I think all of these articles about reddit's fall are wishful thinking. Reddit is big, most users are dumb, and the site will do fine and get back to growing and making investors happy soon. Sure,...
Exemplary
I think all of these articles about reddit's fall are wishful thinking. Reddit is big, most users are dumb, and the site will do fine and get back to growing and making investors happy soon. Sure, it's noticeably worse than before (although IMO it was already bad before). But, to quote the great George Carlin:
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of them are dumber than that."
I'd rather Tildes members stop submitting these articles as a way to collectively hope for Reddit to get what it's due. I started counting down Facebook's fall over a decade ago. And today they're worth almost a trillion dollars. Reddit is not going to die just because it's changed for the worse.
I don't see this as a "hopeful article about the fall of reddit", I see this as the logical conclusion to many moderators closing up shop and heading out. The site is still there and still fine,...
I don't see this as a "hopeful article about the fall of reddit", I see this as the logical conclusion to many moderators closing up shop and heading out. The site is still there and still fine, but its no longer the online home of a lot of great and hard working people.
And your Facebook example is interesting, because sure they're still a huge massively successful company... but do you honestly know many people under the age of 40 who have good things to say about Facebook? Or even continues to actively use it? Facebook has a huge negative stigma to tons of people, I'd consider that a "fall from grace" regardless of how profitable they appear to be.
I think you have your personal reason for submitting this link to Tildes, which might be different from what I'm worried about. It definitely can be read simply as "Reddit did X, power users did...
I think you have your personal reason for submitting this link to Tildes, which might be different from what I'm worried about. It definitely can be read simply as "Reddit did X, power users did Y. As expected - Z was the result". But the topic has quite a lot of votes. Combined with the high proportion of new users from the Reddit exodus I am sure a prevailing emotion is retribution. I'm suggesting we let Reddit go.
As a counter-point I don't mind at least skimming articles that talk about "enshitification" of services. I am also fascinated by how hostile the organization became towards the users. I can't...
As a counter-point I don't mind at least skimming articles that talk about "enshitification" of services. I am also fascinated by how hostile the organization became towards the users. I can't remember anything like it except for a few BBS sysop "my way or the highway" type meltdowns.
I left reddit over the API changes and I didn't even use any 3rd party apps. It kind of feels like this is the beginning of a siesmic shift like MySpace and to a lesser extent places like Digg, slashdot, etc. I think that's noteworthy in and by itself from an Internet history perspective. The fact that so many digital lives are connected to Reddit is also noteworthy to people. How noteworthy is up to each reader, certainly. If there is a thread that I am not interested in I simply don't click on it.
Maybe on some level perhaps I am looking for validation. Had I become the old man tilting at windmills? I don't think that's too outrageous for people who have spent a good portion of possibly the last decade or more lurking, posting and, in general, helping make Reddit what it was. So far I haven't seen any gloat-fests here about the decline of Reddit or anyone "going ham" on their posts attacking Reddit. I've seen pretty measured responses for the most part with some people seeking validation or processing losing that part of their lives.
Since you're a new user, I'll give you a tip: There are topic tag filters. Add reddit to yours and you will no longer be tired of them coming up because you won't see them. Something...
Since you're a new user, I'll give you a tip: There are topic tag filters.
Add reddit to yours and you will no longer be tired of them coming up because you won't see them. Something @teaearlgraycold should be doing as well.
Just as I have a filter for twitter because I've never used the site, will never use the site, and don't care about the weekly "10 new things Ol' Muskrat said this week, you won't believe number 7!" article.
It's not so much that I don't ever want to see reddit posts here. It's more so that I made an attempt at reading and influencing others' behavior. So, less "ew reddit" and more "you're better off...
It's not so much that I don't ever want to see reddit posts here. It's more so that I made an attempt at reading and influencing others' behavior.
So, less "ew reddit" and more "you're better off not caring about reddit".
Not only that, but a website that a notable portion (if not the majority) of this site's userbase has personal history with. Add to that the massive wave of people who only learned of Tildes as a...
Not only that, but a website that a notable portion (if not the majority) of this site's userbase has personal history with. Add to that the massive wave of people who only learned of Tildes as a result of the API debacle, some rubbernecking at the state of the mother-site and predicting its downfall is pretty expected.
Tildes and Reddit are intrinsically linked in so many ways. Deimos is the author of the most important bot in the entire site. There's a reason why typing /r/gaming automatically links to the...
Tildes and Reddit are intrinsically linked in so many ways.
Deimos is the author of the most important bot in the entire site.
There's a reason why typing /r/gaming automatically links to the subreddit.
If you don't want to see these articles, it makes more sense to filter out a relavant tag like "reddit". While there may be a portion of uses who are posting articles like this to "collectively...
I'd rather Tildes members stop submitting these articles as a way to collectively hope for Reddit to get what it's due.
If you don't want to see these articles, it makes more sense to filter out a relavant tag like "reddit". While there may be a portion of uses who are posting articles like this to "collectively hope for Reddit to get what it's due", I think this is probably not the majority. There are plenty of people who are just mildly interested in the fallout of this summer's protests and what current media coverage of reddit is saying about it. It seems too harsh to insist people just not post articles about this topic.
Facebook has lost a lot of value. Meta hasn't, because Zuck is smart and Meta is much larger than Facebook, so the losses of one platform are the gains of another. Many companies have chosen to...
I started counting down Facebook's fall over a decade ago. And today they're worth almost a trillion dollars.
Facebook has lost a lot of value. Meta hasn't, because Zuck is smart and Meta is much larger than Facebook, so the losses of one platform are the gains of another.
Many companies have chosen to stop spending money on FB ads, because the hit rate is so low, because it's essentially dead. The active demographic is mostly boomers (don't trust stats saying otherwise -- they account for users, not active users). "Login with Facebook", where it used to be extremely common, has fallen out of favor and is no longer being implemented by default (Google+Apple are the default two). A lot of the ad inventory is just ads duplicated from Instagram. Facebook fudges the number by counting instagram users cross-posting automatically to FB as active users. FB marketplace is a scam-filled hellhole outside the US and is shrinking in the US. FB groups & events are one of the only things still working.
Just highlighted the same Carlin quote two days ago. And yes, I've found it easier to move on and adapt to Tildes. I think a lot of us want some sort of justice against Reddit....but to what end...
Just highlighted the same Carlin quote two days ago.
And yes, I've found it easier to move on and adapt to Tildes. I think a lot of us want some sort of justice against Reddit....but to what end and what does that actually accomplish? Someone else "losing" or "winning" doesn't often define what I consider to be wins and losses in my own life.
I'm sorry these two statements are quite clearly incorrect. As many users here have pointed out there's still tons of hq posters hanging around niche subs. I also don't see why professional...
high quality content creation (they don't anymore, and they always got this for free by top users who now left) and high quality moderation (they don't anymore, and they always got this for free by volunteer mods who now left).
I'm sorry these two statements are quite clearly incorrect. As many users here have pointed out there's still tons of hq posters hanging around niche subs. I also don't see why professional content creators (people who earn a living doing OC online) would get up a leave the platform, effectively shrinking their reach.
I feel like content creators can help a lot in the fight to encourage users to use another platform. They can post their content on both platforms and link to the other platform, which raises...
I feel like content creators can help a lot in the fight to encourage users to use another platform. They can post their content on both platforms and link to the other platform, which raises awareness of the platform. Exposure is key.
I agree with you on the condition the content creator is ideologically aligned with the movement and has the energy to protest. Quite frankly, I think its plausible two conditions eliminate a good...
I agree with you on the condition the content creator is ideologically aligned with the movement and has the energy to protest. Quite frankly, I think its plausible two conditions eliminate a good chunk of the pool.
They can, but what is their incentive? Professional's goals are to extend their reach and have different ways to sell themselves. Amateurs simply want to post to a large audience. A new forum (or...
They can, but what is their incentive? Professional's goals are to extend their reach and have different ways to sell themselves. Amateurs simply want to post to a large audience. A new forum (or old, unknown one) doesn't accomplish these goals.
Many users (myself included. Heck, even Deimos himself) did come from Reddit. So there will be an inevitable bias towards content talking about reddit, good or bad. Personally, I agree with you...
I'd rather Tildes members stop submitting these articles as a way to collectively hope for Reddit to get what it's due.
Many users (myself included. Heck, even Deimos himself) did come from Reddit. So there will be an inevitable bias towards content talking about reddit, good or bad. Personally, I agree with you and becasue of that I don't really see postings here affecting Reddit's bottom line either way. So I'm not too concerned that we're "keeping reddit alive" either (we both agree it's not dying to begin with, from a businesss perspective).
On the other hand:
I started counting down Facebook's fall over a decade ago. And today they're worth almost a trillion dollars.
I also have my own definitions of success/failure, and I am not a businessman nor investor. just because more people are on FB doesn't mean I in my own experience see it as "alive". Almost none of my community use FB anymore as a place to connect and communicate. At best it is a for sale board a la Craigslist.
It's no longer "alive" in the sense of how we used it. And maybe that's fine by FB, but it is still an interesting lens to dissect from. Reddit can be the same for others.
So, less "ew reddit" and more "you're better off not caring about reddit".
Mental note taken. But for now I still do somewhat care about seeing how Reddit goes, both from a financial and more intimate lens.
With all due respect, and in defense of the colloquial use of that Carlin quote, there are two things here and I think you're misunderstanding and confusing the two. 1) That is how averages work,...
With all due respect, and in defense of the colloquial use of that Carlin quote, there are two things here and I think you're misunderstanding and confusing the two.
1)
That's not how averages work at all!
That is how averages work, or more specifically, the point of centrality, which can be defined as many things. For IQ, a normal distribution is assumed, because that is the model upon which it is based on. (I bring up the point about normality because you mention sigma.) And although averages can be skewed, as in log-normal distributions or in the case of extreme asymmetric outliers you mention, people generally tend to mean the "representative point of centrality", which would be a trimmed mean or the median. If one wants to be pedantic.
So, assuming a normal distribution, which is the model of IQ, the mean/median is indeed the halfway point of the data.
The more true statement is that no one is average.
Not true. No individual has a complete set of average traits, but plenty of people are average in a single trait. To use your analogy: among soldiers, there are individuals of average height OR of average weight OR of average waist circumference etc. But it is highly unlikely that a single individual that is of average height AND of average weight AND of average waist circumference etc.
Even more so, that is literally how IQ is defined. Plain intelligence is not a metric space; someone being twice as smart as someone else doesn't make sense. That's why we defined a...
or IQ, a normal distribution is assumed, because that is the model upon which it is based on.
Even more so, that is literally how IQ is defined. Plain intelligence is not a metric space; someone being twice as smart as someone else doesn't make sense. That's why we defined a normally-distributed ordinal space for IQ. IQ tests are curved s.t. we get N(100, 15)-distributed results. If we're talking about intelligence via the proxy of IQ, the mean and the median are by definition identical. If we're talking about plain intelligence without the proxy of IQ, I'd argue "dumber than" doesn't even make sense most of the time. (that is, intelligence is so multi-faceted that a total ordering isn't given, only a partial ordering.)
Which is to say, if we're talking about IQ in general, all of these abstractions and operations we do make no sense, but on IQ at least some do. Doesn't mean those always translate nicely into the real world. Talking about which, I do wonder whether there's good justification for IQ's normal distribution. Of course it's always a good prior assumption to assume everything is normally distributed, but have we come up with a non-curved measurement of intelligence that also results in a normal distribution, beyond just the expected normally-distributed noise and error of testing? Of course, for any of that to make sense, we have to agree on a projection from multi-faceted intelligence into a real-valued space.
Several years ago I came across a '90s style personal website belonging to some professor (a physicist, if I recall correctly) who made an argument that a fat-tailed distribution would better...
Talking about which, I do wonder whether there's good justification for IQ's normal distribution.
Several years ago I came across a '90s style personal website belonging to some professor (a physicist, if I recall correctly) who made an argument that a fat-tailed distribution would better model for intelligence than a normal distribution. Unfortunately at the time I did not have the appropriate math background to understand his argument, but I would love if I could find the website again now that I do.
I find the whole notion and practice of creating quantitative models of intelligence to be extremely interesting, but unfortunately 99% of conversations on the internet about IQ are full of drivel. Aside from the fact that IQ seems to be a sensitive topic, very few people consider it from a statistician's perspective. People get into big arguments over whether or not IQ is "bullshit," but for me that's besides the point. After all, as they say, "all models are wrong; some models are useful." Is IQ useful? In some contexts, maybe. Can the current concept of IQ be improved? Probably. But when is it useful and how can it be improved? Those are questions worth asking.
As a very statistical-modeling minded person, my best guess at improving the concept of IQ, or rather developing a better one, is to explore those other axes. Basically, knowing that intelligence...
As a very statistical-modeling minded person, my best guess at improving the concept of IQ, or rather developing a better one, is to explore those other axes. Basically, knowing that intelligence can't be reasonably compared as-is (because it's multi-axis - what do you do if I'm better with problem X, but worse with problem Y than you?) is to explore what these other axes are. Probably is on psychologists and neurologists to figure out tests for other axes of intelligence. That could be as simple as devising a test that does test "something about intelligence" but gives a different ordering. Now we have a horrible vector space where nothing has useful names (all axes are just labeled "intelligence") and everything is ugly. So? Find a projection to a nice vector space where you can name the axes. Leave the maths of the projection to the statisticians, the interesting part is the names of the other axes. I suspect what we'll find is that the scientific community has simply taken a weighted average of many much more concrete skills and concepts. All the "bullshit" lies in those weights being arbitrary. Once we name the axes, we can be transparent about that and say "IQ is 20% pattern recognition, 30% geometry, 20% logic and 30% language" for example. And in each of these 4 subcategories (which, to be clear, are simply examples), we have a much better chance of designing a test that measures what it intends to measure, and also find ways around the curving/normalization issues I described previously. There is, to make it overly simplistic, no need to normalize the size of someone's active vocabulary in order to compare. We can just look at the distribution and see if it's gaussian, or if it turns gaussian after we log-scale it.
But don't modern IQ tests already explore multiple axes? Of course there may be axes that have yet to be explored, but my understanding is that modern IQ tests are already designed much the way...
Basically, knowing that intelligence can't be reasonably compared as-is (because it's multi-axis - what do you do if I'm better with problem X, but worse with problem Y than you?) is to explore what these other axes are.
But don't modern IQ tests already explore multiple axes? Of course there may be axes that have yet to be explored, but my understanding is that modern IQ tests are already designed much the way you suggest we improve it.
To be clear, they explore these different axes, kinda like this: My point here is a more deliberate split, away from obscure and hard-to-defend weights, and towards transparently testing these...
To be clear, they explore these different axes, kinda like this:
"IQ is 20% pattern recognition, 30% geometry, 20% logic and 30% language"
My point here is a more deliberate split, away from obscure and hard-to-defend weights, and towards transparently testing these multiple facets. If I disagree with IQ test designers and use different weights, I get a different ranking; and realistically (since they curve it anyway) a ranking is all that IQ provides. That is, as far as I can see, what CHC is doing, plus they also provide a tree structure of how these capabilities interface, which is nice[1]. It's the first I'm hearing of this, which indicates to me that this stuff sadly makes it into the public sphere fairly slowly. On that note, thanks for the link.
Anyway, what I'd like to see is public discourse shift away from IQ - not because it's completely obsolete, but because for most situations, the different underlying axes (or a subset of them) are more interesting and important. I'm also curious about the way they structure the graph. I.e. how do we build it from evidence - when do we split a node into a subgroup of nodes, how do we compute higher-layer scores for an individual, when we can (I presume) only actually test the lowest layer? And how do we insulate higher-order scores from influences in how we structure the graph? Do we need arbitrary weights again? If not, is the ranking in the top node depending on which subnodes we have already defined? Those kinda questions. I reckon though that finding an answer here will get me deeper into the woods than I am willing to go.
[1] though my statistical modeling mind immediately asks whether they have good justification for making the graph of influences tree-shaped, and while I deeply understand the appeal of three layers of abstraction, that too sits slightly undefended in my mind. Though in the end, that latter point is moreso a point of structuring the graph for human eyes than a fundamental property of the model, in which case three layers make sense.
It's interesting to see that there have been tangible changes to reddit since the exodus. I know the number of people who actually stopped engaging with reddit has been relatively small compared...
It's interesting to see that there have been tangible changes to reddit since the exodus. I know the number of people who actually stopped engaging with reddit has been relatively small compared to their total user base, but since a large percentage of those users were longtime moderators and content posters; it seems like reddit has taken a turn for the even worse in terms of content.
I myself noticed it but I thought it was just my anti-reddit biases, so it's interesting to see that so many other people have picked up on it too.
I'm among those who left entirely, and that was (and still is) painful. Reddit was the site I spent most of my online time on and I relied on it for hivemind-knowledgebase use on niche and...
Exemplary
I'm among those who left entirely, and that was (and still is) painful. Reddit was the site I spent most of my online time on and I relied on it for hivemind-knowledgebase use on niche and semi-niche topics.
During the whole protest, I was hoping for a better resolution, hoping I could go back to normal... and sadly that was not the outcome.
I miss the excellent subject-matter concentration that was available to me, but I cannot, in my personal ethical view, continue to use Reddit any longer given their actions.
My hope is that the short and medium term pain of this will yield long-term improved options for communities like what Reddit was. Perhaps Tildes will be one of the sites to grow into that more fully as time goes on - it's why I'm here - both in hopes of that and to contribute towards that goal.
Yeah, like you I have abandoned Reddit completely. I’m really pleased with the level of discussion here on Tildes, but I do miss the in-depth discussion of incredibly niche topics that you could...
Yeah, like you I have abandoned Reddit completely. I’m really pleased with the level of discussion here on Tildes, but I do miss the in-depth discussion of incredibly niche topics that you could find on Reddit.
That said I don't miss how honest contributions were usually buried with cheap one liners or references. Tildes is refreshing at the moment because it's the norm rather than the product of...
That said I don't miss how honest contributions were usually buried with cheap one liners or references. Tildes is refreshing at the moment because it's the norm rather than the product of exhaustive moderation like in the AskHistorians sub.
The cheap one-liners/in jokes were/are tiresome on Reddit. I've left the site, but I don't deprive myself of it when a search for technical help turns up a discussion there, or when I'm looking...
The cheap one-liners/in jokes were/are tiresome on Reddit. I've left the site, but I don't deprive myself of it when a search for technical help turns up a discussion there, or when I'm looking for reviews/feedback/criticism of consumer products/services. There's a huge inertia to Reddit as it has hosted so many valuable discussions over the years, and I'm not sure that those discussions have gone somewhere that is anywhere near as searchable/archiveable. I know a lot of the techy crowd have moved to Lemmy instances, but Lemmy servers can (and very often do, either owing to technical/financial reasons or outright cyberattack) disappear. And don't get me started on the names - I can preface a search with "site:reddit.com" and generally (but not always, and increasingly less, in fact) elevate my search results. I can't do that with Lemmy (and I must admit, I haven't even tried "site:tildes.net", I should do that from now on).
All this to say that I miss the depth and breadth of content there and am not optimistic for its replication any time soon. I do enjoy reading the discussions here on Tildes though. Even when a topic has just one or two comments, I can generally count on them being fairly well thought out and worth reading, real added value.
My issue is that I'm not sure I'm looking for a "techy" crowd. I'm not particularly interested in tech myself outside of ai/machine learning (as it relates to my background as a statistician). I...
I know a lot of the techy crowd have moved to Lemmy instances
My issue is that I'm not sure I'm looking for a "techy" crowd. I'm not particularly interested in tech myself outside of ai/machine learning (as it relates to my background as a statistician).
I find that tildes is much more diverse than I would typically expect from such a niche website. I haven't been to Lemmy but do you find the same level of diversity (in interests) that you find here?
The short answer is no, I don't. Tildes has slower content generation but the quality is leaps and bounds ahead of Lemmy. Lemmy seems great for privacy/self-hosting/piracy etc. and great for...
The short answer is no, I don't. Tildes has slower content generation but the quality is leaps and bounds ahead of Lemmy. Lemmy seems great for privacy/self-hosting/piracy etc. and great for memes. There's a dab of motorsports, but even if a community technically exists for a niche hobby, for example, there's a strong likelihood it's dead (either never got off the ground or got killed by godawful robocopying from its Reddit counterpart).
I feel that's the advantage of instances. If one server goes down for whatever reason, there are various other instances to go to, many of which will have a similar feel. That way we mitigate a...
I know a lot of the techy crowd have moved to Lemmy instances, but Lemmy servers can (and very often do, either owing to technical/financial reasons or outright cyberattack) disappear.
I feel that's the advantage of instances. If one server goes down for whatever reason, there are various other instances to go to, many of which will have a similar feel. That way we mitigate a chance that "Lemmy dies" in the way people call Reddit dead. If an instance goes rouge you have a backup plan that won't take years to build (hopefully), if it disappears it won't take all the knowledge of the fediverse with it.
I can preface a search with "site:reddit.com" and generally (but not always, and increasingly less, in fact) elevate my search results. I can't do that with Lemmy (and I must admit, I haven't even tried "site:tildes.net", I should do that from now on).
yeah, each instance is a website, so you can't really search for it in the same way you scrub a website. That is one inconvenience, but not an insurmountable one. Internal searching is the one place the fediverse can improve the most, but I wonder if there can be some way to make some massive query to Google in the meantime?
I haven't left reddit entirely, I still use it to find answers to questions and keep up to date on the local subreddit, but I no longer comment or post, and no longer moderate the many communities...
I haven't left reddit entirely, I still use it to find answers to questions and keep up to date on the local subreddit, but I no longer comment or post, and no longer moderate the many communities I used to. I wasn't going to gimp myself on a moral stand, but I now enjoy Tildes as my main forum experience
Similar for me. I find not being logged in really cuts down on my desire to scroll as I mainly engage via commenting. I still do have an account, and I have logged in to make a few comments, but...
Similar for me. I find not being logged in really cuts down on my desire to scroll as I mainly engage via commenting. I still do have an account, and I have logged in to make a few comments, but I've also gone and deleted them after a couple of days (as well as all of my other comments I made over the years). If I use Reddit, I'll do so as a leech. If they cut that access off, then like Twitter, I'll just stop altogether.
I felt like I was shooting myself in the foot if I didn't use Google results that brought me to Reddit. So I've limited myself to that, and only when using old reddit, uBlock enabled and with...
I felt like I was shooting myself in the foot if I didn't use Google results that brought me to Reddit. So I've limited myself to that, and only when using old reddit, uBlock enabled and with reddit enhancement suite installed. Since the whole debacle I haven't done any browsing, commenting, or otherwise perusing Reddit. It's just tainted.
I share the sentiment, it's just not worth it anymore.
That's similar to my own compromise. If results return Reddit, that's fine. I'll treat it like quora or GameFAQs. A source of information, but not a community I'm part of.
That's similar to my own compromise. If results return Reddit, that's fine. I'll treat it like quora or GameFAQs. A source of information, but not a community I'm part of.
I agree with your sentiment, and I want to just say thank you for "sacrificing" for things you actually believe in. I know way too many people who complain about inequalities or wrong business...
I agree with your sentiment, and I want to just say thank you for "sacrificing" for things you actually believe in. I know way too many people who complain about inequalities or wrong business practices, but still throw all their money at it because of convenience.
I do miss reddit. It still comes up in searches (I use DDG and often don't have to bother with the "reddit" tag), and I still check if the information I am looking for is there. But because I use containers on my browser, it doesn't log me in... it's just another website that might have the answer or info I'm looking for.
I haven't left reddit entirely (and I'll still frequently add "reddit" to certain search queries), but the fact of the matter is that I did most of my reddit browsing when sitting around bored on...
I haven't left reddit entirely (and I'll still frequently add "reddit" to certain search queries), but the fact of the matter is that I did most of my reddit browsing when sitting around bored on my phone, and the app I used doesn't work anymore. I'm not gonna download the shitty official app, so I just use Tildes or Tumblr to fill my boredom needs now.
Yeah the people protesting are a drop in the bucket of Reddit’s total users, but Reddit’s content only comes from a small subset of its users, most are just consumers of the content. Pissing off...
Yeah the people protesting are a drop in the bucket of Reddit’s total users, but Reddit’s content only comes from a small subset of its users, most are just consumers of the content. Pissing off that vital minority of users was a dumb move, and the total effects of it won’t be realized right away.
I personally am now here on Tildes because of what Reddit did. I no longer browse Reddit on my phone, I will just check certain subs on my desktop for updates on a handful of topics I’m interested in. It’s crazy just how bad their mobile site is that I won’t even bother with it on my phone. I’m more aware of the pervasiveness of toxic posts and commentary on Reddit rather than actual polite discussion of something from different viewpoints. Or even when it’s not friendly debate about something, it’s the same regurgitated meme posts or phrases over and over again.
I still Google search Reddit when I’m looking for information on products and services, but the more Reddit becomes hostile to its content generating users, the less discourse it will have which can be archived/indexed and searched later.
I feel like Reddit is hostile to me viewing their content on my phone without an account in the same way that Twitter is/was (it's constantly changing, sometimes I can't see tweets, sometimes I...
I feel like Reddit is hostile to me viewing their content on my phone without an account in the same way that Twitter is/was (it's constantly changing, sometimes I can't see tweets, sometimes I can, but if you scroll they get blocked, etc. etc.). That hostility made me quite vehemently dislike Twitter links being posted, and the same will happen if Reddit continue down the path of "encouraging" login.
The only thing I use reddit for these days is a very small handful of niche subreddits that I don't have good alternatives for. I used to scroll my front page and sometimes popular in downtime,...
The only thing I use reddit for these days is a very small handful of niche subreddits that I don't have good alternatives for. I used to scroll my front page and sometimes popular in downtime, but not any more.
The degradation in the quality of content is extremely noticeable. I still use Reddit for manga and product information but sometimes I'll take a peek at r/all and r/popular and I'll be honest, it...
The degradation in the quality of content is extremely noticeable. I still use Reddit for manga and product information but sometimes I'll take a peek at r/all and r/popular and I'll be honest, it can be a bit sad to look at. They've succeeded in becoming a generic social media site, with the same content being posted across millions of different subreddits instead of millions of different meme page accounts. Just going on r/popular you'll only really find people fishing for compliments, advertising their OnlyFans, and making up wild stories.
All that being said, I'm kind of glad the change was made, it really helped me look at my social media usage and tone it down. Any time I was bored, either at home or in public, I'd just go on Reddit or Instagram or Twitter. Now, I go out and actively find something to do instead of just doom scrolling. While Tildes hasn't been (and wasn't designed to be) a drop-in replacement, I'm genuinely enjoying the most relaxed feeling of this site compared to others. My social media use in general has gone down significantly, though I haven't been able to cut it out completely just yet, old habits die hard!
Tildes now gets 2+ hours a day that I used to spend on Reddit. I'm still active on a weight-loss subreddit and two other niche communities that aren't elsewhere. I'm spending more time reading books.
Tildes now gets 2+ hours a day that I used to spend on Reddit.
I'm still active on a weight-loss subreddit and two other niche communities that aren't elsewhere. I'm spending more time reading books.
Agreed. I still watch a handful of subreddits. The main page content and app are so vapid. Endless scrolling is a terrific medium for selling ads...but ultimately terrible at transmitting useful...
Agreed. I still watch a handful of subreddits. The main page content and app are so vapid. Endless scrolling is a terrific medium for selling ads...but ultimately terrible at transmitting useful information per unit of time invested.
Exact same for me. There is one community on Reddit that’s closely tied to my profession, but the rest of my time I spend on tildes. For the pure entertainment side of the house, I bought a kobo...
Exact same for me. There is one community on Reddit that’s closely tied to my profession, but the rest of my time I spend on tildes. For the pure entertainment side of the house, I bought a kobo ebook reader a few months ago and have been reading more books than ever before. This has been an incredibly positive experience for me!
I prefer a simpler metric. Take /r/listentothis when the original team was running it: 200 +/- 50 submissions over 24 hours for 13 years. This morning? Just 34 submissions in the last 24 hours. A...
I prefer a simpler metric. Take /r/listentothis when the original team was running it: 200 +/- 50 submissions over 24 hours for 13 years. This morning? Just 34 submissions in the last 24 hours. A five-fold drop in the amount of content is not a content quality problem, it's far more serious than that. Everyone is leaving the party, reddit is no longer the cool place to be. The alternatives made off with the lion's share of the people who submit during the purge. I expect that dropoff in total submissions is variable yet ubiquitous even in the most popular subs. Naturally, the bots and spammers never sleep, and they didn't reduce their output - the regular users did. That gives the garbage a larger share of the mindspace for the same amount of effort. This is fatal.
All of the search engines de-prioritized reddit's results when the blackout banished all of it and left them with pages of top unreachable results. They did not return reddit to the same priority after it was over - in fact I'd bet that the people stewarding those engines had not even realized how dependent they'd become on a single site until that moment.
That is the ultimate kick in the paycheck, a Pyrrhic victory.
There are still book lovers on the various book related subreddits. I would agree there has been reduced quantity of posts. I think a lot of thoughtful people could be happy with Tildes if they...
There are still book lovers on the various book related subreddits. I would agree there has been reduced quantity of posts. I think a lot of thoughtful people could be happy with Tildes if they knew it was here, but each person has their red line for looking for change.
I go back to check on topics of interest and to spread the word about Tildes when appropriate. However, most of my forum time is here and all of my content creation is here.
Not so many of the communities I used to follow there are worth the visit now. There are still several smaller communities over there that I am rather fond of, however, I don't think it's a...
Not so many of the communities I used to follow there are worth the visit now. There are still several smaller communities over there that I am rather fond of, however, I don't think it's a stretch to say that all of those communities deserve a better website, or that all of them are genuinely and visibly worse off than they were even six months ago. I like to say reddit holds those communities hostage, up until the point where they decide to move on - but it's really not reddit. It's their own inertia and laziness that keeps them in that cage. If they don't move on, the evaporative cooling effect will kill them over time. There is no scenario where remaining on reddit is a viable option for preserving a community.
I'd also make the argument that the people who have the integrity to nope out long before things get this bad are the best of the people on the platform (they have standards) and losing them is more damaging than any numbers games. All subreddits have already lost most if not all of their best people at this point, putting their glory days behind them. It's only downhill from here, not a single one of them will ever be better than they were in the past. Reddit doesn't have the draw it once had, the new user stream is drying up, while also getting younger and dumber. Great news for memes. Too bad those don't rank in the search like all the crunchy narrow community discussions and solutions do. Not such great news for the bottom line when you see it like that.
It's not impossible to turn that around, but that almost never happens, and how to do it is imo beyond the patience and comprehension of the investor class. This pattern has repeated so many times it's become a cliche. Tens of thousands of dead websites, all marching off the same cliff like lemmings for over a decade.
Lemmy/kbin, Squabbles, and Discord certainly got the lion's share. Lemmy was by far the largest migration out of the group. There are around sixty alternatives out there and they all got a bump...
Lemmy/kbin, Squabbles, and Discord certainly got the lion's share. Lemmy was by far the largest migration out of the group. There are around sixty alternatives out there and they all got a bump across the board. Even older sites like 4Chan, Slashdot, Digg, and Fark have had a rise in activity. Tildes itself got somewhere just south of 10k users, which doesn't sound like a lot - but remember, those people chose Tildes over the rest of the list because they value the quality and civility. We nearly doubled the userbase here in a few short weeks, and I'm sure we more than doubled the number of 'active' users who visit the place multiple times in a day.
It wasn't like the Digg migration to Reddit where most of the users went from one site to the same other site. This time the migration went to dozens of places, some old, some new. I'm sure it also galvanized the creation of yet more alternatives that haven't opened their doors yet. I guess you could say that reddit has 'gone to seed' at this point.
Edit: It's funny, it looks like Squabbles imploded recently due to bad management. Easy come, easy go.
I certainly felt that the overall tone and quality of posts on Reddit had dropped after the initial round of protests. Regardless of whether someone was pro- or anti- the API changes, the conflict...
I certainly felt that the overall tone and quality of posts on Reddit had dropped after the initial round of protests. Regardless of whether someone was pro- or anti- the API changes, the conflict seemed to drive levels of animosity higher across the board, to the point where it just isn't the kind of community I want to spend a lot of time around.
That being said, there's really no replacement for it at this point. Lemmy & kbin are a bit of a shitshow right now since they don't have the critical mass for most interesting niche subs, and any "All/Hot/Top" sorting will show the same story repeated multiple times in not just multiple subs, but multiple subs across multiple instances, which sure, is how federated content works, but doesn't make for a great user experience. Tonewise, it seems to be trending a bit downward as well, with people jockeying for internet points by posting short impactful hot takes, followed by other users inevitably clapping back. Add in a couple of troll instances essentially dedicated to disrupting good faith discussion, and it's clear that the Fediverse is not going to be without its challenges.
As of right now, I've found the healthiest online community (aside from Tildes) to be Threads. I'm not sure why that is, or if its going to change in the future (I suspect it is), but at least for this point in time they seem to be doing something right.
To be fair, while it is very nice that sometimes moderators were also domain experts, this does make sense. Reddit is ultimately using free labor and their customers are ultimate ad providers, not...
A moderator on Reddit is probably rarely an expert on the topic they're moderating over. Instead, they're a passionate member of the community that sees the value in sharing information between community members, and we'll all work together to make sure someone doesn't touch a live wire.
To be fair, while it is very nice that sometimes moderators were also domain experts, this does make sense. Reddit is ultimately using free labor and their customers are ultimate ad providers, not users nor mods. If ad providers don't care about the content of a sub past "is it related to the audience we are selling to?" then I'm not surprised Reddit itself doesn't care. And to some extent it extends to the users too: if they don't care about proper fact checking and expertise over free access and convenience, why would anyone else care? The time spent trying to make reddit care could simply go back to reinforcing the adage to never trust anything wholesale on the Internet.
In response to concerns that the new r/homeautomation mod team could overlook posts with dangerous misinformation, the anonymous Redditor pointed me to the subreddit's sidebar, which has a disclaimer about the dangers of electricity. However, the disclaimer is only visible on old Reddit. The mod doesn't know why.
Yup, sounds like a very long standing Reddit issue that the admins never gained much headway on. It's one of the many small reasons why people are worried that the eventual answer will be to simply kill off old reddit. They don't care about cross compatibility, which is usually a sign of the old ways being a branch to chop off down the line.
This is unfortunate, but has been around much longer than the API schism. And will probably be a schism in and of itself when/if that ever occurs.
Losing BaconReader hurt, but my addiction had primarily been on desktop for a few years by this point. It's downright unusable (outside of mod mail) on new Reddit. I may not even be able to find...
Losing BaconReader hurt, but my addiction had primarily been on desktop for a few years by this point. It's downright unusable (outside of mod mail) on new Reddit. I may not even be able to find the account deletion button.
There's something on my mind that I've wanted to air for some time now. It's been difficult to find the right place or words, so this is going to be a tangent. I used to frequent r/casualiama, a...
There's something on my mind that I've wanted to air for some time now. It's been difficult to find the right place or words, so this is going to be a tangent.
I used to frequent r/casualiama, a AMA sub that doesn't require identity verification. Folks from all walks of life would offer to be asked anything, sometimes just as a joke or just to chat.
Around the time the API changes were announced, there were these 2 AMAs by new accounts. One was by a young man claiming to be suicidal. He seemed very set in mind about it, and also very calm. Another was by a lady claiming to be a sex slave in Siberia.
(There's the obvious flag of how someone in her position would have internet access and the ability to post as much as she did. According to her, it was one of her clients writing on her behalf. Her bars were primarily social rather than physical; while she had some freedom of movement and action where she was, she had no identity documents and couldn't travel.)
Both AMAs were removed by Reddit admins. Their posts don't show up in archival services like Unddit.
Reddit is a site that has grown to be the de-facto forum on the English -speaking Internet, primarily due to social engagement (leading to more and more engagement), not just from moderators, but also (in fact I would say mainly) from everyone participating.
Suicidality and sex work (though this may not have been a case of sex 'work') have been discussed in r/casualiama and other subreddits before. There's a reasonable expectation of social engagement, but instead they received a corporate banhammer. Neither was stirring up trouble, in fact the young man seemed to be trying to get fewer upvotes for his AMA.
I'm sure there's probably some site rule that can be pointed to that they broke, but there are empathetic ways of handling, even accommodating rule violations (many moderators do this all the time).
I have no idea whether that young man killed himself, and whether that lady was and still is trapped. Reddit chose to silence people who may have needed to be heard the most. Did Reddit know something about the two of them that we didn't, or was it simply because both AMAs were inconvenient for the site?
The API changes and disrespect to mods and app developers were icing on top of a burnt cake.
I don't think there's any way for a small group of people to have control over a platform as large as Reddit while still keeping the community's interests primary. The community's values would be very diverse and the incentives for the admins to be selfish too great. I believe what's needed are more, and more diverse communities rather than a few convenient supercommunities (if you can even call them communities any more) that draw attention away from smaller communities.
I've heard a few stories from the people who used to mod /r/suicidewatch that would chill you to the bone - I won't repeat them as they aren't my stories to tell, but even my jaded jimmies were...
I've heard a few stories from the people who used to mod /r/suicidewatch that would chill you to the bone - I won't repeat them as they aren't my stories to tell, but even my jaded jimmies were rustled. Corporate essentially told the mods to fuck off (during active crisis situations) and gave them zero help. Their line was 'it's not our problem.'
I can appreciate there's a certain legal risk in that sort of content that no for-profit company will ever expose itself to after a five minute conversation with their legal team. It's just another bullet point that proves we will not get the sort of community-enhancing software and services we need from any for-profit entity.
On Tildes that sort of thing clusters around the support tag. If this place gets larger, those issues will start to appear here too. It's not hard to do a better job than other websites when their decision is to essentially do nothing or to actively attack that sort of content. Tildes might be the only social media site out there that will actively encourage people to use it less and look after their mental health.
I left reddit on 6/30. A month later I decided to take a look and somehow everything about the front page and my page was different. Nothing was clickable anymore. A bit depressing but things to...
I left reddit on 6/30. A month later I decided to take a look and somehow everything about the front page and my page was different. Nothing was clickable anymore. A bit depressing but things to draw to a close.
I'm inclined to agree. I've got an extensive list of blocked subreddits I've relied on to keep the main feeds remotely useful, but even with those, the content coming up is questionable at best....
I'm inclined to agree. I've got an extensive list of blocked subreddits I've relied on to keep the main feeds remotely useful, but even with those, the content coming up is questionable at best.
You want a real eye-opening experience, visit stock reddit.com in an incognito desktop browser and check out a real horrorshow. It is unrecognizable in format, tone, and content compared to the site I used to spend way too much time on.
I am pretty shocked actually. When I left Reddit, I felt so certain I would end up back there that I set a rule that I wouldn't use it before September. It is now September and I installed Atom...
I am pretty shocked actually. When I left Reddit, I felt so certain I would end up back there that I set a rule that I wouldn't use it before September. It is now September and I installed Atom for Reddit, expecting to be pulled back in. But the content is so abysmal and repetitive i left the app almost immediately to come here. What a turn for the worst...
I don't know if the quality on reddit overall has dropped or not. because my reddit usage has dropped by at least 90% since I left in early June. I still use it for some specific stuff -- like my...
I don't know if the quality on reddit overall has dropped or not. because my reddit usage has dropped by at least 90% since I left in early June. I still use it for some specific stuff -- like my local subreddit -- because Tildes or Lemmy just doesn't have those things. I guess I have seen some posts, like the F1 race weekend posts, where there isn't nearly as much info in the OP.
That said, I do agree with this:
A moderator on Reddit is probably rarely an expert on the topic they're moderating over. Instead, they're a passionate member of the community that sees the value in sharing information between community members, and we'll all work together to make sure someone doesn't touch a live wire.
I was (I guess still am) a moderator of a political subreddit. I'm now a mod of a politics community on a Lemmy instance. I am not a politician, an official, an aide, a poli sci major, a policy wonk, a journalist...just an interested and concerned citizen. When I first started modding on reddit like nearly 10yrs ago (jesus...), I had no experience moderating. I think my then fellow mod, the founder, was the same or had very limited experience. But we figured it out. And I'm still no expert on politics. There's still tons of stuff I don't know, even in my US state.
Granted, politics isn't potentially life or death like canning or electrical work. But I still don't think you have to be an expert on either to be an effective mod. If I was "hiring" new mods, I'd rather have someone who has experience in any kind of moderating or community management who may not be a topic expert (though at least very interested in the topic) versus a topic expert who doesn't know anything about moderating. Obviously having both is nice, but I don't think it's a necessity.
On something like r/canning, I would hope that they would recruit at least one 'safety mod' whose role would be to find and remove blatantly unsafe posts. But hope is not a plan.
On something like r/canning, I would hope that they would recruit at least one 'safety mod' whose role would be to find and remove blatantly unsafe posts. But hope is not a plan.
Off-topic, but I never considered canning to be a thing that could potentially be dangerous. Good thing to know for something I was planning to do in the future.
Off-topic, but I never considered canning to be a thing that could potentially be dangerous. Good thing to know for something I was planning to do in the future.
Anything food preserving related can be pretty gnarly, you're giving bacteria and other food borne illnesses a lot of time and moisture to grow and multiply by the time you consume it.
Anything food preserving related can be pretty gnarly, you're giving bacteria and other food borne illnesses a lot of time and moisture to grow and multiply by the time you consume it.
My very amateur knowledge suggests that jams and jellies are a lot more straightforward and safer than other things you might want to can. But I always verify what I want to do with a reputable...
My very amateur knowledge suggests that jams and jellies are a lot more straightforward and safer than other things you might want to can. But I always verify what I want to do with a reputable source before I try it. Botulism is no joke.
I agree. A subject matter expert is a nice-to-have. The forum can get by with basic enforcement of a code of etiquette, and if anything the existence of a solid team doing that is what brings a...
I agree. A subject matter expert is a nice-to-have. The forum can get by with basic enforcement of a code of etiquette, and if anything the existence of a solid team doing that is what brings a subject matter expert to the table. It does matter exactly what the subreddit is about, the degree to which this is true, but on the whole I think the proportion skews heavily toward supporting that kind of "basic" team. It seems like a pretty wild assumption folks are making, to think there are many subject matter experts who want to moderate a subreddit, an activity which demands time, pays nothing, and is almost totally thankless. Some are living that all out already, there's no reason to introduce more lol. But if you were able to show them a community with a legitimate interest, capable of self-governing, that I would imagine is likely a very different story.
And that's exactly how my subreddit worked. We brought in officeholders and people running for office for AMAs. We had some resident political aides and opposition researchers who were familiar...
And that's exactly how my subreddit worked. We brought in officeholders and people running for office for AMAs. We had some resident political aides and opposition researchers who were familiar with campaigning and the political process. Sometimes even giving us a little lowdown dirty scoop! We had a resident lawyer who was well versed in our state's constitutional law. Journalists from well-known state publications who followed state politics would drop in and chit chat. These were our experts. Not me, nor my fellow mods. We were just the referees. Janitors, even.
It was very much, "If you build it, they will come."
I actually shared the Rebel Canning article recently in the ~food community due to the wildness of it and viewing it from a food safety lense. Concerns about Reddit moderation of the Canning...
I actually shared the Rebel Canning article recently in the ~food community due to the wildness of it and viewing it from a food safety lense. Concerns about Reddit moderation of the Canning Subreddit came up and it's fascinating to see it written here as an example where bad modding can hurt and kill people potentially!
I used to explore the Fermentation and Canning subreddits frequently, and even prior to the exodus there would be some concerning posts, especially on the Fermentation sub. It sounds like the Canning subreddit used to be better modded, but now it's just the wild west in food safety. I get these communities are ran on free labor and Reddit is very much taking advantage of passionate hobbiest to advocate for safety. For these type of communities, I feel like it is critical that the Admin team would be more invested in user safety. But this is Reddit, and of course profits come first.
I think this article is out of touch, for a lot of Reddit users the displacement of mods is the silver lining to this whole affair. Let’s set the record straight: most Redditors hate the mods....
I think this article is out of touch, for a lot of Reddit users the displacement of mods is the silver lining to this whole affair. Let’s set the record straight: most Redditors hate the mods. They frequently abuse their power, treating their sub like a fiefdom instead of acting as volunteers for a community. A lot of subs were stifled by overly active mods. Many used their position to harass users, and tolerate hate if it was directed at people they personally don’t like. Not to mention the large number of communities built to actively spread lies where mods would ban anyone who didn’t agree. If you fired all the mods and picked random people, you’d fix a lot of things.
I was supportive of the protests, let’s not forget the real goal: when the user base is the value of a service, then it should be able to dictate the terms. Redditors like using third party apps, and they should be the ones to decide if those apps persist, not the site runners who are just skimming value off the top. But a lot has been said about mods during the protest, and I’ve read a lot of push back to that.
At any rate, isn’t it hypocritical for us on tildes to criticize a lack of knowledgeable mods on Reddit? What about here? Tildes runs on a very different moderation strategy, it’s actually even less expert driven. If someday there’s a ~life.canning, no expert will be curating it.
Sorry to rain on the "mods leaving is good for the users" parade but the vast majority of the power tripping moderators who redditors complain about aren't the ones who left. Those people are...
Sorry to rain on the "mods leaving is good for the users" parade but the vast majority of the power tripping moderators who redditors complain about aren't the ones who left. Those people are still on reddit and actively abusing their power. We lost a lot of the good mods in the purge. I still frequent many of the large mod communities and the same old faces are still there running their subs like maniacs
and for a lot, it was the final straw as their last gatekeepers fell by the wayside in a site increasingly dominated by spam, bots, self-promotion not vaguely related to the community, and other...
for a lot of Reddit users the displacement of mods is the silver lining to this whole affair.
and for a lot, it was the final straw as their last gatekeepers fell by the wayside in a site increasingly dominated by spam, bots, self-promotion not vaguely related to the community, and other low quality noise.
It's a huge site so there's large groups for both. Keep in mind many of those high profile mod abuses came from the largest subs, while the subs featured in this article we as small as 100k subs and as large as 2M (which is indeed large, but still a magnitude smaller than the largest front page subs).
I was supportive of the protests, let’s not forget the real goal
I think this is precisely why protests were doomed to fail: Reddit had no "real goal".
Moderators wanted better tooling and didn't want 3rd party apps with better tooling to go away. Admins turned a blind eye, except to the accessibility focused communities where they threw a bone. A bone that, based on some scrolling after the dust settled, was not one those mods trusted.
API users wanted some sort of compromise, be it better rates, the ability to leverage some of the costs on the users, even a delay so they can implement the changes they needed. Admins went so far to outright call them leeches, so that bridge was burned (and on a personal note: while I never utilized Reddit's API, as a developer this is where I went from "welp, just another drama" to "nope, I am out for good this time").
And then users wanted any cacophony of goals: some wanted to let reddit burn unconditionally, some wanted to prop up a new alternative, Some wanted the site to simply listen and promise a direction where they listen, and some simply didn't care or outright disdained the protests and just wanted things to go back to normal. And everything in-between. It's the usual in-fighting that shows a lack of direction.
In particular, admin leveraged the inconvenienced users to sweep away the remaining mods rebelling, and that was that. The cards were never in the community's favor, but the in-fighting made it quite easy to dissolve. I guess if nothing else, all those antiwork/workreform communities see firsthand why many strikes lose steam.
I occasionally check it out, and made all of one post since the protests happened. On the whole, at least observing what I was subbed to, a lot of the really niche stuff has remained more or less...
I occasionally check it out, and made all of one post since the protests happened. On the whole, at least observing what I was subbed to, a lot of the really niche stuff has remained more or less as it was. A few had mod shakeups that mean the future is very uncertain for some of them. The quality of discussions in those specific places tends to be pretty high and folks engage with each other in a pretty ok way. The communities that end up like this tend to be so niche that there just isn't much room for anything else. A lot of the better places either had mods that stuck around, or it just happened to be that the sub didn't actually need a large mod presence to begin with. Some of them took the whole situation as a heads up to improve their moderation a bit.
When I venture out into the more popular subreddits though, I do feel I am observing a difference. It's the same old shit but just way more of it, and comments got more unhinged and terrible likely because folks with a better attitude stopped posting. r/all is practically nothing but noise. And I notice folks getting away with more - just in general, being more abrasive and directly insulting, stuff that while not new usually would merit some kind of mod response. The basic maintenance is gone, so the part of reddit that was just a pit of drivel is dominating, has been my conclusion thus far.
I've been glad to be gone from it. I really hadn't understood just how much of my time and attention was going to it and the truth of that was simply unacceptable. While I tended to get positive signals I rarely if ever had actual discussions. I used to post to some hobby-oriented subs, and realized in all the time I'd done that, despite all the upvotes and praise, not once had I actually discussed an aspect of the hobby in depth with anyone in the subreddit. Almost always, that conversation would begin and end with the first reply. I guess a switch of some sort flipped and I came to see it as a really hollow experience, so I stopped. I was going through motions really; I wanted to re-experience what I used to have in more specialized forums and got lost settling for less. I feel like I spend more time actually learning stuff and seeing neat things now that I don't use Reddit.
It's really noticeable. I'm still on Reddit because Relay Pro still works, but when I scroll through my (very heavily curated) feed, there's barely anything of interest anymore. Cute cat videos, a...
It's really noticeable. I'm still on Reddit because Relay Pro still works, but when I scroll through my (very heavily curated) feed, there's barely anything of interest anymore. Cute cat videos, a ton of reposts and bot content, small bits of discussion here and there. A lot of previously beloved subreddits are now close to dead. It's really sad, but not unexpected.
My Reddit usage has reached the same level as my Facebook usage, except I signed out of Reddit during the blackout and never signed back in (and therefore haven't posted since). A couple times per...
My Reddit usage has reached the same level as my Facebook usage, except I signed out of Reddit during the blackout and never signed back in (and therefore haven't posted since). A couple times per month, from my desktop, I'll visit the front page. I spend about 15 seconds scrolling through, and am instantly reminded why I don't spend any time there anymore and then I leave.
I propose a new app: RAF (reddit ain’t fun [anymore]). To tfa, that quote from reddit’s director of communications was abysmal. Clearly not a redditor. Not shocking she worked at Tesla for three...
I propose a new app: RAF (reddit ain’t fun [anymore]).
To tfa, that quote from reddit’s director of communications was abysmal. Clearly not a redditor. Not shocking she worked at Tesla for three years.
Just a nitpick on the carlin quote: he’s confusing mean and median. Also, it’s kinda elitest.
I’ve been off reddit for months. Still use it as a resource for some queries, but the information is getting stale. I don’t know where to turn. I suppose the answers are on chat services like discord and telegram, but the ui/ux on discord is atrocious for me, and i can’t seem to figuure out how ti find communities on telegram.
Since there are still husks of the dominant primordial internet giants that are still around like AOL, MySpace, Compuserve, Lycos, etc I'm sure we'll still have something called "Reddit" for...
Since there are still husks of the dominant primordial internet giants that are still around like AOL, MySpace, Compuserve, Lycos, etc I'm sure we'll still have something called "Reddit" for decades. Will it be "your" Reddit? Absoulately not, but a Reddit will exist for some time.
Having an aggressively curated sub list seems to hide the worst of it for me as well. I don't really venture out of my organized multireddits these days. However, I have noticed a definite...
Having an aggressively curated sub list seems to hide the worst of it for me as well. I don't really venture out of my organized multireddits these days. However, I have noticed a definite increase in weird (bot-generated?) comments that don't seem to align with the content they are posted under, even in the more specialized subs. I have no idea if it's related or just part of the bot struggles that were already happening
Posts on a forum shouldn't be labelled "content" to begin with, as it isn't content. It's verbal rambling put into writing. It only differs from listening on to random conversations on the streets...
Posts on a forum shouldn't be labelled "content" to begin with, as it isn't content. It's verbal rambling put into writing. It only differs from listening on to random conversations on the streets in that it is somewhat moderated. Sometimes.
Content is more akin to lectures in my opinion. Thought out content, even if we might not agree with it, is different from spur of the moment utterances. Some people are very good at making their utterances coherently and intelligently, but it's still not "content".
That is my opinion. They failed as soon as they decided to call a forum a "content" site.
I think all of these articles about reddit's fall are wishful thinking. Reddit is big, most users are dumb, and the site will do fine and get back to growing and making investors happy soon. Sure, it's noticeably worse than before (although IMO it was already bad before). But, to quote the great George Carlin:
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of them are dumber than that."
I'd rather Tildes members stop submitting these articles as a way to collectively hope for Reddit to get what it's due. I started counting down Facebook's fall over a decade ago. And today they're worth almost a trillion dollars. Reddit is not going to die just because it's changed for the worse.
I don't see this as a "hopeful article about the fall of reddit", I see this as the logical conclusion to many moderators closing up shop and heading out. The site is still there and still fine, but its no longer the online home of a lot of great and hard working people.
And your Facebook example is interesting, because sure they're still a huge massively successful company... but do you honestly know many people under the age of 40 who have good things to say about Facebook? Or even continues to actively use it? Facebook has a huge negative stigma to tons of people, I'd consider that a "fall from grace" regardless of how profitable they appear to be.
I think you have your personal reason for submitting this link to Tildes, which might be different from what I'm worried about. It definitely can be read simply as "Reddit did X, power users did Y. As expected - Z was the result". But the topic has quite a lot of votes. Combined with the high proportion of new users from the Reddit exodus I am sure a prevailing emotion is retribution. I'm suggesting we let Reddit go.
This is my attitude. I've moved on. I'm tired of these topics coming up.
As a counter-point I don't mind at least skimming articles that talk about "enshitification" of services. I am also fascinated by how hostile the organization became towards the users. I can't remember anything like it except for a few BBS sysop "my way or the highway" type meltdowns.
I left reddit over the API changes and I didn't even use any 3rd party apps. It kind of feels like this is the beginning of a siesmic shift like MySpace and to a lesser extent places like Digg, slashdot, etc. I think that's noteworthy in and by itself from an Internet history perspective. The fact that so many digital lives are connected to Reddit is also noteworthy to people. How noteworthy is up to each reader, certainly. If there is a thread that I am not interested in I simply don't click on it.
Maybe on some level perhaps I am looking for validation. Had I become the old man tilting at windmills? I don't think that's too outrageous for people who have spent a good portion of possibly the last decade or more lurking, posting and, in general, helping make Reddit what it was. So far I haven't seen any gloat-fests here about the decline of Reddit or anyone "going ham" on their posts attacking Reddit. I've seen pretty measured responses for the most part with some people seeking validation or processing losing that part of their lives.
Since you're a new user, I'll give you a tip: There are topic tag filters.
Add
redditto yours and you will no longer be tired of them coming up because you won't see them. Something @teaearlgraycold should be doing as well.Just as I have a filter for twitter because I've never used the site, will never use the site, and don't care about the weekly "10 new things Ol' Muskrat said this week, you won't believe number 7!" article.
It's not so much that I don't ever want to see reddit posts here. It's more so that I made an attempt at reading and influencing others' behavior.
So, less "ew reddit" and more "you're better off not caring about reddit".
That is a heavy handed assessment.
It is only natural to follow the news about the 5th most popular website in the United States.
Not only that, but a website that a notable portion (if not the majority) of this site's userbase has personal history with. Add to that the massive wave of people who only learned of Tildes as a result of the API debacle, some rubbernecking at the state of the mother-site and predicting its downfall is pretty expected.
Tildes and Reddit are intrinsically linked in so many ways.
Deimos is the author of the most important bot in the entire site.
There's a reason why typing /r/gaming automatically links to the subreddit.
If you don't want to see these articles, it makes more sense to filter out a relavant tag like "reddit". While there may be a portion of uses who are posting articles like this to "collectively hope for Reddit to get what it's due", I think this is probably not the majority. There are plenty of people who are just mildly interested in the fallout of this summer's protests and what current media coverage of reddit is saying about it. It seems too harsh to insist people just not post articles about this topic.
Facebook has lost a lot of value. Meta hasn't, because Zuck is smart and Meta is much larger than Facebook, so the losses of one platform are the gains of another.
Many companies have chosen to stop spending money on FB ads, because the hit rate is so low, because it's essentially dead. The active demographic is mostly boomers (don't trust stats saying otherwise -- they account for users, not active users). "Login with Facebook", where it used to be extremely common, has fallen out of favor and is no longer being implemented by default (Google+Apple are the default two). A lot of the ad inventory is just ads duplicated from Instagram. Facebook fudges the number by counting instagram users cross-posting automatically to FB as active users. FB marketplace is a scam-filled hellhole outside the US and is shrinking in the US. FB groups & events are one of the only things still working.
Just highlighted the same Carlin quote two days ago.
And yes, I've found it easier to move on and adapt to Tildes. I think a lot of us want some sort of justice against Reddit....but to what end and what does that actually accomplish? Someone else "losing" or "winning" doesn't often define what I consider to be wins and losses in my own life.
I'm sorry these two statements are quite clearly incorrect. As many users here have pointed out there's still tons of hq posters hanging around niche subs. I also don't see why professional content creators (people who earn a living doing OC online) would get up a leave the platform, effectively shrinking their reach.
I feel like content creators can help a lot in the fight to encourage users to use another platform. They can post their content on both platforms and link to the other platform, which raises awareness of the platform. Exposure is key.
I agree with you on the condition the content creator is ideologically aligned with the movement and has the energy to protest. Quite frankly, I think its plausible two conditions eliminate a good chunk of the pool.
They can, but what is their incentive? Professional's goals are to extend their reach and have different ways to sell themselves. Amateurs simply want to post to a large audience. A new forum (or old, unknown one) doesn't accomplish these goals.
Many users (myself included. Heck, even Deimos himself) did come from Reddit. So there will be an inevitable bias towards content talking about reddit, good or bad. Personally, I agree with you and becasue of that I don't really see postings here affecting Reddit's bottom line either way. So I'm not too concerned that we're "keeping reddit alive" either (we both agree it's not dying to begin with, from a businesss perspective).
On the other hand:
I also have my own definitions of success/failure, and I am not a businessman nor investor. just because more people are on FB doesn't mean I in my own experience see it as "alive". Almost none of my community use FB anymore as a place to connect and communicate. At best it is a for sale board a la Craigslist.
It's no longer "alive" in the sense of how we used it. And maybe that's fine by FB, but it is still an interesting lens to dissect from. Reddit can be the same for others.
Mental note taken. But for now I still do somewhat care about seeing how Reddit goes, both from a financial and more intimate lens.
I think I really agree. No matter what happens to reddit, tildes will still be here.
With all due respect, and in defense of the colloquial use of that Carlin quote, there are two things here and I think you're misunderstanding and confusing the two.
1)
That is how averages work, or more specifically, the point of centrality, which can be defined as many things. For IQ, a normal distribution is assumed, because that is the model upon which it is based on. (I bring up the point about normality because you mention sigma.) And although averages can be skewed, as in log-normal distributions or in the case of extreme asymmetric outliers you mention, people generally tend to mean the "representative point of centrality", which would be a trimmed mean or the median. If one wants to be pedantic.
So, assuming a normal distribution, which is the model of IQ, the mean/median is indeed the halfway point of the data.
Not true. No individual has a complete set of average traits, but plenty of people are average in a single trait. To use your analogy: among soldiers, there are individuals of average height OR of average weight OR of average waist circumference etc. But it is highly unlikely that a single individual that is of average height AND of average weight AND of average waist circumference etc.
Even more so, that is literally how IQ is defined. Plain intelligence is not a metric space; someone being twice as smart as someone else doesn't make sense. That's why we defined a normally-distributed ordinal space for IQ. IQ tests are curved s.t. we get N(100, 15)-distributed results. If we're talking about intelligence via the proxy of IQ, the mean and the median are by definition identical. If we're talking about plain intelligence without the proxy of IQ, I'd argue "dumber than" doesn't even make sense most of the time. (that is, intelligence is so multi-faceted that a total ordering isn't given, only a partial ordering.)
Which is to say, if we're talking about IQ in general, all of these abstractions and operations we do make no sense, but on IQ at least some do. Doesn't mean those always translate nicely into the real world. Talking about which, I do wonder whether there's good justification for IQ's normal distribution. Of course it's always a good prior assumption to assume everything is normally distributed, but have we come up with a non-curved measurement of intelligence that also results in a normal distribution, beyond just the expected normally-distributed noise and error of testing? Of course, for any of that to make sense, we have to agree on a projection from multi-faceted intelligence into a real-valued space.
Several years ago I came across a '90s style personal website belonging to some professor (a physicist, if I recall correctly) who made an argument that a fat-tailed distribution would better model for intelligence than a normal distribution. Unfortunately at the time I did not have the appropriate math background to understand his argument, but I would love if I could find the website again now that I do.
I find the whole notion and practice of creating quantitative models of intelligence to be extremely interesting, but unfortunately 99% of conversations on the internet about IQ are full of drivel. Aside from the fact that IQ seems to be a sensitive topic, very few people consider it from a statistician's perspective. People get into big arguments over whether or not IQ is "bullshit," but for me that's besides the point. After all, as they say, "all models are wrong; some models are useful." Is IQ useful? In some contexts, maybe. Can the current concept of IQ be improved? Probably. But when is it useful and how can it be improved? Those are questions worth asking.
As a very statistical-modeling minded person, my best guess at improving the concept of IQ, or rather developing a better one, is to explore those other axes. Basically, knowing that intelligence can't be reasonably compared as-is (because it's multi-axis - what do you do if I'm better with problem X, but worse with problem Y than you?) is to explore what these other axes are. Probably is on psychologists and neurologists to figure out tests for other axes of intelligence. That could be as simple as devising a test that does test "something about intelligence" but gives a different ordering. Now we have a horrible vector space where nothing has useful names (all axes are just labeled "intelligence") and everything is ugly. So? Find a projection to a nice vector space where you can name the axes. Leave the maths of the projection to the statisticians, the interesting part is the names of the other axes. I suspect what we'll find is that the scientific community has simply taken a weighted average of many much more concrete skills and concepts. All the "bullshit" lies in those weights being arbitrary. Once we name the axes, we can be transparent about that and say "IQ is 20% pattern recognition, 30% geometry, 20% logic and 30% language" for example. And in each of these 4 subcategories (which, to be clear, are simply examples), we have a much better chance of designing a test that measures what it intends to measure, and also find ways around the curving/normalization issues I described previously. There is, to make it overly simplistic, no need to normalize the size of someone's active vocabulary in order to compare. We can just look at the distribution and see if it's gaussian, or if it turns gaussian after we log-scale it.
But don't modern IQ tests already explore multiple axes? Of course there may be axes that have yet to be explored, but my understanding is that modern IQ tests are already designed much the way you suggest we improve it.
For some background, see CHC Theory.
To be clear, they explore these different axes, kinda like this:
My point here is a more deliberate split, away from obscure and hard-to-defend weights, and towards transparently testing these multiple facets. If I disagree with IQ test designers and use different weights, I get a different ranking; and realistically (since they curve it anyway) a ranking is all that IQ provides. That is, as far as I can see, what CHC is doing, plus they also provide a tree structure of how these capabilities interface, which is nice[1]. It's the first I'm hearing of this, which indicates to me that this stuff sadly makes it into the public sphere fairly slowly. On that note, thanks for the link.
Anyway, what I'd like to see is public discourse shift away from IQ - not because it's completely obsolete, but because for most situations, the different underlying axes (or a subset of them) are more interesting and important. I'm also curious about the way they structure the graph. I.e. how do we build it from evidence - when do we split a node into a subgroup of nodes, how do we compute higher-layer scores for an individual, when we can (I presume) only actually test the lowest layer? And how do we insulate higher-order scores from influences in how we structure the graph? Do we need arbitrary weights again? If not, is the ranking in the top node depending on which subnodes we have already defined? Those kinda questions. I reckon though that finding an answer here will get me deeper into the woods than I am willing to go.
[1] though my statistical modeling mind immediately asks whether they have good justification for making the graph of influences tree-shaped, and while I deeply understand the appeal of three layers of abstraction, that too sits slightly undefended in my mind. Though in the end, that latter point is moreso a point of structuring the graph for human eyes than a fundamental property of the model, in which case three layers make sense.
It's interesting to see that there have been tangible changes to reddit since the exodus. I know the number of people who actually stopped engaging with reddit has been relatively small compared to their total user base, but since a large percentage of those users were longtime moderators and content posters; it seems like reddit has taken a turn for the even worse in terms of content.
I myself noticed it but I thought it was just my anti-reddit biases, so it's interesting to see that so many other people have picked up on it too.
I'm among those who left entirely, and that was (and still is) painful. Reddit was the site I spent most of my online time on and I relied on it for hivemind-knowledgebase use on niche and semi-niche topics.
During the whole protest, I was hoping for a better resolution, hoping I could go back to normal... and sadly that was not the outcome.
I miss the excellent subject-matter concentration that was available to me, but I cannot, in my personal ethical view, continue to use Reddit any longer given their actions.
My hope is that the short and medium term pain of this will yield long-term improved options for communities like what Reddit was. Perhaps Tildes will be one of the sites to grow into that more fully as time goes on - it's why I'm here - both in hopes of that and to contribute towards that goal.
Yeah, like you I have abandoned Reddit completely. I’m really pleased with the level of discussion here on Tildes, but I do miss the in-depth discussion of incredibly niche topics that you could find on Reddit.
That said I don't miss how honest contributions were usually buried with cheap one liners or references. Tildes is refreshing at the moment because it's the norm rather than the product of exhaustive moderation like in the AskHistorians sub.
The cheap one-liners/in jokes were/are tiresome on Reddit. I've left the site, but I don't deprive myself of it when a search for technical help turns up a discussion there, or when I'm looking for reviews/feedback/criticism of consumer products/services. There's a huge inertia to Reddit as it has hosted so many valuable discussions over the years, and I'm not sure that those discussions have gone somewhere that is anywhere near as searchable/archiveable. I know a lot of the techy crowd have moved to Lemmy instances, but Lemmy servers can (and very often do, either owing to technical/financial reasons or outright cyberattack) disappear. And don't get me started on the names - I can preface a search with "site:reddit.com" and generally (but not always, and increasingly less, in fact) elevate my search results. I can't do that with Lemmy (and I must admit, I haven't even tried "site:tildes.net", I should do that from now on).
All this to say that I miss the depth and breadth of content there and am not optimistic for its replication any time soon. I do enjoy reading the discussions here on Tildes though. Even when a topic has just one or two comments, I can generally count on them being fairly well thought out and worth reading, real added value.
My issue is that I'm not sure I'm looking for a "techy" crowd. I'm not particularly interested in tech myself outside of ai/machine learning (as it relates to my background as a statistician).
I find that tildes is much more diverse than I would typically expect from such a niche website. I haven't been to Lemmy but do you find the same level of diversity (in interests) that you find here?
The short answer is no, I don't. Tildes has slower content generation but the quality is leaps and bounds ahead of Lemmy. Lemmy seems great for privacy/self-hosting/piracy etc. and great for memes. There's a dab of motorsports, but even if a community technically exists for a niche hobby, for example, there's a strong likelihood it's dead (either never got off the ground or got killed by godawful robocopying from its Reddit counterpart).
I feel that's the advantage of instances. If one server goes down for whatever reason, there are various other instances to go to, many of which will have a similar feel. That way we mitigate a chance that "Lemmy dies" in the way people call Reddit dead. If an instance goes rouge you have a backup plan that won't take years to build (hopefully), if it disappears it won't take all the knowledge of the fediverse with it.
yeah, each instance is a website, so you can't really search for it in the same way you scrub a website. That is one inconvenience, but not an insurmountable one. Internal searching is the one place the fediverse can improve the most, but I wonder if there can be some way to make some massive query to Google in the meantime?
I haven't left reddit entirely, I still use it to find answers to questions and keep up to date on the local subreddit, but I no longer comment or post, and no longer moderate the many communities I used to. I wasn't going to gimp myself on a moral stand, but I now enjoy Tildes as my main forum experience
Similar for me. I find not being logged in really cuts down on my desire to scroll as I mainly engage via commenting. I still do have an account, and I have logged in to make a few comments, but I've also gone and deleted them after a couple of days (as well as all of my other comments I made over the years). If I use Reddit, I'll do so as a leech. If they cut that access off, then like Twitter, I'll just stop altogether.
I felt like I was shooting myself in the foot if I didn't use Google results that brought me to Reddit. So I've limited myself to that, and only when using old reddit, uBlock enabled and with reddit enhancement suite installed. Since the whole debacle I haven't done any browsing, commenting, or otherwise perusing Reddit. It's just tainted.
I share the sentiment, it's just not worth it anymore.
That's similar to my own compromise. If results return Reddit, that's fine. I'll treat it like quora or GameFAQs. A source of information, but not a community I'm part of.
I agree with your sentiment, and I want to just say thank you for "sacrificing" for things you actually believe in. I know way too many people who complain about inequalities or wrong business practices, but still throw all their money at it because of convenience.
I do miss reddit. It still comes up in searches (I use DDG and often don't have to bother with the "reddit" tag), and I still check if the information I am looking for is there. But because I use containers on my browser, it doesn't log me in... it's just another website that might have the answer or info I'm looking for.
I haven't left reddit entirely (and I'll still frequently add "reddit" to certain search queries), but the fact of the matter is that I did most of my reddit browsing when sitting around bored on my phone, and the app I used doesn't work anymore. I'm not gonna download the shitty official app, so I just use Tildes or Tumblr to fill my boredom needs now.
Yeah the people protesting are a drop in the bucket of Reddit’s total users, but Reddit’s content only comes from a small subset of its users, most are just consumers of the content. Pissing off that vital minority of users was a dumb move, and the total effects of it won’t be realized right away.
I personally am now here on Tildes because of what Reddit did. I no longer browse Reddit on my phone, I will just check certain subs on my desktop for updates on a handful of topics I’m interested in. It’s crazy just how bad their mobile site is that I won’t even bother with it on my phone. I’m more aware of the pervasiveness of toxic posts and commentary on Reddit rather than actual polite discussion of something from different viewpoints. Or even when it’s not friendly debate about something, it’s the same regurgitated meme posts or phrases over and over again.
I still Google search Reddit when I’m looking for information on products and services, but the more Reddit becomes hostile to its content generating users, the less discourse it will have which can be archived/indexed and searched later.
I feel like Reddit is hostile to me viewing their content on my phone without an account in the same way that Twitter is/was (it's constantly changing, sometimes I can't see tweets, sometimes I can, but if you scroll they get blocked, etc. etc.). That hostility made me quite vehemently dislike Twitter links being posted, and the same will happen if Reddit continue down the path of "encouraging" login.
Agreed. Similar to how I have to remove Pinterest from my search results, since I won't be able to access it anyway.
The only thing I use reddit for these days is a very small handful of niche subreddits that I don't have good alternatives for. I used to scroll my front page and sometimes popular in downtime, but not any more.
The degradation in the quality of content is extremely noticeable. I still use Reddit for manga and product information but sometimes I'll take a peek at r/all and r/popular and I'll be honest, it can be a bit sad to look at. They've succeeded in becoming a generic social media site, with the same content being posted across millions of different subreddits instead of millions of different meme page accounts. Just going on r/popular you'll only really find people fishing for compliments, advertising their OnlyFans, and making up wild stories.
All that being said, I'm kind of glad the change was made, it really helped me look at my social media usage and tone it down. Any time I was bored, either at home or in public, I'd just go on Reddit or Instagram or Twitter. Now, I go out and actively find something to do instead of just doom scrolling. While Tildes hasn't been (and wasn't designed to be) a drop-in replacement, I'm genuinely enjoying the most relaxed feeling of this site compared to others. My social media use in general has gone down significantly, though I haven't been able to cut it out completely just yet, old habits die hard!
Tildes now gets 2+ hours a day that I used to spend on Reddit.
I'm still active on a weight-loss subreddit and two other niche communities that aren't elsewhere. I'm spending more time reading books.
Agreed. I still watch a handful of subreddits. The main page content and app are so vapid. Endless scrolling is a terrific medium for selling ads...but ultimately terrible at transmitting useful information per unit of time invested.
Exact same for me. There is one community on Reddit that’s closely tied to my profession, but the rest of my time I spend on tildes. For the pure entertainment side of the house, I bought a kobo ebook reader a few months ago and have been reading more books than ever before. This has been an incredibly positive experience for me!
I prefer a simpler metric. Take /r/listentothis when the original team was running it: 200 +/- 50 submissions over 24 hours for 13 years. This morning? Just 34 submissions in the last 24 hours. A five-fold drop in the amount of content is not a content quality problem, it's far more serious than that. Everyone is leaving the party, reddit is no longer the cool place to be. The alternatives made off with the lion's share of the people who submit during the purge. I expect that dropoff in total submissions is variable yet ubiquitous even in the most popular subs. Naturally, the bots and spammers never sleep, and they didn't reduce their output - the regular users did. That gives the garbage a larger share of the mindspace for the same amount of effort. This is fatal.
All of the search engines de-prioritized reddit's results when the blackout banished all of it and left them with pages of top unreachable results. They did not return reddit to the same priority after it was over - in fact I'd bet that the people stewarding those engines had not even realized how dependent they'd become on a single site until that moment.
That is the ultimate kick in the paycheck, a Pyrrhic victory.
There are still book lovers on the various book related subreddits. I would agree there has been reduced quantity of posts. I think a lot of thoughtful people could be happy with Tildes if they knew it was here, but each person has their red line for looking for change.
I go back to check on topics of interest and to spread the word about Tildes when appropriate. However, most of my forum time is here and all of my content creation is here.
Not so many of the communities I used to follow there are worth the visit now. There are still several smaller communities over there that I am rather fond of, however, I don't think it's a stretch to say that all of those communities deserve a better website, or that all of them are genuinely and visibly worse off than they were even six months ago. I like to say reddit holds those communities hostage, up until the point where they decide to move on - but it's really not reddit. It's their own inertia and laziness that keeps them in that cage. If they don't move on, the evaporative cooling effect will kill them over time. There is no scenario where remaining on reddit is a viable option for preserving a community.
I'd also make the argument that the people who have the integrity to nope out long before things get this bad are the best of the people on the platform (they have standards) and losing them is more damaging than any numbers games. All subreddits have already lost most if not all of their best people at this point, putting their glory days behind them. It's only downhill from here, not a single one of them will ever be better than they were in the past. Reddit doesn't have the draw it once had, the new user stream is drying up, while also getting younger and dumber. Great news for memes. Too bad those don't rank in the search like all the crunchy narrow community discussions and solutions do. Not such great news for the bottom line when you see it like that.
It's not impossible to turn that around, but that almost never happens, and how to do it is imo beyond the patience and comprehension of the investor class. This pattern has repeated so many times it's become a cliche. Tens of thousands of dead websites, all marching off the same cliff like lemmings for over a decade.
Who are the alternatives in this case? Discord? Tiktok?
Lemmy/kbin, Squabbles, and Discord certainly got the lion's share. Lemmy was by far the largest migration out of the group. There are around sixty alternatives out there and they all got a bump across the board. Even older sites like 4Chan, Slashdot, Digg, and Fark have had a rise in activity. Tildes itself got somewhere just south of 10k users, which doesn't sound like a lot - but remember, those people chose Tildes over the rest of the list because they value the quality and civility. We nearly doubled the userbase here in a few short weeks, and I'm sure we more than doubled the number of 'active' users who visit the place multiple times in a day.
It wasn't like the Digg migration to Reddit where most of the users went from one site to the same other site. This time the migration went to dozens of places, some old, some new. I'm sure it also galvanized the creation of yet more alternatives that haven't opened their doors yet. I guess you could say that reddit has 'gone to seed' at this point.
Edit: It's funny, it looks like Squabbles imploded recently due to bad management. Easy come, easy go.
I certainly felt that the overall tone and quality of posts on Reddit had dropped after the initial round of protests. Regardless of whether someone was pro- or anti- the API changes, the conflict seemed to drive levels of animosity higher across the board, to the point where it just isn't the kind of community I want to spend a lot of time around.
That being said, there's really no replacement for it at this point. Lemmy & kbin are a bit of a shitshow right now since they don't have the critical mass for most interesting niche subs, and any "All/Hot/Top" sorting will show the same story repeated multiple times in not just multiple subs, but multiple subs across multiple instances, which sure, is how federated content works, but doesn't make for a great user experience. Tonewise, it seems to be trending a bit downward as well, with people jockeying for internet points by posting short impactful hot takes, followed by other users inevitably clapping back. Add in a couple of troll instances essentially dedicated to disrupting good faith discussion, and it's clear that the Fediverse is not going to be without its challenges.
As of right now, I've found the healthiest online community (aside from Tildes) to be Threads. I'm not sure why that is, or if its going to change in the future (I suspect it is), but at least for this point in time they seem to be doing something right.
To be fair, while it is very nice that sometimes moderators were also domain experts, this does make sense. Reddit is ultimately using free labor and their customers are ultimate ad providers, not users nor mods. If ad providers don't care about the content of a sub past "is it related to the audience we are selling to?" then I'm not surprised Reddit itself doesn't care. And to some extent it extends to the users too: if they don't care about proper fact checking and expertise over free access and convenience, why would anyone else care? The time spent trying to make reddit care could simply go back to reinforcing the adage to never trust anything wholesale on the Internet.
Yup, sounds like a very long standing Reddit issue that the admins never gained much headway on. It's one of the many small reasons why people are worried that the eventual answer will be to simply kill off old reddit. They don't care about cross compatibility, which is usually a sign of the old ways being a branch to chop off down the line.
This is unfortunate, but has been around much longer than the API schism. And will probably be a schism in and of itself when/if that ever occurs.
i have seen a lot of people since June 1 say outright something like 'I'm here until they kill old reddit'.
Losing BaconReader hurt, but my addiction had primarily been on desktop for a few years by this point. It's downright unusable (outside of mod mail) on new Reddit. I may not even be able to find the account deletion button.
There's something on my mind that I've wanted to air for some time now. It's been difficult to find the right place or words, so this is going to be a tangent.
I used to frequent r/casualiama, a AMA sub that doesn't require identity verification. Folks from all walks of life would offer to be asked anything, sometimes just as a joke or just to chat.
Around the time the API changes were announced, there were these 2 AMAs by new accounts. One was by a young man claiming to be suicidal. He seemed very set in mind about it, and also very calm. Another was by a lady claiming to be a sex slave in Siberia.
(There's the obvious flag of how someone in her position would have internet access and the ability to post as much as she did. According to her, it was one of her clients writing on her behalf. Her bars were primarily social rather than physical; while she had some freedom of movement and action where she was, she had no identity documents and couldn't travel.)
Both AMAs were removed by Reddit admins. Their posts don't show up in archival services like Unddit.
Reddit is a site that has grown to be the de-facto forum on the English -speaking Internet, primarily due to social engagement (leading to more and more engagement), not just from moderators, but also (in fact I would say mainly) from everyone participating.
Suicidality and sex work (though this may not have been a case of sex 'work') have been discussed in r/casualiama and other subreddits before. There's a reasonable expectation of social engagement, but instead they received a corporate banhammer. Neither was stirring up trouble, in fact the young man seemed to be trying to get fewer upvotes for his AMA.
I'm sure there's probably some site rule that can be pointed to that they broke, but there are empathetic ways of handling, even accommodating rule violations (many moderators do this all the time).
I have no idea whether that young man killed himself, and whether that lady was and still is trapped. Reddit chose to silence people who may have needed to be heard the most. Did Reddit know something about the two of them that we didn't, or was it simply because both AMAs were inconvenient for the site?
The API changes and disrespect to mods and app developers were icing on top of a burnt cake.
I don't think there's any way for a small group of people to have control over a platform as large as Reddit while still keeping the community's interests primary. The community's values would be very diverse and the incentives for the admins to be selfish too great. I believe what's needed are more, and more diverse communities rather than a few convenient supercommunities (if you can even call them communities any more) that draw attention away from smaller communities.
I've heard a few stories from the people who used to mod /r/suicidewatch that would chill you to the bone - I won't repeat them as they aren't my stories to tell, but even my jaded jimmies were rustled. Corporate essentially told the mods to fuck off (during active crisis situations) and gave them zero help. Their line was 'it's not our problem.'
I can appreciate there's a certain legal risk in that sort of content that no for-profit company will ever expose itself to after a five minute conversation with their legal team. It's just another bullet point that proves we will not get the sort of community-enhancing software and services we need from any for-profit entity.
On Tildes that sort of thing clusters around the support tag. If this place gets larger, those issues will start to appear here too. It's not hard to do a better job than other websites when their decision is to essentially do nothing or to actively attack that sort of content. Tildes might be the only social media site out there that will actively encourage people to use it less and look after their mental health.
I left reddit on 6/30. A month later I decided to take a look and somehow everything about the front page and my page was different. Nothing was clickable anymore. A bit depressing but things to draw to a close.
I'm inclined to agree. I've got an extensive list of blocked subreddits I've relied on to keep the main feeds remotely useful, but even with those, the content coming up is questionable at best.
You want a real eye-opening experience, visit stock reddit.com in an incognito desktop browser and check out a real horrorshow. It is unrecognizable in format, tone, and content compared to the site I used to spend way too much time on.
wow I've never thought to try that, it's terrifying. All of the changes make sense now, knowing that is the platform image they're chasing.
I am pretty shocked actually. When I left Reddit, I felt so certain I would end up back there that I set a rule that I wouldn't use it before September. It is now September and I installed Atom for Reddit, expecting to be pulled back in. But the content is so abysmal and repetitive i left the app almost immediately to come here. What a turn for the worst...
I don't know if the quality on reddit overall has dropped or not. because my reddit usage has dropped by at least 90% since I left in early June. I still use it for some specific stuff -- like my local subreddit -- because Tildes or Lemmy just doesn't have those things. I guess I have seen some posts, like the F1 race weekend posts, where there isn't nearly as much info in the OP.
That said, I do agree with this:
I was (I guess still am) a moderator of a political subreddit. I'm now a mod of a politics community on a Lemmy instance. I am not a politician, an official, an aide, a poli sci major, a policy wonk, a journalist...just an interested and concerned citizen. When I first started modding on reddit like nearly 10yrs ago (jesus...), I had no experience moderating. I think my then fellow mod, the founder, was the same or had very limited experience. But we figured it out. And I'm still no expert on politics. There's still tons of stuff I don't know, even in my US state.
Granted, politics isn't potentially life or death like canning or electrical work. But I still don't think you have to be an expert on either to be an effective mod. If I was "hiring" new mods, I'd rather have someone who has experience in any kind of moderating or community management who may not be a topic expert (though at least very interested in the topic) versus a topic expert who doesn't know anything about moderating. Obviously having both is nice, but I don't think it's a necessity.
On something like r/canning, I would hope that they would recruit at least one 'safety mod' whose role would be to find and remove blatantly unsafe posts. But hope is not a plan.
Off-topic, but I never considered canning to be a thing that could potentially be dangerous. Good thing to know for something I was planning to do in the future.
Anything food preserving related can be pretty gnarly, you're giving bacteria and other food borne illnesses a lot of time and moisture to grow and multiply by the time you consume it.
My very amateur knowledge suggests that jams and jellies are a lot more straightforward and safer than other things you might want to can. But I always verify what I want to do with a reputable source before I try it. Botulism is no joke.
I agree. A subject matter expert is a nice-to-have. The forum can get by with basic enforcement of a code of etiquette, and if anything the existence of a solid team doing that is what brings a subject matter expert to the table. It does matter exactly what the subreddit is about, the degree to which this is true, but on the whole I think the proportion skews heavily toward supporting that kind of "basic" team. It seems like a pretty wild assumption folks are making, to think there are many subject matter experts who want to moderate a subreddit, an activity which demands time, pays nothing, and is almost totally thankless. Some are living that all out already, there's no reason to introduce more lol. But if you were able to show them a community with a legitimate interest, capable of self-governing, that I would imagine is likely a very different story.
And that's exactly how my subreddit worked. We brought in officeholders and people running for office for AMAs. We had some resident political aides and opposition researchers who were familiar with campaigning and the political process. Sometimes even giving us a little lowdown dirty scoop! We had a resident lawyer who was well versed in our state's constitutional law. Journalists from well-known state publications who followed state politics would drop in and chit chat. These were our experts. Not me, nor my fellow mods. We were just the referees. Janitors, even.
It was very much, "If you build it, they will come."
I actually shared the Rebel Canning article recently in the ~food community due to the wildness of it and viewing it from a food safety lense. Concerns about Reddit moderation of the Canning Subreddit came up and it's fascinating to see it written here as an example where bad modding can hurt and kill people potentially!
I used to explore the Fermentation and Canning subreddits frequently, and even prior to the exodus there would be some concerning posts, especially on the Fermentation sub. It sounds like the Canning subreddit used to be better modded, but now it's just the wild west in food safety. I get these communities are ran on free labor and Reddit is very much taking advantage of passionate hobbiest to advocate for safety. For these type of communities, I feel like it is critical that the Admin team would be more invested in user safety. But this is Reddit, and of course profits come first.
I think this article is out of touch, for a lot of Reddit users the displacement of mods is the silver lining to this whole affair. Let’s set the record straight: most Redditors hate the mods. They frequently abuse their power, treating their sub like a fiefdom instead of acting as volunteers for a community. A lot of subs were stifled by overly active mods. Many used their position to harass users, and tolerate hate if it was directed at people they personally don’t like. Not to mention the large number of communities built to actively spread lies where mods would ban anyone who didn’t agree. If you fired all the mods and picked random people, you’d fix a lot of things.
I was supportive of the protests, let’s not forget the real goal: when the user base is the value of a service, then it should be able to dictate the terms. Redditors like using third party apps, and they should be the ones to decide if those apps persist, not the site runners who are just skimming value off the top. But a lot has been said about mods during the protest, and I’ve read a lot of push back to that.
At any rate, isn’t it hypocritical for us on tildes to criticize a lack of knowledgeable mods on Reddit? What about here? Tildes runs on a very different moderation strategy, it’s actually even less expert driven. If someday there’s a ~life.canning, no expert will be curating it.
Sorry to rain on the "mods leaving is good for the users" parade but the vast majority of the power tripping moderators who redditors complain about aren't the ones who left. Those people are still on reddit and actively abusing their power. We lost a lot of the good mods in the purge. I still frequent many of the large mod communities and the same old faces are still there running their subs like maniacs
That's the thing about moderators, and why the comparison to janitors is quite apt: you only notice their existence when something has gone wrong.
and for a lot, it was the final straw as their last gatekeepers fell by the wayside in a site increasingly dominated by spam, bots, self-promotion not vaguely related to the community, and other low quality noise.
It's a huge site so there's large groups for both. Keep in mind many of those high profile mod abuses came from the largest subs, while the subs featured in this article we as small as 100k subs and as large as 2M (which is indeed large, but still a magnitude smaller than the largest front page subs).
I think this is precisely why protests were doomed to fail: Reddit had no "real goal".
In particular, admin leveraged the inconvenienced users to sweep away the remaining mods rebelling, and that was that. The cards were never in the community's favor, but the in-fighting made it quite easy to dissolve. I guess if nothing else, all those antiwork/workreform communities see firsthand why many strikes lose steam.
I occasionally check it out, and made all of one post since the protests happened. On the whole, at least observing what I was subbed to, a lot of the really niche stuff has remained more or less as it was. A few had mod shakeups that mean the future is very uncertain for some of them. The quality of discussions in those specific places tends to be pretty high and folks engage with each other in a pretty ok way. The communities that end up like this tend to be so niche that there just isn't much room for anything else. A lot of the better places either had mods that stuck around, or it just happened to be that the sub didn't actually need a large mod presence to begin with. Some of them took the whole situation as a heads up to improve their moderation a bit.
When I venture out into the more popular subreddits though, I do feel I am observing a difference. It's the same old shit but just way more of it, and comments got more unhinged and terrible likely because folks with a better attitude stopped posting. r/all is practically nothing but noise. And I notice folks getting away with more - just in general, being more abrasive and directly insulting, stuff that while not new usually would merit some kind of mod response. The basic maintenance is gone, so the part of reddit that was just a pit of drivel is dominating, has been my conclusion thus far.
I've been glad to be gone from it. I really hadn't understood just how much of my time and attention was going to it and the truth of that was simply unacceptable. While I tended to get positive signals I rarely if ever had actual discussions. I used to post to some hobby-oriented subs, and realized in all the time I'd done that, despite all the upvotes and praise, not once had I actually discussed an aspect of the hobby in depth with anyone in the subreddit. Almost always, that conversation would begin and end with the first reply. I guess a switch of some sort flipped and I came to see it as a really hollow experience, so I stopped. I was going through motions really; I wanted to re-experience what I used to have in more specialized forums and got lost settling for less. I feel like I spend more time actually learning stuff and seeing neat things now that I don't use Reddit.
It's really noticeable. I'm still on Reddit because Relay Pro still works, but when I scroll through my (very heavily curated) feed, there's barely anything of interest anymore. Cute cat videos, a ton of reposts and bot content, small bits of discussion here and there. A lot of previously beloved subreddits are now close to dead. It's really sad, but not unexpected.
My Reddit usage has reached the same level as my Facebook usage, except I signed out of Reddit during the blackout and never signed back in (and therefore haven't posted since). A couple times per month, from my desktop, I'll visit the front page. I spend about 15 seconds scrolling through, and am instantly reminded why I don't spend any time there anymore and then I leave.
I propose a new app: RAF (reddit ain’t fun [anymore]).
To tfa, that quote from reddit’s director of communications was abysmal. Clearly not a redditor. Not shocking she worked at Tesla for three years.
Just a nitpick on the carlin quote: he’s confusing mean and median. Also, it’s kinda elitest.
I’ve been off reddit for months. Still use it as a resource for some queries, but the information is getting stale. I don’t know where to turn. I suppose the answers are on chat services like discord and telegram, but the ui/ux on discord is atrocious for me, and i can’t seem to figuure out how ti find communities on telegram.
I'd be lying if I said i wasn't enjoying the schadenfreude. My only wonder is how long before reddit becomes irrelevant?
Since there are still husks of the dominant primordial internet giants that are still around like AOL, MySpace, Compuserve, Lycos, etc I'm sure we'll still have something called "Reddit" for decades. Will it be "your" Reddit? Absoulately not, but a Reddit will exist for some time.
I haven't seen any differences with my corner of Reddit.
Of course on a site that is as large as Reddit that isn't going to be true for everyone.
Having an aggressively curated sub list seems to hide the worst of it for me as well. I don't really venture out of my organized multireddits these days. However, I have noticed a definite increase in weird (bot-generated?) comments that don't seem to align with the content they are posted under, even in the more specialized subs. I have no idea if it's related or just part of the bot struggles that were already happening
Posts on a forum shouldn't be labelled "content" to begin with, as it isn't content. It's verbal rambling put into writing. It only differs from listening on to random conversations on the streets in that it is somewhat moderated. Sometimes.
Content is more akin to lectures in my opinion. Thought out content, even if we might not agree with it, is different from spur of the moment utterances. Some people are very good at making their utterances coherently and intelligently, but it's still not "content".
That is my opinion. They failed as soon as they decided to call a forum a "content" site.
Sometimes content is posting an article, sometimes it is asking a question or writing a review.
There is content just like YouTube. It would be like going to a museum and every one talking about what that museum is about.