Today is my 11th Reddit Cakeday, and it is likely to be my last as an always-on user
With the death of third party apps, I'm gone. Way over 90% of my interactions are on RIF Is Fun, and I don't see myself changing over. (Ironically, I'm typing this on my laptop, but this is definitely the exception.)
The u/spez "AMA" (quotes because it was anything but an AMA) yesterday made clear that there was no vision, no plan, no grand strategy, no genius behind the scenes trying to make a bad situation better. There is next-quarterism, venture vulture capital destruction, and a fundamental misunderstanding of where Reddit gets its value. Without the users, the mods, and the developers who make this insane place work, it will never turn a profit.
Who wants to advertise on a website when there is random nsfw spam? Or where there is rampant racism without folks to clean it up? Or where nobody goes because there is no content? Developers, mods, and users provide (in order) the methods of interaction that then get applied to lead to the economic driver of the company. In the "AMA," the most damning comment in my mind was "we’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive". You can't cut costs out of a budget hole when most of the work done comes from free labor, and when the content that drives eyeballs to the site is free too.
Reddit is cutting the legs off of the 1% and <0.1% of users by seeking short-sighted profits off the backs of third-party developers. Reddit is gaslighting and libelling and doing a pretty shit job of it, because we all can see what's done and said here...And it is just going to accelerate the decline of the site.
I'm not going to be deleting, because I have unreasonable hope that things can change for the better, I'll just not coming on nearly as much. I'll probably sleep or something with the extra time. Or maybe I'll read books on my phone, or develop a new strange addiction.
Here lies Reddit, a hive of scum and villainy to rival Mos Eisley. It was home. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Once RIF is gone, I don't really see any reason to go back to Reddit. I probably won't delete my account, but I'll eventually just stop using it for daily use. It might be like Facebook where I keep it around and log in once a month, and then get an immediate reminder of why I don't use it.
Sadly relatable.
I already ripped the band-aid off and stopped last week. The first few days were the worst as muscle memory still wants to hit the RIF button.
It's refreshing to not see the same bad one liners and introductory level content continually reposted though. I'm looking forward to seeing some better communication platforms arise over the next couple of years.
My 16th reddit birthday happened two weeks ago. I kinda wished it reached 18, but looks like it won't. Fuck /u/spez
Read some of the "AMA" this morning and then proceeded to use shreddit to obliterate a decade's worth of posts. I'm not optimistic enough to believe they'll actually try to do better.
Yup, just got an invite here. It's supposed to rain here tomorrow, so my plan is to nuke my comments then delete my accounts. Its sad but now I have the opportunity to explore here and see what there is on offer.
In the plan, but thank you for the reminder.
I can't blame you. I've thought about it...but I just can't do it. Not while there may be something left to save. Some day, perhaps when old.reddit also goes away, I'll remove everything, by hand if I have to. But that is not today. I'm an unreasonable optimist.
Who knows, maybe the upcoming protests will do something. A fixed duration instead of indefinite until demands are met seems like a mistake though.
My 11th cake day is 11 days from now. I used to be a mod for r/privacy, which grew to over a million subs while I was there. I enjoyed being a part of that community, to organize AMAs and to help guide it. I also grew r/europrivacy from scratch, by myself, which meant years of daily posting and spreading the word. (It's now coming up on 19K subs.)
However, most of the mod duties are soul-crushingly boring busywork. Approving posts. Handling reports. Defusing drama. Endless modmail. (Even when you have every imaginable tool at your disposal.)
I managed to do that for over a year before I burned out. I quit - on good terms with the mod team - and I quit Reddit along with it. My account remained dormant for two years, until this week. I'm joining in the chorus of protest for now, but like you I won't be returning as an active user any time soon.
You are right about Reddit cutting off the legs of the small group of people who keep their site afloat.
Hopefully the ashes of Reddit will prove fertile, and federated alternatives will bloom. Just like with Twitter and Mastodon.
We need to take the internet back from Silly Con Valley.
The Internet (capitalized) was a place of wonder and amusement and infinite possibilities.
The internet (venture-capitalized) is just another way for billionaires to rise and crush orphans.
I want what once was.
I want what it could (and should!) have become.
I honestly believe we quickly transitioned from the information age to the misinformation age. The internet is all capitalized, and for the worse.
I also hold that unreasonable hope that things will change for the better. Though I am kinda prepared to be disappointed.
I'm not ready to be hurt, hence not a reasonable hope, but I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised.
I'm done with reddit after 13 years and it honestly feels like a weight has been lifted. I think being a regular browser of that site has caused a harm that is even imperceptible to me at times because I'm so used to it.
I feel the same way. People having joking about finally being able to outside and touch some grass, but it's not far from the truth for me. I'm glad I'll be able to use this place as a more discussion driven site for my interests and news. I don't think I'll really miss the memes as much as I thought I would a month ago.
I started my reddit "detox" a bit ago and I've unironically read books and articles more in this time than I've done in the rest of 2023 combined. I've just replaced reddit with Tildes + an ebook app.
Exactly. I finally started reading East of Eden, which I've been putting off for a long time. It's crazy how much time I spent just mindlessly scrolling Reddit.
The AMA went way worse than I expected. I didn't expect too much since a backpedal after the outrage was unlikely. I didn't expect spez to double down on his slander of the Apollo dev - you would think since he had recordings and proof - surely you have to address it appropriately but obviously it went the other direction. I think subreddits going 'into the dark' for 2 days is going to do nothing, it needs to be for way longer. In the end - I am in the wait and see camp, I just don't think its the complete end of Reddit but we will start to see other sites (like Tildes) gain popularity.
At least one sub plans to go dark on 6/12 and not come back. This post tells more:
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/145vns0/the_future_of_rvideos
/r/iPhone and /r/DnDmemes are also going indefinitely dark.
I am curious how long it stays down before admins step in and appoint other mods - r/videos is a huge default sub and I’m not sure they’ll let it go dark indefinitely.
At least at that point, the (current) mods will not be doing free labor for something they don't believe in.
I put the subreddits I mod onto the two days and then see. It will probably end up being longer, beginning June 30 or July 1.
I am also an 11 year old user and I'll be leaving as well. There is one subreddit which I will likely continue to visit on desktop, as I don't see it having a potential following elsewhere on the internet that has the same atmosphere. (This particular sub is an advocacy and support group, but other communities on the internet tend to turn into hate groups.)
I am happy to be here and it feels so much more inviting than reddit has in a long time. I tended to post long, thoughtful comments on reddit to really dive into the subject, and I would occasionally get flak from users saying something like "wow, you wrote all that just for me to block you" or jeering at my walls of text. Really shows how discussion had devolved.
That all being said, I am a little disappointed to see so many topics on tildes being about reddit. I am sure the longer term users may be a little annoyed by it, which have asked many users to treat tildes as a reddit alternative, rather than a reddit replacement. What to longer term tildes users think of the influx of posts specifically about what's happening on reddit?
This seems to be the case with all of the reddit alternatives right now. I clicked on one of them, I think Kbin, and it was totally devoted to grumbling about reddit. I like that the threads here are all about text posts, and the algorithm seems to provide at least a little variety of subjects.
It's also just the Big Thing Happening right now. Given the large cross section overlap of old redditors and would-be Tildos...it isn't surprising. I bet it'll die down mid-July.
It’s funny. Not haha funny, but I had a bad enough vibe about Reddit that I nuked all my posts and account history around my 10 year mark (5 months ago). Contemplating whether I should actually take the final step and delete, or keep it active just so I have a convenient handle to my preferred regional subs. Post-3rd party cull I’ll only be on there for research purposes as curiousities come up from time to time but it definitely won’t be the main destination it used to be. Sad.
What made you go through with deleting your posts and comments? Contemplating doing the same, but feeling some kind of connectedness to 11 years of history keeps me from doing it just yet. On the other hand, it’s a lot of data I don’t want Reddit to own..
At some point the engagement started to feel pointless. Like it truly was for cheap internet points. The people in the subs I was most active in were either interesting, helpful, or myopic (mostly this). I didn’t get into any disagreements or anything, but it just all felt fake. Like “10 year cake day, yay” but what was it all for. Or more adroitly, who was it all for?
Maybe somewhere inside it felt like my post history should have been less permanent and more ephemeral. Like IRL no one is writing down your fun conversations and interactions. The only beneficiary of my post history was Reddit, and so poof.
Compelling points for sure. “If you read it, it’s for you.” Makes no sense keeping a post history for fake internet points, thanks for your reply.
I relate to this a lot. I've spent a lot of time on trains the past few years and reddit (via RiF) has been my go-to time killer. I could never delete the account I've held for such a long time (10 years for me) and I will stop by on desktop, but it will be like checking any other social media (short bursts of activity I guess).
I think reddit tried to move away from the model that made it successful for a long time, and this is just the latest step in that progression. With the highly technical users leaving, it will remain as a slighter more in touch version of Facebook groups, is my guess.
I'm gone once they nuke old.reddit, which I expect by Independence Day.
They claim that they won't do that, but nothing would surprise me at this point.
They also said that it would be reasonable fee for the API.
That's my Rubicon. If they cross it, I'm totally gone.
old.reddit is the main reason I even use Reddit on my computer. I've been trying a lot of Reddit alternatives over the last week and none have a UI similar enough to old.reddit.
Actually, what IS new Reddit? I’ve been using RES / old. I haven’t even given “new” more than 3 seconds of load time. I do know it seems more graphic-y and the title bars look different? Is it that different overall? The only time I actually used it was for that NYE pixel thing.
Like you can force old reddit without being logged in using old.reddit.com, you can force new reddit while being logged in and having new reddit turned off by going to new.reddit.com. I think a couple more seconds of exploration should be enough to convince you how bad it is, though.
Agreed, it's one of the first things I check during my day for news/entertainment/social. I just registered a few minutes ago, and I hope this will become a new home.
This is a the thing I’m sad about; I mostly hate Reddit in many ways but it keeps me connected with stuff as I don’t read any news outlets so I wouldnt know about X or Y otherwise.
Echochambered communities and lame non content I will not miss, along with shitposting and memes. Never really got into that, and most of the time it’s not funny to me.
Cheers to tildes!
I will "celebrate" my 6th cake day on 28th of June. It will be my last. I won't delete my account, I will stop using it though. I found great open source alternative already :-)
It's really the end of an era. Reddit changed my life in many ways and is the reason my brother makes his living as a musician instead of a information systems engineer. I'll forever miss the pre-IPO days.
Yea reddit was fun to be a part of as it started to get traction, then the digg collapse, then over years really growing etc. etc. But it's lived long enough to become the villan and it's painfully obvious that the executive leadership is only focused on a big IPO payout no matter what happens to the culture and experience. It's shortsighted.
Would definitely be happier in life spending less time on Reddit. But I don’t really know how I’ll even use the internet now. I feel like for 70 percent if things I want to look into online I search for “topic reddit”. I live seeming commentary on movies I just watched whether they came out that day or 25 years ago. I love seeing reliable personal accounts of product experiences. Tildes is great so far but it doesn’t have that massive backlog of content on almost any subject to dive into yet.
I deleted my Reddit account of 10 years yesterday. They don't care about us and will continue to turn it into a Facebook clone.