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Interestingly, over half the site's top 1000 subreddits on private barely makes a dent in the number of posts and comments. How much of that is attributable to

by irdc 3y ago

Interestingly, over half the site's top 1000 subreddits on private barely makes a dent in the number of posts and comments. How much of that is attributable to the long tail of subreddits, and how much to bots?

constantly 3y ago
The way I use Reddit is to subscribe to small subreddits for thoughtful engagement and just do r/all when I want to mindlessly engage with whatever is hitting the top. So far aside from a couple random “we’re protesting” or whatever banners from the former main subreddits, my experience has remained unchanged, except that I’m seeing some welcome diversity in what’s at the top pages of r/all. Meaning: it’s not just r/pics or r/videos or whatever hitting the top, because they’ve neutered themselves, and now it’s pics and videos from slightly smaller subreddits that don’t normally hit. So far I’m liking this change, though not engaging through Apollo will be a bit annoying in the future.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  So you are a boycott breaker?
  - constantly 3y ago
    To me “boycott breaker” is a much more self-important framing than this deserves. It’s framing it with picket line crossers or scabs. Happy to boycott, protest, and use my resources for things that are acutely important to humanity: human rights issues, unionization and pay issues, environmental issues, among others — and I have done so, including physically standing in solidarity. Third-party API access to a private company doesn’t merit a blip on the radar in my opinion. However while I’m not happy about the access being shut down, nor am I happy that Apollo dev took his ball and went home, I am fully supportive in spirit of the unintended consequences. Notably: lots more diversity on the front page (meaning less reporting dreck from the same oversized subreddits over and over), and maybe even a clamp down on the self-perceived sway of mods, a position that tends to attract the worst, most power-hungry people, and their “moderating” of literally hundreds of subreddits simultaneously. My guess is that, as I’ve previously posted, this will go something like the last boycott of the chat feature. Main subreddits will shutter, new subreddits with similar names will pop up to fill the void with identical content. In any case, Reddit is under the VC gun at this point and I doubt they have a choice here, in my experience with large VC-backed companies.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - orev 3y ago
      > nor am I happy that Apollo dev took his ball and went home That’s a very unfair characterization. It’s more like he was happy to allow everyone to keep playing with his ball, but suddenly the owner of the field wanted $20 million to allow it. That phrase is mostly used when someone is being petty, which is absolutely not the case in this situation.
      - constantly 3y ago
        Sorry just seeing this, HN of course isn’t designed for back and forth discussion. I used the phrase intentionally because looking at the developer’s side of what happened, my takeaway is that while yes it would cost a lot to continue operating, out of the many options available to them they chose to just shut down. That’s “taking their ball and going home” in my opinion. Of course they’re free to do so, but it was far from the only option to take and they’re basically leaving a lot of Apollo fans in a lurch because they didn’t feel like putting in the effort to make a workable solution. Reddit also handled the rollout of fees poorly. All this is of course just my opinion and I don’t expect everyone to agree.
        IggleSniggle 3y ago
        I’m curious what you think they could have done differently. They made a pretty strong case that they explored the alternatives with good intentions and open communication, and that Reddit backed them into a corner. Unless you expect someone to go bankrupt just so their app can continue for one more month? They could either shut down now and refund everyone, or shut down in 2 months and go bankrupt trying pay the bill.
  - me_me_me 3y ago
    Its completely pointless, reddit is doing it because of bottom line: money. Its a long term goal, and few days of people protesting is not going to change their mind, few percent of userbase not being active before coming back is negligible impact at best. Its not going to have any effect, unless significant /r/ communities start migrating to competition. Same story goes with physical product boycotts. They come and go, people forget and move on to another outrage.
senko 3y ago
I would assume the majority of posters/commenters are already members of those subreddits.
HWR_14 3y ago
It's hard to read too much into today's numbers. Right now, people who didn't follow the API pricing saga (or just forgot the blackout started today, or wanted to log in anyway) are logging into reddit, getting shocked, and looking at the posts still available to them. It's still their morning reddit time so they comment in those posts or create some new ones. But they are less happy about it because the average quality of the first 30 posts they see went down, because it's the top 30 from a smaller pool. We'll see what happens on subsequent days.
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  Most likely, the quality went up because it’s the top 30 from smaller subreddits.
onion2k 3y ago
Equally, or maybe more so, interesting is that most of the popular subreddits are dark now. The ones that aren't maybe get modded by people using the main site or official app. I'd infer from this that blocking third parties will have a tremendously negative impact on how Reddit is moderated. It'll descend into a spam-infested hellsite from July if there isn't a change.
labalag 3y ago
[flagged]
oilchange 3y ago
> Interestingly, over half the site's top 1000 subreddits on private barely makes a dent in the number of posts and comments. Probably because the top 1% of the top 1000 subs accounts for the majority of the posts and comments. The corporate and/or state backed propaganda subs like news, worldnews, politics, movies, etc are still up and running. The blackout is probably driving people to these available subs rather than forcing users to leave reddit altogether. Think about it, if you are a reddit addict, are you going to leave because a few subreddits went private? Of course not, you'll simply go to other subreddits.

by irdc 3y ago

constantly 3y ago

The way I use Reddit is to subscribe to small subreddits for thoughtful engagement and just do r/all when I want to mindlessly engage with whatever is hitting the top. So far aside from a couple random “we’re protesting” or whatever banners from the former main subreddits, my experience has remained unchanged, except that I’m seeing some welcome diversity in what’s at the top pages of r/all. Meaning: it’s not just r/pics or r/videos or whatever hitting the top, because they’ve neutered themselves, and now it’s pics and videos from slightly smaller subreddits that don’t normally hit. So far I’m liking this change, though not engaging through Apollo will be a bit annoying in the future.

hospitalJail 3y ago
So you are a boycott breaker?
- constantly 3y ago
  To me “boycott breaker” is a much more self-important framing than this deserves. It’s framing it with picket line crossers or scabs. Happy to boycott, protest, and use my resources for things that are acutely important to humanity: human rights issues, unionization and pay issues, environmental issues, among others — and I have done so, including physically standing in solidarity. Third-party API access to a private company doesn’t merit a blip on the radar in my opinion. However while I’m not happy about the access being shut down, nor am I happy that Apollo dev took his ball and went home, I am fully supportive in spirit of the unintended consequences. Notably: lots more diversity on the front page (meaning less reporting dreck from the same oversized subreddits over and over), and maybe even a clamp down on the self-perceived sway of mods, a position that tends to attract the worst, most power-hungry people, and their “moderating” of literally hundreds of subreddits simultaneously. My guess is that, as I’ve previously posted, this will go something like the last boycott of the chat feature. Main subreddits will shutter, new subreddits with similar names will pop up to fill the void with identical content. In any case, Reddit is under the VC gun at this point and I doubt they have a choice here, in my experience with large VC-backed companies.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - orev 3y ago
    > nor am I happy that Apollo dev took his ball and went home That’s a very unfair characterization. It’s more like he was happy to allow everyone to keep playing with his ball, but suddenly the owner of the field wanted $20 million to allow it. That phrase is mostly used when someone is being petty, which is absolutely not the case in this situation.
    - constantly 3y ago
      Sorry just seeing this, HN of course isn’t designed for back and forth discussion. I used the phrase intentionally because looking at the developer’s side of what happened, my takeaway is that while yes it would cost a lot to continue operating, out of the many options available to them they chose to just shut down. That’s “taking their ball and going home” in my opinion. Of course they’re free to do so, but it was far from the only option to take and they’re basically leaving a lot of Apollo fans in a lurch because they didn’t feel like putting in the effort to make a workable solution. Reddit also handled the rollout of fees poorly. All this is of course just my opinion and I don’t expect everyone to agree.
      - IggleSniggle 3y ago
        I’m curious what you think they could have done differently. They made a pretty strong case that they explored the alternatives with good intentions and open communication, and that Reddit backed them into a corner. Unless you expect someone to go bankrupt just so their app can continue for one more month? They could either shut down now and refund everyone, or shut down in 2 months and go bankrupt trying pay the bill.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  Its completely pointless, reddit is doing it because of bottom line: money. Its a long term goal, and few days of people protesting is not going to change their mind, few percent of userbase not being active before coming back is negligible impact at best. Its not going to have any effect, unless significant /r/ communities start migrating to competition. Same story goes with physical product boycotts. They come and go, people forget and move on to another outrage.

senko 3y ago

I would assume the majority of posters/commenters are already members of those subreddits.

HWR_14 3y ago

It's hard to read too much into today's numbers. Right now, people who didn't follow the API pricing saga (or just forgot the blackout started today, or wanted to log in anyway) are logging into reddit, getting shocked, and looking at the posts still available to them. It's still their morning reddit time so they comment in those posts or create some new ones. But they are less happy about it because the average quality of the first 30 posts they see went down, because it's the top 30 from a smaller pool. We'll see what happens on subsequent days.

IggleSniggle 3y ago
Most likely, the quality went up because it’s the top 30 from smaller subreddits.

onion2k 3y ago

Equally, or maybe more so, interesting is that most of the popular subreddits are dark now. The ones that aren't maybe get modded by people using the main site or official app. I'd infer from this that blocking third parties will have a tremendously negative impact on how Reddit is moderated. It'll descend into a spam-infested hellsite from July if there isn't a change.

labalag 3y ago

[flagged]

oilchange 3y ago

> Interestingly, over half the site's top 1000 subreddits on private barely makes a dent in the number of posts and comments. Probably because the top 1% of the top 1000 subs accounts for the majority of the posts and comments. The corporate and/or state backed propaganda subs like news, worldnews, politics, movies, etc are still up and running. The blackout is probably driving people to these available subs rather than forcing users to leave reddit altogether. Think about it, if you are a reddit addict, are you going to leave because a few subreddits went private? Of course not, you'll simply go to other subreddits.