Smaller subreddits usually supported by a few power users are dying off. I remember it taking me a couple hours to read through the top posts at end of day. Now you’re lucky to see a week’s worth of genuine top posts.
Posts getting roasted in the comments for being too boomery, capitalist bootlicking or hive-mindish happens less and less.
I like how the user claims 2016-2019 as good years. From what I remember, the 2016 election was when reddit started turning to trash with the political astroturfing and right wing trolls making bad faith arguments. When was the crazy with the totally-not-staged crazy doorbell camera videos?
Dear lord 2015/2016 was like the sharp decline after a long slope downward in my opinion. Might be showing my age but peak reddit to me was prior to reddit gold and vote fuzzing.
For me, the downfall was when Unidan got himself banned. Reddit has never fully recovered .
The true halcyon days were before the Digg migration. Sorry, I know most folks on the site and very likely here too were part of that diaspora but it’s fair to say that Reddit was very different and yes: better before that.
2016’ish was when the The_Donald started its come up, which absolutely was a negative for the site. 2015 had FatPeopleHate, Even in 2011 they had the jailbait subreddit.
So saying it was ever particularly good is kind of… lmao
Elections over, now we can ban the_donald. Fucking assholes.
I don’t think shithead communities are an indication of quality. Lemmy has quite a few despite otherwise having early reddit feelings.
I think the quality of comments is a bigger indicator. Reddit started to feel shit when thought out comments got drowned out by the sea of low effort memes, one liners and other overused references. Lemmy also has those comments but the ratio of quality to shit is much higher.
I remember a large influx of 4chan users around 2012 or something that seriously diluted the quality of the comments
I eventually signed up to Reddit in 2011 when it started to become less of the “wild west.” I mean anything could pop up on the front page. 2015 I really got sick of US politics in everything, and I think after the 2016 election, I found out just how many subreddits were controlled and modded by like 4 people. Reddit had a plethora of issues well before most current users even arrived.
deleted by creator
Reddit became openly hostile to the people and content that made it great. It’s not exactly surprising that the good users eventually went elsewhere. You could really tell shit went downhill after they killed the third party apps.
I did notice Lemmy has s lot more comments and votes recently
Lemmy really has increased in traffic over the time I’ve been here.
For all intents and purposes it’s the exact same experience as the other place for me.
I see less repeated jokes as top level comments here.
And fewer people quoting entire Simpsons episodes at each other line by line
Yeah, we recreate entire Monty Python sketches and movies one comment at a time instead.
‘Fewer’
Potato/potuber
No. Wrong / correct.
Meh, whatever you say oh arbiter of casual conversation.
Kissies
sorry buddy but you’re wrong
the notion of “correct” and “incorrect” made up language is silly
‘Less’ is for stuff that isn’t individually countable, like milk, or bulk rice. ‘Fewer’ is for things that one could count individually; glasses of milk, or grains of rice.
It’s ok to use language accurately. Don’t be afraid.
I see a lot less men over there than before
What? How would you know? Is this some reference I don’t understand?
Nowadays all the men are weak, and redditors. How Surreal remembers old Reddit, it was full of lumberjacks and greasy auto mechanics.
It’s just not what it used to be.
The mod strikes and closing of all the meme subs ended them more than they wanna admit. There’s very few memes on there now especially making it to all. Second part is no one wastes time commenting when even an innocent opinion will get your account banned. Waste of time for consumers and contributors equally.
I said (in a relevant thread) that Turkish people in Europe have many more kids as European natives… Now I’m a nazi and my 12yo account got banned, no warning.
There’s obviously context to that comment that we’re not seeing here, but while that statement is not in itself racist, it is something that racist people tend to also say.
late to the party. Q: What is it that corporations will not tolerate about online commmunity, crowdsourced news and info?? Digg, Delicious, Slashdot, Reddit… all eaten and changed?
Silly thoughts…
-
the life in a discussion site is the exchange of ideas/thoughts. For that to happen users need to actually listen, process, and discuss. Reddit’s structure has discouraged that for years.
-
signal to noise ratio - in order for the discussion board site to be useful, there’s some magic signal to noise ratio that has to be maintained. Otherwise, its some style of chaos.
-
Why I left - in a technical subreddit, someone asked a technical question ‘Who still uses XYZ, and why?, I never quite understood it’, I gave a short primer on how it worked, with a couple analogies. The OP replied testily ’ I don’t need anyone to explain to me how it works.'. And then testily to other helpful responses, and then deleted their acct.
-
The experts left most of the technical subs I am in 5-10 years ago. My guess is that discussions are mostly noise: things I could have learned if I read the instructions, or how can I do this without understanding anything about it.
-
somewhere I read that the upvote/downvote counts on the front page are made up… modified by reddit… so that people don’t know what they need to do to get to the front. By adding this, they gave themselves full editorial control of the front page. It’s downhill from there.
[Not quoting for succinctness]
Answer: corporations don’t tolerate unexploited value. Online communities are rather good at gathering value, over the years, as their users add knowledge. That makes corporations grow their eyes and say “DAMN! Look at all that value that I gathered! It’s time for me to reap the profits!”.
- Reddit’s structure: I think so, too. And, more importantly, it’s something that “the Fediverse forums” (Lemmy and Kbin/Mbin for now; SubLinks and Piefed when they join) should eventually deal with.
- Why you left - yeah, the environment doesn’t “feel” cooperative any more. Your example seems to me that the user was disingenuously (or worse, idiotically) disguising a subjective opinion (XYZ is bad) as a question; that’s bread-and-butter in Reddit nowadays, sealioning there is mostly through feigned ignorance.
- up/downvote counts - it’s a bit less creepy; they add/subtract a random number to the actual score, mostly to prevent karma farming. Still opaque though, a bad thing in a collaborative environment.
-
Where did you find this image? I’m not saying you’re trying to pass it off as new, but I do get the impression that you are.
The post is nowhere to be found.
The user has deleted their account.
Whenever this post was made, it certainly wasn’t 8 hours before you posted it. I’d be surprised if it was as new as 8 months old.
This post is already a day old, and the imaged was at least 8h before that.
I found this circulating on Tumblr, maybe? I looked it up yesterday and linked to it when someone was curious elsewhere in the comment section.
I was able to see the post following that first link you posted, it was the first post that popped up though yeah the user did delete their account, it was originally posted 6 months ago
Who would have thought that driving away the power users that posted and interacted with the content the most would ruin Reddit ? 🙄
Because, they don’t care about reddit, they just want to cash out and make it someone else’s problem to fix.
We did it guys. We’ve posted everything there is to post and now we can finally rest.
Literally every upvoted post is some stupid reference humor.
I expect lemmy to go the same way, but for now we’re not there yet.
Maybe because all the power users left lol
deleted by creator
I mean it’s not like Lemmy replaces Reddit for me, but like a nicotine plaster compared to a cigarette, it does quell the craving.
Lemmy is not the perfect replacement but with some work it can become better. It could use some improved tooling, I want the ability to follow other users, and there’s always room for improvement with the apps.
I could do with a guide on how to start a community to try bringing over a couple of the niche subs I used to love.
I’ve never really wanted to mod, but I know I have to be the change I want to see.
I feel the same way about some of the subs that I’d like to see on here as well. I just worry about how to gain traction. Like how to get more people to engage and actually use the community. Is it just random people stumbling across it? Or is there a better way?
Like how to get more people to engage and actually use the community.
When you create it, populate it with as many posts that you can, that are original/legit, before announcing it to the public.
When someone shows up and they see a new sub and there’s no posts they just leave and never come back.
Then I would try to figure out a way of advertising it on Reddit, letting them know that the Lemmy equivalent exists. I’m not sure Reddit will allow you to get away with that, but that would be important to do.
But most importantly, you got to ‘prime the pump’, you have to make it look like it’s already got traction, it’s already got attention, before announcing it to the world.
I’m not sure what’s up with the front page algorithms too. It should be moving way faster - I see almost the same posts there day to day but if I go to each community there’s tons of new stuff.
Lemmy.world is still running Lemmy 0.18.x and will soon upgrade to 0.19.x and 0.19 has scaled sorting.
Improved Post Ranking There is a new scaled sort which takes into account the number of active users in a community, and boosts posts from less-active communities to the top. Additionally there is a new controversial sort which brings posts and comments to the top that have similar amounts of upvotes and downvotes
Here’s a theory…
After the API implosion, so many active and posting users quit that the gap was filled with mainly bots.
Whether intentional or not, this gave the impression that Reddit was still active on paper… The numbers said there was no significant change after the exedous.
When the Reddit admins figured out that a large portion of the site is now bots, they decided to chase the money before the site tanked completely.
This led to Reddit trying to cash in on the remaining users with more ads than ever, cash in on their advertisers, and cash in on the platforms (until recent) good image. Most people have at least heard of Reddit at this point, so going for an IPO now, when almost everyone knows that it exists, and only regular Reddit users are really aware of the enshittification happening. So they can demand a high price for the IPO, and collect a bunch of money before the enshittification is more well known, and the company tanks.
IDK, but that seems to be the way of things.
Facebook has been enshitifying for years and the stock has gone to the moon.
A lot of what enshitification is, is fucking the users to increase shareholder value.
Well, with a mostly anonymous platform like Reddit, there isn’t the same user lock-in, so alternatives, like Lemmy can be shifted to more easily.
With Facebook, you’re dealing with IRL friends and loved ones. Those connections lock you to Facebook. Since you’re locked in, advertisers are locked to you through Facebook’s ad systems, and they can enshittify the whole platform without losing much engagement.
I don’t know of anyone who uses Reddit to stay in touch with friends. Sure, we’re almost all on there in some way or another, but not for that reason.
So abandoning the sinking ship that is Reddit, can be easily done, unlike Facebook where you, and your friends, and their friends, and your family, and your families friends, and your families family, all pretty much have to unanimously agreed to leave Facebook for another platform all at once. That way everyone can stay in touch.
Organizing an exedous of that scale and magnitude is essentially impossible.
With Reddit, users can kind of trickle over individually or in groups as they see fit. Not tied to Reddit for their social interactions among their friends. Most creators, even those with subreddits, can easily post on different platforms and for the most part, they do. So users can enjoy their favorite creators away from the Reddit shitstorm, if they want. So there’s a lot less user lock in on Reddit compared to other platforms, making enshittification a good reason for many to leave.
Bots can’t keep the site running and popular. That’s just not how this works. So, as people figure out that competing services (again, like Lemmy) exist and migrate away, Reddit will eventually tank and go under.
At least, that’s what I’m seeing.
Depending on how that money is (mis)managed, the death spiral could take years or longer. If there’s enough mismanagement, it may be much less. We’ll see.
Unfortunately a lot of smaller subs havent fully transitioned yet, so I’m stuck on reddit for Rimworld content like I occasionally have to log in to Facebook to keep up communication with family. I think at this point though its literally just Rimworld for me. I dont play enough Terraria anymore for the Terraria reddits to keep me there, and tbh I havent looked into Kenshi, but that might be another occasional pull based on what I fine. Sorry for the ramble, I guess the tldr is that there are a FEW pulls reddit still has even though anonymity eliminates most of them
I don’t mean to imply there’s no user lock in, it’s just significantly less than a platform like Facebook. For many it’s not a problem to migrate to another site.
Obviously it’s a thing each community will have to deal with, and honestly, that’s fair. Bluntly, once the community creates a consensus on what the next platform of choice will be, there won’t be much holding those users to Reddit.
Regardless, I’m just speculating. Who knows what will actually happen.
When the Reddit admins figured out that a large portion of the site is now bots
Just fyi, bots use API calls. Thus, Reddit has ALWAYS known exactly what percentage of users and posts are bots, and which bots are Reddit’s own.
And it’s not the first time. You could almost say it’s what Reddit is built on. When Reddit was first launched, the founders used alts to build numbers; now it’s bots.
My own personal view is that they’ve used bots all along. More recently, they made up for drastically reduced numbers last summer with bots, and that’s when the writing was really on the wall for Reddit because at some point it becomes a serious legal liability to continue to sell ad space and accept ad money based on numbers of users and posts that simply do not exist in reality.
So the IPO has to happen sooner rather than later, and RDDT will tank as soon as it goes public, which is why they’re trying to sell the rubes as many shares as they can at a guaranteed pre-IPO price: that’s free money for them, which they will take and go while Reddit implodes.
Short short short short
Honestly the executive comp is outrageous for an unprofitable company, and yes, anecdotally it does seem to be shrinking, if not in sheer user activity, certainly in quality.
