I'm hoping to find more of what made Reddit great in the beginning, namely a bunch of nerds being social and shooting the shit. Community, I guess. Hey, I'm a nerd who likes shooting the shit! What are the chances.

firstly: actual information that isn't a slurry of AI-generated buzzword SEO designed to get you to click an ad; real experiences from other people, real answers to questions.

secondly: participating in specific hobby communities.

thirdly: a place to go when my brain turns off and my fingers just type an address into the URL bar and hit enter.

Hobbies, learning and hopefully a place I can share things I make with people without being called a spammer... At least for a few years.

The subreddit sidebars were a treasure trove of great starting information on almost any topic. It was always my first stopping point when wanting to learn something new, travel to a new place or start a new hobby. It was legitimate helpful information that wasn’t trying to promote or sell anything. I hope to find that here.

Tons of niche/hobby communities are my main interest

It was a huge source of troubleshooting and solving really niche problems. Lots of people know about appending site: reddit to Google searches as a result.

music discovery/discussion. I found so much cool music on reddit communities for bands or genres I like

resources for learning about & discussing some of my hobbies and interests like FOSS software, Linux, gaming, guitar etc

communities for people local to the city/state I live in

I just like a 'digital public square' aspect. I want to see what people are interested in today. I want to catch up on the latest news. Maybe I want to learn something new in a hobby community.

Reddit was okay at that at first, but it did start to feel 'gamed' over a decade ago now. People were starting to notice common reposters, 'super users', and its only devolved from there with sponsored posts, awards, and advertisements. That takes away from the public square aspect and instead makes it feel like you are consuming a product.

I guess I'll be the piece of shit who says porn lol

I'm hoping some good ole fashioned porn gifs make it over here in some capacity.

After college, my reddit was mostly used to keep up with product reviews (especially in terms of durability), tech news, and biomed research, and a lot of times I got guidance on hyperspecific issues from a lot of the professionals in those communities.

Also have to give a huge shoutout to r/resumes and the other large jobhunting subreddits-- I don't think I'd have found a job at all if it weren't for their megathreads and resources

I liked the positivity of the community for the most part. Reddit, to my mind, was the only largely non toxic form of social media and that will be hard to replace though I’m liking Lemmy so far.

I always liked getting into micro communities and hearing how they talked about their worlds. That might include life in obscure (relative to me) places around the world, getting into the weeds of various occupations I’ll never work in or learning about the fine details of hobbies I’ll never have. Real people having good faith conversations about highly specific things relevant to them.

I use Reddit for 2 main purposes. As a distraction with a diverse home page curated to my interests: It was nice to scroll through and have a mixture of memes, art, text posts and news all in one place mixed together. Secondly if you want advice for a hobby/interest there is usually a subreddit for it where you can have a decent discussion.

I've spent a small amount of time on here an kbin so far and both look pretty promising (especially since they should have the same content once the federation on kbin is sorted), if they're active enough I can see one of them mostly replacing Reddit for me even if I'm not sure the main userbase will ever switch. The main thing I'm waiting for now is a decent iOS app, I'll probably use whichever platform gets one first!

Primarily authentic opinions on things that I want some input for, like products, experiences etc. Also gaming communities for seperate games.

I primarily used Reddit to get involved in niche hobbies/interests and learn more about them. After seeing a lot of my favourite communities jumping ship, I thought I’d jump too!

Recommendations and reviews about everything under the sun from actual users and not sponsored ad reviews.

1. Tech support that isn't an advert (Reddit was a goldmine for more interesting hardware)

2. Cool stats/maths things to share with my students

3. Snek and Fox pictures to get me through my marking sane(ish)

Instead of escaping out a tunnel in my cell wall, I knocked out a guard. I put on the uniform. I work here now

Pretty much all sort of info, news or otherwise, and often backed with sources and references. For practical issues, people would often share tips or refer to helpful videos and step-by-step instructions.

My need that I want to fill is a bit unrealistic and unfair to expect but... everything.

What made Reddit slowly morph from just another interesting webpage for amusement to a place where I spend a lot of my time and rely upon for so many things was how it slowly came to intersect with everything.

It became a kind of a separate google when you didn't get much joy from traditional web searching. It was a place to feel one belonged but at the same time a place for anonymity when I wanted it (at least to other Redditors anyway), a place for serious discussion and pointless shitposting seeing news as it unfolded but also stupid cat videos.

It was a placeholder for every niche you could think of so if you were trying out a new hobby, or watching a new show, or starting a new career, or trying new software there was always a sub for it.

Lemmy and other alternatives theoretically could do that, but, it'd be hard. Reddit couldn't really do that because of a great design, it just naturally progressed that way when it had more and more people in one place. That centralisation was it's flaw and it's strength so it's a difficult line for any would be successor to straddle. Ultimately though I think, if nothing ever does pull that off, Reddit ultimately created the need for Reddit and we were all fine before it and should be fine after.

1. Same point on burning time
2. Specific in-depth discussion on hobbies and interests
3. Humor (the kind I like)

I'd say these three

• Sharing memes and clip highlights with the streamer communities I care about
• Learning new things from tech specific communities
• Troubleshooting to figure out if there's a solution someone already derived or share my own for those who end up with the same problem

This is how I've used Reddit

Excellent shitposting memes, I hope that community proliferates here

In general, responses and knowledge from actual humans with experience on the topic I'm looking for, in this age of generated SEO results and AI, that information is more valuable to me.

A lot of learning and reading. I spent most of my time on Reddit just lurking and reading things, but I can't help but notice the overall higher quality of conversation here. I'm pretty happy.

Creative posts and some "historical" lessons, like how being a hivemind isn't exactly too good of an idea for communities in Reddit...

The comments from knowledgeable individuals - frequently involved in the post itself. How often did I read of an astronomical paper, only to have one of the authors comment. Or read about some random fact about plumbing or medicine or whatever, and an academic or professional from the field would offer further insight

Not to mention the spectacular recommendations in various areas: whenever I'm in the market to buy literally anything, I'll search for the best of it on Reddit. The amount of high-quality information available on Reddit is not easily replaced. For that reason, I'll probably continue making such enquiries there, even if I do give up on Reddit in every other way

I went from the rough equivalent of graduating with a 1.5gpa in high school and suicidal to making a grand total of 1 application and getting into a top 10 CS university in the States, literally giving me a second shot at life.

So many things. All the baking and cooking subs for inspiration and advice, my country's sub for daily banter (made plenty of IRL friends through that) and all the subs dealing with people and relationships (relationship_advice) to see what people from all walks of life are struggling with.

It's the niche stuff that made Reddit useful. For example, Amazon reviews are no longer trustworthy, but there were really good recommendations in reddit threads about which devices or products worked. The DIY subreddits were incredibly helpful. I got good recommendations for motorcycle tires and ultralight backpacking gear and Android apps and hotels in particular destinations from reddit. I got walkthroughs on how to set up a Plex server or do a particular project with a Raspberry Pi on reddit. With so many subs, there was almost always a thread for what I was looking for. That was the value. I expect it will take a while to rebuild that elsewhere, but I'm sure it will be recreated.

Most Google search involves the "Reddit" keyword, it's really getting in my way now that most subs are private! One of the reasons why I don't like the "delete all your own comments" thing people seem to be doing

I highly valued the discovery of niche communities. Like solo ttrpgs as my current hyper fixation. I always lurked on reddit so I hope to be more involved here. And of course memes.

The random really cool people that show up in the comments