Yeah, fair. I suppose I’m glossing over a lot of the bullshit because I didn’t engage with that side of Reddit. I think some of these problems are just with society or the internet as a whole. There are some pretty bleak communities on Lemmy too, unfortunately. I think my problem is more that Reddit themselves have killed off what was good about the site while amplifying a lot of the worst (remaining) aspects in the pursuit of profit.
Reddit used to be a lot like Lemmy, but it’s completely overrun by bots these days. Typically they’re trying to either sow division or simply drive engagement, which I suspect is to help train AI. /r/all is literally 50% posts like “help me understand this unbelievably simple joke” or “As a real human, how does [thing] make you feel?” Then the comments are packed with people telling you not to vote or to distrust your neighbors. It’s just been getting worse and worse for years. It’s sad.
Yep. I used to contribute to Reddit regularly, easily several times every day at my peak, but I stopped logging in altogether after they locked down their API and killed 3rd party apps. I kept browsing the site anonymously until last week when they forced logins for old.reddit. I’ve found ways around this, but it has cut my usage by probably 75%. Not sure if it’s placebo effect, but it feels like Lemmy activity has picked up noticeably since the change. To the point that I don’t feel like I’m missing very much when I go out of my way to check Reddit.
Why even bother with them anymore? I recently tried to use their site to check how bad prices had gotten at my local McDonald’s, but it turns out they won’t even let you check prices without the app. Last time we went in 2021 it was $30 for two, so I assume it’s even more expensive with the way inflation is going. No thanks.