I have been on the edge with twitter and reddit for a while and I have finally deleted my accounts that I have had for a very long time there. They are no longer the places I used to know, even more so with twitter. I am ready for my new time here and on mastodon.
Hello Lemmy
Leaving Twitter for Mastodon barely had an impact. I was just about done with that whole place, with or without Musk in charge.
Reddit is different… I still loved using it. I had my subscriptions honed, all my interests represented. I suffered none of the toxicity that others saw. Not sure if that was just because I mostly used smaller, niche-interest subs or because I mostly lurked and seldom posted? It was all friendly, knowledgeable and entertaining, a stream of consciousness that I could dip in to whenever I wanted to.
So I’m not leaving Reddit because of the experience, but more on principal (both the API kerfuffle and a general aversion to ad-revenue models, which are clearly harmful to society). Principals sadly don’t give me something to read over breakfast…
I hope Lemmy can become that stream of consciousness in time. I’m trying to do my bit by being an active contributor rather than a lurking grazer.
We might have to accept we’re on the “losing” side, e.g. Lemmy will never have the numbers our subreddits had. We’ll have smaller communities and less content, but hopefully better conversation.
Honestly reddit lost too. The quality drop in content and comments is noticeable and unlikely to get better. Meanwhile lemmy/kbin/fediverse in general seems to be thriving with hope and energy.
That sounds like the winning side to me.
I made the transition from Digg to Reddit way back when, and like you didn’t see a lot of the toxicity of Reddit likely by having a honed list of subreddits. 99% of my time was spent lurking tho over the last years - so now I’m going to take more initiative and engage more with the platform
Same here. Lemmy is rising quickly though, I have no doubt it will be a sufficient Reddit replacement soon enough. I’ve been using Apple News as my “read over breakfast” app. I already pay for the sub anyway, and once I set it up with a bunch of sources/topics I was interested in, it became a pretty good reading experience.
I hope you consider an open news alternative, or even a closed one slightly less bad than Apple. Good for you for not using Reddit though.
I fear that sounded too condescending, I seriously want to encourage you to not use Apple without making you sound like an idiot.
I don’t think you are an idiot, just the same as the other millions of people who were taken in by Apple’s ‘privacy’ and ‘simplicity’, while not realising the price gouging, right to repair smashing, closed source, keeping everything ensnared its ecosystem that it really is.
I was never big on Twitter myself… I made an account when it first came out and never used it… and then for a high school unit for something we were required to make accounts (I graduated 10+ years ago… so that in and of itself is scary). I’ve never liked twitter. It always seemed to be screaming into the void.
Mastodon I really appreciate the real conversations with real people, especially when they are interested in what I have to say. I made a post about getting rid of lawns and had people from all angles of the argument discussing with me about it. It felt… healthy?!
Well, as healthy as internettin’ is.
Yes, I never got into Twitter but I have an active Mastodon life. I also appreciate smaller communities where you can talk to people like you said. On big platforms I don’t even bother commenting, much less making a post. It will just fall into the void.
You’re right… it’s just not worth it for the most part on larger platforms. I’m not sitting here trying to argue with anyone-- we can have a civilized discussion that ends in a disagreement on smaller platforms. On larger platforms it always turns into fights and pilings-on. It is gross.