• OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    Founded in 2005 by web developer Steve Huffman and entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, Reddit became best known for its niche discussion groups and its users voting “up” or “down” on the content posted by other members.

    Disgraceful, disgusting, lying scum. Say his name: Aaron Swartz

    • Aatube@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Aaron Swartz actually didn’t found Reddit. He built a similar company that wasn’t gaining traction, and as both of them were under y-comb and Reddit secretly seeded fake accounts, Swartz and y-comb decided to merge into Reddit. Swartz was sort of their first and hardworking employee instead of a co-founder.

    • Troy@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Yes. Best thing we can do is be ready (from a tech perspective) and welcoming (from a human perspective). They’ll come or they won’t.

      Compared to summer, Lemmy now has thousands more users, hundreds of active communities (no where near Reddit yet on niche subjects), actual made-on-lemmy content in a bunch of places, and a bunch of apps that mostly have the bugs worked out. It’s probably fair more appealing now to join than it was in summer.

      We still have roadblocks: general confusion about federation (the email analogy seems to be working best), difficulty properly explaining how to sign up, a harder time finding communities, and it’s impossible to migrate between instances without starting fresh.

      • Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de
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        8 months ago

        no where near Reddit yet on niche subjects

        I’m always saddened by how not-active some of those subjects are. For example: Even many large games struggle to have dedicated, active communities on Lemmy (assuming I’m not terrible at finding them, which is sadly also possible). Even some of the largest games have only completely dead communities here. A huge draw of Reddit for me was to be able to talk about the games I play with other people who do too. And mostly, the games I’d love to talk about aren’t in the top 10 most played games list.

        Now I could try to (re)vitalize those communities I would love to see around, and I have done so shortly after the exodus (on my previous account that died with the instance it was on). However, there’s only so much talking into the void I can do until it gets boring.

        I also feel like that might be a big issue for people coming over. After I manage to explain to my friends how federation works, they ask me to help them find the [topic of their interest] community, and all I can show them is a community with 10 threads, all over 3 months old and with 0 comments. Sadly it shouldn’t surprise anyone they’re not sticking around after that.

        • Troy@lemmy.ca
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          8 months ago

          I think part of the problem is that we migrants decided that each reddit community also needed a corresponding lemmy community right out of the gate. For example, on reddit, there is r/hockey, then there’s a sub for each individual team. However on lemmy, the team subs are dead due to insufficient traffic, and stay dead due to the exact chicken-and-egg problem you describe. The solution is to congregate in a larger community instead, where traffic is higher, even if you’re posting about your relatively popular game. So as a Winnipeg Jets fan, I should post in the lemmy hockey community and not the Jets community. Likewise, if you want more chatter about Cyberpunk2077, post in the general gaming community. It works reasonably well for now, and if the signal to noise ratio ever gets bad in the larger community, then you can split off into specialty topics.

          Ironically, reddit also went through this exact process 10-12 years ago. r/science became too noisy, so people ended up in r/physics and r/chemistry, and r/askscience and such. We need to start with communities with larger scope until they’re active enough to split.

          At this very moment I’m looking for a discussion on sci fi oriented table top rpgs. On reddit, there is dedicated discussion forums for a few of them. Here, I’ll post to !rpg@ttrpg.network because there’s more people there. Off I go!

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
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    8 months ago

    Seems like a terrible investment, I can’t see what they can possibly do to add value. Everybody who wants to use Reddit is already on it and anything they do to try and milk it will just lose them users.

    • Corgana@startrek.website
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      8 months ago

      I’ve had the impression for a long time that Reddit could stand to lose a large part of its users in order to be more profitiable. The nerds getting into long winded “ackchually” “debates” are making the site worse for the meme scrollers and they are also not the type to click on ads. They’re not trying to attract more users, they want to maximise revenue from the existing pool. I don’t think it’s a coincidence Reddit has been slowly moving away from “discussion board” and towards image and short video (like the other three big platforms) because that’s where the money’s at.

      My prediction is that shortly after the IPO we’ll see .old go away, and a further sterilizing of subreddits ability to forge unique identities. The only question I have is how do they expect to attract sufficient moderators, buuuut they haven’t had trouble after the API debacle so maybe there are more people willing to provide free labor than I assume!

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        8 months ago

        The only question I have is how do they expect to attract sufficient moderators

        I mean YouTube comment sections were known for years to be an unmoderated nightmare of just people saying the absolute dumbest shit.

        YouTube was and still is the most popular video site.

        I think reddit has just stopped caring about the real content of the comments since, like you said, they’ve pretty much pivoted to images and video. Expect the comments section to be further eroded as well, in the name of needing less moderation. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Reddit do an “AI” push where the “AI” is mostly just replacing moderators with what amounts to a more advanced automod.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 months ago

    Founded in 2005 by web developer Steve Huffman and entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, Reddit became best known for its niche discussion groups and its users voting “up” or “down” on the content posted by other members.

    I appreciate this extremely sly shade at Steve Huffman.

    He’s not an entreprenuer because he didn’t do dick between leaving Reddit and coming back to Reddit whereas Ohanian had a few other companies in his back pocket.

    I mean, Ohanian sucks, too, but this sentence is just Reuters kicking dirt in Steve Huffman’s smarmy little bitch face and I’m fucking here for it.

    • Quetzlcoatl@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Shoutout to all the tip of the spear folks here on lemmy for devaluing reddits ipo. Even if it makes a minimal dent kudos for taking the more difficult road and standing on principle.

      • Match!!@pawb.social
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        8 months ago

        I’ve tried to go back to Reddit occasionally and it’s garbage, vastly more garbage than I remember last year, from the web design down to the userbase. Whereas I can’t recall a single time I’ve been on lemmy and encountered an [undeclared] bot

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 months ago

          Just today I noticed how low skilled the reddit base seems to be in my general meme/tech/piracy thrmed feed.
          So many basic questions that could literally be answered by or get a start on from ChatGPT etc.
          Instead they pollute the subs with their low effort requests for help or guidance.

          Example: How to get started on pirating anime.

          That was a legit title…

          • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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            8 months ago

            The younger generation is less tech savvy than the millenial generation who were forced to figure stuff out themselves and didn’t have smartphones.

            I get the idea that a lot of people who emigrated to the fediverse are older and also more tech literate given all the linux memes.