Reddit is removing the DM feature
Reddit is removing the Direct Message feature, and all active conversations will be archived so you won't be able to continue ongoing conversations. Reddit also deleted all bad reviews for their app awhile ago. Its rating went from 3.4 to 4.5 stars overnight.
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One of the first things Google did when it bought YouTube was to remove direct messaging, don't want people wasting time talking to each other when they should be watching ads.
Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things
That was such a good read. As an older millennial myself, it hit home particularly strong.
Really appreciate you linking that, like the other user said, it spoke to me.
Good find. This is gem.
true but reddit chat is still there
Lmao chat is one of the dumbest features they ever rolled out.
I love how their attitude is always "we made this useless feature, and instead of ditching it were going to get rid of what people preferred and force the hated alternative!"
Once again proving that the Reddit admins absolutely hate the fact that people use Reddit. They should just shit the site down already.
I hated both features honestly. I'm there to converse in public, anything you say you can add in a public reply to one of my comments. If it was ever used for honest chat or messaging, I never saw it.
It was useful for asking questions that neither you nor the other person would want to put in a public post. For example, someone posted a picture in the bad real estate sub that looked very familiar, and I sent a DM asking "is this X location?". I might not want people to know I'm familiar with X location, they might not want people to know they're familiar with X location, but maybe we're both ok with each other knowing.
But I'm pretty sure its main use was sending hate to people without getting banned.
I would use it for some video game LFGs. I wouldnt want to post my game name in a public forum and have my game account be flooded.
But then how can we ask for nudes? /S
I don't mind DMs for one-off things. Like if I see something sketchy and want to tip off a user without alerting the sketchy one.
Also, everybody already owns a named subreddit that they mod, don't they? So can't you just send modmail there and still sidebar the chat in lieu of modmail DMs?
there were subs getting in trouble for asking nudes, mainly medical, where perverts were asking CP-type pictures of thier privates of minors, i think the subs became aware and started making it known you cant post as a minor anymore, or have to label the post without pics.
How does disabling DMs stop this?
I used to use it when I wanted to impart a little secret to another Redditor, without alerting the entire world.
For instance, I found a cool, lesser-used auction site that often had good deals on guitars. If I ran across someone whose guitar had been lost somehow, or who couldnt afford a new guitar, I would DM the auction site, and ask them to keep it quiet. I didn't want to announce it publicly, and alert the entire world to it, and ruin it.
i do that too, trying to give them advice , that people wouldnt try to astroturf your comment.
DMs had their uses, for example RemindMeBot cannot work over chat because there is no API.
i Used PM alot before Trumps first term, and somewhat during him to. i stopped once i started getting into arguments with people about a certain they were doing wrong(like how a dude was trying to apply to same company job at different times or different position, i was saying there is no way they would hire you once you get rejected, he was deadset on reapplying no reason other than how convenient it is for him) and i was getting warnings. i do it doesnt clutter up the subs, that would flag my account as a spammer originally.
Anything that benefits them, fuck the users.
It's the Late-Stage Capitalist way.
enshittification actually.
All in marketing. Can sell ketchup popsicles to women in white gloves with enough money thrown at it.
i did originally used with other person on reddit, with a job specific sub. that was about it, and every other time was a spammer trying to contact people.
it may surprise you how many people use reddit for personals and porn
everyone on tumbler went to TWITTER and reddit for porn, and then OF. imagine the amount of users will disappeared if they banned porn. there were other forums, pics like subs that had regular porn you see on reddit but they were so unregulated they have discussion and imagery about CSAM and beastility.
Cool. The bots can chat among themselves without any pesky users getting in the way.
16/f/Cali
FBI Open up
How is the Reddit app at a 4.7 on Google's Play store, but all of the relevant reviews that pop up are 1's and 2's?
Google must be ignoring some reviews to calculate the average score.
Could be because of people (or bots, whatever) rating but not commenting?
Whaaa?! Google acting dishonorably and ignoring their own mission to "Do No Harm?" I'm shocked.
I mean the only DMs i ever got was transphobic bullshit because they were afraid of downvotes.
Several of my Reddit accounts had tens of thousands of karma, a couple exceeded 100k. I learned early on to never read any notifications/messages ever. I just navigate back to my recent comments directly and check replies in context, instead of a stream of disjointed messages and trolls being deadshits.
My current 1-year old account is at about 115k..kinda want to go out in a blaze.
Digg picked the right time for a comeback.
Reddit dude is involved in the new Digg sadly… Oh and they already are big talking AI for it.
Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit, is not Steve Huffman (Spez/current Reddit CEO). He's done some solid activism and charity work, unlike the piece of shit Spez. The fact it seems he's trying to distance himself from Reddit by trying to revive their former rival is some rich irony.
I’m just here to say fuck/u/spez
Alexis left Reddit suddenly with some weird excuse, too. I think he got word of the stock plan and immediately jumped ship.
he knew it was going to enshittify from them on, took his money and ran.
I just went and checked, and the reddit app has a 4.7 star rating on Google play store, yet when you go read the reviews, they're all 1 or 2 stars.
The official Reddit app is an exercise in travesty. Any third party client for either Android or iOS in the past was better the official solution is even now. It's slow, bloated and UI looks like it's designed for toddlers in mind.
Do you have a favorite app for Lemmy? I’m using Voyager and like it. ☺️
I am on Boost. It's a one time purchase for Android Atleast. The dev is same behind Boost for Reddit(now deprecated) and it implements a similar UI as the previous Reddit Client.
Of course, as you said, there are many FOSS solutions as well. I have heard good praise for Voyager and I think Atleast couple of more clients like Jerboa also exist on F-Droid.
I've just been using the site in my browser for the couple of years or so I've been on Lemmy. I've thought about trying one of the apps but meh. The web interface is so well mobile-optimized as it is
I used several when first starting out here, but kept coming back to voyager.
Who cares? It's reddit. Trash hole of the internet.
Sir/madam/???, this is a community called Reddit. This specifically is where people would care(though I agree with the sentiment).
this keeps happening because the posts rise up. I'm not subscribed.
but I do love watching it descend into trash. hard to say why I don't block it but it shows up for non subscribers for sure.
You can set whether you want to view all/subscribed/local in your Lemmy client.
The communities I'm currently subscribed to don't have that much content so I end up on all frequently. That's how I keep seeing these posts too.
its been in trash since they try to force new reddit down peoples throats.
I just don't understand how PM became DM for so many people. I mean it literally says "PM" in the screenshot, yet OP still changed it to "DM" in their post.
I remember it used to always be PM, then one day everyone suddenly started calling it DM and I just don't know why...
My conspiracy theory is that big social platforms like Instagram and/or Snapchat are behind the change, because the P in PM is for Private and they are fundamentally against privacy, as they profit off your data, including likely analyzing your messages to serve you more relevant ads.
Some people choose to be stupid.
I mean, it isn't very "private" as a messaging platform lol
We need to bring back tunneled DCC.
I use DM because PM stands for Post Meridian.
lol just fuck off already, Reddit.
How long until old reddit is gone completely? Its a damn shame what they have done to that site
If that day comes that'll be it for me and Reddit.
I would be surprised if it lasted 12 months.
do you remember when YAHOO answers was a thing, the old format was like old reddit pages, but permanently changed to the "new reddit format" and everyone hated it. endless scrolling is laggier than just changing pages.
I have already deleted my reddit account - never go back,
he got what he wanted out of reddit, the 249mil in stocks.
How can they remove negative reviews?
devs (reddit) can flag reviews they think are against ToS, then it's up to google to decide what to do with them
With money all things are possible.
mastodon did it recently too
What's the difference between the two? I haven't used reddit since the api shit and I don't remember seeing 2 separate messaging options before that.
By removing the language of "private" from the feature they can now sell your data without having to tell you about it
I did guess that much but I am still interested on what others were talking about and why is chat worse than PM, feature wise.
private messages as its called, when you directly send a message to someone, nobody else can see it. a chat is public and its possible to be join in the chat.
That makes sense, thanks
Wait, how did they delete bad reviews for their app? That doesn't even seem like it should be possible or allowed.
My guess is that Google recently devalued the negative reviews from the API fiasco because enough time has passed. The reviews are (probably) still there, but those 1 star ratings are no longer in the "average" shown to users.
So you go back to your negative review, edit it, and insert a random space somewhere. Did just that.
The equivalent of this in politics would be grabbing all votes not for your party, and shredding them.
Should be illegal and the CEO should be fined billions for it.
Yeah.... Big tech is rotten to the core.
google probably allows the reviews to be astroturfed by indian spammers.
Not trying to defend Reddit here, but what's the functional difference between a chat and DMs? How is one better or worse than the other?
For me, it's that the app I use does not have the chat feature. I'm 99% certain this is just an attempt to push out the revanced users
Chat is only available in the official client, the implementation is closed source. So yeah most likely that.
DMs are exactly what you expect, like private email. Every service has some form of this.
Reddit chat is real time, designed for shorter messages and real-time communication.
The other difference is that everybody uses Reddit DMs and nobody uses Reddit chat. I have my chat turned off as do most others that I talk to.
So this is yet again another example of Reddit management not reading the room and forcing the use of a system people generally don't want.
Management didn't miss the mark, they know everyone still on Reddit are easy marks.
DMs are for directly messaging someone as opposed to commenting on a thread which would be public conversation
reddit chat on the other hand is for bots so that's where you get your spam
So, DM and Reddit Chat is not same thing ?
No, they're two different communication methods. To be fair, it does seem weird to continue maintaining two forms of DM, but also I liked the old school DM style vs the newer realtime message style, personally. I guess I like the distance from strangers.
Also DMs work on both new & old Reddit. Chat only works on new Reddit.
(Unless something has changed recently.)
That's probably a feature. They don't want old reddit to exist.
Oh, and some open source app you build by yourself and put your API key in only work with DM because those app is no longer maintained.
Speaking of API, I don't think there's one for the chat, so removing DMs will greatly reduce the capabilities of RemindMeBot etc.
When new reddit came out they said new features would not be back ported. I saw that as a feature.
Oh I get it now
No, I had my chat hidden because I primarily used old Reddit, and so I pretty much never looked a it. Made 0 sense to me. If somebody wanted something in private, they can send me a DM.
I didn't even realize people used the chat on there. When it rolled out, it was almost exclusively bots lol
it was for bots, still but barely, i think they gave up on it.
chat is more public, and prone to spammers. PM/DM is a private message to someone that the public cant see.
Digg will be removing the comment sections below the links to focus on link content itself.
And when that doesn't work, they'll change it to Fanmail.
Yes this is substack. They will mail you daily if you sub.
I'm going put a new review
Probably
How did they remove bad reviews, and on which platform? To my knowledge neither Google Play nor the App Store allows developers to do that, so it would have to be a more complicated situation with Google/Apple collaboration.
On both Google play and the apple app store you can report reviews for violating policy
Yes, so either the reviews were all death threats, in which case I'm fine with them being removed, or Google/Apple is secretly collaborating with Reddit.
My guess is many could be removed under the guise of being off topic, addressing Reddit itself and not the app specifically.
they probably allow astroturfing, alot of reviews sites do that.
Not at all bothered I am permabanned.
Maybe this applies to some. But consider the conservative whose stomach does a flip flop whenever they just see a fat woman, a trans-person, or a black man.
They hate that flip flop, and the only way they think it'll ever go away is if you remove those people from society.
Makes sense tbh, having two separate systems of private one-on-one communication wasn’t that logical.
"makes sense" would be removing the chat that never should have existed in the first place.
Yeah ok sure, but given that the chat existed this isn’t surprising. I’m not enamoured with Reddit’s choices (obviously, we’re on Lemmy), but the reaction here feels pretty dumb.
Huh? They added the chat in like 2017 as part of their push to enshitify the site and make it a social network lol. I thought it was stupid then, and I still don't see why we need it. Reddit is (was) designed to be like a forum. You post, and you wait for an answer. It wasn't meant for real-time conversation. I don't even see how that fits into the site? The majority of chats I get are NSFW spam bots, and the rest are messages that I see months later because I have chat hidden and only see it on really rare occasions when I have to leave old.reddit a DM would have been answered much faster lol
It makes sense if you want to force users to use the app. It's what put the nail in the coffin for facebook for me.
The patched 3rd party apps were the first that came to my mind... Gladly I barely use the DMs feature, even less the chat feature lol.
Delete your phone's texting app.
What? You can just call them. Having two separate systems of private one-on-one communication isn't that logical.
im surprised they even kept it this long, considered even bots gave up on it.