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Ask HN: Anyone at Reddit can confirm a traffic dip?
Looks like Reddit has gone dark. I logged out and deleted the apps. How are things internally?
- sgt 3y agoI can imagine their sysadmin team going: It's going very well, load average is extremely low and all the servers are running cool!
- hayst4ck 3y agoI can just imagine some piece of automation de-allocating spare capacity or something similarly obtuse. The anticipation of traffic coming back would have me on edge. Maybe everything expires from caches and new traffic comes in on cold caches and slams databases with requests causing the databases to slow down making them unable to handle any traffic...
- websap 3y agoYikes! If they end up deprovisioning capacity and then some of those subreddits come back after 48h, the engineering teams are gonna be in for a rough couple of hours. I'm expecting that they have frozen autoscaling during this time.
- hayst4ck 3y agoI don't doubt Reddit's ops competency, I doubt we will see any problems. I am sure they have people going through the mental exercise of "what is this 'strike' going to do to our infra?" As an ops person the only time I have ever thought "It's going very well" is when something I expected to cause an outage didn't or a new automation seems to be working properly. Everything else is change and failure is proportional to change. 5000 subreddits going dark is definitely change, and I would definitely be anxious about the uncharted territory, not happy to see low load on the servers. I think I would be worried about these people who are downloading their post histories, deleting their post histories, or potentially mass deletion of accounts. Requests against old posts and uncached content could potentially be expensive. Of course, without a deep understanding of Reddit's infra/architecture, it's hard to really estimate what kind of problems might arise.
- websap 3y agoWell this didn't age well rather quickly. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/12/23758002/reddit-crashing-api-protest-subreddit-private-going-dark https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/12/23758002/reddit-crashing-...
- atraac 3y ago> I can just imagine some piece of automation de-allocating spare capacity or something similarly obtuse. Remember we're talking about a company that can't even make a functioning text input in their new UI.
- znpy 3y agoEh, front end development and site reliability engineering are two different teams for sure. If the ui code is bugged, the sre team will still get that delivered it to your web browser.
- atraac 3y agoOf course they are two different teams. They are still one company though, one that displays absolute disdain for their users, why would they suddenly care about properly up and downscaling when they can't even get absolute basic UX/UI right?
- treis 3y agoI'm more worried about how the HN servers are doing. Hopefully they gave them a pep talk.
- optomas 3y agoI'm out.
- Apocryphon 3y agoSo what’s the next Reddit. 9gag? Imgur? HN?
- emilsedgh 3y agoI think that's one of the problems here. When Digg happened, Reddit was already a very viable alternative. But now there doesn't seem to be any.
- pepperonipizza 3y agoReddit, only a handful of vocals are leaving
- harrelchris 3y agoUnfortunately for Reddit, that handful includes many moderators.
- rajamaka 3y agoHas there any been a single instance of a subreddit with a shortage of people volunteering to mod?
- Drakim 3y agoThere has been lots of instances of bad quality mods and mod abuse, which I assume will only become a bigger problem in the future. Having embedded community talent leave is never a good thing.
- theshrike79 3y agoA huge sub like /r/funny (40 million subs) will have zero issues finding volunteers. Finding volunteers you can trust though... An audience that big + lack of morals + power = chance to make money by manipulating what gets through.
- iepathos 3y agoI don't think that's true. The majority of reddit users actually use reddit via third party apps and all those users will be impacted by reddit effectively shutting down all those apps. Anecdotally, I have a bunch of different friends who only use RIF and Apollo to browse reddit and say they won't use reddit anymore once those apps shutdown. They aren't vocal users advocating other people to do the same, they are just normal reddit users with low tolerance for poorly designed mobile ui's.
- bdcp 3y agoI would not be surprised if there's a traffic bump. A lot of people just want to see the chaos
- dmix 3y agoI could totally see people going on other still open subreddits discussing how cool their protest is going.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y agoI'm not seeing chaos exactly. Pages load quickly, but the issue is that the content is stale, there's a lack of new articles or comments. The server is fast, the content feed is slow.
- aaomidi 3y agoDid you think chaos meant the servers are gonna be slow?
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y agoI think that stasis, low load, boredom and nothing happening - metaphorical tumbleweeds, is the opposite of chaos. Servers timing out, error messages on the user's screens, overload, flashing lights and on-call PagerDuty alarms going off would indeed be an example of chaos.
- aaomidi 3y agoYou have a very unimaginative and one dimensional view of chaos tbh.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y agoI urge you to focus both on reading comprehension, where "an example" is not the same as "a view", and on effective communication, where words don't just mean anything, they have well-known meanings distinct from their opposites.
- grumbel 3y agoAre Reddit GDPR request getting processed slower than usual? Previous time I tried it was within a few minutes, but this time it's half a day and still nothing.
- InCityDreams 3y agoHow many gdpr requests are you involved in?
- mduggles 3y agoMy home feed on Apollo is hilarious. It's the smallest subs I subscribe to that never make it to my front page. It's basically "small hobby subs". Even if I were interested in continuing to use Reddit it's basically broken as of right now. I can see what's happening with Warhammer and Kubernetes patch notes.
- xapata 3y agoWarhammer is on a postage stamp in the UK!
- thih9 3y agoFound it: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/06/01/celebrate-the-40th-anniversary-of-warhammer-with-new-collectible-stamps-from-royal-mail/ https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/06/01/celebrate-the... Then again, there’s also: https://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=22759 https://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=2275...
- websap 3y agoI'm not opening the website, but sad to hear that the Kubernetes sub isn't participating. Reddit uses Kubernetes for it's infrastructure management, and it would have sent a message.
- intelVISA 3y agoSad but we all know the avg. K8S operator has a limited capacity for autonomy -- they are using Kubernetes after all.
- bitshiftfaced 3y ago> It's the smallest subs I subscribe to that never make it to my front page. This is a big flaw in Reddit's algorithm if you ask me. On your feed, small subs get crowded out by large ones, despite the fact that you may be more interested in the small sub. It doesn't seem very hard to improve. They could use the click rate or upvote rate to weigh the interest of each sub as well as normalize how many upvotes an item got based on the average upvotes an item gets within a particular sub.
- moepstar 3y agoOk, so there's a list of communities that went dark [1] - but is there anywhere a list of communities that went dark and are moving elsewhere? Like, where exactly? I, for one, don't plan on getting back onto Reddit, i've deleted the official app and keep Apollo around for as long as it is still working. Love the protest and i really hope Reddit leadership gets the message, but IMHO the bridges are burnt and Reddit itself is too - even if they, somehow, reverse course - i'd rather have communities moving elsewhere than going dark for like 2 days and then return to business as usual... [1] https://reddark.rewby.archivete.am/ https://reddark.rewby.archivete.am/ for example
- sillysaurusx 3y agoNot that I know of. I thought tildes was supposed to be a Reddit alternative, but I guess they never caught on.
- websap 3y agoI found https://reddark.untone.uk https://reddark.untone.uk which has some data, not sure of the accuracy.
- atraac 3y agoAFAIK quite a bit of communities recently started being active in kbin but it's pretty quiet still.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoI’ve been browsing Reddit’s mobile app in Popular mode just to see how the experience is for average redditors. Unfortunately there’s enough interesting content that I’m not sure average people will even notice or care. And it’s painful to say that. By “interesting” I mean interesting to the masses. /r/AITAH, /r/iamatotalpieceofshit, /r/therewasanattempt, /r/news… the list goes on. Part of Reddit’s strength is that even with only a handful of subs, it still surfaces the most interesting content from those subs. The net effect is that people who aren’t a member of a community gone dark won’t really be affected. At least they’ll see it, though. I had to scroll past many posts about the blackout, which isn’t nothing.
- websap 3y agoSad to see those subreddits not participate. If things change and I'm back on Reddit, I'd love to get a list of subreddits that didn't participate and perma-block those.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoSome are, even though they’re not private. /r/books is restricted but open, for example. Honestly it might have been a better idea for the plan to be open but restricted with an announcement, so that the announcement is all that anyone sees when they load popular.
- _djo_ 3y agoSome are doing that, which I agree is a better approach. First thing I saw when loading Reddit was a bunch of those protest notices.
- Quequau 3y agoScrolling through the list of subreddits that are participating it became clear to me that a lot of the sort of places that facilitate a kind of repetitive mindless viral content churn stayed open. That's not really all that surprising. So in that way I think you're right, users who like that sort of thing probably won't notice much or care.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y agoEven if we see effects, it could be very short term. People also walked out during the Facebook and IG timeline redesigns, and yet they moved on and user engagement even increased. They will move on from this one, and I’m sure Reddit will find a way to increase engagement despite this.
- ghayes 3y agoI think the comparisons are often misplaced. Imagine if Facebook groups were the core experience of Facebook. Groups (subs) on reddit for most people _are reddit_. Plus, reddit is a nerdier crowd which likely cares more about this kind of stuff.
- hcks 3y agoThis Reddit strike is the most Reddit thing I’ve seen. I don’t even understand the issue in the first place, you can either use the official app for free with ads, or use a third party app for something like $2 a month.
- invalidusernam3 3y agoThe issue is the third party apps were given a short amount of time to implement anything. Not enough time to make code changes, test, submit to app store for approval, release, etc.
- websap 3y agoThis is a lazy comment, but just for completeness if others without context read the comments, I'll engage. There have already been multiple analysis done that no 3rd party client can survive this given the new pricing for the API. $2 a month won't cut it. There were many options Reddit had to improve its API, define a contract with API callers, etc. but, Reddit didn't do enough.
- its-summertime 3y agoreddit intentionally ignored commercialization requests from 3rd party apps, so the latter isn't an option.
- 0x5FC3 3y agoBean counter moment. So, yes ~$2-3/user/month. The 3p app has to charge the user and then pay reddit. In the case of Apollo, it is to the tune of $20M a year. Apollo (the app) is developed by 1 person and so are most other 3p apps. Suddenly (with months notice) they are going to be billed millions. Even after the user pays to use a 3p app, they cannot access any NSFW content through it. This isn't a case of opportunity cost or lost revenue, reddit simply wants 3p apps gone.
- Daz1 3y agoAll the unofficial apps are shutting down
- theshrike79 3y ago
- yolo3000 3y agoSo what keeps Reddit from 'taking over' these subs? They probably already have auto moderation in some form, they could outsource manual moderation temporarily to some companies. Probably some people who contribute a lot will get angry and not post anymore, but the world is big. Until a new similar platform pops up, you will still find new contributors who might not care about this protest.
- o_m 3y agoWouldn't that increase expenses? Today the mods work for free, and the point of all of this is to cut costs before the IPO.
- theshrike79 3y agoThe current moderators are paid only in internet points and power over a community. Zero actual dollars. The automatic moderation tools are hilariously bad, that's why people are using the API for 3rd party tools. Let's see how this develops.
- KomoD 3y ago> they could outsource manual moderation temporarily to some companies That's going to be difficult or expensive (basically making it pointless), 6500+ subs have gone dark. Almost 400 1+ million subs are participating. Total is ~28200 moderators
- paulmd 3y ago> Total is ~28200 moderators 5 moderators control 92 of the top 500 subs. That cuts both ways. There are a lot of mods lower on the totem pole but it's a handful of people making the call to shut reddit down, and it wouldn't be that costly to kick them out, put an admin at the top, and open the subs again. Once you've pried the big ones back open... who cares if r/warhammer wants to stay closed? You don't need to take over every little niche hobby sub, as long as the big tiktok-style content-drip subs get back running. That's the future of Reddit, in Reddit's eyes. Tiktok 2.0. That's where the shareholder value is, they don't give a shit about your niche hobby sub with 10k users being closed. Even if the lower-ranked mods don't want to mod anymore, you will always find some schmuck who wants to push buttons at people. People can't resist it even here on HN, people love flagging/downvoting. What's the least amount of power that can go to someone's head? Internet forums moderator, most definitely. There will always be an endless stream of people willing to do it for the tiny bit of clout it affords them. > (basically making it pointless), saving the business isn't really pointless for reddit. They have procedures to replace mods after 48 hours and we very well might see them deploy them. They've made it clear they understand the frustration and where people are coming from and they don't care. In fact they are actually doubling down on fucking up the web experience for mobile etc to push people to the native app on those platforms. She's not that into you, bro. Remember, this is Reddit... they bought Dubsmash, with a 25% market penetration in the black teen community, killed the platform/app, and turned it into a subreddit with 1.5k subscribers, a conversion rate of around 0.01%. They don't mind doing big Twitter-style changes that risk losing a lot of users even if the conversion rate is abysmal. People are approaching this from the perspective of "what would I, a rational person do, to preserve the Reddit I know and love?" and not Reddit's perspective of pivoting the business to being Tiktok 2.0. In their (probably correct) assessment, that pivot evidently requires people being on the native app/new experience. The hobby stuff is fine especially if it draws in users but it's not where the money is for them. They need advertiser $.
- Dudester230602 3y agoAnyone at Reddit: how out of date is your CV now that you need to update it?
- SilverBirch 3y agoLet's be clear about what's happening here- Reddit is prepping to IPO. Those engineers at Reddit are probably very happy to finally see a liquidity event. They'd be leaving money on the table and jumping into a cool jobs market for tech.
- Dudester230602 3y agoIt will not be their decision though. There are different ways to boost profits. Also, the new CEO might want to shake things up a bit - even if they just apologize and roll things back.
- Vitamins7322 3y ago[dead]
- seydor 3y agoWell obiously there is not much left to see on the website The worst is that reddit search is so bad that they make it impossible to find an alternative subreddit. I disagree with the whole "strike" idea, but reddit is really a terribly terribly ran website
- temikus 3y agoAnecdotally - Reddit is not really useable for me today. More than half of the communities I frequent are offline so the home feed is just the odd ones that are.
- Glench 3y agoGod what a mess. If anyone else is interested I made a browser extension you can use to batch delete your Reddit posts and comments: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit-posts/nbfdoajmaaohkohdnbpjakamhcaaleco?hl=en&authuser=0 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit... Let me know how it works for you if you try it! Still fixing bugs.
- ssag2 3y agoI was on today. It seems... better.