The final nail in Reddit's coffin dropped today:

Dear User,

We will soon begin rolling out changes to Reddit’s User settings. It is getting a refresh that includes changes to ad personalization, privacy preferences, and location settings.

As part of these changes, we are retiring a setting that you have previously turned on that limited how we used your activity from the Reddit platform to personalize ads. We have replaced the setting with a new option to select categories of ads that you may not wish to see.

More details are available in our announcement and help center.

These changes are rolling out starting today and you may see the changes over the next few days.

Users will be tracked with no opt out. Posts may be monetized, which will make content even worse No refund or any type of usable credit for users that spent hundreds on Reddit coins The entire vibe has done a 180° since all these new “positive changes” are rolled out.

vinhill,

Looking at Twitter/X, this won’t be the final nail. People stick to the platforms they’re on as long as it doesn’t directly Negative impacts them too much.

Gestrid,

The difference, I think, which may make it easier to switch is that, on Twitter, you follow specific people. On Reddit, you only subscribe to specific communities, many of which have already been replicated in some way on Lemmy. You can’t replicate people, though. Yet.

Resol,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

I think you forgot that Mastodon exists. Either that or you simply refuse to mention it because it’s so desolate in there.

Gestrid,

No, I didn’t forget it. It’s just that the “specific people” haven’t moved over to Mastodon, so people who follow those specific people haven’t moved over.

The “specific communities” (or at least the large ones) have moved over or been copied to Lemmy, so it’s easier for people who subscribe to those communities to move over.

Resol,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

I understand your point.

MashedTech,

I don’t like reddit… But here’s my question though, since lemmy is federated and all that data is available for access… what’s stopping anyone to integrate into the system, collect it all, analyze it and sell it?

IvanOverdrive,

So, what is the point of buying said data if it’s all available for access?

Aux,

You don’t buy raw data, you buy processed data to suit your needs.

For example, if you want to show an ad to some audience, you don’t want 1 million user records, they’re useless to you. What you want is someone to go through this million of records and identify a group of people to show your ad to.

No one cares about YOU and YOUR data. But people care about aggregate statistics.

A10,
@A10@kerala.party avatar

Somebody is going to detect that and hopefully fediverse will defederate from those instances

Aux,

No one is going to detect anything because there’s nothing to detect. There’s no difference between content consumption by a human and a robot. Anything public IS public. If you don’t want to be public, don’t use public platforms. Lemmy is already fully consumed by Google, for example.

shindig1457,

Good job. You now have tons of data. Where do you show the ads?

Honytawk,

The other websites you track the user to.

BiNonBi,
@BiNonBi@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

How are you tracking them to other sites? There’s not really anything that links a user account to an actual person in the data that gets federated.

SchizoDenji,

Good thing it’s anonymized as fuck and lemmy does not have an official app that tracks it either. Scraping isn’t cheap and the upside is basically nothing.

elegant,

One thing holding me back from stopping to use reddit as a whole is using old.reddit in the browser. Can’t stand the new design, and once they remove that option - never looking back for real.

On mobile, Lemmy all the way.

crossfireprod,

I’ve found myself in the same boat.

Not sure how I feel about it, but it’s interesting to see someone else commenting about doing the same.

Wolpertinger,
@Wolpertinger@sh.itjust.works avatar

That’s where I’m at. I only access reddit from a browser using old.reddit.com these days. Once that option is taken from me, I’m gone.

BROMETHIUS,

With RES of course

frozencat,

tbh I can’t understand why people liked old reddit sorry I’m a zoomer idiot but still can someone help me understand?

feecoomeeq,

More lightweight = faster and more content on the screen? Nowadays cool looking websites are slow and with 25% margin on both sides.

I feel the same all annoyed for example when doing some extensive search on PC vs mobile. No matter if it’s a shopping hunt on ebay or gathering information. On PC i scroll-click 10 links, iterate through them, Ctrl+w the ones being useless and chosing/read betwend the ones left. Something unclear? Double Ctrl+C and deepl pops up with a translation.

5min on PC vs 20min on mobile, where I have to click each link, fight those pop ups and cookies consent, go back, wait anoyingly long 2 second webpage loads and repeat.

Natanael,

For discussions and news and long form text it’s infinitely easier to browse and read in the old layout. The new one is designed for media and for making you quickly jump between threads

elegant,

I’m more of a list person than someone who prefers cards type of style. With a list, I find it easier to navigate and get a better overview of everything, rather than seeing just a few posts at a time without scrolling.

AssPennies,

I used to use reddit with Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES), a browser add-on/extension that has tons of customizations. This was even before there was an old/new reddit, it was just reddit.

So it’s not that we chose to use “old” reddit, it was that we chose not to use “new” reddit. Going to the new design breaks RES and we would’ve missed out on all of those customizations and quality-of-life features that were missing without it.

Plus, “new” reddit is designed for doom-scrolling and serving adds, and not about promoting users to engage in dialog. Most of my reddit interaction was around niche content, where I actually dived deep into threads. New reddit got in the way of that.

frozencat,

thanks

RatzChatsubo,

It’s like reading a endless wall of text on old reddit. New reddit has so much more white space

frozencat,

oh ok thanks

wabafee,

Can I interest you to old reddit like theme in Lemmy.

E.g. old.lemmy.world

More here

gist.github.com/…/4d591ffdcbaab1c49efa406885efd81…

elegant,

interesting, thanks! and it also looks identical. bookmarking this right away

RatzChatsubo,

This looks awesome! How about a clone of the reddit website that masks as a MSN webclient?

possiblylinux127,

Its good I don’t use reddit anymore

BrightHalo,
@BrightHalo@lemmy.world avatar

It sucked going from Boost to the official Reddit app and this I don’t really care about but what got me to come here today was my feeds in the official Reddit app have been stale for the last several days and it’s seems to have forgot what subreddits my account is in. I can go to a subreddit I’m subscribed to and see fresh posts but all the built in views Home/Popular/News… All have content I saw hours ago or yesterday… Why do I want to use an app that shows me old posts and makes me hunt down new ones of interest?

cereal_killer,

I’m posting this comment from “Boost for Lemmy” to make me feel that I’m still on Reddit lmao

BrightHalo,
@BrightHalo@lemmy.world avatar

Same! That’s what I’m using! I had Boost for Lemmy set to pre download or whatever and this morning when looking for my Reddit fix and being dissatisfied with Reddit I was like… Wait a minute, what happened to Boost for Lemmy? I wanted to check that out sometime and started using it lol

TWeaK,

Why would you go to the official reddit app? I continued using Relay until it stopped working yesterday, but Stealth and Red Reader still work just fine and are FOSS. Red Reader was given dispensation for being a disability app IIRC.

BrightHalo,
@BrightHalo@lemmy.world avatar

Boost for Reddit is what I’m use to so my plan was to jump ship when the Boost for Lemmy app came out but the download tried to happen when I wasn’t on WiFi and I forgot to install it. With my recent feed issues I remember I was planning to jump ship

Anonbal185,

I jumped from boost for Reddit to sync for Lemmy. No regrets loving it.

Edit: just realised boost for lemmy is available now too

detinu,

Relay also stopped working for me today, so here I am for good now, at least on mobile.

I hope reddit sinks to the bottom because of their greed.

elysianxr,

I love Relay but I just cannot pay because that supports Reddit. I love Reddit but not the people on top. I hope it sinks.

Draconic_NEO,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world avatar

You could always try patching the app. I did that with infinity and it works perfectly now.

TWeaK,

How do you go about that?

In any case, even the paid version Relay Pro includes trackers, so while I miss the UI I’m not too upset that it’s gone.

TWeaK,

Yep same for me. I’ve moved to Red Reader, it’s crap for the UI but at least it will continue to work for the foreseeable.

detinu,

For now I’m not gonna move to anything else for Reddit. I’ll use Sync for Lemmy as my daily driver, and I’ll see how it goes.

Mandy,

ah yes, just like how the oh so mighty mods pissed their panties with the blackouts, really killed reddit too that one huh

MrLuemasG,

Yeah I think it’s pretty clear at this point that 99% of reddit users don’t care about this, which is why reddit continues to thrive while lemmy is facing lower and lower user numbers

doctorcrimson,

Is Lemmy? I’ve been pretty happy over here, frequent it often once I learned of it not long ago.

g0nz0li0,

Do you mean lower growth in numbers? Lemmy.world recently posted users for August and it grew by a healthy amount.

MrLuemasG,

I’m referring to this link that showed the active monthly users for lemmy as a whole across all instances trending downward

discuss.tchncs.de/post/4010705

trailing9,

The numbers of comments is growing. I would take that as the reliable engagement metric. The falling number of active users could be a sign of people settling on a main account.

Cranakis,

I disagree. I think more ppl are leaving Reddit each day. My irl friends are bailing on it one by one.

A10,
@A10@kerala.party avatar

I also feel the same, Lemmy is well…,. an echo chamber supporting Lemmy . Communties I used visit are doing just fine on reddit. But I a happy with the lower numbers and better quality of discussions

millie,

I mean, yeah. Have you been on reddit since the API stuff? It’s absolutely flooded with bots trying to make up the difference. Which is like, reddit playbook 2009. The broken links are pretty prolific too at this point.

It’s not going to like, close its doors, but it certainly isn’t in the position it was just a few months ago.

madcaesar,

I hope you’re right and I’ll take your word for it. I don’t go to that site anymore.

Mandy,

no difference, why you may ask?

just look at youtube, same shit different color, it keeps getting worse but they are still the king in terms of video hsoting

TWeaK,

Yes but the emperor has no clothes, and more and more people are realising this.

Also reddit is made up primarily by users and the posts/comments they make, YouTube is made up by paid video creators. YouTubers don’t have anywhere else to go, but reddit users do and just need a critical mass somewhere else for reddit to go the way of digg.

Mandy,

i just hope, honestly, that you are right

towerful,

Although it makes it harder for me, I actually quite like hitting a Google result on Reddit and seeing swaths of editted/deleted comments.

Uranium3006,
@Uranium3006@kbin.social avatar

Digg and MySpace still technically exist

Sibbo,

Sounds like it violates gdpr

RVGamer06,
@RVGamer06@lemmy.world avatar

They won’t even try to roll out this in EU

TWeaK,

Oh no they will, they just won’t tell you about it.

Honytawk,

No, it said it won’t roll out in specific countries. Which most likely means EU countries.

If they try to circumvent GDPR, they would get fined so hard Serena Williams would slap Ohanian to the other side of the tennis court.

TWeaK,

“Social media website receives record fine for GDPR violation”, I’m sure we’ve seen that headline somewhere before…

Razp,

Won’t be rolled out in GDPR countries, for sure.

Sawzall,

This is America.

fne8w2ah,

Obligatory fuck spez the hurensohn.

Mastens,

The new update is horrible. They are blocking critical comments and gaslighting users too.

Sadly it’s not even close to the final nail. The largest reason being there isn’t anything to take its place. While I love Lemmy, there are still too many hurdles and roadblocks to getting started compared to other social media platforms and all of those established ones are doing similar moves to Reddit’s nonsense. But just like why Mastodon hasn’t topple Twitter is that the ease of use and user base isn’t there.

Until someone can offer the same(ish) experience that almost fully featured and super easy to get start. Most users won’t break their habits. They only other way is to offer something that is better than the other platforms (since this can be wildly subjective) again ease of use and standardized features are incredibly important.

Will Twitter, Reddit and Facebook go the way of MySpace? I’m sure at some point. But only until something can truly replace or pull users.

beefcat,
@beefcat@lemmy.world avatar

the community quality on Lemmy also just isn’t there yet. there are some good niche communities, but a lot of “staples” are either just not active enough or are poorly moderated.

for example, there still isn’t a good alternative to /r/Games. lemmy.world has /c/games, but their rules aren’t nearly as strict as the former, and it has lead to very poor discussion quality in comparison. All the top comments on the Starfield impressions thread a few weeks ago were low-effort, karma-whoring, single sentences complaining about pre-orders rather than actually discussing the game itself.

V4uban,

!games is pretty solid

OmanMkII,

I’d honestly say the confusion between what communities are worth subscribing to is one of the worst blocks for me. Sure, /c/ exists, but what server should I go to? What communities are there? What ones are actually active? It’s not as easy as reddit was, and if it’s annoyed me then it’s definitely stopped another 10 people from bothering with lemmy :/ Edit: also, ty for the suggestion

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

lemmyverse.net/communities is a good way to find communities.

The main indicator is the number of monthly users and how new the content is.

This can be a bit tricky, but it used to be the same on Reddit when there was Gaming, Games, VideoGames and all the variants. Over time, one community emerged as the one

Wolpertinger,
@Wolpertinger@sh.itjust.works avatar

What niche communities do you recommend?

JayJay,

I use boost for lemmy which was made by the same guy who made it for reddit. It looks and acts pretty much the same.

tocopherol,
@tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I honestly think a small part of Mastodon’s problem is the name, for a while I would just think of the metal band or the fossil record. I feel like at least for me there is a subconscious effect that names and branding have that can be hard to notice.

HolyDriver,

Lemmy makes me think of the Scottish comedian, and also good ol’ lemmiwinks

Murdoc,

🎵A brave adventure is waiting for ahead…

Carry onward Lemmywinks or you will soon be dead! 🎶

OCATMBBL,

All I hear is the black power ranger transformation from the original series.

moist_and_damp,

wasn’t Lemmy named because that dude died in 2015

synceDD,
@synceDD@lemmy.world avatar

Users now clicking I accept new TOS means the end of reddit. Talk about ignorance. Maybe stop obsessing over a website youre not even using anymore and be productive instead.

cy_narrator,

Noone is clicking, there is no option to agree(or disagree)

synceDD,
@synceDD@lemmy.world avatar

Final nail confirmed then lmao 🤣🤣🤣

Smacks,
@Smacks@lemmy.world avatar

No, this won’t kill Reddit. If they can essentially remove every third-party app, they’ll easily be able to start selling user data. Whether we like it or not, the majority stayed on Reddit.

Nothing short of somehow breaking through ad blockers like Twitch did will make people stop using it, even if that.

cactus, (edited )

deleted

beefcat,
@beefcat@lemmy.world avatar

If you have irl friends/family that’s only on facebook you can’t really leave.

they can all still talk to you via phone, text, email, in person, etc. that is what i told all my family when i hopped off facebook

InternetCitizen2,

No easy way to share vacation or gathering photos. If I post one and my aunt comments everyone can see that discussion and join. Not so with just chat groups. Overwhelming majority want this layout and there is no easy way around it.

Genericusername,

Facebook kind of died and used the momentum it had to reinvent itself. Back in the day I used to see updates from my friends, and I used to interact with them. I stopped using Facebook at some point a few years ago and recently got back to it. I use Marketplace, and in my country people with the same hobby as me seem to interact over Facebook more than anything else. Younger people rarely upload except for a few very active outliers. Most of the content is these clickbaity short videos of 5-minute crafts or live-feeding frogs to slightly larger frogs because Facebook thinks I’m into it for some reason. They just made an addictive never-ending stream of content.

Kit,

Thanks for bringing up Twitch. I’m one of the folks who quit using the site after the ad block changes. Did an alternative ever come along?

Draedron,

Alternate twitch player.

Kit,

Can you offer some examples?

RVGamer06,
@RVGamer06@lemmy.world avatar

Xtra for android. You can find it on F-Droid

Kit,

Is there an alternative on PC? I usually watch Twitch on my computer

CosmicCleric,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Whether we like it or not, the majority stayed on Reddit.

The fight may not be over though.

Where people didn’t really care about an API change for third party apps, they may care a lot more about having ads shoved in their faces whether they like it or not.

It’s all about breakings their inertia to change.

Sunroc,

People en mass make “economic” decisions. If they view an alternative such as lemmy as too difficult to use, or their communities are not here they will rather tolerate the ads. Learning to use a new app or having to start the community themselves is too much effort for most people.

thisisthelastonebtw,

If there are still Facebook and Twitter users, of which we know there are, nothing will kill Reddit.

However, I’ll say I’m someone not good at change but am agoraphobic, so my only “connection” was Reddit, and I finally gave in and deleted for good.

Still getting used to this platform, but hopefully can find less toxic users here. Social media seems to be made special for bullies.

ohlaph,

It’s a pretty great place. Glad you’re here.

cy_narrator,

I think I will be okay as long as there is content on Lemmy

jenniebuckley,
@jenniebuckley@lemmy.world avatar

the final nail for me happened long ago. the site has genuinely sucked for years. all the content in the top subreddits is basically ChatGPT generated rage bait, so many subreddits have turned into right wing shitholes, and Reddit themselves have proven time and time again that they do not care about their users. as always their greed has gotten the best of them

the exact same thing happened with Discord. I’ve actually disabled my Discord account and only use my Reddit out of habit at this point

flummoxed_lummox,

I just deleted my reddit account and signed up here as well. Fortunately, I don’t know anyone else who still has an account. Most of my friends and family left a long time ago.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Welcome!

MargotRobbie,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

People aren’t going to leave reddit all at once right away, because structure means that individual subreddits are very much isolated from one another in terms of users.

However, it’s likely that we will be seeing some kind of cultural shift happening there as quality get worse. I feel it’s inevitable that there will be more low effort content pumped out as quickly as possible than ever before now there is an actual monetary incentive instead of imaginary Internet points, and all personalized feed and ad is going to do is isolate individual users in their individual bubble and not allowing human connections to form between them.

Things are getting better here. The regulars recongnize each other’s name and personalitu, whereas on reddit all the usernames all blends together into an amorphous mass unless it’s one of those novelty accounts or e-celeb or something. That’s the key difference between Lemmy and reddit right now.

jaek,

Couldn’t agree more. Those novelty e-celeb accounts on Reddit are getting really put of hand, aren’t they, Margot Robbie

MargotRobbie,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

Oh absolutely, especially those celebrities who comes in, promote their latest project, say some catchphrases, and leave. Why would they do such a thing?

Also, that’s Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie to you!

flathead,

Academy award-nominated actress Margot Robbie does actually spend most of her free time modding an android group on Lemmy - but you will never see that mentioned on mainstream social media.

MargotRobbie,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

Seriously, it really doesn’t take that much time at all, way easier than I thought it would be.

CosmicCleric,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Any advice you’d like to give that would make somebody starting modding a lot easier, would be appreciated.

MargotRobbie,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t micromanage, I just let people do whatever they want but encourage them to do their best, and only remove/ban for people who absolutely won’t listen to reason.

You should also get involved with your comm by talking to people there a lot, so they don’t think you are just some asshole who’s only there to ban.

CosmicCleric,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks for replying.

lightnsfw,

Reddit’s not going anywhere until they ban porn and the hobby communities jump somewhere else.

Death_Equity,

Just wait for old.reddit being removed, there will be another wave of new Lemmy users.

lightnsfw,

yea, if I hadn’t been permabanned that would have done it for me but there’s still enough people on there that don’t even know old.reddit is a thing for that to really kill the site. I have a feeling a lot of people are willing to just put up with their shit for the sake of not really having anywhere else to go. Unfortunately at the moment unless you want to talk about politics or Linux the pool of content on Lemmy is pretty dry and I don’t know of any better options besides going back to independent forums.

Makeshift,

I still have my account and check like once every couple weeks for 2-3 communities.

On PC, old.reddit, and no chance of getting a single ad in my face. I’m not technical enough to know if they’re getting other data from my bimonthly visits, but that’s a far cry less than my old every night visits.

As soon as they get rid of old.reddit it won’t even be reddit to me anymore. Just an ugly new thing overwriting the site I once enjoyed.

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