It’s been a long journey, but here we arrive. Welcome home.

  • Troy@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I skipped Fark, but my progression is largely the same. Once in a blue moon, I still visit Slashdot. It’s like checking up on an ex to see how they’re doing.

  • 🐝🇭🇪🅻🅻🇪🇧🅴🆁🇹🐝@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Tried the official Reddit app today and boy people weren’t joking when they say it sucks. I thought it’d just be the usual experience plus some ads but I was totally wrong.

    The official app doesn’t respect your subreddit subscriptions at all, instead force feeding you feeds of whatever their algorithm thinks will drive maximum engagement just like a shit version of Facebook. The “hot” etc functionality is completely stipped from it entirely.

    Guess I’m here to stay on the fediverse now.

    • SharkEatingBreakfast@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      What absolutely sucks about this is that I had carefully curated my subscriptions on RIF in order not to exacerbate my dumb mental health issues.

      Hell, I’ve read angry posts about people in recovery from addiction and alcohol saying how they keep seeing ads for beer or gambling and things like that.

      It’s horrifying!!

      • remi_pan@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        The algorithm really doesn’t work when you are critical or sceptical over a subject. For instance crypto sceptics from r/buttcoin being shown binance ads. Yes, they do show an interest in crypto, but may be the least suceptible persons to that ad.

  • koze@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    It’s funny to read this article about the death of Digg again:

    In reality, Digg changed their business model and pretended that they didn’t. That is something that is unacceptable with communities and won’t be forgotten. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian hit the nail on the head in an open letter to (now former) Digg CEO – Kevin Rose:

    “You chose to grow with venture capital and you’ve no doubt (I hope) taken some money off the table in your Series C round. I say this because this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It’s cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to “give the power back to the people.”
    

    https://searchengineland.com/digg-v4-how-to-successfully-kill-a-community-50450>

    • Lux@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Sadly, this is the only logical conclusion of things that are run for profit. Here’s hoping the federated model proves more resistant in the long run.

      • outbound@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Funding, even in a not-for-profit sense, will always be an issue. Wikipedia struggles, but kinda makes it work. We’re going to need something creative for the fediverse…

  • MobBarley@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Renegade BBSes -> IRC -> slashdot -> digg -> reddit -> imgur -> discord -> mastadon -> lemmy
    with plenty of side quests along the way

    • oyenyaaow@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Pre search engine time on Geocities trading mutual linking on each other websites, reams and reams of messages and emails

      • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        1 year ago

        It’s hard to tell… it doesn’t feel like one, but it remains to be seen.

        But I feel like the other alternatives to Reddit and the fediverse are more of a sidequest at this point.

  • Lifted_lowered@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I had the same journey but I’m pretty sure I found Slashdot by way of boingboing which I found by way of Diesel Sweeties blog posts when I first got a DSL connection in 2002 and was looking for comics and blogs to fill up my trendy new RSS reader lol

  • h14h@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy

    After experiencing the death of two “power to the people” platforms due to profit-driven VC-backed corporate meddling, here’s hoping the third platform is the charm Lemmy & the fediverse.

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think the Fediverse will suffer the same demise as Digg and Reddit, precisely because it’s not owned by a profit-driven VC-backed corporation, but there are a couple of other serious threats to its longevity:

      • Moderation. If the Fediverse isn’t adequately moderated, it will quickly be overrun by Nazis, pedos, and spam. That’s what killed Voat and Usenet.
      • Funding. This isn’t like IRC, where a modern server can support tens of thousands of users in its sleep. Running a system along the lines of Reddit or Twitter requires a lot of computing power, and that’s expensive. Where’s the money going to come from?
      • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        1 year ago

        I think smaller instances of a maximum of 1-2000 people are the way to go for the future. Most instance owners are hosting it because they want to and they have a lil extra cash to throw at it, the 500-2000 people instances are usually funded by the likes of a patreon ko.fi or other donation setup.

        These instances aren’t big enough that the cost is of an instance isn’t massive and can therefore avoid the likes of Venture capital and Angel investors, and if they start to reach the level where funding is getting a bit short even with donations, they can close new account creation untill the number of donators increases beyond a point

        TL;DR: Essentially instances should be welcoming new accounts in waves. So that their growth doesn’t outpace donation income.

    • Confuzzeled@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I used 4chan when I was younger but trying to go back after reddit was super depressing, I lasted about 5 minutes.

      • totallynotsocsa@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I stopped using 4chan when the probability of getting goddamn CP snuff videos in the browser cache because of a /b/ raid got beyond trivial, so like pretty fucking early on.

      • toadmode@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        4chan definitely got worse. like it was always edgy and stupid, but after 2015 every board just kind of became /pol/

    • amki@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I kinda grew out of it. It was funny when I was an edgy teenager but it got progressively more cringeworthy as time progressed for me, even though the content may not have changed much.

      • darkmugglet@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I stopped engaging with Reddit when meme-ification happened.Wheb it became all about the lolz abd short pithy responses, I started using it to find more interesting articles. Gone are the days wheb the average Redditor would read and make thoughtful contributions.

        • _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          That depended on the subs you were in IMO, there was a lot of that but there were others that still had worthwhile stuff that wasn’t just silly shitposting for fun. Now we’ve got Lemmy though and multiple instances of it!

        • amki@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          That is in part because the reddit algorithm doesn’t like thoughtful contributions. These take time and understanding of the discussed matter. When your metric is positive (upvote) interaction per timeframe you need easily digestable content that people immediately react to. If I have to carefully read and think about the content my vote/comment is far too late to be “hot” on reddit.

  • Breakpr0d@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    I realise that this is unpopular. But personally while I disagree with the decision to charge (exorbitantly) for the api and appalled at the slander hurled at the dev, I think that is an business choice and one more item that I have to disagree and live with.

    But I am very excited about the rise of the fediverse. I know that a company will eventually make a decision that I feel very passionately about, but I will be stuck making a difficult choice. With the fediverse, it provides the users with the opportunity to have control. This power of course often comes with various other costs (lack of a dedicated sre or moderation teams, etc). But I expect that over time this will evolve into options where paid offerings will come up that allows for higher QoS where required.

  • Cobe98@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Same fucking journey as you. Reddit was a good run for 10 years, let’s see if Lemmy can work.

      • knotthatone@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Nah. If Lemmy/Fediverse doesn’t work out, there will be others. This has all happened before…

        • amki@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          If the fediverse idea doesn’t work out and it’s yet another company the cycle is bound to continue.

          A big chance is in front of us to break the cycle!

          • knotthatone@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. Decentralization is the way to go and I hope Lemmy succeeds. This particular implementation may or may not work out long term, but the underlying idea is sound.

            We’ll get it. Might take a couple tries, but we’ll get it.

      • Cobe98@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think so. Although many will remain with Reddit, there is no incentive or loyalty for a significant % to do so. If reddit is shit, why not just use FB, Twitter or regular message boards? Already I saw many subreddits have discords already.

        The question for most of those users is there a lesser evil in choosing one bad company over another? Unfortunately I just see this community content becoming fragmented as a result and no winners emerging.

        I like Lemmy / kbin but I am concerned that a dev could just shutdown their server and a community, accounts are gone. Who pays the server bills, and maintenance backups etc? This seems incredibly problematic.

        Beyond that they need a strong mobile app and 3P devs, a tool to read a users reddit profile and subscribe to similar channels, one click registration without selecting a server. It would be good to also have a mechanism for showing cross-platform posted content in a single view.

        If honestly feels like the 90s wild west Internet days again. No alternative I have seen so far can address these concerns.

      • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        I mean, since there’s no central site to shut down, Lemmy failing would pretty much just mean that it stagnates and some of the bigger instances shut down, at which point there still would be some remnant of it left to stay on, if a smaller one. Failing that, it isn’t the only reddit alternative that people have been working on, so maybe one of the others will be more successful.

        • amki@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I’ve been using Mastodon for some time now so the Fediverse won’t lose me, the question is if my redditing can be migrated.

  • l0st-scr1b3@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Gonna be honest it’s kinda weird to me as someone who did just move over that there’s a bunch of posts from people who just found the Fediverse claiming it as home while there’s people who have been here since it’s creation. It’s got the implication that this was created as some sort of next jump from Reddit which doesn’t really seem to be the case from my perspective.

    • vinniep@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      That feeling makes sense, but I think everyone knows that the Fediverse wasn’t created specifically to give them a landing in this event, just like Reddit wasn’t created to catch the Digg refugees, etc. More of a “next phase in the evolution of this concept”, and while it took a catastrophe, they’re ready to consider that it’s time to move on now.

      The trick is going to be walking that line between preserving what made the Fediverse great and not alienating the newcomers. I think there’s room for everyone, though, and really the big advantage of the Fediverse - we don’t have to agree to co-exist, and can even co-existing completely separately if needed.

      • l0st-scr1b3@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I think you bring up a pretty important point about federation in that it allows for and even encourages expansion in some ways, so that’s a good way to keep optimistic about it. I guess I just feel a little embarrassed. Especially when you look at posts like the recent one asking Lemmy users how they feel about the reddit refugees, and it’s flooded with responses from Reddit refugees instead offering unsolicited feedback about design choices. Then you have threads like this with people laying claim to the fediverse more or less. It just feels like some kind of a Christopher Columbus situation. While I realize that might be a little tone-deaf it’s the best analogy I have for it.

        • Kalkaline @lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Any community is a sum of it’s members, good bad, or otherwise. I think there will be a wave of us Reddit refugees, but also word is going to spread to other places like Meta and hopefully bring in even more people. Getting people sorted into servers that are going to be able to handle the load, or even better getting them to host their own servers is going to be the way to go. Sorry if we’re stumbling all over your garden in the meantime.

          • vinniep@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Getting people sorted into servers that are going to be able to handle the load, or even better getting them to host their own servers is going to be the way to go.

            That part still worries me a smidge, and it’s somewhat related to my other concern about funding/scaling. As more of the general public discover and move over, the % of the general population willing and able to host their own instance is going to steadily decrease. Not saying that we’re all gonna die or anything, but it’s going to be a shift and we’ll have to continue to adapt.

              • vinniep@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                I expect that in time, that’s exactly what will happen. Some instance somewhere will offer guaranteed availability and performance for a monthly fee to it’s members. That feels icky at first blush, but why should it? It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but no one is forced to use that instance to be part of the larger community, and one instance can’t hold the community hostage like a single company social media company could. They’ll have success right up until they don’t and the Fediverse will sort it out through migrations of users and communities.

    • hadrian@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I see what you mean to an extent, and I also just moved over, but it’s worth remembering that Digg -> Reddit was the same afaik. Like Reddit had been around and established for a decent amount of time before the fall of Digg. (This is second-hand info because I wasn’t around at the time)

      • DarkwingDuck@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been on reddit for a couple years before the flood from Digg. The quality of content and especially comments went down right then, and never recovered.

        Personally I skipped Digg entirely.

        • HQC@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Depends entirely on the subreddit, in my experience. Places like AskHistorians didn’t even exist when the great Digg exodus occurred. My favorite sub was /r/cfb which also benefited greatly from the mainstream popularity.

          Not coincidental that both of these are relatively strongly moderated compared to many of the biggest/default subs.

    • nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev
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      1 year ago

      People are so confused and overwhelmed about the fediverse mechanics though.

      Maybe there is room for a product that is an aggregator for aggregators. Like, a centralised service that scrapes and collects all Lemmy instances into one super instance.

      • hal@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Its actually simple. Tell them, its like Email. You have an email account at gmail, but can perfectly fine have email conversation with someone on outllook. Lemmy instance = the same as a web email interface of any email provider. Most people will get their head around that.

        • fennec@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          As soon as you have to explain the fediverse to someone using analogies my experience is that most people have already given up. They just can’t be bothered to learn something new.

  • tezoatlipoca@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    You’re missing the precursors:

    Email -> Newsgroups -> CGI forums / IRC -> Slashdot… :)

    The new Fediverse really is kicking up IRC and newsgroup vibes for this old timer. Its very exciting.