We will soon begin rolling out changes to Reddit's User settings. It is getting a refresh that includes changes to ad personalization, privacy preferences, and location settings.
As part of these changes, we are retiring a setting that you have previously turned on that limited how we used your activity from the Reddit platform to personalize ads. We have replaced the setting with a new option to select categories of ads that you may not wish to see.
More details are available in our announcement and help center.
These changes are rolling out starting today and you may see the changes over the next few days.
Users will be tracked with no opt out.
Posts may be monetized, which will make content even worse
No refund or any type of usable credit for users that spent hundreds on Reddit coins
The entire vibe has done a 180° since all these new "positive changes" are rolled out.
The new update is horrible. They are blocking critical comments and gaslighting users too.
Sadly it's not even close to the final nail. The largest reason being there isn't anything to take its place. While I love Lemmy, there are still too many hurdles and roadblocks to getting started compared to other social media platforms and all of those established ones are doing similar moves to Reddit's nonsense. But just like why Mastodon hasn't topple Twitter is that the ease of use and user base isn't there.
Until someone can offer the same(ish) experience that almost fully featured and super easy to get start. Most users won't break their habits. They only other way is to offer something that is better than the other platforms (since this can be wildly subjective) again ease of use and standardized features are incredibly important.
Will Twitter, Reddit and Facebook go the way of MySpace? I'm sure at some point. But only until something can truly replace or pull users.
the community quality on Lemmy also just isn’t there yet. there are some good niche communities, but a lot of “staples” are either just not active enough or are poorly moderated.
for example, there still isn’t a good alternative to /r/Games. lemmy.world has /c/games, but their rules aren’t nearly as strict as the former, and it has lead to very poor discussion quality in comparison. All the top comments on the Starfield impressions thread a few weeks ago were low-effort, karma-whoring, single sentences complaining about pre-orders rather than actually discussing the game itself.
I'd honestly say the confusion between what communities are worth subscribing to is one of the worst blocks for me. Sure, /c/ exists, but what server should I go to? What communities are there? What ones are actually active? It's not as easy as reddit was, and if it's annoyed me then it's definitely stopped another 10 people from bothering with lemmy :/
Edit: also, ty for the suggestion
The main indicator is the number of monthly users and how new the content is.
This can be a bit tricky, but it used to be the same on Reddit when there was Gaming, Games, VideoGames and all the variants. Over time, one community emerged as the one
I honestly think a small part of Mastodon's problem is the name, for a while I would just think of the metal band or the fossil record. I feel like at least for me there is a subconscious effect that names and branding have that can be hard to notice.