Anyone leave Reddit entirely/completley/for good?

[Yaya]

Hi! I've been thinking lately about Reddit and wanted to hear more about people's experiences or choices on how to engage with it.

The way I kind of "pulse-check" social media is by seeing how I feel after using it. For example, I left Facebook around 5-6 years ago and never looked back. I felt awful each time I used it and it was a solid decision. With something like Instagram it's more challenging as I use it to find out about a lot of events.

I wanted to make this thread to specifically talk about Reddit. In the past, I found Reddit a super useful place in terms of finding niche communities and asking questions. Like most people here I avoided the main subreddits and there are even extensions that can block the main feed (or replace it with a subscriptions feed) or even block the big subreddits.

Lately though I have felt that the quality, even in those niche communities, has gone down. Or perhaps I'm just spending time in more quality spaces. I've also noticed just the "meanness" that can occur. On a post where you ask a question people can belittle your ideas, make inappropriate comments and/or chat requests, and often times just express their opinion when it's not what's being asked.

I do notice I spend way less time on it as my life fills up with other activities, work, and other online spaces, so I do think it will naturally drift away, but I've been wondering about making a conscious decision to step away from Reddit. Again, not for the time-wasting, but in terms of the space not being the healthiest. It makes me wish that all hobbies, niches, and subcultures, had their own forums like this one (and maybe they do but I haven't looked), because I still hope to have that online community.

All this to say; have any of you made a conscious decision to stop using Reddit or regardless have stopped using it entirely? For some reason or another I would like to get to that point which does say something. Curious y'alls thoughts!

[georgemoody]

I mostly gave up on reddit after the API controversy of the '23 and actually deleted my account much later, knowing that you could just shut down all of these great projects people put their heart and soul into didn't sit right with me, wouldn't be a problem if reddit's official app was functional, which it (mostly) isn't. this whole fiasco also made me more appreciative of open source software, so that's a positive at least.

I still use reddit whenever i have some obscure question (i add 'reddit' to any search query if i don't find what i'm looking for, out of habit) though stackexchange does a good job covering some of the more software focused ones.

[McMagnetic]

  I never really thought of it that way.
I use reddit pretty often. A lot of the subreddits I'm in are very samey. r/ska and r/punk, mostly. But all communities on Reddit are so toxic. Always something on that website!!!!!
There's a lot of reasons *I* should leave... But I don't think leaving it would really change anything for me. It's fun to watch people argue for dumb reasons..
... Maybe that isn't a great thing for me to say, actually.
Hahahahahaha

[Nikodile]

I've also noticed just the "meanness" that can occur.

I used to frequent Reddit in high school like a decade ago, but I realized pretty quick that a lot of people there "pile" on others with their upvote/downvote system. I feel just cause someone is downvoted a couple times, their opinion is disregarded. Kinda hard to go against the grain when it feels like there's an objective truth to everything according to Reddit.

Obviously, I'm generalizing, but I feel the environment really punishes free thought.

[McMagnetic]

I realized pretty quick that a lot of people there "pile" on others with their upvote/downvote system

Gosh I've noticed this too. You get downvoted once and immediately, everybody else is downvoting you and being a jerk. It's terrible!
This has happened to me with mentioning things like not having taste for a certain band, I got downvoted to oblivion...
It's like everyone on that site wants everyone to have the same opinion as them! It sucks!

[BlazingCobaltX]

The Reddit API fiasco along with one of Twitter's insane changes was what made me jump into the web revival fully. What worked for me was simply going cold Turkey. r/thenetherlands is still one of the most useful places to get news, so I check it from time to time with one of the Libreddit instances that still work.

There is a real difference in how you interact with Reddit whether you are able to reply or not. Only now I realise that I was always a bit nervous when making a post or comment, because there's a tendency for redditors to come down on you for no reason. This got a bit better when I changed my icon from a girl-like blob to a neutral one (go figure), but ultimately engaging with people on Reddit wasn't fun. Unlike on a forum or chat, you don't really get to know any of the regulars on a subreddit, but you get to deal with the countless of jobless folk that want to get into arguments. Treating Reddit as read-only means you have less room to be outraged at bad takes or be the victim of some argumentative asshole. That inadvertently leads to less interaction with the platform to begin with.

I feel better treating Reddit as a board I read ever so often. My time is spent on better things and I do not deal with daily annoyances. The point about niche communities is fair, though. I miss r/patientgamers a lot, but I remind myself that even in a space where people were largely likable, I didn't make any sort of friends there. It's a big soup of anonymity and most of my contributions have already faded into obscurity. Keeping a website feels far more meaningful instead.

[BartTheZech]

I mostly gave up on reddit after the API controversy of the '23 and actually deleted my account much later, knowing that you could just shut down all of these great projects people put their heart and soul into didn't sit right with me, wouldn't be a problem if reddit's official app was functional, which it (mostly) isn't. this whole fiasco also made me more appreciative of open source software, so that's a positive at least.

I still use reddit whenever i have some obscure question (i add 'reddit' to any search query if i don't find what i'm looking for, out of habit) though stackexchange does a good job covering some of the more software focused ones.

Same thing here. Basically stopped using it with the API change. I did move onto twitter a bit which is probably worse than reddit considering how rampant misinformation and just how unmoderated it is now. Though I haven't really used it that much, mostly just looked around every now and then just to check out some news though I'd see other stuff ofc while browsing.

[cybherspace]

I do use it on and off but I've been thinking of fully quitting.
I uninstalled it from my phone ages ago, so I only visit it online. It's sort of like junk food... I don't really get anything out of it besides the feeling of something interesting. Not even memes anymore, really. I've gone through lots of bouts of cleaning up my subreddits and at this point I don't think I'm subscribed to ANY of the default ones anymore.
I have already dropped Twitter and Instagram, and I've cut my YouTube usage down very hard by using FreeTube and only looking at the creators I'm subscribed to. I have had a Tumblr since ancient times and I have the most fun with that site, of all social media, but even that site I find I rarely go there anymore. I'm just getting better fed by the wild web (to steal a phrase from another thread).

[wetnoodle]

I left when sync for reddit stopped working, I'm still using sync just for lemmy now. It has some issues still but I like the communities there! I use sopuli.xyz (a finnish but open to all instance). I do also still add reddit to google searches for niche information

[nintendowii99]

I would say I've cut out reddit from about 95% of my life. It used to be my primary social media, just because of how many unique and cool communities there were. I was always big into forums, and reddit replaced that for me. However, I was never fully satisfied with reddit. I didn't like the karma aspect, I felt the moderator's often didn't properly represent the sub/made bad decisions that decreased the quality of the sub, and of course, the constant arguments. Reddit was a pretty vicious cycle for me, because I would get super invested to the point where I was scrolling on it for an hour or two a day, began posting more and more, then inevitably something that bother me, frustrate me, etc. I'd delete the app to clear my head, forget about it for a few weeks, then the cycle would start again. Even if I deleted my account, it was so easy to make a new one that it didn't really matter.

It's interesting, because some of the big social medias - Facebook, Instagram, etc. - i've been on since they were created! But it was so easy for me to leave them...I deleted both accounts without feeling bad at all. Reddit, however, i've only been using seriously since around 2018. Yet it's definitely the hardest for me to quit. I think with reddit, it's so easy to get sucked into thinking that it's actually useful, because you can ask questions and such. Compared to something like FB, reddit certainly does have a lot more practical use.

What I did to combat this line of thinking was completely delete the app from my phone and delete all my accounts. I made an extremely basic (randomly generated username, no profile pic, not following any subs) on my laptop. I only use this account for asking questions that i've failed to find an answer for anywhere else. I've been doing this for about 7 months, and i've only needed to use this account twice.

As with any social-media deletion, if you are spending a substantial amount of time on reddit, you're not going to be able to successfully quit unless you find something meaningful to replace the time you spent on reddit with. There are a lot of forums out there that are still running, perhaps finding some related to your interests might help?