It's Reddit starting to malfunction?

Sine_Fine_Belli@lemmy.world to Reddit@lemmy.world – 64 points –

Is it me or Reddit is starting to malfunction and getting worse? More errors, bots, and the gradual decline of the platform itself. Parts of it don’t work on some days, and it’s starting to feel like it’s falling apart.

45

I jumped ship permanently a few weeks ago. It was unusable. finding content made by a human is getting harder and harder. Its all just reposts at this point. Bots posting, bots commenting back and fourth to each other with prompts, ect. The whole place is a mess and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Sounds like subredditsimulator infected the whole site.

Funny, because statistically it seems to be doing fine. Like Google searches for reddit have doubled in 5 years.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=reddit
I have no idea how it has developed since they closed the API, except what I read on Lemmy, because I had already closed my account about a year before that, because the quality had deteriorated a lot already back then.

Lemmy though is nice, it's a lot like reddit was in the beginning.

I would guess part of it is Google getting worse and people adding reddit to the query hoping to find answers to PC problems, etc.

It's possible, but AFAIK Google is known for prioritizing reddit results. i don't see why that part should be worse. But to be honest I don't use Google search that much, my default search is Qwant.

Funny, because statistically it seems to be doing fine.

Only superficially

I agree a lot with that, but this is more than a year old now, and with myspace it only took a few months to begin.

With Digg it was even faster, and what reddit is trying to do looks a lot like what Digg did, when they tried to prioritize monetized content, and although digg still exist, it's an irrelevant site.
https://digg.com/

But a lot of people seem to stay with reddit for some reason. Which may actually be good for Lemmy, because when Digg failed, the quality of reddit took a dive.

Actually Digg wasn't fast either. There were multiple exoduses from Digg throughout a year or more. And you also have to remember that Digg was multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Reddit is today. That gives Reddit a ton more momentum before the trust thermocline is breached.

Back in the day Digg was a phenomenon on the internet. Relatively speaking Digg was orders of magnitude bigger than reddit is today.

While you're probably right, I think it's total numbers that probably matter more for these things. Reddit could loose a number of niche communities and most users wouldn't notice due to its size. They can also hemmorage more people and content before it becomes apparent to the average user.

Considering most google searches show reddit posts, its not too surprising. There's good info on it, but anything made more recently is pretty low-quality. There's still gonna be users on it, but nobody will know exactly how many are actually human.

I sadly had to get a Reddit account just a few weeks ago, I am an IT technician and needed help from the sysadmin subreddit for a work question.

But after rejoining after more than a year away from the site, it has clearly seen a huge decline, way less people post less content, the content that is posted isn't as interesting as it used to be.

I dunno why y’all still use Reddit honestly. I follow this community to watch people slowly come to the realization it’s time to leave.

I do still search for Reddit posts when looking for opinions about products, solutions to technical problems, etc - much as I don't want to use the platform, the quality of content is generally much higher than Quora, the Microsoft Forum, and other open discussion hubs.

I refuse to be an active user, though. I know it needs to make money, but fuck their attitude to their users and moderators.

Reddit has the only decent Steroid/Ped commuities on the web. I dont fuck with anabolics but I do play with some other things that are banned suppliments and its the only place to get decent user info on them.

These kind of comments remind me of the days before the digg exodus

No offense but I've seen this exact thing being said for like the past 10 years lol.

There was never a viable alternative before now.

I'm not convinced the fediverse is a practical alternative for the masses to move to, at all.

I think Lemmy is better anyway with a smaller user base.

lemmy is but one small corner of the fediverse

Yes I am aware of that. I was indeed talking about the fediverse as a whole and not just Lemmy. That's why I said I'm not convinced the fediverse is a viable alternative.

i feel the opposite. the point of the fediverse is mass expansion.

youre right, the fediverse is not the solution for a small community. you want small, phpbb is ready for you.

The point is mass adoption. The reality is that it's not ready or not current feasible for mass adoption.

the reality is its brand freakin new. it took decades for email to become ubiquitous. it took decades for reddit to gather its user base.

pointing out that the fediverse is still rough around the edges for newbs is like point out that infants cant eat steak.

I'm not sure why you are explaining to me what is already obvious. I merely stated that the fediverse isn't currently a viable alternative for the masses. You seem to agree based on your comment above?

I don’t know about that when there is still many improvements to be made for each platform.

Lemmy vs Reddit

Monthly Users (0.004%) 44k / 1.2b

Mastodon vs Twitter

804k / 335m

Mastodon vs Facebook

800k / 3b

Peertube vs Youtube

21k / 2.7b

It's the continual enshitification of the mobile website until you eventually either just fuck off, or download their app. It's almost completely unusable now. Every single update has had tiny little breaking features to it, and all of those have finally added up to the absolute dumpster fire that it is today.

Starting to? ROFL!

It’s like 75% bots and is mostly run by mods that didn’t want to give up that last sliver of authority they got to pretend to have.

Granted, lemmy is no better unless you like teenagers misinterpreting socialism and manufacturing outrage..

Lemmy is not malfunctioning like Reddit is. It is not reliant on a dogshit mobile app that constantly breaks down; it is not overrun by reposts; it has no excessive advertisements. And there is far less manufactured outrage and misinterpreted socialism on Lemmy. And that's not even getting into the fact that is is an app. Hooooooooly shit, I just hate apps on a smartphone as a maxim. That tiny fucking phone screen makes writing comprehensively, and citing sources, like trying to stack d10s using woolen gloves. It has all sorts of trinkets and rewards for browsing the damn app too (I suppose the admins know they have to goad you in), and any third-party apps trying to solve these problems were left without support. "No better" my fucking ass.

Lemmy is no better. It’s users only thinks it is because its full of smug people that need things to mean what they want them to.

There is no nuance here at all. It’s the same hive-mind with a different directive.

let that hellhole fall apart

https://x.com/redditstatus/status/1836846532886417887?s=19

It's down right now

there has got to be a better down detector than a twitter account

Well, there's literally a site called "down detector" which is independent and relies on people reporting a site as being unavailable for them.

Caveat: No ads on the site, so they're probably in the business of building profiles on the people who use their sites.