• u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)
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    10410 months ago

    My dad really changed since joining TikTok. Now that’s all he talks about. Come look at this, come look at this,…
    “But I am busy.”
    “Oh, come on, it’s short.”
    “Look. See? People love Putin.”

    For fucks sake… Then he proceeds to loudly curse when he gets yet another account banned for posting some trash.
    When I try to talk to him, I am met with “Wait, I just have to finish this video.” then later he complains I don’t talk with him. ¿?

    I mean, it’s not just TikTok alone, he uses Facebook, TikTok and VKontakte, but I feel like that had the biggest influence.

    • @[email protected]
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      10 months ago

      start behind the scene subscribing to anti-putin posts and channels and see he changing opinion lol

      • @[email protected]
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        1410 months ago

        100%. This actually works. Most boomers are not technologically late enough to track subscriptions and such.

        There was a YouTube video not a documentary (similar to The Brainwashing of My Dad) where their father went down the rabbithole, but they started subscribing them to better news sources, and eventually to left-leaning news sources, and he did a whole 180°.

        Fear is like a drug. It’s addictive, and rightwing media sources have cracked the formula on how to get people addicted to it, and it can happen to ANYONE. The uneducated to the well-educated. The only thing that makes you immune to it is critical thinking and empathy - which is why I feel that their next war is on education and masculinity. They are literally trying to perfect the addiction so you can never leave it.

        This is part of the reason why education is so insanely important.

        • Promethiel
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          10 months ago

          I feel that their next war is on education and masculinity.

          The latest shots in the former march on by under the banner of ‘woke [literally any noun]’ is ruining our children these days, but that war has been raging since the 80s. ‘They’re’ winning by strangling the purse strings and efficiencies out of public education.

          The latter? Masculinity? That one has been a total occupation for hundreds of years already.

          Our sisters, mothers, and daughters have been warning us even before the side effects get to them. Of the emotional self-immolation a Patriarchic-controlled society demands of men by violence and shame until ‘Men don’t cry’ can be such poisonous words that many men end up kissing the barrel of a gun than using their lips to communicate their struggles to each other.

          It took trauma and the effects of such turning sharpening empathy into a survival mechanism rather than the too often opposite for me to even have been able to introspect myself out of just the more common and pervasive aspects of ‘toxic masculinity’.

          Make no mistakes; whatever you want to call ‘hearts and minds’, the twisted craven swine undermining the concept of basic humanity know very well to keep assaulting them. Education and empathy are the only things that can empower an actual successful removal of the Takers’ ability to do the same.

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          exactly, i got this idea from a brazilian tweet, where she did the same with her mom and it worked lol

    • BruceTwarzen
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      210 months ago

      My dad can hardly use his phone and this sounds absolutely haunting.

  • @[email protected]
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    7610 months ago

    once the boomers get there and start liking it, that’s when you know it’s about to reach peak and crash hard. my parents are talking about reddit. case in point.

    • @[email protected]
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      7910 months ago

      In contrast to the others, Reddit decided to kill itself off before most Boomers have even heard of it:-).

      • @[email protected]OP
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        810 months ago

        The boomers I know haven’t found reddit yet so there is still time. It’s not that boomers are on a platform, it’s when boomers like my parents get there that shit starts to spiral out.

        • @[email protected]
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          410 months ago

          There are a lot of Boomers trickling into Reddit, and they are killing it even faster with mass reporting people.

          They go into subs that shit on Boomers for being themselves, and since Reddit hands out site bans for anything now it ends up destroying a lot of accounts.

          I really hope they never find Lemmy.

    • @[email protected]
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      310 months ago

      My boomer dad has been on Reddit for years. But he just looks at football and fishing subreddits.

    • @[email protected]
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      110 months ago

      They’ve been there. So have gen x and millennials and obviously gen z. Y’all are so petty lol

  • @[email protected]
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    6510 months ago

    Not before their brains start to rot by using those in the first place

    It’s scary to see how even the older generation gains reduced attention span, reduced ability to learn and need for instant gratification on this short dopamine machine.

    • BoscoBear
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      710 months ago

      I experience it myself. I know I am an addict and need to quit. Yet here I am.

      • @[email protected]
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        110 months ago

        It’s a loop that is hard to quit once you’ve entered it.

        I wish you success; maybe a good digital detox on the countryside with some simple books, field work and joys may help to reset your mind?

        • BoscoBear
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          410 months ago

          I spend a lot of time off grid but it is excruciating.

          Best treatment is having things to do for others, but that is rare these days

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            Maybe take some volunteering, then?

            Or would it be too hard/not useful to make yourself start doing something like that?

            • BoscoBear
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              10 months ago

              I do when the need comes up. There is a surprising amount of gatekeeping.

              • @[email protected]
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                110 months ago

                Would you like to tell more on the gatekeeping aspect? Imma be honest, I’m not a seasoned volunteer and would like to know more.

                • BoscoBear
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                  310 months ago

                  One woman that works at a heritage farm told me a story about an open house they were having. She wanted to offer a lemon-sugar they made at the farm from an heirloom lemon tree. The woman organizing the event got very upset about this.

                  I joined a makerspace recently and in one of the steering committee meetings they talked about a problem they had with people who were not authorized using potentially dangerous or costly tools, and authorized people being unable to get easy access. I, being an embedded systems guy, offered to make a solution to this. They could have taken me up on the idea and just not used it, but instead one of the board members goes ballistic telling me I am not the one to do it.

                  I worked with a STEM teacher who contributed a lot of time after hours to help students enter academic competitions. This upsets other teachers, for reasons I don’t understand. They want him stopped. He was getting paid. He told them they could do it too and make extra money (as much as $50/hr) but they didn’t want to. They wanted him to stop.

                  A lot of it I don’t understand but it sounds a lot like the politics inside an HOA or a lot of other organizations.

  • @[email protected]
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    10 months ago

    I hate to break it to you my not-so-tech-savvy friend, but boomers on tiktok is not going to destroy tiktok like it did Facebook. The algo will basically only show their content to other boomers and young people will largely be unaware of it.

    • @[email protected]
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      2810 months ago

      The same was true of Facebook my not-so-socially-savvy friend. Kids will stop using it once they realise grandma is on there because it is no longer cool.

      • @[email protected]
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        2810 months ago

        Again, Facebook and TikTok operate differently. One is a social network, the other is a short form video platform. A social network is inherently dependent on its users. Did YouTube die when it became widely adopted??

        • @[email protected]
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          1410 months ago

          I don’t know if YouTube died per se, but it certainly became enshittified.

          Heaps of content creators sold out to advertising interests and degraded their own platform. Not that I blame them really, money always talks

          • @[email protected]
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            910 months ago

            And new creators take their place, if you’re only seeing shit on YouTube it’s because you’re only subscribed to shit.

            • @[email protected]
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              910 months ago

              Tell me you’re out of touch without telling me you’re out of touch. Most of the good creators only upload once in a blue moon nowadays. The search feature is completely useless. Dislikes have been removed, so you can’t easily filter garbage anymore. Shorts, a toxic form of content, is getting pushed down users’ throats. Their UI is getting worse all the time…

              • @[email protected]
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                10 months ago

                I have no trouble finding good content and if you don’t use the official app or use it in your browser you can just disable shorts. It’s also not like dislikes ever actually filtered content lmao. You never saw videos with crazy dislike ratios back in the day? Engagement votes are engagement, whether they’re positive or negative.

            • Cosmic Cleric
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              10 months ago

              Heaps of content creators sold out to advertising interests and degraded their own platform. Not that I blame them really, money always talks

              And new creators take their place, if you’re only seeing shit on YouTube it’s because you’re only subscribed to shit.

              To be fair, a lot of the good ones have moved over to, or always has been on, Nebula. (I’m not getting paid for pitching Nebula, just saying.)

              In essence, you’re both right, to some degree, but not completely.

        • @[email protected]
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          910 months ago

          Splitting hairs isn’t going to change anything. TikTok is absolutely 100% a social network. It uses more video and less written word but that’s about it. YouTube hasn’t died (and neither has Facebook for that matter) but it was very different in its earlier incarnations. It has become more social as time has gone on, in an effort to remain relevant. It has largely copied TikTok.

          TikTok in turn will become a boring old platform used by Old People (millennials, Gen Z) and kids will (already are) on to something new.

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            It’s not splitting hairs, it’s a fundamental difference. My mother and my niece are friends on Facebook but they don’t follow each other on TikTok. Hell most people who are close friends IRL don’t even follow each other on TikTok. There’s no brand cache for old people to ruin its just a tool.

            Sure kids will move on to something new eventually, but it’s waaaay more likely to be cause all the ‘eligible for commission’ videos make it feel like the Home Shopping Channel not cause old people (continue to) use it.

      • @[email protected]
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        410 months ago

        Facebook was best when people used to call their friends cocksuckers and put up photos of people being drunk on the floor.

        Then it stopped because everyone’s family could see and it stopped being funny.

        Then the ads really killed itm

    • @[email protected]
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      110 months ago

      You do know kids can find out grandma is on tiktok other ways than just the site itself? Touch grass, remember there’s a world outside

      • But would anybody be bothered by it, if there’s no interaction there? Boomers destroyed Facebook for younger audiences, as all of a sudden parents would join in on conversations with your friends in the comments under a photo. You would link an article about a political issue and your reactionary uncle would proceed to call everyone who reads it a damn commy that needs to go to the army to learn some real life.

      • @[email protected]
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        310 months ago

        lol. I can’t tell if you just don’t know any young people or if it’s that you don’t know the difference between a social network and a short term video app. (Or you’re just mad cause tiktok = bad.)

  • I Cast Fist
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    5010 months ago

    Oh don’t worry, OP, soon you’ll be a cranky old perosn who’ll be complaining about whatever social media the young’uns are using and doing your part to “kill” something else by using it

    • @[email protected]OP
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      10 months ago

      Promise?

      Cause all I want is a platform that isn’t shoving ads down your throat; respects privacy; helps you feel connected with peers; and isn’t plastered with hate.

      I’ll be ruining quite a few platforms with those expectations.

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        Facebook was all those things in the beginning.

        Reddit was all those things in the beginning.

        Twitter was all those things in the beginning.

        LinkedIn was all those things in the beginning.

        The Internet in general was all those things in the beginning.

        I’ve never used IG/TT but I assume they were all those things in the beginning.

        Lemmy will probably be said to be most of those things in the beginning.

        With age comes wisdom, which comes once you’ve seen the pattern happen enough times, which can only come with age.

        Sincerely,

        One of those old people.

        • @[email protected]
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          1510 months ago

          You can still setup your email server and send / receive emails without adds.

          So lets hope that it doesn’t end in a single corporate Lemmy instance with its own fork that defederated everything else but has most of the content.

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            Yes you can but for people that are looking to set one up today, not someone that’s been running one for 5 years and has basically a whitelisted reputation, it takes a lot to set it up and keep your domain and IP space reputation solid, along with DKIM/SPF/etc records, all the latest stuff like Google’s new mandatory unsubscribe header that will keep coming up. Even if a couple people on your hosting provider start spamming, if they’re in the same IP space as you, You’re going to be getting filtered more heavily for using a “bad neighbor” host. The big corporate/“nonprofit” guys like Spamhaus and Google and Microsoft are basically those controlling corporations for emails, what they say in their spec pretty much goes. They’re making it h em oarder for people to set up and run their own email servers, whether that is the outright intended effect for their mandatory changes or not.

            Don’t get me started on trying to set up a business newsletter account on your new corporate mail server, holy hell, the warm-up itself is pulling hairs. There’s a reason companies like MailChimp, Zapier, et al make so much money.

        • @[email protected]
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          710 months ago

          You’ve hit the nail on the head.

          The Internet is fine, until you try to monetize it.

          You can grow with membership, donations, site perks, but it’s slow growth.

          Or you can go for a big check. And sell questionably sourced boner pills, online therapy, and vpns to obscure the fact that you use the site.

          These sites are all great until people who invested expect a return.

          Time for a government run social media platform?

          Or maybe something similar to PBS but for social media? Government grants but independently run and crowd funded.

          Free speech but not freedom to hate.

  • PatFusty
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    10 months ago

    Kids think anyone older than 25 are boomers. I would wager that the average age here on Lemmy is ~30. So by default, we are all boomers here.

    With that said, follow my onlyfans account for cat news and all things related cats at

    OnlyCatFans

    • BlanketsWithSmallpox
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      1110 months ago

      Expected Rick Roll but was still sad you didn’t have an Only fans for cats. That would probably make decent money out of spite.

    • @[email protected]
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      410 months ago

      You really sound like boomers in this whole post tbh. TikTok hasn’t been just full of kids or whatever in years… My page is full of hydroponic farmers, cat videos, game memes, d&d stuff, and other comedy shit. Almost all of which are channels run by millennials around my own age.

      You guys are so out of touch and you frankly look goofy with this petty shit.

      • PatFusty
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        10 months ago

        You sound like you are in dire need of cat videos and other cat related content.

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          Is that supposed to be an insult? Cat videos are great. Are you 90? You wanna make a basement joke or bitch about rock music while you’re at it?

          • PatFusty
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            910 months ago

            Thank the lord you brought this up. That dang rock n roll is the devil incarnate. DAE agree? Can I get 5 updoots

  • @[email protected]
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    4210 months ago

    People of all ages have been on TikTok for years now… Y’all are the ones sounding like boomers lol

  • @[email protected]
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    4210 months ago

    “Kill” those platforms just means “I don’t use it”. Petty absurd thing to say considering how huge FB still is.

    • @[email protected]
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      10 months ago

      considering how huge FB still is.

      FB is only huge because they’ve expanded all over the globe, even providing internet to developing nations to facilitate new user acquisition. In reality they’ve been bleeding the original Western users that signed up between '04-'10, and growth among new generations flatland a long time ago. There’s a reason Meta aggressively expanded to other ventures (or attempt to create platforms) like Instagram, Threads, what’s app, VR and metaverse. Metas only chance at sustainable growth and capturing young people is to build or buy platforms young people will use, because it ain’t Facebook.

      • @[email protected]
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        1210 months ago

        Are you arbitrarily adding conditions and moving the goalposts? I said FB is huge, and that is true. Your rebuttal “only because” really doesn’t change that, if anything it reinforces it. It also doesn’t change the fact that FB hasn’t been “killed” as originally postulated.

      • @[email protected]
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        710 months ago

        FB is only huge because they’ve expanded all over the globe, even providing internet to developing nations to facilitate new user acquisition

        And they only say Godzilla is huge because she can crush a tank with her foot.

        • @[email protected]
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          110 months ago

          It’s horizontal growth vs vertical. Growing by getting more coverage is growth but it’s not sustainable growth that you get by getting the next generation into it.

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        If it’s just the Boomers, it’s dead, why the fuck would companies want to market to people with lots of disposable income and nothing to do all day???

      • Jojo
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        510 months ago

        This might surprise you to learn, but boomers are, in fact, people. They might not be the driving force behind the parts of the digital economy you care about, but they still count. They still make money for the services they use.

        • @[email protected]
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          310 months ago

          Obviously. But have you accessed fb in the last 5 years? There’s no content anymore, just ads.

          • Jojo
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            210 months ago

            I stopped using Facebook long ago, but that doesn’t really matter. I’m not really their target demographic anymore. I expect neither are you. I know people who use Facebook regularly for one reason or another. I don’t think that use looks much at all like it did in 2007, but they’re still using it.

          • @[email protected]
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            110 months ago

            I hazard to guess they are the most likely to engage with adds like popups, and banners, and be least likely to recognize native advertisement.

    • @[email protected]
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      110 months ago

      I know very few people that use Facebook, mostly for groups or market if they are. Compare that to a time where everyone was on Facebook, Facebook is dead.

  • @[email protected]
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    2710 months ago

    Someday kids will understand when the baby boomers were actually born.

    Or, I guess OP is a middle-aged person complaining about his elderly parents being on a phone app.

    • @[email protected]
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      1410 months ago

      I mean, I’m only 30 and my parents are boomers. They weren’t even that old when they had me. - I’d imagine there’s plenty of early-20’s kids running around with boomer parents.

      • Atlas
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        210 months ago

        Yeah, I’m in my early twenties and my mom is in her sixties. A friend of mine is in her mid twenties and her parents are both in their sixties, too. Some people wait longer to have kids for various reasons. Luckily, my mom barely knows how to open Chrome, so at least I don’t have to worry about her getting addicted to TikTok lmao.

    • @[email protected]
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      610 months ago

      elderly is a bit harsh referring to people in their 60’s.

      I know a lot of boomers (yes, baby boomers) who keep talking about tiktok.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      10 months ago

      Yep, it still exists. Like a marionetted corpse waltzing around selling garage sale items and finding lost dogs.

      • Smuuthbrane
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        610 months ago

        I think you’re confusing it with Zuckerberg. Or maybe they’re one and the same?

    • @[email protected]
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      810 months ago

      I don’t understand the “killed Facebook” thing either. I haven’t used Facebook in almost 10 years but as far as I know it’s still printing money.

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        Killed Facebook because the people who were into it and enjoyed using it… stopped using it 10 years ago. If I were to log into my Facebook account right now, I would see my mum posting Sovereign Citizen stuff. My aunty sharing photo after photo of my nephews and nieces. My other aunty talking about her later life crisis holidays to South Africa. And advertisement after advertisement for random junk.

        If I’m lucky, one of my friends will have posted something like “Photo from Butterfly Effect reunion last night. These guys still kick ass”

        “Facebook” is alive and well but it’s a different product than we knew and, whether intended or not, target audience is boomers and terminally online jerkoffs.

    • key
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      610 months ago

      And by most estimates it has more active users than ever.

      It’s no longer “hip” but being hip and being popular are opposing goals.

  • @[email protected]
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    2210 months ago

    Uh oh, you’re becoming the generation affixed to social media platforms.

    Oh, you’ll try to hang on, I’m sure you’ve got a BlueSky and ZingZang account, probably dabble in Xruddle to stay “cool,” but you’re whining about dated platforms that most people younger than you are already moving beyond.

    Fight. Fight against the dying of the light!

    • Bahnd Rollard
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      10 months ago

      We used to do just that, google was where you went to find things. Reddit was where you went to tell other people what you found.

      Now you google things on Reddit to find the post where someone else put in the effort to find something. Googles base results are such SEO garbage that niche things might as well not be indexed or gasp on the second page. Reddit itself has also become unuseable with the redesigns, old.reddit/ooer was more readable than the current UI/UX.

      • @[email protected]
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        110 months ago

        I want to use another engine so bad but Google has such little nice-to-have features that no other engine has.

    • @[email protected]
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      310 months ago

      Boomers are also helping Reddit ban people that contribute all the time! Since Reddit’s appeal process is garbage and site wide bans are common, even more users are getting kicked off the platform. Just in time for that IPO.

  • @[email protected]
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    1610 months ago

    If by kill you mean turn into a cesspool of right wing extremist propaganda and incel shit only a boomer could spout and still fuck, then most platforms are already there or pretty close.

  • @[email protected]
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    1310 months ago

    Never felt the need to join tiktok, my friends and family on it kept sending me links to it that were videos that I had already seen weeks ago somewhere else.