How social media's biggest user protest rocked Reddit: The Guardian
How social media's biggest user protest rocked Reddit: The Guardian
A mass user protest six months ago over technical tweaks had big downstream effects, and now the ‘front page of the internet’ is changed for ever
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Not a single mention of lemmy or kbin or any other alternative for that matter. While Reddit might not have lost a lot of traffic, Lemmy has seen incredible growth during all of this. I can still remember how empty this place was before Reddit went through with the api changes. Just thinking about how many great mobile apps we have now makes me really confident in Lemmy’s future.
There used to be no viable alternative to Reddit. Now there is. That seems like quite an impact to me.
I honestly question if it even still has the same amount of traffic. Like it was no secret that site had bots. It's been a thing for awhile. But it's only gotten worse. I get on once in awhile for one particular niche sub. But I had to stop browsing the rest.
For awhile, subs about pop culture and celebrities started getting to /all, but it's posts like "What's you favorite sitcom moment?!" AITA became even more popular, but the stories feel even more fake and formulaic. Before there were times when the top comments were bots commenting on the repost bots post. Now it's not uncommon for people to point it out. The repost bot posts, the other bot steals the top comments and post those.
It's also become even more right wing in a lot of places. So depending on your political leanings, that can be a turn off for some.
Either way, the site really has gone downhill.
I honestly question if it even still has the same amount of traffic.
They used to have traffic stats for each subreddit. Now they don't. Could be cost saving by dumping a feature that didn't see massive use, or maybe theres some facts they don't want getting out...
They might not have lost traffic but they sure lost quality. Discussions are 20% dumber and more aggravating now.
The quality of posts was already pretty poor before the 'protest'. Now it's just reposted garbage, unless it's a very niche subreddit.
I didn't know the fediverse existed and now I'm in several places in it. The Catodon.social is the most excellent microblogging design ever. It's great here.
I knew about Friendica, Mastodon since a couple years ago but Twitter/Facebook style posting wasn't for me. I found Lemmy maybe 3 months earlier than the main push in June and that really was what I was looking for.
catodon you can do long form posts on despite being a Twitter clone and the design is awesome. I'm not much on microblogging either but this is really cool looking.
Do you know how Catodon compares with Mastodon? I tried looking it up and information on it is scarce and vague.
it literally just launched last week is why. The UI is SO much nicer than Mastodon and you can read all of Mastodon from it so it's really nice!
Cool, thanks!
Lemmy would only get mentioned if it was a serious competitor to Reddit, which it isn't.
A lot would need to change for that to happen.
I don't want it to compete with reddit, but why is that the only reason it could be mentioned? Seems arbitrary
The article is about Reddit. Why else would the article mention Lemmy?
Because it's a related, relevant thing...
Related, yes. Relevant, I don't think so.
Tech reporters aren't going to list every competing product or service, only the big ones. Lemmy may have grown a lot, but it is nowhere near the size that Reddit was 10 years ago.
What's the next biggest reddit competitor?
Nextdoor, probably.
Uh ok
Honest question: Would we gain anything by bot placing questions into discussions with certain topics in it? Like foreign governments astroturf for their interests, we could instead ask questions under specific comments:
„The mods are gonna delete this.“ sick of getting your stuff deleted? Have you tried lemmy?
„Imagine shilling for corpos“ have you tried leaving corpo land? Have you tried lemmy?
Etc
Honestly, posting anti-Reddit stuff on Reddit, and even reposting articles about the impressive, yet ineffective stuff we did last summer, just feels like fishing for approval from strangers.
It's like breaking up with your ex and talking about them constantly for the next 6 months. You don't need to show off your new girlfriend to them. You don't need your friends to tell you how great it is that you broke up. Just move on.
I agree on the girlfriend part although most people on the web only have theoretical knowledge of that.
But posting influencial content is just a tool. Its morally ambiguous which makes me wary of it but the question is if we are willing to take measures to help people get out of there.
Its a philosophical as well as sociological question imo.