1y ago

Reddit is a Dying Mall

www.staygrounded.online Reddit is a Dying Mall

Why it'll only get worse from here.

SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml

www.staygrounded.online /p/reddit-is-a-dying-mall

25 7

Reddit @lemmy.ml

Reddit is a Dying Mall

www.staygrounded.online /p/reddit-is-a-dying-mall

27 3

Technology @kbin.social

Reddit is a Dying Mall

www.staygrounded.online /p/reddit-is-a-dying-mall

189 66

158 comments

To be fair Lemmy feels like a brand new mall of stores with empty shelves.
- A lot of empty stores, and then the big anchor stores are full of depressing doomer news articles
  
  Don't look in the changing rooms, they are all full of furries
  
  And memes
- It's always sad when you go to a community for something you like, something that's widely popular, and see the newest post is 2 days old.
  
  Especially when you're the only one posting. At some point, it feels a little like you're spamming the sub, even if you are the only one keeping it active.
- Reddit is gentrification as a website
  Lemmy is restoration
- And all the customers do nothing but scream about politics in every section.
  
  Scream about the old mall*
- We trying boii
- The "mall" analogy works for Reddit because the point of it existing is to buy things there. Lemmy instances and communities only exist because people want to make space for conversation. If spaces are empty, I see that as a sign that someone, somewhere cares so much that they will happy build the space and wait for others to arrive.

This is two months old and a report about the exodus that's already happened.
Reddit didn't die, it probably won't anytime soon.
- Facebook never "died", but no one goes there anymore either. Reddit will be the same.
  
  What is Facebook these days? My grandma spends all day on it, she hardly speaks...just swiping...when I sneak a peek, it's just chain-mail-like bullshit one after the other with a few disguised ads for things she can't afford in between...ugh :vomit:
  
  Isn't Digg still around? It will exist forever probably, but it is definitely a husk of its former self.
- Malls are still around in some places too, but nothing in there is worth going to. Maybe Mall of America if you want to chance getting stabbed or shot, other than that they're either glorified office space or entirely abandoned. But, like reddit, they're still technically there.
  
  Exactly. From the article:
  As far as Reddit’s fate is concerned I predict that what will happen to it is the same thing that is happening to Twitter and has already happened to Facebook and frankly, actual shopping malls. The business side of things will churn along divorced from the content which will become ever more generic and culturally irrelevant. The users who stay on Reddit will be of the unadventurous variety, not inclined to make waves or analyze their habits.
  
  That's just a horrible analogy. Yes malls are basically dead but still technically there. Reddit is just as popular and active as it has ever been. Sure some people, like us, left. The vast majority stayed.
  The 'mass exodus' never happened. The entirety of lemmy put together is the size of a small niche sub barely anyone actually knows about.
  
  My city has malls. They are just big buildings for housing an aunties anne's pretzels, a filthy play area for kids, and any other sucker who is still renting a retail space.
  
  The mall pictured in the article, Rolling Acres Mall in Akron OH, was the largest of three indoor shopping malls in the greater Akron area. I don't know if you've ever been to Akron, but we didn't need three goddamn indoor shopping malls. We're down to just one now, which seems appropriate.
- Who knows. Could be the new Facebook. Feel like that shit fell off pretty fast. Went from everyone on the planet using it to only your weird uncle pretty quickly.
- Dying or not, their leadership made clear the plan is full steam towards enshittification and monetization, so leaving early is for the best.
- Reddit has really declined after the blackout, some subs are not even posting anything usefull or just trolling. My home subs on reddit dies out after i scroll past 500, no more new or upvoted content.
- About as long as a seagull pecking away at a whale carcass. It certainly didn’t help them but it would take Musk level of stupid to end them.

It's really unattractive to be so obsessed with your ex months after getting into a new relationship with Lemmy. Can we move on please?
- I was about to make a joke related to ex's... then I saw your post. Thank you for saving me a couple braincells from frying themselves out.

I started a new job a few months ago and was on my first business trip with four colleagues recently. To make conversation I asked if anyone used Reddit.
• Two dudes had heard of it but never used it.
• One dude said he uses it infrequently because it’s turned to shit.
• One dude said fuck Reddit and it’s API bullshit.
• I said fuck Reddit and it’s API bullshit.
Thats my anecdote. 100% of the people in that car didn’t use Reddit or now hated it. Probably 3 months ago that same car ride would have had three people loving Reddit and advocating it to the other two.
- Despite your experience it's alive and well. If reddit is a dying mall what is Lemmy? To scale it's like an unmaintained Porta potty.
  I hate reddit, but let's not be ridiculous. It's more than fine. Google has really gone to shit. When people search for things they put in site=reddit as a more reliable way to find real information.
  
  Malls didn't die overnight, you know. It's a downward spiral that takes many years when it starts.
  
  Reddit is fine if you only look at user numbers.
  If you consider things like overall satisfaction with the site and profitability though, they are in trouble. That's why they are introducing that embarrassing crypto shit, they are desperate to somehow monetize the site.

The article is 2 months old..
- Like most posts on the Lemmy front page!
  
  Try using Active sort instead of Hot

Why post an article from two months ago about a thing we've all accepted? I started reading and wondered what new drama occurred on that dying platform. Then it mentioned APIs and I checked the date. June. We're almost in September. Eternal September.

At least the mall of Reddit is open 24/7.
That new mom and pop down the road seems to close at random times during the day. 😉
- It’s like Walmart. Open 24/7 but full of shit garbage and shit people.
  
  The Walmarts near me haven't been open 24/7 since the pandemic. Definitely still full of garbage and shitty people, though.
- You can use less overpopulated server
  
  The instance I use is ran by a bunch of Unix nerds, so I'd expect them to wear their uptime as a badge of honour. I suspect there's probably a sweet spot for instance size, where it doesn't hit the biggest scaling problems, but big enough to justify the ongoing effort, rather than obviously being a one-man shop that will vanish when his cheque to Digital Ocean bounces.
- Ahhh, defending reddit because lemmy.world is the target of constant ddos attacks? Just go to a different instance. Lemmy's not closed. A single entrance is just being blocked by assholes who support billionaire-owned platforms.
  
  It's like a mall where the main entrance is closed for construction, but all the other entrances, including the entrances through different stores, are all open.
  
  😉
- Is lemmy.world really that bad?
  Lemmy.ca went out, like, twice in the time I've used it.
  
  As a .world user, it's had some instability. Though in general I'd say it has okay uptime for a somewhat startup, volunteer enthusiast run content aggregation & discussion platform.
  
  It is, loads for me about 70% of the time.
  Very annoying to use.

Small communities that are interoperable” is basically what Reddit is now.
Which is EXACTLY why federation fits the reddit style of forum like a glove, and why ultimately Lemmy is the path forward.
- I'm also on Mastodon, and saw posts saying "you can follow Lemmy communities from Mastodon!" - and sure enough you can, but by god you shouldn't unless you want your feed to be full of comments without context.
  
  Yeah it's kinda weird that from mastodon it boosts all the comments instead of just the posts. You can tap into the posts to see the comments anyways, can't you?
  
  This is the problem I'm having now and I don't know how to go back.
- 💯

Lemmy, can we do better? I came here to hang out with a scrappy new community of people excited about cool shit. Instead it's a bunch of people removed about Reddit and X. C'mon let's make this place fun and exciting.
- Sir, this is a technology sub/comm. It must be filled with articles about social media businesses at all times, or the ancient ones will get hungry.
- There are plenty of budding communities in the federation. The Reddit and X posts are slowing down, so that is nice. Not so long ago, Lemmy was absolutely flooded by /c/memes, but other activity has started to balance it out. The main problem is that it took years to build some of the niche subs on Reddit so it will take time to get those started again.
  An even better sign is that OC NSFW creators are showing up here more and more. Where they go, people follow, no questions asked.
- Don't forget jerking off over Linux
- mander.xyz is awesome, if you select by local you only get science posts from communities that are visited and commented on. programming.dev has some good communities too, that probably need some good comments and content so people don't give up on them.
  You need to pick your home instance well to have a good head start, otherwise, you'll spend every day blocking communities that take up space in you discovery feed when you select by "all".

I've come up with the following rules for my own relationship with Reddit.
I will avoid posting on Reddit.
If I do post on Reddit, I must make a similar post on another forum, maybe Lemmy, maybe somewhere else.
Number 2 is important because it helps other small communities grow.
It's not a problem if a lot of people post on one forum, but it is a problem if a lot of people post only on one forum. I wont allow myself to post only on Reddit.
That said, I haven't posted on Reddit since June.
- Deleted my 10 year account a few months ago. Haven't looked back. Once in a while my google searches will point me to some reddit thread, and I'll check it out, but I have logged in for the last time.
  
  Same story here. Soon as they fucked around with Apollo I grabbed my towel and haven’t looked back. At this point my only interest is morbid curiosity about how bad it’ll get.
- My rule is "don't post on Reddit unless it's giving a reason to delete it"

This post is a total shitshow. I get the sentiment, and to some amount agree. But who the fuck wrote this drivel? its the worst shit I've read in seconds on the internet, and that usually takes hours.
Self Aggrandizing Self Posters.. GFY
- Weird, I thought it was a well written article.
  
  Thanks lol
- Look at fancy pants over here reading the actual article we're talking about
- Maybe an AI wrote it. 🥸

These posts are exhaustingly far from the reality of the situation. Please don’t make the fediverse kick the puppy that is your optimistic opinion, OP.
Edit: OP downvoted everyone who disagreed with him.
- Edit: OP downvoted everyone who disagreed with him.
  Sigh. Please OP, we're not doing that here. Downvotes should be reserved for trolls and the counterproductive. This comment with its snappy "kick the puppy that is your opinion" is not the most productive, but there are downvotes from OP on way more innocuous things, even one comment that agrees reddit is dying but in a different way than the linked article envisions.
  Please leave that behavior on reddit.
  
  How do you know what did they vote on?

This shit is from June lol

I think inevitably Reddit's utter collapse will be power mods causing intense drama as well the mods who are actually capable of curating content properly having left. I was surprised no hate subs spawned from the migration away from reddit, but I realized something. The people who would likely moderate hate subs now moderate the mainstream subs. Shit is going to hit the fan.
- I think the next time the owners do something stupid there will be a similar exodus, and there will already be larger alternative communities available than there were last time and more people will leave and stay left. I think it could also happen the same way more than twice.
  
  That's what happened with twitter and mastodon. People will come in waves.
  
  Agreed, I think Reddit is going to die in fits and bursts and the fediverse will continue to build momentum with each wave. I think it’s arguable that we’re already starting to see this shift happen with Twitter and Mastodon. A behemoth like Reddit was never going to die overnight, but the users who really care have left or will leave soon. And it’s those users who made Reddit what it was, not its scale imo.
- Hah, so Reddit will force the crybabies to grow up or die trying, win-win!

But really, where else can you go to read a bunch of eight year old tweets?
- Tumblr. Also, 8 year old Reddit posts... You can actually find anything old in Tumblr... and vampire role play.

I left reddit after they killed boost. best decision I've ever made.

decentralized social media is the future.

I'm glad after all these years that my local mall is still the face of dead malls everywhere.

I don't think so. The migration to Lemmy was minuscule. It's still huge, like very huge, but now that I use Lemmy more than Reddit, differences are obvious. Reddit is so massive that it has become a wrestling arena, Lemmy on the other side, is a more quiet place where civilized dialogue is above anything else. It's a matter of tastes, but I feel better here.

It was better in this video essay
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q&
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

If Reddit is a mall for ideas, then Lemmy is more like an economy for ideas. Or many malls that are linked by an instant, intergalactic transport system. You know, I'd probably go back to malls if they had that.
- Lemmy and kbin are like a street full of small Shops
  
  A nice walkable one!

We need an article summary bot up in here man. I got walled off after a few paragraphs and it wanted my email to store in their database😅
- Use my email:
  Poop@fart.com
  
  😂 thanks for the chuckle
- Reading mode defeats that a lot of the time if your browser supports it
- Can't we just use the one we had on reddit? Just change the API calls from Reddit to Lemmy.

No, it isn’t.

I know it's bad when the front page is majority popular posts from the last 10 years and nothing new

@JustinHanagan@kbin.social i think you might have the meaning of "Luddite" backwards https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/

Another article that's overly sympathetic to the mods. Reddit has been bad for years, not now just suddenly with the API changes when the bulk of you finally realized. The mods were horrible and HUGE part of the problem, to the point I think the mods (and other users) being so upset is hilarious. The API changes were a bad move, but they were just the latest in a years long string of nothing BUT bad moves. You guys are way late to the party and congratulating yourselves for being so punctual. Now the standard moving on from your ex joke and my comment is finished.
- Let's be honest, if it wasn't for mods Reddit would be 4chan. I'm also not sure Lemmy solves your problem as it has basically the same system.
  
  I don't agree at all. Mods are good at self-aggrandizing.....but I remember reddit before it was chock full o power mods and it wasn't really like that. Also I've been a mod and there wasn't that much objectionable content that needed to be removed. Seems like being a mod these days is setting up a bot, doing nothing, then complaining about how hard your "job" is. Oh, also making sure no posts that disagree with your personal politics are allowed to stay up.

158 comments