Github redlib thread still unfolding. From reddit shareholder letter,
And a key piece of work to retain new audiences is shifting Reddit to a logged-in-only experience.
Most on lemmy know the privacy and bot-infested dumpster fire reddit is. So it’s very easy to think good riddance. But that misses an important point. IMO.
Inspite of the dumpster fire, it also contains a huge body of knowledge not found anywhere else. Example. Many times I have searched for a super obscure error message and the only good hits were a reddit thread in a tech sub. This is formerly open knowledge, accessible privately, now being closed and locked behind logins.
In old web forum days, weird niche info was distributed all over. That made it robust. Big tech social media displaced most of that world. It all got centralized. No matter hjow awful their algorithms are, no matter how toxic, those sites do have riches of knowledge.
We ARE losing something, if open access to niche info created by normal ppl is cut off.
“Ppl will figure a way around” you may say. There is no way to win that fight in the long run.
“Ooopsie, gotta enclose the commons again!”
Social products and resources can’t remain accessible to all of society, where’s the profit in that?
Even worse is the wealth of knowledge that exists in random discord servers…
At some point, we didn’t even notice, we stopped building a library. :(
AI scrapers are the fire that consumed the library of alexandria.
With did this dance with Experts Exchange. They managed the prefect balance: They left various work-arounds working, so that search would work, and they dwindled to irrelevance while presumably bleeding money.
As plans go, it is reliable.
I hope people learn. Stop using reddit.
How does that fix the issue OP is writing about? The knowledge no longer accessible from a simple web search?
Someone posted the question on reddit and someone answered. This happened on the wrong platform, so now they (or other people) have to do it again on a (hopefully) better platform.
Sure, it sucks that reddit has stolen our archive, but this was always in the cards for them, and we willingly played along. It has been clear for a long time that reddit’s top interest is profit, so you don’t even get to be surprised.
Whoa.
You don’t fix, you learn and in the future you try not to make the same mistakes. And Reddit is not the only example.
If I type any subject into Google, followed by the word Reddit, I still get Reddit threads in response.
What if you click it without being logged in?
Yes, even if not logged into Google (and logged out of Reddit), it will still give Reddit tread responses if I mention a topic and then type Reddit.
Running a android OS on a 6 year old 5g phone, could be the reason. Perhaps a current model phone wouldn’t 🤷♂️
Maybe they haven’t made the switch yet
Yah I think it mostly hasn’t hit yet. Might be isolated cases where it has.
Anyway they usually don’t do major changes like this all at once. They’ll roll it out to a few ppl. See if it worked like they wanted. Then broaden. And repeat.
I’m replacing missing knowledge with local LLM. Fuck google, fuck reddit fuck the sponsored search results, fuck all
LLM is not knowledge.
Exactly. That knowledge has to come from somewhere and if it can’t scrape the sources, like Reddit, the LLM is not going to have the answer either.
Yes it is. It makes mistakes somtime, but vrrifying information is much, much faster then searching for it with nothing
Reddit was dead after it had a hit piece written about it all those years ago. Granted the hit piece was very justified but it was all downhill after that.
I personally use RedReader (signed out) and “share to” Linkora to save useful threads.
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.sakethh.linkora/
That works for now. If redreader stops working… 🤷 bye Felicia. I don’t visit Reddit much anyway.
I’ve replaced “sitting at PC, nothing to read” with neal.fun, Atlas Obscura, Smithsonian Smart News and Lemmy 🤣
PS: IIRC, you can download a good chunk of reddit as an archive to search against.
https://github.com/ArthurHeitmann/arctic_shift
https://github.com/19-84/redd-archiver
I think the full pushshift reddit archive (to 2024?) was 4TB, but you can just grab smaller useful subsections. So it’s less of a workaround and more a “tube is out of the toothpaste, suck shit Spez”.
Actually, redd-archive (which is up to end of 2025) has an MCP, so you could point your local LLM at it and get it to find the info you need, all off line.
Last I checked, it even let you grab snapshots of particular subreddits of your choice, so you’re not grabbing multiple terabytes. 2026 snapshots aren’t out yet IIRC
The people capable of giving those answers aren’t gone forever, tech is prob the one case where lemmy should suffice already, ask the question, you’ll be the first now.
I cant even getting a log in. I was banned about 18 months ago and no matter how I create a login (using a VPN/10-minute email) they still figured out it was me.
Then I discovered this place and thought fuck it.
My last resort was to buy an account on g2g or similar but I decided i don’t care enough.
Need a new device. If they’re really serious about it they might start requiring you to loging through google/iPhone which require phone numbers to register.
But you should be able just to use a different nontainted phone and sign up just fine. I’ve done it on my pi and an extra phone through vpns and seemed to work. This hasn’t been recently but I got banned maybe 6 months ago and made a few burners.
You could maybe try a virtual machine too, just never log back in on your primary phone.
But I agree with everyone’s sentiment don’t go back.
they already shadow ban accounts not created with google or apple sign in
deleted by creator
In addition to the more utilitarian aspect of Reddit soon-to-be wallgardened, I’m sad that the cultural, community aspect may be as well. While one could argue that certain communities could theoretically be replicated here, it’s just very difficult without significant mass.
Yah, there is that too.
I’ve looked for some niche communities on lemmy. Actually not even very niche lol. Many of them are MIA, or have a bare group with a single post from 2024. You need some mass to get any engagement.
On the other hand. Mass makes bigger groups go downhill real fast. So a tradeoff I guess.
I’ll miss the Arthurian and Latin subreddits in particular. Not sure if they’ll ever be here, and I am often busy with school so not sure if I can do moderation. Plus I’m not the most knowledgeable in those subjects.
This has happened to me on iPhone Safari and Firefox for the past few months. This will seal the deal for me against Reddit.
This is a good reason to delete posts and stop contributing to reddit.
If people want old info they can use old archives that harvested all the content. It’s easy accessibility of content that has led to people putting up with reddit becoming anti user removing third party apps, making UI worse, and login requirements.
If using reddit just lurk and delete content. Don’t contribute.
While I do agree, reddit has been shown to un-delete comments that were mass deleted in the past if the user used a script
That’s why you don’t delete your account. You rewrite then delete and keep your account to monitor it.
Either way, it is new content that people mostly use reddit for that is keeping the site alive.
I got permabanned, when I delete posts/comments it just shows deleted on the username area, keeps the content up
If you can edit them, use some bot to edit every post to random garbage.
banned accounts can’t edit
This is the reason I don’t like discord (alongside its lack of privacy, ownership).
I am aware they announced recently that the info will now be searchable (for servers that allow), but I consider it an information black hole.
So many people decide to use it and all that information is not searchable. It’s also lost if discord ever desires it, or the server admin bans you, or wtv.
Moving to a more open internet has to come from the masses, but the masses like Facebook so here we are.
The use case of Discord is not meant to be open… it is meant to provide a chat room hidden from the public. That is the whole point of Discord or other chat clients like that.
It is like choosing to ask your friend whether they can help you, that isn’t open information either.
Agreed. But that’s not all is being used for. Many tutorials, guides and who knows what else are in discord servers.
I don’t think the masses like Facebook. I think they hate it, and hate reddit’s new policies. But they’re also distracted / lazy and ignorant and neither understand the alternatives, nor are willing to invest time to discover and learn to use them. I’m also very sure the average person scores significantly lower on both intellectual curiosity and reading comprehension than the average Lemmy user.
When Trump 2.0 started, there was a massive uptick in people attempting to learn about cyber privacy, public infrastructure and other was to be safer and more in control of their digital lives. But most of them couldn’t sustain it and it petered out after about 8 months. It will probably surge back if fascism does massive, rapid bullshit, but as long as they keep turning up the temperature slowly, the frog will just boil to death while doomscrolling and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.
I don’t think the masses like Facebook. I think they hate it, and hate reddit’s new policies.
I think the way Cory Doctorow put it is Facebook is betting people love their friends and family more than they hate Mark Zuckerberg.
You can tell reddit got dumber because of posts complaining about ads, which is the bare minimum level needed for tech literacy.
Which is why reddit has turned into being reposts of twitter, tiktok, and facebook as the general userbase became the bulk of the audience and biggest sign is the anti science demographic sharing the space that amazes you that they can even type.
It’s also why reddit has been able to get away with their changes.
Sorry but this is complete cope. I left reddit after the API debacle and even I will begrudgingly admit the site stayed at least as useful as it was before, if not more so. I repeatedly come back to find answers to obscure questions less than 3 years old, I wish there was somewhere else to go.
You misunderstood what I am saying. I’m talking about the general users of reddit and the most popular subreddits that are basically twitter and facebook topics.
Niche subs are still useful, but the masses are what has made reddit worse because they are the largest userbase that willingly puts up with all the reddit changes. So everyone else gets dragged along.
There is a reason long time reddit users stay away from /r/all and stick to their subscribed subreddits.
I didn’t even talk about leaving reddit, but about the shifting demographic as the userbase grew.
Again since you are not getting the point: Reddit has grown more useful than ever before despite all their enshittification. What you said about going dumber is a cope and subjective at best, subject matter communities still find their home at Reddit and neither content or user numbers have shown signs of abating. Shitposting subs are copying slop from other platforms, who cares? It has always been this way, not like X/Insta don’t copy memes from Reddit.
You aren’t getting the point. There’s useful communities even on Facebook, but the overall demographic is tech and privacy illiterate which results in companies being able to get away with the things they do.
Somehow you extrapolated that to mean reddit has no valuable subreddits. When I never said that.
And why do you use words like cope? Coping about what? If you look at my past comments you see I often recommend people to use redlib instances to use reddit in contrast to people asking to completely stop.
Seems you are the one upset at criticism over reddit and hallucinating a criticism to mean I don’t find reddit useful.
Because you are obviously coping about Reddit somehow having deteriorated when it obviously hasn’t, not sure what else I am supposed to call it. Read you original comment, it had none of this nuance you drummed up with afterwards.
there’s not a damn thing we
canwill do about it.FTFY
What I really don’t like about discord is I have to have an account to use it and I can’t separate my accounts across spaces.
I might be part of some really weird spaces I do not want remotely associate with open source or even professional discussion and support groups. Why those tins are on discord I don’t know, but they are.
Moving to a more open internet has to come from the masses
100%. Your frustration is mine too.
I generally agree with your sentiment. But let’s see some possibly positive sides at the same time:
- Maybe this will encourage or entice people within or outside that wall to come to places like Lemmy.
- And maybe will encourage people on Lemmy and similar platforms to share even more.
- As time passes, a lot of that knowledge and information there becomes obsolete. This is something I’m strongly noticing also on StackExchange for example.
It’s why I’m testing out piefed.
But I’ve also been in software dev for 20yrs and am not your average user…
Went from MySpace, to Digg, to Reddit, now looking for new place for news feed that isn’t tainted by the great algorithm.
Can somebody explain to me the differences between Lemmy and Piefed? It seems I am unable to access Piefed communities but they are amongst us. Has this to do with my specific instance not being federated with them or am I missing something else?
This page has a full list of differences: https://join.piefed.social/features/
tl;dr is that:
- It’s written in a different language, so appeals to different developpers, also claims to be easier to maintain and more efficient, but I can’t judge that.
- Has Post & User Flairs
- Has emoji reactions
- Has polls
- Has Post & User Flairs
- Has multicommunities
- A chat feature
- Better moderation
- a more feature-rich and (subjective) nicer default UI with stuff like consolidated comments,
I can access piefed communities and posts from my lemmy instance: PieFed link: https://piefed.zip/c/[email protected]/p/1963727/growth-of-the-fediverse-20261102 Lemmy link: https://lemmy.zip/post/74312955
Most popular communities are lemmy ones, so it might just be that you haven’t seen one yet, they should be perfectly cross-compatible (minus the extra features), since they’re both threadiverse software.
I think I figured it out. Seems like due to my instance not being that active, many PieFed communities are not searchable because nobody interacted with them from my instance. After I input the specific community in the URL, and thén try to search, i can find it through the search function on my instance…
I just liked the piefed interface better. Still learning how it works myself. Hopefully someone knows more.
Welcome!
Maybe this will encourage or entice people within or outside that wall to come to places like Lemmy
People say stuff like this all the time. History tells us that will not happen. There was a sitewide protest when they killed the API but no one left. History tells us there is fucking nothing these social media corporations can do to get people to leave. Because they have tried over and over again in recent years and it always fails. Maybe 1% finds somewhere else to spend their time.
E: you people need to familiarize yourself with the concept of hyperbole. I wasn’t looking for your anecdotes.
That is not true. I made a Lemmy account around the time they started fucking with the API, if I remember correctly. I wasn’t that active here because I felt like the content was very limited and the people too radical.
Now that my Reddit account has been restricted because “you need to verify your age” 🤡 Not just NSFW stuff restricted, the whole site is restricted for my account. Can’t even access my account settings anymore. (I really should figure something out but alas I care too little).
That’s why I have become more active here. No other options.
There was a sitewide protest when they killed the API but no one left.
Before the API protest, Lemmy had less than 1000 Monthly Active Users. Right after the protests, it shot up to just under 70,000 and then settled down to around 38,000 users. It currently has around 31,000 Monthly Active Users with another 7,000 between Piefed and Mbin.
then:
I feel like someone needs to create a bot farm to advertise Lemmy all over Reddit. Not specific instances, just Lemmy as an alternative. What’s one more bot spamming the site.
Waving from PieFed!
Oh well only a hundred million to go!
A lot of us don’t want to be in a community with millions of people. Some people like stadiums, other people like cafes.
Well then why are we having this conversation?
Nothing?
I have been on Lemmy for years after they blocked apps.
It is called getting a spine and sticking to their principles.
I lost sympathy for those that keep persisting with that shit hole for all kinds of excuses.
I literally left when they killed the API.
Same :) At first I just wanted to have an alternative to Reddit. More like a backup in case it gets worse. Then I realized that I was browsing Lemmy more often so I deleted my Reddit account and here we are. I’m the first generation who was on facebook. Then our parents joined and we moved to Twitter. After Musk ruined that we fled to Reddit and now Lemmy.
Me too. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
One more here!
I dunno, one of the big reasons that Reddit got big, was Digg shooting themselves in the foot.
How do we know for sure? The site is infested with bots that may create traffic to compensate the activity by the actual human users, who fleed their service. Afaik even spaz confirmed that most of the traffic on Reddit is generated by bots.
More recently, I’ve seen tons of comments about Proton that seemed like numerous copies of the same idea shared with less than one minute intervals. It detinitely felt suspicious when reading similar ideas time and time again.
Because despite what everyone says, bots are still very easy to spot, and aren’t capable of creating the type of high quality submissions that keeps users there. And because I talk to people IRL every day that still use it. I’m yet to meet anyone in person who knows what the fediverse is.
There was a sitewide protest when they killed the API but no one left
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Dozen thousands?
i left
Cool!
There was a sitewide protest when they killed the API but no one left.
I’m no one important and I left. I think a lot of people are fed up with being monetized at every turn.
If there really are more bots than real people participating as others claim, then the real people are going somewhere. Maybe they will stumble in here.
Is there a tool to download all reddit posts? I didn’t want to delete from reddit because some people might find it useful but now that it’s gated, I wanna move it all to lemmy.
Iirc shreddit lets you download all your posts before deleting them
I tried “bulk-downloader-for-reddit” I don’t know how you’ll drop it to lemmy.
