I see a lot of comments from bootlickers on how the protests are dumb and stupid and dont work and engagement metrics are still holding but the quality of posts and comments has noticeably depreciated imo. So much so that whenever I visit the site Im actually shocked at how bad it is.
The quality has been declining for years now. This last thing has only made it worse, but you’re likely now noticing how bad it is because you spend less time on it.
The protest won’t work. It’s failed in crippling reddit. Reddit will keep going, but as a shadow of its former self, with increasingly shallow discussions and increasingly crappy/old/unoriginal comment.
I’d say the protest did work. A lot of good users and mods left Reddit, the admins massively overplayed their hand and showed their true colors, probably hurting their IPO, the fediverse got enough of an influx of users to get a good kickstart and the next migration wave is just around the corner.
I read an article comparing Reddit to a dying mall and honestly it’s kinda getting that vibe since the protest
The migration is not gonna happen overnight, but it is happening.
I think the protest crippled reddit considerably. It robbed reddit of a significant number of quality users and moderators, caused an extreme amount of media attention, and created enough of a problem for Google that they had to change course in order to compensate for all the broken links and noticeably poorer search results.
The main reason it looks like it had a much smaller effect is because a lot of missing users have been replaced by bots. And given how hostile those bots are with respect to moderators and the protest, it seems clear that they were put in place by reddit themselves. So don’t be fooled by “traffic is normal” announcements and metrics. They mean nothing by themselves.
The protest caused a lot of users to start looking for alternatives and it shed a lot of light on the fediverse, giving it an incredible amount of exposure. People now know that it exists and know that there are alternatives to reddit.
Remember, the worst is yet to come after June 30th when those API changes take effect.
The quality and the traffic. At least in terms of engagement. I knew another mod there that I used to do spamhunting with and we both modded a couple big subs, we were talking about it one day and we were talking about sub traffic, and I noted about 2 years ago there was actually a big decline in traffic in /r/videos, which he modded he said he hadn’t noticed it, but when you went to archive.org and compared random front pages to engagement at the time, you noticed that all posts overall had fewer comments and fewer upvotes, we started checking a few more large subs and noticed it was quite similar.
Quality is, to some extent, a mod failing. Mods can’t be expected to go out there and produce top quality posts all the time, but they can be expected to keep out the low quality content, and a lot of them don’t do that. By ignoring frequently reposted topics, to not bothering to properly apply the rules to keep the posts fully on topic, the subs just declined and declined.
I started to slowly realize this with the blackout. I tried using twitter and Deviant Art more, and found them to be a lot better since I could see more cool fan art.
While I still like my reddit home feed, popular and all just suck. Its mostly all rage posts made to generate outrage. I see so much negative stuff from /r/Antiwork or /r/Politics. I signed up for cat photos. I’m not here to listen to how our world is so garbage for the 100th time.
Whatever blackout/boycott/migration happens with Reddit, this should go double for Twitter, that’s another place I silently dropped like a rock and have never visited again.
When something happens with Ukraine and I feel compelled to dive into it, I’ve used Nitter, which mirrors the Twitter content but Musk and his right-wing idiocy gets no goddamned clicks and traffic from me anymore.
I’ve stayed off it since the blackout started, but I did visit a sub yesterday that I used to read regularly about a topic I haven’t seen covered here. I left after a few minutes because it really seemed like no one there had anything intelligent or interesting to say, but maybe I’ve forgotten just how much crap I used to scroll through before landing on something decent. Either way, I’m OK with not going back.
I left after a few minutes because it really seemed like no one there had anything intelligent or interesting to say
Reddit has always been that way to an extent. Half of the time it’s just people making bad jokes and quirky references that border on derailing the thread to get that sweet karma dopamine boost.
I stayed off of it for a bit after the first 48, because I needed one of the support subs there. Then the Titan news was going on and the wealth of shitty remarks about the people in the sub was too much for me. I get the whole ‘eat the rich’ mentality, but the sheer vitriol people had against someone they didn’t know didn’t exactly paint the commenters in a favourable light.
Hoping that such opinion is tempered somewhat over here.
I get the whole ‘eat the rich’ mentality
these are the same morons who like to send everyone under the guillotine… don’t ever try to direct them to history book to find out how the guillotine proponents actually ended in real life. trying to have discussion with someone who is 12 yo (mentally at least) is just a waste of time.
I agree. It’s pretty clear that trying to set any record straight (I looked up the philanthropic efforts of that one gent who went with his son) in these situations is a pyrrhic victory. At best you may have offered clarification on some inaccurate talking point they picked up that now someone else might not repeat further, but it only pokes the bear.
What’s goes around, comes around… That sentiment is not coming from a no where. Note how people didn’t say similar staff about refugee boat sinking and actually calling media out for lopsided coverage.
These views only get more extreme as social fabric and economic conditions of the working people degrade.
These people spent more than most people will ever save up in their lifetime for a one time ride in a tube. Money that could go to feeding people, planting trees, etc. They had the US Coast Guard and Navy looking for them with helicopters and sonar buoys. One of them was a billionaire who could have done it right like Victor Vascovo, but instead chose to pinch pennies and ride in the Home Depot special.
They cost society massively, they won’t pay shit for inheritance tax, their families will remain wealthier than I can ever dream of being. I make decent money and I drive past houses with river views and hot tubs and pools and boats and all sorts of rich people stuff I know I’ll never have, those people can’t dream of the amount of money these people have. I feel bad for the kid, that’s about it.
Not to mention the fact that they are thrill-seeking at a mass grave where a horrific tragedy occurred. Similar circumstances, too. The first class survivor ratio compared to the “steerage” survivors… Kind of like how we pulled out all the stops for these rich fucks but can’t be bothered by a boat full of refugees. It’s a sign of the times and people have a right to be livid about it.
I think its more likely that the posts on reddit are the same, and we are simply starting to become accustomed to the posts\quality of comments on the fediverse.
Our eyes are finally starting to open.
Our eyes are finally starting to open.
Do not ever believe this. This is an intellectual trap that once you dig in to it it’s hard to dig out. People like Elon Musk are the type of people who think they see the world for what it really is, and look how stupid they are. Some truths are clearer than others, but you will always be chained down by your own perspective, unconscious biases, and way of thinking. Always keep your mind partially open to new perspectives and do your best to practice intellectual humility.
I think this is really what it is. I’ve spent a lot of my time here enamored with the quality of conversation, and when I joined it reminded me of the sort of discussion I used to scroll through on forums when I was a kid.
I hadn’t seen it since, and I’d gotten so used to the bullshit that I barely remembered the difference. I’d really just chalked up the civility to the forum in question being several dozen regulars who knew each other too well to be dicks.
We need more content, but it’s making me kind of averse to pushing so hard to get the rest over here, lest they just bring the shit behavior with them
We need more content, but it’s making me kind of averse to pushing so hard to get the rest over here, lest they just bring the shit behavior with them
All places eventually trend towards their Eternal September. In the meantime just push back against it as much you can and enjoy what you got.
We’d need an objective way to measure lameness and then review a large set of posts (on a particular sub?) from a couple of months ago vs now. Criteria have to be pre-determined to avoid the post hoc fallacy.
Average words or characters per comment? Number of insults directed at other commenters (measured by someone blinded to which group they came from)? Number of “controversial” comments judged by large numbers of up and downvoted?
I dunno. I’m not doing it. Not a social scientist. Just suggesting an interesting experiment.
how about a number of crying laughing emoji per thread?
😅😂 OMG this is so accurate 😅😂
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Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are made of letters.
I have checked 1,599,379,698 comments, and only 302,533 of them were made of letters.
I see the drop in quality over there as the more technical (the best?) people migrate to the Fediverse. As others have noted, I’m not looking forward to all Redditors coming here and dropping the quality.
Old timers like me remember the quality of Usenet prior to ISPs making it available during the Eternal September. Before then, people on Usenet were largely college students or higher. Quality on Usenet really declined when it opened up to the masses, especially after AOL made Usenet available to its subscribers.
I ended up checking a few times via teddit and I noticed the exact same thing. It seems a lot of the non-mod quality contributors have already left.
Those who stayed are probably power users using 3rd party apps. So expect another big drop in quality on July 1st.
I noticed the same thing. I was on Reddit for a good 12 years and the quality was getting worse for years, but it’s really dropped off since May 30. There are noticeably fewer big posts on r/all and there’s hardly any new or interesting stuff. It’s reposts, Twitter screenshots, stuff from Tiktok and Discord, complaints (think mildlyinfuriating, AITA, Doordash), and rate me requests. And Facebook type things, like “here’s what my kids did today.” The bright spots in the sea of trash are gone.
Kbin, Lemmy, and Tildes have been filling up with the good stuff I missed from Reddit. A month ago, it was a little slow here, but not anymore.
I felt Reddit’s quality started going downhill around 2021, which is not long after
they introduced the official app andstarted allowing Google logins.EDIT: Looks like the official app’s been around longer than I thought. :O
