How many of you feel yourselves being drawn back to Reddit for the sake of niche communities and discussions?
I'm ashamed to admit that I've been on there way too much the last couple of weeks. I had always planned to use Reddit in my google searches because google sucks without it now, but I've been spending time talking there.
My niche interest in question is visual novels. There are very few places on the internet where you can discuss them. There was recently a final translation patch released for the Tsukihime Remake. I beat it and wanted to talk about it! Reddit has a Tsukihime subreddit. I don't know if there is any other English community on the internet that wants to talk about Tsukihime. It's niche enough that I know of no one in person who has that interest either. Without Reddit, where do you even look for an alternative?
I feel like I'm going continue being drawn back for similar things even if they are less niche than visual novels. For example, I wanted to talk about Final Fantasy XVI. I could have made a post about my thoughts here and maybe I would have gotten good discussion about it. Slipped my mind honestly. But I was drawn back to Reddit where there are thousands of people wanting to talk about it right this second. An alternative could have been Gamefaqs, but its a bit more toxic and I hate the style of forum (unthreaded, every post in chronological order, only way to follow conversations is with quoted text. Is there a term for that kind of forum?)
Does anyone else feel themselves feeling a similar pull?
I approach this the same way I approach most things in life since hitting my thirties: Extremism is rarely a good thing.
My understanding of how meat and animal products affect the environment drew me to vegetarianism and veganism. It felt kind of good for a while, but was very restrictive on my life when going out with friends and especially travelling (for me, a huge part of travelling is experiencing local cuisine). I realized that my extreme approach to the diet wasn't saving the planet (I'm just one guy afterall) and was hurting my mental health. I also realized that if I reduced my meat to 2% of my diet and other animal products to 20%, then I would have most of the positive impact I wanted to make and almost none of the downsides (friends only want to order pepperoni pizza? I'm game; it's just one night. Restaurant accidentally gave me meat sausages? I'd rather eat them than let them be wasted). It's also way easier to convince others to take this approach.
That rather large (and perhaps unnecessary) tangent was all to say: Don't feel guilty for using Reddit. It's there. It exists. It will continue to exist, and it will harbour these niche communities that are often found nowhere else (at least in large enough numbers to matter).
You can reduce your usage of Reddit and make user of other services like Tildes, Lemmy or whatever you like and that will have a good impact on growing these other services whilst not holding back your own needs.
So yes, I am "drawn back" to Reddit and I do not feel guilty for using it. I disagree with how they are going about making their current changes and my usage will drop somewhat accordingly.
Great perspective and aligns with my methodology as well. I just want to add that Tildes isn't a Reddit replacement for me. It is its own community with its own goals. It isn't going to replace the niche communities I have on Reddit or Discord. But it does offer better discussion and topics relevant to my general interests.
Totally agree on Tildes not being a Reddit replacement. I am new here, and only found it due to the rise in people sharing their favourite alternatives. Most of them are of no interest to me, but something about Tildes clicked with me almost immediately. I love that it is not another "bastion of free speech". I love that it is full of more considered and intimate discussion. I love that it is not full of memes, and "witty" one word responses all over the places. Never a "this", or "sigh... unzips" and so on. Far from a Reddit replacement, and much more of a Reddit-adjacent that serves another purpose.
I've only been here a few days, so I'm new here too. It's very cozy, and as an old.reddit user, it's very reminiscent of how reddit used to be (in certain ways). I think the current user base of ~20k is a bit small for my tastes, but I hope that grows with reddit's shenanigans. Though, to my knowledge, ~tildes has been around since 2018 and has had periods of "stagnation" for a lack of a better term. I read through the philosophy/intent pages @deimos put up, but I still think growth is important psychologically. Nobody wants to post on a dead or dying website.
I know this isn't a reddit replacement, but I do hope it becomes a "where I spend my time" replacement.
It already has grown. One month ago, that was ≈13k users. And it was at approximately the same level for about 2 years prior to that. I recently calculated that Tildes grew at about 1 user per day for the 2.5 years up to the end of May 2023.
Then we've added nearly 8,000 new users in the past month.
And, I agree with your point: I've always said Tildes needs to grow... slowly, but not as slowly as over the past couple of years.
Exactly. It was very busy from its creation in 2018, for about 2 years, then it just stagnated (that's the word I've always used for it) - until this recent burst of interest, starting a month ago.
Ahh, thanks for bringing some numbers to temper my impressions.
I think I literally wrote my comment with yours here in mind haha.
To me, that's very exciting though I know some folks are worried about the culture here being overran. It's not really a rational feeling on my end, but emotionally hearing that makes me more motivated to stick around and post more. I don't think (and @deimos wrote this into the philosophy docs) that permanent growth is required, but I think ~tildes is just wee bit under a kind of critical mass of userbase where the platform blooms.
I saw discussion elsewhere on a lack of say ~pets board (or makeup, or other less tech-oriented niches) and somebody said something along the lines of "well you can" but then I saw the tag pets had like 4 total posts ever which wasn't encouraging. Hopefully that changes soon, I definitely think diversity in posting will improve things and that will come with a larger userbase so enough niches have a population.
It is a tad overwhelming. Even though we officially had 13,000 registered users last month, only a tiny tiny portion of those users were active here. Suddenly, 8,000 people have signed up - and most of them are active (of course). So, now, a small "old guard" is trying to teach a much larger new userbase about how Tildes works and the cultural expectations here.
I agree. I don't think you'll find anyone who actually disagrees. We've all known that Tildes had to grow. However, the intention was for a gradual managed growth, not doubling or tripling (or more-ling) the number of users practically overnight!
See... there, we're limited by the 90:9:1 rule of internet participation. 8,000 new registered users doesn't mean 8,000 new people posting topics (even assuming they're all active, which they probably aren't). Out of 8,000 new active users, we'd have:
80 people posting topics;
720 people commenting on those topics;
7,200 people voting and reading those topics & comments (but nothing else).
So, we're limited to what those (hypothetical) 80 people are interested in posting. That's not a large userbase, when we consider it that way. Even many of the people who complain about the lack of a ~pets group or ~makeup group probably won't post there; they'll just read the topics that they expect other people to post. But, if those (hypothetical) 80 people aren't interested in posting about pets... having a ~pets group won't suddenly make them post about pets.
That's why, as you say, we need more users on Tildes. Just... not 8,000 in a month. That's too many, in my opinion. As the saying goes, you eat an elephant one bite at a time - not in one big gulp!
Agree that those numbers look overwhelming, but imho as a new user, this is quite a rare opportunity for Tildes to really build traction.
The skew of the new users should hopefully be fairly close to what Tildes wants - 1/ most frustrated users are from 'old' Reddit (~Digg exodus), and 2/ the registration process acts as a sieve to further filter out impatient/meme-seeking users.
Carpe diem!
That's kind of like telling someone facing a fire-hose opened full-bore to "Drink up!" :P
This influx is a big chunk of newbies for Tildes to swallow and digest. It'll take a while for things to settle down.
Yeah I get you.
I guess my point is, this is a good problem to have. +1 user/day into perpetuity with >90% dropping off is tough. Even +2/day... if Reddit had an extended death instead of going with a bang (like now).
I totally agree the previous rate of growth was too slow. I said it repeatedly over the years. Tildes needed more growth - but it needed gradual and managed growth.
We've swung from nothing to full-on. That's a bit extreme.
Yes I agree not ideal - but play the hand you're dealt / silver linings etc. Baptism by fire is not the worst situation.
I'll stop with the cliches now but hope to have transmitted a small dose of optimism in this exchange.
Honestly, from what I have seen thus far it really just seems that if this site ever goes fully public like Reddit is it wouldn't be too far fetched to see it slowly become mainstream, and become more of a Reddit competitor. But in the end, I really doubt Reddit could ever be replaced, it has simply become too large for it to ever truly fade away unless something extremely drastic has occured. Frankly the whole Reddit API debacle has opened my eyes to understanding why many groups still chose to maintain forums instead of switching to subreddits. I now appreciate that view and don't downplay it as a bunch of older internet users unwilling to change.
I know of one forum - and I hope nobody names them here - who moved to Reddit. They've maintained their forum mores and community: they don't link or cross-post, they never seem to mention their subreddit on other subs, they haven't done anything to increase findability for their sub. They have a schedule of posts that start daily conversations, they all seem to know each other and reference that familiarity in their comments (asking about each other's weekend plans, how their kid did on that test, whatever happened with the boss problem, tell me about that pot roast...).
I look in on them every now and then. They have now grown to include a second sub, which is private. Otherwise still holding strong. Pretty much none of them seem to post or comment anywhere else on Reddit and I think they may not even know there's a protest going on.
It's just striking to me, to see the little island they've created out of necessity when their forum platform folded up.
I just loved the hell out of that story; I wish I was part of a community like that. I imagine those people must have some real-life connection.
I think it has a lot to do with scale. Reddit has been around quite a while and has orders of magnitude more regular users than Tildes, kbin or Lemmy.
This is its strength and its weakness. With that many users, lively and informative discussions on niche topics is possible. OTOH, it also means effective moderation is difficult and general etiquette (reddiquette) falls by the wayside especially on large general subs. It also makes reddit a target for advertising interests and monetization as we see.
Then Tildes will remain a niche site without niche subtildes. If one can't create a group for left-handed LGBTQIA+ Muslim vegans, what would be the point of being part of the site and the ensuing community? It will devolve quickly into groupthink and echo chambers rather than encouraging diverse discourse even if it encourages odious types to participate. Seems like Tildes wants to minimize moderators by minimizing audience.
It’s a conscious decision because dividing something too thin would just result in million groups each with zero users, giving the impression of a dead site.
It just so happened that people quite liked the community and this feeling of interconnected forum-feeling so the decision remained longer — at least that’s what I got to know.
I use the same approach to eating meat. Avoiding meat when it's convenient to do so eliminates almost all meat from my diet. That's most of the externalities of meat consumption removed from my diet without much impact to my own life.
I had a friend who had a similar ethos and called himself a 'freegan.'
Generally called Flexitarian.
This reminds me of "radical anarchist" Yang Wen-Li's little speech here from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Haha.
You said everything I wanted to say about this, and more.
I definitely don't feel ashamed about still using Reddit, and I'm not entirely sure why others do. You can't possibly navigate the real world if you boycott everything that is morally indefensible or even ambiguous. Like, I still use Facebook to chat with family once in a blue moon, I'm also on Instagram every day and use it as a sort of blog for posting cross stitches I finish. I also use Chrome, play games made by shady companies, watch movies made by sometimes problematic people...
Don't get me wrong though, there are a few things that are bad enough to warrant a boycott - I can't watch movies with a known predator, or listen to music by known abusers, for example. Maybe those things are more about my own trauma, so I'm definitely not taking a moral high ground or anything, because while others find the decisionmaking of the Reddit CEO bad enough to boycott it, it's just not enough for me to completely shut out and ignore a website that I've been using every day for 12+ years. Besides, I've been using Tildes and Reddit more or less in parallel ever since Tildes came about, so it was never going to wholly replace the other one.
This point in particular really resonates.
In my mid-twenties especially, I thought this was the answer. I would actively try to avoid anything from companies that seemed scandalous for one reason or another. But after a year or more of trying to avoid all products by:
And so on, life becomes incredibly restrictive. You're limited to very few ways to communicate, very few products to eat, very few products to entertain yourself with.
Moderation is key. And taking easy wins too. I use Firefox instead of Chrome and Protonmail instead of gmail. That doesn't mean I boycott Google entirely (I use an Android phone for example), but it diversifies my stakes a little and doesn't have a huge impact to my life.
Seconded, outright bans vs mindful moderation is how I can process functioning in the myriad unethical systems that permeate our society.
Not me, not one bit.
Was on Reddit for 16 years and have felt the decline in discussion stronger in the last year or so than ever and was already barely using it for anything but quick news or comics (shoutout, though, to /r/animetitties). Even my town sub had become squirrel memes and rants.
I do feel like I’m opting out though. Like I’ve made a decision to be left behind and I might not know what’s new or cool or trending as much.
I'd agree most discussion is worse quality than it used to be. I've felt that very small subreddits (similar to Tildes in a way) lend themselves to a higher quality bar. Like, they have enough critical mass to actually get the discussion to happen, but they are still small enough that trolls are kept to a minimum.
Agreed deleted my account of 17 years, haven't missed it one bit. I've missed Facebook more, if only to be included in group conversations that my family refuses to have in a group sms or 3rd party app.
I was on Reddit for only eight years and remember when a locked post was something buzzworthy. Over the past two years especially, people seemed to be less shameful about espousing hateful thoughts or ideas in general. I do miss the old smart Reddit but those people have moved on. I won't tolerate or support Huffmans stance against people or the "landed gentry" as he calls that helped build Reddit.
Every news outlet got rid of their advertising department that could have easily done in house hosted on their servers. But went with 3rd party blockable ad services. Then, pickachoo surprised by the no money.
That's the rub, no one thought reddit would literally replace Google when it comes to recommending stuff and take over search. But I would have loved to be a fly on the wall of digg 4.0 or whatever they hyped as. The idea of web 2.0 was just advertising for advertisers.
It's a little like the Facebook backlash a few years back. A bunch of people left Facebook or proudly proclaimed they never used it, but all that did was consciously remove a communication channel for them.
I've tried to not use Facebook for years, but some of my local communities still use that as the sole means of communicating...so I'm either consciously left out of the conversation (neighborhood group) or I have to make exceptions to dip in when needed (Church).
There’s definitely things I miss, but I don’t feel the urge to go back. The CEO and admins have gone too far and I want nothing to do with them. I’ve worked in organizations like that before, and it never brings good things.
They're betting on a sweet payoff from the inevitable IPO.
Personally, it's not a huge time sink. I get highly interested in a topic for a bit and get it out of my system after I get to talk about it for awhile. But I get spending too much time there. I've seen people do that obsessively.
This describes my interactions with reddit 100%. I mainly lurked for the past 5 years and didn't even create an account or start posting until this year. I was cutting back a little more each week because of the time sink before rexxit happened and I haven't been back intentionally except once to check out the PPV results to AEW.
Other than that 1 time, the only time I find myself on Reddit is if I'm looking up some niche information and Reddit is like the first 5 results. I think that will be the one true "tragedy" of rexxit: the information lost, both past and future. However, we were all able to search for stuff before reddit and I'm sure we all will be able to find things we're searching for after.
I'm sure there will be a reddit replacement sooner or later. Any time a "giant" fails in tech there is a flood and feeling out process of many different platforms/products before 1 slowly acheives critical mass.
I had the realization recently that the reason I stopped actively using RSS is because I developed more and more of a Reddit habit. I'm thinking I should start curating a new list of feeds so I can stay in the loop about my niche interests. Because the other purpose, besides discussion, was keeping up on topical news.
Surprisingly not as much as I thought I might.
I took a "harm reduction" approach instead of cold turkey. I uninstalled the Premium Bacon Reader app and logged out of my account.
Eg, when the odd moments strike and I want to see other niche comments on a topic, I limit it to browse and not comment. Eg, don't log in, read only, and if the sub is private then I go away respecting that. So far I've "succeeded" and only read comments for one thing.
There is one I am having a little harder time: a kid wanted me to help her ask "tip of my tongue" for book title, and gave me descriptions to post. Maybe I'll make a post here on ~books and try my luck? We have a few librarians.
It might be fun to take the kid to an actual library to ask a librarian. My friend works in a library and says most people ask about logging into Facebook or using email, but she would love for someone to actually ask about books.
I miss the card catalog days!
My library growing up was a relatively early adopter: we had a computerized catalogue in the mid 90s and the card catalog was fully removed by 1999. They even had a fast telnet version you could access instead of the web interface, which was useful on dial-up.
So I never really got the card catalog experience, though I did try it once or twice, because I wanted any excuse to use a computer.
Try chatgpt.
ChatGPT doesn't contain facts. It just generates text algorithmically. I've seen one example in the wild where it literally invented titles of academic papers out of thin air.
I'm not sure I'd rely on it to identify a book.
EDITED as per @pdg's correction below.
I spend a fair bit of time on the Goodreads group for finding forgotten book titles and yeah ChatGPT is NOT helpful. I've seen an influx of people using it and posting to solve requests with "books" that are completely invented. And they sound really plausible but once you try to look it up it turns out to be garbage.
Often it'll take an actual title, fake a synopsis to match what person was looking for, and attribute it to another real but incorrect author.
One could argue that these algorithms then contain information, but in any case, especially for identification you wouldn't rely on it completely. You'd get ChatGPT's suggestions, look them up yourself, see if they fit.
Anecdotally, yesterday I had a song stuck in my mind with just a few pieces of lyrics, googling didn't help me, so I asked ChatGPT and lo and behold, I found the song after a few questions. Here's the chat if you're curious.
You're absolutely correct. I apologise for using the wrong word. I've edited my comment to replace "information" with "facts".
Thanks for that!
I used it for book recommendations (listing my favorites) and it worked
but then i asked for the best arancini in Boston and it made it up
100% I am not feeling that itch. I did reddit for well over 10 years and I get nearly no satisfaction from the type of interaction available in smaller communities, much less the larger ones.
The archery communities (and I mean /r/archery specifically), which I currently relate to the most, have poor leadership and troll problems and almost immediate negative interaction. The solution is to deal with it. No thanks. I'd rather lead my own.
/r/games is full of downvotes and negative interaction. /r/popular makes me doomscroll and waste hours of my time, and once it's at that point no one is reading newer comments. And all the hate does not deserve my brain space.
I am much, much happier here. Talking to strangers, either in depth or for a moment, gives me the civil human interaction that keeps me going.
Tildes has replaced my Reddit usage 100%. After the first few days of muscle memory after deleting the app, I was pretty much over it. Reddit was easier to let go than I thought it would be. Tildes gives me pretty much what I wanted from Reddit but in waaaay less time. The missing stuff isn't worth dealing with Reddit for (for me, anyways).
I never had intentions of downloading Reddit's app, but I was going to use the desktop version from time to time. In the past few weeks, I've lost enough respect for the platform and its leadership to the point that I don't want to return in any way.
I agree. I feel like the separation anxiety from Reddit was very brief. Tildes, squabbles and RSS have filled the void and I don't spend nearly as much time endlessly scrolling.
I like the fact that I have to actively click on the next page for Tildes instead of doomscrolling. Helps me put it away for when something more interesting is on the front page.
I use it, but I'm not particularly "ashamed" of it? You're exactly right, for those niche communities, there's nowhere else really to be. The federated solutions will by definition never be able to accomplish this, because they'll never reach the critical mass necessary when each instance has its own copies of every sub (and that's actually necessary with defederation drama).
Other than that, you can go on Discords, but that's not really a replacement so much as something different.
So it is what it is. If you enjoy it, you should keep using Reddit. Nothing wrong with it. If you don't enjoy using Reddit, you shouldn't. I wouldn't feel any shame for it.
I only say ashamed because I had told myself I was going to do my best to stick to "site:reddit.com" google searches and I'm using it far more. It's a very mild shame, haha.
Precisely why it would be great it tildes allowed for the creation of new communities / sub-topics. Not making decisions based on catering to advertisers, and fixing the problem of power-hungry mods who never get checked by site admins would fix most of the problems there.
pardon my ignorance, but if it's federated isn't this unnecessary? (unless defederation drama, but ignore that for a minute)
it's like if you suddenly found a thriving knitting lemmy/group somewhere, even if on another server you'd still post there, and that group would become the more popular one, right? no need to clone or start a new one? or am i misunderstanding how lemmy works?
I know a lot of people have decided on a cold-turkey withdrawal from Reddit this past month, but that's only one way of doing it. I'll probably keep using it for certain niche subreddits until Tildes or another site incorporates those niche interests.
I'm glad the recent drama happened in a way because it has introduced me to other sites like this one, which I hadn't heard of until a couple of weeks ago. This has much more the philosophy I'm looking for, but it's obviously lacking a lot of the niche interests at the moment. I think it's fine to frequent lots of different sites if they all fulfill a need. It's probably healthier to a certain degree so that you're exposed to different viewpoints, cultures and areas of interest.
I think it boils down to one's use case for Reddit.
If I'm using it as a resource, aka googling something and appending reddit so I can have a shot at usable search results, I'm certainly going to keep using it.
It's still useful as a news aggregator, especially in smaller topics. But there are a number of kbin/lemmy groups that duplicate them now. Maybe the threads are going to only have 14 comments vs. 1,400, but I've become somewhat disenchanted with the Reddit "hivemind" as it tends to overvalue the shrillest and lowest-common denominator voices, so that's not a downside.
But as a place of online community, or even as a little online timekilling dopamine dispenser, it's done as far as I'm concerned. After the latest dust-up, the banning of 3rd-party apps, the latest rounds of UI enshittificiation, and the naked disregard that Reddit leadership has exhibited towards its community of users, going there just doesn't make the happy brain chemicals come out anymore.
I have left them and it feels like I have been severed from a part of myself. It is probably the toughest boycott I've done.
If I google and reddit looks like the only good result, I will copy the link and put it in the wayback machine. I may stop doing this in the future, but wanted to keep it up while Apollo was still doing it's thing.
I am a bit more drawn than I'd like, but I think once Apollo stops working I think I'll be much less on there. I can't stand using the official app, and I don't want to use old.reddit on mobile either. I've been lurking here quite a bit and also on fediverse (kbin). Like others have said, I don't think you (or anyone) should feel guilty about using it. There is so much content there that it's almost impossible to completely avoid it.
On a side note, I have been feeling that the quality of the content has really been lower compared to a few weeks ago, or maybe I just kind of "grew out of it".
I've dipped back for a few minutes here and there since moving over to Tildes just to reassure myself the content I was a slave to is just meh and I didn't lose anything of value by no longer using reddit.
I definitely miss the large community where you can basically find any interest you're looking for and there's a horde of experts on almost any topic, but absolutely not going back to Reddit. I'm deleting everything on Friday and not looking back.
I only received my invite and registered today.
I definitely have considered this very thing when applying for Tildes. I would go so far as to say that this very shortcoming is the reason that Tildes will struggle with any degree of userbase until it is able to not just support the influx of those interested in it coming from Reddit on such a large scale, but also to accommodate their desire for further niche areas - IE approval in more regularity for those groups to be generated.
However, there is definitely something to be said for using the tag system properly; that is to say, being active and engaged and being the change you want to see in the world. Admittedly it's pretty intimidating to post something in the Games group that is about a very specific game (IE FFXVI) when the whole group itself only sees apparently an average of 6 posts a day. You don't wanna be seen as "that guy." But if there's genuine comments on the threads, generating discussion, then it's well within its rights to live there. And maybe next time it won't be you who needs to be brave... It's only the 16th in a line of games loved by millions over time, after all.
My musings would say, "I could commit to making one thread a day with proper tags about something I'm interested in talking about", and if only one in every ten of us did that, there'd be more volume and therefore more interest to talk to others, even if we did have to weed through a few posts that we didn't care about. Ideals are funny things, though.
Finally, perhaps if tags could be specified to search outside of their group, that'd probably go a long way to allowing the flexibility so we wouldn't feel like we're bothering the general community too much, because if we select a cool tag that might have subjects which can bleed over into other groups that someone can click, then the topics can truly be considered worthwhile to find a mine of info over what we're interested in across groups. (I saw several interesting tag use cases for this: "Short Read", "Ask.Advice"... or even just stuff like being able to search for a specific series that might have BOTH a Book and a TV Show.) Also, letting us further refine our tag searches for finding things with multiple tags (or excluding certain tags!) would be incredibly helpful. (How can I find specifically a topic on both "visual novel" and "specific series", but not find stuff about the "light novel"? Or find "fanart" of "specific series" but the series is both a TV show and a Book and I don't care the source - searching twice sucks!)
And as an addendum, I also genuinely do miss the concept of Reddit's Best Of. Even if they sometimes were... debatable... it allowed me to engage in seeing specifically comments that I might not have otherwise just because the initial title of the post didn't interest me.
If not you, then who? If you won't make a post about the game(s) you like, you can't rely on other people to do it for you.
Actually, it's more like 1 in 100. ;)
You mean... like this ? https://tildes.net/?tag=final_fantasy
It's on the "to do" list: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/331
Remember: Tildes is still in alpha-testing. It’s an unfinished product. Set your expectations accordingly.
Oh I wasn't sure how to get to tags without specifically searching in a group. How can you do that?
And nice to know that it's on the roadmap... I really think it'll help! :D
I hard-coded it by editing a URL, because... Tildes is still in alpha-testing. It’s an unfinished product. Set your expectations accordingly. and the feature for subscribing to tags hasn't been built yet.
Oh okay, just how you linked it made me feel like I was missing a native way to do it, and I'm new here, so thank you. Anyhow, I was just trying to let my impressions flow since that was the original topic, haha.
Oh. If you go to any page on Tildes and click on any tag, it'll show you a list of topics with that tag.
If you do this inside a group, it'll show you topics in that group.
If you do this on the front page, it'll show you all topics from across Tildes.
Sorry about that.
That makes more sense, thanks! Yeah, I didn't stumble upon it because by the time I wanted to check tags, I was already on the actual thread reading the content and comments, so naturally it defaulted to within the Group only. Good to know. :)
I never actually left Reddit. I just reduced my presence there after the redesign in 2016-18.
Contrary to a lot of opinions in here, I'm in a similar boat to you.
My niche community that I keep getting drawn back to is /r/anime and /r/manga, as I've yet to find a better place that not only engages in relevant latest-episode/chapter discussions but also keeps me updated on what came out/is coming out soon that might interest me.
The rest of the "generic" stuff though, which I classify to be very broad topics such as /r/gaming or /r/pics, not so much.
It's literally the niche communities bringing me back since I haven't really found a solid replacement for post-episode discussions yet either on here, Squabbles, Lemmy (which I don't actually like using that much) or any other on-the-rise alternatives.
I am 100% not feeling that itch to return. I was a Reddit user for nigh on 10 years and quit cold turkey and I don't miss it. It was only when I quit that I realised what a drain on my mental health and the amount of time I spent both on the site and trying to decompress when off it.
Things would stick in my mind and I would get angry, I mean I was angry over the Roe vs Wade repeal for days and I live in the UK. This is just an example but a good one there are numerous others that I found were dragging me down.
The day I made the decision not to return and deleted BaconReader was a good day for me, and the day I found Tildes was another good one. The community, conversation and just all round positive attitude here are what brings me back
In middle school, I remember having friends go through their first breakup with their first girlfriends.
This reminds me of that, except instead of two friends, it’s thousands of them. And they just refuse to move on and not mention her for one day.
Nope. Don't miss it. There is very little in the way of thoughtful discussion and a pretty toxic community. Often the trending subreddits in r/ all just made me upset and added nothing to my life.
I gravitated to Reddit because I missed the more comprehensive discussions on the old message boards of yesteryear. But very little of that occurs on Reddit. People often go "off topic" immediately in a thread.
And the lack of compassion and cynicism that permeates reddit is frankly, disturbing.
Sure there is some stuff that makes me feel good about life on Reddit , or is informative, but just as often there is content that just depresses the hell out of me.
No way would I go back. Life is too short. Happy to be here. This is WAY more my speed and much better for my mental health.
I haven't missed it. Really and truly, it is not the reddit that had value at one time. I was there for 12 years and not on any of the super popular subs anymore.
Tildes is a good fit more me but nothing will be what Reddit once was and we have Spez to look to over that.
Going forward it will be much more commercial and bot riddled than it already is now.
Last but not least: I do not miss the troll type crap that you could count on there. I love that people here are trying to learn something new, or understand something new.
Reddit feels like a hair salon loaded with catty hairdressers after being here.
I stopped using Reddit for the 48 hours was it? of the protest. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. In addition to missing all the cat subs and my hobby subs, it was just the general sense of being a part of a community, especially since I live in a non-English speaking country and am socially isolated in real life. But the extreme difficulty in stopping indicates addiction and, honestly, I spend more time there than is healthy. Someone on Reddit kindly gave me an invite to here, and since I now have a new place to hang out, I decided it was time to let go. I gave myself til the end of the month and got my fill of Reddit to the point where I was beginning to hate humanity. I just deleted the app literally a few minutes ago and am feeling a bit like I did after I had my last cigarette. Things may get a bit bumpy for me for a while, but here’s to better overall health and productivity.
I missed out on the SN25 static-fire because I wasn't trolling /r/spacexlounge
I've considered making a new user to subscribe to a half-dozen specific subs, and black-list the rest. And then just never engage/upvote/comment. But I don't like it.
That's a great example! Missing stuff because you just won't see the news about it anywhere else.
This week I’ve dabbled a bit and made a few comments only to realize that there is a huge uptick in the amount of new profiles that are lurkers waiting to attack people post. It’s as if the press has driven all types of mean people to spread their hate on its forum. Once Apollo shuts down I don’t plan on using the site again. Except in the off chance it shows up in a duck duck search.
I don't really go on Reddit anymore as I quit 'cold turkey' when all the subs went dark, but the two that i'll miss are /r/madeofstyrofoam and /r/edanonymemes , both of those (and lots others!) are places that I don't think will ever come back elsewhere on the internet, and it's pretty sad.
I think you're the first person I've seen on Tildes mention this sub! It's a very nice little corner of the internet for sure. That, and many other mental health subreddits are irreplaceable for me - I don't know if you feel the same way, but if you find comfort in such places, don't stop using them just because the CEO is an idiot. That's just my opinion anyway... That I just don't feel it's worth it to give up those communities
Actually, I don't miss anything. There may have been a post here and there that was useful or funny, but I didn't look for them specifically, so I don't actually miss them.
The same here on Tildes - I find many posts interesting, but don't actually look for specific ones. Just discussing whatever I feel like and not participating in all the other posts.
Be it niche or geeky or nerdy, most of us will keep sticking to reddit for a very long time unless a superior alternative organically evolves (which seems very difficult today) due to mainly two reasons:
Network effect doesn't happen in a day, and those who started early have a clear and monumental advantage in this game.
I was hopeful about Lemmy initially but what's happening there in the name of "decentralization" is more fragmentation, turf wars and fights for control over narratives. They took all the wrong things from reddit while going there and that's creating issues, not to mention decentralization itself is very hard in programming and that's causing the technical issues too. What they need is leadership through consensus to emerge and set things right. Decentralization doesn't mean that lack of leadership or "ordered anarchy" will run things on autopilot even though many people just hope that it happens somehow!
Heavy user down to 0 since the blackout.
BUT
tildes has been helping, but i do miss the old reddit.
I'll be honest, I also have been feeling drawn back towards Reddit recently, as you said for the specific communities. I also don't enjoy the format of a typical forum, and it's helpful to have one account to access a whole site of communities. As others have said there are Discord communities, but honestly I don't really like the format of Discord for communities, although they do have their upsides. I deleted the Reddit app I was using from my phone which has helped me use it less, although occasionally I will use it on my PC.
Is something like this along the lines of what you're looking for? I'm not familiar with Tsukihime, I just did a search for it on Lemmy and that came up. I don't think it's close to the level of Reddit yet, but I'm noticing a good number of niche communities popping up on Lemmy. I'm on lemmy.world and it feels kind of like Reddit from years ago.
I'm not in the camp "avoid Reddit at all costs." I just use it way less than before and mostly don't miss it, just because the level of discussion dropped so much in the subs I liked. It's interesting to see new communities being built elsewhere.
It's the same game, yeah. It's cool that someone has a ...sub-lemmy? for it. Would be great if it grows and will be interesting to see if similar niche communities will be able to achieve a critical mass of users. Not a lot of comments on those topics at the moment...
I miss ShittyDaystrom, whitewolfrpg, and vtm. Maybe Lovecraft.
Everything else was filler.
I still view Reddit, though I've given up on voting or commenting there. If the admins there aren't going to respect those adding value to the site then there's no reason to continue to do that. Hopefully the continued decline will encourage bigger specific interest groups to grow elsewhere.
I've been trying to avoid it as much as I can and honestly finding it easier than I expected, but I'm crediting it to the fact that I'm in the midst of a big cross country move and have spent the last week+ driving, unpacking, assembling furniture etc.
But I do feel like I'm missing a place to get new video game news and baseball updates for teams other than my own, which I do miss.
I pop back in there out of habit and to check on the state of the site. Most of my favorite communities are still protesting in one way or another though so I get bored quickly. To help curb my habit I've deleted the app so I can only access the mobile site.
Yeah, but mostly muscle memory to open Sync on my phone. Once that goes dark in a few days, that'll be most of my Reddit use gone. I'd only open it in a browser on desktop once or twice a week. I'll probably continue to do that, for the sake of some niche communities while they still exist. But taking away my preferred method for habitual scrolling will be doing me a favour, if I'm honest.
Not really, but I’ve not entirely stopped following certain subreddits. There’s a subreddit for the state I live in and one for an Emacs community I like. But I was mostly a lurker, so I just subscribed to them (the old Reddit versions) via my RSS reader and logged out. If I feel the need to make a comment, I’ll log back in momentarily with a new account I made.
I check those RSS feeds maybe once per day. Sometimes I skip a day or two. This way there’s less mindless scrolling and I’m not on it all the time. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with Tildes and Lemmy (and honestly, I’ve found I prefer Tildes). I just spend my time differently now. I already read a few books I’d been meaning to read for nearly a year.
I really do miss participating in my niche interest communities like discussing and discovering fantasy novels on /r/fantasy, checking out build specs on /r/buildapc or reading about trivial spats in /r/hobbydrama. That said, the urge to contribute on reddit has been sapped to nigh zero with the API fuckery. I'll probably still visit old.reddit for technical aid once in a while after rif dies, but for entertainment not so much.
The only subreddit I am still actively using is /r/barexam because it's such a specific and niche group, and there are a lot of valuable resources available to me there as I put myself through the hell of studying for the bar...again.
While the first few reddit-less days were rough for the most part I've adjusted to not being on it daily. Aside from the odd google search where it seems like the most relevant responses are on reddit. I do miss certain communities like r/fanfiction, and may check in at some point in the future (even if only to see if there's other places people have spread to), but overall I've found more time to read books and play games now that I'm not puttering around on reddit reading 30+ AITA threads every day. Thought about deleting my posts and account, but haven't done so.
I use Teddit to lurk old subs that don't have a Fediverse alternative (yet) and don't interact with anything. Aside from that, Reddit's pretty much dead to me.
If there's anything people want to talk about, they should just start a conversation going here or anywhere (aside from Spezzit). That's pretty much how Reddit grew into the behemoth it is today, amirite?
I thought it was a BBS, but that’s too old. These days they’re called boards, message boards or forums.
About Reddit: I still use it, especially for niche knowledge, but definitely less, and with less interest these days. Tildes is turning out to be more of that “new smaller subreddit” everyone wistfully looks back on, and I hope it can keep that vibe as long as possible.
No.
It's surprising to be honest. I used it often for years but now I have stopped I feel no need to go back for a peek. I feel better without it.
My compromise with reddit is instead of being a doom scroller like I've been most of my time there, I only drop in for the niche communities I'm subbed to.
I have a bookmarks file with links to Splatoon, Stardew Valley, my local city's subreddit, and the few queer subreddits that are still active. I no longer browse my front page, all, or popular.
I've also done this for a few communities on fediverse that are active and unproblematic, and the few tumblr pages that I still follow. I think Tildes and youtube are the only platforms I still "exist" on.
In a way, that's is more or less how I browsed the internet before reddit or facebook. I would just have links to sites and forums I thought were neat, and gaiaonline was the space I mostly existed on. If there is any good that has come from the enshitification of reddit, it has me going back to the way I used to surf, and I feel a lot less of a mental burden on myself because of it.
Also, I browse with an ad blocker on firefox, and have never spent money on gold or anything else, so it's not like my presence on reddit benefits them in any meaningful way.
I'm still quite active on Reddit. It has really good communities, and for some stuff images are pretty helpful, say motorcycles, or mechanical keyboards. I will keep using it as long as my user experience is good enough to justify it, and then I won't. I'm very happy that I keep seeing more and more alternatives around, including the fediverse of course, for all its shortcomings.
It's tempting to go back. There are a lot of niche communities in Reddit that I really miss.
Luckily, I just about can't go back. Reddit's official app and website are too awful for me to put up with.
I wish they'd just set reasonable API pricing. I'd have paid a subscription fee to keep using Reddit with my preferred app, but it is what it is. *shrug*
I've had to make one or two visits for some niche knowledge reading, but other than that i've not been on at all. The blackouts were the end for me, and i'm leaving my 13 year old account to rot in the dust. It's left a massive hole that i'm slowly starting to fill with more productive things, and other dopamine sinks that I don't visit as much. All in all the movement has been positive for me, and I think/hope that tildes will be at the forefront of a 'post-old web' emergence, where we see more decentralised discussion groups built for community, not for profit.
I'm not old, old internet, but I started browsing in 1998 and things were very different back then. Things have been on a gradual decline since 'Web 2.0', but this honestly feels like the start of a new chapter for the internet to me, and i'm excited to see where it goes. It's all a bit messy at the moment, but I have a feeling it will become something beautiful again. I think this new liberated and decentralised net will exist alongside the current internet that we're all beginning to loathe. I think both entities will be different enough to coexist and serve two difference audiences.
I'm still using it a little bit, but have completely deleted all of my comments from both of my accounts. I may delete one or both accounts eventually, but right now I'm generally using it as a read-only situation:
I'm considering abandoning the trading portion, because I can do the rest without accounts - in a read-only sort of way and just go ahead and delete. I try to refrain from any additional comments or discussion myself unless I feel absolutely drawn to helping someone with a problem (the only exception I'd be willing to make).
But, I'd prefer to contribute elsewhere. I know I personally can't make reddit die, unfortunately, but I'd prefer it get to the point that it's so bad that it creates a vacuum that other things fill. With it still around, I feel like it's way less possible for a true alternative to emerge.
Before Reddit decided to suck, I had about 300 Reddit URLs bookmarked for daily, weekly, and monthly visits. I've deleted all but the few that cover news on niche interests I haven't yet been able to match elsewhere, so I'm down to 4 daily clicks, plus 2 weekly clicks. It's surprising how much I don't miss spending hours there. Minutes is more than enough.
Of course, but tildes is taking up more of my social media time, which really is the goal. As folks move, I’m sure my usage habits will as well.
I have been lately because I'm a huge hockey fan and I want to know what's going on as it gets closer to draft day and with trades. There just isn't enough information elsewhere at the moment.
LGRW
I highly recommend hfboards. It’s actually a more lively website than Reddit for discussing ice hockey. It’s a more old school forum so it might take some getting used to, but it’s great.
99.9% of my reddit usage was on mobile. I've already deleted the official app and when RIF goes down for good, I'll delete that too. I still plan on using reddit, but only on PC browser, when I intentionally need it for tech support or to view my local city or niche hobby subs. It'll be more of a weekly check-in type deal than my standard place for online discussion and news. Tildes has taken that role, and I'm already enjoying it more.
I don't like using reddit, it makes me feel dirty after everything that has happened.
I do, NASCAR, AWWW and What is this thing, other than them 3, nope, Tildies suits me just fine!
typo
I only use Reddit logged out, via old.reddit, and just to watch ModCoord and Save3rdPartyApps. Basically keeping an eye on the protests and the future of the platform.
Besides that, I do end up searching a lot of Warframe content, and while the Warframe Wiki is satisfactory, sometimes I need some nuance, and that nuance is only on /r/warframe. :(
Someone needs to scrape that sub and archive it somewhere else.
Niche communities. Good news coverage. It’s a what I need here but I am hoping Tildes gains steam in July.
I hear what you are saying. If there's a given bit of info I need and it's on a Reddit link, I'll read it but then I'm out. I vastly prefer the dialogue of this space.
I decided to axe the urge by DNS blocking reddit outright. Do I miss it? Yes. Am I going back to it? Never.
The day Reddit blocks the use of
old.reddit.comis the day I (and many others) will officially drop it.So part of what I used reddit for was outreach/ being helpful to the public regarding causes that interest me. r/povertyfinance, r/askwomenover30 are places people reach out for help and Tildes is not going to replace that. I also get tremendous satisfaction from suggesting books in response to requests. 1. It's like solving a crossword puzzle matching what I have read to what someone wants. 2. It's helpful. 3. It lets me reflect and converse about my favorite solitary hobby.
I am however disgusted with u/spez for reasons everyone here is familiar with. The form my boycott takes is that I have moved all content contribution and much of my conversation to Tildes. If I want to submit an article? It goes here. If this becomes a place where people submit book reviews, I will join in, but it is kind of quiet now and I don't want to spam the books Edit I am conditioned to say subreddit. Subtilde?
Honestly? Please don't take this in a negative way, but I'm tired of the Tildes posts about Reddit. If I wanted to talk about reddit, I'd be on reddit. It reminds me of someone that broke up with their girlfriend but still talks about them all of the time.
You may want to filter the reddit tag so you don't see the posts. I imagine it will be a popular topic for a little while, then decrease in frequency with some time.
Just figured out how to filter. Thank you for the suggestion!
No problem! Tildes is both very different and oddly similar to reddit. In this case, we still have the ability to filter topics/groups just like we did on reddit, except on Tildes it's opt-out instead of opt-in.
I think opt-out makes more sense with both the philosophy of Tildes as well as the size of it (since we definitely don't want to make topics/groups opt-in/hard to find, at least at this point in time.)
It wasn’t so much intended to be about Reddit itself rather than niche communities. It just so happens that Reddit is the only place most of those communities exist.
Sorry if that came off as offensive. Nothing against your post at all!
As for the discussion, I think I like the more general classifications of Tildes. Reddit has a ton of niche communities that most people would never find unless they knew exactly what they were looking for. With tags, communities should be able to form within these broader categories. I saw they were looking at the possibility to subscribe to certain tags in the future. I think it'll get there, and with it all being in broader categories, it'll be easier for others to find these communities with the increase of exposure.
While I agree with most of what you've said, I genuinely think people are just trying to be respectful and dip their toes into the water with generic, widely applicable questions and topics, rather than barging in here and clogging up everyone's feed with content that may seem out of left field or too specific. A lot of newcomers from reddit have also noted that we've grown accustomed to receiving negative feedback when posting anything on reddit, so I think it will take a while to shake that feeling and be able to post things without fear of being lambasted by small angry mobs.
I tend to agree with you on the color/food/etc. questions, but just like reddit, I think we have to be the change we want to see. Have you posted yet? I haven't. Honestly I'm not used to posting, since I generally only commented on reddit. But now that I'm on here, a platform where posts don't get instantly lost in the noise, I think I'll try to contribute more often.