
westwoo@reddit
When forums use facebook or reddit as a hosting service for the forum as opposed to a "platform", it might not really matter much
The same thing applies - you search for it using any search engine, and if you find what you need only on facebook or reddit - oh well
FanClubs_org@reddit
That's exactly what I'm trying to do with fanclubs.org. It's not an everything site like Reddit is, but I have it set up to cover a vast range of topics.
I have a major redesign coming in the coming months which will do a lot of things differently (better) then your used to, but I'm very optimistic it'll be a welcome change.
andooet@reddit
The Something Awful forums is where I'm mostly now. It's like the internet used to be without algorithms and stuff. Just idiots online shitposting like the internet was meant to be. And now that the userbase has gotten older and mature you don't get goatse'd as much anymore either
(also got the best smilies(emotes) on the internet) :imunfunny: )
PreciousTater311@reddit
I hate to say it, but you're right. I supported the blackouts this summer, I found a Lemmy instance and registered... and was underwhelmed. And I've read enough accounts right here in this sub to see that as much as we're looking for the next reddit, Lemmy ain't it.
MigrateOutOfReddit@reddit
Four relevant details:
With that in mind, I believe that Reddit is becoming worse for most users here. Specially past IPO. While a few of those alternatives will get better (also, "for most users"), so actually taking your time to investigate a few of them, registering, getting familiar with them, etc. is IMO a good investment of time.
Gabe_Isko@reddit
It's a self selecting thing. All the people who don't like reddit alternatives still post here.
I think Lemmy's fine to the point were I deleted Reddit on my phone. But it still has a long way to go before it has the same kind of velocity that comes from user adoption. So I still go on reddit. That's totally fine.
rancor1223@reddit
Personally, I just stopped using Reddit as much. I tried alternatives, but there were 2 major issues
I don't really care for most "generic" subreddits (/r/pics, /r/aww,...), I want my "specialized" subreddit focused on topical well moderated discussion - 3D printing, anime (/r/anime is great, strictly moderated and I love it) for example. But those specialized communities don't form overnight.
Realistically Fediverse is the best alternative. My issue is that I feel like it's by design populated by people who don't really like moderation. But I love moderation. Communities that self-regulate as the exception, most require moderation and some benefit from it. /r/anime is fantastic in this regard. I got lot of hate for saying I would sooner follow the moderators elsewhere than the "community", but I stand by it.
So in the end, I still go to Reddit. But I dropped the phone app and I never go to my subscribed subreddits anymore. I have a very few subs I open up from time to time and that's it. My use of reddit dropped by 70% easily.
IRunWithVampires@reddit
The people want an jnstant replacement. How? Reddit is about the people. It’s not gonna happen overnight.
HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit
Most of us agree. There isn't a "good one". Because it takes time for any platform to grow and be "good". If you were expecting a great alternative to spring up overnight, you were out of your mind. This is the early adoption stage.
When it came time to jump ship from Digg, Reddit had already been around for a while, or at least, it had been around long enough for it be comparable to Digg.
Unfortunately, people got too comfortable with this centralized platform for too long. There could have been a true alternative "in the oven" for a while before now, but no one bothered with them, so here we are, not in the eleventh hour, it's 10 past midnight, with no alternative "ready".
That's why we're committing to the options at hand and pushing them to be better. Because nothing will ever grow if some people don't settle in the new frontier first. But part of that is accepting that if you want to get to Oregon, you're going to have to ford some rivers and deal with dysentery. You can hang complain or you can deal with it.
FIRSTFREED0CELL@reddit
Centralized platforms are easy to use. Most people don't give a fuck about "federation", they want all the forums they are interested in easily accessing in one place with no BS about what forums and what posts in those forums being dependent on what URL they used to get to the site.
gishlich@reddit
I can't wait till all the cool kids start a new reddit. I'm gonna be one of the first losers who crash the party this time. That's why I'm on this sub - lookin out for those sweet sweet tailcoats to ride in on.
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
I don't necessarily disagree with everything you're saying. It's just the point I'm making is that too many people are ok with reddit. People aren't going to just up and sacrifice everything they have for nothing. Maybe if reddit pushes hard enough with more and more bullshit then maybe a mass of people might actually jump shit idk.
But for now like a lot of other people are doing, I'm just gonna use reddit as a toilet whenever I'm bored. Then I'm going to touch grass as much as possible whenever I can.
Direct_Card3980@reddit
Lemmy is okay when you’ve found a good instance and good communities, but it’s not a replacement for Reddit. I think anyone expecting a plug-in replacement is naive. There are good alternatives, but they’re not Reddit. They’re alternatives.
IMHO the best move right now is to just use less social media. The entire industry is collectively imploding right now, and hanging on like a heartbroken ex just feels more and more pathetic to me. We should all walk away for a while and let it die. From the ashes something better will emerge.
winterwulf@reddit
not yet, people need to be patient. there are many devs working to improve it.
chesterriley@reddit
I am using social media more now that I've switched to primarily using lemmy/kbin. And having a blast.
Stroov@reddit
lemmy is reddit posts without reddit
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
Lmfao!
OrwellianLocksmith@reddit
Lemmy is badass
LibertyLizard@reddit
I like the fediverse but honestly if the result of this whole fiasco is some people spending more time in the real world that’s a good thing, even if it might be a little frustrating.
RRekxx@reddit
I'm housebound due to a chronic health condition, so I spend more time on Reddit than I'd like.
Recently I've discovered just how bad this place is not only for my mental health, but for my ability to form opinions. Reddit is an echo chamber of the highest order, full of pseudo intellectuals.
Majority of people comment what they think others will agree with and reward them with upvotes for. Many big subs are just the same reposts over and over again. People upvote and downvote with the consensus, and dogpile on people who are downvoted just for going against the grain. It's reached a point where decent discussion is almost impossible across 99% of this platform.
With that being said, I agree that there isn't really an alternative. And in an ideal world, I'd love for mine to be to touch grass, but my condition doesn't really allow for that. It's reached a point where I've unfollowed any discussion-based subreddit (with the exception of my sports teams), and just left myself subbed to the funny/wholesome video subreddits so I can scroll through once in a while. Also gravitating more to Instagram, but it's far from ideal.
Now I'm trying to push myself to put my phone down and consume more long-form media, to try and reverse this brain rot that social media has saddled me with.
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
Same. I plan on at one point deleting all my accounts on reddit. I don't usually spend this much time on Reddit and other places unless I'm bored or just trying to release negative energy I can't anywhere else. It's funny because I think a lot of people want that old school reddit again, but I think we need to just move on. The old social media isn't coming back.
I don't think a lot of people realize just how bad it is we don't have any alternatives. Look at YouTube for example. I've been trying to use alternatives and support them, butvwe all know these alternatives will never have that same luxurious benefits as the already convenient big sites have.
Either way, I'd say just focus on specific subs for specific goals. Otherwise we're just brain rotting ourselves.
YXIDRJZQAF@reddit
There are no good alternatives for all of reddit, but I’m quite happy with some smaller more focused offsites that I’m using but are banned from being named 🚨😱🚨
Efficient_Star_1336@reddit
Yeah, essentially. If you get down to it, politics, tech, and everything else aside, Reddit has the network effect on its side. You can't compete with hundreds of millions of users.
Like, if you want to ask a question about an obscure game, your options are Reddit, or Discord if that game has a discord server. That's it. You won't get any kind of response on Scored, or Fedi, or any of the hundred or so reddit clones with a dozen users each.
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
CONVENIENCE! Would be the number thing all these big sites have for themselves. That's the big reason people won't leave. Why would anyone give up that convenient ability to search up something you have a question about? Shit I'll admit right now that I always turn to reddit for an answer.
Question about your car? Reddit! Need to lurk a sub about a physical problem? Reddit! Useful information? Reddit!
People aren't gonna throw away everything just to move to something that doesn't offer that same equal amount of quality or more. You're absolutely right about everything you said though.
Efficient_Star_1336@reddit
Yeah - like I always say, the only way to compete with a big site is to somehow integrate its existing userbase. Gab's founder tried this with something called Dissenter, which added special comments sections to every URL through an extension. Got nuked from Chrome's app store at a time before Brave existed, which essentially killed it, but something like that now would do very well.
You could probably even get it on the Chrome store, if you open-sourced and federated the service and let people pick a server. Recreating the basic interaction loop of Dissenter (go to existing website, press a button, talk "on that website" with other users of your service) is essentially the baseline for a reddit alternative.
zero-evil@reddit
There are specialized forums with.. I guess I should say were , as I'm not sure they're even viable anymore. But reddit is 98% stupidity, so it's barely useful itself. Maybe it's our fault for being here..
nanami-773@reddit
The 3rd party app issue on reddit was solved by using "boost" as a MOD. Reddit posts are now about 30% of what they used to be, but the news is still flowing.
I spend a lot less time on reddit, I don't really feel the need to migrate to Lemmy etc. I'm quite happy to stay away from SNS and watch old classic movies on streaming.
stranot@reddit
honestly I don't even care about finding an alternative anymore since I patched Relay with my own API key using ReVanced. it's like nothing ever happened
Magica78@reddit
I hang out on Spyke. It's small but chill. Nothing will ever work out if you don't contribute.
cacheson@reddit
There is no perfect reddit alternative, which is what a lot of people seem to expect.
Lemmy and kbin are a good reddit alternative. They've still got bugs and missing features, but no show-stoppers. For those that don't mind that, they're pretty enjoyable, and they have a large enough userbase to be self-sustaining. This is still true after the contraction in activity level that happened after the protest spike.
If you're waiting for perfect to happen before you move over, you're going to be among the final wave to leave reddit, once it finally decays to the point where all the but the most stubborn decide to give up on it. And really, that's fine, other than that you'll have to continue putting up with reddit (or logging off) for a long time. There are others that are more adventurous though.
Economy_Blueberry_25@reddit
I'm going to go ahead and say it: the mods from r/ModCoord dropped the ball on this one. Back in July, with the great Reddit blackout, there was a critical mass that could've detonated into a mass exodus.
But the mods of r/ModCoord couldn't agree among themselves about a single platform for migrating their subs and telling people to hop on. Instead we had a diaspora where several subs went more or less wherever their whim suggested, and most power users (the ones who actually post some shit, the ones that count) didn't even consider migrating at all.
The protest was a grandiose failure, one for the history books. If instead of merely locking up subs and memeing fck spez* and all that, the mods had sent out a clear and only message: "JOIN [insert Reddit-alt here]" then it would've been another story.
So, here we are.
There are viable Reddit alternatives in existence: Scored, Discuit, Spyke... Even Squabbles gained some traction before going down the toilet, ethically speaking. I don't believe most people (meaning: the 90% of lurkers in the userbase) would like Lemmy/Kbin because of the extra layer of complexity that federation implies for their user experience. They just want to sign in and scroll away immediately.
virtueavatar@reddit
You seem to complain a lot about a lot of things, even about great services like Steam.
If you go looking for problems wherever you go, you will find something there and you can make the choice to dwell on the negatives if you choose to. It simply isn't that bad. Life doesn't have to be that blue, /u/Lifeisblue444.
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
My username is LifeisBlue what do you expect? If I wanna use this alt account to shit on anything and everything to release some negative energy than so be it. Which is another good thing about reddit, taking a mental shit when you need it. Also Steam has been shit for years. People just wanna ignore the big issues with big known sites because it's all anyone has.
Seriously, I may have my issues but at least I can see the bullshit within a lot of things that nobody wants to admit.
virtueavatar@reddit
Everyone knows there's problems with every service, we're doing the best we can with them. Endlessly nitpicking on every downside isn't the way to use them.
Redbullsnation@reddit
The alternative of Reddit is not coming to Reddit 🤣😂
I don't come here often anyways. API bullshit and the mods even in the subs I frequent is becoming more and more corrupt as fuck
boxer_dogs_dance@reddit
Tildes isn't for everyone, not everyone likes it, but it's been around for six years now and is stable.
If people don't pioneer sites, they won't develop and grow.
But touching grass is a very good thing.
Pavel_Milyukov@reddit
There’s a lot of ones that appeal to a certain niche that are viable (MetaFilter, FunnyJunk, IFunny, some news aggregators) but none of the ones that try to compete with Reddit more broadly are large enough to replace or even really rival it.
RaddiNet@reddit
Yeah, you are right. Now what are you DOING about it?
Lifeisblue444@reddit (OP)
Touching grass. Lol! You should try it.