Same two reasons, but maybe in the opposite order. If Apollo is dead then by principle I’m not going to use Reddit by any other means. But if some other third party app had been banned and Apollo was still alive, I’m not sure I would have been strong enough to break away on principle alone.
3-7 dollars minimum monthly payment to reddit and no nsfw would make me leave Reddit pretty fast.
What I'm able to say does not come across well in text. Please know that I'm using your comment as a diving board into a larger conversation and that this isn't about your comment. I too am guilty of what I'm about to say.
But this attitude is the systemic reason why mega corporations, and billionaires are taking over. When the product we consume is good enough for us that we settle.
We're exhausted into complacency until we're personally affected by something.
Sorry, the we didn't start the fire remake really put me in a mood
Yeah I totally agree and understand your point! I was admitting my own lack of a backbone when it comes to convenience vs morality; I’m certainly guilty of taking the easy route over the “right” one in many situations. I don’t love it but hey, we each only have bandwidth to fight so many battles.
main reason is the app changes of course, but I've been getting sick of the site for quite awhile.
powermods that run hundreds of subreddits abusing their authority, everyone is snarky and rude, only approved stances are allowed and anything deviating from them get dogpiled/censored, the annoying redditisms (edit: Thank you kind stranger! Wow I didn't expect this to blow up! obvious fake stories in AITA/Relationships, etc).
the entire site was just getting really stale.
the upside was that it had an active forum for almost every niche interest, but that's also a negative as it really killed many of the small special interest communities.
You summarized my experience / feelings on the matter perfectly.
A few of the reddit mods were so obnoxious, they would ban you for posting to other subs they didn't like. Even if you had never been to their stupid sub or cared about it, you would get a random ban notification from some wacky niche sub.
On the one hand: who cares. But on the other hand: it doesn't feel like a very welcoming place when you check the site for the first time that day and some weirdo has banned you "because reasons".
I even saw one mod that would stalk individual users and mock them for getting banned from his precious sub. It was so absurd.
As for the typical users of reddit: I know it's a tired cliché...but it really was like a "hive mind" over there.
It also has a horrible new user experience. To get some basic level of karma you have to jump through hoops. The whole thing feels like a nasty reindeer game.
I'm really glad lemmy doesn't have karma.
My anecdotal take: I got banned from a random sub i hadn't heard of for comments in PolCompMemes and the ban message identified me as a nazi. I replied saying something like Ok, I don't use that sub so great effort, and not a nazi my flair is libleft ffs.
I got a 3day sitewide ban for harassing mods for that one reply to their message. Absolutely unhinged behavior, and the appeal wasn't even looked at. The only logical reason for this is advertising the small sub otherwise it is just a very stupid person wrote the banbot.
yea, I regularly deleted my account and made a new one.
each time, I would create my account.
have zero karma, start commenting to get karma, and all my comments were removed because I didn't have enough karma lmao
THIS. (Sorry, had to respond with a Reddit cliche)
Like you mentioned, the upside of communities for almost all niche interests is the thing that kept me there for years even after the front page went to shit. In addition to the things I was actively following, I really enjoyed stumbling into new niche subs and learning about something from a group of passionate experts by reading threads. I’m hoping we have that same sense of depth here soon too!
powermods that run hundreds of subreddits abusing their authority
Speaking of this, I really hope awkwardtheturtle had a meltdown. Talk about the worst of the worst mods on reddit.
Oh boy, you get an updoot for that!
Any time someone says upvote but replaces vote with anything I downdoot them.
You’re still replacing the word “vote” with something. It’s all annoying to me and my visceral reaction is to downvote. Petty and not something important, I know.
Ugh, not to mention the top comments on discussion-worthy topics just being a meme, one-liners or comment chains which somehow get 5000 upvotes like it was so note-worthy and significant when you could find the same thing in multiple posts in r/all for the past month. It still happens on Lemmy, but at least all the thoughtful comments aren't buried under them.
When I first learned that Reddit would be pricing out third-party apps I was angry and upset, but I still entertained the notion of maybe continuing to use old.reddit on the desktop (until they inevitably killed that). I like many of the communities there and didn't want to give them up.
But then came the AMA and the leaked memo and the crushing of the protests with threats and strongarm tactics. Everything spez wrote dripped with contempt for the community and the moderators that had made the site what it was through their unpaid labor. The message became clear: "Let the little users cry it out. They'll have their little tantrum and then they'll settle down and accept that the reality is that we can do anything we want to them and they have to just accept it. Their communities, their conversations, their culture, it all belongs to us, not to them. We have everything and they have nothing".
I'm not going back to that.
This x1000.
The complete disregard and disrespect to the people that made Reddit what it is was just downright awful. I’m not supporting that shit.
I loved Reddit… spend much of my free time on it, but I absolutely hope it all comes crushing down and takes spez with it.
Basically same idea here. After the AMA I was basically totally done. Fuck Spez and everything about how they've decided to run their site. I'm hoping that Lemmy ends up being a better version of reddit. I understand that not everyone wants reddit 2.0, but something like that but better would be amazing.
Yeah, I completely agree. The main app I use didn't even shut down (Relay) but the AMA convinced me to leave anyway. Spez and the rest of the admins came across as simply vile.
He fantasizes about owning slaves in a post-apocalyptic feudal society. The fact that he makes those sort of statements about the community, us, is just creepy as hell.
It left such a bad taste in my mouth realizing that they were absolutely just going to let people get their rage out, and then rely on the good ole human nature of just going with the flow. I mean realistically, once you have the momentum of a site like Reddit, you can do some pretty shitty stuff, and not get canned for it. I'm fairly certain they're just going to rely on that, and then make money on what's left after that.
I'll probably still keep using old.reddit.com, but making an account on Lemmy has like 0 opportunity cost, so why not right?
Same reason as everyone else, I reckon.
Apollo is the only way I’ve used reddit for about 6 years.
I don’t want ads, and I don’t want my data serving as an asset to capitalist pigs!
the fediverse was/is quite a daunting platform. I’m here for the long run (hopefully), but I worry that it will either continue to be a relatively vacant space compared to other media, or crumble under the weight of unexpected operating costs.
To anyone who has been here for quite some time, I ask you: what are some useful tricks to make the most out of the service?
the fediverse was/is quite a daunting platform. I’m here for the long run (hopefully), but I worry that it will either continue to be a relatively vacant space compared to other media, or crumble under the weight of unexpected operating costs.
As a veteran of Usenet/Alternet, the Fediverse feels nostalgically like home in a way many social media platforms failed to capture since then, at least for me. I think it has legs this time, with specialized "galaxies" catering to different media habits and preferences. You have imagos of other platforms for long- and short-form discussion, video, images and mixed-media chat here. The Fedipact even seems to be a good start towards limiting the influence of Big Tech and their playbook to Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. Well... this time™.
I also worry about it collapsing, but more from under its own weight of balkanization: ever more fragmented splinters of the same communities all isolated from one another through defederation and strife. Maybe that's an unavoidable end game for diversity in an ecosystem, or maybe it will scale this time without corporate interest driving engagement through controversy and rage?
We'll see. Nothing is forever, and something different usually comes along when you need it.
Anyway, I'm here for the same reasons as you and many others. It'll be a good thing we build here, if we can keep it.
Ha! Effnet Dalnet Undernet and Newnet represent! I was a Wolf on a certain room with certain eggdrop bots that did certain caching of info interesting to others :)
Seeing the way Reddit handled the protests. It’s one thing to have a business goal of getting everybody off of 3rd party apps (which was obviously the case). It’s another to lie about it, slander developers, threaten mods, etc.
The CEO basically said fuck you to like 15% of users, and hes doubling down on lies about it.
Spez has chased away the most active users and mods. Only lurkers and addicts will stay in the long run. This will hurt reddit. Hopefully.
To be honest I'm still winding down there.
But for me, once the blind moderators said they can't work with the new system, that's pretty definitive for me. When people with disabilities have found and built their own ways to exercise equal power with others and protect their communities, and then those ways are wantonly taken away from them — yeah, that's bad.
I'd been a redditor for about 14 years, if not longer (I was a sophomore in high school, I believe, and I'm 30 now). I've been using 3rd party apps for about as long as they've been around. I tried the official app once a few years ago and really disliked it compared to the experience from things like Baconreader and AlienBlue.
The fact that the apps are dead is obviously shitty, but I decided to quit Reddit because of what the API changes represent - the inevitable descent of a capitalist enterprise into full-bore profit extraction. In my view, that's not going to work for Reddit, which seems like an inherently unprofitable enterprise. Any changes that will drive revenue will also substantially hurt the things that makes Reddit useful and fun in the first place.
More ads? That actively degrades the experience. More monetization of little digital badges? That's not going to be enough to generate the revenue they want, and it's incredibly stupid anyway. Paywalling subreddits? That will kill the entire site in a heartbeat.
Ultimately I just don't think Reddit even can be profitable to the degree that corporate overlords want it to be. Either it's going to die quickly, or it's going to gradually get even worse, dying slowly.
Pretty much the same for me too. It's been a slow burn for probably 5 years imo and the api issue and mod abuse just pushed me over the edge.
My main reason? The administration team, I can understand needing money and wanting to charge for the API services, and while they were higher than normal I would have probably been okay with paying a subscription to help keep the third party app I was using running.
That was until I saw the CEOs response to the development community and anyone who remotely asked about it. That was before he absolutely butchered the ama, and before he slandered one of the largest third-party developers in the community, and then when being called with evidence the bull crap he was spreading instead decided to attack said Community member saying that he didn't realize that it was recorded and that he stands by what he said. That was before he decided to threaten the moderator teams on the platform who may I remind you was working for free as volunteers comparing them to a landed gentry.
It is very clear that what he says publicly is polar opposite of how he administrates, he may say that Reddit is an open Community where the community has final say, but his actions say completely otherwise; it's his way or the highway. And since he is the CEO of the platform I'm choosing the highway and clearly I'm not the only one.
At this point even if he decided to do a complete 180, and made a formal apology to the site and reversed the actions of the API changes(which I personally think financially wise would be unwise they should have funneled it into Reddit Gold somehow) I wouldn't go back, it's clear how the leadership is on the site and quite frankly that's not something I want to contribute to.
Losing Apollo for one.
But what really actually disgusted me was how Spez is throwing people like Christian under the bus.
I would’ve gladly paid for Apollo and given Reddit a fair cut. Not anymore. Lemmy seems pretty great so far.
The tone shift, mainly. I mean, I knew it was going downhill, but I didn't realize it'd happen so quickly until the huge shift in tone after the protests. Then it kinda clicked that "whoa this place is turning into a shithole fast".
It's good old cancer. The influx people don't really know how to use the community, they don't "get it", and now there are enough of them to resist being driven away. It's unstoppable now. Every sub slowly turns into a shitpost sub, bit by bit, as the negatively creeps in subtly.
A single mod team can't hold it back, trolls are too smart for that, and trolling mods is too fun. It takes a larger community culture to keep them at bay. Lose that ... and watch for yourself. Should take a year or two, off the top of my head. Not even r/humansbeingbros with a mod army could withstand the coming times of darkness and despair. It would merely be the Rivendell among Sauron's endless hordes. lol
I gotta admit, I thought reddit was immune. The karma system. But a critical mass of users is capable of undermining and subverting it, and then spez came. While he could backtrack and possibly cure the cancer by inspiring some decency again, I don't think that's very likely. No profit in that.
I was on the fence about it until the Spez AMA. Then, I decided I'd be leaving on the 30th.
Then, I had a user call me "fucking stupid" for supporting a sub shutting down, and that was the final straw for me. I had seen how friendly people on Lemmy are and this showed me how toxic Reddit is by comparison. So I immediately nuked all my comments & posts and deleted my account. This was around two weeks ago and I've been much happier here.
In that AMA I discovered a subreddit literally named friends of spez they were going around that ama and raining people with legitimate criticisms with downvotes although most of the other redditors tipped the scales fairly quickly they were also throwing reports on these users as well and of course they weren’t banned because they’re friends with spez
I'd been looking for a good reason to leave reddit for a while.
Lately I've been growing tired of the push towards reddit mobile app. I only use the desktop app, even on mobile, and slowly but surely reddit has been hiding things behind their app or requiring you to sign in. I don't want to sign in, I don't want a mobile app.
Despite how big it is, it's very easy to not actually engage with anyone. I miss forums, so I didn't like that.
Opening up popular posts and scrolling down pages of witty one liners.
General rudeness, brigading, and the all or nothing mentality concerning many topics.
Reading pretty much any comment in /r/worldnews is discouraging.
I know people like googling with 'reddit' at the end, but marketers also know this and I've become suspect of 'reddit recommended' products. In general, reddit is turning into a product and not a place of knowledge and discussion.
I know this is probably my own reddit settings, but I don't like how comments have been collapsing. So I open a post with 9000 comments, I see like 3 top comments and have to click to open the children, which can take a second to load. If I reload the page then I lose my place. Clunky. (I've never used any app to access reddit).
World news is one of the main reasons i left Reddit especially the brigadering and the same copypasta that some “users” post in every thread about a specific conflict
Because of the amount of times i have seen the same comment spammed in multiple subreddits in just 3 days I naturally reported one of these comments as spam and insted of taking it down they just perma banned me from Reddit
Part of it was the platform getting worse, sure. All the reasons others said, the algorithm getting worse, the API, etc.
A big part of it is the people. The more people from Facebook and Tumblr and other big apps came to reddit the worse it got. It also happened at a time that subreddits and the algorithms and rules were creating stronger echo chambers. What it created was incredibly toxic braindead circlejerks.
I'm so tired of the braindead circlejerks. Basically everything was. I'm so tired of seeing copy pasted musk threads where everyone tells everyone else how much they hate musk saying the same lines over and over, for example. Or repeating the same misinformation about topics they're fired up about because it fits their bias, while also complaining about misinformation. Pushing the dawn project videos for Tesla circlejerks or literally anything related to crypto for example.
I hope one of these new forums or social media sites popping up creates good communities and somehow avoids creating these echo chambers and reinforcing them with their algorithms, moderation, general design, etc.
I miss old reddit and old forums and IRC so much these days. They weren't perfect but they weren't as bad as modern social media.
I'm with you. Visible vote counts and karma should be gotten rid of entirely (not just optional).
I had been using Apollo for 6 years. I couldn't go back to their miserable app. Still can't stand their desktop mode either
I’m not BillMurray, but I am an Apollo user and I can’t believe how bad the official Reddit app is. I’ve started using Wefwef today.
Looks great so far, not so many communities unfortunately but you have to start somewhere.
I was a mod on Reddit so I was personally aware that for years Reddit's mod tools have been totally inadequate for the job, that Reddit has been promising to give us something better, and that Reddit has failed to deliver. Honestly, it was even worse than just not delivering: we'd get new tools that didn't solve the main problems, were only available on the iOS app, coming to Android eventually, and coming to the websites never. Third party API tools were the only thing that made modding vaguely functional, even on a small sub.
I'm also a supporter of accessibility in apps, which is also something Reddit has been promising for years and Reddit has failed to deliver. Again, third party API tools are the only thing that makes Reddit vaguely accessible right now.
Reddit's API changes are not realistic to implement in a single month. This was made clear early on and Reddit has refused to budge. So at this point Reddit is knowingly upending an ecosystem that makes their site usable by groups of users with no first-party replacements ready. And given their history of failing to deliver these very tools, I have no confidence that they will ever do so.
And THEN the Spez AMA happened. I was hoping he'd listen to the community, engage with our concerns, or at the very least actually do an AMA. Instead he got caught lying, he got caught astroturfing, and he inadvertently made it clear that the real issue was that he was butthurt over these third party apps being better at business than Reddit was. Oh, and later we found out the Reddit CEO really admired Elon Musk's handling of Twitter, a platform I left for all the reasons Spez seems to like it.
Even if none of these issues affected me personally (which they do), Reddit has made it clear that I just can't trust them to run a fair and functional platform. They do not take their obligations to their users, mods, and business partners seriously. If they don't like the way the game is going, they'll change the rules without warning. They will promise features they will not deliver even when those features are essential to their site working for the users who keep it alive.
I don't want to help Reddit build what Reddit wants to make anymore.
API bullshit
Steve Huffman’s behavior
(Final straw) Spez said that he spoke with Elon Musk and looked up to his “cost saving” measures. It is apparent he wants Reddit to be like Twitter so I said fuck it I’m out
This! I was initially just planning to support the blackout. Then huffy opened his mouth just as i was beginning to get comfortable with lemmy. I've continued to check in on a few subs and posted links to matching Lemmy communities, but deleted the app yesterday.
That one article that coined the term 'enshittification' and made me realise centralised, for-profit social media will always turn garbage after awhile. I'm tired of changing sites every few years. Time to use something that'll stay good this time.