I agree completely. I've used Reddit since at least 2008. I quit Facebook over what they did to WhatsApp and will never use another Meta product. Reddit is getting dangerously close.
It's very clear there is not an adult at reddit who can tell the people in power NO.
I ended up having to pay $2 for a Safari iOS extension to auto-redirect reddit links to old.reddit just so I could actually read the site when I got there via web searches. There's no usability whatsoever
I just painstakingly pinch and pan around old.reddit rather than try to wrestle with their dog-awful app or redesign
semi-related: I've been trying to get the WallStreetBets mods to just make their own version of Reddit instead of putting up with the admins' constant bullshit.. they're basically singlehandedly funding that whole shitshow and get nothing out of it but scam ads, users randomly banned for saying a no-no word, etc
That is the day I will quit reddit and never look back. 6 months ago I rarely used old.reddit.com, but now I run into more and more dark patterns all the time. They tried to TikTok my feed and it was an awful experience. I frequently default to it now instead of using it only when I get sick of the dark patterns.
Reddit got popular because Digg screwed up their comment threading. It's sad to see reddit is starting to make anti-user mistakes like digg. Maybe they think they can force it because there isn't a competent competitor.
The problem with all of these sites is they start to service the lowest common denominator in the name of next quarters profits. As their websites become more hostile to the educated, the quality of content drops and profit goes up, but the golden goose is slowly being strangled.
Reddit was fantastic around the time of digg because the average user appeared to be college educated or greater. Celebrities like Randall Monroe were submitting high quality content. It was common for a literal expert to write a well thought out post. Now it's an "Americas funniest home videos" feed of fart jokes with your liberal aunt and conservative uncle having an argument in the background.
It seems so clear to me that billionaires mean we can't have nice things. Twitter and Reddit both promoted a "truth to power" free speech ideology, and now billionaires are coercing these companies into becoming cess pits that reflect the worst parts of humanity. Power doesn't like to be threatened so they will destroy the weapon.
I still can't decide if these companies are being destroyed because they promote a "no more billionaires" ideology, or if it is simply capitalistic greed and the search for next quarters profits.
> The problem with all of these sites is they start to service the lowest common denominator in the name of next quarters profits. [...] It seems so clear to me that billionaires mean we can't have nice things"
The pressure to increase quarterly profits to the detriment of the long-term emerges from the very nature of short-term investment, particularly as facilitated by stock exchanges. Eliminating billionaires would not eliminate this dynamic.
Yes, Reddit is not even part of a publicly listed company that has investor pressure to meet quarterly numbers, it is privately owned by the Newhouse family. People just like having more money than less money.
The entire Internet at the 'fantastic' time of Reddit was very much tilted towards the elite class that could 1. Afford an expensive computer or phone (or have access from University) 2. Afford Internet (and for an added bump of exclusivity add mobile Internet) (or have access from University) 3. Have the time/inclination to put lots of energy into CREATING Internet content (via either a hobby site, or composing well thought out posts). What you are complaining about is the quality of a restaurant that has gone from an exclusive new spot you discovered to a Chili's franchise. (Phil's Fish Market?).
What everyone on Hacker News seems to long for is an Internet limited to 'that class' of people. They complain about billionaires and advertising, but maybe they should take a broader look at what they are really longing for.
> What everyone on Hacker News seems to long for is an Internet limited to 'that class' of people.
Yep, that is exactly what I want. I want to be around and interact with other educated people who act in good faith and I don't want to be around uneducated people who act in bad faith or can't see or aren't open to the contradictions in their own ideas.
The good things in a community site come from people more
than technology; it's mainly in the prevention of bad
things that technology comes into play. Technology
certainly can enhance discussion. Nested comments do, for
example. But I'd rather use a site with primitive
features and smart, nice users than a more advanced one
whose users were idiots or trolls.
Sure, having a group of people who are of the same general education, sensibilities, and class is desirable.
When people who are only in the same space due to shared interests and experiences become too inclusive then that gets diluted and they are left being around a lot of people who are just a lot of people. No one likes that except extroverts and attention seekers.
Trying to shame us for pining for the days of educated and interesting content made by people we relate to for reasons that are not tied to monetizing everything (because, well, we don't need it) is silly, because by pretending you think that is wrong means you are either short-sighted or bitter.
This is not to say that exclusivity is desirable, but to say that communities exist for a reason and being nostalgic about losing a healthy one does not make you a bad person.
I don't give a toss if someone has an expensive device or university internet, and I resent the implication that only "an elite class" can compose a well thought out post.
The fact is, billionaires pay people to keep the status quo. Those people hire other people - to program bots, to hire PR goons, to spend millions or even billions on swaying vulnerable minds with echo-chamber media drones -- all to warp discussion online and IRL.
Tobacco companies did it, fossil fuel companies did it, and you can be certain tech companies and governments are doing it too.
You're discounting all of that, and then calling people classist for wanting good-faith discussion. Uncool.
I don't think Fediverse solves the problems that we see in Reddit (or Twitter, or any of the others). Instead of admin meddling from a single group of closely-affiliated admins (they all work for the same company), you just get meddling from many small groups of admins, none of those groups affiliated with each other except via ActivityPub. They can't shut down conversations they dislike entirely, but they can sever you from the Fediverse thoroughly enough that they might as well.
And they can do it early enough that no one ever knew you were there in the first place. Even the Reddit admins didn't do that... I don't know if it was apathy and indifference, or just that they couldn't pay enough attention back in the early 2010s, but they didn't. And that likely allowed Reddit to grow so large, it could be the forum for everybody, about everything. Fediverse and Lemmy just ends up being those old phpbb forums, that won't talk to or link to each other unless everything is excessively sanitized and drips with insincere civility.
Lemmy doesn't even have an Elon Musk to piss everyone off of Reddit and drive them to search for an alternative.
Are servers hosted on fediverse open to being indexed by search engines otherwise I doubt it can replace reddit. Reddit did discussion threads , subs, and searchable results from search engines really well. It was a really great version of "forums" . I am not sure fediverse or Discord can do such things.
How do they plan to handle moderation? The strong majority of subreddit mods still use old Reddit because modding on new is suffering. Many will give up modding and some will abandon using Reddit entirely. Do they have a plan to replace the thousands of free employees that currently keep Reddit habitable?
The day old.reddit.com stops working is the day I stop using reddit completely, I detest their new UI so much that it’s essentially unusable for me.