Mastodawn

Lvxferre Jul 14, 2023

[db0] Reddit is a dead site running

https://lemmy.ml/post/2040930

[db0] Reddit is a dead site running - Lemmy

The link contains @[email protected] 's views on the ongoing state of Reddit, and I think that it’s worth sharing here - both to document a piece of opinion, and as food for thought. The main points are: * a comparison between the current state of Reddit vs. Myspace near collapse; * the illusion that everything is fine based on “raw” numbers like engagement; * that Reddit was never a “good” site, but it had two positive points (open API and hands-off approach to communities), destroyed by the current events; * the ongoing progression of the Fediverse as alternative to Reddit; * the change in quality in both the content and the behaviour of the people still there.

electronicoldman

I agree and I really think Reddit’s enshittification has led to the fediverse reaching critical mass (via migration to Lemmy) for self sustainability. And because of how the fediverse/Lemmy works, I think Lemmy could end up being a sort of foundation that other fediverse apps (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Peertube, etc) can stand on to reach their own critical mass.

Reddit is just the first domino to fall.

Celestial Jul 14, 2023

I agree with the self sustainability.
I started browsing fediverse a bit back, but there wasn't enough content so I would go back to Reddit (mostly to catch up on news and discussions).
But I'm going to Reddit less and less now as there are more people engaging in fediverse content. I now mostly go back for specific subreddits, but not the general feeds anymore.

Lvxferre Jul 14, 2023

You brought up a great point - synergy between different platforms in the Fediverse. At least in theory we could build something here that surpasses Reddit, Twitter, IG, Youtube and Facebook, simply because it’s intended to operate together.

Reddit is just the first domino to fall.

More like the second. Twitter was the first, and Huffman aping Musk was part of the domino falling chain.

electronicoldman Jul 14, 2023

I’d argue that Twitter hasn’t fallen yet, simply because many organizations, including government, still use it as an official media channel, whereas that isn’t really a thing on Reddit.

Lvxferre Jul 14, 2023

Twitter is in large part like Reddit now: dead, but running. There’s still some anchoring as the orgs that you mentioned keep using it, but that won’t be for long.

It fell already. It’s still bouncing a bit, but it won’t stand up ever again, except perhaps by a big stroke of luck.

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 14, 2023

I read here on Lemmy a couple of days ago about at least one nation’s government that is building their own website to get off of Twitter because they consider it too unstable now.

ryathal Jul 14, 2023

I don’t think the fediverse is at sustainability yet. It’s still very much an early adoption phase. Pretty much every community is ok with content for the sake of content. If it weren’t for the constant stream of shit posting the fediverse would look dead. The next step is to start getting more quality to happen.

Sabata11792 Jul 14, 2023

We moved past critical mass and moved to a meme cycle. Shit-posting in response to shit-posting is like the heartbeat of the internet. Beans, retro memes, and making fun of Poland getting invaded again are the natural order of things.

Hikiru Jul 14, 2023

Lemmy works so well because Reddit was always about interacting with normal, average users. Mastodon and Peertube don’t work as well as Lemmy because many people go on Twitter and YouTube for well known people with big followings, and those people will stay on whatever platform is most popular. This is just my opinion, I hope it changes someday.

ragnar_ok Jul 14, 2023

Is it just me or has interacting with humans on reddit become a frustrating experience? People are only trying to get one over on each other, all debates I see seem to be about who can just get the harshest insult in before blocking the other person… i guess reddit’s popularity works heavily against what made reddit good in the first place, i think the more popular something is, the lower the common denominator

🇸‌🇵‌🇪‌🇨‌🇺‌🇱‌🇦‌🇹‌🇪‌🇷‌Jul 14, 2023

I said it before, but I think a lot of that toxic arguing was us being played by bad actors. People would say the meanest shit or have the worst takes imaginable to get a rise.

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 14, 2023

Those “bad actors” are users too though. They’re real people who enjoy causing outrage. We’ve had them since the invention of BBS. We used to call them trolls. I think we still call them trolls, but we used to too. Seriously though, so often now people jump to the conclusion that the guy with the shitty take and horrible attitude must be from some Russian cyber farm. Maybe he’s just an asshole.

blivet Jul 14, 2023

Personally I suspect that a significant amount of the negativity on Reddit really was was organized by state actors in order to sow division. The constant ageism, for instance, always struck me as suspect. Someone would inevitably bring up how awful boomers were no matter how irrelevant it was to the discussion.

yumcake Jul 14, 2023

Yes, to some degree, it could also just be the usual toxicity that people explore when they get their first taste of anonymity on the internet. I like to hope that people eventually mature and grow out of it, but the younger you are, the less time you’ve had to work out those dark indulgences.

I don’t see that kind of talk being representative of real world interaction and whenever that happens it’s a useful reminder that some of what we see on the internet is kind of a glitch, like an artifact of an attempt at simulated communication that ended up failing because of broken mechanisms in the human component failing to translate real interaction into the virtual space.

Like the whole woke-war that bad actors are trying to drum up to increase cultural divide…the internet spotlights only the worst stories and segregated social groups know nothing about the out-groups except these rage-bait stories.

🇸‌🇵‌🇪‌🇨‌🇺‌🇱‌🇦‌🇹‌🇪‌🇷‌Jul 14, 2023

I hear you and I agree they’ve been around since I first started using mIRC 27 years ago. But the trend now is that there are more of them than there are of us. It takes ten minutes to load up a large language model to behave like a right or left wing troll and let it loose on Reddit, or here for that matter. In fact, I’m going to code one up tonight for shits and giggles that spreads positivity.

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 14, 2023

How do you train the LLM? Just follow the ChatGPT docs and point it to the API as a source?

🇸‌🇵‌🇪‌🇨‌🇺‌🇱‌🇦‌🇹‌🇪‌🇷‌Jul 14, 2023

ChatGPT can work, but it’s expensive. You can use oobabooga and grab a model off huggy face and then code up a personality. Then you have the API send generation requests to the model and post as if it’s a human.

GitHub - oobabooga/text-generation-webui: A Gradio web UI for Large Language Models with support for multiple inference backends.

A Gradio web UI for Large Language Models with support for multiple inference backends. - oobabooga/text-generation-webui

GitHub

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 15, 2023

Thanks! I’m going to give that a shot. I’ve been messing around with the ChatGPT API as a content generator for another project.

🇸‌🇵‌🇪‌🇨‌🇺‌🇱‌🇦‌🇹‌🇪‌🇷‌Jul 15, 2023

I made a bot that interacted with my Twitch chat using this! Very fun use of the model. I’ll warn you it always uses 100% when processing, usually for a couple seconds. It can cause stuttering while gaming.

socsa Jul 14, 2023

Well, except a bunch of subreddits straight up banned you for calling out trolls. Because it hurts the Facebook crowd’s feelings to be ostracized for being stupid.

tasbir49 Jul 14, 2023

I’ve noticed it as well. My guess is that the average age of someone on reddit is decreasing, and combine that with the popularity of call-out culture you have what you have.

EatMyPixelDust Jul 15, 2023

And the number of times a perfectly rational and informative post will get a huge pile of downvotes for no good reason.

Corkyskog Jul 15, 2023

I love how every comment you made will be acksuahllied by the most dumbest pedantic shit that will get a bunch of upvotes and sidetrack the entire conversation. Really good posts would get almost entirely ignored because someone claims to debunk it by disproving one of their dozen points and facts.