I feel like lemmy is actually really amazing and has a lot of smart discussion happening instead of the constant circlejerking that happens on Reddit. I also feel the community here is a lot more hopeful/helpful! That’s all, thanks for reading 😄

  • teft@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I actually said the same a few days ago. Lemmy now is how reddit was back in the beginning.

    • sudo@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      The question that remains to be answered is, are the normies that moved to Reddit responsible for what it became? Or was it a product of the corporate profit driven manipulation of the platform? Time will tell…

      Edit: It’s worth noting, I don’t mean to say ‘normies’ a a pejorative term, just the most casual way to differentiate the more tech-savvy, active early adopters that I find many people currently using the platform are, versus those who are simply doom scrolling content on social media.

      • CthuluVoIP@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        It’s most likely a combination of both. I’m not a huge fan of the divisive “normies” vs “whatever the hell we are” stance, but Reddit became what it is because it was poorly designed from the beginning to handle how rapidly it needed to scale. It was never envisioned when the project started as an internet killing behemoth, but ultimately that’s what it became. Without in-built tools to manage that growth, Reddit succeeded because the community willed it to be and in spite of its own codebase.

        What’s happened to it now is likely correlated to a number of factors:

        • Significant user growth as the popularity of the site among habitual internet users grew over time
        • Positioning within popular culture - namely the practice of appending Google search queries with ‘reddit’ to improve results, which is common among people who otherwise don’t browse the site at all
        • Unchecked bot traffic with limited mechanisms to control or curtail the propagation of duplicative, low effort / value, incorrect, harmful, or misleading information on a massive scale
        • A philosophical pivot from being a community driven by community to a company driven by a desire for profits
        • Algorithmic manipulation of how content is displayed to maximize advertiser return at the expense of organic community dynamic shifts a combination of 1- a rapidly grown userbase, 2- positioning within popular culture (vis a vis, appending Google search queries with reddit to improve the results is common even among people who otherwise don’t use Reddit)
        • The hurt feelings of a CEO with an easily bruised ego
        • ZodiacSF1969@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Don’t forget a complete failure to ever monetize the site correctly. They’ve never made a profit lol.