I was around at the time, but I went from /. and/or forums to nothing to reddit. I was also about 5-7 years late to reddit
What were the prevalent reddit like boards at the time doing such that reddit became popular?
A bunch of nerds and atheist talking about nerdy things plus memes. Basically just like Lemmy.
The general subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/ was archived in 2011; pretty good at showing what the front page was like back then.
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Sure, that’s how I came upon it too.
Was there a catastrophic event like the Reddit API change that led people to make a switch?
Look up Digg v4. I was mainly a digg user until this point in Aug 2010. They redesigned the website and took away the downvote button. There were also increasing concerns from the frequent posters that the front page was getting more and more monolithic, you’d see like 20 stories from 2-3 websites at the top all the time.
Switching over to Reddit at first was hard. The site wasn’t “pretty” like digg and the content was much more unfiltered. It was like moving out to the wild west - rough, a little scary, and had a ton to explore
Digg did a site redesign that everyone hated. That was a big shift.
Digg was the main competitor. They updated so that it showed where the links were coming from, and so many were coming from reddit it started a mass-exodus. In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end. A cool nerd hangout got mass appeal.
Reddit back then was like a blend of what content we’re seeing on the “chat” communities here on Lemmy, and what Hacker News is today. It was much more technology oriented, and much less topical.
Subreddits existed, but ones for smaller fandoms and narrowly focused meme formats did not.
Was there a catastrophic event similar to the Reddit API change that led people to flock to Reddit? Or was it the appeal of the format?
For reference: I started because my friend was browsing Reddit in class and it seemed like something to do. I’m not sure if I represented the general population
I wasn’t around for it, but I understand that Digg was the “it” place until they did something dumb, and then reddit was flooded with Digg refugees. It seems like history is repeating itself, or at least rhyming.
I remember a UI redesign that looked kinda like shit, losing the ability to downvote and therefore bury paid ads placed to look like regular content, and something about a facebook connection but details are real hazy.
Yeah, the digg v4 move didn’t have identical reasons as now, but it sure felt familar
“You [Digg] chose to grow with venture capital… this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It’s cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to “give the power back to the people.”” - Alexis Ohanian
I know that was ~12 years ago, but to go from that to “we will continue to be profit-driven until we are profitable” is one hell of a character arc for a website
It’s actually a pretty common character arc, it’s just unusually blatant here.
A different group took over, and money talks. That’s about it. That’s why if we want to maintain a non-corporate internet, decentralised social media are the only option available.
Let alone Aaron’s principals. He must be spinning so fast in his grave that we could probably solve the world’s energy needs.
