‘Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable,’ Steve Huffman says in defending the move to charge for high-volume API access.

  • DarbyDear@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Same exact situation for me, down to putting Jerboa where RIF used to be. I think the appeal to Beehaw for me is its emphasis on community. I’ve been on the internet for a hot minute, and I didn’t realize that I actually missed having a sense of community online. Reddit was basically a source of content for me, and I would lurk almost exclusively. With Lemmy, I’m finding myself commenting and responding far more often. I’m not entirely sure what the difference is here, but I just feel more inclined to actually participate here.

    • sugar_in_your_tea
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      1 year ago

      Same for me, but I used Boost (and before that, Slide).

      On my phone, Jerboa is good enough. On the desktop, I’m more interested in finding specific information, so I still read Reddit sometimes. If Reddit doesn’t reverse course, I’ll just drop my account and only use Reddit read only with an ad blocker.

      Most of my Reddit browsing was on my phone, and about half of the rest was me providing content to Reddit. I would’ve been happy to pay for an ad-free tier (say, $5/year; I paid for a couple others before I recently switched to Boost) on a decent mobile app, but I want my choice of app because the official one sucks. I would also be happy to pay for an ad-free desktop tier per account (say, $10-20 fixed), and if so, I would still be contributing content.

      But no, Reddit had to go and ruin their platform. So I’m out, and I’ll simply be a leech from now on.

    • fishy 2.0 (he/him)@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      same here im accually interacting with people instead of just lurking i think the community aspect helps but for me its also thw fact theres less users around so the chances of accually having a decent conversation is higher

      • DarbyDear@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I’ve noticed the same. I also don’t really have the same feeling that replying in a post with a bunch of comments already on it is a waste of time - on Reddit, if a post had 100 comments on it then it was kind of pointless for me to add my voice because nobody would see it anyway. Here, I’ve actually gone through and responded to various comments and posts regardless. I think that’s more of a “social norms/community culture” thing than a technological difference though. I mentioned my thoughts on what went wrong with Reddit elsewhere, but basically the way Reddit set things up led to the encouragement of low-effort popularity contest type replies so people would rush to get the highest-karma responses as quickly and easily as possible. There isn’t an easy way to see someone’s total score here though, so upvotes aren’t really the focus and actual conversation can happen instead.

        • fishy 2.0 (he/him)@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          From what i understand the karma system was meant to be a way to encourage people to be active early on to drive even more traffic to the site but as it went on it definitely devolved into a popularity contest like you said

          • DarbyDear@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I’m guessing the double post is thanks to the timeouts (what I assume is) due to the jump in traffic to Lemmy from the blackouts. It still makes sense to me though!

              • DarbyDear@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                No worries! I’m getting a lot of timeout errors today; either it’s the increase in traffic from the blackouts or the update to Jerboa. Either way, it’s no big deal!

        • fishy 2.0 (he/him)@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          The karma system had its advantages in that early on it encouraged people to be active and make the site seem more alive from what ive heard but as it went on it ike you said just devolved into an popularity contest

          • DarbyDear@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, tapping into dopamine bursts to encourage activity is a great short-term solution, but I guess it was also foreshadowing into what Reddit would become. I’ll take what I’ve seen here so far over the quick and easy hits any day; having a constant stream of bite-sized content to consume was wreaking havoc on my attention span and I didn’t even realize it until I found myself having to stay focused on some of the longer conversations I’ve seen around Lemmy.

            • fishy 2.0 (he/him)@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              Same here accually having convesations with people has been pretty fun and ive yet to see anything not civil for now wich is a plus

              • DarbyDear@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                Definitely! The big reason I decided to join Beehaw after taking a look at what instances were available is because the focus here seems to be building that feeling of community more so than just replacing Reddit, and I’ve already been feeling it in the best way. It’s almost like a return to the days of forums where there were actual conversations happening, and I’ve actually slowly started recognizing names and avatars as I poke around in different topics. I’m not sure what things are going to look like further down the line, but hopefully it keeps developing in the way it has been! I do think it will, for what it’s worth, since the admins and mods seem to be on the same page and dedicated to keeping the momentum going in that direction.