Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/are-reddits-replacement-mods-fit-to-fight-misinformation/Open linkView original on lemmy.world1586
Comments381https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/are-reddits-replacement-mods-fit-to-fight-misinformation/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Oh Lord
Thank God I wasn't the only one who went WTF. That's like one of the simplest things I learned as a mod in my first 2 days. You gotta update the sidebar twice for both versions of it. It's been over a month since they probably took over and they still don't know this.
I love this article but it also makes me sad like with the old r/canning mods pointing out the unsafe material the new mods left up.
Sadly, even before the mod purge many subs couldn't get that right. I don't know how many discussions I had over the years about things that appeared in the sidebar, only to find the other person was looking at a completely different version of it. New.reddit.com was a problem from the start.
That's so true lol. Long story below but it deals with a fuck up some mods did with the old/new rules & automod.
I once had to deal with a major fuck up that the previous mods left me as they all fucked off to mod the next version of the console the subreddit was for. On the day they added me and two others, they practically said bye and good luck but didn't give us any control of the sub. They never touched the sub & the two other new mods quit or didn't touch the sub too. Was fun to be the sole mod with a subreddit of 5 million people for like 5 months....
The issue was that on the day before the old team fucked off, one of them changed the automod to automatically remove any post that dealt with support. It was set up that so the "support help" flair that any user could pick, would trigger the automod to remove it and then warn the user they would be banned if they didn't post it in the correct support thread.
Buuuuut the automod stated the rule wrong compared to the New Reddit version and mobile app people were flocking to modmail freaking out that they were about to be banned for trying to ask help to fix their console. AND it never stated what support thread or gave a link to it which made everyone ask on modmail for that too.
I had to deal with hundreds of modmails alone while learning how to code automod since the old mod refused to fix it even though I stated how people were freaking out. Thankfully I got help from somebody else that gave me tips on automod and how to correctly code it.
It turned out the automod was only stating the old.reddit rules and nobody had changed the new.reddit rules to match it. I used RIF to mod so I only saw the old sidebar lol.
I wanted to say all that because i realized that experience I had with basically being left to hang is how all these new mods probably have been for the last two months. All these features with no help or support from past mods would suck so much. I eventually snapped and called out all the old mods for how shitty they were for leaving one of the biggest subreddits on Reddit to a single person before leaving the team.
End of the long story lol. Sorry for making you read all that 😆 I just really hate how the new.reddit format can fuck up sooooo much shit.
No, I enjoyed reading all that. I was never a mod but was on reddit enough to pick up some things. Thank you for the window behind the scenes.
Function and design parity between versions? I don't even know what that means. Would that require teams to talk to each other? Because we nixed that to prevent unionization.
There probably isn't an old.reddit.com team in the first place, so no talking is needed.
chef's kiss
The kiss of electricity 💗
HVAC specialist's kiss
To be fair, the amount of people automating their HVAC system with "a raspberry pi and a bit of python" in there with nobody batty an eye has been high long before the purge. Some people mess with everything they can without understanding any of what they're doing.
How can I use a sonoff to control my fireplace guys?
Remember the Kickstarter candle light which could be lit remotely but not put out remotely?
Was it funded?
we talking about gas or electric? The Internet goes out and you suddenly can't turn off the gas...
I liked it as a general place. Pretty much all smart home stuff works with home assistant so it was nice seeing everyone's ideas and devices regardless of platform.
No comment. Moderators are the key to Reddit's success, and they have been treated like shit and will continue to be treated like shit.
Jesus. I can from time to time, I used to be a regular on /r/canning. The attention to detail re food safety was one of the best things about the sub, as you really can kill yourself and others if you piss about.
Botulism is nothing to fuck around with. I'd rather play with something safe like burning thermite than that stinky crap ever again.
Botulism has no smell, taste or colour change though.
Then that can of food was contaminated with something else as well. It definitely had botulism in there though with that bulge.
Won't someone think of the poor landed gentry!?
How did volunteers who run reddit's for-profit business for them for free end up equated with landed gentry?
I think you're responding to a half-assed attempt at sarcasm. It was spez who originally called mods landed gentry.
Maybe so! Always hard to say with the range of opinions I see on the internet these days
Hey now, I'll have you know I only ever whole-ass my sarcasm!
-Steve "spez" Huffman, days before he democratically forced protesting subs to reopen and removed mods.
That's a really good question to ask Reddit's CEO as he is the one who said that.
Landed gentry is when someone works for no pay in service of a lord, right?
I'm certainly not defending spez and I wholeheartedly agree that this business model is daft, but with all that said... for every responsible dedicated knowledgeable reddit mod, there's a dozen who find fulfilment in being fief lords.
It was all fun and games until reddit threatened to de-mod them, then suddenly "for the good of the community" they decided that bending over was the only option.
Wow! Who knew when you kick your volunteer mods who curate content for you for free to the curb that overall quality would decrease?
I hate what Reddit is doing, but I also hate your casual homophobia. Aren't you sure, you would be a better fit for Reddit than the fediverse?
Did they edit their post and lemmy glitch out? The comment is 4m old, but your reply is 6m. There's no marking that it's been edited either, so something's wrong.
My comment is nowhere to be found now
I am posting from kbin, it shows me that their post is 25 minutes to my 10 minutes ago.
Weird. I'm using Jerbao from lemmy.world.
I just stumbled across this, but I made a comment last night and when I went to check the backlash this afternoon it was gone. I was pretty disappointed.
I know multiple queer people who use "removed" in a way that lets them take ownership of the word rather than allow it to be a slur. But importantly, there's context to them saying it that makes it clear it's not a slur. It'll be among friends who know them well enough, or on dating profiles/kink websites where it's abundantly clear from how they use it and everything else they've written that it's them reclaiming the word.
Your comment doesn't have that context. You're an anonymous stranger in a thread filled with anonymous strangers, and there's nothing about your comment that implies you're not using the word as a slur. In fact, the way you used it was as a pejorative. It comes off as offensive and inappropriate.
Uh. Let's not use the f slur shall we?
FARM
I mean the article is just former mods repeating what you're saying, it's not like they're reporting anything new happening. Also includes some examples of stuff that is ultimately irrelevant for reddit as a platform, such as canning and electric garage doors.
That stuff absolutely is relevant, because having the right info for those things is crucial, because acting on the wrong info can literally kill you.
The reason why Reddit content is valued so highly by users (and search engines) is because it was seen to have some level of curation to it, due to the efforts of the volunteer moderators who took their "job" seriously. They felt that it was vitally important to weed out dangerous info. And that basic safety effort is likely all that is saving Reddit from a massive lawsuit once someone tries to fix their garage door the wrong way and dies.
It's like Reddit made a list of things that sane companies do to protect their brand and reputation, and made a point of doing the exact opposite.
I dont know how to break this to you but there has always been a LOT of incorrect bullshit on Reddit, and it's always done just fine.
If the Boston Bombing didn't do the platform in, canning surely wont.
It’s not about Reddit. The platform will continue. It’s about the communities with some built-in danger reducing the bar for safety, potentially leading to death.
The internet is pretty callous, but someone dying over this would be bad, right? That’s still a living person who might not do enough research or follow the unsafe article and get hurt or die. Reddit as a platform aside, and even if you or someone else believes they should have been more careful, people dying in part because of this is the issue.
If a single one of those niche subreddits disappears, the site will be fine. So, sure, you can argue they're individually irrelevant to Reddit as a platform, I guess. But Reddit having a vast collection of niche subreddits is what keeps the platform alive. Do you think people would be nearly as engaged in the long term if it was only world news, politics and memes? Those broad categories are going to have the widest appeal but they're not what a lot of people stay for. They stay so they can discuss their favourite TV show, the specific game they're playing right now, the niche hobby they're interested in, the particular celebrity they're weirdly obsessed with, that incredibly specific kind of porn that gets them off.
And there's a reason a lot of people add "reddit" to the end of their Google searches - there are all kinds of niche subreddits with information they're looking for about a particular issue they're having right now. If I'm having issues with my electric garage door, having a high-quality, well-maintained forum dedicated to the subject - filled with experts and knowledgeable enthusiasts - is exactly what I need, and Reddit had that.
Memes might have a broader appeal and be more monetisable right now, but losing all the niche subfora is something that will hurt Reddit in the long term.
Imagine the website being famous for its niche information becomes the place with “only bad information on it”
God it’s almost like he did this shit on purpose.
It's relevant for Reddit as a home for niche topics, but maybe they're not interested in being that anymore
Yeah it's a weird article. "There's some misinformation on the internet!"
Wow this is the part that made me laugh the most. One of the first things I learned when as a mod was that you had to change the side bar in both old.reddit and the newer version since they both have different sidebars.
I never even realized that the loss of whole mod teams could make this simple feature unknown by the new team.
There are a huge amount of redditors these days who have no idea old reddit ever existed and the first time they heard of 3rd party apps was when Reddit announced they were pricing them out of existence. Naturally, a lot of those people are going to become mods now and their ignorance about fundamental aspects of the site is glaring.
This is only tangentially related but I started using reddit 13 years ago and the userbase has become increasingly unrecognizable in recent years. But what makes me truly feel like a dinosaur is seeing six month old accounts refer to reddit as "an app"... It's bizarre to me that so many people's exposure to reddit is limited to the worst way to possibly use the platform (the official app).
I remember Reddit 13 years ago and it really was a different place. The whole calling it an app was something that annoyed me too lol.
I also still remember my first reddit experience was BaconReader on the Windows 7 phone lmfao. I'm old.
At least you haven't met people referring to the internet as "wifi" and didn't have a 16 year old say they "needed at least 8GB of memory on a laptop to store music" (this was about 6 or so years ago). They thought that the RAM specs (aka memory) was the same thing as storage on phones. I saw his brain melting when I tried explaining it to him and was confused by my saying "phones have both memory and storage, the same as a laptop or desktop".
Everything has been an app first for years now. Not sure when it switched.
Well yeah, when reddit just picks up whatever volunteers yell loudest, they don't exactly get experienced mods. Those people all left reddit already.
Tons of mods don't know, as all of the sidebars on old.reddit of many newer subs are blank
And that's the problem right there.
Reddit shat away the experienced people and gave the reigns to brown-nosers
Meh, that's their problem. I'm sure the subreddit I used to mod has been shut down. It was dead anyway. CTCD, but few remember the stupid dog
One of the mods on a sub I moderated got compromised, and the css of the sub got turned to cancer as part of a site wide attack.
I got a few PMs bringing it to my anttention and fixed it/demodded the culprit. A day later, I remembered new Reddit and saw that it was changed in the attack as well. Not a single one of the 1M+ subs brought it to my attention. Either they weren’t using new Reddit, or they didn’t care.
Does CSS carry over to the official reddit app?
I think the new Reddit settings carry over which is joust text and a few color options.
haha
I also have the feeling that the comments started to suck a lot more. It's starting to feel like comments on Youtube or Instagram, not like real people having a somewhat reasonable discussion about the topic.
Yep, interactions are definitely becoming more toxic. Indeed it starts to feel like youtube. I adopted Reddit at fisrt because of how friendly the community felt. That was 8-9 years ago and that time is clearly gone. Lemmy is nice, I hope it will keep growing.
I've noticed YouTube comments have actually become more positive (though still mostly useless). It seems YouTube has implemented some algorithm where it prioritizes "positive" sentiment comments above all. That's why all the top comments on popular videos are generic platitudes.
For example, go on any MrBeast video and read the top comments. They are all praising MrBeast for his videos and hard work. Finding any negative comment is difficult. On the other hand, if you go on a Reddit discussion about MrBeast, you'll find plenty of people complaining about him.
MrBeast is just an example, I'm sure we all have our own opinions about him but that's not the point I'm trying to make. In fact, the same is true for any popular YouTube channel. Even political channels, where you'd expect to see heated debates in the comments, mostly showcase top comments agreeing with the video.
This video's comments, YT had no good comments to push to the top
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=CRPHp2EjNR8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Anecdotal, but I’ve personally noticed a lot more open hostility in comment sections. I’m noticing that it’s starting to make me feel like I felt when I still had Instagram and FB: Lousy.
So I’m now making a conscious effort to use it less and hopefully stop it all together, one day.
That feeling of dread when you notice you have a reply in your inbox
Who is "you"?
If it can be a front of the culture war, it will become one. Society has polarized, and so, in turn, has public discourse.
.. and there are too many bots in the comments.
I think that is just you projecting. Also, have you seen new star wars show Ashoka? I heard its the best show of the year!
Enjoy the show with some Pepsi™ Max
DRINK VERIFICATION CAN
The last thing I read before quitting Reddit for good was someone calling me a prick in a pinned post on my profile telling people to go to Lemmy. Needless to say, I'm not sorry I left.
Yep. I was casually talking about which country to move to for getting a master's in a computer science-related field and I got lambasted just because I mentioned that I graduated from fine arts, despite that I've explicitly mentioned that I was going to move away from that field anyway and that the programs I plan to move to allow undergraduates from any background.
because it's just made to make you upset somehow. the cynical nature of reddit is x100 now
Wow, ive been away for a bit. I heard AITA is gone sour, (rspash havn a good time i guess) what else?
Good. Fuck Reddit.
I love watching them crash and burn. Greedy dicks
They've definitely entered the second half of FAFO territory!
Or the third step in enshitification.
I can't put my finger on it, but I think there's been an uptick also in posts purely in the form of increasing engagement. Safe 'bets' on getting responses (i.e. ++ to AskReddit), remarkably bland headlines, and just shit that reminds me of controversy of the "jumpstart" of automated bots they used in the earlier days.
A lot of suspicious "wholesome" posts on all, too. Seems like an astroterf to make the whole thing more digestible.
I've been half turn between blaming spez for that, trying to keep "engagement" numbers up so he can IPO and walk, vs blaming karma bots. And then I thought, "Why not both?"
Pretty sure one of the new (announced?) changes is that people will be able to get money from being popular enough. Encouraging "engagement" and karma farming over actually using the site as a human.
My understanding is that that's an expansion of reddit's earlier cryptocurrency effort, where users in like 3 subreddits could earn reddit moon tokens. Which is nice and all, but it's about as reliable as any other cryptocurrency; it follows reddit's usual policy of never giving out anything of real value and making other people do the work; and since they're "awarding" it themselves, that means they have the main stash of moons in hand and they're the ones who will "win big" if moons ever takes off.
Mods weren't ever supposed to anybody but janitors. That isn't in a derogatory tone. The anonymous userbase was the original value proposition of reddit. The expertise came from random nobodies. Usernames didn't matter on reddit because nobody looked at it. It seems this is long forgotten history from a time when the internet was primarily IT nerds.
By the time mods were becoming somebodies, reddit was past its prime. Once the power structures started forming it was over. As we're seeing now reddit is hinges on single point of failure. The expertise among the userbase has gradually left the platform long before this API stuff. A long slow process years in the making.
Internet janitors are a dirty but necessary job not unlike the real world. Somebody has to scrub toilets and pick produce. People are a-holes on the internet who need to be put in their place. Reddit has long since become too hoity-toity for that. Now mods are supposed to be experts in their field. Too high to be digital toilet scrubbers. Too scared of "muh free speech" to janitor the Greater Fuckwads anymore. So reddit is an asylum run by the inmates. Expertise can't be assed to contribute to a dumpster.
On another note. The imgur purge has also contributed to the barren wasteland of reddit content history. So many dead posts.
But you can't be a 'janitor' on a sub like r/canning without understanding canning. You can't know who is posting unsafe information unless you know what is unsafe. That's the problem.
Thank you for using canning as an example. This is a excellent choice because it is a situation where people think they know what they're doing and they are just basically posting recipes for botulism. On Facebook there are the rebel canner groups and in those groups you're not even allowed to mention the word of botulism or the mods will ban you. Because even warning somebody that something is unsafe goes against those communities standards. Canning is a prime example of where the admins have to have actual knowledge to pull off the job.
You should really read the article. At least the first bit
What a relevant username
To be fair, the linked article used r/canning as an example, not me.
I run a cryptography subreddit and we have the same problem. You don't necessarily need to be an expert in everything, but you absolutely MUST be able to tell who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't
This is, unironically, the perfect job for librarians.
Not libertarians though
Isn't that similar in real life? Taking care of the elderly and sick, firefighting etc. are or have very specialised 'janitor'-like tasks that need specific knowledge.
The user base was supposed to be the main arbiter of such things.
Doesn't work for certain topics
Because reddit is largely devoid of expertise by now. This is talking in circles. The point is that the user base well stocked with a healthy breadth of knowledge is able to call out bad posts. We both agree subreddits aren't working. It is for these reasons. Relying on sole expert moderators doesn't work.
It is more that Reddit wanted its moderators to not be anyone important, especially under the current CEO. Ditching the default subs, firing Victoria, heavily maiming r/all, and other actions were geared to prevent mods from gaining power over Reddit. On the flipside, Reddit maintained the mod ranking based on when a mod joined specifically to keep communities from forming more legitimate methods of mod selection.
Mods were supposed to be weak while being scapegoats for Reddit in case something went wrong.
They became the equivalent to automated customer service lines. Nothing but bots with no humans available to address concerns. Any attempt to contact a mod generally resulted in an arrogant reply.
the free speech argument doesnt really make sense as reddit was founded on being "the last bastion of free speech"
Free speech versus civility. Say what you want but don't think you won't get punched in the face for being an asshole. On the internet you should absolutely be able to get punched in the face. The virtual version of that is being modded. Which is apparently tantamount to human rights violations these days so mods have had to walk on eggshells. It's no wonder the old guard have been leaving in droves.
There was never a time in the past when you wouldn't receive a digital face punching for being an ass. As time went on people started giving up on reddit. Especially mods who cared to foster communities people wanted to use. Mods became glorified bot operators. "Automated customer service lines" as someone else said. And so the trolls have completely run amok on that platform. Usually there is no getting hold of a real human moderator. Other times they're so checked out they themselves get trolled into banning anyone but the griefers.
really? seems to me reddit started banning more and more not even for trolling, but for posting in the "wrong" subreddits, or for using slurs whereas back then reddit had slurs all over the place highly upvoted and anyone complaining was downvoted and spammed
Waiting for the Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliot of mods to show up...
Hi there!
I want to believe!
Being a mod is pretty fun sometimes!
Have you checked out ![email protected] yet?
Every couple of weeks I come back and check lemmy to see if the top post isn't about reddit. Not yet.
I'm fine with this - many of us were on Reddit for over a decade and had to cut cold turkey when they killed the site. We're here hoping Lemmy will replace it, so feels natural to speak of the old "shell" site.
Yeah, it always feels like asking about an ex girlfriend. I want to not care, but it's difficult not to.
Also, whether or not one uses reddit/twitter/Facebook, the state of social media is worth discussing, its important.
There are certain redditors who always appeared in comments from several subs I was following, and I’m very happy to see some of the same names popping up regularly here, too.
Hello, it’s me, theangryseal. You might recognize me from nowhere. But I’m everywhere now. I’m the shirt on your back buddy. I’m the wheels on your track buddy.
Now that’s an obscure reference. Enjoy it.
Yes! Seen so many familiar names, been a bit surprising
Sir this is [email protected]
That, plus articles from Ars Technica discussing Reddit generally get a fair bit of traction on this community because it's a semi-big name publication discussing Reddit in a negative light, which further confirms the stance most users on Lemmy already have about Reddit
Do note, though, that the parent company that owns Reddit also owns Ars Technica.
It's one of the biggest trash fires of the century, watching petulant fuckwits tear down functionally competent institutions and replacing them with nazis, spam and sockpuppets. certainly deserves the attention it's getting.
great job musko and spez, you idiots
You have a way with words, and I'm loving it.
tyvm!
Hey, one man's narcissism is another man's testing the effect of accelerated decay in Fortune 100 companies. Maybe their grandfathers left them a Brewster's clause in their wills. You never know!
lol thanks for the chrotle, this was worth reading.
That's a bit misleading. This is the first top post about Reddit in quite a while; it's nothing like it was here a couple of months ago.
I've been off Facebook for >5 years now but I still comment on news about fb
Subscribe to different communities. Most posts I see are politics, racecars (until I blocked it) and non English communities (until I block them)
Scrolling through all posts is fine. Communities are not (outside of memes).
I did a bit to try to keep up ![email protected] but it felt like I was posting to no one. Got basically no engagement. I stuck with it for a few months, because I understand the Catch 22, but it didn't seem like it was going anywhere anytime soon.
For league, at least, Reddit is the only option. I doubt it's the only community in that position.
This is my struggle too. Lemmy is great for the current events and entertainment stuff. Doesn’t have enough volume to replace the local or niche subreddits for me.
I personally am not into League but still wanna branch out, if you got any other communities thats niche but interesting, reply to me
It's not like it's overrunning !worldnews or something. This is !reddit. You can block it.
It's almost like we all used to use reddit like 2 months ago so are interested what's happening with it, crazy
Hang on, sometimes a Linux sub will post something about how they hate Windows.
On your Subscribed feeds? Because this is literally the fuck Reddit community you're looking at and if you don't want that filter it.
To be fair, the content quality on Lemmy has been about the same from what I've seen.
Bots all over the place, low-effort quips instead of discussions bubbling up, lots and LOTS of low-quality armchairing, personal attacks and flaming instead of actual discussion....etc
It was good for a month or so during the reddit 3rd party app purge, but quickly went downhill.
Look at the quality of mods they're getting.
The r/diving subreddit got a mod who claim to be an avid diver with 21 dives across 7 oceans. And the subreddit drama link
That mod is hardcore powertripping, lol. Why do people get so puffed up for being essentially forum janitors? At least 4chan mods could take it on the chin when the community made fun of them. Reddit mods have the thinnest skin and the arbitration skills of Judge Dredd.
I got irritated with the asshole mods on AITH and gave myself a new alt aita_mods_are_all_incels. They really really didn't like that, some incel girl mod actually sent a message saying she's not and deleted it.
Fucking tools the lot of them.
One day, I had to tell someone that they should research pet safety before giving other people pet safety advice. This person was recommending people to feed their dogs things that are well known to seriously poison and harm them. Apparently, according to that person, all dogs can eat anything because their grandma's one dog was fine.
I responded with links showing that the food was in fact harmful, and a lovely mod banned me for "arguing". It filled me with rage. Not because I was banned, but because the OG misinformation was still up, but all of the corrections were removed. Other people's comments correcting it were removed, too. Fuck accurate information intended to keep pets safe, I guess.
I hope that the random people who saw the post looked it up before trusting that person.
Reddit went from "I append site:reddit.com when querying google for well-founded and nuanced info" to the opposite.
That user is the alt of a well-known troll. They know exactly what they're doing.
I'm still not convinced that the /r/diving mod wasn't trolling the admins with that post.
It's Esne. They were.
Probably the best written article I’ve read on this subject. All concerning things in the article that Reddit absolutely doesn’t care about. Canning milk? What the fuck.
Edit: I forgot that condensed milk is a thing…wondering if people can make it at home?
Mmm. Nothing I like more than a 5-year-old can of milk.
Ah yes, the 2018. That's a good vintage. Aromas of pestilence and disease overwhelm the nose. An enticing menagerie of dumpster and botulism coats the palette with a subtle finish of garlic sharts lingering between sips. A pronounced effervescence from years of fermentation leaves a most pleasant mouthfeel. 95/100
Would that technically be a delayed action grenade?
Chemical warfare agent for sure
I always buy dehydrated/condensed milk in cans, is that not normal?
Oh I’m dumb lol…can you do that yourself?
Condensed milk is mostly sugar.
Yes you can. Take milk, simmer for an hour. Thats basically it
Edit: step 3 would be NOT canning it. Keep it in the fridge like a normal person.
I feel like you're one of the people this article is talking about.
Now there's a difference between cooking and canning.
You can safely make sweetened condensed milk in the home kitchen. What you can't do is safely preserve it.
Safe: I want to make a key lime pie tonight, I've got my limes, I've got a pie crust, I've got my eggs...no sweetened condensed milk. Grocery store is closed too. Okay, but I've got milk and sugar, so I'll just mix some sugar and milk in a saucepan and simmer it down, then I'll use that to make my pie tonight.
Unsafe: I'm going to make a big ol' batch of sweetened condensed milk, pour it into mason jars, boil 'em for ten minutes and put them in the cupboard so that it's ready whenever I want a key lime pie.
There's LOTS of stuff that's safe to cook and eat immediately that's not safe to put in jars on the shelf.
Thanks, I think I misunderstood the above, I thought they were saying you could make canned at home.
Never knew what was in key lime pie (it's not much of a thing here), so that's cool to know!
It's not all that hard to make; you may have to substitute ordinary limes for key limes as they can be difficult to find in most of the world but you should give it a try.
You can make condensed milk at home. You absolutely shouldn't can it at home. That's a pretty big difference.
Sorry @Tar, I misunderstood what you were saying.
I think you can make sweetened condensed milk at home but not safely preserve it. Have you noticed there's no shelf stable normal milk? There's no dairy products on the shelf on the Welch's aisle. Even given industrial equipment, the best you can do is evaporated milk.
Insert pikachu face
I think I've seen this effect. Felt a bit smug when I saw a post of r/linux talking about how the quality of the posts was so poor after the "reddit migration".
I've noticed it too that the quality of posts in certain subreddits I cared about just felt a lot more 'empty'. Which is both good and bad. Good cause Reddit got what they deserved and people stuck to their morals by dispersing to more federated communities across the web; but I also feel a tad sad that the subreddit championing a vision I want to see that took a long time to get there is now gonna leave a way pooer impression on anyone looking to join.
But eh, I'm not sure many if any people's mind on trying out Linux were decided due to a reddit post before. ( Feel free to tell me otherwise if I am wrong on feeling. )
It's a real shame that communities like that couldn't more easily uproot and move en masse to a new instance on Lemmy or similar.
Any users that cared probably moved on too quickly for something like that to take shape.
I think my bigtest issue with Lemmy is that I waited a bit from the huge migration because it just felt so incomplete and it was such a mess to jump into but now that I finally joined it feels dead with lots of subs basically dead with only some posts from months ago like the overzealous people decided this was dead and disappeared.
I'm kind of glad that the subreddits/communities that I follow hear are slow; At least the news ones.
Really the only pages I would like to see super "lively" would be the funny memes ones.
Which ones do you wish were more active?
it's ok.
spez said revenue isn't affected, so he got what he wanted. he doesn't give that much of a shit let me tell you
The purpose of reddit is to keep people engaged while seeing ads. That's it.
it's odd because I find lemmy more engaging, but perhaps its because of clickbait discussions that come up on the first page.
Lemmy is built for the community. Reddit just wants you to stay long enough to look at ads.
Wait, reddit has ads?!
Good grief, thank God I left
Try the official app. It's awful.
Upvotes and downvotes on ads are just cosmetic, they don't do anything.
It hurts their feelings, sometimes that’s enough
Anything but. They'll be using that feedback to profile you, to better target ads at people like you. It's like Facebook's "I want to see less ads like this". It's to give an appearance of control. But really it implicitly means "show me more of what I didn't reject". Even if you're there anonymously they'll be associating any interaction you make with the ad with the subs you visit, the types of comment you make etc
Or even better, block them.
Then get your whole account blocked as a gift by Mr. Dont-Block-Our-Friends Huffman Musk. (No, dont make fun of his name! It was a gift from his mother.)
Replace "reddit" with any free service. Welcome to the Internet.
And before you "ackshually Lemmy" me, someone is paying for it. Perhaps even you, if you've donated to your home instance.
People donating aren't pushing shitification in search of profits though...
The Fediverse - being "free as in beer" rather than "free because you're the product being sold" is different.
It's different because it costs somebody money. If you're being an asshole on commercial social media, the company has financial incentives to keep you around. You're bringing in more eyeballs.
If you're being an asshole on a Fediverse server, it costs an admin something. They have to deal with complaints. They have potential reputational loss or defederation for their server. The server that they pay for!
Admins are paying for the server, so they must decide: is all this bullshit worth it? Is it something they really believe in and stand by with their real money and energy?
I think that changes the calculus of assholes, bots, and Onlyfans on social media.
100% correct. It's a powerful illusion because back in the day it was a real site with real people on it. It's taking some folks a long time to pick up on this.
There is almost no real content on there. If it's not a bot / AI, it's some shill with an agenda. It's all about the ads and clicks.
I've noticed a huge increase of ragebait AITA posts every time I check the front page. They're all pretty similar - disowning a child or deciding not to attend a wedding. And people fall for it every time. It's kind of sad to see one of the smartest places on the internet turn into social media junk food.
The people replying might be bots too.
Umm, reddit readers, most never even acknolaging the exodus situation publically, began to really bug me. Knowing this, your words now stronger than ever throw into question their nature because:
That likely means both audences and creators. AITA is almost completely hyperreal now. Few non fictional interactions exist anymore. Was it always like this?
What's reddit?
I think it's a website for people to ask celebrities whether they will fight horse sized ducks or duck sized horses.
Let's talk about Rampart instead, shall we?
By the way, have you seen the banner of this community yet?
What do you mean by the banner? The barbie image? It's very colourful
Omg you guys are amazing, thank you for the laugh. I was a reddit user since 2011. So many good memories, but I haven't been back since the day of the app collapse.....
WhEn dOeS tHe NaWaLl BaCoN?????
Some sort of bad lemmy clone
Thanks for the loud laugh.
But did you roll on the floor?
Fortunately, I did not. Hard floors.
I hear it's kinda like Digg
I have no idea
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=Kf1A8Ukk5Us
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Faces?
Something about putting things in cans
Is that why 90% of everything is the same unfunny reposts from 80 years ago now?
So nothing's changed then?
Due to the lack of visible karma, people repost way less on Lemmy than on reddit.
It's less about visible karma and more about how high karma can push you to r/all faster, meaning people can sell those accounts.
You just have bots that auto post to lemmy from reddit instead, and flood the feed with no intervention.
Which may actually be worse.
I block them. Did a big rant about that very topic a while back.
lemm.ee made plans to block bots.
Are they at least labeled as bots?
No, this is business as usual for Reddit
WELL I FOR ONE AM SHOCKED!
absolutely shocked! who could seen that coming?
Someone using old.reddit who can still see the sidebar warning?
I’ve been a redditor for ~14 years and knew reddit was dead ever since they scapegoated ellen pao to make a bunch of shitty changes. And the only reason I’ve been able to use reddit this long was old.reddit. They are so insistent on change for the sake of change, and change for the sake of satisfying investors and advertisers. They don’t give an iota of a fuck about their actual users.
You know how spez was bitching that reddit never turned a profit? I've said before it's his fault for never understanding reddit. Reddit's treasures are it's community and it's commentary. Instead of focusing on those, he's spent tens, maybe hundreds of millions, trying to force reddit into the latest techbro fad - reddit crypto or reddit NFTs or whatever. And then he absolutely fucking panicked once he realized that he'd paid for multiple AI companies to make off with multiple entire copies of one of reddit's treasures (which probably cost tens of millions in itself), and then alienated it's other treasure when he kept doubling down in his panic.
Yeah. Putting all the effort into useless stuff like NFTs, crypto, or really even the whole terrible New Reddit into first making the actual experience better would have been much better. Make people pay for your awesome features after you actually have awesome features.
Instead, they made the user experience worse and worse, and repeatedly broke the tools people used to make it convenient. Not to mention all the bots and bribing mods to promote Subreddits…
Perhaps New Reddit was supposed to be their big break. Too bad it sucks so badly.
I still can't believe they paid they much for Alien Blue, just to deliberately go out of their way to make it so much worse.
"I'm shocked, SHOCKED! Well not that shocked."
I know we all are in rage about reddit’s fuckery, but this says nothing about the state of the website.
we already knew reddit was not the objective truth or wikipedia, but mostly an echo chamber. incrementing the check on the information objectivity will NOT hamper reddit’s growth. we’ve already seen other social media thrive without the weight of fact-checking or their intended purpose (facebook, instagram, I’d dare to say the new twitter as well).
I as all of you would love to see reddit bomb so badly that they’ll all end unemployed and spez under a bridge sleeping with cardboard sheets, but that’s not going to happen soon.
we should stop looking at how badly is reddit doing, and start watching at how to make Lemmy a better reddit instead.
I don't even think about Reddit anymore. Let it fade into obscurity.
Yeah I haven't been back once since they blocked Sync. Hopefully it rots and dies, just like Digg before it.
This. The whole circlejerk about how much better Lemmy is and how people are so glad they left reddit is getting really old, really fast. Meanwhile, any interesting post that would be normally spur fervent and meaningful discussion on reddit has maybe a dozen comments on Lemmy, most of them low effort. Heck, this exact same article on reddit's r/technology has 10x more comments and way more total engagement.
The spam and toxicity here are the same as on reddit with a different tone. Lemmy is just another echo chamber with a different coat of paint, and the only differences are a lack of ads and way less people and diversity to interact with.
Yea. I felt like the article was just nitpicking about not much change at all. Just past mods reminiscing? The nut graph of the write up was not great to begin with and the body wasn't really news...
Turns out purges make everything shittier
Your gif flew away...
how bout that IPO now?
Avoid reddit drama with one simple trick:
Add this to your hosts file
127.0.0.1 *.reddit.*
I had gotten banned over some stupid bullshit near the end of the drama, after i had already been posting here too, and was like 'yeah fuck it.'
Just a few days ago I couldn't resist making a new account simply because of how slow this place is and how often it goes down. Reddit is, absolutely, 500% worse then it ever has been. I'll go with much less content and random outages.
They want to kill the site and license the data. Same with Twitter. It’s the only explanation that makes sense based on what they’re doing.
Nah I think twitter's hit job is more to benefit the people musk owes money.
::CoughsaudisCough:: sorry, should get that looked at.
Yeah, right.
All 7 of them. The other 993 will upboat it for having a meme in the comment
They forgot the "unless it supports their bias" part.
I wonder what will happen if I fire my volunteer work force
You can't fire me, I quit!
Personally I just stopped going to Reddit and don't even check the mod queue. I'll let it burn to the ground.
reddit is rage fuel. i'm so glad to be done with it. it seems everything written there is driven to make you upset or your day worse somehow.
Hate to say it, but Feddy verse is no different.
Nowhere is safe from the shrill endless war of shitty middle class Americans with nothing better to do than stink up every available channel with whatever you dumb shit politics they refuse to shut up about.
Thanks for being a shining example of what the Fediverse is about.
NGL it totally depends. For general news/politics etc yeah.
Some of the more niche subreddits....Its definately much less of that and some of the folks that have been around, arent using default subs. My "home page" looks severely different from the default.
Dunno if this is related but for the first time in my life I've been receiving spam PMs on Reddit in the last few weeks... Very annoying
There are tools to automate that
https://old.reddit.com/r/redditseppuku/comments/14frr4u/reddit_seppuku_how_to/?ref=share&ref_source=link
Delete your account
www.reddit.com/r/redditseppuku
That's their fault
after I got banned from Reddit Admins for single reporting racist comment I decided its best time to leave. i am not going to bow to that racist scum. https://imgur.com/a/8B2dlSQ https://imgur.com/a/ctET6Rb
As per your screenshot & the contained link, you reported this comment as racist?
It sounds to me like you got banned for a good reason, because that was an abuse of the reporting tool.
Reporting a racist comment isn't "abuse".
Even if you think racism is OK if it happens to be against a group you hate, it's still not justifiable to ban someone for bringing it to the the attention of the administrators.
That would achieve nothing except make people afraid to alert the mods.
Thats a bad outcome no matter what.
Probably saying privileged yellow/black folk is not a racism too. /s
On the other hand if you agree, I will appreciate your consistency.
Imagine if you were to replace "white" with "black" or "asian" or "gay" in the text you quoted. Is it now a racist comment?
Those groups don't have privilege.
Imagine that I have that kind of imagination even without your wise input, and that I do not change my opinion on " " being racist or not based on whatever you insert for the perceived skin color.
Just the idea that you have that I would make a difference based on what someone inserts there makes it seem like in your mind it does matter who's being addressed. Because in my world it doesn't matter.
Also, complaining about some "privileged" is not racism in and of itself, and with the addition of "committing atrocities", the commenter on reddit outed themselves as a dumbfuck of a troll. And the previous poster clearly took the bait.
If it doesn't involve oppression of a minority race by an in-power race, it's not racism. Might be prejudism, not racism though. Racism involves a power imbalance that treats as inferior a minority.
Sure is. But "White" is prejudice at worst, not racism. Racism includes the inherent power dynamics and systemic racism against minorities.
So when it done in average African country with total population 5% of white(definetly a majority, swear on
mathmeth textbook) is ok. Basically racism by non-white people is not a racism and there is nothing racist in this statement.I'm not sure if I should mark such absurdity as mere sarcasm.
Its about power, completely devoid of racial lines. It matters If you are given the privlage and act apon convincing yourself of lies. It also matters if you chase power at all costs.
Yes, and racism is also a social hierarchy and systemic structure that utilizes tools of oppression to allow the in-group to have power and control over the out-group. Calling it prejudice alone is not acknowledging the full picture.
Oh my gosh, the closest thing to reasonable and you get a "consult your dictionary" comment.
Yeah, this thread has been fascinating. It's the most basic concept and people are wild'n out. My last comment at the bottom of this thing I think will summarize it well for anyone who reads through it all. I think the biggest concern is why people are so resistant to understanding the additional power/control and systemic shit within racism. I use "gravity" as an example, but when it comes to racism, these are people's lives. And I'd hate to think how invalidating it would make someone feel to hear this "no" and "check the dictionary" shit in a conversation outside of the Internet.
Lol mate, you're being willfully obtuse. As you already know, there is knowledge beyond the confines of the dictionary, and the dictionary is merely attempting to summarize a very complex subject. If you'd like to broaden your perspective, you can turn to the research which is where I'm pulling my definition. If you'd like to understand why it's so important to include those other things I mentioned in the definition, there's plenty of reading opportunities to explain that.
It's more than that, though.
Racism is my favorate word in any spelling bee because of this. So simple its easy to remember. Especially in comparison to 10 letter words.
Hi @[email protected] , would you be so kind and elaborate about, how comment that is aimed on group of people based purely on their skin color is not racist and therefore reporting of it should be punished as it was? I say, it is misusing admin, or mod privileges for sake of spreading hatred against that specific group of people. All people should treat each other equally and nobody should banning people that fight racism by only option they have (had) on that platform, ergo reporting that.
there is a difference between racism and prejudice. that comment is prejudiced but not racist. if white was replaced with black then it would be racist, bc there is an inherently power structure in play meant to create more economic and social opportunities for white people.
I really wish more people understood this 😭
Second one here, the top comments are completely empty! Its odd really
Safety does not matter as much as money and being able to turn a profit. $50 over 5 lives.
Delete your account
www.reddit.com/r/redditseppuku
I haven't deleted mine for one simple reason. I plan to go back in and change all my comments to say the same thing (so long and thanks for all the fish). I'll be damned if I'm gonna let them use my comments to sell for money to people willing to pay the high API costs to train whatever comes after chatgpt. Because if I'm honest it wasn't about screwing over the third party app developers. That was an added bonus for Spez. He has this repository of internet currated data on millions of subjects getting scraped by every company wanting to train a generative AI. Sure he wanted to drive engagement on the official Reddit app. But that's still not gonna net him more money than licensing that data for this use case. And he's willing to sacrifice the site quality as a whole to get it.
Hahaha GTFO you trying to claim the previous mods were experts?
Is there really a community named reddit here? I came here to not be on reddit...
Some people like to watch the news, some people like to stop and look at car accidents... some people like to watch reddit.
This community has a low enough volume that when I notice it, it's interesting.
Better to keep it contained. You'll see the same article posted to less specific communities. Ideally it would all be here and you could just block the whole community.
You could block the community (I think - we can certainly do that on kbin, not sure about lemmy).