Hadn’t realized how reliant upon Reddit I’d become for news and interesting things until after it turned to shit and I quit it. I’ve rediscovered RSS for ex., using reader apps to scan sources directly and read without all the noise—that actually came from someone’s recommendation here in the comments. I’ve found several new sites with deep, knowledgeable articles and discussions, like https://theconversation.com/us (free! No ads! Also discovered through the comments here), and my engagement with articles and their sources has gone WAY up. I’ve stopped reading garbage comment sections, too, and I’m just feeling better mentally as a result, disengaging from the endless, low effort memes/jokes and the mean, toxic comments*. Anyone else?
(Thanks again, admins—really enjoying and appreciating how Beehaw is run!)
Honestly? No. I like Beehaw. But it’s less convenient, with less content. I would rather stop using Reddit, but ultimately I’m just doing the same stuff here that I was there. Then again, I saw little toxicity in the subreddits I was in. Also, adult content is far less accesible.
Again though, I’m pretty happy with Beehaw/Lemmy. I’m sure they will only improve with time.
I’ve noticed I’m spending more time looking at content that I actually want to engage with.
I’ve also been on a huge FOSS hyper-fixation for the past week after replacing reddit with Lemmy. I’ve stopped using Youtube in favour of an open-source front end (Piped), I finally ditched Windows as my main OS and set up EndeavourOS, found an open-source Spotify front-end for desktop (psst) as well as an alternative for mobile (ViMusic).
If anyone has any other open-source software to recommend, hit me up!
If you’re on Android, take a look at f-droid. Kind of like Google Play Store, but for FOSS.
Ive been using Unraid (not FOSS), and there are a Ton of FOSS containers that I play around with all the time. I have one for budgeting, hosting a website, updating Dynamic DNS (website), and a whole bunch of others.
For email, Thunderbird has done a complete re-write, and it’s excellent: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/download/beta/
Man, I’m enjoying life since I got off Reddit, which was when they first announced the API changes. Deleted my account there and then. Same goes with Twitter.
Turns out all these places just churn dumb online drama that is so inaccessible to the general public, that I ended up being a bit withdrawn because I had all this online drama in my head and I couldn’t really talk to folks about it.
Now I’m ironically much more sociable that I’ve moved over to the fediverse. Outside of the reddit drama, conversations have been much more human. And even with the drama, I’ve learned to stop caring about such things - everything is in change, it will be okay. Companies don’t matter - people do.
This might sound weird, but bare with me!
I save funny stuff, goofy things, and positive content in a folder for my son to browse through, which keeps him from looking for content himself in parts of the internet unknown. He loves it, and I had been able to keep the folder updated with a good amount of new images daily, thanks to R×ddit.
However, lately that has changed. Posts deemed as “wholesome” and “made me smile” now increasingly have the edge of a dystopian nightmare (“look at this father reuniting with his son who he thought was dead amidst this war-torn country! Awwww! Wholesome!” and “this teacher was surprised when his students gave him something that his paycheck should have been able to adequately provide but he is not actually paid enough to afford it! Awww! Made me smile!”). I’ll find animals doing something “cute”, only to realize that behavior is caused by bad or abusive care.
Now I struggle to find things that are actually funny or nice without having a sexist edge, a horrifying implication, sexual undertones, or some kind of underlying dark tone.
I am finding less content here, but the content I am coming across seems to be much more genuine! I’ve actually saved quite a bit more things than I’ve seen on R×ddit within the past year.
Oh yes, absolutely. I spend a lot more time watching tutorials on YouTube, because I’m not having pointless discussions with people who automatically hate me and dismiss me as soon as they learn my age (I’m ten years too young to be a “Boomer”, but to the kids on Reddit a “Boomer” is apparently anyone over 40). Also, of course, I’ve discovered Beehaw, which is awesome and far more chill. I’m not sure if I got away from ageism, but hopefully?
I’ve also done a lot more reading. I’ve finished two books in the last three days, which would have been the norm for me pre-Reddit. Recreational reading had fallen by the wayside for far too long.
I joked to my friend that worldwide productivity would spike once the blackout started. I notice myself, I love Lemmy but feel less “addicted” to it than I did to Reddit if that makes sense and I’ve found myself doing more IRL as well.
Also, I hear you on the age thing.
got away from ageism
No way, old man winter!
Just kidding! I remember being on a gaming forum back in the early 00s and having a couple of “old” guys on (in their 30s-40s). We’d always give them shit, but at the same time looked up to them and thought it was cool they were still gaming.
They also had great perspective and wisdom to share with us teenage idiots.
Now I get to be the ‘old’ guy in my 30s. It’s fun to engage with the younger crowd, and not dismiss them because of their age, because the younger generations have interesting perspectives too. I’m like paying it forward.
undefined> No way, old man winter!
I see the assumption “everyone is male on the internet, especially the ones with feminine avatars” hasn’t gone anywhere. :-P
Haha! I didn’t even notice the avatar. So I guess maybe ageism and accidental sexism are still a thing here?
My bad :)
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Well, I’m enjoying the Internet now that I’m here on Beehaw. I stopped actively browsing Reddit years ago, only ever using it for web searches and the sidebar/wikis for niche topics. The vibes were bad. Normal subs had too many chuds and lefty subs had too many tankies, and comments felt insincere and sarcastic. So my social media usage has increased a little, but I like it here. Good project y’all are running.
Edit: /u/mochi@kbin.social - It keeps hanging up when I try to reply to you. Tankies are people who advocate for authoritarian governments that are “communist” in name only, like Russia and China. In reality they are essentially fascist. Genocide denial is a quick way to spot them.
Normal subs had too many chuds and lefty subs had too many tankies
Yep. I was initially attracted to the users that were present from 2014-2017. Over the years I noticed that the communities I had frequented, both leftist and tech subs, had hollowed out and become shells of their former selves. I spent a year and a half wondering where the users I liked had migrated to and searching for them. Search engines are increasingly useless these days as everything retreats behind walled gardens and SEO gentrification runs wild. I had been a Mastodon user for years and I recently noticed at the time that they implemented the ability to follow hashtags, so I tried that out and started building a feed. To my surprise, I found them at last. In hindsight, it makes sense. The Fediverse are FOSS platforms that are decentralized. Mastodon in particular also opts you out of search engine indexing by default. But yeah, feels nice to be reconnected with the demographics I liked.
I could always add ‘Reddit’ to a Google search and get information from real people. With the rise of bot sites/articles, this was my way of getting answers online.
Lemmy is great for learning new or interesting things, and I’m glad it’s here. I just am not sure how to get answers from real people anymore
I really hope Lemmy becomes searchable. That’s an amazing draw from Reddit. Other than Quora, I haven’t seen it yet.
I’m really enjoying it honestly - I didn’t realize how many great forums were still out there.
I’m waiting for my data request to go through, then I might delete my account. Although there isn’t much of a point if they are restoring comments…
You might want to keep your account so you can go back and delete your data as they restore it. I nuked all of mine, but every day maybe three or four things show back up again. It’s very strange. Almost like a rolling backup being restored.
Since April my social media usage has been 90% Fediverse 10% Reddit, and that 10% is dwindling fast. Once I settled into a corner I liked and got my feed set up to my liking, I found myself logging off in a good mood. This is in contrast with Reddit where I find myself surrounded by garbage content, garbage users, garbage admins, and a sense of feeling stuck because all the alternatives were either dead or regressive. The grass really is greener.
I feel a lot less stressed overall and feel good about deleting my reddit account!
I’m glad there are other people out there that enjoy looking for content they want to see rather than having it fed to them from an endless scrolling pipe and from repost bots.
I did until I got into Lemmy and tildes, now I’m mindlessly refreshing a different app now 🙃
Yep, same here 😂
Honestly? It feels a bit mid for me. I keep reflexively opening the app, and there’s still a lot of smaller communities I peek at. I try to keep time-burning scrolling here, but it doesn’t feel the same.
I like how I have to open my browser manually to browse lemmy
