Asklemmy

I'm a little sad because I met my partner of nearly 10 years on Reddit on that account. I will keep the account because our original DMs are on there and would like to preserve them. Will probably wipe all the content and contributions, and just keep those DMs

No. I first joined Digg and Reddit around the same time, but I rapidly came to the conclusion that Reddit was the right choice for me. I just loved Reddit's simpler and less cluttered interfaced, and the smaller (at the time) communities. Then, one day, proper Reddit became 'old' reddit, and it became clear that the end was coming. I started my search for an alternative almost immediately and now, finally, I found one. So, no, I am not heartbroken. To me, Reddit has been dying for years. And honestly, even if reddit survives, I do not want to go back. The feddiverse is a much better proposition, it is the way forward.

Totally agree. My reddit account is 12 years old, and I was only just now starting to gain confidence that there would already be a sprawling community for a new topic I found. I know it will take a long time to get that feeling again, but it's also refreshing to see the fantastic discussions on this platform.

I have been on Reddit for the last 10 years, and a 3rd party app user for all of it. It feels like the end of an era, and that will be sad no matter what. I won't miss the vast majority of subreddits, especially the bigger ones. It's the smaller more niche subreddits I'm going to have a hard time not returning to and I'm hoping to find similar communities elsewhere.

Maybe now I'll be abit happier lol seeing nothin but mad American politics and videos of nazi rallies just makes me lose hope for humanity, at least of it's more out of sight that'll be better for everyone's mental health

I am not sad. It started to feel a bit like a bad addiction. The huge increase in casual users also brought a whole bunch of corporate accounts running heavy PR activity on reddit, and quality of discussion has tanked, probably from a lot of bots commenting.

I stayed on Reddit a lot for support forums that were prone to brigading attacks. I know how hard the mods were working to keep the spaces constructive. Reddit is not only trying to sell my attention as a commodity they own, but also under appreciating the mods volunteer hours for why the site was worth it.

@Acetamide Reddit has been pretty terrible for years, I'm excited rather than sad to see their demise.

Absolutely. I was browsing Apollo tonight like I do many evenings for a decade+. And noticed it was June 12 GMT (I thought I had more time!). So, sadness, nostalgia, anger at reddit leadership, etc., but excited to find a FOSS substitute. And having it built at least in part on rust is amazing.

Just deleted the Apollo app. Sad times. Hope this turns out to be a viable replacement

Kind of cautiously optimistic at this stage, Reddit has been going steeply downhill for the last few years - if the "blackout" does nothing for Reddit then maybe it could succeed in drawing attention to alternatives.

Hmm~ I guess I feel sad a little, yeah. Reddit was a pretty cool place. Still is if you hang in the right communities. But I do most of my browsing using a mobile app as of late and if they're killing off RIF and Apollo, I might as well look elsewhere. I also feel a little optimistic about this "migration" slowly taking place, since this time it's not out of some knee-jerk reaction to admins banning some problematic subreddits, spawning places like Voat.

And the federated, open-source nature of Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon reminds me of how a group of friends can create their own Discord server.

I closed my Facebook account in 2016 and haven't looked back. Hoping I feel the same about Reddit

I think a lot of us are going to be going through reddit-withdrawal/detox over the next month. It's going to be tough.

I've been meaning to get off Reddit and social media for a while, just not happy with the posts on there and the way things are handled. I have a stuffed animal manatee named Manny and I love him dearly, and all other manatees to keep me happy and hopefully everyone here. Love to all !

I wouldn't really consider myself a "refugee".

I've been feeling like the internet has been become a more isolating and nonconstructive place for a long time, and I have been following the fedverise & other projects for a while, hoping that we might be able to build something better.

I am interested to see where things go.

From /. to Digg then Reddit. my journey continues....

The hardest part is finding a replacement application after using Apollo for so many years.

Nah. I never liked using centralized monoliths like Reddit and other social media sites but stayed there due to lack of alternatives. I'm glad to see a federated network like Lemmy getting enough activity that I can ditch Reddit.

Not sad, just disappointed. They could have the perfect app and they ruined it, all just for more money.

Yeah, it’s a really weird feeling. I discovered Reddit in 2011 and it’s been a not-insignificant part of my life ever since.

Now I’m here, on this new thing that feels really small and inactive in comparison. All the subs I’m used to reading just aren’t here. Many of them will probably stay on Reddit. I really hope Lemmy takes off, and I don’t end up caving in and downloading the official app a week later.

Nah, I'm mad as hell, they had years to sort this crap out. They can burn.

I remember the "narwhal bacons at midnight" phase of reddit when the great digg migration took place. It took years for the geocities from the 90s vibe of reddit to turn into the community it became. Content posts were so few and far between, at first, that I wasn't sure the site would last. Over time the 3rd party apps and general openness of the original dev team made it worth using but slowly, the bigger the site became, the bots and meta comments (and truly awful mods) kind of took over the main subs. The niche subs weren't valuable enough for it to be worth that kind of manipulation, so they were great (at many still are to a large extent).

It's a sad reality that I've watched evolve having been online for the rise of the web. the enshittification of commons seems to be the trend in every network as far as I can tell. That's the problem with network effects i guess.. You need people to have a network, but people are greedy. The more people in the network, the more tempting it is to try and exploit, which makes it lousy for the network. Too far, and the value of he network sinks and the people leave (digg, tumblr, slashdot, etc.). I wonder though, if Aaron Swartz had been around, if he would have been able to keep reddit more aligned with the original vision? Tragic we'll never know.

*edit: an even better deep dive, I hadn't read until lately, the takes the history of enshittification back to the roots - https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

I think because I have left reddit and returned to it so many times over the past 15 years I was looking for a reason to make it permanent. I'm more relieved than anything else. My religion also teaches me that who you are is a result of all of the actions you have taken in your life, and that we should not associate with those whose actions inflict harm on their own community (meaning spez)

If I didn't see this coming from a lightyear away maybe I would be, but it's been obvious since at least 2016 the direction reddit was going.

Eh, good content was less and less common in a sea of low effort fluff and reposts. Once I started actively blocking subreddits I didn't care about, I got deeper into the fluff much more quickly.

There will always be nerds pooling quality content. Reddit was the best place for that for a while, but like all pools it had grown stagnant. I'm excited to witness the revitalization afforded by migration. The site is just a site. It was nice, but all things must pass, and metamorphize in passing.

No I don't. I've been in denial for too long that Reddit was great. But it has devolved alot. The formative moments of Lemmy feel like old reddit and I'm enjoying it so much more. Will that change? Probably, but I'm savouring the wholesome and fun community that is Lemmy right now.

Of course I feel heartbroken. Niche communities that I am slowly leaving behind. Many many saved posts that I always intended on going back to but never did. I'm still on Reddit and the reality of the situation hasn't sunk in yet. But I'm starting over here fresh and I'm even ready to actually participate more over here than on Reddit. I'm just ready to start something new

16-year user here. Its been a long time coming, I've watched my friend spiral into a bad place and call me an idiot for being concerned. There is no saving these old networks. They will be around as bullhorns of whoever pays for them but even with the different usability I think its only a matter of time before people start to see "True Reddit" style material coming out of the fediverse and things start to grow less due to thee circumstancesbut more for the same reasons reddit and slashdot before them grew to begin with.

Even IF these networks never fall, no original social network was predicated on the idea that it MUST be for everyone. Thinking it needs to be is just monopoly enabler talk IMO.

Reddit kinda stopped being fun at some point, and I didn’t even realize it until I came here. The lack of doomscrolling potential here is an added bonus.