I Tried Reddit Again and it Sucks Now
I installed the official Reddit app and went on it to see what the old place was looking like now. My inbox was filled with spam. The "home feed" shows subs I never subscribed to. There are so many ads. Between the ads and the the extra subs in the feed, it's hard to just scroll. I also noted a lot of spam in some of the subs. Maybe they are subs with no mods? I'm not sure what's up with that.
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It really feels worse now, even in terms of topics in the subreddits for which there is no equivalent here.
Still, until certain things are born here or well populated, I'll still check it out from time to time.
At least, so far I seem to check it less and less and am grateful for Lemmy and its growth. I hope it keeps growing!
I maintain one of my accounts for use in getting technical help on software specific subs. I haven't noticed a decline there, they continue to deliver as much advice as they always did and with no weirdness.
I did notice though, because on that account I hadn't opted out of the redesign, that they've successfully made the new design way shittier than it even already was. It's really hard to see your messages now, which are essential for the purpose that I maintain the account because I post a question, and then get back to work knowing it could be hours or days before there's a response and I just come back to check later if anyone had any helpful advice. I now have to somehow find the messages in amongst chat features which only contain unsolicited messages from randoms about some irrelevance or another that they're pushing. Or also some other weirdness about people I'm "following" which fortunately doesn't appear to have been populated for me but is still pointless clutter that gets in the way of the actual utility of the forum.
Definitely not a fan of that shitty new design approach. It's funny actually, while I may have grumbled at developments over the years there, nothing quite bad enough could make me leave and it was only the demolition of the 3rd party apps that provided the impetus, but it was never really only the apps, I could sense something was going in a bad direction but couldn't point to any one particularly egregious thing that would merit boycotting something I actually really liked and poured a lot of time in to without sounding really petty and entitled.
Now there's this design issue and the reports that the place is starting to degrade heavily as an actual forum and I feel reassured that I left there at really just the right time rather than trying to keep swimming in the rapidly evaporating pond.
Yeah, like many things were mitigated if you used reddit only on mobile with good app, I even don't remember when I sit behind PC to browse reddit. I do know about crypto vault on official reddit app, that later learned only on crypto subbredits only you can earn crypto.I showed some cat pics from subreddit on official app and scrolling from vid to vid...And there were weird jumps from cat doing funny things only to other subreddit. So ads redirect from one sub to other when watching full screen
I haven't been back, but lemmy feels pretty hostile in most of the popular communities, with much stronger group think than I saw on Reddit. I was hoping this site was going to go in the opposite direction.
I get that sense too sometimes but then I remember reddit was like that too, just when it's big enough the group think I don't like agree with ends up on subreddits I don't browse while Lemmy I browse everything since there are less choices. (And I bet there are even tankies somewhere on Reddit, just a little less obvious.)
I also just put myself out there more on here since it's smaller and needs less lurking, and speaking up more naturally means more negative interactions. People are jerks everywhere, try not to let it get you down.
That's solid advice for life in general. Thanks!
I think what communities and instances youre on really affect that.
Like ive noticed posts within my instance (solar punk) tend to be very kind and helpful. Likely because it is a small instance full of eco friendly sci fi optimists. I even joined a discord based book club that has weekly voice chats through the instance.
Ive noticed the big conversations that end up in all (often from lemmy.ml) tend to have more bickering and general nastiness. The same was true of reddit, niche things tend to collect fewer trolls because there arent as many people there for them to mess with.
Lemmy.ml is my home instance too, so that could explain my overall experience. I started out on lemmy.world and it seemed pretty friendly. Then I switched to ML when Threads was federated because I didn't want to see Threads content. It never occurred to me that the change of tone might be from switching instances rather than Lemmy itself just growing. I guess it could be both, since I frequently browse the everything feed which has content from everywhere.
Both would make sense. Lemmy has definetly had some growing pains and lemmy.ml has been targeted quite a bit recently by bad actors. Plus since its the biggest instance, it is going to be more influenced by the energy of the new sign ups.
I hope as things continue to grow you find friendlier spaces and good discussions :)
Thanks!