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It's been around a year since a lot of us quit Reddit, myself included. I'm happy with Lemmy, but I still feel a bit lost online since leaving the old site. Discussion?

Been thinking of making a post like this for some time, apologies if some of this is not completely relevant: this community seems more like it's about Reddit the platform/product than Reddit the social "thing", but I'm sure a lot of people have similar experiences to mine. Maybe on some instances more than others.

Here's the one of the last comments I wrote as a regular Reddit user, on the eve of the blackout (almost a year ago to the day), under a post titled "Will your participation in Reddit change":

Reading through this is a bit funny, in retrospect, seeing how Reddit-centric my understanding of the internet had become at the time. I am happy to report that I have checked the home page maybe a half dozen times since the blackout, instead of once or twice a week like I expected. I suppose the disgusting state of the heavily astroturfed worldnews sub was a big part of it as well: for me Reddit was the one big online platform where the average visible user didn't seem to be very misinformed about Palestine (at least not by default), and it was frankly very sad to see where it got in the past few months.

I do miss Reddit, I haven't been able to replace it outright. I'm from Lebanon, and Lebanese Twitter is (if you can imagine it) even more of a toxic cesspool than regular Twitter. I'm not on Facebook (also cesspool here), I'm not on Instagram - my point is I don't get anything about my country on ostensibly user-curated social media. /r/Lebanon was very far from perfect, but it was nice to get a trickle of local news with users who were more in line with my own politics. The local news outlets focus on a lot of irrelevant crap, the sub's news feed was a bit more interesting.

One thing I loved about that subreddit was that users with more mainstream views in my country (eg. transphobia-as-default) were allowed to spout their bullshit in the subreddit with little mod pushback (if it's just JAQing off etc, not harrassing people obviously). Then the regulars would dogpile on that user's post - very refreshing! And very validating I would imagine for anyone who is used to hearing this shit everyday.

I was applying to be a mod to help keep the sub moving, at one point, but hey. Maybe that headache was never worth it. Still, I felt like I lost one of my online homes.

More generally, I have enjoyed my first year on Lemmy, although the experience has been lacking in many ways. For one, while Reddit has a reputation as a meme cemetery, the memes here are generally a bit moldier. But that's okay. The fact that there's fewer posts I think isn't necessarily a bad thing either, I think we all preferred Reddit's slightly slower homepage in 2013 than the one we left in 2023, that would regurgitate more and more from the bottom of the barrel if you were willing to keep scrolling.

I've toyed with opening a Lebanon community here on dbzer0, having opened one on FMHY that nobody used. But it wouldn't be the same, and I wouldn't know how to populate it. I posted maybe 2 non-question posts on Reddit in my decade+ of being a regular user, but I wrote tons of comments. It also helped keep my English sharper, I think.

I've reactivated my old Instagram account and it's pretty ass out there. The ad/post ratio is just egregious, and they'll just serve you random posts from random pages. I want to see my friends goddamn it, isn't this what your platform is supposed to be for? For those of you who don't know, the app will also send you a notification once or twice a day suggesting you look at "today's top reels". I have never watched a reel of my own will, fuck off.

Point being, the main platforms people use online haven't been up my alley. I can only hope the zoomer dumbphone pushback keeps expanding, and that social media starts being seen as something for older generations. Wishful thinking?

This is just a post about enshittification, everyone's favorite word, but every time I think about it for more than 2 minutes I can't help but miss a simpler internet. Some part of me was hoping it would kickstart me "growing out" of spending this much time online per day (not everyone spends a ton of time online), but it hasn't.

Also every time I ask something longer than 20 words on Discord some middle schooler will reply "yap", even in the channels designated for questions. Discord has had its uses (yes I know there's privacy concerns), but it's hardly a replacement for Reddit, or forums. Both of which are/were searchable. But enough yapping from me.

Thoughts? How has the exodus been for you? Is this how Digg users felt?

187 comments
  • Reddit is dead and buried, what's left are bots and teenagers. Those yappy discordians now run the show, most of us 10+ reddit veterans either came to lemmy, or gave up on "the internet". I'm pretty sure you're not the only one who considered reddit to be the internet at that point.

    Most power users, myself included, spent 5+ hours per day there, at times more so than at their paid careers. Especially the mods (I've been moderating 6 subs, two of which had over 1M and 5M users).

    I do miss some of those communities. I don't miss modding. Leaving reddit showed me what ungodly amounts of time I sunk into that platform, now that I had to fill other means to close the gap. With Lemmy it's 20-30 min a day, often spread out over 5+ sessions since there's not much to say or see that takes me more than 5 min at a time.

    I've stayed on some of the moderator discord channels since those are fine folks, and chat with them in the off-topic rooms. Which shows me that reddit has gone off the deep end once and for all. With many decent folks leaving, ads and bots exploding all over the place, only the die hard shitposters and radical opinion leaders stuck around. They might not have had a digg moment, but are going the way of tumblr, which is arguably worse.

    What I'm trying to say is that while Lemmy isn't the arch we wanted it to be, going back isn't possible either since the harbor burned down.

    Personally, I've started a PhD just about a year ago at the time I left, and it does plenty of filling the gap in my daily calendar...

  • I actually miss Reddit, I miss it when it was actually a useful site where you can engage with users on specific topics that barely anyone in my country gives a shit about. I left Reddit on 1 July 2023 (the day API access for third party apps got shut down), and after 11 months, I'm still not looking back. Lemmy really is my new home now, I'm called "Resol van Lemmy" for a reason. Let's be honest, Reddit nowadays is basically some buffalo trying to take a huge dump on a birthday cake, an incredible website that ended up being ruined by a bunch of shitty business decisions. I'm gonna say it again, fuck spez. He is not was Reddit is about, we Redditors are what Reddit is about. I don't even care anymore, fuck him. Lemmy might potentially be as good as Reddit one day, but I suspect that this day is quite far away from today, but I (and my fellow Lemminos/Lemmings/Lemurs/whatever) am working to make that day closer than ever.

  • Lemmy is great for general shit... News, memes, generic hobbies like cooking that most people might do, etc.

    I miss being able to go to /r/Game_Name and being able to talk specifically about that one title. The generic "Gaming/Games" communities are mostly just news about the industry as a whole, which doesn't really get discussion about the games themselves.

    IDGAF though if nobody else uses it, come June 21st, I definitely will be practically spamming the only Elden Ring community on Lemmy with stuff from the DLC as I play through it. Add "Lemmy" to the online group keyword thing in-game :P

  • I lucked out in this regard.

    I was able to join up on sopuli, a local Finnish instance with a small but active number of users, who post about and occasionally comment on local things in !suomi@sopuli.xyz. It's still quieter that reddit in that regard, but I do at least get some local news.

    I've also made a huge effort to bootstrap an active anime community here on lemmy, and luckily I've not been alone in that. !anime@ani.social has been growing steadily. Instead of getting my anime fanart on reddit like I used to, I upped my usage of pixiv significantly, and then translated that into several communities and activity on lemmy.

    If you can, try and get your news from local outlets, and if you actually get into that habit, set up a community for your local area, and start curating articles worth sharing, and posting them there.

    • Anime and TV discussion threads are what I miss most about reddit.

      So long as the anime sub doesn't overly gatekeep shit near to anime but refuses due to arbitrary FetchFrosh reasons then I'm good.

      Stopping shit like Thunderbolt Fantasy or near Chinese /Korean anime from being discussed was absolutely ludicrous. But then they have anime best girl competitions constantly like wtf.

      The amount of sidebar bullshittery just gets stupid.

      Like animemes and animeirl should really all be combined for now until there's enough people here.

      • There has been some drama around anime because the largest communities used to be on .ml. But they made the bonkers decision to defederate ani.social, which then caused people to make new communities on ani.social in order move away from .ml entirely, in response.

        The discussions over on !dungeonmeshi@ani.social are likely some of the most active, but the anime community also has them, though not every series has enough watchers to get comments.

        For animemes !animemes@ani.social is the most active, ATM.

    • My problem with ani.social is that it's full of moe, and I HATE moeshit with a passion.

      • That's too bad, because I'm almost solely responsible for that particular genre of post on the threadiverse, and I don't plan on stopping.

        A "passionate loathing" of a concept sounds like a 100% "you" problem.

        Also, I list literally every moe community I run in each of the sidebars of every community. It'd take you less than a minute to find and block them all.

        And if you're using "moe" to refer to anime in general, you know v19 introduced instance blocking, right?

        Edit: I don't understand why anyone would bother downvoting me or any of my posts? Do you people think anime-fans will just go away or stop being anime-fans if you disapprove hard enough?

        Just to prove the point, I commit to making ten more posts for every downvote I get. I'm up to over 600, configured and ready to go. If you don't want to see them, just block me already.

  • Like others, being on Lemmy dragged me away from the constant stream of endless gratification. I still check it a few times a day, at most, but much less than Reddit.

    What Reddit still has over Lemmy is a huge database of answers. While many people have left Reddit or moved on, their comments stayed, and that includes many searchable and genuine answers.

    It also has more communities. Game devs still use Reddit to host a lite web page (subreddit) for example. While the fediverse has many communities, alot of them are duplicates. Every instance has their own Memes community for example, which pollutes the feed sometimes.

    In the last year, I've made less than 5 posts on Reddit, mostly asking questions. I don't browse it, I just end up on it from search results.

    I wish the fediverse agreed on unique communities. It's cool that I can communicate with several different websites, but imagine if there was 5 reddit.com's and they all made their own memes subreddits. Either you have to subscribe to all of them and get duplicate memes, or you sub to one and miss out of 4x more.

    Because those 5 reddits are all divided, so is the potential user base. I'm not saying we should go back to a single website, but rather that each website in the fediverse hosts one major community.

    Alternatively, have an instance that merges all the other instances' communities so that all the meme communities appear as one, and all duplicates are filtered out.

  • I too miss reddit sometimes. Mostly because it had such a large userbase that there was always something interesting to find/read. If you had the right subreddits it was a very nice and friendly place. I like the fediverse (I'm on mbin) but there are still some hurdles to take. Such as finding nice magazines not on your home server. There are some lists and stuff, but I just want to search in the search bar of the site and find them. Also, there is still a 20 year gap of information. If you have a question it is most likely already asked at reddit. So searching on DuckDuckGo or Reddit will almost certainly give you an answer. Searching on the fediverse won't give you the same hitrate. Especially for more non-mainstream subjects. For instance: I have a specific kind of motorcycle, the magazine on the fediverse is dead. Not one post, no activity (so that's my fault as well). On reddit, there a couple of thousand threads. I just recently decided I wanted to interact more on the fediverse (hence this reply) to put in my effort to keep the fediverse alive, active and growing. I just need to find some subjects to start a relevant and interesting new thread.

    I don't think lemmy/mbin/etc. will be as popular since it's too much trouble for the non-techies. I do think mastodon/misskey/etc. is quite active and interesting. It's better then twitter. And since I follow the right people I really like pixelfed instead of instagram. I think those are better, but it is an adjustment. Since you have to put in the work to find the right people to follow. And while I dislike the instagram algorithm, it did offer some very good, high quality photography. But I think it's going the facebook way. Facebook in it's early days was a great way to see what your friends and family where up to. Now it's just old memes, stupid jokes, fake news and advertisements. Instagram is becoming that as well.

  • I divested myself of Twitter a couple of years ago (which is how I ended up on the fediverse in the first place) and then in the last 18 months or so, Reddit, Facebook and Discord have all been given the boot too (and for a bonus, Windows as well)

    I've found replacements for all of them in self hosted and/or community ran alternatives. It's quieter, and missing content, yet at the same time, it's far more personal than the sites I left behind. In many ways, it feels like the old IRC days, with smaller communities, but where people knew each other somewhat.

    I wish they were a bit more active, and that some of the niche stuff existed, but at the same time, I feel quite at home with my alternatives, rather than lost.

  • I didn't voluntarily leave reddit I got banned for some random comment (I honestly don't know what it was) and the appeals process was bullshit. So I found Lemmy. Haven't been back to reddit since don't miss it.

    • I had to appeal a permanent ban there for something super stupid, like really dumb. Roughly, I said, that public figures should be very careful because there are crazy people out in the world who will take their words seriously.

      They said I was provoking violence, when I was commenting on the mindset of violent people.

      At least here in Lemmy I can just block the irrational mods and instances like lemmy.ml and move along with minimal impact.

  • While Feddit.dk is still small compared to /r/Denmark, I'm quite happy with the vibes here. Most people are very well-mannered and reasonable. There's not as much complaining either - lots of people in /r/Denmark are constantly complaining about seeing a certain kind of post and you can't filter them out cause everything Danish on reddit is in that subreddit, basically.

    The fediverse with a language-specific instance gives much more options for creating a good culture and splitting content into more categories when necessary.

    So yea, while Feddit.dk is not at the same size as /r/Denmark, I'm quite happy with the exodus so far.

  • Lemmy is missing the small communities and frankly, most of the medium sized communities that Reddit has. I don't find the userbase that toxic but of course there is the occasional twat to deal with, luckily the blocking system is more robust than Reddit's. Hopefully user growth will continue and people that still use Reddit will promote Lemmy and the Fediverse there enough to feed the exodus.

  • I only miss the small communities, especially the ones for video games like r/stalker. Nowhere else to talk about these things.

    • I've been around the internet a long time and seen, and been part of, community growth. The general trend is that you post to the larger community until it has enough momentum to continue on it's own in a more niche space.

      So talk away about stalker in the general sub is my advice. It'll grow and then there will be a specific community in time.

  • for me Reddit was the one big online platform where the average visible user didn’t seem to be very misinformed about Palestine (at least not by default), and it was frankly very sad to see where it got in the past few months.

    This was a really big one for me, it was the clearest indicator that something had fundamentally changed on that site.

  • I feel similarly often, but I think it has started to push me towards growing out of spending so much time online. Lemmy definitely has not filled the same niche reddit did, in some ways it's better but I am often disappointed what I see here as well. Even things like youtube I have started to watch less lately. It all is just starting to feel like hyper processed slop, like what am I really getting out of this thing I feel attached to?

    The only social I really still enjoy lately is mastodon and that's because it's possible to make real connections with people there, it's not about making viral posts that tons of people see. Though clearly I still visit lemmy, I find myself often wondering if it's worth it.

    I feel better consuming less social media, feel healthier. I have read so many books over the last year, just last month I read 16 books though that is an outlier. Not just fiction too, though that is the vast majority, but also pure math books. Smoking a lot less weed, I use to smoke it every day, I was high every day for years and years but now im close to just giving it up completely I think. I have started to exercise and eat better too and I am more willing to just be alone with my thoughts. Sometimes its painful but I think its good for me.

    I don't think it's all down to just less social media, but it has been helping for sure.

    Part of me often feels like if I don't check social media im like doing something wrong, not participating in the world, like I /need/ to stay informed. But social media isn't going to save the world, i'm not actually helping anyone or anything by reading and commenting on posts. Its an illusion of participation, a honey pot that just sapps away my time and my mental health and doesn't give me the things I actually want like real human connection.

  • I do miss it. A lot of niche communities. One example is r/Slovakia. Sometimes it even gets Q&A posts from major politicians or other people like that. Here it's dead.

    Also RF-related communities. On Reddit I had a separate feed for stuff related to that: https://www.reddit.com/user/lukmly013/m/radio_stuff/new/ (I haven't been there for a year, I don't know if the communities are still relevant)
    I am not even a ham, I just liked to lurk around.

    And a controversial opinion: r/teenagers. I joined Reddit when I was 14. Sorting by... whatever the default is did usually bring up dumb stuff, but sorting by new had some good posts. Lots of questions, others posting their art or photos they took. Usually not something worth posting on dedicated communities, but not bad either. The quantity of posts meant there was plenty of good ones too. Usually others there were nice, unlike in real life.
    It partially reminds me of !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone

    But Lemmy has advantages too. While there's far less people, they're usually more active. On Reddit, most comments and posts received nothing. Doesn't tend to happen here.
    Lemmy is also fairly technically-oriented. I feel like 70% of Lemmy user base is using Linux (desktop) at least a bit. But there's more aspects to it too like being privacy-oriented and anti-corporate, so I don't see stuff like "Just sign up for [data collection service], it's free." or "Anyone could be a billionaire if they tried hard enough." and "It doesn't matter, your [appliance] will be long obsolete before it needs a repair anyway."

    But in the end, it doesn't matter as much. I joined Reddit mainly for the Linux communities. There's very much not a lack of that here.

  • Looking back now that it's been almost a year, it feels like not a ton has changed for me with Lemmy specifically. I'm still generally not interested in the global feed (I wasn't often with Reddit's either) and mostly just poke around it in from time to time to see if my home instance has a community I should be contributing to. !games@lemmy.world is solid and probably the most "Reddit-like" out of the communities I follow. I'm still trying to help grow a couple smaller ones, but I guess at least it's good that there's still activity after a year?

    The other places I've tried have been more interesting, in both good and bad ways. I first started in the Fediverse with Kbin, and it's far worse than it was a year ago. Squabbles seemed interesting for a little while until it got gross, and Tildes wasn't for me. I'm still getting my feet wet with Mastodon after finally giving up on Bluesky, and I've completely left Twitter behind. Leaving there feels good, but the best thing the exodus did for me was push me more into Discord. I'm very active there and joined on as a mod for my favorite server. I've started using the platform professionally as well.

    Unfortunately, after recently discovering Revanced can patch Sync (my previous favorite Reddit app) into functionality again, I've been on Reddit a little bit more. I still haven't contributed posts or comments since I left, but sometimes I'll have to go on as part of my Discord duties. It also really doesn't help that NSFW Reddit is indispensable. A year later, I haven't found anything that comes close in that aspect.

187 comments