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Actions have consequences.
I hate that the main issue reported is third party apps are dying. That’s a side effect, not the main issue.
The main issue is the access of the reddit’s data. We all built that. The volunteers who gave all of those hours to supervise that content is the real MVPs of reddit. Not the useless execs. The real founder of reddit has been gone for a while now (he was a true freedom fighter of access to knowledge).
The execs of reddit realize two main things. The first is the known idea that third party apps have the option to change how reddit looks to the user (including blocking ads). The other is that academic types and AI builders could use the content that we cultivated together in order to build datasets to train AI. The reddit execs know groups like these would be willing to pay extra for our data.
R.I.P. Aaron Swartz. It’s been 10 years and these are the issues you warned about and fought against.
Mir offers another business metaphor for the tension on Reddit: “If you have a really good music venue, but you break relations with every notable artist, you’re not going to be a very successful venue. You need to really prioritize the needs of the folks providing the value on your platform.”
Honestly this sums it up pretty well
Additionally, it’s not even that good of a venue.
I was talking to my friend about this and asked if he could point out a single improvement that reddit has made in the last decade that hadn’t been about monetization, since I exclusively use old.reddit.com and third party apps, I certainly couldn’t. We couldn’t come up with anything…
There’s nothing. It’s been slowly getting more and more shitty for years. It’s just been happening so slowly that there wasn’t a breaking point where most of us left until now.
I’ve been casually looking for an alternative for years, because the content has gotten so low effort. There just hasn’t been any good alternatives. I tried Voat, but that got over run with racists and Trumpers almost from the jump.
Lemmy is the first thing I’ve found that seems half decent and it needs to triple ot quadruple it’s engaged user base to really have a shot. Too many posts with no comments or very few. What made reddit special was the comments and interactions. I have hope lemmy can get there, it just needs way more users to do so.
What made reddit special was the comments and interactions.
And in the past few months, I found several instances of karma farmers copying a good comment that was low in the thread and pasting it as a reply to one of the top comments to get visibility and upvotes. Idk if it was bots or people with no life, but I bet shit like that was happening much more than we realized, vastly padding engagement. Personally, I’d rather have a smaller and more authentic community here than disingenuous reposts, shitposts, botposts, trollposts, and general farming like what many subreddits became. I like that this platform seems to have much more thoughtful engagement between users who feel more like people than some cardboard cutout. I think we all can learn and grow as people by sincerely engaging in real discourse in the serious communities, and have interesting OC in less serious ones that are just about memes or storytelling or whatever.
I agree that interactions are special, and I agree that Lemmy needs more users, but I’m wary of bloating the userbase and packing garbage into here. I’d like to see a little growth, and give lurkers a reason to engage in an inviting community that isn’t hostile.
Reddit is inauthentic. Nothing but censorship everywhere. Nobody can say anything if you’re a real person and not a bot. I made a comment comparing new and old Star Trek in a Star Trek community, and my comments got deleted and I got a punishment ban for…some reason. I asked a question about others’ experiences with gay businesses under /AskGayBros and my question along with the thread was deleted, and I was banned for 3 days…for conducting illegal transactions. Those are just two examples, but there are plenty more. I pretty much know that if I post something on Reddit - no matter where and no matter what I say, it will get deleted and I will get banned for 3 days. No matter what. Nobody can say anything over there. I don’t think there are any real people posting, just bots. Because you have to watch what you say and even then, you will likely get deleted.
If I post ever my account is instantly permanently banned and I still don’t know why. AITA mods are incels
Good riddance to bad rubbish!
