everybody on ilx complains about reddit

^^

All explained by their wanting to take it public

my main complaint about reddit is that everybody seems to post with this great sense of authority when they almost always have no fucking idea what they're talking about. it's like watching little kids argue about where babies come from or something

hilariously otm

yeah but that's hardly exclusive to discourse on reddit... or life in general, really.

ymmv but I've usually gotten pretty useful responses on reddit when I've posed questions in subreddits relevant to my interests

entire site is down for me right now!

Apparently it's 92% of subs that have gone dark in protest. Whatever I may think about reddit, that's impressive.

Yeah, every subreddit I peek in on now and then is either gone completely or has just a note up that they've gone dark.

What's the saying, "if you're not paying for the product, then you're the product"? A social media content strike emphasizes that it's a little more complicated than that.

all will be accepted here, the place where nobody makes any money ever

Was reading a few reddit threads last week where people were wondering where they would go if that place shit the bed. And people were all like, "what if we go back to Digg or Fark?" I was not quite halfway tempted to link to ilx and see if it would bring us any fresh traffic.

"I Love Fountain Pens"

"I Love Automotive Repairs"

"I Love Homemade Porn"

xp can't speak for any other mods but thanks for not doing that

Yeah, it was more of an "intrusive thought" than a genuine temptation.

stumbleupon playing the long game

What's the saying, "if you're not paying for the product, then you're the product"? A social media content strike emphasizes that it's a little more complicated than that.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, June 12, 2023 11:12 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

the reddit power dynamic is weird because users provide not only the content but also free labor (moderation). i don't think this is necessarily a sign of a wider social media revolt, although it's interesting that it's happening at the same time as twitter.

Current situation definitely stifling my web browsing/searching/time wasting.

as someone who makes stuff and wants to share it with people, I fucking hate reddit and hope it goes away forever.

Is there something about the reddit experience that makes it particularly negative for artists, etc? Not disagreeing with you, wondering more out of ignorance, being an infrequent reddit visitor who also likes to make stuff.

yes it's quite simple, if you post anything you've made, you are called a "spammer" and likely banned from the sub. many subs explicitly say in the rules that you can only share something you didn't make.
another site I use has an "I made this" button and people there appreciate you much more when you check it.

I think this will always be a thing on certain boards. As a shameless spammer, I don't love it, but I guess I get how it can annoy people when a few posters take up a bunch of space with it.

So... the answer is to put stuff you've made on the site that you are referring to.

That doesn't preclude you (or anyone else) from using Reddit for other reasons, right?

Like, when I make recordings, I put them on SoundCloud or BandCamp or whatever, or use CDBaby or DistroKid. If I were the sort to make cute crocheted dragon feet to put on the legs of baby cribs I'd use something like Etsy. If I made software or paintings or furniture or pottery I would find appropriate venues for those things as well. It would never occur to me to use Reddit for any of that that. But if I want to recommend a restaurant that serves good esquites, I can do that on Reddit. If I want to snark about a celebrity or ask about how to fix a wobbly guitar part, I can do those things on Reddit.

If I wanted to use a website for something it's not made to do, and it didn't do that thing, I would go elsewhere. Without a seething feeling of hatred and wishing it would go away forever.

Like, If I wanted to gush about how much I like Talking Heads, or how much I don't like Nickleback, ILX would be a good place to do so. If I want to review local dry cleaners, ILX would NOT be a good place to go. I would not decide to hate on ILX for not doing something it was not designed to do.

I refuse to accept there's any logic behind it, it's a parasitic website which did even more than social media to kill blogs, and the things of value there (obscuremedia for example) would be much better if they were elsewhere.

yes it's quite simple, if you post anything you've made, you are called a "spammer" and likely banned from the sub. many subs explicitly say in the rules that you can only share something you didn't make.
another site I use has an "I made this" button and people there appreciate you much more when you check it.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, June 14, 2023 4:02 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

TBH as someone who quit treating reddit like mindless content snacking (AKA I refuse to look at regular large subreddits in order to prevent addiction and time wasting), from what I've seen or see on the subreddits I still occasionally check, this doesn't seem like a universal rule. Seems very specific to what the "thing" you're making is and how that content works on the respective sub?

But I'm not here to defend reddit - it just seemed like an opposite description of posting rules I've seen.

huh, the music (gear/production) related subs I follow are more likely to be mad because someone didn't post their tunez (ie just a picture of boxes or unhooked new gear), /r/DIY would probably delete a post if you didn't make it

milo otm

thread title also otm

Unless I'm misunderstanding the issue, any rules about posting things one has made will depend on the particular subreddit rather than being something universal to the site. A lot of subreddits welcome original content.

Just scanning the ones I'm in, r/crosswords for example is filled with self-made clues and puzzles.

I'd attribute the usefulness of Reddit just as much to the participation of community members who take the time to write thoughtful posts and comments and the stacked discussion format where users upvote good content and downvote bad content. I have personally benefited from local recommendations, house cleaning and repair tips, financial advice, cute animals, and non-stop moral catharsis from r/AmItheAsshole.

I have no stake in third party apps, but I'm sorry for those affected and admire the solidarity with those that supported the protest.

And thank you WmC and the other mods who take the time to moderate ILX.

I refuse to accept there's any logic behind it, it's a parasitic website which did even more than social media to kill blogs, and the things of value there (obscuremedia for example) would be much better if they were elsewhere.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

where should the trans shitposts go

this is a pressing concern to me

Business Insider: Reddit users are boycotting the site for 48 hours, and Discord is perfectly positioned to pick up the slack

Here's an article I didn't read about something I keep hearing: people are using Discord now instead anyways!

I have little-used accounts on both these sites. But I'm wondering, how the hell is Discord a substitute for Reddit/web forums/etc. Maybe there are features on there that have passed me by, but it looks like a fancier IRC. It has better asynchronous features than IRC in that if I am perusing a board for a subject I'm an expert in, I can have a look at recent messages and reply and impart my wisdom... but how the hell is that useful to anyone else in the future? They have to be searching the exact right keywords to turn up some thread of a few messages? On a server they scrounged up an "invite" to someplace else on the web? idgi

The cited alternatives are for The Positivity Network, Unexpected Friends, and Luna's Lobby.

I can only conclude I'm not sure what the internet's for anymore and that's why I like ilx. Even if this account is also barely used.

how the hell is Discord a substitute for Reddit/web forums/etc.

You're OTM about how it works - you have to guess the keyword or ask a regular. Every time I've had to do this I've thought about how much new and niche knowledge is staying ungoogleable now. The messages are subject to much easier deletion than they would be on a crawlable website, too.

That puts it well. Same feeling trying to adjust to Reddit vs old web forums, just feels way dumber this time.

Reddit posts get archived after 6 months. So if you have anything to add/ask about an old discussion you turn up, you have to start a new discussion. In practice, you've got to catch a discussion pretty quickly (a comment on a months old post is not going to float to the top of an active sub). Maybe if this is your experience of the Internet, Discord is not such a strange alternative.

At least Reddit's search was decent... before the blackout.

the thing is a public discussion forum like this has its own boundaries, they're just implicit rather than explicit and they include all of us so we don't notice them

even though a lot of stuff here is indexed by search engines, in practice one is unlikely to run across this place unless one knows the right keywords or asks a regular! and then you have to weigh the upsides, like the fact that this site is _theoretically_ more accessible than a discord server, against the downsides, which is that decades-old drama can be dredged up and used in concerted hate campaigns. public internet information can be used for a lot of bad things, and this is why i limit the places where i put anything at all out on the public internet.

i don't know why that article picked an angle only highlighting the discord servers mentioned in the post it links to and ignoring the actual reddit-like websites listed right above them. i haven't heard a single person talk about those servers but i've seen plenty of people talking about lemmy, tildes and kbin (not that any of them are actually going to take off)

discord is a terrible replacement for reddit, it's apples and oranges but i can imagine a future where reddit and the concept of "message boards" in general go extinct and everyone jumps to shitty chatrooms because that's the way the wind's blowing.

I prefer to believe in an old school forum resurgence.

Or Usenet

phpbb

mIRC

BBSes featuring Tradewars

See y'all at alt.flame.beer.stupid

hell yeah

every so often I visit alt.rocknroll.metal.metallica and I see people replying to 20+ year old messages. probably bots though

Imagine what the internet could be if it wasn't trying to make itself profitable for private owners. https://t.co/v2FTSFFFSN pic.twitter.com/ESH2fcinN8

— Dave (@MediocreDave) June 15, 2023

even though a lot of stuff here is indexed by search engines, in practice one is unlikely to run across this place unless one knows the right keywords or asks a regular!

off topic, but Kate, your post accidentally made me nostalgic about how I discovered this place as a eastern european teen - I used to think of myself as a web search hotshot, enjoying making precise queries that produced fewer than one page of results. One day I felt I had a really cool thought on a subject, and was convinced nothing that obscure could have already been said online. I typed it in under quotation marks, and Google returned an ILX thread as the only result! It felt like discovering a treasure, and ILX has been my favorite place to read in the two decades since. Yay!

as a eastern european teen

Ohoho

Sorry, sorry, shitty of me, couldn't resist

I've been writing a music blog for about a decade now and have been kind of wondering what the point is anymore. I get decent traffic from Google, mostly because I'm writing about albums that not a lot of other people care about, but it feels like that whole ecosystem of blogs and webrings and actually like, Googling stuff because you want to read about it is pretty much dead. do people actually like, read blogs anymore?

Feel like the demise of rss readers really killed blogs off in a big way. It felt like a feedback loop - I used to read blogs regularly but was never an rss feed person, but the stream of constant readership due to ease of following kept the audiences up for those blogs. I guess people use substack now and that sends you an email for new posts so you don’t have to keep looking.

Yeah I read newsletters, which is effectively the same thing, they just go to my email and I mostly read them there rather than on the sites that host them.