- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
I’m so glad I have a Reddit alternative now like Lemmy. Every news article I see about some corporate move Reddit makes, it seems further and further removed from the community-driven website I had hoped it would be.
I’m thinking the API protests would have been more effective if y’all just stopped moderating entirely instead of locking down subreddits.
Let the site turn into an absolute cesspool.
Is that the site we all left cuz it’s a turd? Yeah? Don’t care. It’s called principle.
There’s still one protest possible.
LEAVE REDDIT!!! GET THE FUCK OFF OF IT! LET IT DIE. MAKE IT DIE!
Same with twitter.
And all things Meta.
Twitter and Reddit went so much to shit and lowered the bar so much that Meta actually became almost not bad in my eyes, almost.
Meta is still on a whole other level when it comes to data privacy.
Gee are you implying that storing passwords in plaintext is a bad thing? /s
That’s security, not privacy.
That’s security, not privacy.
helenslunch - the slayer of untruths
How much privacy do you have when someone has your account password?
You have none, because your security has been compromised. This is a flaw. Poor privacy is intentional.
I’m still pissed off that I’ve never had a facebook. I never gave them any info about me. I gave them no reason to have a profile on me.
Yet because OTHER people have facebook, they know my name, my address, my phone number. I don’t know if they can identify me in pictures that other people post, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
That shouldn’t be allowed. I did not consent.
Correct. And the same is true for the mobile phones, carriers, and a slew of apps that all look at contacts. They know who you are and who your friends and family are.
There’s a guy in the world of pro wrestling named Jim Cornette that said a quote this reminds me of.
Cornette is known for holding grudges, and being hateful. He keeps a shitlist of people he hates.
Well in the 1980s he was working for a wrestling company, and hated one of his coworkers for a year. Then a new guy came in and was so much worse.
Then one day he says to the first guy “You know, you used to be at the top of my shit list, but with all these new fuckheads coming in, you managed to move down a few spots simply by not doing anything!”
They’re doing a Bradbury, in a way, kind of like Tumblr and Steam. Everyone else is shooting themselves in the foot.
I think Meta is doing a decent job with Instagram. I mean except for collecting all possible data and psychological profiling of users to serve them targeted ads, it’s a decent enough platform. And the only one still allowing for engagement with your actual friends rather than exclusively professional content creators.
Even if you ignore all the ads and data-mining IG its still a shit experience.
- You can’t share any links, which does nothing but make it a worse experience, because people just use annoying workarounds.
- All the buttons for user profiles, hashtags, and comments are impossibly small.
- In the search function you can conveniently “flick” between posts so you don’t have to line each one up perfectly on the screen, but this works nowhere else in the app for some reason.
- They created what are essentially 2 completely isolated social media platforms (posts and stories) into the same app, which results in fragmentation of where people post and where you have to look find their posts.
- Every time I try to scroll down, I scroll to the side instead.
- Every time you open the app, it shows you a post, and then that post disappears 2 seconds later.
- They abuse the DM system by cramming other notifications into it for tags and “broadcasts”, presumably to force you to receive them after you’ve disabled all the other notifications.
- Of course there’s the flaw of not allowing text posts, which again does nothing except force people to post photos of text, which undermines the fundamental purpose of the platform.
- Incessant “suggested” posts that I do not have and have never expressed interest in.
- No scroll bar for video, so if there’s something you missed or want to watch again, you have to watch to the end or start from the beginning.
- Read receipts subject users to abuse. Any other platform you can disable them.
- Standard image posts are hidden by the algorithm, so no point in even posting them anymore, which essentially makes it almost entirely a TikTok/Snapchat clone.
- You click the play button on an image, thinking it’s a video, but it’s just a still image with annoying ass audio.
- Auto-playing videos.
- Stories just flip along without you doing anything, and trying to go back and see them again is a nightmare.
I could go on but I digress.
WTF are you on about? no one likes instagram shorts and the feed is a jumbled mess of bullshit and advertisements. I deleted mine a long time ago and don’t regret it for a second.
no one likes instagram shorts
it’s “reels” i think tiktok recommends better videos, but IG has closed the gap in recent years.
I mean except for collecting all possible data and psychological profiling of users to serve them targeted ads, it’s a decent enough platform.
It’s not. Instagram is popular the way it is because “It’s going to be a lot harder to pull off massive protests” there.
Don’t worry that’ll change, they haven’t owned it for that long yet.
they haven’t owned it for that long yet
they acquired it in 2012.
…OK, well I guess we wait until the wrong person is in charge of that division. Also I’m old because that feels like yesterday…fuck.
The problem is that FB is the “core forum” for tons of niche hobbies. Irts the only reason I still have a account. They successfully killed off the old php forums.
If you live in rural America sone information is only posted to Facebook, from private businesses to small county or town governments
Additionally FB Marketplace killed Craigslist, at least in my area (also US). Nextdoor somewhat is a counter but that has its own problems.
Meta probably is the hardest one given that in many influencal countries WhatsApp is the app everyone uses for communication
It’s also the main organization tool for “groups”. I have tried to migrate mine to other platforms with no success.
And also the biggest online classifieds marketplace for trading goods. Even though it’s a fucking awful experience and simply ignores any filters you give it. If you want to actually sell your stuff, or sell it for market value, without shipping, you just have to use it.
Yep, agreed. The biggest problem there is that Meta is generally not making life worse for its users than they’re used to. Facebook and Instagram are giving you almost the same shitty experience you got a decade ago.
at least they are developing affordable vr
And locking it behind their account system
Affordable purely by the money you pay upfront. They earn more by the ridiculous amount of tracking they do, and they’re also forcing you to stay within their services.
As with so many other things, you’re paying with more than just money.
they’re also pushing the technology and pressuring other manufacturers to adopt and be competitive
Yeah they’re subsidizing the price to get between you and reality.
Using Reddit as a platform to protest Reddit is even more idiotic than staging a sit in at Disneyworld to protest against Disney.
“Hey we’re getting revenue and media is gonna give us a bajillion clickthroughs from rubbernecking, please, if you can still protest in any capacity on our site please do, make it a huge spectacle”
Like what the hell are they even protesting about now? What is left to protest about? And why? Just go.
I left Reddit 6 months ago when I was permabanned for asking a question about what is forbidden. They can kiss my ass. And I hope they go broke.
I genuinely tried to leave but lots of communities didn’t leave Reddit and therefore had to stick to Reddit. I did with RRSS-feed and avoided their app.
Recently figured out we can Sideload Apollo app with almost all functions available. So did that.
Thankfully never used twitter! I read valuation dropped from 44B to 9,4B recently.
You can create the community and begin the migration
I’m not the right person to start a community, that’s the main problem. I’m not fit to be a Moderator and such.
It’s super easy, the main problem is no one will move. I still moderate a couple on reddit, but it was hard enough getting people even there, certainly no one will come here.
I feel like internet users have become so lazy, stubborn, and resistant to change. I’m pretty sure it used to be easier to get people to move to new things like new forums, Xfire, Ventrillo, IRC, ICQ, AIM… people used to try new things
Eh, not everyone is fit to be a moderator.
I don’t feel I have the time (this issue is made worse by my timezone not aligning up with the most active hours for communities), nor do I have the maturity and level-headedness to be a fair and impartial moderator.
E: oops replying 3 days later. I’m surprised this thread is still in my feed…
I’m pretty sure it used to be easier to get people to move to new things like new forums, Xfire, Ventrillo
In some respects it was somewhat easier to get them to be on multiple platforms instead of moving. Think of the original messenger proliferation, where sometimes people would be on IRC, XMPP, AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, or etc. so much so that you had software like Pidgin and Trillian to help consolidate server/chat rooms and friends lists to more easily chat with all your contacts.
Even with Ventrilo, I remember being open to also switching to Mumble or vice versa if there was some hiccup with either.
There have always been people like that, it’s just more noticeable now because the numbers are larger.
People still use MySpace and Digg, and there are people on Bluesky, Mastodon, here, etc.
It’s in its afterlife phase right now. Much of the comment sections on any given subreddit are full of newbies using colloquialisms from other platforms. e.g. Users call subreddits “groups” which I think originates from Facebook. Or users trying to “bump” posts. There’s a lot of signs that the core userbases are gone.
The hold outs for these sites are so fucking dumb. They act like social media is somehow an important part of their existence when just 10, 20 years ago it was an emerging technology. These early iterations of social media are toxic as fuck. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They don’t deserve your patronage and are taking your goodwill and turning it into social decay.
10-20 years and you people can’t give it up for something better. There is no argument. You don’t owe them loyalty. They aren’t innovating. They have contributed to the rise of authoritarianism.
Yeesh.
No, because then they’ll all flood here. Then I’ll have to consult with 9,006 different rules between each sub, while subsequently making sure I’m bending to each power-mods weird and unwritten agenda.
No I’m good with reddit. I encourage reddit. And I encourage all the weirdos to use reddit!
Nope.
If you encourage it, it will continue to fester and rot, and the entire internet will lower their expectations.
We need to destroy these companies. We need to smash them to pieces, and hey guess what - it’s going to hurt a bit! We need to be prepared to stand up against evil, corrupt, racist, bigoted robber barons. We need to make some sacrifices to fix the internet.
Burn the fuckers to the ground, and let spez rot in a hole.
I think you have misconstrued what I’m saying here. I hope reddit exists to collect the weirdos, and be a breeding ground for the gross shit it is, and keep it away from here. We don’t need to inherit the 2024 users of reddit, no one wants them. Let them echo in their bot chambers until they literally spin into the ground. Keep Lemmy normal.
I get what you’re saying, but it never works like that.
You said it yourself: “I hope reddit exists to…be a breeding ground…” And it will. The worst of humanity will collect and fester and grow in numbers. And what’s going to happen then? Some will spill over to here, and other ‘safe’ communities.
There’s no way we can thrive and simultaneously isolate ourselves from assholery; and by encouraging it to thrive elsewhere, we’re only expanding its power and reach; and at the same time, enriching and empowering asshole billionaires like spez, Zuck, Musk, etc.
No, we need to fight them. We need to wade hip-deep in the shit to shovel it down the drain, rather than hoping it’ll just go away on its own.
Look at it another way: If you have a garden, what happens if you designate one corner as “the weed corner?” It grows, spreads, and takes over the rest of the garden.
We can fight them, but ultimately these companies have the control. They can enrich and empower, and there’s probably not a lot we can ultimately do about it. When the chips fall, I’d rather they just stay on a sub and endlessly echo chamber themselves into oblivion. Some will come here, but it seems like most will stay there until something ultra stupid forces them here. And I mean at this point, even ultra stupid hasn’t, so yeah. If they have to collect somewhere, I’d personally rather it be there than here. I think that’s the main point I’m making.
A friend and I were recently discussing how spineless modern boycotts are.
We set a goddamn deadline for when the Reddit boycott ended. No wonder Spez just waited. Most people then just continued using the website. What a disgrace.
Imagine if after one week of the genocide in Gaza, the BDS efforts just stopped. A boycott must be indefinite. It should go on until demands are met.
…I’m gonna go ahead and say it.
I like it better here.
Same. This place is great, even with the tankies from lemmy.ml and the fascists from hexbear, at least we somehow still get along.
Not all of us are tankies fwiw, I just wanted to be on the largest and most well-supported instance with generally the least amount of downtime.
What’s the deal with having a .world user complain about ml and hexbear in every single thread lately?
It’s crazy. Almost like we all have the freedom to say whatever the fuck we want, including complaining, because we fucking can.
Having those arround adds some flavour to my feed. I’m like “ooh so that’s what they are up to” I wish that smaller communities thrive but well.
Lemmy was better before the Reddit exodus last year, when people started insulting others by calling them tankies and fascists. Before that, it was much more peaceful.
He says from his 7 month old acct.
No chance that is an alt account?
No chance whatsoever to hold alternate accounts on this federated social media website that are all incapable of account consolidation and OTP validation like reddit can /s
No chance they were a lurker?
It was still full of tankies though, lemmygrad was the second biggest instance and you’d see it everywhere
They were tankies and fascists before anyone ever came here and found out that they were.
Calling them such didn’t create them.
Basically… A tankie isn’t not a tankie just because theres no one there to accuse them of being one.
hexbear isn’t fascist
They are heavily biased towards China and Russia, two countries with fascist governments. That kinda speaks for itself, even if they claim to be communists or socialists.
Don’t confuse authoritarian regimes with fascism. China is an authoritarian state running a diluted version of communism, but it’s not fascist. Russia under Putin is leaning more towards fascism these days for sure, but they’re not fascist outright yet.
Maybe what the hexbear folks gravitate around the most is the idea of authoritarianism. The flavour doesn’t matter as much.
They share the same positions on global politics as pretty much every Marxist-Leninist political party on the planet. You may not like those positions, but trying to characterise them as actually far-right extremist is absurd horseshoe theory nonsense.
Liberals & social democrats on lemmy.world acting like NATO, the US Democratic Party, and capitalism are the real bulwarks against fascism is amusing.
Once you get into Leninist territory the difference between the far left and the far right blurs into meaninglessness.
Stalin made a deal to carve up Poland with Hitler
Steve Bannon cites Lenin as an inspirational figure.
Communist regimes have historical brutally repressed religious, sexual, and racial minorities.
I could continue but you get the point. People obsessed with control and domination always end up acting the same
This place feels like old reddit. When we could have actual discussions and not just be downvoted by bots. It’s so much better here
And you can still tailor it to yourself. Instances have different mindsets to different topics and things they allow or don’t and there’s tons of people to agree with or disagree with but everyone is cordial.
I just don’t have a reason to go back
The lack of commercialization being shoved down and up your orifices is really nice.
It’s so much better. Personally I don’t hope it grows much either. Satisfies my content itch, have still had some good quality convos here, seen some great comments threads. Absolutely none of the bullshit that Reddit purposely encourages. Plus most of the zeebs and the chronically offended seemed to have stayed with reddit, and I’m super OK with that.
I agree with everything you said, but I gotta ask: What is a zeeb?
I believe the definition is somebody who is totally lame.
I’d argue Lemmy is turning into its own echo chamber. I’ve seen some mods power tripping just like good old Reddit. I erroneously thought people would learn from past mistakes, but sadly this is not what happened.
Then just go to a different Instance. I agree the powermods are a headache, but at least with Lemmy they have way less power. You can start a new sub with a matching name on a different Instance, and draw people away from the power mods. People get pretty sick of the power mods, pretty fast.
We all do
At this point I’m more or less done with Reddit. My latest ban was because I posted a screenshot of an ad with a wacky old person comment to r/oldpeoplefacebook. I carefully smudged out the person’s name and profile pic…and got a three-day site-wide ban for sharing personal information. I protested, they said, nope, you shared personal information. All I can figure is they decided the advertiser’s name is personal info, which would make it even more bizarre because I’d say about half the posts have group or advertiser names unedited.
People they let mod, can end up getting this really bizarre God complex not dissimilar to what you see in university settings, their word goes, questioning their word is a sin and they’ll just double down.
Stop using Reddit, problem solved
I came here to banish reddit but this thing wont leave my feed. I guess I’m going to have to take the time to filter the word.
You know what’s not impossible? Leaving that shit hole and never coming back.
It’s possible but reddit isn’t the only one looking for engagement, so are individual users. If a site has more users, it has more engagement and content. It is also not impossible to drop the lemmy name when you do go back there to make people aware of the alternative.
Someone dropped the name lemmy over there, so now I’m here checking it out. Screw reddit, man.
My thought exactly. They can always do like me and nope the fuck out of there.
I left and joined Lemmy. After a couple of months of being flooded by politics in /c/memes, actually it’s everywhere, and very little new content I started going back. Now I doomscroll both. I usually head to reddit after a couple of posts which portray me as a fascist because I’m not a Marxist.
Yeah I’m thinking about leaving Lemmy. Not sure where to go but this place does not have diversity of thought or dialog.
True but how do you get the message out when they control the media?
That’s not a good method though on it’s own, there needs to be effort to undermine them. And since they don’t want to do peaceful protests, the only option left are the more violent and less legal ones. The ones that compromise their platform and its data.
And moving to a different, more decentralized shithole?
Lemmy has the same power tripping admins and mods, just more of them and each with a new and unique bias. You don’t hate AI? Ban. You acknowledge certain genocide? Ban. You made fun of my typo? Ban.
Unlike the reddit, you can always make your own instance and host your own communities and nobody will ever ban you. That’s the whole point of being distributed.
Same as subreddits. The problem is most communities are on .lm and .world, and already established.
Again, the point is that nobody can ever stop you from running a community as you see fit, unlike reddit, which easily ban you and your community for any or no reason. And if your community is run well and the other has indeed power-trippin mods, the people will come to yours, as has happened multiple times before. So no, it’s not the same shithole, unless you make one.
Not the same shithole, a more decentralized one.
And if shitty moderation would mean people leave, reddit wouldn’t have any users. Alas…
People do and have left communities in the past. /r/Marijuana to /r/trees comes immediately to mind and there have been many many others. But leaving for an entirely different service has a way higher executive cost. Once people are in the fediverse however, the cost to switching primary communities is not that high, and we’ve seen that away when people moved from !risa@startrek.website to !tenforward@lemmy.world due to mod actions.
Wrong instance I guess. Yeah, Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad and hexbear are toxic as hell, but there are really nice instances out there. I chose dbzer0 and it’s great here. We also have many interesting threads about locally hosted FOSS AI. db0 himself is quite involved in this topic, he’s the initial author of things like AI Horde. Basically everyone on db0 I’ve seen acknowledges the active genocide that’s being conducted by the Israeli fascist government. Other topics on the instance are anarchism and of course piracy.
Which is great, but for “news” there seems to be one major community and even then there’s like 3 comments on the typical post. Any “news” communities on other instances have zero.
I have very popular hobbies (football, formula1, to name a few) and there is no community for them. Just not enough users.
That’s exactly why more people need to leave Reddit and other corporate social media platforms
Yes, they need, but for “normies” there’s little reason to, and you have the first mover penalty.
You did not make fun of my typo? Believe it or not, also ban.
We have the best commenters. Because of ban.
Public modlogs and federation help fight this.
Helps document this, does little to fight it.
FUCK SPEZ
The only way to win the reddit game is to not play.
How about a nice game of Chess?
Launches entire US nuclear arsenal against Russia
Can we launch it against Spez?
Very good Joshua
I just lost The Game
Moderators will now have to submit a request if they want to switch their subreddit from public to private.
But do they have to submit a request if they tell the audience “fuck it, this is now a sub about X, we’ll remove everything that’s not about X”?
…In fact, fuck any particular topic - if the mods approve of it, every subreddit can actually be about whatever people think it should be about, now that we think about it. If the mods don’t do it, will the admins do it? The answer is: Highly unlikely
It’s amazing to me that so many people are willing to work as unpaid moderators so that Reddit’s investors can make more money.
Ideally, it would be because they care for the community they moderate, which I believe is the reason most mods do it.
Then you have creatures like awkwardtheturtle, who knows what motivates them.
I would assume Awkward is motivated by narcissism and/or because they’re a power-hungry freakazoid, but who knows? 🤷
it’s power. power motivates and corrupts.
If all mods quit that’d be perfect. Reddit has shown they’ll replace mods when they actually need to (or want to). But if no regular users wanted to pick it up then they’d have to pay admins to moderate. I don’t think we’ll see it though. There’s always going to be someone who wants it enough who has enough time for whatever reason.
Reddit has shown they’ll replace mods when they actually need to (or want to).
But, their business model doesn’t work unless those mods are working for free. So, while they may replace mods, unless people keep signing up to work for free to help a for-profit company deliver value to its shareholders, eventually it’s going to collapse.
The other option is for all the mods to quit. AI can probably do a lot of basic tasks, but without mods they wouldn’t have a site pretty quickly.