4 ms·

You’re right that no mod owns a particular subreddit, but Reddit does not have a monopoly on communities either. There are a bunch of forums online which will

by xattt 3y ago

You’re right that no mod owns a particular subreddit, but Reddit does not have a monopoly on communities either. There are a bunch of forums online which will gladly accept an influx of refugees from reddit, and the world will move on. If there isn’t one, one will form, somewhere. However, past behaviour also predicts future behaviour. The current actions of board of directors (and the silence of others) speaks volumes. Reddit may go as far as salting the earth for communities that do end up successfully migrating. I wouldn’t put it past them to hire a troll farm to spam a niche community with low-quality content. It’s been a nice break away from Reddit.

firesteelrain 3y ago
The alternatives are crap right now and they might move on but unless the masses jump onto Lemmy or Mastodon, Reddit will continue to dominate. I tried those two other sites and they are just terrible.
- criddell 3y ago
  Do you really want an alternative? Everybody is different, but for me, the return on my time spent there was way too low. Rarely when I closed the window did I feel good about how I spent the previous 20-30 minutes. And I say that as someone with a very low bar for when time is well spent. Like John Lennon, I believe that time you enjoy wasting isn’t wasted. Reddit wasn’t clearing that bar for me. It felt like a slot machine. There was some compulsion to pull the handle again but ultimately I walked away less happy.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    I do. Reddit - specifically old.reddit.com - is the pinnacle of discussion board UIs (which is less of a commendation of Reddit, and more a damnation of every other platform, especially those that came after). And quality-wise, it's what you make of it - it's not a single site, it's a universe of mostly independent discussion boards, connected by SSO and a shared interaction model. Whether you spend time on Reddit's equivalent of HN or of 9gag, that's up to you - both exist, and it's not fair to condemn one because of the other. (Slot machine mechanics are, unfortunately, present to a degree in every discussion board, group chat and mailing list - other people posting potentially interesting content == variable-schedule reward, which is the way to get addicted fast.)
    - haswell 3y ago
      As a longtime (~15 year) user, I’m on the other side of the fence. Reddit has been on a downward slide for quite some time, and the quality of discussions there has been getting consistently worse. Many of the subs that used to bring me joy have been overtaken by the toxic sludge that you’ll find on other social media. There are still some pockets of goodness left, but it increasingly requires deliberate work to unsubscribe, apply keyword filters, etc. It has become increasingly difficult to justify my time spent there. None of this has to do with the UI or apps, and I had already decided to trial some time away from Reddit because I could feel it pulling me in daily, and increasingly I’d find that my time there was not well spent, and often made me feel angry after I’d encounter the same bullshit again and again. So this latest mess is not even the primary reason I’m leaving. It’s just a very very strong push over an edge I was already teetering over. I know many people who are in the same boat, and I’d argue that this is Reddit’s future. The latest actions are like a poison pill. They won’t kill the site overnight, but more and more people will feel poorly about using the site and implicitly supporting Spez’s bullshit. Reddit will survive like Twitter is surviving. It exists, but people don’t want to be there anymore, and the kinds of people who made it a compelling place to spend time are the kinds of users who are leaving in droves. I envision my future Reddit use looking more like my current google use. Something that will happen in an incognito window while searching for something specific. I don’t see myself continuing to spend time contributing.
      - SpecialistK 3y ago
        [dead]
  - vGPU 3y ago
    I really wish we could go back to forums again. The amount of knowledge lost to discord and mass account deletion is insane. For example, I was fixing a superautomatic espresso recently. I ended up finding the schematics I needed on an obscure Czech forum that didn’t come up on a google search. I found that forum by clicking through three other forums that were similarly obscure and that I have not been able to locate again. If the information located within had been posted on discord, it would have been lost. Forums with their own file hosting are often the last documentation we have of something, as file hosters die off. Ever noticed how google will say 600k results but only show you 1.5 pages? The mass knowledge of the internet is being lost.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
TBH, I can't remember all the drama and controversy over the years. This just seems like normal Reddit to me. It fits their MO to a tee. Sure things were different 2005, but for the last 5-10 years it's been pretty clear what direction reddit has been headed in. So, I can't agree more that past behavior predicts future behavior. Reddit's been like this for a long, long time.

by xattt 3y ago

firesteelrain 3y ago

The alternatives are crap right now and they might move on but unless the masses jump onto Lemmy or Mastodon, Reddit will continue to dominate. I tried those two other sites and they are just terrible.

criddell 3y ago
Do you really want an alternative? Everybody is different, but for me, the return on my time spent there was way too low. Rarely when I closed the window did I feel good about how I spent the previous 20-30 minutes. And I say that as someone with a very low bar for when time is well spent. Like John Lennon, I believe that time you enjoy wasting isn’t wasted. Reddit wasn’t clearing that bar for me. It felt like a slot machine. There was some compulsion to pull the handle again but ultimately I walked away less happy.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  I do. Reddit - specifically old.reddit.com - is the pinnacle of discussion board UIs (which is less of a commendation of Reddit, and more a damnation of every other platform, especially those that came after). And quality-wise, it's what you make of it - it's not a single site, it's a universe of mostly independent discussion boards, connected by SSO and a shared interaction model. Whether you spend time on Reddit's equivalent of HN or of 9gag, that's up to you - both exist, and it's not fair to condemn one because of the other. (Slot machine mechanics are, unfortunately, present to a degree in every discussion board, group chat and mailing list - other people posting potentially interesting content == variable-schedule reward, which is the way to get addicted fast.)
  - haswell 3y ago
    As a longtime (~15 year) user, I’m on the other side of the fence. Reddit has been on a downward slide for quite some time, and the quality of discussions there has been getting consistently worse. Many of the subs that used to bring me joy have been overtaken by the toxic sludge that you’ll find on other social media. There are still some pockets of goodness left, but it increasingly requires deliberate work to unsubscribe, apply keyword filters, etc. It has become increasingly difficult to justify my time spent there. None of this has to do with the UI or apps, and I had already decided to trial some time away from Reddit because I could feel it pulling me in daily, and increasingly I’d find that my time there was not well spent, and often made me feel angry after I’d encounter the same bullshit again and again. So this latest mess is not even the primary reason I’m leaving. It’s just a very very strong push over an edge I was already teetering over. I know many people who are in the same boat, and I’d argue that this is Reddit’s future. The latest actions are like a poison pill. They won’t kill the site overnight, but more and more people will feel poorly about using the site and implicitly supporting Spez’s bullshit. Reddit will survive like Twitter is surviving. It exists, but people don’t want to be there anymore, and the kinds of people who made it a compelling place to spend time are the kinds of users who are leaving in droves. I envision my future Reddit use looking more like my current google use. Something that will happen in an incognito window while searching for something specific. I don’t see myself continuing to spend time contributing.
    - SpecialistK 3y ago
      [dead]
- vGPU 3y ago
  I really wish we could go back to forums again. The amount of knowledge lost to discord and mass account deletion is insane. For example, I was fixing a superautomatic espresso recently. I ended up finding the schematics I needed on an obscure Czech forum that didn’t come up on a google search. I found that forum by clicking through three other forums that were similarly obscure and that I have not been able to locate again. If the information located within had been posted on discord, it would have been lost. Forums with their own file hosting are often the last documentation we have of something, as file hosters die off. Ever noticed how google will say 600k results but only show you 1.5 pages? The mass knowledge of the internet is being lost.

P_I_Staker 3y ago

TBH, I can't remember all the drama and controversy over the years. This just seems like normal Reddit to me. It fits their MO to a tee. Sure things were different 2005, but for the last 5-10 years it's been pretty clear what direction reddit has been headed in. So, I can't agree more that past behavior predicts future behavior. Reddit's been like this for a long, long time.