It’s disappointing to see some of the larger subreddits going public with a ‘what’s the point?’ tone. Most are staying private, but some aren’t. As if Reddit doesn’t exist solely because of its user generated content. If enough subs permanently shut down, they’ll be forced to reconsider their API position. Social media can’t run without social media.
I decided to write a message to subreddits I’ve been lurking for years via messaging the mods saying how vitally important it is for subreddits to protest right now, at this critical time, before it’s too late. I’ve politely implored them to continue the protest saying how these API changes with have a long-lasting, permanent impact on Reddit as a platform for the worse.
I’d suggest you guys come up with your own letter template and message the mods of those subreddits in polite form. It’d be great if we can convince these exceptions to go private again. I also understand some moderators may be afraid Reddit will just replace them with mods willing to reopen the sub, so I added a section saying it they’re treated like that, Reddit don’t deserve their time and maybe they should consider spending their time elsewhere if that happens. This is their prime chance to stand up for the right thing right now for the future of Reddit.
I used Reddark to determine which subreddits to contact. I’d say only contact hobbyist ones such as sports rather than more politically-inclined ones like Ukraine that have a fair reason to stay open. Also some subreddits have made poll posts asking their users if they should go private like Gaming and NotTheOnion, so please don’t message those ones.
I personally think you should message them if you think it will make you feel better, but I wouldn’t expect anything to come of it. I assume the mods are aware of the implications of their actions and are choosing to reopen with that impact in mind.
In my opinion, reddit was an interesting experiment 10-15 years ago that grew stagnant and somewhat boring. The people running it have chosen, with intention, to make the site as suitable as possible for their financial goals. I don’t like it, but it’s their right to do so. The issues which have recently boiled over were always present, and I just don’t think you can put the Shit Genie back in the bottle RandyBoBandy.
Reddit will lumber on, it will probably go right behind Facebook and many users will continue to use it. The more creative users will likely flock to platforms like this and create something new that will take a longer period of time to go through a similar cycle.
I may leave my account intact over there. Maybe I’ll occasionally pop over to see if it still works like I do on fark.
I think the fun part of reddit is over.
“I think the fun part of reddit is over.” Upvoted until I saw this, and had to comment to say you are absolutely right. Reddit will live on for now but the fun times feel over.
I agree man. I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference. It’s just a shame to see how rapidly the platform is dying overnight due to greed and I want to know as a long time user, at least I did everything I could on my part to protest it’s changes. Onto greener pastures we go.
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Does it really matter? I feel like as long as we have a good community here or somewhere else in the fediverse, what Reddit does or does not do is irrelevant. The main problem was we didn’t like their policies and there wasn’t anywhere else to go with a decent sized community.
If you have to ask then you’re probably fighting a losing battle. I’d focus more energy on making kbin (or Lemmy) a viable alternative. Post content that people want to see. If you are a dev contribute to open source.
I’m sure the potential users who are on the fence would be more likely to move over if the platform was in the best shape it can be. It needs an actual community of users and content for that to happen.
I think one of the big problems is that the mods are just as ‘addicted’ to reddit as the users are. The mods don’t want to lose their community. If it’s not for all the work that went into it and the joy they get out of it or for providing a community for a niche group, it’s for the ‘powertrip’ of being a mod.
So it’s also a case of selfdiscipline. Are they able to restrict themselves.deleted by creator
I think the next move is to direct communities to a new platform, and get the mods on board with it.
Right now I think fediverse is the new platform. The infrastructure needs to be ready to scale though.
Kbin needs to get baseline hardware in place and auto-scaling cloud hardware to deal with the rush and day-to-day fluctuations. This requires money and engineers.
Kbin needs a way to generate some income to help pay for these things. The easiest to sell is ads. If ads don’t show up soon I don’t see this project succeeding. If Kbin can’t scale automatically then it’s going to fail.
Once these issues are addressed then convincing a few large subreddits to redirect their community to fediverse will make it easier to redirect smaller subreddits. It will also make it possible for mobile devs to do their thing.
I think mobile apps should decide if they want to be free and not show ads, or get a cut of ad revenue if they do show kbins ads to their users. People should be compensated for their work.
What do ads have to do with it? Once @ernest sets up a donation page that allows automated, periodic donations, it should be fine. Look at mastodon. They’re pulling 28k/month in donations from patreon alone. Lemmy and kbin are the two biggest contenders for a reddit replacement on the fediverse imo and it’s quite possible they’ll get bigger than mastodon (personal feeling).
They won’t need ad money and if they ever do switch, I can bet you it won’t play well with the community.
It is a bit of a catch-22 though. In its current state both Lemmy and Kbin are not really user friendly, app support is pretty much nonexistent. It would be hard to sell access to this for a few bucks a month. But if the money doesn’t start rolling in early to get ahead of stability and usability problems, it may never get off the ground at all. And we could potentially throw money at it and still have it go nowhere. It’s tricky. I want to tell my (admittedly small) subreddit to jump ship and come over to lemmy.world and kbin.social but I think in its current state they’re liable to look at me like I’ve gone insane. These places aren’t ready to handle the 95+% of Reddit that aren’t relatively tech-savvy power users.
We need:
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a wiki equivalent per-community
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better discoverability across fediverse aggregators
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a more RES-style UI that just makes more sense for the way people are used to browsing (why can’t I go anywhere and see a list of my subscribed communities? kbin, lemmy.world and the Mlem app all can’t do this, but Memmy can, and it’s the one most important thing I want - there’s a reason it’s the opening page of an app like Apollo)
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and an app that leans in to the broad discoverability across servers rather than is limited by it. e.g. Mlem can’t see kbin communities. Kbin doesn’t have an app yet.
There was no reason to expect any of this was gonna happen in two days - but I think once those start coming in to focus we can actually pull broad swaths of Reddit communities over with fairly little disruption.
I agree that the UI needs work. I want to point out that you can see a list of all your subscribed communities. On your profile, where it says Overview, threads, comments, etc, these are on a scroll bar. scroll over and there’s a tab labeled subscriptions, and there you can see all your subscribed magazines and how long you’ve been subscribed to them.
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At least some of Aquariums made it over here. Shrimptank not so much. Neither did Plantedtank. Those last two are pretty niche so that’d be a hard sell.
I could not agree with you more. I don’t feel like 48 hours is long enough. I woke up this morning and thought, “I can use Reddit again…wait why? Fuck Reddit they’re assholes.” And then proceeded to jump onto Lemmy and kBin hahaha. Peace out Reddit.
I cannot believe these neanderthal mods went public lmao that is the STUPIDEST decision they could make. I thought everyone was agreeing to go longer than two days. What a joke.
The problem is that people on here are complaining about people creating alternatives to their old subreddits so people either stay on Reddit or miss out. Make up your mind, peeps.
Some have also polled their userbase elsewhere, the Retro Gaming Network, which represents about 70 subs, polled on Discord - they’re currently 492 to 55 to extend the blackout indefinitely. I’ve just looked at Reddark now and the only sub that’s included from those 70 is r/retrogaming, so add 69 more to the 6250 currently dark.
r/Switzerland also polled its users to see what they wanted, in a typical Swiss way (we Swiss people get to vote on various subjects 4 times a year, including changes to the constitution, new laws and many other things)
What was the result?
So far “go back to private” is winning but the poll will end on Friday.
I was expecting them to stay neutral.
No plans to go back on Reddit at this point, so no.
Isn’t the biggest hurdle in Reddit that they’re killing API mod support? If the mods are okay enough with the changes to continue on Reddit just let them?
FYI - don’t message /r/food. I had a brief browse and saw absolutely no posts whatsoever about the blackout. Very much business as usual as if nothing happened. So I messaged them, their response was “Thank you for your unsolicited message shitting on our protest.” and banned me lol. So leave them to it. I was pretty careful to word my message maturely (the first paragraph said ‘I hope I’m not coming off as unreasonable, but I do think it’s vitally important for this protest to continue for it to have any real impact.’), but I guess some just really can’t live without their Reddit addiction.
/r/food mods have always been power tripping cunts lol
Right? And don’t they get mad when people ask for recipes? I swear I’ve seen tons of “This isn’t /r/cooking!” posts there, even when it’s clearly homemade. Seems like it’s just a bunch of low effort pics with no context. I could just do an image search on google for “food” if I wanted that.
I double checked to make sure. There is absolutely no protest or messaging on /r/food. What a bunch of cunts.
It is honestly vital that the blackout continue, and I hope most are on the same page. I am not optimistic, though.
It is honestly not, and it’s concerning to continue to see people that think it is.
We have to let go of this notion that for kbin to win, Reddit has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for kbin to win, kbin has to do a really good job.
If the best we can be is the only alternative left, that’s pretty weak.
You’re essentially asking people to brigade. It doesn’t matter if it’s ‘politely’ or not. You’re asking people in one area to go to another website and start contacting people there for an agenda. This really isn’t what Kbin should be about.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask.
It’s unreasonable to coordinate an effort and ask other people to do it against another site/sub/community/magazine/etc. As someone who modded one of the top subs on Reddit, this is exactly the kind of thing that leads to excessive moderator and sub harassment. If you think you want to do it on your own, go ahead and do it. Making a post asking others to isn’t okay.
