Does anybody feel like the quality of reddit has already dropped massively? en (kbin.social)

I see a lot of comments from bootlickers on how the protests are dumb and stupid and dont work and engagement metrics are still holding but the quality of posts and comments has noticeably depreciated imo. So much so that whenever I visit the site Im actually shocked at how bad it is.

1chemistdown,
@1chemistdown@kbin.social avatar

I’m dying with Apollo so I make sure to go upvote Christian appreciation posts and I do not look elsewhere

blivet,
@blivet@kbin.social avatar

I’ve stayed off it since the blackout started, but I did visit a sub yesterday that I used to read regularly about a topic I haven’t seen covered here. I left after a few minutes because it really seemed like no one there had anything intelligent or interesting to say, but maybe I’ve forgotten just how much crap I used to scroll through before landing on something decent. Either way, I’m OK with not going back.

Psycrow,

I left after a few minutes because it really seemed like no one there had anything intelligent or interesting to say

Reddit has always been that way to an extent. Half of the time it's just people making bad jokes and quirky references that border on derailing the thread to get that sweet karma dopamine boost.

HanaSolo,

I stayed off of it for a bit after the first 48, because I needed one of the support subs there. Then the Titan news was going on and the wealth of shitty remarks about the people in the sub was too much for me. I get the whole ‘eat the rich’ mentality, but the sheer vitriol people had against someone they didn’t know didn’t exactly paint the commenters in a favourable light.

Hoping that such opinion is tempered somewhat over here.

sadreality,

What's goes around, comes around... That sentiment is not coming from a no where. Note how people didn't say similar staff about refugee boat sinking and actually calling media out for lopsided coverage.

These views only get more extreme as social fabric and economic conditions of the working people degrade.

BongRipsMcGee420,

These people spent more than most people will ever save up in their lifetime for a one time ride in a tube. Money that could go to feeding people, planting trees, etc. They had the US Coast Guard and Navy looking for them with helicopters and sonar buoys. One of them was a billionaire who could have done it right like Victor Vascovo, but instead chose to pinch pennies and ride in the Home Depot special.

They cost society massively, they won't pay shit for inheritance tax, their families will remain wealthier than I can ever dream of being. I make decent money and I drive past houses with river views and hot tubs and pools and boats and all sorts of rich people stuff I know I'll never have, those people can't dream of the amount of money these people have. I feel bad for the kid, that's about it.

Not to mention the fact that they are thrill-seeking at a mass grave where a horrific tragedy occurred. Similar circumstances, too. The first class survivor ratio compared to the "steerage" survivors... Kind of like how we pulled out all the stops for these rich fucks but can't be bothered by a boat full of refugees. It's a sign of the times and people have a right to be livid about it.

argv_minus_one,

Silver lining: if not for these guys creating an actual need for search and rescue, the USCG would have to perform search-and-rescue drills at similar cost anyway.

Or so I've heard. 🤷‍♂️

sadreality,

damn dawg... i guess after all, these clowns are the JoB cReAtOrZ that we peasants don't deserve

beardsley,
@beardsley@midwest.social avatar

It’s taking some time to get over the withdrawal, but despite the fact I really liked some subreddits, staying off has become the best internet habit-related choice I’ve ever made. The low signal-to-noise ratio you mention is one big factor. The other is I needed some obstacles to ease of use to make my choices more deliberate. I have found alternatives, sure. But now I spend maybe a tenth of the time on social media that I used to when I was redditing every day.

Jcb2016,

Who checks reddit anymore? I don't check the site at all. even if they did let third party apps back u/spez could always go back on his word. lemmy and the where here to catch us when we became stranded!

mrbigmouth502,
@mrbigmouth502@kbin.social avatar

I felt Reddit's quality started going downhill around 2021, which is not long after they introduced the official app and started allowing Google logins.

EDIT: Looks like the official app's been around longer than I thought. :O

kratoz29,

Is the official app really that new??? I thought it was around since way before.

mrbigmouth502,
@mrbigmouth502@kbin.social avatar

It turns out it came out in 2016. I was thinking 2018, but I was wrong. https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/official-reddit-app/

In a way, it's been even longer than that, since they bought out Alien Blue in 2014, according to Wikipedia

kratoz29,

Oh, that timing makes more sense haha all this time and the app still sucks balls.

SirEDCaLot,

I think Reddit quality has been declining for some time.

There are two factors at work I believe. One, once something goes mainstream, you get a much broader set of the population on the platform, and much like real life, the idiots seem to be louder. More importantly though, updates to the platform deprioritized serious conversation in favor of mindless scrolling. Look at the new website, or at the official app. They are not conducive to in-depth conversation. They keep trying to distract you with posts from other communities that you don’t even subscribe to, the goal is obviously to get you to keep clicking clicking clicking rather than spending a bunch of time on one page composing a well thought out reply.

And that shows. Really high quality in-depth conversations on issues of importance used to be far more common for me on Reddit. Today they are much less frequent, fewer people seem interested in real discussion or debate. And there’s much more of the attitude of ‘you disagree with me there for you’re wrong fuck you’.

I think the recent protest and beginning of migration are going to make that even more prevalent. I think many of the smarter people who enjoy in-depth discussion and post quality comments are going to migrate to Lemmy or Kbin leaving Reddit full of idiots. I think that will actually be good for Reddit as a company, at least in the short-term, because idiots don’t use ad blockers and they install the official app without thinking. It is of course killing their golden goose, but their actions suggest they have decided they prefer to do without that goose’s continued services.

usualsuspect191,

As long as the people there now are able to cash out, they don’t care about a sustainable future. They’ll squeeze until out dies and then move on.

SirEDCaLot,

Honestly I think that’s probably part of it. Spez and Kn0thing cashed out when they sold Reddit to Conde Nast for like 10 million. Now of course it’s worth billions. So I think Spez really wants his due, and is only interested in a payday.
Before this controversy, the account /u/spez was last active like 10 months ago. That speaks volumes- if you supposedly love the community but won’t interact with them on a direct level for almost a year, that suggests maybe you don’t actually love the community.

Cube6392,

And when you come out of your hidey hole, you do an AMA, answer like 6 questions with non-answers (after starting late) and then return to your hidey hole.

Or I guess with his prepper ways, its more of a bunker

rockyTron,

The quality of discussion here reminds me of when I joined Reddit like 12-13 years ago. The massive user base and tendency toward hivemind/dogpile responses, canned inside jokes, and repetitive content definitely made the experience stale and uninteresting the last few years. If you use the new website design and/or the first party app, you can see how the content delivery has become the same as every other social media, a nonstop torrent of visual candy you can flip through, with the comments becoming an afterthought. The only thing that kept me coming back to Reddit were the comment sections, and I feel a rebirth of that draw occurring in this open-source social universe.

SirEDCaLot,

Yes exactly! I’ve always be in Reddit for the comments sections. 12-13 years ago, back when forums and IRC were what there was (aka, DISCUSSION based communities where low effort posts didn’t blow up, and platforms were run by hobbyists and webmasters catering to communities rather than social media corps desperate for clicks). It was a better time to be online IMHO. I think part of it was that joining web communities was slightly unapproachable, which meant you had to be at least a little smart to realize that you wanted to join that community and figure out how to join it. But I think the format of the sites had a bigger effect in selecting the quality of content that got popular.
As you say, nonstop torrent of visual candy you can scroll through and click click click getting another ad impression or 12 each time.

at-fieldu,

anyone with a brain is protesting. ask yourself who is even left posting. do you know anyone IRL that posts on reddit by the way? I'm telling you it's the age of fake content, shills, influencers, karma bots, scammers, culture war mongers. makes >90% of the content on reddit now

yunggwailo,
@yunggwailo@kbin.social avatar

Honestly

sadreality,

Just feds, bots, shills and me

Riptide502,

I started to slowly realize this with the blackout. I tried using twitter and Deviant Art more, and found them to be a lot better since I could see more cool fan art.

While I still like my reddit home feed, popular and all just suck. Its mostly all rage posts made to generate outrage. I see so much negative stuff from /r/Antiwork or /r/Politics. I signed up for cat photos. I’m not here to listen to how our world is so garbage for the 100th time.

niktemadur,
@niktemadur@kbin.social avatar

Whatever blackout/boycott/migration happens with Reddit, this should go double for Twitter, that's another place I silently dropped like a rock and have never visited again.

When something happens with Ukraine and I feel compelled to dive into it, I've used Nitter, which mirrors the Twitter content but Musk and his right-wing idiocy gets no goddamned clicks and traffic from me anymore.

resurrexia,

@yunggwailo IMO it’s bad on big subs but for niche subs that can’t/won’t move to the Fediverse it’s the same. It’s incredibly frustrating because there’s almost nowhere else to have a decent conversation about these topics in a non-discord, forum-like fashion.

sgtlighttree,

I frequently lurk on r/worldbuilding and it is still pretty active, though I've yet to find a solid equivalent of that sub on kbin/lemmy

VoxAdActa,
@VoxAdActa@kbin.social avatar

A lot of small, shitty subs are popping up on r/all lately, I've noticed. I used to doomscroll and only notice I'd been too far when I started seeing stuff from subs I'd never seen before, like r/artefactporn, r/justguysbeingdudes, or that weird Talylor Swift circlejerk sub. That was usually around pages 7-9, somewhere in there. That was the sign that I'd been scrolling for too long, and probably ought to either touch grass, or at least refresh the page.

Right now, for me, all three of those subs are on the first page of r/all, along with other subs I've never seen (or rarely seen) before the bottom of the barrel, like r/newsofthestupid and r/rabbits. The one from r/rabbits is on the bottom of the front page with less than 1500 upvotes.

gapbetweenus,

r/all is a bit like 9gag now. Even sort by controversial is boring.

AmidFuror,

We'd need an objective way to measure lameness and then review a large set of posts (on a particular sub?) from a couple of months ago vs now. Criteria have to be pre-determined to avoid the post hoc fallacy.

Average words or characters per comment? Number of insults directed at other commenters (measured by someone blinded to which group they came from)? Number of "controversial" comments judged by large numbers of up and downvoted?

I dunno. I'm not doing it. Not a social scientist. Just suggesting an interesting experiment.

noodlejetski,

how about a number of crying laughing emoji per thread?

kestrel7,
@kestrel7@kbin.social avatar

😅😂 OMG this is so accurate 😅😂

JWBananas,
@JWBananas@kbin.social avatar

This

JWBananas,
@JWBananas@kbin.social avatar

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JWBananas,
@JWBananas@kbin.social avatar

Bad bot

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JWBananas,
@JWBananas@kbin.social avatar

Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are made of letters.

I have checked 1,599,379,698 comments, and only 302,533 of them were made of letters.

argv_minus_one,

Now I finally know what was missing from Lemmy.

Deralax,

I think its more likely that the posts on reddit are the same, and we are simply starting to become accustomed to the posts\quality of comments on the fediverse.

Our eyes are finally starting to open.

Nepenthe,
@Nepenthe@kbin.social avatar

I think this is really what it is. I've spent a lot of my time here enamored with the quality of conversation, and when I joined it reminded me of the sort of discussion I used to scroll through on forums when I was a kid.

I hadn't seen it since, and I'd gotten so used to the bullshit that I barely remembered the difference. I'd really just chalked up the civility to the forum in question being several dozen regulars who knew each other too well to be dicks.

We need more content, but it's making me kind of averse to pushing so hard to get the rest over here, lest they just bring the shit behavior with them

Pandoras_Can_Opener,
@Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz avatar

shit behaviour is one thing the mods are another. I’ve seen plenty of communities on reddit where the users hated the mods and eventually left and formed their own sub. the fediverse already encourages multiple parallel communities for the same topic. so i hope we can get around the worst of reddit by seeking out and creating healthier communities. Leave the power mods behind.

Kichae,

Yeah. You no longer get first mover's advantage by just taking the obvious forum name, so you no longer get remain the owner of a massive community by default. If people don't like the environment, they'll just find another space with the same name and use that instead.

There will be consternation over the overlapping names, especially by people who fear missing out on something someone is saying (even though they most certainly were not refreshing "New" on forums with 20M subscribers to see what wasn't getting up voted), but for many that'll go away once they realize they can pick "the good version" of a space.

Whatever that means to them.

14th_cylon,

the fediverse already encourages multiple parallel communities

this is first thing fediverse has to fix if it wants to get somewhere. for a community to be useful, you need people interested in the topic concentrated at one place, so you can profit from that crowd wisdom. 100 people spread over 80 communities is not going to be much useful.

Kichae,

100 people spread across 80 communities isn't useful, but neither is 100,000 in 1. It just creates an overwhelming amount of noise. Comments get filled with jackasses jockeying for attention, and niche posts get buried in floods of other posts.

Just because people have become used to it doesn't mean it's been good. It just means people have been blind to what they've lost, all because we have biases toward big numbers.

Niche interests won't be spread out. That's not how they worked before Reddit, and it's not how they'll work after it. Big popular groups will splinter, and it'll be a good thing.

mrbubblesort,
@mrbubblesort@kbin.social avatar

We need more content, but it's making me kind of averse to pushing so hard to get the rest over here, lest they just bring the shit behavior with them

All places eventually trend towards their Eternal September. In the meantime just push back against it as much you can and enjoy what you got.

Kichae,

People are going to wring their hands over admin-level, permiable serve blocks forever, but one of the things you can do with them as an admin is disconnect from Eternal September.

Obviously, general interest servers aren't going to want to do that, but more niche ones should be able to get away with it. And with some careful consideration for how blocks work, we can probably have environments where the good stuff reaches smaller, disconnected sites through intermediaries via cross-posting.

With some careful planning, we could have it all.

NewsUser,

We need more content

I spun up an instance because I dislike what Reddit is doing and I want to support this community and help it grow.

Regarding the content you are talking about: https://fediverse.boo/magazines

I've set up automatic news feeds from the BBC, NPR, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and CNN so far to their own magazines. That way you can subscribe to a specific magazine to get articles from the publishers you like. (I'm also still tweaking how much content gets pulled in so its not too much or too little). I also have a catch-all news magazine that I manually curate news article links for.

I plan on adding additional magazines that aggregate links from other websites (not just news) but I am waiting to hear from the community on what content they would like to see.

Ok, thats my like 30 second elevator spiel about my instance and my magazines. Definitely drop me some feedback if there is any additional content I should automatically add to dedicated magazines. Hope to see some new people jumping into discussions on posts over there!

introvrt2themax,
@introvrt2themax@kbin.social avatar

Will you be adding The Guardian?

reflex,
@reflex@kbin.social avatar

Our eyes are finally starting to open.

He's beginning to believe

Psycrow,

Our eyes are finally starting to open.

Do not ever believe this. This is an intellectual trap that once you dig in to it it's hard to dig out. People like Elon Musk are the type of people who think they see the world for what it really is, and look how stupid they are. Some truths are clearer than others, but you will always be chained down by your own perspective, unconscious biases, and way of thinking. Always keep your mind partially open to new perspectives and do your best to practice intellectual humility.

curiosityLynx,

Always keep your mind partially open to new perspectives and do your best to practice intellectual humility.

This is the basis of true intelligence/wisdom.

Hyperreality,

The quality has been declining for years now. This last thing has only made it worse, but you're likely now noticing how bad it is because you spend less time on it.

The protest won't work. It's failed in crippling reddit. Reddit will keep going, but as a shadow of its former self, with increasingly shallow discussions and increasingly crappy/old/unoriginal comment.

Maestro,
@Maestro@kbin.social avatar

I'd say the protest did work. A lot of good users and mods left Reddit, the admins massively overplayed their hand and showed their true colors, probably hurting their IPO, the fediverse got enough of an influx of users to get a good kickstart and the next migration wave is just around the corner.

argv_minus_one,

The protest may not have crippled Reddit, but funding may yet do so. Word is, spez did what he did because interest rates went up, the venture capitalists demand an actual return on their investment for once, they want it now, and this is spez's desperate attempt to make that happen.

This is almost certain to fail. Lurkers, bots, and trolls aren't going to pay for flashy avatars or whatever silly gimmick he comes up with next. Advertisers aren't going to want their advertisements to appear next to trolls (see Twitter for evidence). Reddit will run out of money and collapse.

Spez may yet have the last laugh, if he manages to IPO and sell out before the music stops. Time will tell. But every non-shareholder who works for Reddit would be well advised to GTFO ASAP.

abff08f4813c,

I ended up checking a few times via teddit and I noticed the exact same thing. It seems a lot of the non-mod quality contributors have already left.

Those who stayed are probably power users using 3rd party apps. So expect another big drop in quality on July 1st.

marron12,

I noticed the same thing. I was on Reddit for a good 12 years and the quality was getting worse for years, but it's really dropped off since May 30. There are noticeably fewer big posts on r/all and there's hardly any new or interesting stuff. It's reposts, Twitter screenshots, stuff from Tiktok and Discord, complaints (think mildlyinfuriating, AITA, Doordash), and rate me requests. And Facebook type things, like "here's what my kids did today." The bright spots in the sea of trash are gone.

Kbin, Lemmy, and Tildes have been filling up with the good stuff I missed from Reddit. A month ago, it was a little slow here, but not anymore.

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