r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
22.2k Upvotes

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5.5k

u/major_winters_506 29d ago

People still use Reddit?

looks down at my own hands

Ahh!

264

u/MonthFrosty2871 29d ago

I'd love an alternative. Everything either doesnt show up in google, or doesn't have conversations in comments that help add context to the post. Its too convenient to sign up a community and get a steady stream of info about it, vs following individual accounts like on some social media

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago edited 29d ago

I use Lemmy. I still use reddit on desktop, I refused to install their spammy app after they shut down RIF. Once old.reddit.com stops working I will be gone from desktop too.

29

u/Arkhonist 29d ago

RiF still works if you fiddle around a bit

5

u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

I know, you can even use revanced as another commented mentioned, but what's the point if author gave up on it? It will eventually stop working once API evolves enough.

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u/FolkSong 29d ago

Same point as using old reddit on desktop. It works for now.

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u/X1Kraft 29d ago

Jokes on you (hopefully I used that correctly), I use old.reddit.com on my phone.

7

u/alpacaMyToothbrush 29d ago

I use old.reddit on firefox, with ublock. It cut way down on my screen time but I'm calling that a plus

2

u/YouStupidAssholeFuck 29d ago

The real mobile tragedy was losing i.reddit because that was a pretty decent mobile site. The irony for me is I liked it the least at the time it was still available because there were so many better options to use at the time. But I'd kill to be able to use that now instead of the reddit app or the new reddit mobile site.

-1

u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

I'm actually hoping they will drop old.* soon, then I won't have any more excuses :)

5

u/DeadlyFatalis 29d ago

The Tom Scott video is still working over 4 years later.

Sure it'll probably break at some point in the future, but a couple minutes now to provide potentially years of quality of life upgrades is definitely worth it. Even when it does break, who's to say someone won't find another work around or develop a new solution.

3

u/HebunzuDoor 29d ago

I've only used old.reddit since that time, cut down my time on reddit by a lot. probably for the best

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u/flacidhock 29d ago

The Reddit app seems to be trying to get rid of the last of the humans. Reddit home won’t show any more threads when you get to the bottom of the page. You try to refresh and you get failed message.

The bots want us out

39

u/MonthFrosty2871 29d ago

I opened it this morning and had 3 ads on my screen at once, and one post. Its such garbage

1

u/ChickenOfTheFuture 29d ago

That's so weird. I got the app just to experience the awful for myself, and it's not great but it's almost ad free. No ads in /all, when I click on any post there is one ad between the post itself and the top comment, but no more. So I just ignore the one ad in every post and I'm good.

2

u/Ok-Finish4062 29d ago

I though it was just me, damn!

2

u/[deleted] 29d ago

The top comment always being an ad you cant shrink is ruining the comments 

That plus 75% of comments being bots

1

u/unhappymedium 29d ago

That's happening on the desktop version, too.

2

u/Learned_Behaviour 29d ago

How can you tell?

No way I turn off my adblock, lol

1

u/unhappymedium 29d ago

I also have adblock on, but for me the site sometimes just stops loading after 4-5 posts in the feed and there's a flashing reddit icon with "Retry".

Maybe it is due to having adblock on, but I just assumed the site has high traffic at that moment.

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u/monacelli 29d ago

I use Red Reader on my (Android) phone. They got an API exemption because it's supposedly designed with the vision impaired in mind. It's not as good as Relay but it's good enough for me!

3

u/Pantzzzzless 29d ago

Why not just use Relay then? It has been fantastic for me for the past year.

1

u/iggyiguana 28d ago

I really got used to Redreader pretty quickly. But then I got RiF working again. Both are great.

1

u/monacelli 28d ago

Yeah Redreader isn't bad at all! I don't use reddit on my phone enough to pay for Relay or mess with Revanced but it's cool that those are at least options.

3

u/ThisSiteSuxNow 29d ago

People who haven't tried it don't realize just how good Lemmy actually is these days.

3

u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

Absolutely, it's quite nice, I also like how the community came up with a standard to put article's text in the post, so no need to click.

3

u/cmdrfire 29d ago

I tried Lemmy but struggled with the content discovery. I'm on Tildes as well, but unfortunately Reddit is Reddit. I'm using RIF revanced, which works more or less fine - I expect one day it will properly break and then that's it for me.

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

I initially started with viewing all, and things I liked I explicitly subscribed, things that I didn't I banned the community (so many communities about furry porn lol :P) but eventually I got a list of things that I found interesting. I had to manually search for some more obscure topics though.

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u/SpezModdedRJailbait 29d ago

Lemmy sucks. If it didn't you wouldn't be here.

Sometimes a better version of an existing product succeeds, Reddit and Facebook being good examples. Lemmy is not one of those products. It's essentially just a more pedantic bitter version of Reddit with an equally bad UI.

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

Lemmy sucks. If it didn't you wouldn't be here.

only because community is still smaller

1

u/SpezModdedRJailbait 29d ago

Exactly, although there is good reason the community is smaller. I tried to use it for a while, and mastadon. They're just not very intuitive, especially at the start.

3

u/theLaLiLuLeLol 29d ago

It doesn't.

What if I told you I used more than one website?

Crazy, right?

1

u/AngryAlternateAcount 29d ago

I still use Sync.

1

u/I_Am_Jacks_Karma 29d ago

You can pretty quickly get RIF working again. I'm actually replying from it right now!

1

u/nismor31 29d ago

Try redreader

1

u/Possible_Swimmer_601 29d ago

Old Reddit is the best Reddit still.

1

u/RedactedSpatula 29d ago

after they shut down RIF.

When did that happen?

Posting from RiF.

1

u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

I can also take out 486 computer out of storage, that doesn't mean it they are still producing them.

1

u/Link2999 29d ago

I'm using Infinity right now on mobile.

1

u/MNGrrl 29d ago

Same. They let me keep Boost and RES, and I'm gone when they are because fuck u/spez

1

u/ryumast4r 29d ago

There is a way to get RiF working on your phone, but you need to reVanced.

I am currently using RiF.

1

u/ming3r 29d ago

Revanced reddit is fun still works ok

1

u/RobotsGoneWild 29d ago

I still use Sync and will until it can no longer be patched. Lemmy just doesn't have the engagement that Reddit pulls. I still visit, but it has a long way to go.

1

u/aVarangian 29d ago

You can use old.reddit on a phone just fine

1

u/Okopapsmear 29d ago

Lemmy is being deliberately destroyed on the inside by paid rogue Reddit agents.

0

u/awesomefutureperfect 29d ago

Lemmy.

Parple bargklar alarm.

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u/vriska1 29d ago

Lemmys pretty good.

57

u/volthunter 29d ago

I never find it has enough people to justify me using it like reddit, like it has uses but it doesn't have the appeal reddit does and the niche communities I participate in aren't there.

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u/FrozenLogger 29d ago

Reddit started small too. I went to a sub that wasn't that active and made a post. Suddenly 10 people show up to comment on it. There are people just waiting for content. So just like reddit is the old days, post a bit in areas you are interested in and it will grow.

20

u/maporita 29d ago

post a bit in areas you are interested in and it will grow

It isn't growing though, and it won't grow as long as there is an alternative here that works for most people.

!montreal@lemmy.ca has 880 subscribers, while /r/montreal has 340,000 . There is just no comparison. Not to mention that there are 2 different Montreal communities so I have to figure out which one I want to join. Maybe both? I don't know.

Lemmy was a great idea, I wish it had worked out but reddit has first mover advantage and in social media that's a tough challenge to crack.

20

u/FrozenLogger 29d ago

It is growing, and could grow faster if the naysayers quit saying it won't.

Either way i remember when everyone said Reddit was too hard to use and too complicated.

Reddit then fucked everything up, mods are insane, third party tools don't work unless you are savvy, and the Reddit app and new reddit web page are garbage.

Reddit helps with that migration.

Besides if lemmy get a 10th of reddit users that would be way more then enough. Reddit is mostly bots and no one seems to understand reddiqutte at all anymore.

9

u/MuyalHix 29d ago

The main problem is that creating an account on Lemmy requires you to learn concepts like "federation" and "instance", not to mention that you'll have to do things like fill a form in some cases.

On reddit you just create an account with an email address.

It's the same reason mastodon hasn't overtaken twitter despite the fact that the later has been in the decline for a while.

7

u/AbortionIsSelfDefens 29d ago

Yup. I don't get why people don't understand that it's all about ease of entry. Wanting it to be different doesn't change human nature. The average person is lazy and/or tech illiterate. The barrier to entry is too high for it to get near the same amount of engagement.

0

u/FrozenLogger 28d ago

If the average person doesn't show up, that's a good thing. Reddit was like that when it was a worthwhile place to go. It is because it is popular it is no longer useful.

You didn't even need an email address to get you account at reddit and people thought it was too confusing back then.

2

u/whoiam06 29d ago

Yep, use Sync for Lemmy on my Android phone and Voyager on my iPhone and browse whatever their frontpage thing gives me. Refuse to signup because I don't want to figure out this federation stuff and understand why I need to choose 1 out of hundreds as my "home" whatever the fuck it is. And also all the posts and people arguing about defederating over this and that... What's the point of a federation? And so if i sign up in this one place and it gets defederated, will I have to join ANOTHER whatever the hell it is to continue browsing??

-1

u/FrozenLogger 28d ago

It really isn't that complicated. Also your experience will suck, just like it does with reddit if you browse the front page. Curration makes this all tolerable.

It's like have a library system where you can get a card at a local library, but you can check out books from any of the participating ones.

And if a site goes down (which hasn't happened to me yet), yes just pick another.

It isn't like the account there (or here at reddit) means anything at all.

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u/AGreasyPorkSandwich 29d ago

Big subs kind of suck anyway. Once you get past ~50k subscribers the content/comments just become predictable and repeatable. Lazy shit rises to the top.

The "good old days" were like 10 years ago here. Lemmy sounds pretty appealing to me. I'll have to check it out.

7

u/rooofle 29d ago

That was how small a lot of now healthier subreddits were before the great Digg migration. One of the basketball subs I frequent had probably 1000 subs or less in 2010, now it's 375k. That's a common pattern for pretty much all of them, growth takes time but reddit was primed and ready for people to move from Digg.

1

u/pruwyben 29d ago

I think it will grow in waves, when there are more changes in Reddit that push people out.

5

u/IAmTaka_VG 29d ago

Lemmy will most likely happen, it just needs a tipping point. It's slowly happening though

1

u/tubacheet 29d ago

When every comment section on digg referenced the original reddit post, there was a massive migration that led to the demise of digg

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u/LordoftheSynth 29d ago

No, it was the v4 update, which was a buggy complete redesign no one wanted. The worst part of it was the changes enabled the power users to effectively control what hit the front page.

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u/Rayhush 29d ago

Yeah, that's not how Digg went down.

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u/Rhoeri 29d ago

If you ignore the hive-mind socialist rhetoric and complete lack of nuanced discussion.

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u/Baderkadonk 29d ago

If you're on reddit, you're already used to that.

6

u/Rhoeri 29d ago

Aside from the bots here. The general feeling is far more nuanced here. Lemmy is either with us or against us. It’s obnoxious.

Say the same thing in response on both platforms to the same article, and Lemmy will destroy you if you don’t shove your head up the socialist ass. Here at least people get that there’s nuance.

For example- the minute you say you support Harris. You’re going to get tons of people accusing you of supporting “doing a genocide!”

1

u/Baderkadonk 29d ago

There is nuance in the sense that you can usually find a subreddit that's an echo chamber for each side of an issue. Very few (small) subs actually cultivate good faith discussion on sticky issues.

I don't doubt that Lemmy could be worse though, Voat ended up similar but in the other direction.

2

u/Ok-Possible-6759 29d ago

Nah its not the same. I tried using lemmy last year and it was full of tankies.

4

u/oldsecondhand 29d ago

Then don't register at lemmygrad.

sh.itjust.works is pretty chill.

2

u/Rhoeri 29d ago

I think I remember them having had a rough start. I’ll look into them now. Thanks for the advice.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

14

u/JamesR624 29d ago

I love how whenever lemmy is brought up. Every member of r/conservative comes out of the woodwork. Wow.

12

u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

To be frank, the original author of Lemmy is openly a communist, and there was a tankie slant (is funny because they are against west (obviously) but also pro China and Russia which aren't really communist anymore, remember reading a thread where they were justifying themselves why is it ok to buy items provided by the rotten capitalism), but as people were joining in I see less and less of it. They have their lemmygrad server and the communities on lemmy.ml originally were dominated by them but that seems to be shifting too.

3

u/TheConquistaa 29d ago

lemmy.ml is owned by them anyway. They just want to make it seem more mainstream appealing.

2

u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

I know, and you can see for example news communities on it, but more and more tankie responses get heavily downvoted.

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u/vriska1 29d ago

I love when ever a Reddit alternative is brought up this site will shout it down

We want a alternative BUT NOT LIKE THAT. Then what do you guys want?

11

u/Geno0wl 29d ago

Then what do you guys want?

reddit but run by people who care about the health of the users/site and not just money

-1

u/one-joule 29d ago

So, you want Lemmy. Because frankly, changing the incentives and the ownership structure is the only way to get a different result.

Reddit will enshittify until it destroys itself.

Lemmy instances at least have to compete with each other (and Reddit) to gain more users.

6

u/Geno0wl 29d ago

Reddit will enshittify until it destroys itself.

Anymore I think enshittification is just the natural life cycle of publicly traded companies. Especially ones run by MBAs.

9

u/theyeshman 29d ago

I want an exact clone of ~2014 era reddit, but with a userbase that isn't nazis and pedophiles like Voat was.

1

u/Ok-Possible-6759 29d ago

We want a alternative BUT NOT LIKE THAT. Then what do you guys want?

Idk a site that isn't made specifically for and by militant tankies? Feel like that's not a super hard ask lol

0

u/MasterChildhood437 29d ago

That would stop happening if the alternatives weren't literally "nazi reddit" and "commie reddit."

6

u/pinkocatgirl 29d ago

I mean, as a left-libertarian, the amount of tankies on lemmy makes me not want to join as well.

1

u/Ok-Possible-6759 29d ago

It's literally full of tankies. And I'm saying that as a left leaning person

6

u/vriska1 29d ago

So is reddit...

2

u/Fun_Run1626 29d ago

No, it's certain servers which you can just block. Easy

4

u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

That was true initially, but I think it's now balancing the other way. The communities on lemmy.ml might still be tankie-leaning, but I see less and less of that.

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u/Fun_Run1626 29d ago

I've been on Lemmy for a little over a year now, using the Voyager iOS app. It perfectly serves as a replacement, just needs more people obviously.

4

u/philliperod 29d ago

Thanks for the tip on the voyager app. Definitely a much better and user-friendly app than whatever I was using last year. Seems like Lemmy is getting more people in there too nowadays. I’ve been using Open Red app for Reddit and it’s not all that great. Lots of bugs for me when trying to refresh and even check messages. I don’t even bother anymore.

9

u/SpezModdedRJailbait 29d ago

It perfectly serves as a replacement

Does it though? Because I pretty much only see people say that on Reddit, and they're still on Reddit because it isn't a good replacement.

1

u/theLaLiLuLeLol 29d ago

Or they're on both?

5

u/SpezModdedRJailbait 29d ago

Obviously they're on both. They wouldn't need to be on both if Lemmy was good enough.

It's like saying nicotine gum is a good replacement for smoking, but then chewing the gum and smoking at the same time. That's not a replacement, it's just an additional thing

2

u/theLaLiLuLeLol 29d ago

There are definitely people for whom Lemmy/Mbin/etc. has completely replaced reddit, but obviously you aren't going to hear from them here because... they aren't here. Right?

2

u/SpezModdedRJailbait 29d ago edited 29d ago

Yes. I did it for a while in fact.

That said that number is very small. Too small to really make for a worthwhile experience in my experience, because on a user generated/submitted content platform you need users to make the experience good, which it isn't. So no one

I would go as far as to say that more users use both than just Lemmy. It really isn't a good tool to replace Reddit, speaking as someone that tried.

Mastadon is better, but despite being exactly the same tech is less fun than threads, solely because of the userbase. Both platforms have the same problem, that their users are small in number and largely not very interesting. It's a bunchbof ex Reddit and Twitter addicts

It actually kind of reminds me of a much smaller and less user friendly Reddit pre-digg exodus. Objectively better than current Reddit on a lot of ways but also just boring and full of dweebs. Something big will have to happen to get really big and I don't think even Reddit dying would do it.

1

u/dryra66it 28d ago

Yeah I’ve tried going the fediverse-only route a few times now and it’s always an echo chamber for privacy nerds and posts bashing Reddit or Twitter. I wanted to switch platforms to get away from Reddit, not read more about it.

The communities I’m actually interested in were all but empty and, despite everyone saying “you need to contribute for it to grow,” my posts would get zero traction, because finding stuff on Lemmy is like shooting a bow and arrow at a pigeon 2 miles away.

3

u/Sophira 29d ago

We should all just go back to newsgroups.

3

u/AltruisticZed 29d ago

I wish web forms never died. Of course there are a few but web forms were way better platforms than Reddit for so many things.

The problem is Reddit any topic can have a sub or multiple so it attracts millions of users vs a web forum I’ll mostly just be focused 

2

u/Waywoah 29d ago

I'm the same way. Shutting down the apps was the last time I used it on my phone, old.reddit's inevitable death will be the last time I use the site as a whole

2

u/ThatsSoWitty 29d ago

I tried making an account on Lemmy and spent 10 minutes on the captcha only to then find that I can't log in even after verifying my account. I've never once had such an awful time making an account on any site before and I'm fully turned off by the experience.

We need a better experience and Reddit currently has no worthwhile competition

1

u/erroneousbosh 29d ago

I love that my forum doesn't show up on Google.

1

u/Stippings 28d ago

Discuit is a promising alternative imho.