I email everything to myself like an old lady, and pay Google for extra storage. 🤫

Thanks for the heads up! That’s definitely something we hadn’t considered. We’ll start looking into it!

Very helpful! We are already looking into a VPN, just undecided which one to go with, so I’ll send this comment to him. Thank you!

Hey! My husband is thinking about doing something similar with his, can you share any resources you used? He’s done programming before but never with a raspberry pi, and he’s not sure where to start.

What do you mean?

I already am.

Elon Musk is just another gross white man who wants a manic pixie dream girl, minus the dreams. It’s no surprise that he doesn’t see a problem with this. He’s a textbook predator, and the whole situation with Grimes made that abundantly clear.

I hope his next venture is selling guided tours in unregulated deep sea subs.

I don’t know if I’d call it a mass exodus, and I don’t know that it directly has anything to do with Lemmy, but there’s been a noticeable dip in quality. Fewer posts across many of the front page subreddits, fewer votes, more bot posts, more low effort posts, less discussion in comment sections, lots of deleted comments and accounts… overall there just seems to be a dip in quality.

I was going to delete, but decided to stick around for a while first, to see how things pan out, and I’ve got to say the mobile site is even worse than expected. I get constant pop ups trying to direct me to download the app, then when I say no the website will auto reload, often sending me back to the top of the page. It’s difficult to find and respond to anyone who replies to your comments, and sometimes if you sort by top: today it won’t even show any posts. Just… blank. Clicking on a post opens it as a tab that is more like a popup, and closing it resets where you were on the page.

I could keep going but I think that pretty much summarizes what I’ve noticed. Don’t know that it’s directly related to a Lemmy “exodus,” and I’m still finding my way around here so I can’t really say, but reddit as we knew it seems pretty dead.

Thank you so much for sharing! The only thing that still confuses me is upvoting. I thought Lemmy was still doing upvotes but I can’t see where to do so on this interface.

If anyone else is confused, you just have to log in again using the interface. Figured I’d leave this up for others, just in case 😂

Yeah, BORU is back to showing only 2-4 posts when sorted by top:day AND top:week.

It’s really weird and makes reddit feel very hollow.

Something I’d like to share:

I’ve been periodically checking reddit in my Browser to see what’s going on. I commented last week about noticing a sharp decrease in posts on “my” front page. Since then I’ve observed a few more interesting things.

1. Late last week, I noticed that multiple subreddits (BORU and PICS in particular) had like 2-4 posts when sorted by “top, 24 hours.” It wasn’t a case of having to click “next” (I really miss rifs endless scrolling feature…) to navigate to a second page of posts; there was no 2nd page. That was it.

2. I also noticed that on the mobile website, ads are designed to look nearly identical to posts (imo it was more obvious that they were ads on rif), and most of the time the website would only have 1 or 2 posts before one of these fake ad posts, so your user experience is immediately impacted.

3. The ads don’t seem to be as targeted as they used to be. I used to get ads that seemed to be geared toward me, my searches, and interests. Creepy, but I found it way less annoying than the alternative. Which is apparently a lot of “He Gets Us” and ads for complicated electronics or unnecessary services. Like a mobile vet clinic that isn’t even available in my area, lol.

4. The bot posts are getting obvious and WEIRD. I took screenshots last weekend because just about every other post had a robotic, overly formal, and/or downright confusing title. Here are some examples:

56.3k, front page: “A brain tumour changed her life Her nerves are badly damaged! But today she opened a car door…walked…opened a gym door…walked and sat down …BY HERSELF what a lady”

[Quotation marks, format, and ellipses are original]

40.5k, front page: The trapped dog doesn’t wait a bit to hug the rescuer after being freed…

Same weird ellipses, and the way it’s phrased is like a “correct the mistakes” worksheet for 2nd graders.

I think Reddit is in the “find out” stage of their fucking around, even if it’s a quiet or subtle change to the casual observer.

I also tried going to ModCoord [I’m not a mod it just felt like a good place to find updates] and, on my end, it looks like almost everything has been deleted. The same day I took screenshots, /r/PICS posted a public response to reddit’s threats, which weren’t even acknowledged on modcoord. The most recent post I could see was something from GallowBoob? It was really odd.

Is the website being glitchy? Probably. That is, after all, part of the root of this problem. But if anything, I’d say it’s pretty clear that the content has decreased in both quality and depth in the last 10 days. Even if a lot of users are still signing in, I don’t think they’re posting, commenting, or voting as much as they used to. That may be a reflection of the quality of posts, or of users displeasure at the situation, but regardless of where it came from, at least it’s something.

There have been plenty of movies and shows based on this so I guess I’m more confirming a poorly kept secret than I am revealing it, but;

If you go out to eat in a college town (esp if it’s a state school,) there’s a good chance that almost every employee (managers, bartenders, servers, you name it) is drinking or smoking pot out back, if not in the middle of an active bender. We’d fill our water bottles with alcohol, make food for our stoner friends in exchange for drugs, take shots in the walk-in fridge, roll on Molly while cooking, run out back to puke, and rally for the rest of our shift. After closing we’d meet up with other industry friends, usually at a bar where one of them was still working, close that place down, then pair off and hook up in questionable places.

I’ve had sex on restaurant rooftops and patios, in supply closets, behind the stacked pallets in dry storage, and in the manager’s office. I witnessed others get it on in booths, on top of the video poker machines, and even on the bar itself. Thankfully never where food was prepared, but that was pretty much the only thing that was off limits, and only within my social circle. I can’t speak about others.

I’m a boring elder millennial now, but every once in a while I reminisce about working in the service industry. I don’t think I appreciated how much freedom I had, I was too busy worrying about money, school, and relationships. I definitely wouldn’t do it again, but I’m glad I got to sow my oats, or whatever.

I got mine today! A few irl friends that use reddit also just received theirs. Might be worth checking!

I’m still waiting for them to send me my data before I erase. There’s just no way I can manually go through 10+ years to see if there’s any info I want to keep copies of. But now I’m wondering what happens if they never respond to my data request. Before rif went dark I saw a lot of others saying they never got a response.

Honestly? As another user noted, it’s just boring. Not nearly as much is getting posted, and the comments are reminiscent of the days when we’d scramble to write “FIRST” in the comment section. It doesn’t feel conversational, if that makes sense. Like people are talking at each other, not with them. Also lots of “lol nothing changed, why was everyone making such a big deal?” But then the front page is mostly politics, shitposting, and recycled ask reddit questions. Not a monumental change, but definitely lower in quality, imo.

I logged in to reddit on my computer the day after rif went dark, and there were noticeably fewer posts on the front page. I think only 8 or so posts were above 10k upvotes. I wouldn’t be surprised if advertisers are pulling their ads in response.