Reddit was something unique and personal to each user. Some it was new, some it was the only place to find specific tech or other advice that wasn't corrupted by ads and algorithms on goggle and other big corporations.
Reddit was my way of disengaging from world news before I knew about anxiety, and how things could affect me and become personal even though I had no way to help world events. So I used it to personalize my mental diet, if I was creative I could sub to many craft subs like leather or metal etc, it's where I went to get other perspectives on movies and content that I didn't fully understand.
End of the day, is all that possible still on Reddit, kinda, but it's going away, and they pushed me personally to leave as I could see it was becoming google/Facebook, ad algorithms to push what people pay for or get paid for. So time to reset.
Become involved, I'm way more involved and adding to discussions on the new sites I'm on. Everyone adding comments and posts and perspectives and opinions are building this up from bottom up.
You are the future, make your perspective part of the future by helping guide these new sites to something we can be proud of.

I always stuck with front page and never was on popular or all, I feel that was my saving grace. Also reposts and crossposted content drove me batty, so overtime unsubbed from groups that got political or negative. I wasn't subbing to just kitty cat pictures, more so hobbies, movies, and specific YouTubers like rlm etc. That's why I mentioned that everyone's experience was different, just a few different subs and the whole experience is different.

I'm in a demographic that people actively try to push and radicalize as well, so even if I am frustrated with things and how they affect me, I always keep one foot out and try to be super aware of that. I feel some, not all obviously get caught up over time and it erodes who they are and normalizes some really crazy things. So when I realize something like American politics is affecting me and my day, as a Canadian, I step back and look at what I'm letting into my mental diet.

End of day I hope we all learn from the past and can improve on what worked and avoid what didn't. There's no reason to not learn from the past and try to grow in a positive way.

You better tell the mods to delete a good portion of the posts and this entire magazine then... I think it's perfectly normal question to ask and be curious about, if you don't want to hear about Reddit maybe don't sub to this magazine and contribute to the conversation about it?

Trick to avoiding that is to never get gold. Took me 10 years to never get gold once. I'm good at what I don't do.

I think it maybe important for us to all collectively shift our views on commenting on "old" posts. I'm going to give myself a 2 week window on commenting on threads. If everyone had this kinda attitude it may help with engagement short term til things start picking up long term.

It'll be interesting to hear from the odd user that kept their accounts how things change in the coming weeks and months. It's cool that so many websites made articles about it but it still felt very clickbait and polarized on even those sights. Users will know the truth and hopefully update us on the shitshow to come.

I don't think that your experience is the standard norm. I've never heard of swing dancing in my city, let alone friends that are all off swing dancing at night. Not sure if you're in a much older demographic but the younger generations are not into that sort of stuff? I think COVID may have also affected a lot of group socializing growth in general too.
But if I had to guess it would be one of two things, one: people just aren't really into it, socially or culturally. Two: you may have meant well but it comes across very negative, and I'd assume many people don't dance because of people like you and your opinions and judgements in regards to gatekeeping what is dancing and what isn't. If I went out on a dancefloor and looked over and saw disapproval and judgement from your eyes I'd feel pretty uncomfortable and remove myself from that situation.

That's kinda what I figured, didn't expect it to be a ghost town, so that makes sense.
I could tell by the loud users declaring that Reddit is gonna be better and everyone else were just whiners that content would slow down quite a bit. Didn't get a vibe of those types putting out engaging content haha.

I'm confused as well, some of the time I get a little circle with a number next to my username and other times I don't, didn't realized being mentioned by name was the cause. Would be nice to have some more consistency with notifications.

Sigh and it begins...

Little late to the game on this one but I did finally get my words to reflect how and why I feel I do about this situation, I commented it recently on another post but I'm gonna drop it here again as I hope it can add to this discussion.

I quit when rif went down. I've never used an official app, desktop site, mobile site etc. Rif was Reddit to me for 10 years. Maybe leaving as a collective will make some difference, maybe not, but I'm going to start being more firm on how much I'll let companies try to push me around expecting me to just take it. They built it on our backs, then just took it away so a literal select few can cash in, when they are already filthy rich and had other options.

I've been explaining it to others as if you broke your phone. Now it's frustrating getting used to a new phone, but it has lots of new features you never even thought of that make up for the inconveniences. Sure I could go back to my old phone, it's comfortable to use, but the screen is broken and it cuts me now and again, and over time it'll cut me more often. I'd rather get used to the new phone.

This past year I've dealt with food going up, gas, utilities, rent, hell cigarettes and even beer, my fishing license went up. Every single nook and cranny they can pull a cent from you they will.
I'm done choosing to let them. If they want my data, my attention, my content, they can pull it from my cold dead hands damnit.

Ok weird ass Braveheart speech over and out.

I quit when rif went down. I've never used an official app, desktop site, mobile site etc. Rif was Reddit to me for 10 years. Maybe leaving as a collective will make some difference, maybe not, but I'm going to start being more firm on how much I'll let companies try to push me around expecting me to just take it. They built it on our backs, then just took it away so a literal select few can cash in, when they are already filthy rich and had other options.

I've been explaining it to others as if you broke your phone. Now it's frustrating getting used to a new phone, but it has lots of new features you never even thought of that make up for the inconveniences. Sure I could go back to my old phone, it's comfortable to use, but the screen is broken and it cuts me now and again, and over time it'll cut me more often. I'd rather get used to the new phone.

This past year I've dealt with food going up, gas, utilities, rent, hell cigarettes and even beer, my fishing license went up. Every single nook and cranny they can pull a cent from you they will.
I'm done choosing to let them. If they want my data, my attention, my content, they can pull it from my cold dead hands damnit.

Ok weird ass Braveheart speech over and out.

You the real deal?

I don't expect anything positive to come out of Reddit after the direction they chose to go. Spez has proven who he is and what's important to him and that won't change. I was just curious as to what effect no 3rd party apps was having on the user experience, since they kept saying it's only 10% and that they didn't care and wouldn't be noticed.

Ugh people just commenting "this" to every top comment and getting upvoted like crazy drove me batty. It doesn't add to the conversation and anytime I mentioned it on Reddit I'd get 100 people just replying "this" underneath... Hoping that one track mentality can be different here. It's one thing to have it happen once, but for it to be every single time someone brings it up is kinda a drag. Like ya hur dur we get it, but it gets old fast.

I'm on tildes, it's really refreshing and easy to use.
Main difference is that it seems to cater more of a serious adult conversations, which after years of being able to predict most comments before looking in Reddit, is very refreshing.
Lots less memes, communities are pre set and can't be created, seems to be to make sure to populate them before creating sub categories that people may see as in active and avoid.
Overall it feels like fedworld is best overall experience, squabbles is memes and lighthearted and tildes is more deep and thought out style of interaction.

I think I started on iPhone 3, if that's possible. Alien blue sounds too familiar to me and I think I read it was iOS. Means I've been around longer than the 10 years on rif, if my memory is correct. End of the day it's a damn shame, greed everywhere you look, amazing how one person or a few can affect thousands so easily.

On android. Right now I have a shortcut from browser on my homepage. App would be great all around. Problem I'm having is every time I click on it I have to sign in, even if I choose remember me. Second problem is it opens a new tab in my browser, and with tildes and squabble (just got squabble app thankfully) it adds up fast and I'll have 12 tabs of just these sites in my browser.
Also have not seen any prompts to install.

I'll try again, thanks!
Worked!

I have them turned on from when I first signed up, didn't even see a notification for you tagging me in this reply. Who knows maybe there's just a small bug, I'll keep checking manually where I can in case. Or maybe they are just late. Thanks for the help!
Edit to add: just got notification, took 3 hours.

Do they speak in an unnaturally deep voice and wear black turtlenecks?

Time will tell if there's any difference due to people leaving. I think the reason I find it interesting and others do as well is because we aren't given any hard data on the actual amount of users left, how many decided to stay and only lurk going forward, how much of the user base were heavy contributors etc. The pushback also was adamant that there would be zero change, and if they're right then they're right, not going to hurt my feelings.
While I think it sucks that they chose to go the direction they went, which with how much I hate ads forced my hand to walk away, I'm not upset and deeply affected to my core, I know Reddit will keep chugging along without me.
Whole point of this post was to discuss the changes that happened due to us leaving and if they were noticeable.

After the whole Brock turner the rapist crusade (deserved) I've been sitting here scratching my head why spez wasn't named and shamed with his real name by the same group.

Solid point. One thing that these companies will realize quickly if they plan to move from ad based to subscription services is that a lot of them won't make it. Especially when the price of everything is so high. It no feasible for people to sub to 8 streaming services between film and music, add on a VPN, the odd Patreon, lots of people with ring and other camera and security subscriptions. I get that people will shuffle between services, but that might not be enough, and the more they go for the customers throat, the more likely people will realize it's a want and nowhere near a need.

It's been super refreshing to have some change, before I'd check comments on Reddit I could generally guess the top 3 comments and be right almost always. Take into account that sometimes things get crossposted and reposted and it starts to show you how unoriginal it all can be.

Thanks, you said it better than I could.