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HeinzStuckeIt 2 days ago

On modern social media, even if you had a group full of smart and reasonable people, the platform itself is injecting crap that may well drive out many of them.

I rececently returned to Reddit since there are no other remaining discussion venues for one of my hobbies. I looked at the new-Reddit interface and shuddered: ads are being shown among comments, and many comments are hidden by defaul because apparently discussion and community brings insufficient engagement for a modern ad-based internet business. Even if I and a tiny, tiny percentage of people are still using the old-Reddit interface, obviously the overall culture there is going to be molded by the default one.

sssilver 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

My favorite Reddit UX scam is that you tap on comments to collapse them along with their children, UNLESS they’re an ad that masks itself exactly like a comment in which case you tap it with the intent of collapsing it, but instead you inadvertently increase RDDT shareholder value (at the expense of the time you waste closing the webview)!

spicybright 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I refuse to use reddit with it's modern UI. Once old.reddit.com dies I'm hanging up my spurs

Loughla 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I left when they killed 3rd party app access.

Honestly even the curated subs I was a part of were pretty toxic or echo-chambery now that I've had time to look back

anukin 2 days ago | parent [-]

The biggest problem is that Lemmy is no substitute for Reddit. Majority of it is run by tankies and people professing extreme left views.

Loughla 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm saying you don't even need a substitute. Genuinely looking back, I was more anxious when I would browse reddit in my free time.

I promise, disengage from social media (and the doom news cycle for that matter) and you'll be happier, or at least you'll worry about stuff you can control instead of stuff you can't.

Except hn. Never disengage from hn.

webspinner 2 days ago | parent [-]

Since I use the fedi in other ways, and I'm still here, it isn't necessary. Is it fun to test? sure!!

nekusar 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"Extreme left" said by someone likely from the USA is slightly left-of-center basically anywhere else.

The USA democrats and "left" have been overton window'ed so hard that a actual democratic socialist, Mamdani, is compared to being a communist. https://nypost.com/cover/november-5-2025/

There's also hundreds of Lemmy federated servers. I'm sure some are actual communist. But there's plenty for all walks of life. And it's like Mastodon in that regard.

And honestly, if "killing SNAP and other public benefits for poor people" is capitalist, I want nothing to do with that. That is completely ethically bankrupt. Doubly so being one of the richest countries in the world. Absolutely 0 people should be starving. And I'd also say that 0 people should be involuntarily homeless. (some may want to, and choose to be vagabonds and travel. they should have that right! but they should also be able to choose to have a home.)

zjp 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>"Extreme left" said by someone likely from the USA is slightly left-of-center basically anywhere else.

This is a 2000s era meme that was started to try and get people to see reason and vote against Bush, but it is not true and has not been for coming up on a decade. The Democratic Party is to the left of many European left parties, especially on issues like immigration and freedom of identity, and its politicians (especially the young ones) regularly pitch welfare state expansions that are more generous than European counterparts (see Kat Abu on 'medicare for anyone physically present in the US, for free'; a more generous offer than even the NHS).

cheikhcheikh a day ago | parent | next [-]

Is that the democratic party or a fringe left that is trying to accomplish something as part of the party ? what policies did the democrats actually implement across the years? Bernie is considered by the democratic party leadership to be a radical(hes not) and would prop up anyone but him

zjp a day ago | parent [-]

>What policies did the Democrats actually implement over the years?

Roughly in order: Don't Ask/Don't Tell repeal. Dodd-Frank. Lily Ledbetter (extends the statute of limitations on equal pay suits). Making it clear that sexual orientation and gender identity are equal to race in hate crime law. Banning lifetime coverage caps so your insurer cannot simply decide your life is not worth living and banning the practice of excluding pre-existing conditions from healthcare coverage so that you are not enslaved to whatever employer you happened to be working for when you got the worst news of your life. Establishing the CFPB to end unfair credit practices like medical debt reporting. Capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month for Medicare. Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. ACA subsidy expansion. People our normie centrist presidents put on the bench decided Obergefell. People our normie centrist presidents put on the bench are protecting human expression.

You have to engage in motivated reasoning not to recognize these things as making life better. If you want to make life even better, consider voting for Democrats. When you don't vote for them, they become the minority party. When they are the minority party, no amount of impotent screaming or saying please can turn 49 votes into 61 votes, nor can it force Republicans to help them help you.

Bernie is a loudmouth with almost no legislative accomplishments that spent his life building his own brand and ratfucking the party. Of course the party leadership doesn't like him. When you get a rock in your shoe, do you like the rock?

Actual leaders are in the trenches right now embarrassing the GOP with this shutdown to force them to make COVID-era healthcare subsidies permanent. What's Bernie doing except derailing news events to complain that party leadership isn't supporting his faction in comparatively irrelevant local races?

hshdhdhj4444 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Ah yes, so one candidate for the Democratic primary (she isn’t even a Dem primary winner yet) for one of 434 Congressional seats may have a position that on the edge might be slightly more “left wing” on one issue in one of the more right wing Western European nations, is clearly evidence that the U.S. is no longer far to Europe’s right…

To be fair, setting aside my snark, I don’t disagree with you. The real problem here is simply the fact that the single axis left-right political framework is insufficient to capture even the simplest democracy in the world right now.

And the US has made huge leaps to the left on some axes, but is still far to the right of the European center on many other axes.

anukin a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Lemmy is occupied by tankies and Marxist leninists and that’s not my type of lefties. They also espouse violence which I don’t like. For example the main federated server is called lemmy.ml ml standing for Marxist leninists. They are also the developer server hence all federated servers have to federate with them.

HeinzStuckeIt 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The OP says tankies. Those kinds of extreme left are extreme even by non-USA standards. A European-style democratic socialist like Mamdani would be, one hopes, to the right of them. Tankies were largely forced out of European mainstream parties after the shocks of 1937, 1956 and 1968.

skinnymuch 2 days ago | parent [-]

A better way to think of it is that the western “left” isn’t part of the global left. Using tankie unironically is a classic example.

Sammi 2 days ago | parent [-]

The massive sympathy for Russia in the Ukraine war among the far left makes it pretty clear that tankies are alive and kicking.

cheikhcheikh a day ago | parent [-]

Can you share any evidence of this massive sympathy?

webspinner 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Well you can choose to affiliate with another party. I did so. I was unaffilaated for years, though!

Fuhrmanator a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I built my private version of Infinity for Android. The steps were 90% automated. They were in a Reddit thread like this one (I just pasted the first thing I found now), although I don't know if the build process still works. https://www.reddit.com/r/Infinity_For_Reddit/comments/1izm7c... -- you have to side-load the app, which is a little tricky because you have to load it onto your phone. I think put it on a private Google Drive.

Maybe similar solutions exist for iOS, but maybe the side-loading is not as easy?

Anyway, on Windows/Chrome I use uBlock Origin and never see any ads in Reddit online. There was a lot of drama about reddit selling out in 2023 (I was sad to see Infinity die), but there are tech solutions to avoid its enshittification.

chistev 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Where would you go to? Hacker new?

frank_nitti 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not to mention that, at least on the iOS app, the button to close an ad is in a totally different place than the rest of the UI screens, which is always in the top-left of the screen. A small “X” is placed in the middle-left of the ad image, to make you spend an extra second finding it, which I would assume they are happy to report as a user engagement metric to their advertisers.

anoncow 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If I accidentally did it Adsense would ban me.

webspinner 2 days ago | parent [-]

Do it anyway! Then you have a case against them.

amarcheschi 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I think it's possible to remove ads with reddit revanced

Espressosaurus 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Old reddit is unfortunately just a rounding error. I weep for the day they decide to kill it.

noir_lord 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't, the utility of reddit has declined over time for me but there are still a handful of reddits that I enjoy but them killing old.reddit.com is absolutely what will push me off the platform entirely.

Though at this point I spend (or waste depending on PoV) much less time on reddit than I used to.

dingnuts 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

weep? I'd finally be free. I wish this site would disappear too. Whoever designed these algorithms got me good, at a young age, and I don't think these sites have been a net positive overall or on me personally

ASalazarMX 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

We are already free. If we keep returning to a few subreddits, it's because we can't find an equivalent community elsewhere. If they kill the old interface, we'll eventually use the new one if there are no other alternatives, no need to lie to ourselves.

webspinner 2 days ago | parent [-]

Nah, I just leave. Because I want too, and because I don't like Reddit's AI training ppolicies.

entropie 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Iam nearly 15 years on reddit now and I would miss it if i cant use old. or a good client. Iam sure sooner or later it will happen and ill most probably leave.

Reddits quality went downhill over the years but there is more or less no successor/competitor. It will be over and buried forever. Eternal september gets them all.

Side note: be free if you want to and dont make it dependent on decisions others do for you.

seesaw 2 days ago | parent [-]

I am in the same boat. I think I will get a lot more of time back if they kill old

webspinner 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm sure they're going to eventually. They say they won't, but they deprecated private messages. Yeah, I did use those lol.

rurp 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't know how anyone can use the official reddit mobile app for more than 5 minutes. Between the ads and terrible interface it's an awful experience. But I also hate facebook so I'm clearly not the target audience for this stuff.

RedReader is a much better interface but lately has been having issues for me so I just haven't been using reddit. If and when they kill that client I'll be done with the platform.

webspinner 2 days ago | parent [-]

I hate Facebook with a passion! Mostly because my family is there, and they're constant lecturers.

derbOac 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but with ad blockers I never see ads on Reddit. I honestly don't think I've ever seen an ad on Reddit at all, with a tiny exception for ads for other Reddit offerings, which is very recent for me.

Not saying they're not on there, but the ad blockers must be doing a pretty good job on that site.

webspinner 2 days ago | parent [-]

I don't usually see them either!

damnesian 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I never use the app, only login to old. and when old is taken away, I will take my marbles and go home.

webspinner 2 days ago | parent [-]

I don't either! Mostly because I don't use many apps anyway. I like the web.

stdclass 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> since there are no other remaining discussion venues for one of my hobbies

maybe you find a suitable board on 4chan

webspinner 2 days ago | parent [-]

Lol or just create one.

kevin_thibedeau 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are Firefox extensions that monkeypatch the old UI with usability enhancements and force a redirect for all reddit links.

webspinner 2 days ago | parent [-]

You bet there are, and I use them regularly. The ones I need, anyway.

shortrounddev2 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I first joined reddit in 2010 because it was the best place to see other people's minecraft creations. I no longer have an account but by far the most commonly suggested videos for me when I view the front page without an account are

1. Car crashes

2. Street/bum fights

3. Conspiracy theory content (UFOs, Anti-vax, chemtrails)

4. Anti-semitic videos (one such video was titled "Kanye was right about everything")

5. Anti-muslim videos (weirdly I get a lot of Indian majority subreddits that post a lot of hate videos about Pakistan/Muslims)

Every single one of these categories produces feelings of outrage. Reddit has just become a fucking hate machine. Not just hate toward other races, but hate toward the entire human race. Every video shows someone doing some anti-social shit, like people driving like total assholes, or running people over, or getting hit by a train after cutting off traffic, or beating each other senseless in public. In the 1990s there was a huge outcry over violence in media because of Mortal Kombat, Doom, and The Matrix, but here we are today watching actual people die on dashcams regularly. This has to be just bad for us on a really primal level

yen223 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

People thought video games would turn people violent, turns out it was social media that did it

noAnswer a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When I visit Youtube in a privat tab from my German IP all I get is "be afraid of the other" alt right "vote for AFD", "chemtrails are here to get you" kind of videos. Not a singel "cute cat" or "interesting science fact" in sight. :-(

It's almost as if they like the population to be afraid.

webspinner 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

OK maybe try to escape the algorithm? This is different with Reddit, though. You'd have to figure out which settings you need to change.

Mountain_Skies 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's wild how many fan subreddits end up turning into hate boards for the sub's alleged purpose.

webspinner 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm leaving Reddit because of all this!