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.

TehWorld,

I’m not spending much time on Reddit these days but in no way is this the end for Reddit. The VAST majority of the user base just doesn’t care. We may see more users trickling in and Lemmy is sure more ready now than ever but people are so used to being advertised to, that this won’t be a big issue long term. People are dumb.

Rolando,

The hope is that the non-dumb people will leave for here, and that they’re the ones who make quality content.

ElleChaise,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Rhynoplaz,

    All I’ve done is shown people my politics and bitch about assholes!

    skillissuer,
    @skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    o7

    Send_me_nude_girls,
    @Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de avatar

    I can’t find the asshole post.

    omgarm,

    Like an average thursday night with friends.

    camr_on,
    @camr_on@lemmy.world avatar

    Keep up the quality content lmao

    iheartneopets,

    Fuckin legend

    rDrDr,

    Reddit users will be reposting Lemmy content for real money gold by 2025. Fucking spez…

    JohnnyEnzyme, (edited )

    One thing I hadn’t thought much about until recently-- the quality of comments is so much higher here, and I don’t have to typically scroll through a wasteland of dudebro jokes to get to relevant replies.

    So, comments are also ‘content,’ and from what I’m seeing, Lemmy already has a distinctly smarter / more mature userbase.

    DogMuffins,

    Yeah no one who’s still there cares at all.

    HughJanus,

    I’m sure they care at least a little bit but not enough to move on

    vanontom,
    @vanontom@lemmy.world avatar

    2016: All I need, to have hope for the future, is a large majority of people willing to slightly inconvenience themselves to produce positive changes.

    2023: Human intelligence has peaked, idiocracy is here, I for one welcome our AI overlords, earthonfire.jxl, etc.

    foggy,

    Idk man, literally asked a bunch (3) of friends how reddit is lately who had no idea what was going on this summer with the API changes and didn’t care when I told them. Here are there responses:

    “They’ve gotten really bad at putting relevant shit in front of me”

    “Been a ton more ads lately”

    And

    “dude thank you for telling me reddit had porn lol”

    Emperor,
    @Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

    “dude thank you for telling me reddit had porn lol”

    There’s what now?!

    drekly,

    Lemmynsfw.com

    Emperor,
    @Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

    Jesus

    zerofk,

    Jesus had abandoned us. To go watch porn.

    Shush,

    I always wondered if there were people oblivious to porn on reddit. It always seemed like common knowledge those days.

    It’s not the usual manufactured porn by companies, it’s usually people showcasing a video of themselves.

    DrQuint,

    A lot of people’s approach to social media is

    • login an absolute total of times equal to one, on an app, and never again, that session better last
    • do zero content curation, what comes is what you eat
    • mostly scroll past shit, don’t interact, don’t produce
    • maybe click on a navigation link once or twice per month

    So of course they don’t know there’s porn. They’re basically only seeing their feed (which is a clone of /r/popular, so a bunch of clones of /r/funny and ragebait) and the default subs, which doesn’t have porn by default ever since reddit removed its ability to show up on default feeds.

    Shush,

    I meant more around “reddit is known for having porn channels” and less “reddit pushes porn in your default feeds”.

    You’re right though, the casual dead-minded scroller wouldn’t know about it.

    JackFrostNCola,

    It used to be moreso, but before i left reddit it turned into people spamming promoting their onlyfans accounts, some subs felt like scrolling through a gallery of ads.

    lud,

    The amount of porn on reddit is astonishing.

    Just go to r/randnsfw a few times.

    Juvyn00b,

    Aww man it’s banned…

    lud,

    Nah it works fine.

    You might have to use old reddit: old.reddit.com/r/randnsfw (WARNING the link might be extremely NSFW)

    It should redirect you to a random nsfw sub, just like /r/random

    recarsion,

    Redirected me to r/welding, wtf

    KSPAtlas,
    @KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz avatar

    hot sexy welders in your area

    dylanTheDeveloper,
    @dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world avatar

    Only if you have an account, can’t view NSFW subreddits or posts without one

    ConstipatedWatson,

    I completely agree with this!

    Also, it’s an unfortunate rule of thumb that, when you see a sensationalized headline, most likely it won’t have the effect it claims to have…

    Well, let’s hope there’s a steady migration to Lemmy (though numbers are small here)

    Edit: added last line

    Jah348,

    This is for sure the final nail, it’s going to collapse just like Facebook and Google did after all that ad stuff. Profiting off a user data is clearly a failed business model and we see that time and time again.

    mysoulishome,
    @mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

    That infographic with the most profitable companies in the world…both of them are still on it. And Reddit wants to be.

    HughJanus,

    Facebook, the site with 3B MAU?

    Uranium3006,
    @Uranium3006@kbin.social avatar

    The weird thing about the internet is it's hard to make money. Information is free in.both senses of the term

    Chais,
    @Chais@sh.itjust.works avatar

    No opt out? Expect trouble from the EU.

    DocBlaze,

    does Reddit still have a .onion site? I feel like perhaps you can use the .onion site and be able to escape this. the tor browser was specifically modified from Firefox to avoid fingerprinting.

    otter,
    @otter@lemmy.ca avatar

    I think this is more for accounts, since it tracks upvote/downvote, etc

    HughJanus,

    Fingerprinting is mostly pointless once you’re logged into the site.

    You can use Mullvad which is TOR but without the TOR.

    PrincessLeiasCat,

    Can you explain more about Mullvad wrt Tor? I’m shopping for a new VPN & looked into Mullvad extensively because it’s my #1 choice so far. What about it specifically makes you say that?

    HughJanus,

    Mullvad the browser, not the VPN. They partnered with the TOR project to create it. So it has all the same browser protections of the TOR browser except that it doesn’t go through the TOR network so it’s actually mostly useable for general daily use.

    Mullvad is probably the best choice exclusively for VPN. I chose Proton only because of their “suite” of products under a single subscription.

    PrincessLeiasCat,

    Ahhhh, my apologies…I completely misunderstood!

    Thank you for taking the time to explain all that, and for the positive words about Mullvad VPN. My current subscription is almost up, so I should get it soon. Have a good one :)

    ForgotAboutDre,

    They did mention the options with different in some locations.

    tdawg,

    It’s common to run different rulesets based on region

    skillissuer,
    @skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    you underestimate people’s complacency and inertia, in no way this is end of reddit

    wilberfan,
    @wilberfan@lemmy.world avatar

    Exactly.

    DrQuint,

    Yeah, people think tracking you for ads will dissuade anyone? Like, Instagram has a content to ad ratio of 33%, and people give zero fucks.

    I don’t think people will ever leave, and I don’t think we should want them to leave either. We can build better, smaller platforms much more easily than we can’t fix the world’s attitude and consumption trends towards the large ones.

    JokeDeity,

    I mean, having some users isn’t the same as having a ton of users using the product for hours a day. They can still say people are using it, but it’s far from how it used to be (actually goes for Instagram and Facebook as well). There will always be people still using them, but for less time and getting less enjoyment out of it. The majority of users will not use it much at all, only out of some sense of necessity. Instagram and Facebook are literally unusable in my opinion due to ads and sponsored content, most people I know that used to spend hours on those two sites now barely use them at all, and that’s the direction Reddit wants to head in.

    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

    Gargleblaster,
    @Gargleblaster@kbin.social avatar

    This would've resulted in my leaving if I hadn't left in June.

    Saved me 3.5 months.

    TheFriar,

    Right? I hope more and more people leave. It’d be great if more users came to lemmy, but I’d be content just seeing people leave that putrid site

    CheatMageLVL99,

    I might just start visiting forums for relevant information again. Lemmy seems to be pretty decent for now. Reddit really has gone downhill.

    dth,
    @dth@lemmy.world avatar

    the announcement was finally the one that made me leave. better late than never i guess!

    Jimbo,
    @Jimbo@yiffit.net avatar

    Welcome!

    dth,
    @dth@lemmy.world avatar

    thank you very much!

    Ghostlight,

    I’m new here. I left Reddit yesterday. No looking back.

    Pantsofmagic,

    Welcome!

    kungfuratte,

    Bienvenue!

    Klear,

    Vítej!

    cum_hoc,

    ¡Bienvenido!

    titter,

    SAME. Relay for reddonk stopped working, needed updating, and came back with an unavoidable subscription model suggesting i should pay 5.99/mo to continue “enjoying” reddit at my pace. Some people probably would, “oh, what’s that one banana a month”? I don’t sign in, thus I don’t post, comment, vote, reward. This is just me being charged to lurk on a website that forked in ungodly amounts of profit over a reward system they trash canned. Reasonably so because they didn’t really reward the user as much as it was just micropaymemts to reddit, and people were noticing. Instead we are “rewarding all 3rd party users by letting them pay to use our content”.

    Mind you this is on top of reddit recent announcing that they will no longer give you the option to not be tracked, instead replacing it with “tires of ads you can opt out from”

    SMH

    dynamojoe,

    bem vindo!

    Resol,
    @Resol@lemmy.world avatar

    Welkom!

    BonesOfTheMoon,

    Welcome!

    ruford1976,

    whale cum

    hiramfromthechi,
    @hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world avatar

    If you wanna keep your bookmarks and the subreddits (communities) that you’re subscribed to before deleting your Reddit account, I made a free tool to help you store and offload that data.

    It’s called Reddit Account Manager, and it’s 100% free.

    You can also use it to manage your Lemmy account(s), of course.

    detalferous,

    Thanks for such an awesome trip!

    Users can also use Redact to delete their data, and then delete their reddit account

    old.reddit.com/r/…/reddit_seppuku_how_to/

    hiramfromthechi,
    @hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world avatar

    Yep, the ideal workflow for migrating would be something like this:

    1. Use Reddit Account Manager to neatly organize and store your Reddit accounts, bookmarks, and subscriptions
    2. Request your data archive from Reddit itself
    3. Use something like Redact or Power Delete Suite to remove your content from Reddit
    4. Permanently delete your accounts from Reddit
    5. Move to a federated alternative (optional)
    noodlejetski,

    how do I get it without giving away my email address to some random website?

    Amends1782,

    You should be using an email forwarding/alias service such as SimpleLogin, or apples proprietary hide my email service for example. You can have an infinite amount of alias emails that all forward to your main, and have 100% control over.

    The other option is older school, just make another account somewhere. You can also create automated rules to just forward all emails from their to your main too.

    noodlejetski,

    sure, but people could also host their freeware in a way that doesn’t require me to do any of those.

    hiramfromthechi,
    @hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world avatar

    I’d open source it if I could, but since Reddit Account Manager is built without code, I can’t host it on GitLab or GitHub.

    Amends1782,

    I agree, but your question wasn’t phrased that way :p

    noodlejetski,

    sigh because sometimes instead of telling someone “it sucks that in order to get that one piece of software from your website you make me create an account despite me never going to visit it again”, you can phrase it a bit more politely and hope that they, you know, figure out the intent behind the question rather than take it so incredibly literally.

    hiramfromthechi,
    @hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world avatar

    You could use a service like SimpleLogin, Addy, Duck, or just a temporary fake email generator. I don’t mind if you give me a fake email address—you have a right to privacy.

    If it helps, my website’s hiram.io. I realize that’s still “random” in the grand scheme of things, but it should at least show you I’m a real person, and I build stuff to build a better web.

    Mango,

    Can I use this with Android?

    hiramfromthechi,
    @hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world avatar

    Your question’s a little nuanced, so let me try to answer this as thoroughly as possible:

    The short answer is: If the platform you choose to use it is accessible from your Android phone, then yes. But it’s not Android- or iOS-specific.

    Out of the platforms that it’s available on (Airtable, Notion, Coda, ClickUp, and Baserow), all of them except for Baserow have native mobile apps. With that said, Baserow is also mobile responsive, so you don’t need a native mobile app to work with Reddit Account Manager.

    • Reddit Account Manager is a template built on top of those tools (Airtable, Notion, Coda, ClickUp, and Baserow), so you’ll need an account with at least one of those to use it.
    • Reddit Account Manager is built without code.

    Hope that clears things up. :)

    Mango,

    Uhh yeah that didn’t clear things up.

    I don’t have a computer and I want all my Reddit content deleted without having to do manual labor for the next several months.

    BlueCrystalFlame,

    Hi, just made this account after reading that. Fuck Reddit fuck Spez

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Welcome!

    ohlaph,

    Welcome. Tell your friends!!

    christophski,

    This is just the continuation of the instagrammification if reddit. They want to turn it into a influencer platform where people are desperately trying to make money so that they can take a big cut of it.

    Raz,

    Is this even legal in the EU?

    UnD3Rgr0uNDCL0wN,

    No.

    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.

    Haui,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    As a mod on reddit (who only reacts to pings these days) I would like to post an undramatic message „here‘s what happened, if you‘re interested to join our lemmy mirror, here‘s the link.“

    Anyone got something I could use which will not set off reddit stans or get me replaced and the message deleted?

    DrQuint,

    I found that the best approach is to just have the link in the sidebar. This was how several communities first started introducing discords when it was basically an unknown piece of software. It became normalized without anyone noticing when.

    Haui,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Thats what I did already. I might just leave it at that then. Thanks for the suggestion though. :)

    mojo,

    We all know they’re still not going to leave. Also lol those people buying Reddit coins can get fucked.

    toots,

    I deleted my reddit accounts and signed up to lemm.ee today b/c of the advert policy change.

    BROMETHIUS,

    Noice. I still use Reddit on desktop occasionally, but haven’t touched mobile since the api change.

    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

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