I was the victim of a cyberstalker about a decade ago. This person was convinced that I was really someone else that she had a beef with. Her reasoning? We both like taking photos. (Apparently, I’m the only one posting photos online. All those pictures you see online? That’s all me. No wonder I have no free time!)

I couldn’t argue with her to let her know that she was mistaken because she had it on “very good authority” that I was lying about who I was. Namely, “God told her.” And I’m not exaggerating here. She literally thought that God talked to her and told her stuff like who was committing crimes.

Oh and I was guilty of those crimes according to “God.” I won’t name those crimes because they’re heinous, but suffice it to say she thought I was doing unspeakable things to kids. She was threatening to call my employer, the police, and everyone who knew me to tell them about what I was doing.

Luckily for me, all she had to go on was “TechyDad.” I blogged at the time, but didn’t post my exact whereabouts or my real name. The guy that she thought I was wasn’t as lucky. She contacted his employer (a school in New Zealand) and everyone with the same last name as him that was on Facebook and near him. All to tell them what he did to kids. (Again, her source was “God.” He didn’t really do anything and he had to have quite a few awkward conversations to clear things up.)

I finally got rid of the stalker by grabbing her IP address (from one of her comments) and modifying my htaccess file to report 404 Page Not Found for only that IP. She crowed on Twitter about how she singlehandedly took me down and then moved on. (I and her other targets would report her to Twitter, but she’d constantly have dozens of other handles ready and waiting and would switch to them the second her main one was banned.)

To my knowledge, she’s still out there stalking people.

Now, how would this have been different had she had my real name? Well, with a little work she would have been able to look up my location. (My name’s pretty common, but she’d find me eventually.) Then, she’d locate my employer, my address, and other information. She could send me packages or mail harassing me. She could contact my local police to swat me or just to report my “crimes.” She could contact my employer to report me and try to get me fired.

Now, I eventually did tie my real name to “TechyDad.” I wrote a book and didn’t want to publish under “TechyDad” so I used my two name. That being said, it was my choice. I definitely wouldn’t want it to be required for me to use my real name everywhere.

Apparently, those subreddits are now not only open, but completely unmoderated. Reddit’s solution was to remove the mods and put nobody else in charge. I’m sure that won’t backfire in any way whatsoever! /s

Email: “Hi, this is IT. It looks like your password is expired. Please change your password by clicking this link. Ignore the weird from address and the fact that the link obviously goes to a noncompany website. We’re really from your IT department. Promise!”

Way too many users: “Yup. This looks legit. Better coick that link and enter all of my information right now!”

Thanks for posting this. It will help me replace a few more of the subreddits I loved going to with Lemmy alternatives. I might still need to go to Reddit for a couple of subreddits (one local one and one hobby one), but my goal is to reduce my Reddit usage as much as possible.

I went back on briefly today for the first time to:

• Make sure I had read all my replies.

• Check the Boost subreddit to confirm it was going dark at the end of the month. (There was an update so I was wondering if there was some hope of it saying online.)

• Check is the two subreddits I actually still care about are closed. (One is. Another isn’t.)

I didn’t read any posts (except in the Boost subreddit to confirm that it was being shut down) and definitely didn’t comment or post anything. After that brief check in, I’m not going back for some time.

I’m not sure, but here’s a photo of my son’s blue parakeet eating to hold you over until you find it. (Also, let me know if you find such a community.)

All those OnlyFans links and not a single photo of a fan!

(Sorry. Couldn’t resist the dad joke.)

The aww subreddit opened a Discord for the cute animal photos, but I had trouble navigating it and decided to just not go there. I’ll admit to never using Discord before and for some reason it wasn’t coming naturally.

And, yes, I know the username doesn’t match with that. Not instinctively understanding a technology made me feel old.

If I’m forced to the official Reddit app, I’ll go from following 30+ subreddits to only 5 or 6. And even those, I’ll likely comment less on.

There are communities like /r/LEGO that I don’t know of a replacement for. (Maybe there could be a thread where people post the Reddit communities that they miss and people reply with alternatives. Someone could even keep a list to make it easy to search.

I’ve had multiple times when I launched Boost (my third party app of choice - at least until it’s forced to shut down) out of force of habit.

Thankfully, I planned for this eventuality. I installed a “focus” app and set it to block Boost and the Reddit app for 2 days. (I’ve since also moved the apps away from their usual spot on my phone to prevent launches.)

In one of the subreddits, someone mentioned an effort to make a “Reddit API->Lemmy API bridge.” Basically, you’d load this code and point your Reddit API calls to Lemmy instead. Then this bridge would translate your Reddit code to Lemmy. This could allow for apps like RIF, Boost, Apollo, etc to quickly turn their Reddit apps into Lemmy apps.

I hope this pans out. Jerboa isn’t bad, but having many third party apps to choose from would be great. (As a Boost user, I’d love to load Boost and browse Lemmy instead of Reddit.)

People on Reddit complain about the mods enough as it is. (And I include myself in that. I’ve had some less than stellar mod encounters in the past.) However, if Reddit were to force out existing mods and replace them with mods willing to toe the company line (and possibly ban people for mentioning the blackout, complaining about Reddit, or mentioning alternatives), it would just result in more user dissatisfaction.

Reddit won’t go out overnight. There are too many people who post there. However, this could turn into a snowball effect. Rebelling mods are replaced by bootlickers. Dissent is crushed in order to make it seem like everything is hunky dory before the IPO. Power users flee to alternatives like Lemmy. Slowly, normal users hear that some of their favorite content is on this new service and sign up. Reddit usage drops little by little until it’s limping around as a shell of its former self.

Try letting it sit for a bit and then refreshing. It did the same to me before loading.

I found a different one, posted by the author on the DataIsBeautiful subreddit: https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/