I went back to Reddit this morning. Yeah I know, but I just wanted to check the place out after all the blackouts. As I was scrolling through my typical stuff I was down voting dumb things as is pure habit and it struck me… after being here only 2 days and not having any down vote button, what was just a pure habit suddenly felt a little dirty.
Those people I just down voted didn’t do anything wrong I just didn’t agree with them. But by down voting them I’m basically doing one little part in actually silencing them. It felt bad. In fact all of Reddit felt bad… like, it was just such a habit and I was ready to go back, but once I did it wasn’t as good as I remembered it.
All it took was 2 days away using a different platform that gives me essentially the same stuff I want to read and this no down vote thing somehow has resonated with me more than I would have thought. I actually went back and removed the down votes. Those people have the right to feel how they do whether I agree or not. I don’t need to silence and invalidate people over things that are so incredibly minor.
I’ve decided I will use Reddit only via Google search if it has the content I’m looking for, just like any other webpage, but I think Lemmy, and Beehaw specifically, are my new home. It no longer feels like “the alternative.” It feels like a place I actually chose to be. I wrote in my application that I wanted less toxicity in my life and I think that’s already happening. I’m really grateful to have discovered this place.
I popped into one of the few subreddits I participate in and the consensus was mostly, “Who cares about the API/third-party apps, I just want my Reddit back.” Whatever, they can have it.
I’ve been working to curate my RSS feed in the last couple of days so I never need to visit Reddit at all (outside of being directed there by a Google search result).
I’ve been working to curate my RSS feed in the last couple of days so I never need to visit Reddit at all
Ironically that would make Aaron very proud! He was one of the Reddit founder, but also a creator of RSS, and his prosecution for basically accessing an API led to his suicide…
Still don’t understand how “downloading too many scholarly articles” was a crime on a network with an open policy.
So many don’t understand that the mods need those tools, and don’t care about people who need the accessibility (although I suspect that argument is popular more for having the moral high ground).
Everyday users don’t understand all the work that goes into certain things sometimes. Mods really have a thankless benevolent job sometimes. We should appreciate what they do more instead of just going back to Reddit with our blinders on.
When people say “modders need those tools” does that mean:
- modders like to mod from the 3rd party apps cause they have easy buttons for stuff like, PURGE and BAN?
or
- Modders are using bots and stuff that use the API to find and auto-delete posts with racial slurs or something like that?
It’s both, I believe, there are apps they use directly with more powerful tools than the site gives you, and bots like automod that can enforce policy (e.g. “title must include IRTR” or “image posts must also have a comment explaining …”).
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I’m not on an instance with no downvotes, as I do think they have SOME purpose (though you’re right that it is usually a bit of a disagree-so-shut-up button rather than anything else), but I agree with the rest. The content here is certainly slower. On reddit, I could just refresh the main page and have dozens of new posts to interact with- here, not so much. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though. I still get my mindless scrolling when I’m poopin or something like that, but I’m spending a lot less time online than I did. I’m reading more, I’m working on my novels, I’m WAY more productive at work. I used RiF exclusively on my phone, and so I decided pretty soon after the API announcement that I was done. All the protest and reddit’s hilariously mismanaged response has done has cemented my resolve.
I’m spending a lot less time online than I did
Removing Sync from my phone was huge in terms of changing my habits. Without ready access to the dopamine drip, I am using my phone so much less than I did even a week ago. And as you said, I’m reading more and scrolling less.
I’ll admit it’s very much like getting over an addiction.
My big thing was deleting redreader from my homescreen and putting Jerboa where redreader was stopped quite a few reflex clicks. Now when i do it i expect lemmy and the redreader app is buried in my app drawer where i dont really see it
[they] didn’t do anything wrong I just didn’t agree with them
And that’s why it’s disabled! That’s not what it’s meant to be for, it’s meant to be for things that don’t add to the conversation. If it’s factually wrong then fine - downvote, but don’t do it to suppress others’ opinions.
My habits on Reddit were to upvote if I liked it, ignore most of it, downvotes I mostly reserved for people being toxic.
Yes, I completely agree with you. Reddit could become such a nasty place, and I fully admit that I was part of the problem. It didn’t feel like a problem because it was so socially accepted, even encouraged, within Reddit’s own culture, but I was definitely part of the problem down voting people into oblivion for “being dumb”. I never thought twice about it until the last two days. Now it feels dirty. Now I recognize I don’t want to be a part of that culture any longer.
Haha, I think I just had a little rant at you there even though you were saying the same things I was saying. Bad habits… I don’t think I’ll be on reddit much now, hopefully enough people stay around to make this place quite active still.
It should be fine - it was busy enough before the blackout, and of course all the good apps will stop working soon, along with a bunch of essential tools for modding, etc.
What’s sad is that back in the old days of Reddit, Reddiquette was actually a thing and people followed that rule more. In recent years, though, it feels like Reddiquette is completely dead.
Post any kind of dissenting opinion and you’ll get downvoted into absolute oblivion. And I’m not just speaking about politics. You can write a well thought out comment in any sub that goes against the grain, and the culture is just totally to downvote for disagreement. I think my most downvoted comment of all time on Reddit was on r/juicing when I questioned whether carrot juice was actually effective for depression lol.
And a lot of people end up downvoting just because somebody else already did. I would see people posting milquetoast dissenting “hot takes” that are really just room temperature takes and then get downvoted to -68 over it. And then somebody would go “why was this downvoted” and he at +3
Everyone else has already hit the culture points, but I want to touch on how smooth and snappy lemmy’s web UI is. Maybe my home instance is just overpowered, but even old.reddit.com is a slug in comparison to how fast this feels. One of the most unexpected wins for me so far.
I really think it’s just a toxic culture thing. I’ve seen similar instances in people coming from places like League of Legends of World of Warcraft to other games or communities.
When you hang around in a toxic environment and the powers that be do nothing to curb that behavior, you begin to feel like you have to also be toxic in self-defense. It becomes your only recourse.
Then you go somewhere that’s not toxic and it’s like a culture shock: people actually get banned for bad behavior, other people aren’t nasty to you all the time, and you suddenly realize that you don’t have to be defensive.
I have a lot of hope for Lemmy. I hope it keeps growing and I hope people don’t just join the platform, but join the culture and contribute in positive ways. Reddit is dying and people need to let it and make something better.
you begin to feel like you have to also be toxic in self-defense […] Then you go somewhere that’s not toxic and it’s like a culture shock
This is exactly what I’ve experienced! I’m not looking to make any excuses for my time on Reddit but seeing the cause just laid out like that makes me feel… maybe not better, but differently, about why that behavior didn’t seem wrong at the time. I’m sure at some point early on I was downvoted and mocked and thus started the cycle of retaliation downvotes until it became normalized.
Then I come here to Beehaw and I can’t even downvote you. If I disagree, I have to actually engage with you. And in this instance at least, if I just treat you like garbage the mods are going to notice. That means if I want to engage, then it needs some thought behind it. All of this leans in the direction of starting conversations instead of silencing them.
It makes me very glad to hear that Lemmy has this effect on people! It gives me a lot of hope for the platform. I also came from Reddit. I joined yesterday, actually. Immediately, I didn’t miss it. I still don’t. I miss the resources I had there, but I’m not gonna wait around while they slowly bleed out.
But I did notice what you said here. The disliking something just because people didn’t like it. Reddit is infected by pervasive, toxic elitism and sophistry. I hope Lemmy does better in those regards, and your post here reassures me it will. Or that at least Beehaw will.
I remember playing Fallout 76 and being sooo untrustworthy of people out of pure habit after a lifetime of “toxic” games. People on there ended up being very wholesome. I didn’t meet any “lifetime” friends like some others did, but most people just wanted to give me stuff and give me good advice since I was new. They didn’t even have to, they just wanted to because I was new to the game.
That honestly makes me very happy to hear! I really hope that catches on in more games. A kind and helpful community is important for the survival of the gaming community as a whole, but doubly so for individual games.
Same as the title for me but different than your thing. Just feels stale over there and I go into comments and it’s the same ol drivel over and over again lol. This community feels fresh and I’m really enjoying exploring the various communities and chatting casually about whatever…
Feels just very corporate place over there and I dunno. Just not feeling right anymore. I’m thinking maybe it’s been wrong all along I just didn’t realize. Hopefully lemmy’s growth continues but at a reasonable pace so that we don’t devolve in the same sorta rhetoric over and over again.
I definitely feel better over here now and while there are way less comments it really seems like the engagements are far better.
Maybe that’s what it is. By the time I look at a post over on reddit there are 1000s of comments and half of them just saying the same thing lol.
At least here you can contribute
Those are probably bots/account harvesting.
Based on usage statistics during the blackout where 99% of the site was unusable (and bots are known to post in that 1% of low traffic subs to farm karma,) I’m honestly wondering if it’s not just mostly bots at this point.
https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/
At any rate, I’m not going back. I like this community more, and the topics I care about will find a home here eventually.
I think its a good example of how one platform with its ecosystem/culture can shapes our habits.
in my opinion, i think the feature of up voting and down voting in reddit are created to bring something relevant to the surface, while “hiding” something that deem not important to the discussions.
While over the years, this trend and culture changes just to silences someone that doesn’t share the way we see the world.
I do not like disabling the downvote button because of this, but i think it is better to disable it, if we tend to abuse it
I do not like disabling the downvote button because of this, but i think it is better to disable it, if we tend to abuse it
In theory voting things up and down for relevancy is a fine idea, a good one even. But human nature is often the reason why we can’t have nice things. It’s just way too easy to fall into that trap. Simply having an upvote button does allow the best ideas to rise to the top, but it doesn’t silence alternative opinions or encourage dog piling on someone with groupthink.
For the longest time, I avoided Reddit because of just how toxic it was becoming. This is really true of a lot of social networks. That’s why I joined this instance (lemmy.blahaj.zone) because it doesn’t have a downvote button, allows NSFW content for when I want it, and seems to have a friendly userbase. I was initially on Lemmygrad, but it really felt like an echo chamber and quite frankly I need a detox from “tankie” spaces.
I’m starting to realize the value in curating my spaces and paying attention to what I expose myself too. The last several years have been unbearable. Social media has put gasoline on a civilization that is on fire. It’s been terrible for all of our well-being and mental health. And behind all of this are algorithms keeping us addicted and logged-on. What was once fun became an inescapable curse.
The thing is none of us are to blame for all this. Everyone was manipulated into it. But now we know we can at least try to do something about it. Independent and federated networks are part of that solution. Taking the social influence out of the hands of corporations who control what we see and manipulate our emotions so they can harvest and sell our data is key.
In the collapse of major social networks there is a silver lining—we have the ability to change the tide. This is a major opportunity for us and we should us it to make the Internet a better space. We all both need and deserve that.
Between the pandemic and the 2020 election cycle was when I became acutely aware of the information I was ingesting. I found myself becoming more and more upset by the posts I was reading while doomscrolling. Eventually I communicated with my partner about turning all that shit off via filters and tuning out and we immediately became 100% happier for it.
I noticed that too. Only instead of upset, I was becoming angry and supercharged into actually doing things about it. I think this was actually a positive for me, because I enjoy having a passion about some of these political topics I would have simply glossed over before.
Also haven’t been back on Reddit and don’t plan on going back. It’s hard, I’m used to being on Reddit multiple times a day and have to fight the muscle memory to click on the app. But I’m realizing I’m really not missing out on anything by not being there. I’d rather stick with this community as we continue to grow. I don’t even use third party apps—it’s just the principle. Just doesn’t feel right to go back, feels scummy to support the site knowing that it’s owner doesn’t give af about its users.
What helped me is uninstalling Reddit from my phone .
My ‘methadone’ for mobile Reddit is using old.reddit.com through the browser. No toxic algorithmic feed and ‘nag nag nag app nag nag app app’ interruptions but it’s so fiddly to use I spend less time there.
@polygon well, don’t go back.
If you felt bad about the way reddit has been treating its community, then why would you go back?Louis Rossman said something along the lines of “It’s like spending the weekend away from an abusive spouse”. It’s not gonna do anything.
Stop using reddit. If they don’t change things before the 30th, delete the data on your account.
Edit: Here’s Rossman’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U06rCBIKM5M
Important note: I apologize in advance for this lousy suggestion.
Do you know that you can edit post titles? This is a great candidate for a lame joke. Just change it to “Going back to Reddit: feels bad, man”.
You’re right, the culture there has grown rotten.
The only reason I’ll be heading back is to wipe out my history and migrate my subreddit content here.
Shreddit is your best friend in that regard. I used it to wipe my account squeaky clean.
Thank you for the shreddit lead, I got some data to burn.
A better option in my opinion is power delete suite. It let’s you edit comments and doesn’t require you to give access to your account to a third party service.
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Seems many people have gone back though, since kbin is much faster than it was this time yesterday.
Ernest might have also gotten up more servers to handle the load, noticing that cloudflare is off and we are federating again (this is a beehaw thread)
this is a beehaw thread
I was wondering what OP was talking about when they said they had no downvote buttons. I see a down arrow here on Kbin bruh!
Yup! I wanted to comment like “hey, don’t feel bad OP, you have 5 downvotes yourself” lol.
Why not use both? Doesn’t have to be either/or. You don’t have to be super ideological, use platforms when they suit your purpose. I’m sure Lemmy will grow with time.
