Anyone leave Reddit entirely/completley/for good?

[zawieja]

Agreed with the google issue  far from a perfect solution for me to add "reddit" to get any human input on the issues i'm searching but at least it kinda works...

Since I don't use social media much anymore, I like to use reddit to keep up with what's going on in some of the fandoms or topics I like. Usually if something big has happened in the last week I can just sort for the top posts in the subreddits every once in a while.
...To my own annoyance I often end up scrolling through what's popular instead, though -.- Very hard habit to break.

Still, I don't use it enough to see much of any toxicity or problematic stuff. I've tried to use it more at one point to talk to me, but it wasn't working out for me, so I'm just a lurker.

[milo]

Reddit is my biggest guilt. I absolutely want to leave but for an unknown reason I cant. There's always something to read, something to watch. Lately it's been invaded by AI bots and Karma farmers and it seriously diminished my experience. It's a very difficult situation and I often have a lot of guilt due to this. I have a lurking account, perhaps it should be closed. I'm not giving up, I know I can do it.

Wow I can really relate to this. I've been on it pretty regularly since 2011 or so. I quite using my account years ago and would just browse the main page. You're right, lately it's all bots and karma farmers and the real people who are still on there are so full of doom and gloom even when you find something interesting to talk about the discourse always seems to turn negative.

I've been able to move away from most other mainstream social media, but I still can't kick reddit and I too feel some guilt from it. Mostly because whenever I browse it I leave feeling pretty awful, but for some reason I can't stop myself from clicking that link. It's mainly the way I get news events and stuff so I'll go there to check the latest and then I'll just... keep browsing, wasting so much time. It doesn't help that it's literally infinite. You can just scroll and scroll and scroll...

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

For those who want to stop: Consider editing your host file.
If you do so, accessing reddit will require you to actively take it out of your rule list, making it easier to withstand short impulses to open the URL just out of sheer habit.

The tech companies use their black patterns to cause addiction. No shame in using tech to help you fight it.

[Junebug]

A lot of social media sites are fountains of novelty, often unintentionally by the sites' designers. Whenever you have anonymous people making unique posts about ephemeral subjects you basically have a high supply of novel posts that one can endlessly look at because one wants to see the next interesting thing, but has no guarantee if the next click will do the trick. It's been stated several times before that this is basically a virtual slot machine and the effects on psychology are basically the same. It's a need for novelty that makes a person feel good briefly but leaves them dissatisfied most of the time. In the long run, there are better things for a person to do with their time.

How I deal with it is to keep a list of sites that have this dynamic, namely: Twitter/X, Hacker News, Reddit, Tumblr, [auto redacted], and Youtube. Many of these sites I have quit entirely because of this dynamic, particularly when the aspects that interest me can be fruitfully explored in different ways (usually by reading books on the subjects that interest me so I can get a more permanent and reliable form of knowledge.) Others I still allow myself to visit out of an experiment with getting the good out of the bad, and this is done by giving myself limits for how many times a day I can visit a particular site. The latter approach has had mixed results, but the experiment isn't over yet so we'll see how that turns out.

[ctrl-shift-esc]

I've used Reddit somewhat frequently, though with varying frequency, over the years. I've mostly just have had enough of it, for many reasons, most of which have already been mentioned here.

I started downsizing my usage of it because as the OP said, it didn't leave me with a good feeling, but I still kept browsing it. I realized - this is the same exact reason I left Facebook years ago, what am I doing?

It really is a trap, because the site is very good at making you feel like it's useful, and I mean sure, it can be in certain cases. But for the most part, it's just not. One of the biggest things that helped me reduce my usage, and I don't know how cringe this is but I don't care  : is that I've been bouncing my ideas off of LLM "AI" chatbots, first ChatGPT and now LLaMA, and I realized - wait a minute; I get better and infinitely more polite answers and reactions on a goddamn AI chatbot, and I don't have to wait around the slot machine of whether someone will 1. Answer me in the first place 2. Answer in a way that is actually good. For the most part, 2. rarely happened. And I realized, the level of discourse on Reddit is so low, that I'm better off talking to a literal text prediction algorithm.

These days I don't log in (I've never used the app, when I go there on my phone I just use a private browser tab), and I just check r/worldnews and r/europe for a pre-curated list of things going on in the world. People have already picked out the most interesting things in the general sense of news. I want to keep up with current events a little bit, but not too much, so this saves me time. I don't comment or like anything. It's literally a news aggregator to me, which is how it was supposed to be in the first place. Which also explains a lot, when you think of how the site operates. There is pretty much no reason to check it more often than once every few days, because it will always show you the same stuff that has been popular in the past 24-48 hours.

I also have developed a massive distaste for any form of social media, or any social sites in general, that focus on 1. A very fast pace 2. Any sort of like/up-downvote/ranking system. 3. Infinite scrolling 4. Non-linear ordering of posts. I don't want to be artificially forced to feel FOMO. I want to come to a site at my own pace. And any likes systems severely lower the quality of discourse. Why bother putting effort in a comment or post, when someone can just post an overused meme or repeat the same meme phrases and gather 10 times more likes, while your post/comment fades into obscurity? Not to mention that posts older than 48 hours might as well be deleted from the site, nobody is going to see them let alone comment on them unless it gets to the "top" category or someone happens to come across it while searching for a niche issue. The upvote system also encourages echo chamberyness and groupthink. Overall, it's just really really bad! 

Speaking of that, I had no idea how much I missed forums. This site especially completely does away with those problematic things about the modern web (along with the wonderful pro-necroposting policy!) - I can just come and go at my own pace, there is no FOMO, there is no sense of trying to one-up each other (I've seen some forums with a likes system, what a horrible mistake). I like Melonland a lot so far from what I've seen 

I might quit Reddit entirely at some point, but at the moment it serve me a purpose that I'm fine with. It's like a terrible multitool that has one really good screwdriver.

Edit: Added and clarified some things.

[ngoomie]

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.

This is pretty much the same boat I'm in. I also still have a Reddit account for the rare, rare occasion I feel compelled to ask something on Reddit, but generally I don't bother anymore. I have a Lemmy account I made when the API thing happened that I don't use much, I really ought to get back to using it since I actually really liked it.

[Zombiethederg]

I used to use reddit quite frequently, and at the time I knew of the whole.. I guess "Redditor" stereotype, but I assumed it was a small majority of the website. Over the 2 years I used that hellsite, I was proven so wrong.

Very often i'd encounter people so terminally online that they'd harass me over minor opinions that didnt matter. I think one time I mentioned I wasnt the biggest fan of Megalovania in an undertale subreddit and I woke up to about 70+ comments of people calling me a contrarian (I have sense retracted this opinion but thats besides the point)

Reddit also has a problem of keeping subreddits around which REALLY shouldn't stick around for longer than the 5 seconds before they are made. Lots of subreddits I care not to name come to mind, but there are several that existed for WAAAAAY too long before finally getting shut down. Along with just the general "this is an unfiltered website" behavior they have, I cant find myself enjoying Reddit very much. Now I just have a burner for asking questions on subreddits. I dont do much else on there :/

[Zunne]

I did, i got tired of Reddit's BS so i just quit.

[Bone-A Lisa]

my real use for reddit these days is when i'm trying to find info on some topics or if i'm trying to find an answer/solution to an issue. adding "reddit" at the end of a google search is basically a must in order to get any sort of plausible answer i will say, for how messed up that sounds, that it is rather useful and has given me some way better help for all of my strange tech issues than any other site

This is pretty much how I use reddit aswell. I deleted my account with the API changes and so far haven't regretted that for a second. I do no casual browsing on reddit at all, and instead use Lemmy for a lot of that stuff.

Unfortunately, if I need an answer for something, especially if it's niche, reddit is still the best place to get it. Hobbies, programming, general tech, etc. are all things that I search for constantly. While reddit users are often toxic as hell, they have more useful things to say than all of the AI generated listicles that get pumped to the top of my search results lol.

[cmdr_nova]

I've been tentatively leaving Reddit for the past 6 months or so. It was the CEO deciding he wanted to be just like Elon Musk that did it for me, and then the destruction of the API. The thing that helps is the fact that the open source project "Lemmy" exists (a user owned version of a link aggregator that sits on the ActivityPub network). But every time I have a question, it's always back to reddit for the answer

[Eunice]

I have now logged out of reddit and I won't be logging back in again. I'll admit that I loved it, especially the wedding shaming subreddit, which was always fun. But they've changed the layout and it's just horrible. The "new.reddit.com" has gone, so I don't see the point in keeping up with it. It's impossible to find the subreddits I wanted to read. Sad, as I'd built up a respectable amount of points, or whatever they are. Ah well.

[imnotjahan]

I used to use Reddit quite a lot, but I deleted my account one or two years ago. It was too cynical and stuffed with porn for my taste. And even when people helped or discussed, it seemed more like just a fight for pointless upvotes.

I still will go on Reddit occasionally, as it has a community for almost everything which is nice, but without an account so I can't become to entangled.

[garystu]

I wanted to use it for some self promotion but then I remembered I despise reddit. I lasted one year. I think the NFT shit made me remember I hated reddit.

I just remember it as the platform which gained notoriety for hosting bigots, mens rights activists and gamergaters in the early 10s. I believe their were some clean-up-the-sites-reputation community bans at some point, but the damage is done in my eyes.

Reddit must have some sweetheart deal with Google and Bing to show up at the top of so many searches. Would push independent forums down. Why does Reddit have a reputation for giving good advice its Just Posts. You could get posts anywhere, if search engines weren't gassing reddit up. You could find a forum for anything, if

[Cobra!]

Reddit was the last social media I was regularly using before I quit social media. I got sick of its addictive nature and how it was shaping me as a person, so I uninstalled it from my iPad and never looked back.

Nowadays I only use Reddit nowadays through Remini on Gemini, which amazingly still works after Reddit’s API pricing.
I enjoy it because it limits the amount of posts you see to 20 a day. Now and again I go on AskReddit, and a few others, and that’s about it. It’s turned from an addiction to something to spend 5 minutes reading when I’m bored, and then on with my day.

[Memory]

I've been trying to leave Reddit for good. Despite it having every subreddit for whatever I'm interested in, I feel as though the communities in them are so empty?

I actually got back into Neocities because of the Neo subreddit, but I noticed that people there are quick to get confrontational or grouchy which makes it hard to get involved in the sub/community. Of course, this is just how Reddit is. I wish more forums exist, whenever I search up forums, Reddit always comes up as the #1 best result which....is not it. I am glad that I was able to find Melonland and the 32 Bit Cafe Forum from Reddit.

Now that I say this, there really isn't a reason to be on there. I do use it mostly for when I need answers for uncommon problems or to troubleshoot. I usually lurked since there wasn't any incentive to communicate with other users on there. I was able to leave all the other social media apps, so getting rid of Reddit shouldn't be too difficult. It's been nice not being on my phone all the time, and my interactions with other people online have been more positive since I'm not surrounded by social media cynicism.