When I first learned that Reddit would be pricing out third-party apps I was angry and upset, but I still entertained the notion of maybe continuing to use old.reddit on the desktop (until they inevitably killed that). I like many of the communities there and didn’t want to give them up.
But then came the AMA and the leaked memo and the crushing of the protests with threats and strongarm tactics. Everything spez wrote dripped with contempt for the community and the moderators that had made the site what it was through their unpaid labor. The message became clear: “Let the little users cry it out. They’ll have their little tantrum and then they’ll settle down and accept that the reality is that we can do anything we want to them and they have to just accept it. Their communities, their conversations, their culture, it all belongs to us, not to them. We have everything and they have nothing”.
I’m not going back to that.
Literally. Reddit users are both content producers and consumers. They are also (unpaid) moderators and developers who made the website usable on Android and iOS devices. In short, Reddit is (was) its users, and spez and Ellen Pao contributed nothing. He deserves to watch his baby (which wasn’t even his idea in the first place) die a fiery death.
Give it a few months of reddit users seeking an alternative and Reddit will follow in Twitter’s footsteps: 50% of the content will just be robots talking to each other.
50% of the content will just be robots talking to each other.
Wait that wasn’t already what was happening?
deleted by creator
It left such a bad taste in my mouth realizing that they were absolutely just going to let people get their rage out, and then rely on the good ole human nature of just going with the flow. I mean realistically, once you have the momentum of a site like Reddit, you can do some pretty shitty stuff, and not get canned for it. I’m fairly certain they’re just going to rely on that, and then make money on what’s left after that.
I’ll probably still keep using old.reddit.com, but making an account on Lemmy has like 0 opportunity cost, so why not right?
Yeah, I completely agree. The main app I use didn’t even shut down (Relay) but the AMA convinced me to leave anyway. Spez and the rest of the admins came across as simply vile.
This x1000.
The complete disregard and disrespect to the people that made Reddit what it is was just downright awful. I’m not supporting that shit.
I loved Reddit… spend much of my free time on it, but I absolutely hope it all comes crushing down and takes spez with it.
The CEO is a total scumbag and Apollo closing down.
Just got the death message from BaconReader today. Sad panda, but also good riddance.
main reason is the app changes of course, but I’ve been getting sick of the site for quite awhile.
powermods that run hundreds of subreddits abusing their authority, everyone is snarky and rude, only approved stances are allowed and anything deviating from them get dogpiled/censored, the annoying redditisms (edit: Thank you kind stranger! Wow I didn’t expect this to blow up! obvious fake stories in AITA/Relationships, etc).
the entire site was just getting really stale.
the upside was that it had an active forum for almost every niche interest, but that’s also a negative as it really killed many of the small special interest communities.
You summarized my experience / feelings on the matter perfectly.
A few of the reddit mods were so obnoxious, they would ban you for posting to other subs they didn’t like. Even if you had never been to their stupid sub or cared about it, you would get a random ban notification from some wacky niche sub.
On the one hand: who cares. But on the other hand: it doesn’t feel like a very welcoming place when you check the site for the first time that day and some weirdo has banned you “because reasons”.
I even saw one mod that would stalk individual users and mock them for getting banned from his precious sub. It was so absurd.
As for the typical users of reddit: I know it’s a tired cliché…but it really was like a “hive mind” over there.
It also has a horrible new user experience. To get some basic level of karma you have to jump through hoops. The whole thing feels like a nasty reindeer game.
I’m really glad lemmy doesn’t have karma.
My anecdotal take: I got banned from a random sub i hadn’t heard of for comments in PolCompMemes and the ban message identified me as a nazi. I replied saying something like Ok, I don’t use that sub so great effort, and not a nazi my flair is libleft ffs.
I got a 3day sitewide ban for harassing mods for that one reply to their message. Absolutely unhinged behavior, and the appeal wasn’t even looked at. The only logical reason for this is advertising the small sub otherwise it is just a very stupid person wrote the banbot.
yea, I regularly deleted my account and made a new one.
each time, I would create my account.
have zero karma, start commenting to get karma, and all my comments were removed because I didn’t have enough karma lmao
THIS. (Sorry, had to respond with a Reddit cliche)
Like you mentioned, the upside of communities for almost all niche interests is the thing that kept me there for years even after the front page went to shit. In addition to the things I was actively following, I really enjoyed stumbling into new niche subs and learning about something from a group of passionate experts by reading threads. I’m hoping we have that same sense of depth here soon too!
Oh boy, you get an updoot for that!
Any time someone says upvote but replaces vote with anything I downdoot them.
What are your feelings vis-a-vis “upboat”?
You’re still replacing the word “vote” with something. It’s all annoying to me and my visceral reaction is to downvote. Petty and not something important, I know.
powermods that run hundreds of subreddits abusing their authority
Speaking of this, I really hope awkwardtheturtle had a meltdown. Talk about the worst of the worst mods on reddit.
Ugh, not to mention the top comments on discussion-worthy topics just being a meme, one-liners or comment chains which somehow get 5000 upvotes like it was so note-worthy and significant when you could find the same thing in multiple posts in r/all for the past month. It still happens on Lemmy, but at least all the thoughtful comments aren’t buried under them.
It was based on principal. And Apollo RIP
Same two reasons, but maybe in the opposite order. If Apollo is dead then by principle I’m not going to use Reddit by any other means. But if some other third party app had been banned and Apollo was still alive, I’m not sure I would have been strong enough to break away on principle alone.
3-7 dollars minimum monthly payment to reddit and no nsfw would make me leave Reddit pretty fast.
What I’m able to say does not come across well in text. Please know that I’m using your comment as a diving board into a larger conversation and that this isn’t about your comment. I too am guilty of what I’m about to say.
But this attitude is the systemic reason why mega corporations, and billionaires are taking over. When the product we consume is good enough for us that we settle.
We’re exhausted into complacency until we’re personally affected by something.
Sorry, the we didn’t start the fire remake really put me in a mood
Yeah I totally agree and understand your point! I was admitting my own lack of a backbone when it comes to convenience vs morality; I’m certainly guilty of taking the easy route over the “right” one in many situations. I don’t love it but hey, we each only have bandwidth to fight so many battles.
Spez
What an ass he is
Up with Sync, Down With Spez
That one article that coined the term ‘enshittification’ and made me realise centralised, for-profit social media will always turn garbage after awhile. I’m tired of changing sites every few years. Time to use something that’ll stay good this time.
Put simply, I’m tired of being the product, and it’s obvious that Reddit wanted to implement more data harvesting and more advertising to their platform. Couple that with the outrageous cost to use their API, and it’s bye, bye Reddit.
I choose this reason also ^ It’s close enough to my own.
Obligatory Fuck Spez.
Honestly, mostly solidarity.
Sure, the fact that my preferred Reddit app was going the way of the dodo and the fact that they weren’t even trying to negotiate in good faith were reasons, yeah, but at the end of the day, I was just gonna grit my teeth, patch the Reddit app with Revanced, and have that be my personal and insignificant F you.
Then I realized a bigger F you was to deprive them of content, future or present, (mine, specifically. As insignificant as it was) so I did.
And here I am
Honestly same! There’s no particular reason for me other than solidarity
Like, sure, some communities were getting better or worse, but that’s wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, and honestly due to Reddit’s age it was bound to lose it’s spark. Change is inevitable, so I jumped shit early
Loved this comment. Thank you. I wish more people were like you.
Seeing the way Reddit handled the protests. It’s one thing to have a business goal of getting everybody off of 3rd party apps (which was obviously the case). It’s another to lie about it, slander developers, threaten mods, etc.
Losing Apollo for one.
But what really actually disgusted me was how Spez is throwing people like Christian under the bus.
I would’ve gladly paid for Apollo and given Reddit a fair cut. Not anymore. Lemmy seems pretty great so far.
Rif is getting shut down. And most of the sensible people seems to be moving to kbin+lemmy. I just followed suit.
I’d been looking for a good reason to leave reddit for a while.
Lately I’ve been growing tired of the push towards reddit mobile app. I only use the desktop app, even on mobile, and slowly but surely reddit has been hiding things behind their app or requiring you to sign in. I don’t want to sign in, I don’t want a mobile app.
Despite how big it is, it’s very easy to not actually engage with anyone. I miss forums, so I didn’t like that.
Opening up popular posts and scrolling down pages of witty one liners.
General rudeness, brigading, and the all or nothing mentality concerning many topics.
Reading pretty much any comment in /r/worldnews is discouraging.
I know people like googling with ‘reddit’ at the end, but marketers also know this and I’ve become suspect of ‘reddit recommended’ products. In general, reddit is turning into a product and not a place of knowledge and discussion.
I know this is probably my own reddit settings, but I don’t like how comments have been collapsing. So I open a post with 9000 comments, I see like 3 top comments and have to click to open the children, which can take a second to load. If I reload the page then I lose my place. Clunky. (I’ve never used any app to access reddit).
World news is one of the main reasons i left Reddit especially the brigadering and the same copypasta that some “users” post in every thread about a specific conflict
Because of the amount of times i have seen the same comment spammed in multiple subreddits in just 3 days I naturally reported one of these comments as spam and insted of taking it down they just perma banned me from Reddit
Slightly off topic, you know how whenever a post vaguely related to the northern lights comes up… every. single. time. The top comment chain will be that fucking simpsons reference. It’s lame and annoying at this point but that joke has been going on for far too long. Just a minor pet peeve with the Reddit community.
Spez and his API changes.
spoiler
fuck u/spez
Losing Apollo was the main reason.
However this whole saga unveiled other disturbing things such as how Reddit is leveraging its communities for advertising in this post: https://lemmy.world/post/837198
