[db0] Reddit is a dead site running

I'm OK with the full repost. It's not like I'm running adverts 😁
- Good to know! Thank you!
- Tbh, on mobile your page's not really readable with the double citation thing, so I'm glad that you are relaxed with the repost. Thanks!
  
  Ye that's annoying. I'll see if there's any sort of fix

I was on reddit much longer than myspace and I still miss myspace more than reddit. lemmy definitely reminds me of the early days of many social network sites. reddit was just noisy programers faking users at the beginning.....so perhaps we do that with our content again... I wonder if I spin up a lemmy instance If I can have midi playing on my page again?
- Just as an FYI, MIDI does not make any sound; it's just data containing pitch and velocity information (among other things). Virtual instruments use midi information to make the sounds. Windows (and I assume other OSs) have default virtual instruments that make the sounds that you would hear when playing a midi file, but that would sound different playing the same file through other virtual instruments. It's a pretty common misconception.
  On the other hand, don't you dare try to bring back music autoplaying when you load a page from the myspace era!
  
  don’t you dare try to bring back music autoplaying when you load a page from the myspace era!
  You can't have a good site without .mid files! Or without
  <blink>
  blinking text
  </blink>
  !
  
  I finally understood midi by comparing it with emojis. The unicode standard only defines characters and their meanings, but it's up to os or app developers to choose an actual visual representation to display.
  
  Most pages block audio autoplay anyway, but you can always turn it off ;)
  
  You can import basically any midi file in Guitar Pro and it’ll output a guitar tab
  
  On the other hand, don’t you dare try to bring back music autoplaying when you load a page from the myspace era!
  Yes midi, I literally want a player piano to start up on anyones random page but especially my own! ⁂
  
  Similar to platform emojis being unique interpretations of the same information.
- I feel like people had a stronger emotional attachment to Myspace than they have to modern social media. It was more like blogs (people were also fond of their own blogs, even bad ones). That's perhaps even worse for Reddit because the "emotional cost of switch" is far smaller.
  I wonder if I spin up a lemmy instance If I can have midi playing on my page again?
  It's probably doable, but odds are that you'd need to tweak Lemmy's code for that.
  
  no, it was that they were teenagers when they were using it. it's pure nostalgia.
  
  I might be an outlier, but I have zero nostalgia for my pretentious teenage emo-edgelord Myspace page - and I am glad it is lost to the graveyard of history

since I’ve started using Lemmy full-time, I’ve seen the improvement in engagement and quality in real time.
This, more than anything happening at Reddit, demonstrates to me that people are leaving Reddit in droves.
Just weeks ago, Lemmy was slow, quiet place; it was rarely worth visiting more than once a day in terms of new posts. Since the Reddit protest, Lemmy has had a sea-change in volume, and that bespeaks a major migration.
- I joined Lemmy 2 years ago and it was pretty much a desert, except for communities like privacy. I left after asking for a feature (a local intance feed, which has been implemented a while back!), because there wasn't much else to do. Almost forgot about it until the whole reddit fiasco happened. I'm now so thrilled that threaded discussions are taking off in the fediverse!
  I was really active on reddit, especially in a local city community. Answering tourist's questions, posting local news, engaging in many conversations. I knew the regular's usernames, I am sure many recognized mine. I haven't posted since I've left and it honestly hurts a little, but I can't go back anymore. Reddit is dead, it just doesn't realize it yet. I'm happy to be a part of building Lemmy up.
  
  I joined 3 years ago when I first heard about it in a zealous enthusiasm for open source projects, but quickly I realised it was just too small of a community for proper engagement - and the communities that were there felt a bit impenetrable with more close-knit and small userbases.
  Now I can use Lemmy like I used reddit, for (reading and participating in) discussions with a semi-anonymous crowd on a multitude of topics and for looking at silly memes. And the future so far only looks more promising when it comes to the multitude part of topics available to discuss.
- I didn't really start to use Lemmy until after the API shutdown. And even in that length of time it's been remarkable. The first week without reddit Lemmy wasn't really able to keep me death scrolling, which was a good thing probably. I eventually used revanced to get Sync working again on my phone. Since doing that I've spent maybe 3 hours on Reddit and probably 3 or 4 times that on Lemmy as the communities get more active and I find more communities I want to be a part of.
- This gives me real, concrete hope that Lemmy is the future. I’m seeing it transform just in the last couple of weeks.
  Also the old memes thing is funny af.
- Yeah I've personally witnessed the growth in real time. I got on lemmy when the Reddit API changes where announced, and I was checking in on it at least once a day, because that was all there was to see.
  Where as today it's booming!

I think reddit will keep going for awhile longer, mainly just because of how big it is
But the damage has definitely been done, and the problem is I don't believe reddit has any capability of patching up the damage long-term. Everything still looks good now, but it's not like Twitter immediately looked bad when Elon got it either. Instead we'll see them continuously, over and over, having to fix things that looking back were caused by this.
- Once a number of the smaller hobby communities have their bases move offsite, it will be a big blow to reddit. I think it's those types of groups that would be more likely to stick around. You can find political commentary anywhere, but finding a group that can answer your questions about a niche hobby is only in a few places, and chances are high that the subreddit ended up killing the old forum for it.
- I think Google de-prioritising Reddit search results is huge.
  It was my go-to secret. Try and find a specific solution/recommendation/review, I'd see what comes up normally then add "Reddit" and check out some threads.
  Normally, the Reddit threads would have the gem I needed for my problem/question.
  Now, I'm faced with private communities or deleted posts. And - although it makes my googling harder - I'm all for it. I find myself adding "-reddit" now so I don't get juked by search result caches.
  I gave knowledge to that site. I gave my experiences within niche communities. I'd reply when someone asks a question on my post/comment a few years later.
  That's over for me.
  There is a long term lasting damage that they have done to themselves.
  
  I used to do the same thing. I found that adding "forum" in place of "reddit" brings up more community answers on more websites. I hope it works for your stuff like it's worked for mine
  
  Yeah it's pretty weird actually going to different sites for answers and information. I mean, I feel more informed on my decisions now atheist. Before I used to just go with the top reddit comment like 80% of the time.
- db0 didn't explore further on the types of damage caused by the current events, but once we do, IMO it's clear that you're right - there's no way for Reddit to patch it up.
  The main damage is that Reddit hit the trust thermocline. It has been abusing the trust of the userbase for a really long time, but the 3PAs and its "users? mods? nah, fuck them" approach that made plenty users go from "I trust this site enough to contribute with it" to "contribute??? with Reddit? Hell no!".
  And it's funny because Reddit Inc. seems to be (historically) hellbent on avoiding the same mistakes as Digg did with v4 (where changes in interface pissed users and made them left), for example leaving old.reddit alone for so many years... just to do the exact same mistake as Digg did in the big picture (v4 didn't cause the Digg exodus alone - it was v4 plus everything before it).
  
  leaving old.reddit alone for so many years
  Except they killed part of the old reddit experience earlier this year, when they decommissioned i.reddit
- Digg is still around.. but it's nothing like it used to be. Reddit will do the same.
- I mean, Digg is still up and running…
  
  Lycos does too. Tripod as well. But does it mean anything?
- Splintering communities suffer from major attrition events that lower their value. We already have a model for where Twitter and Reddit are going -- FB. Compared with 10 years ago it is a graveyard. If it weren't for their ownership of IG, it would be far worse for them. It is now a site for older people and for an awful lot of fake accounts. Twitter and Reddit are headed this same direction, but it's probably a 2-3 year timeline before it is really obvious. More generally, the model of centralized social media has already peaked. I am not disputing that they will still have large user bases but there will be a slow grinding down.

theres enough of us here now to make lemmy viable, we're over the hump of any social media of getting enough people on that you can browse all day and still have real content.
- I had my first "What time is it?!?" moment a couple days ago while browsing lemmy. Hours had passed, and I didn't even notice.

- I agree with the self sustainability.
  I started browsing fediverse a bit back, but there wasn't enough content so I would go back to Reddit (mostly to catch up on news and discussions).
  But I'm going to Reddit less and less now as there are more people engaging in fediverse content. I now mostly go back for specific subreddits, but not the general feeds anymore.
- You brought up a great point - synergy between different platforms in the Fediverse. At least in theory we could build something here that surpasses Reddit, Twitter, IG, Youtube and Facebook, simply because it's intended to operate together.
  Reddit is just the first domino to fall.
  More like the second. Twitter was the first, and Huffman aping Musk was part of the domino falling chain.
- Lemmy works so well because Reddit was always about interacting with normal, average users. Mastodon and Peertube don’t work as well as Lemmy because many people go on Twitter and YouTube for well known people with big followings, and those people will stay on whatever platform is most popular. This is just my opinion, I hope it changes someday.
  
  Is it just me or has interacting with humans on reddit become a frustrating experience? People are only trying to get one over on each other, all debates I see seem to be about who can just get the harshest insult in before blocking the other person… i guess reddit’s popularity works heavily against what made reddit good in the first place, i think the more popular something is, the lower the common denominator
- I don't think the fediverse is at sustainability yet. It's still very much an early adoption phase. Pretty much every community is ok with content for the sake of content. If it weren't for the constant stream of shit posting the fediverse would look dead. The next step is to start getting more quality to happen.
- This is total pie in the sky naive thinking, but I used to think reddit felt a lot like the way 'the net' is described in the Ender's Shadow novels. But now with the Fediverse I feel like we're even closer to that.
  PSA: card is a dick and a bigot who uses his platform to spread hate. If you want to read his books, don't steal them just find a nice truck for them to fall off of.
- We moved past critical mass and moved to a meme cycle. Shit-posting in response to shit-posting is like the heartbeat of the internet. Beans, retro memes, and making fun of Poland getting invaded again are the natural order of things.
- Looks around
  Uhh, Mastodon's been self-sustaining for quite a while now. There's an order of magnitude more active users on Mastodon, and Mastodon's federation with PixelFed keeps it sustainable.
  The fact that Lemmy doesn't federate well with Mastodon and PixelFed probably means that it's not going to actually generate an outsized impact in that space.
  Now, Lemmy's federation with PeerTube could do some interesting things...

Reddit has reached terminal enshittification and the only thing left for it to do, is die.
The mods and tools are leaving. Will the last one to go, please turn off the lights?
- Nah, MySpace lights are still on lol

First of all, I cannot speak for the current state of Reddit myself because I literally never go there anymore.
I’ve been here for 5 days, and from my experience is this platform has gained a lot of traction even in that short timeframe. Hopefully it just doesn’t level off and then die suddenly.
Most importantly though, this article hit on the nose of what my opinion is on what made Reddit great… great 3rd party platforms (I loved Apollo) and the moderation/customization of its subreddits. Everything was so hands off. Both of those are gone now. Reddit killed off the very things that made it unique and so good.
In my 7 years on Reddit, I’d say over the last two-ish years we have slowly been seeing that leave. So many subs got shut down, and some definitely were questionable at best, but in it, Reddit organic feel and freedom. At first it was only the worst of the worst subs, but slowly more and more left. Not to mention moderation was being done by a shrinking number of people and it seemed the echo chamber in each individual sub got worse.
Some changes were directly administration’s fault, others indirect to varying degrees.
I’d argue Reddit has slowly been killing itself for awhile now, it’s just that the latest changes are the most abrupt, direct, and significant.
- I've been checking Reddit once in a while. Mostly to archive a few things here and there, as people mention them in this sub. I feel like db0 is spot on, when talking about how the place is now bitter and hostile (it was already this way, but even more now). The current events were "just enough" to get rid of any sort of cooperativeness that you'd feel on the site before.
  
  How is emotional stickiness measured? I feel like the article is hitting on something I've noticed about reddit ever since July 1st, but it's hard for me to explain or support this subconscious observation that the quality content has slowed dramatically.
  Reposting had always been a thing but it feels like the ratio of reposts to quality has increased, and the scroll of new posts on the front page or /r/all has slowed considerably. I have no way to back that up other than subjective experience though.
- Yeah, I haven't been around here too long either, but it feels like something interesting is happening for sure. There's tons of memes, but there's definitely also some interesting non-meme content. It's shaping up to be a replacement for the core of what made Reddit work, hopefully while learning what not to do along the way. I know of at least 1-2 new apps on the way from seasoned 3rd party Reddit devs. Sync (!syncforlemmy@lemmy.world) will likely become my app of choice when it's available.
  The biggest issue I'm seeing right now is the amount of data we're asking server admins to store as far as long-term sustainability. In a Lemmy Support community, I saw one admin saying their 1k-user instance was gobbling up an extra GB of disk space daily. I wonder if the devs could overhaul the content distribution system to reduce the number of copies of data stored? Maybe clusters where each cluster is a "core federation" inner circle that shares/mirrors content with each other (basically a pact to distribute seeding the network), then more loosely federated servers that are allowed to view/share data without fully mirroring all relevant content.
  So many subs got shut down, and some definitely were questionable at best, but in it, Reddit organic feel and freedom
  While I agree that deplatforming should be very cautiously and judiciously approached, I will say that there is some content that should be blocked for the sake of preservation of tolerance. I don't care whether the topic of discussion is legal, I care if it's ethical. Hate speech has, and does, encourage real violence against innocent parties. When the goal post keeps moving for the sake of attracting investors or silence activism, rather than focusing solely on user experience, we start to see unreasonable restrictions on free communication. With federation and open source software, there's no way to stop neonazis from setting up their own network, provided DNS is willing to point to them, but that doesn't mean we should assist in growing their ideology/platform.
  Not to mention moderation was being done by a shrinking number of people and it seemed the echo chamber in each individual sub got worse.
  I wonder if this might be a reflection on increasingly difficult times for many people as cost of living exceeds income? Moderation takes real work. It's unpaid and generally quite thankless. If would-be mods are bogged down with real-world problems, they'll have less energy to devote to volunteering.
  
  Good points and I agree with all of them. I’ll also add that when Reddit started shutting down some subs, it was a good thing, as they started with the worst of the worst. My point is just that’s when it started, and it just went too far from there. Now there definitely seems to be too heavy of a hand.
  Expanding on that, that all evolved to a point where Reddit is telling moderators how to moderate, and if they fail to comply, they will force you out and replace you with someone who will moderate exactly how they want. At this point, besides niche smaller subs, there is very little that is organic on that site.
  The subs used to feel like they each belonged to their creators and/or moderators. To me that is what made Reddit great and unique in so many ways, it’s why there was something for everybody. The site could perfectly fit the content to anyone. That’s pretty much dead now.
- There is certainly a change in character over there. I think we’re at the tail end of long, gradual decline. I’m not sure where along the way we dropped off - probably some proverbial frog boiling going on. But undoubtedly the quality of discourse in say, 2010-2015 was significantly better than today.
  
  That's a decent point I would say. I would say even pre 2010 was better, but I was still lurking at that point. It took me years to feel comfortable enough to create an account, probably because most posts were tech stuff that I didn't understand enough to have a valuable opinion.
  Sometime around 2016 it became really bad. Like really, really bad. I don't think the election was the reason for it, but all those bots certainly didn't help. Politics would literally creep into every comment section, even pics of fluffy kittens. The political bots seemed to get quieter after ~2018, but the vitriol, aggressive comments and people feeling the need to dunk on each other only seemed to get worse and worse.
  There was a distinct point when I realized the site had changed when I made a reply to add some additional information to a commentors point and they immediately thought of it as a direct personal attack against themselves, not someone just furthering discussion.

MySpace didn't nearly collapse, it collapsed. Whatever it is now is not the vibrant user space it used to be. Now it's irrelevant to 99.9% of the people on the planet.
- By "near collapse" in the summary I meant "close to the collapse", or "a bit before it collapsed".
  
  Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. I very much enjoyed reading this post and engaging in the comments that spawned from it, so I hope I didn't come across as dismissive. But I wanted to point out that it did in fact collapse, because I personally remember it happening. Shortly after Newscorp took ownership they purged the content database. Everyone lost everything. We lost our pictures, our profile settings, and for me the most damaging was blog posts I had spent a lot of time writing, which had a lot of engagement on them. Whatever investment people still had in MySpace died right then. The people left on the site immediately migrated to Facebook and the collapse was complete.
- i really want to know why myspace's owners even bother keeping the lights on any more. to my knowledge's there's no niche community of hanger-ons who still passionately use it (please correct if I'm wrong). most of the main content of the site (pics and music) have been purged so there's no reason to even keep it up for nostalgia/historical purposes.

Thanks for sharing this post! Doctorow has a lot of useful things to say about the current moment we find ourselves in with the Fediverse.
- Yes! This guy shines in uncertain times, that's kind of his brand.

Just waiting on some subs to start moving here. But yeah I’ve seen huge decreases even in the volume of posts. The quality of comments has also gone off a cliff. I think the most engaged users were a tiny subset.
Definitely lost the rational and measured discussion crowd although they were always shrinking as a percentage. It’s even more outrage and dumb hot takes now.
- The 90-9-1 rule sure seems to apply to reddit, based on the decrease in most subs since the blackout.

This is becoming like the "dead MMO" meme. Just because you no longer use it doesn't mean it's dead.
- I think that it's different. The author identifies two core points responsible for the popularity of the platform. And it's easy to see why they're so important:
  open API → third party devs coding features to use with the platform → higher user experience → higher user retention
  hands-off approach to community → Reddit being used in ways that the community managers didn't expect → Reddit more suitable for a wider audience → larger potential market
  By killing those two things Reddit might make some short-term profit, but it'll be at expense of the value of the platform and associated company. Once that value goes too low, the profit margin itself will go down, encouraging further measures, that in turn will degrade its value even further.
  Using MMOs as analogy what the Reddit devs did was to remove core mechanics essential for the main gameplay cycle, and left the players only with the optional quests and minigames. Even if you don't really care about the core gameplay, you'll eventually get bored, and leave. No sane game dev would do this, and yet that's what Reddit did.
  There's an additional factor db0 didn't mention through this text, that I believe to be essential for Reddit's "aliveness": user trust. It's hard to measure, but it's what prompts users to "play along" the platform and other users, explaining the bitterness and hostility - because for your typical user, everyone besides himself is "part of the platform". And this tends to create a vicious cycle, since hostile interactions make people trust a platform even less.

IMO it is like the foundations of the building have been undermined , I do agree with the author , even if reddit looks ok numbers wise the heart and soul has been removed.

There’s now significant bitterness and hostility,
Yes, I’ve noticed this more than ever in the last year or two, it simply is not pleasant to interact with people on reddit anymore. Old accounts stopped posting months or years ago, new accounts either don’t take it seriously (therefor making the entire experience an empty and frustrating exercise in trolling) or use it purely to make bad faith arguments about politics.
Don’t get me wrong, reddit’s never been exactly a bastion of highminded discourse but right now it’s positively vile.
- or use it purely to make bad faith arguments about politics.
  How much did Hillary pay you to type this from Hunter Biden's laptop?
  That's a serious example of laughable responses I've received on Reddit. I received them often enough to eventually completely block all political sites from my feed over there.
- reddit’s never been exactly a bastion of highminded discourse
  It had some subs and users that were generally nice and fun to interact with, but it has been a constant battle to keep the trolls out of the garden. With people now haven lesser tools to fight and lesser people that want a pleasant experience for all I could imagine those patches of joy would dry out. But now we're here and I'm all for making the best out of it.

People are leaving Reddit in droves but they’re a tiny minority. It’s far from collapse
- Did you read the article? That is exactly what the author addressed and why he thinks it is heading towards collapse based on his experiences with Friendster and MySpace. Now Reddit is much larger than either of those sites, so it may be more resilient to users leaving (Twitter being a good parallel here, and potentially in the same boat), but they are very much following in the same footsteps as those other websites.
- It's like a house of cards - depending on which card is missing, the whole thing falls down. Although it depends on what "to fall down" or "to collapse" means in this case.
  For "collapse" = "noticeable and irreversible change of the number of active users, and their overall engagement": I think that the collapse will be slow-motion, because the content already in the site still retains a bit of the userbase. It won't be as fast as Myspace's. However the situation is looking similar to Myspace before the collapse.
- Wasnt the point of the article that the tech literate people left? For sure the hardest crowd to please, but Id say they've settled here in Lemmy with the massive ammounts of tools and apps being created - with such a small userbase
  
  The point is the quality, not the quantity. I see a common refrain on the threadiverse that the discussions are more in depth, insightful, thoughtful, etc. Slowly the rank and file of Reddit will get tired of how much less interesting and creative the content there is

Well this article is very mobile friendly
- Firefox's reader mode is great for unfucking news sites. Removes the ads too.
- I don't think @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com cares particularly much about mobile users.
  
  I do, I am just not particularly capable of fixing it. I merely use WordPress and rely on its functionality to handle mobile. It's typically ok but something about the double quote fucked it up

"Reddit has reached terminal enshittification and the only thing left for it to do, is die."
👍

My question is how can we go about making the transition easy and worthwhile for big communities?
I’m talking a guide that makes it super simple for users to switch. Then convince mods of communities with strong engagement to move over.
- I'm writing a draft for a guide like this right now. Focused on explaining:
  what is Lemmy, through comparison with Reddit, highlighting similarities and differences
  how to choose a server and join
  how to look for the stuff that you want to see
  a few misconceptions (e.g. confusion between the flagship instance and the whole)
  how federation and defederation works (no technicalities, just on practical matters)
  However I don't have any idea on how to address big communities, so I'd need help to write this guide.

Reddit might go on for a number of years. Maybe with a continually decreasing amount of users, engagement and value, but until the fediverse is able to accumulate the knowledge base contained on Reddit, it will still be my primary knowledge base. I cannot wait for the day when I can scrub ' Site : reddit.com' from my Google search bar. Edit:spelling errors

And the quality of the discussions is a pleasure to go through.
Lemmy is just a new platform for the same people. Accordingly, I find the "quality" is very similar. I like both. But I'm not sure about Lemmy's algorithms, both for posts and comments.
- It might be intended for the same people, but at least currently, it's used by a subset of them, strongly biased towards older users (in both RL age and experience with this sort of platform), more engaged, actively seeking alternative to a site still favoured by the network effect. Those things do affect quality.
  It's also worth noting that the same people behave in very different ways, depending on the environment. Reddit eroded the trust of its userbase not only against Reddit Inc., but against itself, as users fighting over stupid shit is engagement.
  My experience with Lemmy is a bit more like db0's and a bit less like yours, as I do feel like the quality is different. Here I got into exactly one discussion where I could reliably say "yup, the other side is a moron"; in Reddit though, it was a dozen per day.
  
  Age has a lot to do with it. We used to see a substantial drop in quality on Reddit at the beginning of every school year summer break, which would resolve itself when school went back into session. But some time around 2020 we took that drop and it never went back. I think it's likely that the pandemic drove the masses to start engaging on Reddit and where the masses go, eternal September follows.
  
  Not to mention, many of us trying very hard to engage and create so we can attract the filthy casuals and feel superior when they ask for help!

This is more like a slow burn. Reddit won't go up in flames, it'll slowly burn to a shithole.
- Perhaps the content still there has more retention value than the author takes into account. But what he said should still hold true for the newer content and interactions, I think.
  
  The content there has immeasurable value. But users like me are burning their content history to the ground when they leave, and there's talk of reddit blocking all mobile users not on the official app and even paywalling the site. They'll drive the final nail into their own coffin with either or both of those moves. Considering they've consistently taken the worst possible path at every fork in the road, I fully expect them to eventually go with both options.

Good riddance.

I’m optimistic, but I’m not seeing this in my experience, yet. Sure, the “front page” of Lemmy is good enough to keep me off Reddit. However, most of the individual pop culture communities I participate in are super active on Reddit and pretty much dead on Lemmy. For instance: /r/onepiece vs the multiple communities on Lemmy. That subreddit often has more comments on posts than members of the Lemmy communities.

LOL at the Cory Doctorow reference on medium:
- For some reason Medium allowed me to read the article, so I copypasted it to a pastebin. I'll also link it in the OP, fuck those walls online.
  
  Rather than breaking up ad-tech, banning surveillance ads, and opening up app stores, which would make tech platforms stop stealing money from media companies through ad-fraud, price-gouging and deceptive practices, governments introduce laws requiring tech companies to share (some of) their ill-gotten profits with a few news companies.
  This makes the news companies partners with the tech giants, rather than adversaries holding them to account, and makes the news into cheerleaders for massive tech profits, so long as they get their share. Rather than making it easier for the news to declare independence from Big Tech, we are fusing them forever.
  Holy crap, I never thought about it that way.