I don't know what it is, but people there seem to be turning nastier and nastier. Like for instance, I posted some technical question on an electronics subreddit earlier, and something in my post - not sure what - landed me a -15 score, and people replying that if I didn't like it I could fuck off. All I said was that some component wasn't placed in a terribly convenient location in the new design, and the people who posted angry and rude comments weren't even the designers. I mean what the actual fuck...
It seems a lot of subreddits I used to enjoy participating in are now full of people in a really antagonistic mood, and I often hesitate to post anything there now because I know it has a 50% change of turning nasty. And so instead, whenever possible, I post in the equivalent Lemmy community because even though they have a hundred times fewer users, it's a much less frustrating experience.
I come interact on Reddit or Lemmy to have a good time, not to pick up a fight and get insulted by passive-aggressive internet lusers with frayed nerves.
I'm not unconvinced that R×ddit isn't completely overtaken by shills & people who have swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.
Have a critique? See a flaw? Something that bugs you about a product? YOU'RE WRONG, IDIOT!!! EVERYONE LOVES [thing] SO YOU ARE STUPID FOR CRITICIZING IT!!!!!
Quiets down the detractors. They don't have a voice.
Quiets down anti-capitalists, politically-motivated folk, logic-minded.. you know. People who cause trouble for those with something to sell you.
The reverse happens on Lemmy too in some community. Like for example the fairly popular!aboringdystopia@lemmy.world: it's a radical anti-capitalist, probably pro-communist and most assuredly pro-anarchist community, which is generally fine by me. But if you go in there to express a reasonable opinion that isn't "burn all corporations" or "kill all capitalists" and expect to have a reasonable discussion, that's just not gonna happen. You'll just get modded down. It's not so much a place to discuss anything than a big anti-capitalist circle jerk.
So you can find places where people are angry and nasty like on Reddit here, but usually you kind of know in which community you'll find the anger. On Reddit, the anger is everywhere and for no reason, including on subbreddits that aren't the least bit controversial. And even if you don't criticize a product or diss a company or its products, most Redditors are ready to jump at you because... well, they seem to feel the need to be aggressive.
I'm fairly convinced the nature of the platform turns them like that: Reddit is subtly aggressive too and I'm convinced it rubs off on its users.
To be fair, that description of being piled on by angry people who are looking for an excuse to be angry could easily describe a lot of threads I've been in on the Fediverse lately. Seems like there's an unfortunate mood going around right now.
Some of the cool people moved to Lemmy, but it still seems like a fairly small fraction. I think a larger number have just completely given up on social media and are no longer participating.
Attitude is the main reason I started looking for reddit alternatives over four years ago, not ui or privacy or moderation or the api stuff (which came a lot later). I have a lot of theories for why it happened (that aren't just the capitalism and astrotufing circlejerk) but they're hard to back with substantial evidence
I've been hearing society is bad and getting worse from a variety of people since I was born in the height of the Cold War, and I've come to believe it's only a perception. It's no better or worse than it's ever been: it's just that as people get older and the standards of their youth change, they feel alienated by a world that is increasinbly not theirs anymore.
I'm old enough to be a grumpy old man but I keep reminding myself that this isn't my world anymore either. And if I'm honest, I don't see how the world of today is significantly worse than when I was a kid and we were all preparing for nuclear armageddon any minute now. And I always remind myself how my grandparents and my parents constantly told me to stop listening to "degenerate n*ger music" and quit wasting my time with those damn computer things and pursue more "manly" endeavors. I don't want to become bitter like they were because I have no real reason to: the world of today really hasn't done anything to me, it just feels weird.
However, I will say this: social media brings the worst out of people. It's like reality TV of the 80's and Usenet, but turbocharged. I think the utter social mediocrity that is social media contributes a lot to the perception that society is worse: it isn't, it's just that the worst of it is a lot more visible and more vocal.
I suspect many people who generally want to be kind and helpful have given up trying there. I know I certainly have. Look how active I am here, that's a lot genuine engagement they've lost and I know I'm not the only one.
I hate how Reddit conditioned my brain to see score before the actual content and make up my mind about it before even reading it.
I don’t say scores aren’t important to have some kind of loose groupthink quality control but it all has as many cons as it has pros and there isn’t really a perfect solution just least bad.
Also it is the main thing making social media so addicting when you receive points and I want internet to serve me and not I serve the internet.
If a phone/site/program makes everything possible to be as addictive then it actually makes you a slave to it imo instead of it being a useful tool enriching your experience and serving you to maybe get more useful information or show new ideas.
That’s why these new designs get more pretty to look at but less useful because they are made to hijack your time from yourself for ad watching. So in a way ad based companies literally do everything to steal the most valuable resource from you - your time and by extension - your life.
reddit has a huge backlog of billions of posts. until lemmy keeps up with it, i won't completely leave reddit, because my favorite part about reddit is exploring obscure communities, which lemmy does not have. (I'm using lemmy for actual discussions and stuff) Also I think it's still the most decent network out of all big tech ones, i.e. it's not as bad as fucking Instagram or whatever...
Well yeah, I get the backlog of post. Reddit threads from 4+ years ago still come up when I Google something. I mean actively using reddit. The obscure communities can be made and will be once more people use lemmy. Reddit didn't have them at the start either
In my opinion. The majority of computer/phone users is not very technical. They get used to how something they use works. It keeps working as is for a long time.
Then when small changes make it worse, they just accept them. Its just a bit worse. No biggie, then at some point they are used to the new normal. Something else gets worse and the whole thing repeats. It has to be literally unusable before such users switch to a new thing. Like reddits servers need to shut down, that kind of unusable.
True, I honestly don't get it. In everything in life if I don't like something I find something better or try to fix it. I hate relying on some entity blindly putting my trust into them. I will genuinely never understand the blind trust people put into anything and everything. I can't tell if it's ignorace or apathy
None of the niche communities I am interested in exist on lemmy. Maybe they will eventually, maybe they won’t. It’s more or less useless beyond doom scrolling. I miss reddit because I miss having all of my useful forums in one place with a better thread format, and I didn’t need to remember a bunch of accounts to participate in something like /r/tipofmytongue or /r/bikewrench periodically. Lemmy is just a political news space with memes and that’s not going to attract everyone.
that's the sh.reddit.com ui, you get it if you're not logged in, otherwise you get new.reddit.com.
i think new.reddit.com or old.reddit.com are much better tbh, but they're probably using it because new.reddit.com is really buggy while logged out (i assume they blocked it for logged out users by now right?)
Yeah the point of the post is to say that's becoming the default now. I can always type in new.reddit.com, but any link I click will take me back to this
I disagree, you can see so much on the old layout specifically because it's a wall of text. The new layout is unnecessarily bloated and takes up your whole screen on every device you view it from, so you can barely see more than one or two posts at a time. It removes the ability for the user to freely scroll and look at things that interest them, and forces the user's attention onto exactly what the algorithm wants them to. The new layout removes a ton of agency from the user.
I think for two simply have different use cases for Reddit.
The old ui is great if you see Reddit as a text aggregator. You want text or headlines and click on the content to see it. Images are almost meaningless.
The new ui puts a focus on visual connect. Images and videos are the focus, you don't have to follow links most of the time, because the content is embedded.
Those are two very different approaches. Neither is doing a great job of achieving their goals, though.
It also squeezes everything into a narrow field only suitable for mobile (and maybe some small vertical monitors). Granted that seems to be an awful trend that far too many sites are following.
I don't like how it looks either. Way too busy. Only thing is, it is lightweight though. New reddit usually crawls to a halt after half an hour of scrolling (which is probably good for my mental health).
I agree it's terrible on mobile, but it's the wall of text I love on desktop. I want to see as many titles on a subreddit as I can.
The Lemmy web desktop UI is quite similar. I just wish the list of subscribed communities was more accessible rather than being at the bottom of the instance home page.
I was very confused for a moment as this is how my Lemmy looks - I'm using the Photon interface (e.g. https://photon.lemmy.world/) Pretty much identical.