Reminiscing about the "Reddit migration"
Reminiscing about the "Reddit migration"
Seeing more "cake days" pop up lately, it seems we're approaching (or in) the 1 yr anniversary of the Reddit migration.
It's kinda sweet actually that we all get this reminder of it with the pickup in "cakedays".
It reminds of my seeing the wave happen. I was on lemmy before the migration (not a flex, I joined mastodon in the twitter migration and explored the other fediverse platforms around looking for a reddit/forum alternative) ... and followed a bunch of communities over on my mastodon account. Early last year many of these communities were fairly quiet (or at least quieter than now) and so I didn't really see any of them in my mastodon feed. I'd actually forgotten that I'd followed them. I'd heard word about the API stuff over on Reddit, but I knew something was happening when I started seeing more and more posts in my masto feed that confused me ... it wasn't clear where they were coming from. Double checking I'd see that they came from lemmy communities I'd forgotten about ... and I realised I was seeing lemmy literally come alive!
All these cakedays are kinda the same thing ... a sort of internet equivalent of a weather event or season.
Yeah its been a journey. My cakeday for the an account I made on ml would be about now, and I think its around a month till this account is officially a year old.
Its an odd time to be on a platform like lemmy.
We're seeing an almost complete adulteration of what we might call the internet 2.0 era sites into walled gardens of exclusion. Effectively, the stealing, en-masse of almost two decades of user generated content. The walls and gates of the gardens we planted get higher everyday; the enshittification of all things.
And yet here we are. On a self-hosted, federated, unbought, unbroken, and unbent platform. Obviously its not all roses, but for what its worth, both the users and developers have created something incredibly special: A ray of hope in a time where it seems like the world has only been changing for the worse. And while the instances have their differencs, we should be looking to embrace those differences as much as possible, because this is what truly gives the fediverse strength. If its Kbin or Lemmy or Mastadon; or .ml or .world or .blahaj.zone.
The point of the fediverse isn't consolidation or control, but distribution and access. There is so much more possible simply because enough of us were willing to make the journey over here. We're providing the future with an alternative that isn't tracking them, trying to manipulate them with an algorithm, or to turn them into commodities. There is power in that.
So happy cakeday. Happy cake season to those who were messing around with a browser plug-in about this time last year, trying to delete their reddit history. Happy cakeday to the developers, to those who post, and to the commenters. And most of all, happy cake day to you dear lemming reading this. You make this place happen.
Hear hear!!
Great comment, cheers!
Well put!
Fuck Reddit.
Reddit was a great idea - common software providing free access to diverse communities needing only a single account to access them all. Fuck spez for screwing it all up by being a greedy pig boy:-(.
Without knowing the financial history of the place, it seems a good case study in something that could have gone for the sustainable stalwart of the internet path but instead fell to the dark silicon valley profit/growth side of things. With wikipedia being the only great success (AFAIK) at forging solid and sustainable foundations for the internet, I suppose the lesson is that it has to be non-profit, or open-source (or both) from the beginning.
In a way, it is kinda on many of us for not realising this and pushing against it sooner.
One of the great things coming out of the fediverse (and bluesky too at the moment) is all of the open software being developed that will hopefully plant seeds that will last a long time.
It was even open source at one point.
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain
It's been wonderful to find a home here! Hoping for many more cake days for all of us here in this friendly little corner of our beloved blue marble!
and I realised I was seeing lemmy literally come alive!
thats a rather soul stirring realization put to words. :-)
Don't miss Reddit at all, long live the Fediverse!
I was very active on Reddit for a long time but for some reason I also don't miss it. I think it's because the big subreddits felt "too big" for quite some time before and even in the smaller subreddits there was often too much unnecessary negativity.
Happy to be here. It'll be interesting to see how it grows, but I'm happy with it being a smaller crowd for now. Feels like I have many more pleasant and meaningful chats on here than I ever did on Reddit.
holy shit! i hadn't even realized it's been so long! sweet!
Hahaha I remember that shitshow! Hexbear dunking on reactionaries and their federation were especially fun times! Oh and the lemmy.world "preemptive last resort"! Good times, either way I'm glad other instances exist besides the containment one of world. Love to have you guys here.
And to think I've been on lemmygrad since GenZedong got quarantined. Holy shit it's been a while.
Fuckin cowards of .world preemptively blocked us and we still live rent free in their heads.
also we banned the mods of db0 but stayed federated which is extremely funny.
That's the funniest part.
Very much true, made this account last year on June 4.
I was thinking about the digg exodus to reddit just the other day.
Cheers!
I started my beehaw and ml accounts on June 2. This one and Lemmy.one are coming up on June 11. And my sdf.org account was on June 30. But this is the one that stuck 😁.