OC Any other former redditors feeling grief?

I have been joking to a couple of friends today who were also redditors that I've been feeling withdrawals from reddit throughout the day. Like I knew I was addicted, I just never thought I was going to have to face the consequences of withdrawals!

But there's also a major part of me that's feeling a sense of loss. I had two reddit accounts that were 11+ years old. I used an app called Redact last night to totally expunge my comment and submission history, and I just was hit by so many emotions watching my old content turn to ashes.

Reddit is where I always spent my depression spirals, but it was also where I found hobbyist communities and group help support. I found sexual partners through reddit, and used to even moderate in my early days. It's where I used to keep up with a TON of current events but also read from so many diverse perspectives with expertise on topics.

As much as I am tentatively excited for the culture and community we can build on kbin, I truly am feeling the inconsequential reality of all that karma and browsing. Reddit felt like it was going to be immortal, but even the mighty fall.

Anyone else bummed??

_galactose,
_galactose avatar

I feel sort of lost, because one of my sources of information is cut off. Besides being able to be a part of that highly-specific community you were looking for, reddit also was very good for finding answers to any random question and avoiding bad google-search articles that are quite often unhelpful.

daredevil,
daredevil avatar

I'm wondering how kbin will play with search engines down the line. I often used ddg to search through Reddit, but trying it with kbin didn't seem as helpful. I wouldn't know how long it would take for posts to show up in Google's searches, but I'll be patient until I learn more. If anyone has any advice for searches, that would be really helpful. Doing so was a large part of my time when I really wanted to browse past discussions regarding key topics and keywords.

Ashyr,

I'm curious about this as well. I basically never Google anything anymore without appending Reddit to it.

mookman288,
mookman288 avatar

Instead of using the keyword "reddit" consider using the keyword "forum" or "discussion." Make use of double-quotation marks, plus sign, and minus sign in your search queries to be more granular with your searches.

It may take a considerably long time for kbin posts to start showing up in Google. Part of the reason is that kbin is new to being popular, so the backlinking and general popularity traffic isn't there yet (but it will be, I'm sure.) It also takes more time for Google to crawl and index the content of sites which have lower priority.

I have various personal hobby sites on Neocities, and even some WordPress sites, and it's rare for them to appear in Google searches even after many years. They just aren't popular enough and do not have the right backlinks for Google to organically find them and prioritize them in results.

Timwi,
Timwi avatar

Do your sites have XML sitemaps? I run this niche community website that was not easy to find on search engines and its content was slow to update, but then I learned about XML sitemaps and it changed everything. Check out the robots.txt file where I added a line for the sitemap. Follow the link to see what the file looks like. As soon as I added that, suddenly my site is top result if you search for ktane + the name of a module (e.g. “switches ktane”), and it gets crawled and indexed a lot more often. This applies to both Google and DuckDuckGo.

ninjakitty7,

The thing that saddens me the most deeply is that Reddit was the last place on the internet that was a source of real, human-generated information. The drive for profit has destroyed every single search engine through SEO, meaning that you can't get answers to questions anymore. Reddit was where I went when I wanted to find passionate people and niche topics and answers to obscure problems that Google would tell me nobody has ever had before.

Jyrdano,
Jyrdano avatar

I second the google searching. Reddit was great to finding answers to really specific questions, and there isnt really a replacement for that AFAIK

WeaponizedPoultry,
WeaponizedPoultry avatar

This is part of what's been troubling me with the whole situation. With so many long-time users nuking their entire post histories there's a lot of link rot happening. How much good info is just gone already? I understand not wanting to contribute to reddit's bottom line any more, but the loss of public information is concerning.

HandsHurtLoL,

I am not an archivist, but I have know people in information sciences who have experience with archival work, and I am also struck by how many times we would joke on reddit about how sociologists hundreds of years in the future would absolutely misinterpret some of the jokes in our threads for being so out of context.

I hadn't thought about how much the world today stood to lose by reddit going dark, not being indexed on Google searches. I don't think Spez thought of that, or if that's even a prevailing concern at this point compared to profit and going public.

Not sure I have any solutions, but just acknowledging this adds another bittersweet note to my sense of loss. It wasn't that just I lost my place in that highly constructed world, but also the world lost its greatest crowdsource.

CynAq,
CynAq avatar

I agree with the loss of information point. It's getting much harder every day to find quality information on the web.

Hopefully most users who had good content and information in their history archived their content before nuking it on reddit with the plan to post it on wherever they end up next.

It will take time for that information to spread out and be discoverable again, but I can't blame people for taking it away, especially with the very open demand for AI training data, as a lot of people agree that it's unethical to use people's content for machine learning without explicit consent.

Col3814444,

Reddit absolutely changed my life for the better in the past 15 years or so I have been using it. People love to complain about how awful it apparently is, but I didn’t find that - for every awful thing there are a thousand great things.

I’m going to miss it for a bit, but this site seems to have promise, it reminds me greatly of Reddit when we all moved over from Digg. Will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

20k,

Reddit got me into a C++ committee meeting and allowed me to present a paper which was super cool, and let me meet my first and second girlfriend. Its wild that its just kind of gone

teacosts,

It's sad that they got greedy. I do realize how addicted I was to the site and realized that's what I mostly did on my phone. Trying to train myself to use kbin.

isdfoa,

same, reddit also basically became my search engine for anything that isn't just straight up facts i can get from google (ex: recommendations, opinions, advice, troubleshooting, etc). it feels like the rest of the internet's content is just regurgitated buzzwords aimed at getting clicks for ads rather than anything actually useful.

scabrous-leper,
scabrous-leper avatar

Yes, this! I used it like people do youtube, for repair/fix it questions, as well as niche communities for interests, news, entertainment.

WeaponizedPoultry,
WeaponizedPoultry avatar

Content from niche communities seems to be most in danger. Just yesterday I found myself with questions regarding some Star Wars miniatures games and what would have been the best results on google were stuck behind the reddit blackout.

I'm not sure how well the fediverse can replace a small subreddit yet. The fractured nature of the platform seems like it could mean communities that were <50k users just never become as active as they were on a more centralized platform. And how long will it take for content here to have similar reach on search engines?

HandsHurtLoL,

Yes! For me, it was extremely effective at its primary goal of being a content aggregator. I kept up with sooooo much news that was thematicly linked (national news, world news, politics, specific country's news/politics) that I could be the smartest person in most rooms I occupied in irl.

I think though that the corresponding magazines will be the first massly populated here on kbin.

Haus,
Haus avatar

This is the thing for me. I think I'm experiencing a bit of news FOMO. Reddit has been reliable for years at supplying news, cat antics, and pretty girls. I also agree that google+reddit has been really useful in solving very specific problems.

Flabbergash,
Flabbergash avatar

Put it this way, the first I heard of Berlusconi's death was on the radio. The radio!!

TimberHearth,

I think people are jumping the gun a bit on what Kbin is and are expecting it to be as huge as Reddit which it might never be. Most of my news I’m getting via the free version of Feedly which is an RSS reader and I’m only really using Kbin to scratch that itch for a bit of commenting.

I hope people are exploring their options with being able to interact with Lemmy and Beehaw boards via Federation too. If this setup ever gets as big as Reddit it’ll be through the federated whole not one individual site. Considering how much data costs to host I think pushing one site towards a monopoly will always force increased advertIsing and with popularity comes financial predators. This is of course what Reddit is going through now.

gluuhm,
gluuhm avatar

Thanks, I'll check out Feedly! I don't know why I stopped using RSS feeds, but the idea of using one again sounds really appealing. I'm not sure why.

eatmoregreenfood,
eatmoregreenfood avatar

Meh. I used reddit since about a year after its launch. I noticed the last two days my thumb reaching for the reddit app on my home screen. But then I pause, remember I deleted rif, and just log into kbin and try to be active. Right now sorting by new has been amazing. Lots of new magazines (shout out to the one I made tvsuggestions).

I think you can get the reddit dopamine hit by being active on kbin. Investigate! Explore the site! Make a zine!

The plus side is I'm using it way less than reddit while simultaneously being way more active on the medium. Win win

HandsHurtLoL,

I'm certainly already venturing out into more engagement here, but I am using it less than reddit only because there isn't a convenient 3rd party app for kbin Q_Q

eatmoregreenfood,
eatmoregreenfood avatar

There will be. For now the mobile version is usable. I just threw a link to it where RiF used to be. But yeah stay at it. The more engaged we are the more need for a polished mobile app there will be. Donate, use the medium, etc. Mobile app can't possibly be too far out.

HandsHurtLoL,

For anyone who wants the donate link, it's here!

RedditExodus,
RedditExodus avatar

Thanks for sharing the link, I just donated. It seems like this Ernest guy is working his ass off!

exohuman,
exohuman avatar

You can use the web app feature. In safari, hit the share button then scroll down and hit “Add to Home Screen”. It will now appear as a standalone app separate from your browser.

discodoubloon,
discodoubloon avatar

I’ve been doing this. The password thing won’t set so just have to commit it to memory for now.

experbia,
experbia avatar

I removed Relay from my home screen when I realized at some point while just zoning out I had just unlocked my phone and tapped it open without really thinking about it consciously. It was that much of an idle habit. I looked down and saw the pics pinned message about going dark and was like, uhh??

rastla,

Huh, Hadn't actually thought about sorting theads by new.
Since this community is somewhat small for now, that's actually a great idea.

BeatNik,

I've found myself doing the same. I've instinctively opened Apollo about 6 times yesterday and each time I've force quit the app immediately.

I can't bring myself to delete it just yet. @christianselig made one of the best R*ddit apps and in a way this whole protest has been a great way to break away from my addiction.

scabrous-leper,
scabrous-leper avatar

@BeatNik
I wound up deleting Apollo, just because I was too dumb to see where one logs out! But, having it be gone, completely, makes it easy to not go back.

@HandsHurtLoL @christianselig @eatmoregreenfood

Highfall,

It's tough, I've used it for 12 years and i'm devastated because atm there's no site that can replace the community and the amount of centralized content available.

However, I went through the same journey 12 years ago because of Digg and I hope /u/spez continues to fasttrack reddits death. Making a community of addicts give up something they are addicted to requires a special sort of talent, and the faster spez can apply his abilites, the faster the community can move on to the next platform and build something better.

Right now we are in limbo where the replacements aren't nearly as good, and reddit isn't quite dead yet. This is the worst stage.

HandsHurtLoL,

I have to laugh at your comment that Spez has a special talent if he can make millions of addicts suddenly give something up!! If being a social media mogul doesn't work out for him, he should consider a new career in addiction management 😂😂

You make a good point about centralized content though, too. Like, I appreciate that other users who seem to be a bit more knowledgeable about the Fediverse are name dropping a lot of platforms, but I don't want my new online home to be scattered. I guess I'm spoiled but like, I do want my stuff centralized. Is there no middle ground where the back end is federated but the UX is one location?? I'm not a computer scientist or programmer so I'm not sure if I just asked for an oxymoron.

!deleted121404,

deleted_by_author

    •
    HandsHurtLoL,

    There's a part of me that I think would have continued to still use reddit if like, Spez had pulled out of the nose dive by the 10th or whatever. But now I feel like he and reddit have crossed the Rubicon, and it's just the principle of the matter and solidarity at this point.

    Also, is annoyance a stage of grief? haha

    vaiium,

    Not grief specifically, the annoyance is probably more related to withdrawal symptoms.

    letsroll,
    letsroll avatar

    You nailed it. If it was just about "the IPO" or "profits", well, that's part of life sometimes. But to do what he did to Christian, who made the Appollo app, well that was just nasty and unnecessary. And it feels like the community is responding by saying "fine. you did this." and burning the whole thing to the ground. Reddit will keep going but I bet enough CORE people will leave that it will be a shell of its former self, and it's not like public markets will miss that.

    parrot-party,
    parrot-party avatar

    I don't view social media as inherently bad. I actually think it's on average good. But it's easily taken over by corporate greed and propaganda. There's no incentive for that on smaller communities though, so it's probably good to reset the community back to a more manageable size.

    omnislayer88,

    biggest thing I miss is using it as a second google. I would add site:reddit.com to the end of searches cuz normal searches would churn out articles that were written by someone who had no idea what they are talking about and way to long for what they say.

    WorseDoughnut,
    WorseDoughnut avatar

    I'm kinda bummed about the specific niche communities that I know will either take time to move somewhere else (if they ever do at all), like for specific manga/anime, hobbies, and fandoms (specifically gunpla and Godzilla.)

    I feel like I know I'll be missing out on stuff being discussed there going forward, but hopefully that feeling in me and others will drive discussion here a little bit.

    I know it's kind of silly, but I think it's totally okay to feel upset when a social media site that you're invested in (or addicted to) starts to die off. Up until now it's been a serious part of how I consume media and talk about my interests, and having that fall apart is going to be tough to cope with for sure.

    EnglishMobster,
    EnglishMobster avatar

    Don't be afraid to make your small niche communities here as well! Be the change that you want to see!

    I used to moderate /r/Disneyland, and I've started to try and recreate that community here, @Disneyland.

    But even if you weren't a mod of those places... you can still be the change you wish to be and start the communities here. I really liked /r/modeltrains (but I wasn't a mod), so I made @modeltrains over here on Kbin.

    Once Kbin starts federating again (hopefully soon!), you'll be able to subscribe to places like @mst3k. Even though its "home" is Lemmy, you're able to subscribe to it from anywhere in the Fediverse. Once Kbin starts federating again and pulls posts from Lemmy.world, you'll get mst3k in your feed.

    HandsHurtLoL,

    I hope you find this helpful but here, using the @ symbol is equivalent to doing /u/ from reddit to either link to a person's profile or notify them that they're being mentioned in your comment.

    If you want to link to an online location, use /m/ and the name of the location, just like you would have previously used /r/Disneyland.

    James123428,

    I don’t know a lot about the fediverse and just reading about it makes it seem, I dunno “scary” to navigate. Any tips to help?

    EnglishMobster, (edited )
    EnglishMobster avatar

    Don't stress about it!

    The most important thing is to just find communities you enjoy. There's plenty right here on Kbin.

    Kbin has a "Magazines" tab which is sorted by subscribers. Going through that is a great place to find great communities. You can think of it just like finding subreddits on Reddit.

    You can also use https://browse.feddit.de/ to find communities outside of Kbin. Imagine a bunch of Reddit servers all connected and talking to each other - that's what's happening.

    The link I gave you is going to show a lot of Lemmy communities. To find them on Kbin (and use your Kbin account to subscribe/talk to them), you can type in the name of the community into the magazine search bar. (There's an extension to make this part work more smoothly but it only works for Mastodon right now.)

    For example, Beehaw is a large Lemmy instance. If you wanted to subscribe to their gaming community, just search for gaming@beehaw.org:

    https://i.imgur.com/VdnRoR6.png

    Note that it's formatted just like an email address! That's the best way to think of it, and why it's a meme to say that the fediverse is "just like email". It doesn't matter if you have a @yahoo.com email and I have a @gmail.com email, we can both send emails to each other just fine. My UI will look different than your UI, but we're seeing the same thing.

    Now, the really neat thing is that this goes beyond just Lemmy and Kbin being able to talk to each other. You can also talk to Mastodon (Twitter clone) and PeerTube (YouTube clone).

    Go to the little search bar up top. Type in @FediFollows@social.growyourown.services. This is a Mastodon account, but you can see it here, perfectly fine:

    https://i.imgur.com/KnJVUJj.png

    You can even browse their account from here on Kbin: @FediFollows

    https://i.imgur.com/lZsojDu.png

    That account lets you find interesting people and subjects to follow on Mastodon, but because everything is connected you can find those people here too. You can hover over their names (or simply click) and they'll appear for you to follow.

    https://i.imgur.com/9qlhamF.png

    People you follow will appear in the "Microblog" view on Kbin. You can follow people here on Kbin, or elsewhere on Mastodon.

    A couple caveats:

    1. Kbin is experiencing very high traffic right now. Because of this, Cloudflare is active. Cloudflare makes it difficult for non-humans to get to this server... and that includes the little bots that "connect" the Fediverse. So right now, things aren't working like they should... but once traffic dies down then we'll be federating again and everything should work as expected.

    2. Kbin is very young as a service. It started development less than a year ago. This website has only been "live" for about a month, and most of that was just the admin talking to himself. Even if tens of thousands of people didn't all show up at once, it would be kind of buggy. You have to trust that the bugs get worked out - or go to somewhere like Lemmy, which has been around for a few years. I'd recommend https://lemmy.world, which is run by the same guys who run a big Mastodon instance (mastodon.world).

    James123428,

    For the gunpla aspect at least i know some stuff, mostly it’s my friend who has a “backlog” of probably hundreds of builds he’s bought but, in his own words, “doesn’t have space for”. I found a discord for him, probably the Reddit discord, and to be honest it just lit a fire in his eye to build stuff and show to when his friend group (myself included) just likes the finished product and not all the building stuff.

    This is a long winded explanation and I’m sorry but what I mean is, you aren’t alone there are so many people out there who care just as much as you do and will go wherever to find that connection.

    The end of Reddit for us isn’t really an end, it’s a beginning.

    Infraspace,
    Infraspace avatar

    I've been on Reddit 17 years, ever since the great Digg migration. I still hold out hope that this situation will be resolved somehow, but I'm not optimistic. If they follow through and force moobile users onto their shitty app, I plan to back up my saved links andd comments locally, then nuke my account using PowerDeleteSuite.

    Wage_Slave,

    Twelve years of reddit and yeah, can't deny it I already disappointed in what had happened.

    Happy that people are actively working towards establishing new communities and places like kbin here benefitting from the changes.

    Sorry kbin for the death hug BTW.

    But yeah, for lack of a better term I miss it. But I also miss high school and that's a shithole I won't revisit.

    ANuStart,

    It fucking sucks. Reddit was my home for 14 years; we went through a lot together!

    Honestly, I feel like once the madness subsides most people will go back to Reddit since there really is nothing out there quite like it.

    And quite frankly I probably will too... maybe. I'm more upset that I can't access Reddit with Sync than the other crappy things that they're doing. Reddit IS Sync to me now, the interface is just so much better.

    I'd say the majority of people looking for a replacement and hoping it's the Fediverse will realize that the whole point of reddit IS centralization and will quickly bounce off the Fediverse. Sure there will be those who stay (I probably will) but Reddit knows what they have and by next week things will go back to being fairly normal.

    Monitor343,
    Monitor343 avatar

    I have definitely felt bummed about it. My reddit account is pushing 12 years old. Lots of good times on there. Lots of good information, It recently has become a great goto place for finding IT assistance for unique scenarios. I will miss it. I am excited by Kbin though. I missed the Digg to Reddit transition. It will be interesting to see the Reddit to <Whatever comes next> transition.

    sneezingsuspense,

    as someone who used (an unhealthy) amount of reddit during my formative years, i feel ya. it feels like the end of an era, i'm growing up and leaving reddit behind.

    hope you can find your community elsewhere. but take all the time you need to mourn the loss of those experiences.

    trombone,
    trombone avatar

    Well, it sucks not to have reddit (have been there for 9yrs), but it's got to be it for now. Not using reddit is still better than using it via their shitty official app. On mobile I used Sync, cause it's fucking great and if Sync goes down due to the pigboy's fantasy of being next Zuckerberg or something then I'm out.

    MisterMoo,
    MisterMoo avatar

    Definitely! But what I'm experiencing is the loss of the Apollo version of Reddit. In Apollo I had all kinds of filters set up for my own mental health. Political terms were filtered out. Elon Musk was filtered out. At least a hundred subreddits were filtered out, and if I got tired of one I could just add it to the pile. If something started trending and showing up in a bunch of post titles and I didn't want to see it, I'd just add a filter and be done! Also, Apollo fixed Reddit's user-hostile changes to the blocking functionality, allowing you to suppress all visibility of a user you'd blocked.

    So bottom line: I miss the site when viewed through the guardrails of Apollo. Other than that, well.. I miss the 2010-2013 version of the site, when it was simply a more fun, happy, and insightful place than it is today.

    IncognitoErgoSum,

    Honestly, I'm not feeling grief so much as I just have this muscle memory where I keep checking RIF on my phone and now it's just a bunch of random crap because there's barely any content left for people to upvote. I imagine this will resolve itself once RIF stops working.

    yumcake,

    Yeah, I have grown a lot from what I've read on Reddit. It's introduced me to a lot of niche things I would never have otherwise come across, and with many other platforms heavily tailoring content to my existing interests, it's unlikely I'll simply stumble across things the way I had on Reddit. (Yes, I've used Stumbleupon, it's not the same).

    I'll miss having so many sources of insight and while I'm excited to join kbin and the fediverse, from what I'm reading about it's fundamental nature, it'll never become the kind of critical mass that allowed for experiences like I had on Reddit. Slashdot's dead, Digg's dead, Reddit's dying, at least it seems like the Fediverse has the potential for longevity.

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