Exactly right they’re normalizing ads in everything. They’re indoctrinating the youth, who don’t know any better or differently, into just accepting/expecting that all content in all forms comes with ads, and you can’t watch any of it without signing in so they can track you and sell your data.

I rarely use YouTube, but my nephew (he’s two) was over the other day and we put on some cartoons for him that were in YouTube since my wife and I don’t have Disney plus. I couldn’t BELIEVE how many ads it showed. One five-minute merry melodies cartoon had FOUR SEPARATE ad breaks, the third and fourth of which were both 3+ minutes long if you weren’t paying attention to skip.

Wtf?! Not even shit ass normal broadcast television has that many commercials.

You’re welcome! Happy browsing. Another tip that will have mixed results is to ask for recs in the chat community (either Beehaw’s or other instances). It never ceases to amaze me how many random/niche communities there are that I’d never have thought to look for!

but it seems like you have to rely on an external 3rd party tool like https://browse.feddit.de/ to find any of them

That’s a tool that exists and can be very helpful, but you can also browse all communities federated with your instance by just going to “Communities” and selecting “all”. You can search for anything that way. It’s not perfect and in desperate need of some filtering/sorting tools (coming in the future I believe), but you definitely don’t have to use a third party tool! Also works on Jerboa, not sure about the iOS app.

Seriously, how many times have you heard Redditors complain that a community has gotten too toxic, or too meme-filled, or too obnoxious, or too (insert whatever adjective).

Guess what - on Lemmy, you and all the people that think that can start a new one, and you can moderate that stuff out. And the people that enjoy the existing community and its vibe can remain. And you can all like the same stuff while treating it differently. I’m all for the migration, but man I am getting burnt out on all the fresh rexxitors posting about how they don’t get or want to change lemmy after they’ve been here for like three days.

Hi welcome. Have fun with it! It’s new, it’s exciting. It’s less developed but that just leaves tons of room for growth and polish! Reddit was over saturated and stagnant. Embrace the relatively empty pond!

Great article and summary but man, whatever happened to editorial review? There are three or four major grammatical errors in that short piece. It’s unfortunate because it’s extremely well written otherwise, and does a great job of reporting objectively which is very rare these days.

Twitter’s response to a request for comment regarding its Boulder offices was an automatic email with a poop emoji. Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted in May that this is the new auto-response for press inquiries.

I can’t believe this is real, what an absolute clown show.

Honest question - what’s a tankie? I feel like I’ve seen them mentioned a ton on Lemmy but I’d never heard the term prior to a few days ago. From the image it looks like a maga/skinhead combo?

I agree completely. Also, I mentioned elsewhere that I feel more likely to actually contribute to this smaller community. I’ve already made more posts (2…3 maybe?) in a week here than I did in the last 2 years on Reddit. When you don’t feel like you’re shouting to 3 million people who aren’t listening, it’s more fun! It’s hard to really talk to anyone when you don’t know anyone at the party right? Is that enough analogies? I feel like that’s probably enough…

You’re not wrong at all on that, however, the quarantining and banning of hate communities happened before the removal of any and all NSFW subs from /r/all. The hate groups were largely getting restricted well before that. I realize they’re two sides of a similar coin - but there were different motives behind the shifts. Recall also, that most of those groups getting quarantined and banned were not NSFW communities.

Nobody was using boobs or twerk videos for hate speech. A 4K/60FPS version of that gif of Alexandra Daddario wasn’t being used to advocate violence against political figures. That later shift was done purely for user control of content. Reddit (probably) isn’t getting click shares off of imgur reposts of daddarios boobs. If they’re not standing to gain, they lose every time someone leaves the front page and goes to a sub page to explore more. They also get fewer eyes on their paid content if people are turned off from using /r/all because they don’t want to see said boobs. That particular move was a dollars and cents content control move only.

I edited my comment to expand because probably a lot of people don’t realize their being manipulated. You bring up a good point though, because you’re right. The reason it feels like there’s so many polarizing takes and arguments in comments and bot generated discussion is because there is - think about it, say you’re like me/most people and rather than go to the link you just go right to the comments. Well if you see “people” arguing back and forth and posting polar takes, you’re more likely to go to the article and form your own opinion.

I think that’s kind of proof-positive for just how much content on Reddit is now controlled and pushed by Reddit itself in some way. If 75-80% of the subs where content gets hosted are not adding content, but there hasn’t been a meaningful dip in content, it’s because Reddit is the one controlling the content.

It’s also part of why this API change is so important for them. Have you ever wondered why certain links/stories/things get posted to like 20+ subreddits seemingly all at once? Or no matter how many times you refresh, or which sub you visit it’s the same 3-5 links at the top? It’s because Reddit is being paid to push people to those links. They are getting click share revenue each time someone follows that link from their service. It’s not banner ads they’re worried about, it’s the links themselves. That’s a MASSIVE amount of revenue they’re not getting because if you click it from outside their environment, they get zero money. You can’t ad block the content itself, but make no mistake it is an ad.

Hate to by the pessimist, but he’s not wrong. Most subs will open back up tomorrow, I doubt most will close again. The users that aren’t on board will jump ship, but a greater percentage will likely just grumble and complain while they continue using the service. It’s what they’re banking on.

They’re not getting me back. I doubt that will affect their bottom line much, but it’s all I can do.

I said it elsewhere, but I fuckin like Lemmy man. I’m glad I found it, regardless of how/why I did.

Honestly, it was probably intentional. People shit on spez (rightfully) but he’s doing his job perfectly. He’s looking like an incompetent man child, and finger pointing at a third party using an obviously and probably intentionally weak narrative. He’s put all the focus on himself and how stupid he looks. He’s a punching bag, and in the mean time everyone at the corporate level that actually enacted these changes and is forcing this platform shift is remaining a) anonymous and b) out of the crosshairs.

I posted this on Kbin too, but I thought people might find it interesting here as well. I feel like maybe younger/shorter term users, and other people really don’t fully understand what’s going on with Reddit, and how it’s been building to a crescendo for a while.

tl;dr: This shift in Reddit has been coming for awhile, and was heralded years ago by fundamental changes they made to how users engage with their platform, most specifically by turning “/r/all” into “/r/onlywhatwewantyoutosee”.

I was a Reddit user for 12 years and change. I pre-date the Digg migration, and honestly I thought the years after that were its peak. There were warning signs that it was going downhill at many points in time, but I think the moment that really signaled Reddit was never going to return to what made it popular and successful is when they removed NSFW subs from /r/all…even though they’d rolled out /r/popular a year or two prior, supposedly for that purpose.

It’s not because of the restriction of NSFW subs in and of itself, it’s the implications/precedents that were set for the service as a whole. At that point, it became crystal clear that Reddit wanted to make sure the vast majority of users would be stuck with reddit recommended content only, and from there out it’s felt more like user manipulation for maximum advertising. Think about it - probably 50% of the most popular posts are either thinly veiled ads, or posts LOADED with ads that Reddit is surely getting clickshare revenue for linking to. Then there’s the sponsored posts hidden in with the normal posts, and the banner ads inserted between those.

The point of /r/all was to show everything, in real time, as it was growing in popularity. That’s how people discover things they like that they didn’t know existed - but finding those things, means spending less time in the controlled environment engaging with the content they most want you to engage with, and making them less revenue as a result. When /r/all turns into “/r/onlywhatcorporatewantsyoutosee”, there’s really no going back or improving. This API bullshit is just the next iteration of that same long term strategy - control what users see and interact with by forcing them to stay in their tightly controlled environment

Thanks! My reddit name got shit on frequently, so I’m not sad to see people appreciating the new one!!

Ah okay that makes more sense. I was never a big submitter, just commented a lot. Still, you make a good point. I have some highly updated comments in discussion threads (not a lot but still), and you’re right that reddit could get residual value from those down the road. Best to scrub completely.

Is there a guide for how to do it thoroughly? I have THOUSANDS of comments, it would take days to do it manually.

Stick around the cute animals are growing by the day! Seriously on Saturday I could only find one community dedicated to animals. Today while browsing I found like EIGHT!