cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/37870004
reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).
the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.
another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait (“Am I The Asshole?”) because company shareholders want to see “engagement numbers” go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that’s “engagement”. but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the “Asshole”, so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.
size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.
we should probably get rid of the “don’t make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow” idea.
So not unlike the groupthink you encounter on the Fediverse? Where it’s even more perverse due to defederation and due to the networks being much smaller
The thing with defederation is, if I’m paying the bills to keep a website running, I’m going to decide what that website hosts. And if your website is filled with people spewing shit I don’t want to host, I’m just straight up blocking your website.
At the end of the day, each fediverse website is a content mirror. I, as an administrator, have ultimate control over what content I mirror. You, as an end user, get to choose which site you’re using. That’s the deal. You choose your administrator, not control them.
Yep, and if you defederate from too many sites, or from all sites that don’t share your values 100%, your instance starts to die because it’s not interesting to be on it if you’re outside the groupthink.
I like that, it’s a good mechanism for keeping things fresh and interesting. It’s also why I have several accounts on different servers, because I like to see hexbear stuff but also about 5% of the stuff that ml mods don’t like.
Edit: actually, while we’re on the subject: I’m incredibly old so I still like the “information should be free” bullshit that the internet used to be able to run on, is there any instance that only censors people for spamming and CSAM and information-free politics trolling?
Like, all they care about politically is if you’re willing to admit that facts are facts and don’t want to kill or chattel enslave entire sections of society?
it’s entire like that.
people’s tolerance for differences has degraded to the point what was once previously considered a difference of opinion is now considered ‘hate speech’.
the viewpoints that many folks have normalized today also, would have been considered totally insane 10 or so years ago. people are far more radical, and far more intolerant, and many lemmy users are here precisely because of their radical views they use to abuse others.
my heyday on reddit in the 2010s I was a part of a lot of diverse communities that simple could not exist in 2026. the majority of folks would be banned for offending users and violating the political ‘truths’ so many people cling to here on lemmy. i also watched in real time as my communities were invaded by these values and the tonal shift in content and interactions went from easy and fun and diverse to very serious and homogeneous. the ‘fun police’ came and basally reported friendly interactions in the name of ‘justice’, because as outside observers they saw in-jokes as abusive and awful.
No, I don’t think it’s the same. On most issues I had interesting discussions, even when most of lemmy is clearly just parroting some silly arguments. I have downvotes disabled on my instance so I don’t care if 100 people disagree without being able to articulate their arguments. The few people that can are usually fun to argue with. You also don’t get spammed by negative comments like on Reddit (because there are not as many users). I never got banned just for disagreeing with the majority, unlike on Reddit.
The are some topics you can’t discuss on lemmy because people are too emotional about them but I don’t think it’s as bad as on reddit.
It’s easy to dismiss what you just stated because most people know the truth. There’s plenty of blogposts and posts in general about the cultures and experiences people run up against. It’s very much an echo chamber and homogenous and defederation strengthens that- show us otherwise. I’m happy to be wrong . I’ve seen plenty of spamming of negative comments and people harassed out of the space and projects shutdown. I can assure you people aren’t shutting down projects and leaving the space because people asked them nicely
I think we’re talking about different things. I don’t know what blogposts or project shutdowns you’re talking about. Maybe you’re talking about mods and devs? I’m writing from the perspective of an end user. I don’t care about defederations and such.
But… my first lemmy account was on linux.community server and I was banned without any explanation. Since them I’m self-hosting and had 0 issues. So… maybe that’s also why I see lemmy as better than Reddit?