Bold move when you’re pricing the working class into using transit.

That was a key thing to finally learn. I’d removed all the people who expected I was on call for them from my life for other reasons, which wasn’t an easy process, so everyone left is a reasonable person who texts for non-business reasons with a 1-2 day response expectation, though it’s usually much faster. If it’s more important, it’s a phone call. If they just want to chat, they text to see if I’m available before calling.

I set my phone to not ring unless the number’s in my contacts. If someone needs to get a hold of me, they can leave a message … but never do. I get notifications for weather alerts, text messages, my transit app and when a new xkcd gets posted. I certainly check my email and other apps on occasion, but I don’t need notifications.

Other than surrounding yourself with the right people, the whole thing takes minutes once you’ve hit that mindset.

A key difference is that nothing was being shoved at you as soon as you got up from the computer.

I switched to Linux this year for three reasons: I hit my limit on sales-pitch notifications from Microsoft, I learned about Proton in Steam, and I finally accepted that I don’t really use Creative Suite anymore. At this point, it’s faster and easier to install Ubuntu than Windows assuming drivers aren’t an issue, which you learn at the beginning of the process with live media.

The exit didn’t start with the API announcement, just gained steam. What’s truly baffling is that Reddit seems to want data on where users’ final straw is.

Plus, you shut down the pipeline. No one’s going to make the jump from the other 95% if the content sucks.

I found your comment posting at the same time as mine with the same thesis (complete with “can just …”) pretty funny.

Not a lot of meat to the story, and it conflates tech itself with the social expectations that have sprung up because of it and the way it’s used. “Instagram’s pedophile network” (which seems only to be brought up for shock value) is not “cell service.”

I’d hazard a guess that what respondents really want to return to not being expected to be available to anyone at any time. And, crucially, they don’t feel they can just … do that.

Email does one thing and is exceedingly good at it. There are no other examples in the modern web I can think of for which there has been zero feature creep. And it is presented to the user as an application of a protocol, not the protocol itself.

That said, the past week has been made it abundantly clear that I have zero knowledge of how most people use internet connections.

I have so far found that explaining it as being like email (defederation aside) is not helpful.

The first sentence of your last graf makes “might” do some really heavy lifting in the second.

I think we’ll see a full spectrum of how people use Lemmy, and I suspect in the long run, self-selection on each instance is going to make federation make a far more understandable concept to people with any curiosity about it, and if everyone else wants Reddit, hey, more power to them.

Offline, I associate it with someone who writes batch files or scripts. I suppose that’s changed a fair sight since the '80s, but it hurts my brain that installing Firefox throws one into rarefied air before uBlock even comes up. And still, that’s where I set the baseline for being online simply because I cannot comprehend the last decade-plus actually putting up with every ad served … I can’t even conceive the volume of time spent putting up with them, let alone inteacting.

I get that mods are a subset of power users. But it seems the bar for the latter may be as low as “anyone who, upon reading an interesting article, heads over to Reddit, checks for an extant link, and if none is found posts one.”

I seriously thought that was table stakes for using the site.

I’d actually buy that it’s a self-anointed title. In other words, meaningless.

I’d sum it up thus: When’s the last time you enjoyed a new bot?

I’ve been through a lot of launchers, to the point where I’m not even certain what I’m currently using. It’s all cartoonish and absolutely against my design aesthetic. I turned notifications off months ago for anything but direct communication from my contacts and set the phone to go straight to voicemail for anyone else, and it’s been bliss. I have a few F-Droid apps, but I’ve found that I prefer the desktop experience for most use cases through that store … rarely do I have a pressing need to check my RSS feed where I can’t read links on a full monitor.

I get into work and back home in a far better mood by playing a casual game and listening to music on my commute, and there’s nothing I miss about slavishly checking my phone.

Definitely a situation where the demand is more of a damning indictment than the fact that supply exists.

The focused instances are going to be where it’s at.

And far easier to moderate. You could have 1,800 communities on the Rust instance and still know content anywhere should be about Rust or Rust-adjacent.

Spinning up your own solves all these issues. That’s not for everyone, myself included thus far, but ultimately, no one is going to build, maintain and host exactly what I want for free forever. That’s an unreasonable expectation in any context.

Because people generally want a user experience similar to Reddit

The power Reddit has over these users is they believe that to be what they want. But have you ever run into a longtime Redditor who says it’s perfect the way it is? Not just recently, either.