hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout today, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! Thanks!
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thread cycled! new thread is over here, folks
I don’t care about fixing Reddit and I don’t care about teaching Reddit a lesson. I don’t care if the site buckles or continues to hold on and grow while they regulalry downgrade their service as they have been doing for the 10 years I’ve been an active user. No protest of anything Reddit has done has ever caused Reddit to reconsider what they’re doing. Reddit does not care about anything because it’s not a person. It’s a business entity which will attempt by any means to maximise profit. Having a functional website or having human users or moderation at all are not strictly necessary to secure investment or generate ad revenue. Doing what investors want them to do, regardless of the actual effect it may have long-term, is what will get them investment now. That is more important to Reddit than everything else put together. There’s no mastermind, no one’s at the wheel, no idiot is unilaterally making decisions like a king. There’s only the inevitable consequences of the collective decisions of businesspeople participating in corporate capitalism.
The main reason I don’t care is that I don’t have to care anymore. The Fediverse has been a breath of fresh air after a very long time.
No reason to go back and every reason not to. The Fediverse is my home now.
I don’t care about fixing reddit either, I don’t care if it lives or dies, not anymore, tho it wouldn’t be bad IMO teaching the CEO a lesson in humility.
Hard to teach humility to a dude who is surrounded by institutional investors funneling millions into his pockets.
But yeah I hope this is ruining his sleep
Not sure he is able to learn.
Right? This was always bound to happen. The only way it wouldn’t be innevitable would require Reddit be a non-profit or co-op or equivalent. Which it certainly isn’t.
I also agree, the sudden breath into the fediverse (I’ve been poking my head in since I ran a nextcloud instance and they had a plugin for the fediverse called nextcloud social.). This place isn’t just a handful of OSS developers and enthusiasts anymore, but something starting to resemble a community of all types.
It reminds me of when Reddit was good, way back in like 2010 (for me) - but it feels more consequential now!
no idiot is unilaterally making decisions like a king.
Every decision is made by one person or a party of people specifically saying “Yes” to it. Whether they are “idiot[s]” is up for debate, but every single event involving anything artificial is decided by a person/people, not merely a faceless system.
No protest of anything Reddit has done has ever caused Reddit to reconsider what they’re doing
To be fair, they did fire that pedo mod they hired. Eventually.
AskHistorians is taking the approach of “blackout for two days, then read-only moving forward indefinitely.” I think that’s a good approach as it still removes the functionality of the subreddit while reminding people of what they’re missing out on due to the admins’ actions.
I know there are bigger subs, but AskHistorians is an absolute jewel in Reddit’s crown. For all the dumpster fire subs that raise controversy and drag Reddit’s image down, AskHistorians is the one sub that could always be pointed to as a sub with an inarguably positive impact. It’s also a sub in a unique position because its moderators are probably the hardest for Reddit to replace, because many of them are the historians that answer the questions, or have personal relationships with those that do. In addition most of the historians aren’t really Redditors, participating only on AskHistorians. Removing the current mod team and replacing them would absolutely 100% kill the sub forever.
Not that I have any faith in Reddit to do the right thing. I just think it’s interesting to realize just how different of a position AskHistorians in than the rest of the subreddits, being at the same time more impactful than their subscriber numbers show, while being fragile enough to be permanently broken if handled poorly. They are also one of the only mod teams I’ve see who have issued a list of actionable goals that Reddit can address.
Also it’s interesting to see that their participation in the blackout is almost entirely on Spez’s head. That’s some damn fine CEOing there, Lou.
The askhistorians subreddit and it’s mod team are absolute gems, I was able to attend one of their talks at a conference and it was honestly one of the best presentations I’ve seen at these types of events. It is giant loss to the academic community to have them shut down tbh, and I hope they are able to migrate and keep their audience.
But then again knowing Reddit, if they migrate u/spez will probably allow Holocaust deniers to take up the space or something.
I hope one of the archive projects (archiveTeam or others) has backed up r/askhistorians past posts and comments, just in case.
Not to worry, every post and comment on reddit has been archived, and is freely available as a 2tb torrent on Academic Torrents.
Is there an easy way to access this? I wanted to point out to some older reddit posts.
Oh, I hope so as well, that sub is absolutely precious. When people talked about nuking their account(which I get it) it was for post like those that I feared for.
This is just my personal opinion. The 2 day blackout for me, never meant for people to pack their bags and leave Reddit entirely. It’s not a very easy task to do, and honestly, there is still lots of contents and friends back in reddit. Reddit can be sure that lots of people will simply come back, and spez will grinning while working his way to his beloved IPO.
However, the 2 day blackout has opened a new world of alternatives to Reddit. Now people know other places and other communities that can replace Reddit as a whole. Yes, Reddit will still be an influential website. Yes, Reddit will still be money driven. Yes, spez will not budge. But we can.
To me, Reddit will not crash, burn and crushed to ash. But rather, it’s either went the FB way, relying to lots of ads and older demographics to sustain, or simply becoming Myspace or Digg, a distant memory that’s only in name.
Just my 1/2 cents.
Yeah I wouldn’t have ever signed up for lemmy if this api thing hadn’t come about. This is my first fediverse experience. I was pissed at reddit, but now I don’t care about reddit one way or another. Lemmy has gained enough users to sustain itself even if there is no more mass migration. There is an active community here that will help lemmy grow organically over time.
Mastodon’s story feels pretty similar Starts off as a small project, Twitter becomes worse due to corporate capitalism, mass influx is users some of those stay. Twitter still exists, but mastodon now is known and used interchangeably.
relying to lots of ads and
older demographicslow-literacy masses to sustainFIFY
Among the “older demographics” there are the most “nerdy” people, those born when personal computers and the internet didn’t exist, those growing up together with technology, used to a world when corporations didn’t destroy the good of sharing knowledge.
Those are the people most likely to rebel to what reddit is doing and find their way out if it, because they know it’s possible, because they’ve seen it before.
Youngest people are used to how the world is nowadays because it’s all they’ve seen, but they can be shown the difference if they’re willing to listen.
Low-literacy masses are those who don’t listen because they don’t care, people of that sort exist in every age “range” and are unfortunately the majority of content “consumers”, that’s why Facebook(/Instagram/WhatsApp) doesn’t die, and Reddit won’t either most probably.
Exactly, I’m ‘older’ but I grew up with the internet in the 90s and know what it was before it turned into a monetized cesspool of corporate trash.
Reddit relies on user generated content, so it if the few users who actually generate entertaining stuff take their business elsewhere it will go the way of Myspace and DIgg. Because there is already a Facebook for old people.
I’m trying to figure out what kind of blackout you’re talking about. I open up (oh my God, I feel like a heretic) Reddit and guess what? Hardly anything has changed on Reddit. My feed is still there. Yes, a grand total of five ever-fronting subs stopped working, ten more subs took a formal vote, and… it’s still the same. Every social network goes the way of monetizing content. I first joined Reddit in 2015, at the time it was an incomprehensible pseudo-social network with an awkward interface. It took almost 18 years before Reddit became usable. But blackout is still a long way off. While kbin/lemmy is consolidated by the thought of blackout, but people can’t stay in suspense for long.
It’s still refreshing to see how many subreddits ended up joining the blackout. Over 8000 joined, including some big ones, and (as of posting) 6800 are still either private or restricted.
I don’t think the monetisation of content is inevitable for social media . It’s inevitable for companies driven by profit who fully control a platform if that company wants to survive - but there are other ways to structure a community that doesn’t rely on centralised platforms run by a business.
I guess we might see if i’m right over the next decade or two. I hope I am.
I’m glad to see there’s been more of a push for previously ‘48 hours only’ subreddits to move to an indefinite blackout - but I wish that more of them had committed earlier. That leaked internal email shows exactly what I already expected; they just see the protesting Redditors as a bunch of whiny babies who they expect to give up after a couple days and forget the whole thing.
I’m not giving up. 11 year account deleted. I might read stuff on Reddit from time to time, but it will be without an account, in a private tab, through a vpn, with an ad blocker on.
there are also a lot of subreddits that went readonly. which doesn’t hurt much. when the first google result for something is a functional readonly reddit page, reddit has succeeded. When the first result I click is a message about the issue we’re facing that is much worse for reddit.
At the same time, the couple of subs posting the images and only the images are causing /r/all to have some anti-reddit commentary.
Either way, r/all doesnt look that different. Ok, normal-reddit-for-thing isnt on the front page, instead smaller-reddit-for-thing is there.
I’m sure moderators will plan more, but I think it’s going to be difficult to maintain coordination and whether I like it or not, I get reddits approach to just ignore this.
It’s functional for the users, but not for Reddit who wants more data/engagement.
But yeah, the smaller reddit thingy is true. r/thesims4 was open when r/sims4 was not.
hang on, what leaked internal email, do you know where I can find that?
i want to call complete BS on them making it out like the Redditors protesting would physically assault the staff. Guess that’s probably a reasonable thing now though. People are whacked in the head.
He wasn’t content on slandering the Apollo Dev, now he’s slandering all of us
It at least seems like an attempt to push an “us” vs. “them” mentality.
I thought that was quite an escalation also. But maybe their health & safety committee reccomended it. Probably just trying to make the workers feel embattled and unsafe so they would avoid engaging with the issues and stay to reddits side. Its a PUA kind of doublespeak; spez is the one actually making the threat. But in a way it seems to come from us.
To be a fly on the wall at the water cooler. Please reddit workers, leak a zoom call.
I wonder if things are as tense as was shown in that video from reddit HQ.
Seems on brand after the CEO doubled down on falsely accusing the Apollo dev of blackmail, even though the Apollo dev posted the recordings proving otherwise.
Yep. That was the point I became what he calls a ”whiny “ person and deleted my account.
i like the part where he implies that redditors are so deranged they will physically assault his employees.
This is a sub that could really benefit from just leaving reddit entirely anyways. Potentially being able to have more open discussions centered around piracy would make the content of that sub so much better.
That. Being able to actually post links to websites.
Is the exclamation mark command meant to trigger a link? It doesn’t do anything for me. My “home” lemmy is lemm.ee if that makes a difference.
Lots of Fediverse stuff works like you might know email to work, i.e.
thing@place.com, no matter where your email is hosted, you can send and receive messages from other hosts.In this Case, the
piracycommunity, within thelemmy.dbzer0.comdomain, you should be able to copy-paste the !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, or any community like it, into the search bar of your home lemmy server and be able to subscribe.Unless it’s blocked…
I’m not sure how to make a link to communities so that it works for everyone sorry. But yeah the ! Does indicate a community usually
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Did he just imply people will protest by assaulting someone wearing a reddit logo?!
Correct, when you think he can’t sink lower he starts to Digg
What a drama queen. No one has suggested anything more violent than harsh language.
We absolutely must ship what we said we would.
Nothing new, but shows that there is absolutely no attempt to find a compromise. I won’t be coming back on Wednesday.
After slandering the Apollo Dev, Steve now starts to slander the entire userbase.
But please continue to mod unpaid and unappreciated!
To be fair, he isn’t wrong.
I cannot see another blackout happening. I think a sizeable chunk of Reddit’s moderators would go back if it otherwise meant losing power and influence on one of the largest social media sites.
Of course a lengthier or indefinite blackout of most of Reddit’s communities would cause major disruption.
Yeah, don’t hold your breath for a Lemmy/kbin port of Apollo:
The amount of work it would take to port all the API endpoints over to Lemmy or Kbin or something, that would be a gargantuan amount of work that I’m not sure I have the capacity for. And then just the complexity of making it work. Long term, it’s a big question mark for me that, at this stage, I’m not sure I’m totally interested in pursuing. But it’s also one of those things where I completely wish it the best. And if something that was decentralized kind of became the norm, I think that would definitely be a win for everybody.
Great interview from Christian there, it really is so frustrating that Reddit is and has been so hostile towards him. :(
Can you imagine the dumbasses at Reddit corporate thinking they could turn him into a villain? lol
The leadership is so incredibly dumb that it almost feels like sabotage.
Honestly, it was probably intentional. People shit on spez (rightfully) but he’s doing his job perfectly. He’s looking like an incompetent man child, and finger pointing at a third party using an obviously and probably intentionally weak narrative. He’s put all the focus on himself and how stupid he looks. He’s a punching bag, and in the mean time everyone at the corporate level that actually enacted these changes and is forcing this platform shift is remaining a) anonymous and b) out of the crosshairs.
I disagree that the punching bag strategy is effective - even looking beyond the obvious example w/ knock-on effects Elon has done from Twitter -> Tesla, you’ve got Adam Neumann w/ WeWork, Travis Kalanick w/ Uber, etc. who’ve taken similar personality deflection strategies - it only caused more long-term harm than good for both medium-term operations and brand reputation.
It’s not a sustainable strategy and it’s pretty cringy to see it happen from an investor perspective.
Ah, the business world.
Fucks over Ellen Pao so that all hatred is directed at her, discovers a few years later that corporate can do the same to him.
surprisedpikachu
Although, I think he hasn’t actually learned this yet and still believes he’s doing a great job. His comments a few years ago about how he “sees [himself] as a leader, rather than a slave” speak to his arrogance (and also his weird philosophies; I’m pretty sure this is a dude who unironically considers himself a real life Hank Rearden… shiver).
It’ll actually be really funny if they just knock him out of the way just before the IPO. CEO makes bad decisions and proves to be a liability. IPO not looking as profitable. Get rid of CEO to gain trust from investors? Launch IPO. Take the money and run. Of course, the decisions were on them as well, but of course they’ll claim no credit for it.
I’m sure he has contingencies in place, but still. It would be a hilarious end to his tenure if something like that happened.
This is pretty much what I was going to say. I don’t think that people understand quite how the pseudo libertarian tech bro mentality still permeates this space, and in particular with reddit. The site has always been this way, so if you’ve been around for a while, you’ve been around to this play out many times. Free speech is some absolutely inviolate principle that requires reddit to platform pedophiles (jailbait) and pics of dead kids, until it’s not because it gets bad press and starts to affect financials and some overlord steps in, and then, just like in the real world, when my libertarian ideal starts to negatively impact me, it goes out the window. Repeat ad nauseum.
These people also tend to think that every bit of success they have is only because of them, even though in the case of reddit, most of the success that it’s had has happened in spite of them. One of Reddit’s defining aspects used to be ama’s. Reddit fired the person responsible for making them great. Reddit completely missed mobile even more than Twitter did, and then when they finally got there they did it poorly and can still attribute most of the success to third party developers. Nothing really since the core product stabilized in like 2008 has been meaningful, it’s been about the community the entire time.
I would still be willing to bet that spez and reddit think that their rugged individualist genius is the reason that reddit is as big when that’s all largely happened in spite of them. None of them will admit the truth - they had a good basic idea at the right time, and they’ve succeeded since based on the backs of a bunch of people they’ll never give credit to, and as soon as they stop listening to those people they fade from relevance. And even though they have plenty examples to look to (the juxtaposition of this compared to twitter is really something) they don’t learn from it.
He should opensource it, then. Someone else will do it.
I’m pretty he just wants to go take a week long nap before answering any more questions.
Has anyone considered creating a bridging API interface for lemmy? Something that can translate between the lemmy and reddit API to make this easier?
Still new, but this was gaining a bit of traction a few days ago:
Relay for android gave in to Reddit’s demands … thoughts?
I think this is a bad sign for everyone protesting the changes… a major app giving in makes the rest of the apps look bad for complaining imo https://www.androidpolice.com/popular-android-reddit-app-may-survive-absurd-api-pricing/
The Internet was supposed to be better, but it turned into another set of monthly bills. And caving in to Reddit’s gouging sets a dangerous precedent, because it normalizes the smearing of devs that brought us here.
We kinda proved we can manufacture scarcity even where there is none.
We are literally slashing unsold sneakers before throwing them in a landfill, criminalizing dumpster diving and handouts of expiring food.
I didn’t know api changes means 3rd party apps no longer can show nsfw content. Nobody’s going to pay a subscription and not be able to see stuff that they can see on the official app. Looks like reddit is giving all 3rd party app developers a shitty deal whichever way you cut it.
The relay creator did the math and came to the conclusion that an subscription model might maybe work but it would be to tight. It reads as the person is saying that it is unfeasonable.
You say he gave in? As far as I can read that is stated nowhere.
Even if the apps would comply;
- Reddit will jack the prices again when they see fit.
- Reddit also wins with this pricing because they are gonna pocket the cash.
>Reddit will limit ‘Recommend’ and NFSW content to its official app. >
And ohw yeah you are gonna get less content for your subscription. It is all in bad faith.
I think that a forced paid subscription will probably kill it anyway long term, who in their right mind would pay a subscription to access Reddit?
Also don’t forget that thes app owners themselves are running a business and probably make a bunch of money from their apps that they don’t want to see evaporate with the changes.
Another good point he made is about how he’s calculating this. He’s projecting current usage into the sub model.
But he’s probably very right that casuals will probably leave and power users will probably pay. So it’s the Spotify problem, your power users use you more costing you more but they don’t pay more so you start going in the red. Considering relay is not a VC backed app or anything like that. One miscalculation and one bad month and you could see thousands of dollars in surprise costs.
I can’t blame him if he wants his app to survive. I used the pro version for years and would happily payed the planed subscription. But because the vast majority, if not all of the money goes to Reddit I just can’t bring myself to do it. I hope his calculations are correct and if they are not, I hope he doesn’t falls into dept.
I can’t blame the 3P Devs for dealing with this situation as they see fit. It feels like shooting the messenger …
I don’t know how to feel about this, that’s the app I use and was mad about losing… I already bought the paid version a long time ago but now it’s moving to a subscription model so I guess that doesn’t count anymore…
The base subscription could cost $2 per month, with an extra $1 for message notifications to account for the additional API calls that such polling incurs.
I just had a Rollercoaster of emotions. I was sad and angry to see relay go be sure it’s been with me for idk how long (more than 10 years? Has it been that long?). But then losing relay would severely cut my reddit time and lemmy being a lot smaller meant that I could potentially kick this habit. So was kind of excited.
Then I read your message that relay is not going and I’m like “fuck! My addiction will never be cured!” Then saw its a subscription model and now I’m really conflicted.
I’m in the same boat. It was my go-to app, and at first, I was happy that it will stay open - but during the last few days, I realized more and more… I don’t care anymore. Not about relay, but about reddit itself.
I’ve uninstalled relay on sunday - and never missed it on my phone. I just stopped wasting time and did better things with my time. At this point in time, I can’t see myself putting out $2 a month just to get angry at ragebait again.
Boo.
This has been absolutely wild. Sadly, it’s not that surprising and the corporate speak is strong. While Reddit likely won’t change, the “type” of users that will leave over this is the kind of users that made Reddit the community it is today. These are all likely active members from Fark, Slashdot, Digg, and others.
Good news though, we’ve got a group of people that are experienced in making fantastic communities. I’ll bet we’ll do it again. We’ll see how this goes with the Fedditverse/Threadverse via Lemmy/kbin. I’m sure we’ll figure this community/magazine thing out soon enough.
Sometimes all we can control is how we react to the situation.
I find it a bit disheartening that a lot of comments on Reddit (I know I’m mostly staying away) are labeling us, the people who take issue with not only the API pricing but the entire direction the site is going, snowflakes and whiny babies.
A lot of “I don’t cares” and “I just want to use the site not see this useless protest” etc. I remember a time when reddit could come together and actually get results (for better and for worse).
Even the way people comment is different. Seems like a lot more low effort, mouth breather posts, or suspiciously bad faith arguments that I see in response to the increasingly rare thoughtful/informative dialogue in the form of posts or comments.
I’m not saying the site was ever an iconic standard to the peak intellectual, but there seemed to be more people hungry for that type of content.
Maybe I’m just looking back at everything through rose tinted glasses, but I miss the days of ending up going down a new rabbithole sparked by a random comment chain.
I wonder if it’s just me and I’m just turning into that old bitter dude longing for the “good ole days.”
That’s reddit from 8+ years ago you’re talking about, and small communities. Reddit has long been a mainstream community now, and we all know how the average person is.
I’m surprised how quickly I’ve adapted to fediverse, Mastodon just didn’t fill-in for twitter in the way that the lemmy instances have, once I learned how they work together.
Now that I have gotten over the first hump, it feels new and exciting enough to make up for the lack of diverse content. I really think lemmy/kbin can be the platforms that push forward an interoperable, self-custodial social media.
Same. Ive already started using lemmy as a place to find solutions to my problems. I just dont google “problem reddit”. I go to lemmy search bar and browse “specific keyword not working”. Been working with certaib topics, and its only gonna get better from now on
Oh yeah, Lemmy has a usable search bar! Kinda forgot that it can be useful after using Reddit for so long.
Oh that’s good to know, I’ll be doing the same now! 😄
I tried searching for top 10 eyelash extension brands for dogs on lemmy and it didn’t find anytthing pfft
I agree, the inherit fragmentation in the fediverse architecture has a certain negative impact on the microblogging experience for me (but I still won’t go back to a centralized platform ever again), but for Lemmy/kbin it fits perfectly. Link aggregation sites are already fragmented into separate communities by design.
I even view the fragmentation problem in niche communities as a feature not a bug. Don’t like the coffee community on one instance? Try checking out the coffee community on a different instance. You might like the second group of people better
Seeing as you’ve mentioned it, do you happen to know of any coffee communities on here?
Edit: I’ve found !coffee@lemmy.world
Yepp, it works surprisingly well. I assume one of the similar communities will eventually “win” on one of the instances, like with similar subreddits over time. Also some instances will go full specific, like nature or movies or gaming etc. See the growth of lemmynsfw already, lol.
I’m really liking it a lot. I wasn’t too amused by Mastodon either, but as you say: for link aggregation, for specific communities, for discussing topics (and not being about people, but about topics) this is a perfect match.
Presumably it’s only going to get better over time. I was afraid I’d lose this part of the internet when Reddit went full corpo, but to be honest the quality of discussion on Lemmy makes up for the diminished content.
Honestly, my discussions have been nicer over here on the fediverse than they were on most parts of Reddit.
It’s like small town, big city. Smaller communities are usually happier and more friendly.
I do want it to continue growing, but I will be enjoying it while it lasts.
Yeah, it’s 'cuz we’re all the bleeding-edge nerds. The best people, in my opinion. ;)
Same for me
I said it elsewhere, but I fuckin like Lemmy man. I’m glad I found it, regardless of how/why I did.
Thinking about sticking to Lemmy for most things and using my Reddit alt account just as a porn aggregator. Who’s with me?!
There’s lemmynsfw.com as well now.
ok guys I’m done with reddit
Oh! Fab. I was under the impression that Lemmy wasn’t going to allow NSFW.
None of the big ones were allowing NSFW posts on their instances, but anyone can create an instance that does allow it 🙂
What would be the point of the “Show NSFW content” option then?
Similar but in my case it’s the war in Ukraine.
/r/ModCoord thread working on extending the blackout beyond tomorrow, as a response to Steve’s email: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinite_blackout_next_steps_polling_your/
People commenting on there calling them lame for trying to protect the communities that they care about. Yet these idiots use the platform (for free) and just gobble up promotions and ads from daddy corporate and say thank you
That’s great news 👏. I really hope most of the subs currently participating end up going indefinite. Especially with Spez shrugging off the whole thing in the media.
So, apparently the mod purge started, one of the mods of /r/tumblr confirms getting booted out of the mod team and opening the sub
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Missed it, same thing?
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Not surprised in the least that they’re purging mods here, but I’m a little surprised they’re doing it during these 48 hours. Seems like it’d be a better move to at least wait until the protest ends before cracking down on delinquent subs/mods. Not that reddit has done anything to suggest that they’d act intelligently in this.
Saw that coming.
But r/tumblr is currently private
Just have to say: Has anyone notice that Beehaw is just way faster then Reddit? Sorry new here, just my first impression. By the way. Thanks everyone for this site.
From join-lemmy.org:
Blazing Fast
Made using some of the fastest frameworks and tools, including Rust, Actix, Diesel, Inferno, and Typescript.
Indeed! I guess it’s (at least partly) because there’s not as much stuff going on that the user can see (and sometimes can’t see).
Maybe because I’m using Jerboa, but it feels slower to me. Jerboa has many issues though
Have you updated recently? A jerboa update came out earlier today and it seems to run better now for me.
Yes, I am on the web UI… Have not tried the app yet.
