this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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I've never been sentimental about a social media site but it's sad for me to see reddit so clearly killing itself. Pushshift is already banned and Apollo is soon to follow. Reddit will either pivot fully to a mainstream audience or die out. It's just sad for me to see it doing it to itself.

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[–] Manticore@beehaw.org 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If by 'mourn reddit' you mean 'process the idea that reddit is as good as dead' then yes.

I'm not missing it much, though. I like the social engagement part, and I like the getting news part. I used the time-killing part. Lemmy is social engagement and so far it feels much more engaged, more concentrated, less fluff. And the news in Reddit is 1) mostly America-centric anyway and 2) linked from other sources of questionable repute. And time-killing is something I should do less of.

It's a nice place to find answers and guides, enough so that I use 'reddit' as an additional search term if I want relevant, accessible answers that are willing to call out a product's design for being at fault (if relevant) and suggestion unaffiliated alternatives.

But the communities, the content? I'd barely been engaged there for a year. I loaded it a lot, almost every day; I read it plenty. But I didn't actually enjoy it very much.

Leaving it behind completely will be difficult when it's still the best aggregate of user-generated content, at least for now. But actually commenting or posting in it... I'll be fine.

[–] Borgzilla@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago

I didn't mourn Digg, I won't mourn Reddit.

[–] DarkSirrush@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago

I've been mourning Reddit since the r/all porn ban. Content quality overall went downhill, and there were no distractions to the decline left.

For me, this past week or so has just been watching the death throes, and finally looking for something else to move to.

[–] Senseibull@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No I don’t mourn it, it became mainstream around 2014 and went downhill from there imv. The front page was full of rage politics and the comments became really toxic. Everyone got drowned out, spreading that audience across multiple sites might be a good thing in the end. End the hive mind

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[–] President_Pyrus@feddit.dk 6 points 2 years ago

I am beginning to mourn what reddit was. Not what it is or what it is going to turn into.

[–] spicyjimmy87762@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

It honestly feels more like leaving a bad relationship. I didn't realize how bad things had gotten until I left.

[–] Cowbob45@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago

I was introduced to Reddit thanks to CGPgrey and have been using it since high school, It's definitely sad to see it dying but I'll just treat it as the end of yet another phase of the internet. Such is the will of the sands of time.

[–] DingoFan@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not any more than I mourned digg. Reddit is dying, just like Digg did and we collectively looked for a new home and found Reddit. I am hoping Lemmy takes off and we make our new home a decentralized version of the parts we liked about reddit, without the parts we didn't like.

Will be a fun ride and I am glad I am on this train with Lemmy (Both Beehaw.org and lemmy.ml)

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[–] jezebelley@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I'll still be browsing it with Reeder 5. When they shut off RSS then I'll be completely gone.

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[–] half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

Relationships with products are worth thinking about. Reddit, other people's content was the product. Reddit was just the gatekeeper. Most social media sites are like this. They want to be able to control what we see so that they can sell that access. Then once they have control they can really ratchet up the costs. Facebook's walled garden is an example. You might remember the video content apocalypse several years ago. That was one of their attempts to control what everyone saw and it turned out all their watch time data was bullshit and their ad rev fell out the bottom and ruined 100s of great shows and stifled careers. After Hours on Cracked even mentions it in their own show, rip. Not that they're good otherwise, but Reddit saw chatGPT just make a fuckzillion dollars off of Reddit data and realized they were being too generous with their gatekeeping.

I'm not at all sad about walking away from that kind of relationship.

Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

[–] rss3091@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

Yup. I've been on reddit for the past decade, on and off, through a couple of different accounts (got banned from r/comicbooks for posting a spider-man comic in its entirety), and I discovered so many great books, movies, tv shows through it. I gave therapy a shot because of people on r/getting_over_it, and it's made a significant difference in my life.

It just sucks how much awesome stuff and communities are going to be destroyed because of corporate greed.

[–] TempleSquare@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

It's normal to grieve. If reddit were a spouse, I'd have one hell of a marriage (in a good way). Eleven years and multiple hours of interaction each day?

I've grown concerned how reddit has such a monopoly on message boards. (As I am still concerned at the monopoly Twitter has had). Like, it's to a point where I was googling the word "reddit" next to my question to get good answers. This is a testament to the community there.

The nice thing here is that Lemmy demonstrates that some competition exists. I can still have a fun chat online without relying solely on one company.

[–] bnaur@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

Sentimental in the sense that I have been a Reddit user for 16 years and this makes me feel really really old. And in internet years Reddit is even older, I would have excepted it to die already years ago and it seems exceptional that it has kept going for this long.

Back when Reddit was starting to get popular I was mildly annoyed and suspicious of it and all these other new fangled web2.0 things but slowly it replaced random forums, news groups, irc and other old school platforms for me. To me Reddit sits somewhere between those and the more modern and "social" web platforms and as such it feels like a relic from the early 2000s that probably has no place in the modern internet. Bit like me myself actually ("Hey, you should post that on Reddit!" is the usual ironic response that I get from my kids whenever I say something really funny or insightful...)

And like others here I'm worried about all the niche communities and losing the vast source of content that Reddit has accumulated. Sure, most of it is low effort shit as usual but especially with how bad Google has become Reddit is now my first choice when I need to get an overview of some new topic.

That said I have been planning to delete my Reddit account for a while now. After all these years it has got stale, the hive mind is predictable and it feels like I have seen all the same conversations and topics already too many times. I don't need to read any threads on more popular subs since I already know what the most upvoted opinions, memes and jokes are going to be. And it seems like every few years they piss off their userbase in some way, who then threaten to quit and find something better and surely this the end of Reddit, and then nothing happens.

It's old. I think it's time to let it go now.

[–] pridefulofbeing@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don’t mourn Reddit, I mourn the people and ideas I enjoyed engaging with through it. But, I’m glad people chose to find another way to engage (such as Lemmy) vs. staying in that toxic system. :)

[–] agegamon@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Exactly. I'm definitely gonna miss some of the meme subs and topic-specific subreddits but honestly I'm not going to miss the platform itself or most of the content there.

I really should have moved on from it a while ago like I did with twitter tbh. Life is so much better with less social media, and when the stuff I engage with is genuinely more positive. I don't have forever to live and don't need to waste time in a toxic relationship of any kind, especially with reddit

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[–] GreenCrush@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (7 children)

I think what I'm most sad about is losing easily searchable information. Finding an obsscure thread about some weird question I had is great. Maybe that will be preserved somehow. Idk. That and the more unhinged reddit posts and copypastas throughout history.

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[–] melodicangel@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've never been too sentimental about anything dying or changing into something else. Especially with Reddit since the CEO is so hell bent on converting it into your typical social media.

But no, I'm not too sad about it. Everything has it's time. Things come and go but the memories you make there certainly aren't invalidated by things going to shit.

[–] SoaringDE@feddit.de 7 points 2 years ago

I'd be more sad if the CEO wasn't such an idiot.

[–] Nullroad@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago

In a way, I mourned for reddit a long time ago. I stumbled (literally, stumbleUpon'd) reddit way back before the great Digg migration, when it was still mostly a haven for techies. The site went through a great many changes. Some good, some bad, some just... different.

At some point it got a little much. I've known for a number of years that I was growing increasingly alienated from it. Part of it was the Nazis and Reddit's inability or unwillingness to deal with any of the hate and bots. Part of it was the pervasive meme / low effort image culture. Those things were always there, but there was a time it'd get you the stink eye and an annoyed upvote.

Besides Hackernews (which has always been full of a certain Silicon Valley type), there wasn't really too many places to go. I've just been kinda waiting in the funeral parlor, hoping a ride to something else would come while I mostly browse the niche subreddits.

It's my hope that this incident starts the seeds of old forum culture as expressed through multiple lemmys. That's a pretty ambitious hope, but still. It's well past the time for the big social media networks to break up.

[–] jursed@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

for me its going to be very melancholic to see something I've (unfortunately) spent years on. I will actually be sad to see it go, not the app itself but all the smaller communities and the wiki's and all the knowledge that was shared. It was inevitable but I didn't think it would be so soon or so quick.

At the same time, good riddance.

[–] rskn@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

Nope they did this to themselves. They are just trying to squeeze more profits before they probably sell.

[–] nhgeek@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I am a little. I already deleted Apollo to break the habit. One might as well dive into the deep end. I'm all in on Lemmy now. I mourn the critical mass of Reddit but I'm hopeful Lemmy will rise to fill the void.

[–] chaoticPuppies@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

I deleted RiF a couple of days ago. RiF is reddit to me. I have countless subs and bots blocked. Still, I was scrolling r/all and realized how repulsed I was by the content. It was just page after page of junk. I still have my account, but I haven't logged in for days.

I am mourning the time I have wasted.

[–] Clbull@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Not really. Reddit has been an addiction for me at best, and a thorn in my side at worst.

What ruined Reddit for me was the community moderation. Not gonna name specific users but some of them are real assholes who will ban you because you violated some hidden rule not advertised on their subreddit, because you participated in another subreddit they don't like, or because they just had a bad day and felt like screwing with you.

Reddit has become this partisan mess where the right view you as a Commie if your beliefs are anywhere further left than Donald Trump, and where the left view you as a Nazi if your beliefs are further right than Bernie Sanders. Participate in the wrong community and you end up having a bot ban you from dozens of other subs. This goes entirely against the ethos that Reddit was originally founded on.

The worst part is that I cannot even use words like 'trump', 'incel', 'cuck', 'snowflake' etc on Reddit because most of the moderators have shadowbanned people from using such terminology.

I've been a Reddit user since 2010, shortly before the Digg-exodus, and I have never seen the website in such a bad state before. Only wish there was an alternative that wasn't a right-wing cesspool. Lemmy may be it.

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[–] biscuitsofdoom@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've checked out for a couple years ago.

In many ecosystems, wildfires are nature's way of regenerating the earth,

[–] spoonful@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Reddit needs to die unfortunately. The last 5 years of development was spent on shitty stickers and nfts that no one will even remember. The project has zero vision, no wonder they want to cash out.

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[–] goztboy@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Personally I'm glad to let it go. The site has been a source of frustration for me (not all the time but there's just some uniquely reddit things that get tiresome to run into constantly) for many reasons and having a reason to step away from it has made me realize I will only miss the one community on there I was active in.

The rest, I will let fade away from my memory and let it be.

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[–] Monkeyhog@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not really, This seems just as good, plus its a smaller.community so not as many assholes.

[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago

Personally, I've moved past that stage to the urinating on its grave stage.

[–] JohnQuincyKerbal@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I am absolutely going to miss RIF. That app provided such a clean filtered experience to the content I was interested in on Reddit for years.

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[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 5 points 2 years ago

I thought I would be more sad deleting all 10 years of content today. It's been cathartic. The place I joined is long gone, and there is not much left to mourn.

[–] Phantom_Engineer@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

Not really? Reddit has been on the downhill slide for ages now. I made this account two years ago, but there hasn't been enough content here to really do anything with until now. For me, it's like "eh, eff em," and has been for awhile, even before the API changes.

[–] lvxferre@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I've mourned more for the shells of the eggs that I broke today. That was a tasty omelette.

I'm genuinely happy that Reddit is dying. Yes, it'll lead to some information loss and that's bad, but we've been stuck in that abusive platform for too long. Now at least saner alternatives will get some room to grow.

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