Reddit was something unique and personal to each user. Some it was new, some it was the only place to find specific tech or other advice that wasn't corrupted by ads and algorithms on goggle and other big corporations.
Reddit was my way of disengaging from world news before I knew about anxiety, and how things could affect me and become personal even though I had no way to help world events. So I used it to personalize my mental diet, if I was creative I could sub to many craft subs like leather or metal etc, it's where I went to get other perspectives on movies and content that I didn't fully understand.
End of the day, is all that possible still on Reddit, kinda, but it's going away, and they pushed me personally to leave as I could see it was becoming google/Facebook, ad algorithms to push what people pay for or get paid for. So time to reset.
Become involved, I'm way more involved and adding to discussions on the new sites I'm on. Everyone adding comments and posts and perspectives and opinions are building this up from bottom up.
You are the future, make your perspective part of the future by helping guide these new sites to something we can be proud of.
I’m upvoting your comment because you bring up great points, but I personally disagree with the disengaging from world events aspect. I’ll miss the niche subreddits that helped you solve the most random of issues, but I think reddit was far from a great place to disengage from news and the political discourse brought by news. Ever since the 2016 election cycle, I personally saw a considerable increase of posts regarding politics that came from both established subreddits and new ones that popped up (like /r/enoughtrumpspam which simply added more spam to the pile).
I think Trump’s campaign and presidency really ignited a lot of this, and while I neither like nor support Trump, I miss when the biggest disruptions were from isolated events (like the Occupy Wall Street movement or the Ellen Pao fiasco) rather than 4 years of a presidential tenure.
After years of nonsense, it all just got tiring. You can curate your reddit experience, but what happens when all the political doom scrolling finds its way into your favorite subreddits?
Kbin and the rest of the fediverse will grow, and I’m aware that the same kind of posting will find its way here, too. Thankfully the fediverse lets you subscribe to multiple communities of the same name, so maybe /m/news isn’t up one’s alley but /c/news is, for example.
I didn’t realize how shit reddit was getting until I stopped using it. The constant barrage of political shit accompanied by low effort comments/puns did a number on my happiness. I stopped using Facebook for similar reasons.
I’m glad you’re also adopting the mindset of being an active contributor. For years I also just would scroll and seldom upvote, but if we want to make “this house a home”, we need to put in the effort ourselves! I look forward to seeing how this all plays out. So far, I am very optimistic. I hope you find your niche interested here sooner than later!
After years of nonsense, it all just got tiring. You can curate your reddit experience, but what happens when all the political doom scrolling finds its way into your favorite subreddits?
I'm not much into US politics, but you know, this reminds me of why I started disengaging from my own country subreddit. At the start it was mostly about the people and the community, and I liked talking to people and hearing their problems. I was hosting regular get-togethers and eventually became a mod. As Reddit got more mainstreatm, the anti-government political people started coming in and well, I don't want to be hearing about moaning all the time. These people also had a terrible persucation complex (not helped by my country's history of surpressing opposition views), so any attempt to moderate these people when their posts and comments got excessive and off-topic was met with fierce pushback. I just wanted a more positive place for people, instead of endless political bickering.
Until I got to the part about your country's history of suppressing opposition, I thought you were talking about my country's subreddit!
We went through the exact same trajectory from being a small friendly place with meetups, getting bigger, becoming negative and political arguments all the time. In the end I stopped dropping in there at all.
Might have worked. They created one for my country, and also we could filter out politics on the main sub, but some people still just bring it up in other threads.
I always stuck with front page and never was on popular or all, I feel that was my saving grace. Also reposts and crossposted content drove me batty, so overtime unsubbed from groups that got political or negative. I wasn't subbing to just kitty cat pictures, more so hobbies, movies, and specific YouTubers like rlm etc. That's why I mentioned that everyone's experience was different, just a few different subs and the whole experience is different.
I'm in a demographic that people actively try to push and radicalize as well, so even if I am frustrated with things and how they affect me, I always keep one foot out and try to be super aware of that. I feel some, not all obviously get caught up over time and it erodes who they are and normalizes some really crazy things. So when I realize something like American politics is affecting me and my day, as a Canadian, I step back and look at what I'm letting into my mental diet.
End of day I hope we all learn from the past and can improve on what worked and avoid what didn't. There's no reason to not learn from the past and try to grow in a positive way.
Absolutely this. It got very homogenized. I joined reddit for the variety of people and their ability to understand topics I'd like to understand better. Then it all turned to bots and reposts. Then I would unsub from one subreddit and migrate to the new sub that was similar to the sub I just abandoned until the new sub became infested with bots and reposts, then rinse and repeat.
I feel like I can do away with the doomscrolling and time-wasting, but it's the specific advice and hobby subs that will be difficult to tear away from completely.
I'm also going to have trouble avoiding my city's local subreddit. It's definitely a hub for everything going on here, and I've made some real life friends on there who I plan on keeping up with.
What I liked about reddit was its "googleability". You had a question and found an answer without reading through an endless article that winds it's way through rephrasing your question 5 times, adds extensive biographies of everyone mentioned, the wider history of the problem and the author's grandmother, all to pad the article and have you scroll through more adds.
But now there's ChatGPT, so most of my "googling" can be done that way, and I don't have to scroll through walls of puns or "this is the way" or "thanks for the gold, kind stranger", or "take my updoot and get out". I wonder how much of that bullshit were bots, anyway.
First thing I did when I got chat got was use it as a search engine, it's not perfect, but google should wake up, when something is better at its own game accidentally, imagine what's possible if they don't fix their algorithm
People who hoard more money than they can spend in several lifetimes while people are literally dying in the streets cannot be good. These things are mutually exclusive.
For me personally it's more a question of does your money hoarding system exploit people or is it family money that's been made unethically. I think keeping that kind of money to yourself is unethical. And I don't mean you should go living from riches to rags but recognize that you own something to society and do something about it.
Another way to describe individuals who hoard enormous amounts of wealth to the detriment of society and other humans is ... pathologically unsound and incapable of compassion or empathy for others around them
Yes, but you can boost your own comments to counteract the downvotes. The whole system is sketchy at best and shouldn't be relied on to determine anything about a user.
If you click on "more" you can also see everyone who up/downvoted and boosted a comment/post. So seeing that you upvoted/boosted yourself might be frowned upon by some. But who cares
The upvote button on kbin was originally mapped to boosts. People didn't care for they, and it was incongruent with how Lemmy does it. So, they changed the functionality, but didn't get around to updating the rest of the reputation system.
That said, kbin doesn't federated down votes, so the system is going to be weird no matter what.
I'm not sure if Lemmy federates downvotes. ernest has said that kbin doesn't, though. Maybe that's changed since he made that statement.
AFAIK, though, there's no need for changes to ActivityPub. It has everything it needs to propagate 'actions', which can be defined however a platform chooses. Other platforms just need to know how to interpret those actions in order to do anything with them, and I don't see sites that aren't aping Reddit's engagement model to care about downvotes in any way.
I hope the boost and upvote list don't get messed up. I've been using boost for things I want to comeback later on top of things I want more visibility on. I'd hate to lose that and have to manually sort them.
These should definitely be on by default. Users won’t think to ask or find threads where this is explained, and having it off absolutely kills conversations and engagement unnecessarily @ernest
I am pretty sure that he's busy with about a million things. If you can do PHP and Symfony yourself, you can submit a PR, a fix, and then he'll review it and include it. If you can't, you can see if there's an issue filed on the issue tracker and if not, file one, and that'll put it in line for people working on PRs. It looks like it's up to about 400 open issues.
But everyone trying to drag his attention to their favorite feature in the hopes that he'll just go implement it really quick won't work. There's only one of him, and there are issues like the servers having trouble exchanging messages under sufficient load and patching SQL injection bugs (i.e. people turning up security holes) that are probably gonna be higher on the precedence list than QoL polish.
EDIT: Some other guy did submit an issue for notification of comments, and someone on that issue pointed out that they're already there. If you want to follow up on an existing issue, you could maybe point out that maybe the defaults for these should be changed: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/293
I suspect it's off by default as part of the growing pains. It's probably a non trivial amount of work for a server to have to generate and track notifications. It is necessary though for non real time conversations.
Yep, I'm inclined to believe this, especially considering that currently notifications seem to be delayed in many cases. My notifications will show empty for hours, and then I'll see new notifications for replies I've already seen by that point.
Likely gonna be a few weeks before things start to stabilize after the influx of new users.
I have them turned on from when I first signed up, didn't even see a notification for you tagging me in this reply. Who knows maybe there's just a small bug, I'll keep checking manually where I can in case. Or maybe they are just late. Thanks for the help!
Edit to add: just got notification, took 3 hours.
Is this working though? I turned that setting on a week or more ago and I've never received a notification despite getting comment replies. I thought maybe I just didn't know what notifications look like, but I got one when someone mentioned my username.
If you visit the page that a notification would refer you to it automatically clears the notification, so if you visit the page after the comment is generated but before it's visible on your instance it could clear the notification or prevent the notification from appearing at all.
Based on my limited knowledge of the fediverse that would be my hypothesis
Which setting is it? I'm really struggling to understand the wording of the options...
Notify me of comments in my threads
Notify me of replies to my threads comments
These both sound the same to me, isn't a comment in my thread the same as a reply to my thread? Assuming "my thread" means when I leave a comment and it gets comments under it. What's the difference between "my threads" and "my threads comments" maybe one means all replies under one of my comments which isn't what I want - I just want notifications when someone replies directly to one of my comments, but "comments in my thread" sounds like it includes all replies to other people's comments under my comment but "replies to my threads comments" also sounds like it includes replies to other people's comments under my comment...
I think you've got it, replies-to-replies is probably not needed (though if you don't get many replies or if a reply actually is relevant to you it might still be beneficial to be on).
I gave both possibilities so I'm not sure which one you are saying I got right haha, I enabled both and got a notification from you so clearly one works. The wording for both sounds like they could both technically apply to any reply or reply to a reply from someone else so I'm not sure.
Ie, if I make a comment and A responds, and B responds to A, both are technically "comments in my thread" assuming thread means all sub comments no matter how deeply nested
At the same time both A and B are technically "replies to my threads comments" (or replies to a comment while being in the thread) so it also meets both conditions there.
Maybe I'm just dense... But I'm going to assume the second one is nested and the first means direct, it feels like I'm trying to decode a logic puzzle on the SAT or something
I would guess that one case is "I made a new thread and am OP and want to be notified of all messages to that thread" and the other is "I want to be notified of comments that are children to my own comments".
Notify me of replies in my posts
And
Notify me of replies to my posts comments
So I think for an op one of those would be the correct one. I checked both "threads" and "threads comments" and got a notification, I just have to figure out which one means all replies and which one is direct replies because both "comments in my thread" and "replies to my threads comments" sound like they encompass both direct replies and sub replies (ie comments in my thread seems to imply any comment in the thread no matter how nested or to who they are to, at the same time "replies to threads comments" also sounds like it encompasses all replies since any comment under a thread no matter how nested or to who is technically a reply to a comment in the thread)...
The Outer Wilds. IMO, non-violence-based gameplay design is an underexplored space, especially in 3-D games. The Outer Wilds manages to feel like a fully-fledged game, rather than a traditional walking simulator, using exploration as it's core gameplay loop.
Further, it's main progression system is you, the out-of-game player, learning about the world. There's no abilities you gain or keys you have to find. You unlock new areas, not as a programmed game mechanic, but as a function of reasoning about what you've discovered and gaining insight into how the game world works. Any playthrough could be beaten in about 15 minutes -- there's nothing physically blocking you from triggering the end of the game -- but it takes you 15 hours or so of flying around the solar system to accrue the necessary insight to get there.
It’s a toss up for me between Outer Wilds and Subnautica. I found Outer Wilds after playing Subnautica and looking for something with the same feeling.
Anyone that liked Outer Wilds should also play Subnautica. Although the game play is more similar to No Man’s Sky (even though Subnautica is definitely much better than NMS)
I’m playing Subnautica for the first time right now, after hearing it was similar to Outer Wilds. I’m discovering I have a much bigger fear of vast open water than I do for space!
I wish I had the guts to play it - the anxiety I got from the water-tornados and huge vast emptiness of space, the black hole - the game did such an amazing job at giving me an overwhelming sense of dread that I had to just stop playing. I consider that a compliment towards the game lol
Hey, speaking as someone who hated all the planets (especially the a fog-ridden one I won't spoil)
Part of the reason why I fell in love with this game was the realization that nothing could ever really harm you. The anxiety I feel when exploring the water-tornado planet was always there -- slightly dampened by the understanding that nothing dangerous could ever happen. At most, I was flung up to space. Black hole? Don't worry, you'll just end up far away. I'm always anxious, always fearful. I had to learn to be with those feelings, instead of pushing them away.
This was outer wild's personal message to me: it's okay to feel scared or overwhelmed. It's okay to be crushed by narrowing tunnels or die of oxygen depravation or whatever else the universe can throw at you. You'll always be back in front of a crackling campfire. That's the safety that the game always guarantees you.
Honestly, with enough exposure to outer wilds, I tried doing black hole trick jumps and sometimes even drove my ship right into the tornados for fun.
I really hope you continue playing! This was one of the best games I'd ever played.
Beyond being set in space I would say they are pretty different. Outer Wilds is set in a single, hand crafted solar system. The planets are kind of "cutesy" and small. Like you can see the curve of the horizon when you are on each planet because they are each designed as spherical levels you are meant to explore most of.
The space flight mechanics are also pure Newtonian physics ala the Expanse, whereas the ships in no man's fly like planes, not rocket ships.
All that said. If you liked No Man's Sky I think there's a decent chance you'll like Outer Wilds.
Original Myst was like that- you could technically beat the game inside of seconds- if you knew the answer. (Empty world where everyone was sealed inside books- you could free them by freeing one of two heirs. You had to decide which was the “right” heir.)
The puzzles left clues around the entire game to explain things unlocking puzzles
Tried to get my now-husband to integrate the soundtrack into our wedding, but alas!
And for anyone reading this thread and thinking it sounds worth a try: a) do no further research, go in blind, very important and b) Outer Wilds is the one you want, not to be confused with The Outer Worlds.
I found similar when I left my country of birth, that many people don't keep in touch, even if I tried to maintain a connection. Out of sight, out of mind.
Read a book about it if you have time or a few articles.
I read the big one (Pollock, Van Reken) and it was honestly scary how well it described some parts of my personality, and the challenges I was dealing with in my life.
That sounds nice. Similarly I've been in a book club for about two years now that was started on Reddit.
Although we haven't read a book in months, we still meet virtually every week, so I guess we're just friends now.
The ultimate test of these kinds of groups seems to be whether they can survive transplantation from one social medium to another. I wonder how my little book club would fare if there was a schism over using discord...
Maybe there is a board here that would help you set up something like that? It can't hurt to look around and put out some feelers.
I think this has taught us there should be multiple ways of getting in touch with people. Don't put everything in one basket (in this case, Reddit). Hopefully the Fediverse will be one of many ways to do so.
For as good a tip as that is, and @NumbersCanBeFun should definitely try it if they haven't (or can), it doesn't always work.
I did the whole reaching out thing for years for those I knew from Uni, and for almost all of them I was the only one reaching out. It felt tiring holding up a relationship the other person had stopped caring about, so I ended up dropping most of them and haven't heard anything since.
I've seen what 4chan can cook up, so I think it'd hardly be fair to call you a loser for having the gaul to make friends online haha
Joking aside though, it really does sucks so much, and while I can't say I built up friends on Reddit, I do I sympathise with your situation.
There are so many people I used to know from my time at Uni, but years later I now only keep contact with a handful on a semi-regular basis, because they just never reach out. It's always me having to extend the olive-branch, and it gets tiring after a while of realising you're the only one holding things up.
I'm a rather home-body person myself, so I can also sympathise with not wanting to lose the friends you have for fear of being unable to make more.
I'm hopeful to talk to all sorts of new people here, as everything does feel more personal than Reddit for the most part. Also given the size of the community I do find myself running into people I've chatted with before to gain more insight from. In fact, I vaguely recognise your avatar, so we might've even spoken before too haha
KBin is fairly intuitive as well, in spite of it's lack of some quality of life improvements they need to implement. I am using it pretty active now on it.
I can't speak to old-school Reddit because I joined fairly late to the party (2018-ish), but this does feel a lot like the old-school forums I used to frequent.
I'm glad you've already had the chance to integrate with folks around here, and I'm sure you'll have plenty a chance to carve out a niche to hang out in.
Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that way. I certainly do - the blackouts and moving to Kbin gave me a chance to reflect on how I used Reddit, the habits I fell into, and to make what I think are healthier choices about them. For one, less doom-scrolling, and more attempting to interact more meaningfully with threads.
When the convenience melts away you find out who your friends really are, and most of the time our friends are friends of convenience. Feel free to message me if you ever want to talk, I think we all have this strange disruption of our life and routines from all the reddit goings on. It's hard on people, as pathetic as that sounds, it's true.
I feel you with this. Covid has made me completely bed bound and social media of one kind or another has been my only socializing for 3 years. Though Reddit isn’t one of the main ones for me, it does pain me to see some areas of assistance has gone away.
That article is about their web browser. Agree that it doesn’t exactly instill confidence that their search engine is squeaky clean. Regardless, DDG results are much more useful than Google results, as the entire first page isn’t ads.
This. It was an interesting read and gives me doubts, but it's undoubtably better than using google and I can set it to my default search engine in safari
Iwould honestly not use Safari either. Mozilla Firefox is the way to go (unless you're on iOS where there actually is no real choice, although the probably still better to use the Firefox front end)
«DDG results are much more useful than Google results» -- not if one is searching in anything but english; not sure for english either (had very poor results myself whenever i tried it) but at least can't disprove it.
I honestly went back to Google after seeing every fucking link in DuckDuckGo behind MSN. Almost every alternative search has Microsoft’s claws in them.
Glad to see a potential alternative in SearXNG. Thanks for the info.
same here (concerning going back to google every time); unfortunately can't share optimism for searxng: afaiu it's not a search engine but an aggregator/frontend, i tend to get all the same sh*t with it no matter which combination of search engines / settings i tried. finally just gave up for the moment with an internal promise to do more testing in a year or two.
Yeah although this is specifically the Duckduckgo web Browser rather than their search site. The only web browser to use is Firefox, set up the privacy and tracking settings correctly plus add in privacy extensions.
Duckduckgo website doesn't track you in the same way, but still it is a company and should not be treated as a virtuous entity.
please, PLEASE, never forget that the CEO of DuckDuckGo is also the founder of the "Names Database". it is insane to me that anyone trusts DDG. where do you think they get all the money for marketing from? i've seen a DDG ad on a fucking bus stop in the middle of nowhere
edit: throwing in an honorary mention for Qwant, which is an EU-based privacy-oriented search engine. i've been using them for a couple of years now and have yet to hear anything bad about the company. SearX is also supposedly a safe bet
I believe in science, I also practice witchcraft. Do I think anything I’m gonna make is going to help me? I mean, yeah due to legit science. But I also know when to go to a real doctor. Do I think runes and tarot cards can tell me the future? Not necessarily but I view it as more of a, it’s already in my head it’s just helping me spell it out type of thing.
I have no idea your age but, a lot of people dabble in witchcraft in their teens and early 20s and never come back to it. If I did my math right I’ve been practicing for 16 years. I’ve never used it as an excuse to not get mental health help, I’ve never used it as an excuse to not go to a doctor, and I’ve never forced my beliefs on others (which is more than some people in some religions can say).
I’m not saying your friend won’t use religion as an excuse to not do normal things but, I think you should take some time to look at things from another perspective. It’s really not much different than those who believe in an all powerful sky daddy. Not only that but, witchcraft can be secular as well.
I think you are mistaking my initial disdain with his decision to explore witchcraft. It isn't about believing in science, I don't think I mention science once in my post but I see how it can be mistaken since I mention I come from an academic background. I have no qualms with practicing witchcraft and actually would like to participate myself, all knowing that it is just for leisure and entertainment, and it isn't harmful. Similar to how playing a Ouija board might be. Others may believe there are actual beings controlling the position of the planchette, but we know that isn't true.
My initial issue was him using this newfound interest to fall into delusion and have more mental health issues by ignoring the reality around him. His biggest issue with my challenge of these beliefs came when I told him to talk to his therapist about this. I wasn't trying to force my beliefs on him because I don't have any beliefs regarding it, although that might've been what I did since a lack of belief is a belief itself. I've apologised and we're okay now, I hope. It does not seem like this is harmful so I'll be supportive of this, just as I've been supportive of his other personal troubles.
The whole social media collapse has been crushing for a recluse like myself. I mean, I might as well come out straight and say that. I'm not tactile and I don't socialize, so the internet is my main source of communication with the outside world. I'm guaranteed to find people who share my interests, people who "get" me, people who don't act like I came from Venus when I finally open up to them. When that all folds in on itself, or mutates into something that would make the monstrous works of HR Giger look like HR Puffnstuff, yeah, it's kind of painful. Like living through your own digital 9/11. That sounds dramatic, and I mean it to be, but yes, losing social networks that were trusted sources of discussion has been like a sledgehammer to my mental health.
TMI, sorry. I do leave my house when needed, but it's more business than pleasure. (There's very little pleasure involved.)
I hear you. I spent most of fmy social time as a teenager in those new-fangled chat rooms in the mid-late nineties and I don't think I ever really learned to socialize properly in person. Lol. That said, I don't find the newness of this platform too daunting. I was one of the people who left Digg back in the day too.
I do miss my May 2023 baby bumps group now that I'm on maternity leave and have a lot of down time feeding the little one though. It's not like it's easy for me to leave the house with a toddler and a newborn even if I was to join a real life parenting social group.
Taking my daughter to organised play groups several times per week was forced upon me due to needing access to the community nurses who attended, as she needed constant monitoring of a birth condition. However, I'm incredibly glad I went, and continued to do so long after the condition ceased to need such close attention.
I made friends with several other parents, our children bonded and made their first friendships and learnt the basics of social interaction. The shared learning and support we were able to offer each other smoothed over countless daily needs and little fears. Sure, these friendships didn't all sustain themselves long past our kids starting at their various different schools, but by that stage they had already learned so much that I could tell apart many of the children who had benefited from a similar experience and those who hadn't.
I say all this simply to encourage you to try these sorts of groups. You might not make friends who last forever, you might not meet people exactly to your liking, but that's life and it's a valuable experience for the kids for that very reason. People are never more welcoming and friendly than when you have young children and need some companionship, we're all in that same exact boat.
Hey, I know what you mean. As a teen I spent a huge amount of time on the local BBS scene, before moving on to the Usenet groups, IRC, and then various forums.
I'd say don't despair. Interest groups will find a way to congregate somehow. We did fine socialising online before garguntan social media networks, and we will continue to do so without them. There'll be a dip in the near-future, but others will come to take the place of these social networks. They may not be huge and all-encompassing, but maybe that's what we really need: Smaller communities tailored to more specific needs and wants.
I'm still working on it because it doesn't happen to everyone, which is why it's not that simple. Before the release, the problem should already be resolved, so please have a little more patience :)
Thank you for all the work you're doing to improve kbin!
Only somewhat related, but along with periodic logouts, I've noticed that if I interact with a page that's been up for a while (I get distracted, read a bunch of headlines, or going back to a previous page) it will error out and attempt to resend the data when I try refreshing. I can go back to the original page and reload and it works just fine.
@ernest Thanks very much for taking the time to reply. Kbin is great and I appreciate all of your hard work. Take the time you need, no one could have imagined how this instance would take off!
I myself was enamored with vampire stuff and in high school met an online boyfriend who really committed to the shtick of being a vampire - though a significantly weakened in bloodline so he could walk in sunlight. I think at one point he was also claiming to be a vessel for the archangel Michael. Please know this was all happening in 2000/2001, so long before Supernatural!
I caught up with him briefly about 15 years after high school, and he's still claiming to be a vampire. A divorced vampire who smokes a lot of weed, but still a vampire.
I went through a period a few years back of catching up with some of my exes, and it was a montage of dodging bullets. One guy was heavily into opioids for pain management after flipping a truck during street racing. One was married to a homophobic Renaissance faire kind of woman while over time, he had come to understand he was bisexual. And then there was the divorced vampire.
I learned my lesson: I don't want to follow up with any of them ever again.
Yeah, I thought for sure he would have outgrown it by then, too. He copped to making up the archangel Michael bit, which surprised me, but he was keeping the dream alive as a vampire.
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