The thing about leaving is that I don't know where I would go. As much as I much preferred the way Usenet clients worked the weak moderation made it untenable. Most of the competing sites are overrun with the neo-nazis that were kicked out of Reddit or topics are limited to whatever the news story of the day is. The ability to create long term communities around extremely niche topics is the strength of Reddit. Despite its slogan about being the front page of the Internet, Reddit's front page is almost completely worthless, and the people who chase after the front page are a detriment to the site.

Similar, 65k, but still hanging on. I mod a couple small subs.

My observation is the worst aspect of monetization is on the communities themselves. For the first half, say, it was standard spectrum: some trolls and schmucks but for the most part regular folks with something to say. April Fools projects from the admins wowed us year after year at the creativity and cordiality.

Then came the ads and the apps, no picnic but down in the subs was a new problem: site policy. At some point, subs and posts were getting yanked or even altered by admins. Censorship, astroturfing, shilling, kowtowing to foreign investors, the whole political manipulation thing: you couldn't trust anybody's motivations anymore in a conversation. Most lately, the standard disney/youtube-ification has started.

I'm almost done, too.

And I remember what brought me there. Was people spamming about it on slashdot and digg. I have the decss controversy to thank for bringing me to a place that didnt censor a number just cuz it might be illegal in some states. I had heard of it before and checked it when it was linked to, but that was the first time I gave it a chance as my go to page when first logging onto the internet. Reddit has long been replaced as that "first page of the day."

For a while I actually switched to facebook lists, but then facebook got hostile towards allowing people to sort their follows into categories. That one I really cant understand, because it made facebook infinitely more pleasant to use.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2476952/digg-users-are...

What are you using now?

I’ve been an active member of various communities and forums over the years (excluding reddit), and I never actively left one. It was always just a realization I hadn’t been to the site (or really aging myself, BBS) in a year. Most of them where daily habits at one point.

Is there somewhere people are going to? similar to when Digg went to reddit. where will reddit users go?

Not all of the outcasts can end up on HN