I was with Reddit for 12 years and bounced between Rif and Apollo, I am sad I am losing both
Think of it as fortuitous timing. Reddit is the old internet. Lemmy is the new world. You are one of its early movers. Come fill this place.
Hehe, the actual “old internet” resembles the fediverse of today, it’s what we thought the internet was supposed to be back then. Once corporations found the internet, we got the bullshit we have today.
I’m still a little concerned what happens once instances start getting real traffic though.
More instances will need to spin up. People aren’t used to having choice so it’ll confuse them at first. Same thing with Linux distributions, people aren’t used to having choice so they don’t know how to go about comparing what’s on offer. They’ll accept making choices at the food market, but are too confused when it comes to OS’s and social media, lol.
History repeats itself. The fediverse is going to go downhill too once it gets big enough for corporations to notice it. Enjoy it while it lasts.
And users will facilitate that process by glomming on to certain instances thinking that it matters to which they belong
Except the code is open source, no matter how many corps invade the Fediverse, there will always be an option.
JOIN MY WEBRING!
Maybe the Fediverse’s logo should be a little animated gif a of a construction worker.
The old internet was great. I had a lot of fun with the local bbs, irc, and telnet talkers. It was a simpler time.
Reddit is the old internet.
Ehhh.
I’d timeline it something like this:
Interaction was on non-Web-based systems, mostly distributed
This was mostly pre-2000s and tended to go into decline in the 1990s or 2000s as Web-based platforms focusing on ease of use picked up users. Many of these were distributed.
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Usenet (decline as a discussion forum dating to maybe late 1990s, though lots of pirated information is still transferred via it)
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IRC, peaking around 2003 according to WP
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Email (peaked later, in 2009, according to WP. Obviously still pretty healthy compared to the above two.
People tend to shift towards interacting with each other on large websites; these tend to later acquire mobile apps to cater to smartphone users.
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Facebook
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YouTube
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Twitter
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Reddit (though a fair number of third-party clients did exist)
If the Fediverse manages to pick up a lot of people, it’s probably somewhat-closer to the first phase.
IRC was great back then. The other day I jumped on Undernet because I was feeling nostalgic. It’s still running but didn’t have much activity. The fact that it still exists made me smile.
Yes email, IRC, Usenet was the old internet. I used that stuff in the early internet days. I think what happened is it was just more convenient to use a web browser for stuff. You needed client apps for those original internet application protocols and they weren’t always easy to set up and use. When everything got centralized on the web the corpos took over.
The Fediverse is Usenet like, but in a much easier way to use. People that complain about the complexity should have seen how clunky those old internet protocols were to use.
15 years on reddit for me. Exclusively old.reddit.com and apollo for most of that. That site is dead to me now.
I just feel bad for the developer. Years spent developing an app for it to be worthless. That has got to be deflating.
Depends how you define ‘worthless’. In the case of Apollo, it certainly wasn’t financially worthless for him. And just to be clear, I have no issue with a quality app developer making money doing what they do.
I mean, actual take-home-pay aside from running Apollo, I have no doubt that Christian will be head-hunted like all hell from so many tech companies. I bet his future is solid gold after this. =)
Me too. RIP two best apps. Reddit is dead to me.
For me, it was JoeyforReddit on Android. What an excellent app! I was able to read at length because I could select my own font, sizes and color. It made for very easy reading on my eyes.
I love being here but am hoping for apps for these new socials. I cannot do the sans serif fonts without eye pain. I think the reading flow isn’t smooth. So improvements needed and will be well received.
Nice to see you all here.