Ribbit
Something I’d like to share:
I’ve been periodically checking reddit in my Browser to see what’s going on. I commented last week about noticing a sharp decrease in posts on “my” front page. Since then I’ve observed a few more interesting things.
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Late last week, I noticed that multiple subreddits (BORU and PICS in particular) had like 2-4 posts when sorted by “top, 24 hours.” It wasn’t a case of having to click “next” (I really miss rifs endless scrolling feature…) to navigate to a second page of posts; there was no 2nd page. That was it.
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I also noticed that on the mobile website, ads are designed to look nearly identical to posts (imo it was more obvious that they were ads on rif), and most of the time the website would only have 1 or 2 posts before one of these fake ad posts, so your user experience is immediately impacted.
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The ads don’t seem to be as targeted as they used to be. I used to get ads that seemed to be geared toward me, my searches, and interests. Creepy, but I found it way less annoying than the alternative. Which is apparently a lot of “He Gets Us” and ads for complicated electronics or unnecessary services. Like a mobile vet clinic that isn’t even available in my area, lol.
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The bot posts are getting obvious and WEIRD. I took screenshots last weekend because just about every other post had a robotic, overly formal, and/or downright confusing title. Here are some examples:
56.3k, front page: “A brain tumour changed her life Her nerves are badly damaged! But today she opened a car door…walked…opened a gym door…walked and sat down …BY HERSELF what a lady”
[Quotation marks, format, and ellipses are original]
40.5k, front page: The trapped dog doesn’t wait a bit to hug the rescuer after being freed…
Same weird ellipses, and the way it’s phrased is like a “correct the mistakes” worksheet for 2nd graders.
I think Reddit is in the “find out” stage of their fucking around, even if it’s a quiet or subtle change to the casual observer.
I also tried going to ModCoord [I’m not a mod it just felt like a good place to find updates] and, on my end, it looks like almost everything has been deleted. The same day I took screenshots, /r/PICS posted a public response to reddit’s threats, which weren’t even acknowledged on modcoord. The most recent post I could see was something from GallowBoob? It was really odd.
Is the website being glitchy? Probably. That is, after all, part of the root of this problem. But if anything, I’d say it’s pretty clear that the content has decreased in both quality and depth in the last 10 days. Even if a lot of users are still signing in, I don’t think they’re posting, commenting, or voting as much as they used to. That may be a reflection of the quality of posts, or of users displeasure at the situation, but regardless of where it came from, at least it’s something.
One sub I’m quite a lurker on has 6 million subscribers, and top posts for the day had like 1.5k upvotes, and there was a massive shortage of new/interesting posts.
The change in reddit over the last few weeks has been dramatic.
Yeah, BORU is back to showing only 2-4 posts when sorted by top:day AND top:week.
It’s really weird and makes reddit feel very hollow.
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Dropped Reddit due the API changes and dumsterfire after that with the CEO. I get they need to make money, but this was simply aimed at taking down third party apps and services.
I really hope this place will grow.
Ribbit
Making reddit go back to their own ways is not victory. We need to get redditors onto Lemmy. It is up to us to use Lemmy and spread its awareness to redditors.
I’ll do my part to welcome anyone who joins here, but there are plenty of knuckleheads on reddit who will give you shit for having any kind of principles that take a long term view or make life anything other than blissfully convenient. I have no motivation to try to convince those people.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this? What sort of views did you get shit for?
The Witcher subreddit mods put up a poll about whether or not they should extend their protest (Every post from the start of the protest had been about The Hexer an old poor adaptation of the witcher). I commented that I supported the continued protests, because charging exorbitant prices is unfair to moderators that do what they do for free, and unfair to the 3rd party app developers who gain no income from developing their apps. Someone came at me with this argument;
buddy i work 48 hours a fucking week i’m just trying to enjoy and discuss things about fandoms i enjoy while i’m taking a shit. i could care less about these protests, all it’s doing is fucking up my potty time
Like, from a self-centered point of view, how dense do you have to be to not understand that moderators not having access to their tools is going to “fuck up your potty time”.
well I called him;
Self centered, selfish and uncaring.
I mean seriously, have some common decency to fight for the platform you browse daily. I just don’t get some people, really. Well regardless, Lemmy has been a much better place, though I can’t imagine that’ll last forever.
As someone who thinks like said user, they fucked up my potty time because I used RIF. I couldn’t care less about protests and other shit, but I won’t install Reddit official app because it’s bad and I need an android app. I don’t want to browse from Firefox. Therefore, here I am. Most people aren’t too invested into reddit and creating too many barriers will drive the away. The reason I don’t use reddit is the same reason I don’t use Twitter, Facebook, and hardly ever open Instagram: their apps/sites are just too inconvenient to use due to little things such as forcing logins, ads, pushing internal browsers, pushing their own image/video hosting…
I like Tiktok, on the other hand, despite doing a lot of the same shit, and YouTube haven’t annoyed me enough to leave yet.
Oh, it would be a victory. But only until they try it again. And again, and again…
Not to worry, we will be still flying half a social network
