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> People aren’t stupid, and they aren’t as docile as you think. People have a very short attention span and a very low level of commitment if they're not direc

> People aren’t stupid, and they aren’t as docile as you think. People have a very short attention span and a very low level of commitment if they're not directly impacted. Remember the outrage about Musk on Twitter? It's all but died down. Or the various attempts to create some alt-right social networks. People don't have an obvious other place to go, and the majority of the community of /r/whatever will just go to /r/whatever-else.

xeromal 3y ago
This right here. I've been on reddit since 2010 or so and the dejure "most important thing in the world to talk about" is ever changing. Hong Kong, COVID-19, Ukraine, Harambe, Victory (the AMA person?), the great subreddit purge to name a few. Everyone claims they're going to delete reddit but will simply forget about it in a few weeks. haha
- dimmke 3y ago
  I've been on Reddit since 2009, and never cared about any of that stuff or claimed I was going to leave Reddit over it. I absolutely am leaving Reddit over this. I am keeping my account, because I might need it to promote my business (it still has utility in that area and I am pragmatic, I am not going to not do something that could help my business for ideological reasons), but I will no longer be using it on a daily basis or contributing comments/posts unless they back away from this.
  - xeromal 3y ago
    I'm sure you will. I'm saying the population as a whole won't.
    - dimmke 3y ago
      You're saying a large percentage of the current userbase won't (probably >90%) However, all users aren't the same. While I did not moderate any subreddits, I contributed substantially to several small ones in the way of posts, upvotes and thoughtful content. That's the stuff that really brings value to Reddit - it's the long tail. And even if the percentages are right, if the 5-10% that leave are some of the most valuable users of the site it will have a HUGE effect. There are things about Reddit that are not widely known - the often thrown around stat of a small number of accounts moderating a huge number of subreddits is the tip of the iceberg. There's also a subreddit that you only get invited to if you have over 100k comment karma, called the Century Club. That's been around for a long time. Reddit knows it needs power users, not lurkers that add no value but advertisement impressions. If they are trying to pivot to just become a site where you can infinite scroll memes and focus on the big subreddits, then they're directly positioning themselves to compete with Facebook and TikTok which seems pretty bad strategically IMO. It definitely doesn't bode well for the next decade of Reddit.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        > If they are trying to pivot to just become a site where you can infinite scroll memes and focus on the big subreddits ...
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    > I absolutely am leaving Reddit over this. ok > I am keeping my account, because I might need it to promote my business (it still has utility in that area and I am pragmatic ok, so you're not leaving. Everybody else will be just as pragmatic and the rest won't care. Realize that you just pretty much proved the point of everybody here that believes that this likely will have very little impact. If you were principled you would leave.
    - dimmke 3y ago
      There are plenty of people, especially in entertainment who don't use social media but have accounts to announce things like a new project they are working on. I think it's disingenuous to say that someone who only posts to Twitter twice a year, to announce that they are on tour but does not browse Twitter regularly or use it aside from that is an active Twitter user. >Everybody else will be just as pragmatic My intention is to only utilize my account to promote my business on subreddits I think are relevant, whereas before I commented regularly several times a week. If everybody makes a similar change, Reddit would lose a lot of commentors. >If you were principled you would leave. The multiple threads you and I are going at it in all boil down to the same basic thing: what each of us thinks will be the result of Reddit's changes to allowing API access. What subreddit moderators will do, what Reddit as a company will do in response, how users as a whole will respond, etc... At this point, I think we have both fleshed out what we think is going to happen in multiple ways and it's clear we disagree so further discussion on that front is pointless. I will say that I don't feel I have been making an argument that people will (or should) leave on principle. Or that I myself am leaving on principle. I am choosing to leave Reddit because I don't want to use their terrible web application or mobile application. If that changes, and I'm able to use Apollo again then my stance will change. Because I am pragmatic. I don't think there's going to be some Mastidon alternative that pops up. I think convincing Reddit to change course is the best path forward than trying to get an alternative going.
dimmke 3y ago
Ultimately, we can only speculate on what's going to happen. Neither of us can say conclusively, we can't see the future. All I can say is that subreddits are built on the idea of autonomy - it's not just that they have their own mods. It's that this is a semi autonomous community. If you look at a lot of the subreddits that decided to go dark, their moderation held polls/voting about it and asked for community input. Reddit admins are there as a safeguard - in the case of a subreddit doing something illegal or so unsavory it poses a larger threat to the site. In the past over the last 10 years, this model has mostly worked. Even the subreddit r/the_donald, during the lead up to it being banned the moderators there described having discussions with the administration about what they would have to do to avoid being banned. Just because Reddit has always had the ability to be more forceful doesn't mean they've exercised it. The action people keep suggesting here - a hand wave and all of a sudden these subreddits are "nationalized" (for lack of a better term) like a South American dictator taking over an oil company would completely shatter the trust that has been built, and it would have a lot of effects on the site. Just like when the South American country starts nationalizing companies. Capital flees. They might not even be visible right away, and it probably wouldn't result in Reddit itself closing down but I am confident it would ultimately harm Reddit substantially (as opposed to many of the comments in this thread claiming it would have no adverse effect.) Using Twitter as an example when the acquisition isn't even a year old isn't valid, in my opinion. Talk to me in 2 years.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > All I can say is that subreddits are built on the idea of autonomy On the illusion of autonomy. > Using Twitter as an example when the acquisition isn't even a year old isn't valid, in my opinion. Talk to me in 2 years. Then why join this debate in the first place?
  - dimmke 3y ago
    >On the illusion of autonomy. This is the part that your side doesn't get - having power to do something and not using it doesn't mean you're giving off an "illusion". Everybody who runs a subreddit is fully aware that Reddit admins have the power to shut them down if necessary, but the precedent that has been set is that there would be a lot of communication or they'd have to be doing something flagrantly illegal for that to happen. I don't understand why this is so hard to understand conceptually - because it's how the international community works. Countries generally get sanctioned, not invaded. Yes, it's not a perfect system. Yes, countries like the United States stage coups and regime changes, but it is better than the old way of invading and trying to rule a country like they're a colony. >Then why join this debate in the first place? Because the goalpost I keep seeing put in place to frame this discussion is that if Reddit doesn't immediately collapse after shutting down third party apps, then all the protests made no difference and clearly nothing has changed. My point is that it might take multiple years before we see how hollowed out the site has truly become. And it might still be a very popular website from a traffic perspective, but I believe it will have lost the core "engine" that makes it work. Also I have a lot of work to do that I don't want to do and commenting on here is a way that I procrastinate but I think this is probably a safe assumption for most people spending their morning commenting here.

xeromal 3y ago

This right here. I've been on reddit since 2010 or so and the dejure "most important thing in the world to talk about" is ever changing. Hong Kong, COVID-19, Ukraine, Harambe, Victory (the AMA person?), the great subreddit purge to name a few. Everyone claims they're going to delete reddit but will simply forget about it in a few weeks. haha

dimmke 3y ago
I've been on Reddit since 2009, and never cared about any of that stuff or claimed I was going to leave Reddit over it. I absolutely am leaving Reddit over this. I am keeping my account, because I might need it to promote my business (it still has utility in that area and I am pragmatic, I am not going to not do something that could help my business for ideological reasons), but I will no longer be using it on a daily basis or contributing comments/posts unless they back away from this.
- xeromal 3y ago
  I'm sure you will. I'm saying the population as a whole won't.
  - dimmke 3y ago
    You're saying a large percentage of the current userbase won't (probably >90%) However, all users aren't the same. While I did not moderate any subreddits, I contributed substantially to several small ones in the way of posts, upvotes and thoughtful content. That's the stuff that really brings value to Reddit - it's the long tail. And even if the percentages are right, if the 5-10% that leave are some of the most valuable users of the site it will have a HUGE effect. There are things about Reddit that are not widely known - the often thrown around stat of a small number of accounts moderating a huge number of subreddits is the tip of the iceberg. There's also a subreddit that you only get invited to if you have over 100k comment karma, called the Century Club. That's been around for a long time. Reddit knows it needs power users, not lurkers that add no value but advertisement impressions. If they are trying to pivot to just become a site where you can infinite scroll memes and focus on the big subreddits, then they're directly positioning themselves to compete with Facebook and TikTok which seems pretty bad strategically IMO. It definitely doesn't bode well for the next decade of Reddit.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      > If they are trying to pivot to just become a site where you can infinite scroll memes and focus on the big subreddits ...
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > I absolutely am leaving Reddit over this. ok > I am keeping my account, because I might need it to promote my business (it still has utility in that area and I am pragmatic ok, so you're not leaving. Everybody else will be just as pragmatic and the rest won't care. Realize that you just pretty much proved the point of everybody here that believes that this likely will have very little impact. If you were principled you would leave.
  - dimmke 3y ago
    There are plenty of people, especially in entertainment who don't use social media but have accounts to announce things like a new project they are working on. I think it's disingenuous to say that someone who only posts to Twitter twice a year, to announce that they are on tour but does not browse Twitter regularly or use it aside from that is an active Twitter user. >Everybody else will be just as pragmatic My intention is to only utilize my account to promote my business on subreddits I think are relevant, whereas before I commented regularly several times a week. If everybody makes a similar change, Reddit would lose a lot of commentors. >If you were principled you would leave. The multiple threads you and I are going at it in all boil down to the same basic thing: what each of us thinks will be the result of Reddit's changes to allowing API access. What subreddit moderators will do, what Reddit as a company will do in response, how users as a whole will respond, etc... At this point, I think we have both fleshed out what we think is going to happen in multiple ways and it's clear we disagree so further discussion on that front is pointless. I will say that I don't feel I have been making an argument that people will (or should) leave on principle. Or that I myself am leaving on principle. I am choosing to leave Reddit because I don't want to use their terrible web application or mobile application. If that changes, and I'm able to use Apollo again then my stance will change. Because I am pragmatic. I don't think there's going to be some Mastidon alternative that pops up. I think convincing Reddit to change course is the best path forward than trying to get an alternative going.

dimmke 3y ago

Ultimately, we can only speculate on what's going to happen. Neither of us can say conclusively, we can't see the future. All I can say is that subreddits are built on the idea of autonomy - it's not just that they have their own mods. It's that this is a semi autonomous community. If you look at a lot of the subreddits that decided to go dark, their moderation held polls/voting about it and asked for community input. Reddit admins are there as a safeguard - in the case of a subreddit doing something illegal or so unsavory it poses a larger threat to the site. In the past over the last 10 years, this model has mostly worked. Even the subreddit r/the_donald, during the lead up to it being banned the moderators there described having discussions with the administration about what they would have to do to avoid being banned. Just because Reddit has always had the ability to be more forceful doesn't mean they've exercised it. The action people keep suggesting here - a hand wave and all of a sudden these subreddits are "nationalized" (for lack of a better term) like a South American dictator taking over an oil company would completely shatter the trust that has been built, and it would have a lot of effects on the site. Just like when the South American country starts nationalizing companies. Capital flees. They might not even be visible right away, and it probably wouldn't result in Reddit itself closing down but I am confident it would ultimately harm Reddit substantially (as opposed to many of the comments in this thread claiming it would have no adverse effect.) Using Twitter as an example when the acquisition isn't even a year old isn't valid, in my opinion. Talk to me in 2 years.

jacquesm 3y ago
> All I can say is that subreddits are built on the idea of autonomy On the illusion of autonomy. > Using Twitter as an example when the acquisition isn't even a year old isn't valid, in my opinion. Talk to me in 2 years. Then why join this debate in the first place?
- dimmke 3y ago
  >On the illusion of autonomy. This is the part that your side doesn't get - having power to do something and not using it doesn't mean you're giving off an "illusion". Everybody who runs a subreddit is fully aware that Reddit admins have the power to shut them down if necessary, but the precedent that has been set is that there would be a lot of communication or they'd have to be doing something flagrantly illegal for that to happen. I don't understand why this is so hard to understand conceptually - because it's how the international community works. Countries generally get sanctioned, not invaded. Yes, it's not a perfect system. Yes, countries like the United States stage coups and regime changes, but it is better than the old way of invading and trying to rule a country like they're a colony. >Then why join this debate in the first place? Because the goalpost I keep seeing put in place to frame this discussion is that if Reddit doesn't immediately collapse after shutting down third party apps, then all the protests made no difference and clearly nothing has changed. My point is that it might take multiple years before we see how hollowed out the site has truly become. And it might still be a very popular website from a traffic perspective, but I believe it will have lost the core "engine" that makes it work. Also I have a lot of work to do that I don't want to do and commenting on here is a way that I procrastinate but I think this is probably a safe assumption for most people spending their morning commenting here.