Yesterday, it was announced that reddit’s API fees were following Twitter’s path to destroy third party apps. I’m sure for shareholders this looks like a win, but for someone like me, this is a massive loss. I’m not a fan of the official app and I have no interest in using a bloated, unfriendly UI, ad-laden app. So, this will probably mean the end of my reddit use.
I have a complicated relationship with the site as is. For the most part, I do love the concept. I like the subreddits and the ability to easily find information, but over the years, I’ve realized that reddit is like all other social media and can be quite toxic for me. The solution I found was to be strict in what I view. So, I skip big subreddits. The communities I subscribe to all post less than 20 posts a week, things like r/Westerns, r/ImpactWrestling, r/NothernExposure, r/ViewAskewniverse, r/WingsTvShow, etc.
This has worked well for me. I’ll still “search” for a subreddit when I want to see some latest news like at r/Television, but I do not subscribe, and I spent way less time on it that way.
Over the past few months, when I have visited bigger subreddits, I’ve felt old. I’ve seen conversations and questions that made me feel like I was out of place on reddit. It’s occurred to me more than once that my time was reddit was almost over and well… eliminating the Apollo app just gave me that final push.
There is a wind of change on the internet as of late. While some changes are disappointing, I do hope that maybe, just maybe, this will lead to a better internet.
If anyone has any suggestions for good forums, please shoot them my way. Especially ones related to science fiction.
I’ve been meaning to write about Reddit, but as these things tend to be, it became longer research that led to other tangents.
Reddit is one of those last “normal” social networks I still care about – or perhaps it is the last one – so it hurts a bit to read the news. I’ve been using Infinity for Reddit on my phone for a while, and I have no intention of installing the ad-infested official app with chat, suggestions, and “what’s hot,” which translates to “what sells.”
The other piece of the news I was sad to hear is the regulation of NSFW content. Leaving moderation to the companies and their automatic tools is a disaster I keep seeing. It targets LGBTQ folks, blocks controversial topics that are important to discuss, and flags anything resembling nudity, which is just plain nonsense (I’ll never get used to the fact that people blowing each other brains out is fine, but show someone naked and the world ends).
Reddit has been a good source of information. It taught me about classical music, it helped me install GrapheneOS on my phone, it solved my Emacs issues, and it aided me in discovering more of my personality and sexuality. It even gave me quite a few friends over the years, some of which I met in person.
From the NYT article, the CEO’s perspective makes sense, but it belongs in an internet that is distorted and wrong. As a person who gets further and further away from these content-for-money companies, I can confidently say we have more options today than ever before, a sign that many people are tired of this kind of bullshit.
The direct federation Reddit clone is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(software)][Lemmy]], but it’s not there yet. It suffers from the same problem as the rest: few and far between instances that alienate newcomers from Reddit.