Former Digg refugee now Reddit refugee

submitted by PopASquatt from self.Introductions

Hello All,

3 year Digg user turned 9 Year Reddit user. Now it's time to move on to something that I hope will be more of a level-headed grounded website.

Reddit in it's early years was something to behold. A democratic social media aggregrate, which in the early years of the internet was a welcome change from the usual web forums. Newgrounds, Something Awful, Ebaumsworld, even Bodybuilding.com we're some of the more popular places to have discussions about nearly any topic. Populated with active users of all walks of life the internet really was just filled with regular people. Interference from corporations, advertisers, bots, media giants, governments, and NGO's was at a much lesser extent.

The Reddit of today reminds me of the twilight years of Digg in which "Power-users" controlled the content and discussions. Nothing feels organic about it anymore. It's controlled and mainstream, which in my opinion goes against the very spirit of the internet.

It's time for the Reddit monopoly to have some competition again. Anyone else feel the same?

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[–]magnora7 22 insightful - 1 fun22 insightful - 0 fun23 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Hey, welcome. I'm a former digg refugee too. Digg really messed it up didn't they? I'm impressed at how slow reddit's decline has been compared to digg, which basically imploded all at once after the HD-DVD key deletion scandal, quickly followed by the site redesign, which was done to disguise ads as content, to trick users, and increase digg's income.

I also did newgrounds, something awful, ebaumsworld... fark.com also comes to mind, b3ta

Interference from corporations, advertisers, bots, media giants, governments, and NGO's was at a much lesser extent.

I agree, it used to be the exception. Now it's the rule. It's harder to find normal people to talk to online anymore, it seems. It's so much astroturf and bots now, and it's frustrating to use moreso than before.

It's time for the Reddit monopoly to have some competition again

Amen to that. Here's a list of reddit alternatives, run by saidit's admin d3rr, which it looks like he updated just yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/fas4on/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_50/

I specifically recommend www.notabug.io and www.ruqqus.com in addition to saidit, they seem to be pretty high-quality for the most part.

I'm a big fan of alternatives, and more media options! This is what freedom of information looks like.

[–]whistlepig 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

It's harder to find normal people to talk to online anymore

So true... I've actually been going back to irc this year.

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Are there people still on IRC that chat instead of just fileshare? How'd you find them?

[–]whistlepig 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

There are the same ones that have always existed... shared interest is the easy one.. like on freenode, I'm on #linux, #hardware, #reprap, #noagenda etc etc.. For example, right this moment on #reprap they're talking about wikipedia. So people aren't always 100% on topic.

But ... this model works well for other things that IRC doesn't or I wouldn't be here. ;]

[–]muyuu 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm so tired of the preachy politics era we live in. I really miss IRC but to be fair I'm just interacting with people much less. Not only platforms get lost, but people either vanish from conversations, or get radicalised, or just cocoon themselves and just keep a facade online.

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good to know some of the old communities are still kicking on IRC

[–]LockeDemosthenes 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

Beginning of the end was banning "unpopular" conservative subreddits from showing up on the front page.

When i saw a thread about some space drone constructor game skyrocket across r/gaming with thousands of superficial comments and 20k upvotes per hour - each one of those superficial commenters having multi-year accounts with posts across NHL, movies, golf, etc. it struck me that these were huge operations astroturfing reddit for money.

Then came star wars, holy shit, the most inorganic fake social media blitz I've ever seen outside of typical liberal reddit political spam until the recent BLM "stuff."

Reddit is done. Other websites will fall prey to this machine as well. The future is either anonymous astroturfing or verified ID accounts. Both suck.

[–]magnora7 13 insightful - 4 fun13 insightful - 3 fun14 insightful - 4 fun -  (3 children)

You saidit. And also the US presidential election cycles, you can practically see the propaganda swell up in the months prior. And then it suddenly all stops right after the election is over. Shareblue and Cambridge Analytica probably control a good portion of the American social media internet between the two of them, at this point. Internet cultural astroturfing is definitely a "thing" now, and every organization is doing it because it's cheap and very effective. And it's effective, because many people are still under the mistaken impression that social media votes and comments 100% correlate to public opinion. When in reality they can be bought and sold just like giant billboards. Which is basically what reddit has become. A giant billboard.

[–]ManWithABanana 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I will never forget the first time I saw this in action.

The Los Angeles CA area has a subreddit, and very few republican congressmen left. The Democratic party identified one who they could defeat, and decided to work extra hard (spend extra money etc) to defeat this guy.

The subreddit suddenly gets a picture of this Republican, with a title showing unsubstantiated nonsense. It's not even a meme - just a picture of the guy. It's all about the stuff they put in the title, to smear him and get people to vote for the other guy. And from the time I last checked the subreddit (1 am) - no picture posted - to getting into the office (6 am) - the picture has the most upvotes of all time in the subreddit.

It was clearly a phony account getting mass machine upvotes, but it got people super riled up about the congressman and tons of comments from regular posters. Nobody wanted to hear me when I said "Hey something's wrong here".

Same thing OP is mentioning, but this is literally politics.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah it's one of those things, once you notice it, you can't un-notice it

[–]asterias 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There's a similar situation with subs dedicated to specific countries, which are actually controlled by foreign entities.

[–]FreeJulianAssange 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Anonymous works fine. When Digg was better than anything we have now, I had a quite anonymous account and all was fine. It's just a canard by people who want to control information.

In fact if we can't be anonymous, we can't speak freely at all. We all now now in the back of our minds that almost everything we write can be traced to us by law enforcement or others.

Recently I tried to log in to a secondary youtube channel I own, registered to a protonmail adress. I even still knew the password. Yet to "pretect me" google won't let me log in to my own account again EVER unless I give a cellphone number which they than can easily trace to connect with all the other data they have.

Anonymous speech is the only free speech.

[–]twosheds 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Just discovered that not only does yahoo not let you create an email without a phone number, but they "don't support" google voice numbers.

I just want to be anonymous enough that some blue-haired landwhale admin at reddit or some other sjw infested company can't try to get me fired for wrongthink. I'm sure my data at my isp is not safe, I'm sure my data at reddit is not safe, and I'm sure my data at google is not safe - and it's not likely I'd have any legal recourse if some social justice psychopath managed to get me fired.

[–]FreeJulianAssange 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Same here man. I've been censoring myself for years now on most platforms especially the big ones. I work in a field where I could easily be fired for enough rumors (mental health field, with juveniles). Luckily I saw this coming in the times of the Snowden revelations, so well before the cancelling truly began.

Either I'm anonymous, or I can't really speak on many subjects. It is simply too dangerous now. For example: I've smoked weed for 20+ years. That alone could get me fired possibly where I am. I'm not going to test it.

Anyone who thinks you can have honest conversations without anonymity is dreaming the sweet dream of perpetual delusion.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

i years ago had a twitter account, litterally named "fake name" but now they don't let me log into it for same reason you mention.

[–]FreeJulianAssange 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Oh you must ba a Russian BOT then :D. I had a twitter account briefly. Now I read for info, but will never make one again. I am always keeping an eye on new platforms though. Sooner or later one based on privacy must arise and have at least decent success.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I do like to read twitter, lot of trash there but some people post good thoughts, and I'd want to make a name for myself jujst to be able to save peoples twitter accounts I like but yeah anyway it's not worth the trouble

[–]iraelmossadreddit 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

sadly I think reddit will stay around for a long time. The dumb masses are all on the internet now and reddit is like the new "news". They are just fed what they want and there is no real discussion. that's what the dumbed down poisoned food masses on anti depressants and anxiety pills love. It's a well oiled propaganda machine that seems no chance of stopping unless the internet itself is completely changed. Lets be real, if a site like sadit ever got to be any real competition to reddit, the powers that be of conde nast dav would shut this down in a heart beat.

[–]LockeDemosthenes 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's not about toppling them, as the end of reddit is guaranteed already. Its about having open platforms where we can argue about things most of us arent experts in without being censored for given opinions. Without that, reddit has happily and enthusiastically jumped off a cliff headed for the rocks below.

[–]geraldinepoofhauser 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Reddit has been shit for years. Curious as to what they did that's just now making you see.

[–]PopASquatt[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You're right, it has been apparent for many years now that Reddit had eclipsed its "reasonable" golden era. The only reason I hadn't left earlier was the lack of a decent alternative. Saidit looks like it could be that alternative. Chatting with you right now and seeing the responses of many of the other users in s/introductions has got me hopeful. I want people to disagree with me, and elaborate on their perspective. We're not infants. We can be reasonable even during extraordinary times.

[–]sproketboy 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

Yeah same. I think the upvote/downvote is the problem over there. Here we don't do that. :)

[–]FreeJulianAssange 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (9 children)

Actually the lack of downvotes is what would make me drop saidit too if I find a more populated similar thing. I really don't understand it and dislike it.

Like I see some users spam fake news links to their own little websites. Yet there is nothing to do about that. I like the insightful/funny buttons, but they should really bring back the downvote. No downvotes makes this like social media for pussies.

[–]sproketboy 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

some users spam fake news links to their own little websites

There's a report button for that.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

hard to tell if a mod will care or even look at that, best to let things be organically downvoted, let the users decide what sucks, of course that can be manipulated like in reddit they just push a button to give something a thousand downvotes, but well saidit could fake the insiteful and funny numbers too, I do trust them for now tho.

[–]sproketboy 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The problem with downvotes is brigadiering which happens all the time on reddit.

[–]bobbobbybob 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

exactly. Its a method to "cancel" people.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I get that but the answer to that isn't to get rid of the concept of downvotes

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

we look at the reports, and they help us a lot

[–]FreeJulianAssange 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I won't report them because they aren't doing anything wrong.

I want to downvote them, but not have them removed. They have every right to spam their opinion in my opinion. I welcome it. But I would like to be able to downvote. Now I can only ignore and not reply in any way. So what I did is block the users.

[–]bobbobbybob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

i can only ignore / block

better all around. You manage your experience without fucking up other people's

[–]bobbobbybob 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You need to think about it. Not having a downvote halves the power of mass manipulation.

[–]whistlepig 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I'd argue it is the moderators that killed reddit. It was way better before those were introduced.

[–]comments 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

there was a time before moderators?

eta: I was censored here on SaidIt without explanation

[–]whistlepig 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The whole point of the voting system was so it would be self-moderating. You had better controls of what level of negative votes you wanted to show or hide. That was the big plus that sold the idea. This was the day of forums and this model was designed to automatize (or decentralize) moderation and make it the user's responsibility so the site host didn't have to do it.

The idea that the voting system would show what was popular was a secondary benefit in the beginning.

Back then if you turned off the hiding of heavily voted down comments you saw a fair amount of bigoted and stupid crap. But there was also occasionally the very well made argument that most didn't want to hear.

Digg was like that originally... slashdot.org was like that originally..

Remember reddit started 15 years ago. The public internet was 100% about free speech in the 90's and it was only through the 00's that the mainstream became more and more involved that the clamoring for censorship was started. The idea of your reddit's and diggs was to create a model that balanced both ways of thinking and allowed the individual to decide how much censorship they wanted.

Soon after these models became popular and more of the irresponsible public (and advertisers) got involved the more clamor there was for centralized censorship and that is when the sub moderator system was introduced.

Before that time the gross and disgusting comments just got voted down to extreme levels and you had to intentionally click on them to see them. And after the first one you had no excuse for not knowing what you might be getting.

This comment is mostly based on my memory. Although I double checked a couple dates on the wikipedia. ie.. started in 2005 and the subs were started in 2008. I think it was 2006-2007ish when I first heard of reddit and started using it. Originally I was using Digg and Slashdot, but they started top down control and others in the comments there suggested I check out reddit.

[–]Jac0b777 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's up to all of us to make this a place where good, productive, respectful and positive conversation thrives. Since Reddit is in dire need of an alternative and (in my view) Voat is a toxic cesspool (not only of the most blatant racism, but just general toxicity as well), SaidIt seems one of the best alternatives out there.

Welcome! :)

[–]EVERYBODYPANIC 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Although I visit many sites, I find the quality of conversation best here at saidit, and this one thread makes me a bit more hopeful for humanity. All of you are smart, insightful, tactful, polite and aware. Blessings to all.

[–]ManWithABanana 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

God I remember Digg - has it really been 9 years ? Anyway, welcome !

[–]Sebine 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

I shall remain "on" Reddit until my porn subreddits are banned.

I doubt they will be.

But you never know.

[–]FreeJulianAssange 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Former Digg as well. I remember hating the forced switch to reddit, as reddit was always worse than Digg.

And here we are. The cycle continues. The sad thing is it seems to be taking longer for these platforms to die after losing validity. Normies are ruining the internet!

[–]Antifa 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Platform migration is a thing that platforms never think will happen to them.

[–]twosheds 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

No way, myspace is forever!

[–]Silentxsage 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

in 5 years, this site will fucking suck.

[–]comments 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't like the platforms that deceptively censor stuff to fit their agenda.

I hope the switchover can happen more quickly than they probably planned for. They probably have plans in motion already that they're using their information control to advance.

[–]Wild-tangent 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Same. Got my useraccount banned, finally had enough. Worried this place may go the same way as Voat- lots of Q-tards, but hopefully it'll be more than a refuge for 'whatever you can't say on reddit, but nothing else.'

[–]filbs111 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, you might be on to something!

[–]bobbobbybob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A democratic social media aggregrate, which in the early years of the internet was a welcome change from the usual web forums.

ha, youngun.

NNTP protocol from before the days of internet graphics ftw.

And a barrier to entry: At a university or capable of technology configuration.

[–]Wild-tangent 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Sadly, not liking the site's content so far.