for the Reddit refugees, do you also feel a bit heartbroken?

Actually I feel excited, because Lemmy has sparked a new interest in news aggregators and the fediverse and I'm enjoying my time here a lot.

I agree, it feels a bit like the internet in the early days, where you can find mindblowing new things just around the corner with a single click
- Yup and no big corps were tracking us.
- Exactly! And without being called names for asking questions or interacting with people.
Fully agree, I've been TOO excited since I found out about Lemmy's existence. I can't wait to see how it progresses with so many people joining. :-)

A little bit. What I hate is losing the communities related to my hobbies. Reddit is/was very very helpful for me. Finding new music, finding new games, discussing movies and TV, learning about weird movies or cult shows, sharing my stuff to people that find it cool... It was 11 years of that. I needed that site, so many very helpful posts. I hope whatever comes next is better. For now I'm here, waiting to see what happens.

Preach. I get that entirely.
I have really been diving deep into a lot of niche hobbies and Redd** had such a great community for them. I have no problem starting over for the sake of justice, but it is going to take a long time to build them up.

Reddit hasn't really been the same for a long time anyways. I liked the feel of Reddit in the old days better, and this kind of has the same vibe

So many times in the past few months I would open reddit, stare at the uninteresting front page and close it. Especially the past few years it has taken an astronomical nosedive, and that's coming from someone who joined in 2013 which some consider too late.
I've been thinking that for a while. I really miss the old feel of reddit. I recently opened it up in archive.org and the content just had a different feel back when I first joined. Also fun seeing the old news stories.

I joined Reddit during the digg exodus. Before digg I was into fark and before fark, something awful.

It's good that things die. it's where new mediums come from. It also keeps the power with the user. It's an important part of the internet life cycle.

This comment gives me hope. Lol.

I moved to Reddit when Digg destroyed itself. It wasn't too hard to make the switch, although it did take a bit of getting used to. I imagine it'll be the same this time, or maybe a bit easier, as the format of lemmy.ml is not too different in appearance from Reddit.

I'm mostly sad about losing the communites i loved, for which I have not yet found a comarable one on lemmy. r/cars and r/cartalk mostly

Yeah, Reddit had a lot of communities that I loved interacting with and finding advice with. I do hope Lemmy gains enough traction to replace Reddit.

I just keep thinking to myself, "it's the end of an era"

Reddit has been the only social network I've used for 12 years. I've watched it go through so much change over the years, but it always felt like even at its worst, it showed its users more respect and gave them more control over what content they saw than any other social network out there. I am cautiously optimistic about the future of Lemmy, but it makes me sad to watch RiF and Reddit phase out of my life.

I hate reddit. But it feels like the library of Alexandria burning down (yea I know). All those google search results and educational subreddits that are shutting down forever, and because they are too small reddit won't force open them again.
A lot are in the pushshift archive, but that cuts of at 2022. Also, it doesn't include a lot of the smaller subreddits.
I have had my PC running 24/7 with multiple VPNs to avoid rate limits downloading as much as I can before the API dies, but with some blackouts moving forward a day I have already missed a few.
Like many others, I would often add "reddit" to the end of my searches to get better results, half the websites on web searches now are either AI generated, copies or are completely AD ridden websites that ask you to turn off your AD blocker.

Reddit has answered almost every question I've ever had for years. The potential loss of all the knowledge is my greatest concern.
- i getcha, but it was people who did that. it's kind of hard to shut us up, we'll answer more questions wherever we are
  
  most knowledge has a shelf life anyway
how exaclty does this pushshift work? I downloaded some zsts from it but what do I do with them?
- The file you downloaded is a compressed JSON file, it's not something you can really just look at. But it contains all the data needed to build a nice UI around.
  I don't know what OS you are on but on linux you can run zstd -d -c file.zst | jq . and it will print everything in the file. It's not really readable though. Also it doesn't have any of the media content, only the text
I think this is honestly the biggest issue. Web search has been garbage for years, with legit the only saving grace being Reddit users sharing their knowledge. This is gonna have a horrible effect on producing good search results.
- Totally agree. I feel like this is the equivalent, to some degree, of Stack Overflow just suddenly going away. The history needs to be preserved, somehow.
- It's valuable knowledge with how-to's that made me create an account there. I learned plentiful with the people that cared to share.
  
  Most i implemented into my daily life & conditions have become favorable for me.
  
  It's unfortunate that Reddit Company have refused to collaborate with its users, since years back. Otherwise we would have seen their web & mobile app develop/ innovate in great ways. But they have chosen one limitation after the other. Slowly over the years.

The thing that's missing here most is the niche communities (I'm talking about like the ended 10 years ago tv shows and people are still posting about them). On the other hand, I noticed while most countries have 1 or 2 communities, my country already has at least 7 for specific locations and people still want to make more so it feels very much like home already

Going to sound sad but I'm a more than a bit bummed.

Outside my family and my job, reddit and the community was a massive social outlet for me. I don't have as much contact with friends any more and being part of some of the communities there made it not so bad.

i'm sad that reddit is dogshit, but excited to watch lemmy grow and to have the opportunity to be a part of its growth

I cared more about the niche communities than I did about Reddit as a whole. Once those move over here, I'll be just fine.

right! it's the people, not the product

i think someone forgot that

Not going to lie. This all feels like Google+ to me. The communities and networks are all over the place

Reddit kinda stopped being fun at some point, and I didn’t even realize it until I came here. The lack of doomscrolling potential here is an added bonus.

I felt this myself with the front page of Reddit often being filled with terrible news and the comments full of flame wars.

While I hope Lemmy/Kbin takes off (heck, I'd love early internet forums to come back in style) and kicks off a second internet renaissance, the imminent collapse of Reddit legit is giving me anxiety. Hope y'all don't mind if I vent a bit.

Firstly, there are a lot of "niche" communities on Reddit, mostly dedicated to individual games and the like. The kind of thing where fanart, announcements and discussions happen. In the short term, I don't see them surviving the collapse. And if they do, they'll probably move to a not-great platform like Discord or whatever Facebook comes out with.

Secondly, with SEO optimized AI generated garbage topping search results, Reddit has become an important reference when looking for reviews and opinions on things. As well as that, it has become somewhat of an archive of internet culture in a way. With subreddits moving to black out permanently and a push for users shredding their own data, there's a very real chance that all of this content will be lost forever.

I think because I have left reddit and returned to it so many times over the past 15 years I was looking for a reason to make it permanent. I'm more relieved than anything else. My religion also teaches me that who you are is a result of all of the actions you have taken in your life, and that we should not associate with those whose actions inflict harm on their own community (meaning spez)

I closed my Facebook account in 2016 and haven't looked back. Hoping I feel the same about Reddit

A little sad and a lot salty, my main account got suspended by reddit in retaliation for actions taken as a moderator and got totally ignored by members of the mod relations team and their oh so smugly named "anti evil operations" drones.

I'm sad Reddit is no longer the site it was

I'm glad that Spez and the rest of the reddit execs get to see their precious cash-cow die in flames.

I've been on reddit since the diggification. And to be honest, I miss the people. Reddit itself? I don't miss it at all.

But lemmy is turning out to be a nice place. Reminds me a lot of the old days of the internet, which I hope that we can some day go back to.

Ive spent 98% of my time here in Lemmy vs. 2% since last night. I'm not deleting my reddit account just yet, but, overall like what I am seeing here. I'm also just trying to figure everything out here.

There are issues/worries about what happens when an instance goes away, where's that content go? Duplicate/fragmented communities on multiple instances.

I'm more worried about losing the CONTENT that we created on Reddit, etc as a historic/research tool if reddit fails completely. Lot of content with people helping others.

I see/saw a lot of talk about wiping your data before leaving... I'm sure if that happened in larg volumes, they have backups of that content. No idea what legal ramifications there are with restoring them though.

I'm in a wait and see, but w/o RIF I'm gonna be hard pressed to use reddit on my phone, and if old. Goes away that might end it for me.

I'm more worried about losing the CONTENT that we created on Reddit

There are Reddit JSON dumps, I saw one yesterday.

I'm in a wait and see, but w/o RIF I'm gonna be hard pressed to use reddit on my phone

I'm using Jerboa, it looks pretty good IMO when you set the view to "list".

FYI: A shitload of people started helping with the Lemmy codebase on GitHub, it was awesome seeing the community coming together.

Yes, I'm really upset about it. It feels like i've had so much taken away from me over my life and I was always willing to accept it and move on, but to see something so simple and innocent get taken away seems just so pointless and depressing. Like why am I not allowed to just have my little shitposting community? is it too much that I get to smile without some capitalist coke rat getting a payday? I hate this so much and there is nothing I can do about it. I will mourn for awhile, until I cant even remember why im upset anymore, and when I wake up tommorrow the world will be just a little bit worse. it always is.

Fuck technofascists

I went from digg to Reddit during that mass exodus and will be doing the same from Reddit to Lemmy. It is a little bittersweet seeing what Reddit was 10+ years ago to what it’s become, but I’m excited for the future and to see what becomes of Lemmy, kbin, etc.

I sucks but I did the same thing with Digg when it turned to shit.

Not Reddit but I feel sad for Aaron Swartz. What a monster his creation became. Thankfully Lemmy exists to fill Reddit's place.

Not much. There's so much mod & admin abuse nowadays that I developed kind of a resentment. On top of that there's a lot of rude or downright hateful user behavior that seems to not just not get punished, but in some cases even encouraged. The only thing that lets me endure it for now is simply the community relevant content. As for kbin it needs exactly that. More users and content. Functionality of the site is good enough to be usable for me and will surely also improve but we really need the people and content to bring everything together.

I'm not 100% hating reddit right now, though I do hate them a lot. So not deleting my >10yo account or anything....but I do recognize that this is near the end.

The default app is garbage. I'm someone who likes my feed and interaction set up EXACTLY to my liking. So losing any customization, etc is just going to make me like it less, use it less, etc.

But I know that eventually, once they have control over how you interact with Reddit, it will only be a matter of time until it looks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: ad-filled, "suggested content" GARBAGE. I honestly can't use any of those sites/apps anymore they're such cluttered wastelands, I don't know how people stand it.

So I guess less heartbroken, and more like dread as I know the enshittification of reddit is just getting started...

A little bit, there's a lot of specific subreddits I enjoyed browsing and talking in that have yet to reach a good critical mass here on Lemmy. I've been sharing my own custom Zelda monsters for Pathfinder 2e on the ZeldaTabletop subreddit and there's no substitute for that subreddit over here yet (I might make one once RiF dies on June 30th).

Yeah, totally. But I'm also finding extremely cool Lemmy and the concept behind the fediverse

12 years of reddit. It will take some time to adjust but I also switched from google to duckduckgo years ago after decades of google, and then too never looked back. Lemmy does need a LOT of work, still, but so did reddit in the early days..

To those working on Lemmy, please don't fuck this up for us. Don't be a spez.

It's also up to us not to fuck this up. Let's not turn this into a toxic hate-filled dystopia lol.
- That will happen nonetheless, when more people start coming in. Its something that will just have to be managed.
  
  On the other hand, I do hope that here on lemmy we will stop just kicking anybody with an opinion that we don't like. That will only cause echo chambers where everybody will repeat the same stupid opinions that will only get more extreme. We will have to listen to those that we don't agree with.

More than anything else, I'm going to miss the easy access to reliable answers by appending reddit to whatever I'm searching for in Google

Yes and no. Reddit had become toxic and a shadow of it's former self. It was a good run for 11 years. Hopefull Lemmy can be an alternative. :)

I view this as a fresh start. Cut off the old and grow a new one. Just like a gecko. I spent a lot of time on reddit but I can't say I ever actually connected with another person on it, there were just too many people on even the small subs I joined. Maybe lemmy will bring back the small internet forum feel and we'll actually be able to stand out from the crowd better and actually get to know each other.

Hey RickyRigatoni, nice to meet you :)

I feel just a bit heartbroken but at the same time I really love the concept of lemmy.

I'm just a little afraid that lemmy is just a short-lived alternative and the people go back because not everything is working perfect right now.

That's definitely a risk. The main way of avoiding that is to stay active :D

I've been trying to jump for a long time now, I used tildes for a while, but it just didn't have enough content I'm interested in. Now it seems lemmy is gaining enough steam to be my primary social media.

Reddit really peaked with the Obama ama. After that it was all downhill, the place grew too quickly to keep its culture.

No, actually, I used reddit just to pass time, never really engaged in the community, and without this whole debacle I wouldn't have found out about lemmy and the fediverse as a whole, which is really exciting and a new part of the internet (for me) that feels like a breath of fresh air after years of everything being so centralized around very few companies, I'm getting a vibe of the internet from 15-20 years ago, exploring the wild west of the internet.

I'm getting the same retro vibe, for so long I've been missing how cool and simple things used to be, the fediverse sounds really amazing and a more futuristic way of engaging online.

However, I indeed miss the old reddit since I was an active member and also all the lost karma lol.
- It’s probably unhealthy to have such an attachment to fake internet points that do literally nothing.
  
  I guess for me Reddit lasted longer and grew bigger than I expected it to, so I see this as a natural progression. It grew much further than it had any right to, I think.

@Acetamide I don't understand why though. We live in a capitalist system, and therefore Reddit has to make money in order to survive. On the current path, Reddit won't exist AT ALL. So we either get a Reddit with some fees that devs don't like, or no Reddit at all.

I don't care that mutch about Reddit Inc, but rather about all the communities I was once part of.

A bit. Reddit has been a big part of my life for over a decade. If I lost access to all of those communities, it would be really unfortunate and hard to accept. I'll miss being able to get amazing advice or insightful comments just by adding "reddit" to my google search.

I think the spirit of Reddit will live on though, I doubt that everyone will just vanish and we'll all be stuck on subpar platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or Tiktok.

I'm really excited about the possibility of the new "Reddit" being a federated, self-hostable platform like Lemmy, and solving these periodic exodii issues once and for all! No more dictators deciding the direction the community should go. I'm really impressed with what Lemmy has accomplished so far with its code and its community.

Just speaking for myself, I find absolutely no interest in those platforms you mention: they do not show any really depth if you know what I mean. I love going around various sublemmies (if that's the word) and discussing these absolute niches.

I actually feel more relieved. It has become toxic and dominated by bots. As soon as a real person posts anything, it's immediately down voted

I'm enjoying Lemmy much more. Reminds me of the internet of old.

I feel the same. Just releif. Since the redesign and official app, deep down I knew where it was heading. It's different this time (vs voat) where there is an alternative that has the spirit of why we all enjoyed reddit to begin with and without the commercialism that reddit has become. It's early, surely lots of challenges ahead for this idea but the decentralized nature I think will be very interesting and will allow for the more mainstream community to create a pleasant experience for those that wish it. Also, Lemmy is need of some technical polishing and ease of use, bug fixes, etc. Instances will also need funding by providing transparency and decent moderation. It's like reddit but without trying to monetize your content. Lol

It's all very exciting!

I'm used to the layout of RIF and my niche subreddits NCD/Ukraine Conflict, NBA but I'm posting here and trying to add to the community. Hoping for a better mobile app one day though:X

I'm permanently suspended anyway, there's no way back. They somehow find me if I create a new account lol

Yes. I loved Reddit for a LONG time. They started to crumble in my opinion when the added these Snooavatars, which later turned into a NFT scheme. I never bothered with these. The promise of the website was awesome though. Being able to follow interests and communities instead of people was a completely new concept, which I had never seen before. Now it feels like the corporate greed has finally completely taken over.

Time to jump ship.

I feel that. Reddit's bit of an addiction for me. I don't use other social media so it became my one stop shop for news, inspiration, and to connect with all the little niche intrest.

Oddly, I was frequently just doom scrolling r/all to see what was going on the the world. And when I ran out of revent stuff if just sort by new. Super unhealthy behavior.

Hopfully this transition will help me slow down a bit and get back to reality.