It’s been a long journey, but here we arrive. Welcome home.
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Tried the official Reddit app today and boy people weren’t joking when they say it sucks. I thought it’d just be the usual experience plus some ads but I was totally wrong.
The official app doesn’t respect your subreddit subscriptions at all, instead force feeding you feeds of whatever their algorithm thinks will drive maximum engagement just like a shit version of Facebook. The “hot” etc functionality is completely stipped from it entirely.
Guess I’m here to stay on the fediverse now.
What absolutely sucks about this is that I had carefully curated my subscriptions on RIF in order not to exacerbate my dumb mental health issues.
Hell, I’ve read angry posts about people in recovery from addiction and alcohol saying how they keep seeing ads for beer or gambling and things like that.
It’s horrifying!!
people in recovery from addiction and alcohol saying how they keep seeing ads for beer or gambling
Not that this is how it works, but I imagine a diligent algorithm looking at those individuals and that content, and then thinking “mhhmm this will generate maximum revenue!!”.
I think that’s absolutely how it works (in part). Ads curated toward your demographic! Maybe it’s not inherently purposeful, but it’s harmful, nonetheless.
In a subr×ddit about alcohol recovery? “Our algorithm detected that your post history contains the word “alcohol” or “beer” a lot! We will tailor your ads to cater to your interests for maximum profits!” Boom. There you go.
It takes the human aspect out of the community and drives it to become harmful at worst and soulless at best.
Even more than that, you have the idea that ‘similar users to yourself buy a lot of alcohol, so you probably will too’. Of course alcoholics, whether attempting recovery or not, are likely to buy alcohol. So if you’re a recovering alcoholic, ‘similar users to yourself’ are gonna be buying more alcohol than usual, and so you’ll see ads for it. Totally heartless and just for-profit.
The algorithm really doesn’t work when you are critical or sceptical over a subject. For instance crypto sceptics from r/buttcoin being shown binance ads. Yes, they do show an interest in crypto, but may be the least suceptible persons to that ad.
It’s different with subs focused on addiction & recovery though.
Maybe it’s a very bad idea to targeted knife ads in a suicide watch sub, you know? Susceptible people and all.
I completely agree with you, and your example is very good indeed. (Maybe my previous comment was not clear ? English is not my mothertongue)
Me too. I suffer from PTSD myself so I avoid things like the war coverage in Ukraine. The app is full of it and I can’t filter it fully like I can in RIF.
I hate the reddit app but I don’t have that problem. My home page is all what I’ve joined.
you don’t mention the copious, copious amounts of ads and sponsored contents
wow thanks reddit, you are more and more Facebook-like now, congratulations.
Yeah, that’s pretty bad too but I was at least willing to accept there is a valid reason for that to keep the lights on.
However, when they go as far to break the core functionality of the website and turn it into another Facebook with psychological manipulation at its core then that’s a whole other thing entirely.
Agreed. Honestly, if I want a FB-like Reddit, fuck that, I’ll going to Facebook.
Enshittification sucks I would say.
Renegade BBSes -> IRC -> slashdot -> digg -> reddit -> imgur -> discord -> mastadon
with plenty of side quests along the waySo we’re a side quest then?
fixed, it was late 😉
It’s hard to tell… it doesn’t feel like one, but it remains to be seen.
But I feel like the other alternatives to Reddit and the fediverse are more of a sidequest at this point.
Pre search engine time on Geocities trading mutual linking on each other websites, reams and reams of messages and emails
BBS>FidoNet>Newsgroups>AOL>Slashdot>Reddit>Fediverse
deleted by creator
Fark eh. I used to have a double digit account number of there. Those were the days.
Finally more people moving to fediverse
There was del.icio.us as well!
Core memory unlocked
Yea, kinda miss that one =/
I forgot about that site, what did it even do?
Basically just aggregated links IIRC.
It was kind of a social bookmark sharing site, used it a lot back in the day! I saw word of a revival a while back, but like most things the revivals don’t seem to work out. See Digg, Bebo etc. :/
For me it was Slashdot->Hacker News, And then in parallel Reddit->Lemmy
yeah HN feels kind of like old slashdot to me
slashdot has really stagnated over the years
Time for a new start.
Though Lemmy is very new, it’ll be exciting to see it grow over time.
It’s like that scene in Chocolat with Johnny Depp where the woman feels the wind blowing. Nothing we’re not used to, always a bit of a bittersweet goodbye.
You missed metafilter.
Can’t leave out irc.
It’s funny to read this article about the death of Digg again:
In reality, Digg changed their business model and pretended that they didn’t. That is something that is unacceptable with communities and won’t be forgotten. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian hit the nail on the head in an open letter to (now former) Digg CEO – Kevin Rose:
“You chose to grow with venture capital and you’ve no doubt (I hope) taken some money off the table in your Series C round. I say this because this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It’s cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to “give the power back to the people.”https://searchengineland.com/digg-v4-how-to-successfully-kill-a-community-50450>
Sadly, this is the only logical conclusion of things that are run for profit. Here’s hoping the federated model proves more resistant in the long run.
Doctorow has it right. Enshittification.
Doctorow’s great, first heard about him from the srsly wrong podcast
His episode with Adam Conover’s Factually podcast is great. A fucking must watch/listen
In the medium run federated instances will have to be financed somehow as well. We’ll see how that goes.
Depends on how many volunteers you have who are actually willing to donate
Funding, even in a not-for-profit sense, will always be an issue. Wikipedia struggles, but kinda makes it work. We’re going to need something creative for the fediverse…
I donate to them fairly regularly, Wikipedia is fucking great!
that doesn’t really hold because Wikipedia does not struggle with funding in the sense you’re thinking: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/wikipedia-millions-bank-beg/
so, survival doesn’t necessarily have to be at stake
Oh sweet, sweet irony.
At least Ohanian is married to Serena, and left reddit 10 years ago. Spez (aka Steve Huffman) is a fucking piece of shit that betrayed both of his co-founders
They removed Aaron from the list of founders at some point.
Tbh, I totally forgot that Ohanian left Reddit like 10 years ago 🤦
Such is life, nothing lasts forever. I could think of a good song for this, but nothing comes to mind yet as Im enjoying watching that Twitch counter of closed subreddits counting up nonstop.
“every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”
Closing Time by Semisonic
You’re missing the precursors:
Email -> Newsgroups -> CGI forums / IRC -> Slashdot… :)
The new Fediverse really is kicking up IRC and newsgroup vibes for this old timer. Its very exciting.
I never really used email socially, was always a chat or some bulltin system
+1 you’re right. Especially IRC…oh how I miss those days.
I miss that moment when I became the cool kid in the channel because I had an IRC bouncer
There are still some good communities out there. I’m still on IRC every day.
It’s about the only constant over internet use from 1994 to present. IRC and E-mail. Also the web kind of, but it’s changed so so much.
If we’re including those then I think we have gone full circle and are back in the safe waters of protocols
As a really old person, I was thinking today the vibe was unlike anything I’ve felt since Fidonet ;)
Lots of similarities between Lemmy and FIDOnet. I’ve been saying this to anyone that will listen.
Lots of similarities between Lemmy and FIDOnet. I’ve been saying this to anyone that will listen.
Usenet! Those were the days.
IRC is STILL running to this day
Yup, and some servers are very active.
I know something like 28 thousand active daily users!
