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Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

715 points by rajeevk 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hitpointdrew 3y ago
"Let's use Reddit to promote boycotting Reddit!"
- diffeomorphism 3y ago
  Duh, just like protests are close to company buildings.
- bicijay 3y ago
  I mean, why not, still works?
- karmakurtisaani 3y ago
  Why is that a bad idea again?
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    Other people’s opinions are surely different than mine but… I think the subs that have gone dark actually made Reddit better. It’s all the popular subs, and that’s the really low effort, frankly, basic bitch comments. For me, in protesting they’ve improved it.
    - bick_nyers 3y ago
      I've been trying to fix first layer adhesion issues on my 3D printer and all of the relevant subreddits went private. So there's more subs participating than just the popular ones.
      - dotnet00 3y ago
        To be fair, most of the replies to you would be the same old "have you tried leveling your bed?".
        bick_nyers 3y ago
        Yeah hair spray/glue stick and bed leveling lol. I bought an auto bed leveler and still can't get anything to stick/not curl up towards the nozzle. There are those hidden gems on Reddit though that aren't the typical response, replies that suggest that your plastic filament has absorbed too much moisture and that you need to dry it in an oven.
        dotnet00 3y ago
        Yeah those issues can be really frustrating. I find textured PEI sheets to be the easiest to get working, if adhesion suddenly stops being good, I first try washing with soap and water, then I try adjusting the z-offset, then drying the filament and playing with bed temperatures, curling can happen in both cases of if the temperature is too low and too high. Additionally, with corners lifting on certain prints, you might just need a brim. I had a BLTouch for a few months, but I found it to be way more trouble than it was worth (probably mostly due to its temperature sensitivity and the heated enclosure). I ended up switching over to a Klackender probe, which has been more reliable to me.
        bick_nyers 3y ago
        Yeah the only thing I haven't really tried is swapping out the textured glass bed for something else but I think that's my next move
      - artogahr 3y ago
        Hey, I've spent considerable amount of time in those subreddits! Maybe I can help? You can reach me on artogahr@gmail.com
      - ddingus 3y ago
  - Gys 3y ago
    I assume as long as people keep going to reddit (for whatever reason, does not really matter), reddit can show ads and make money. Reddit will only start having problems once the visitor numbers go down. So far (?) that seems not the case.
  - George83728 3y ago
    Because it makes other people (such as myself, and probably reddit management I'm guessing) think you aren't very serious and you'll come crawling back to reddit after you get bored of this protest. Do prove me wrong, because I'd really like to see reddit die. But I'm not counting any chickens until they hatch.
- ang_cire 3y ago
  Yeah, this post is just a ruse to drum up DAU numbers for Reddit by making users unwittingly cross the picket line! /s ;)
- George83728 3y ago
  Reddit addicts gonna reddit.
- Brendinooo 3y ago
  "yet you participate in society, curious"
mynameisvlad 3y ago
Original article link is https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-protest-b2357235.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-...
quaintdev 3y ago
[flagged]
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  This AMA happened 27 days ago…
  - quaintdev 3y ago
    wow completely missed that part. I opened discord after ages and this was first message I saw. I'll redact my comment.
- cmiles74 3y ago
  I suspect the set of power users that insisted on using Apollo overlaps quite a bit with the moderator population.
trostaft 3y ago
Perhaps you should link to the actual article, as opposed to the reddit thread about the article... https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-protest-b2357235.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-...
- opello 3y ago
  It seems there's an interesting lever presented in the article: comment about the support being provided to the platform that is so adversely affecting the users so that the advertisers are exposed more directly to the impact.
icapybara 3y ago
The main problem with the protest is that there’s no viable Reddit replacement. Back during the Digg fiasco, it was easy for everyone to jump ship to Reddit.
- vkou 3y ago
  This is the root of the problem. Large communities can't meaningfully migrate off it. Small communities shouldn't migrate off it. (As they will lose discoverability.)
  - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
    >Large communities can't meaningfully migrate off it. Yes they can, Digg migrated to reddit, Facebook migrated to Instagram. If Reddit becomes insufferable for most of their users to use they will migrate. Never forget the internet 1% rule [1], just the right set of users have to migrate to kill the site. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
    - vkou 3y ago
      Reddit was a better alternative to Digg, which is why people migrated. What is a better alternative to Reddit from the point of view of a community mod? Self-hosting a phpBB forum isn't it, it's way too much work.
      - MAGZine 3y ago
        it's not enough to be marginally better. you need to be a LOT better to overcome network effects and activation energy. reddit became substantially better when digg ruined their product. actually, digg didn't work at all when they rolled out their new version, so it was (approximately) infinitely better.
      - dbbk 3y ago
        You're not wrong, there isn't one
  - 3y ago
idiotsecant 3y ago
It seems to me like this is turning into a subreddit migration in slow motion. A lot people still want to post content and a lot of people still want to read content, so what's happening is people are posting it to the less popular 'alternative' versions of the popular subreddits and those posts make the frontpage instead. It seems like there is a noticeable decline in quality but i'm still seeing quite a bit of posting. Not sure if it's having the intended impact or not. I think the missing thing here is a viable, popular alternative. Digg died because reddit existed. If there was a consensus on the next reddit I would think reddit should be much more worried.
- rvba 3y ago
  I think HN is experiencing a lot more traffic too
  - bbor 3y ago
    It's been very interesting, and part of that is my fault - been posting a lot here instead of reddit (when I should probably just post nowhere). The vote counts seem crazy high this week, even for typical stories. I will say that I haven't noticed a decline in quality of posts; not sure if that's due to a strong culture or strict moderation. I suppose most of the Reddit refugees only browse the HN homepage, so HN veterans still have an out sized impact on the New page, which in turn dictates what can reach the top.
- pcurve 3y ago
  Yep, I'm seeing smaller subs being bubbled up on my front page. Maybe people will start creating their own subs. There is Saidit https://www.saidit.net/ https://www.saidit.net/ but it's not really a viable alternative.
  - maxsilver 3y ago
    I'm not sure why those folks would bother leaving, Saidit is basically identical to what an unmoderated Reddit would look like.
- 3y ago
cmiles74 3y ago
IMHO, Reddit's charging such a high price for API access that it's as good as unattainable is more of a last straw then anything else. Reddit has been clear that they view the data as their sole property, when you think it through, why be a moderator for a for-profit company if you aren't being paid? I don't know why it took this long for moderators to quit.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  I don't think many moderators will actually quit as long as the users are there, especially since reddit gave back some moderator API call access. Moderating is already a terrible, thankless job. The people who do it enjoy moderating because (I assume) they're 'in charge' of something big and important. I don't think reddit closing off third party access will be enough to convince most of these people to stop giving labor for free.
  - Maxburn 3y ago
    This is the thing I don't get, reddit is getting a heck of a free ride with all these mods. You'd think they would do everything within their power to enable them so why kick them in the nuts? Also the "power" users would probably be happy to pay reasonable prices to interact with it via app/api, so go ahead and charge something REASONABLE. There's something nefarious going on behind the scenes and it's all very suspicious. I'm happy to go back to targeted forums if I need to.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Indeed. I'd happily pay Reddit directly for an API key if that let me run RIF in a "bring your own key" mode. They could split the profits between themselves and app dev. I'm surprised no one is proposing this. But I guess this comes down to people willing and able to pay to avoid adtech cancer being actually the most profitable cohort for the advertisers...
      - tcrenshaw 3y ago
iameli 3y ago
The biggest Reddit communities are in open rebellion. Twitter is, charitably, a mess. Twitch started taking a full 50% of the revenue of their top creators, who are furious. What's going on? What's the bigger trend that's causing all these platforms to go so user-hostile?
- hiddencost 3y ago
  Interest rates
- xmonkee 3y ago
  no more free money
- dmitrygr 3y ago
  The end of free money from the fed?
- ls612 3y ago
  Interest rates go up.
- rvba 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    I disagree with a lot of your post. You’re correct that the Reddit IPO will likely lead to traditional finance holding the bag, much of which will be large funds. Twitter was bought by musk, but your comments about his wants are fever dreams. Twitch is losing the streaming wars to Youtube.
  - roastedoolong 3y ago
    [flagged]
- marklar423 3y ago
  I would add on - enshittification driven by money, as coined by Cory Doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
bluetidepro 3y ago
@mods can we update this link to the real article and not just going to reddit? https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-protest-b2357235.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-...
- probably_wrong 3y ago
  FYI, The Independent redirects based on location. I am not surprised to learn that Bill Cosby has been sued by 9 women in Nevada, but that's probably not what you wanted me to read about. If the link is changed, it would be better to do it to an archive version. Here's one: https://archive.is/NcsuT https://archive.is/NcsuT
facet1ous 3y ago
People are treating this as if this is the Reddit of 2011. If you really think this protest is going to stop the momentum of a Reddit IPO payout you are sorely mistaken.
- tensor 3y ago
  I personally don't care one way or the other about any reddit IPO payout. Happy for them if they get paid, reddit has been an amazing service for many many years. What I DO care about is being able to browse without ads and recommendations I don't want shoved down my throat. They could have done things in a way that preserved 3rd party clients but required payment for an ad-free experience. People would be mostly fine with that I think.
chongli 3y ago
I was really skeptical of lemmy [1] when I first heard about it during the blackout. I joined yesterday and it completely changed my mind. Yes, it is going to face some growing pains (see the total user growth in the past few days) [2] in the coming weeks and months but it really has the potential to replace Reddit with a federated system of communities. One that won't be damaged by investors or executives attempting to pivot over to the latest social media trend. As many people have recently noted, Reddit quietly became an extremely important repository of text-based knowledge. Distinct from Wikipedia and Archive.org, but no less important, Reddit is full of valuable procedural (how-to) and consumer (product-related) knowledge. Reddit has countless small communities built around hobbies and other niche interests, which places it in the same role once fulfilled by Usenet and later independent web-based forums. While those technologies still exist, they face enormous challenges with discovery (try to find a new forum on Google recently?), single-sign-on, and moderation. These were all solved by Reddit and I believe lemmy solves them too. The fediverse [3] truly has the potential to liberate small internet communities from the vagaries of Big Social Media, of which Reddit is only the latest example. [1] https://join-lemmy.org https://join-lemmy.org [2] https://the-federation.info/platform/73 https://the-federation.info/platform/73 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
- jurassicfoxy 3y ago
  Yes, I just saw the r/StarTrek migration, and visited Lemmy for the 3rd time or so this week, and quite frankly, I could drop reddit entirely now, if I knew how to find communities. I feel some real hacker/dev excitement for the future of Lemmy.
  - soundsgoodtome 3y ago
    Let us know if/when you figure out how to find communities. Discoverability seems to be a real problem with Lemmy.
    - Solvency 3y ago
      I literally can't even sign up for Lemmy.world. The button after entering a new username/pw just spins indefinitely, forever.
pgrote 3y ago
When do replacement subreddits start forming? /r/picsnew or something.
- Simulacra 3y ago
  They already have, people who don't care about the API issue were creating their own "unlocked" subreddits of popular Reddit's that have gone dark
  - floren 3y ago
    Once enough of those get created, it would probably be more harmful to Reddit if the mods then opened up their original subreddits. Now users have to pick between /r/foo and /r/foo_unlocked. Communities are fragmented.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      Powerjannies probably aren't too worried. Most users will choose the r/foo instead of foo_unlocked especially in the 6-month+ timespan. Building some community of 1000 people is a complete waste of time, if it starts to get traction the powerjannies will unlock their own communities and maintain their personal power/influence. There simply is no circumstance where building a replacement community to bypass the powerjannies' control will be a worthwhile use of anyone's time. If there is a feeling that this is a loud minority waving pitchforks and that subreddits that re-open largely go on unaffected... the move to bypass the minority has to come from reddit themselves, otherwise the powerjannies will just regroup and come at it a bit more subtly once they realize they're on the losing side. They ain't gonna give up that mod slot when they know how much personal power it affords them. And people can say there isn't power in it, or they're in it for the community, but, this kind of "keeping it closed for everyone because some users don't want it to be open" is exactly the kind of thing that gets a powermod all bricked up. There's enough power for some people to get a thrill out of it. The current protest falls into a perceived gap in the "inactive sub" rules - if a sub is inactive and the mods are gone, that sub can be reassigned to new mods and reopened. The mods are saying "no, we're not inactive... we're just not letting anyone talk, but, there's 1 post a week in a private thread, see?". And the reality is that even if you accept that's a valid gap in the rules (arguably this is already covered by mod reassignment rules) this certainly will not be allowed to persist forever, Reddit will simply change the rules around what constitutes abandonment. The pressure is already on from community members who don't feel represented and are willing to take over the mod work if the current mods simply no longer wish to mod under the new system: https://old.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/149z2nd/requesting_rscience_due_to_inactivity/ https://old.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/149z2nd/requ... You can protest at the factory gate all you want, and shame people for "crossing the picket line". You can't obstruct the actual factory floor, and if that happens the cops will remove you. And that's what things are fast coming to with the whole situation. Mods are free to not mod. Users are free to not post. That's the "protest at the gate" approach. You can't be disruptive on a commercial platform, or you're gonna get removed. If mods no longer wish to participate and abandon the platform, Reddit is perfectly free to execute its "abandoned subreddit" procedures and reopen the sub, or to alter those abandoned-subreddit procedures in any way they want. If users/mods wish to behave in a disruptive fashion because they don't want to be members anymore, they will be banned. And yes, there are people willing to step in and do the work too. Powermods are not that special, actually they're kinda awful at times.
baby 3y ago
I said it before, and I’ll say it again. This is a huge opportunity for Facebook. They sort of tried to do Reddit in the past and ended up with shitty Facebook groups. If I were them, I would rush to add some reddit features to Facebook group (reddit-like threads, upvotes/downvotes) or try to launch something new that’s more like reddit on top of the facebook/insta social graph. Just call it “Groups”
- kramerger 3y ago
  Facebook? I'm all in favour of bringing back G+
  - baby 3y ago
    people who say that have clearly not used G+ x)
- bmarquez 3y ago
  It would be interesting to see Facebook Groups divorce from Facebook itself. Maybe allow people to login using an Instagram or Whatsapp identity, or better yet an independent login. I don't really want my group activity to be linked to my Facebook identity for tracking/advertising purposes.
  - jacooper 3y ago
    An Instagram account is as bad as a Facebook account, if not worse.
    - bmarquez 3y ago
      How is it worse? From a privacy perspective they're both terrible and the data flows to the same Meta servers, but Facebook demands you use your real name (and demands photo ID if it thinks it's fake) while Instagram doesn't care.
- starik36 3y ago
  > shitty Facebook groups Are you serious? That is the most useful and well done function of Facebook! The accounts are all mostly real names so there is much less toxicity. Instead you get enthusiasts around a topic that can discuss issues in a constructive manner - or at least more constructive than Reddit.
quaintdev 3y ago
Reddit has become pretty popular in India and this new population is okay with new site and policy changes because they simply are not aware of what Reddit use to be. Reddit blackout has almost 0 effect on Indian subreddits. Reddit still has numbers to show even if most subreddit are down. Just check r/India r/Mumbai r/Banglore r/Delhi r/Pune and other India subreddits and you will see.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  I’m sure that fact will really pump up demand for their IPO.
  - bbor 3y ago
    Is this sarcastic or am I missing some point? More users == more money, and India is the biggest under-tapped single market in social media, if you consider it a "single market". I don't get why being popular in India would be a bad thing...
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      Reddit sells ads, and ads that aren't going to US or UK users are priced at rock bottom rates. Ask anyone who owns a website that runs adsense.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - berkle4455 3y ago
      Investors do not care about just DAUs (daily active users) anymore, they care just as much about ARPU (avg revenue per user) At Facebook, users from Asia Pacific region monetize at around ~1/15th of US&CA users. The costs to serve those users remains relatively fixed on a per-user basis, so expect those costs to inflate by 10-15x to earn the same revenue. Will Reddit drastically change their business model to appeal to Asia Pacific users and advertisers? It's possible but extremely unlikely and pivoting your business model months from IPO isn't a good plan. A flood of India users to a western-centric platform is how you kill that platform (see Quora).
bena 3y ago
All reddit has to do is remove the ability for subreddits to be private. Or put the ability to make subreddits private behind a paywall. Much like how Github treated private repos. End of the day, reddit is going to have to figure out how many users are willing to boycott. Moderators are one thing. They are a minority. But if they remove the ability for /r/funny to be private, would users honor the protest? The subs that have ended their blackouts are going on like nothing happened.
- darknavi 3y ago
  GitHub private repos are free now by the way.
  - bena 3y ago
    Which is why I used the past tense.
- boolemancer 3y ago
  Okay, so you take away the power from the mods, and expect them to still do the work to moderate the subreddits for free?
  - bena 3y ago
    A single power. And I don't think it's a power all mods have. If it is, it would only take one rogue mod to re-public the subreddit. And really, whether or not the mods continue to moderate is the thing being tested with such a move. Reddit did the API thing, the mods responded by escalating to this. Reddit can either blink and walk back some of their choices, wait for the mods to blink and reopen (of which, some have already), or reddit can escalate further and see if that makes the mods blink. I believe a non-zero number of mods will continue to moderate. I also believe there are more than enough people willing to moderate to replace any of those who refuse to return. Then you have weird situations. Because I'm willing to believe that some people believe it is extraordinarily difficult to moderate a subreddit and that they are uniquely gifted at it. Some of these people will believe that they have to moderate the subreddit because they believe the community will go to shit without them. Others will believe that their replacements will cause the community go to shit and Tim Reddit himself will come begging them to rejoin the moderation team. And neither of these things are true. Moderating a forum is mostly drudgery and the only real skill it takes is having the time to do so. This is a battle I don't think the current mods can ultimately win.
MuffinFlavored 3y ago
major subreddits keeping reddit alive basically: r/politics r/worldnews r/movies r/tech r/television r/news r/technology r/gadgets r/sports minor ones i've noticed: r/indieheads r/boxing It's a pretty serious blackout, but it'd be even more serious if those went dark too (and stayed dark).
- ahahahahah 3y ago
  The "major" subreddits you listed are ranked #74, #76, #77, #4020, #946, #165, #875, #2324, and #1584 by posts per day. The claim that they are "keeping reddit alive basically" is rather generous.
  - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
    How can I see those stats?
    - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
      https://subredditstats.com/ https://subredditstats.com/ I found this
      - ahahahahah 3y ago
        Yeah that's where I took the stats from. I spot checked them a bit to see if that metric seemed like it was affected by the recent blackout, but it looked like it wasn't (maybe they lag by some number of days). You could take the #users instead which shouldn't be affected by the blackout, but I thought posts better reflected how much activity they were producing (the first couple listed were really low on users but much higher on posts), but really I think for any of the metrics you pick will make the "keeping reddit alive" claim look rather questionable.
  - smbullet 3y ago
    Subreddit posts per day is really not a great metric to track engagement. You probably want comments or votes per day.
luxuryballs 3y ago
They have already started removing mods of popular subs and giving the mod powers to less disruptive users.
- seydor 3y ago
  Where did this happen? Link?
veave 3y ago
I hope the admins of reddit will start taking control of the closed subs and opening them up. The content of each one of those subs has been written by the users and it makes no sense that a handful of mods are taking the content and holding it hostage by keeping the subs private. If I were a contributor to one of those subs (for example by posting answers to programming questions) I would be fuming.
- Fauntleroy 3y ago
  ...so that the admins of reddit can exploit their content instead?
  - veave 3y ago
    Letting users create a database of knowledge with the premise that it will be available and then massively deleting (or hiding) that knowledge is abusive. The admins of reddit haven't done so (yet). The day they do it I will call them out for it, but by now, it's the mods.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      > The admins of reddit haven't done so (yet). Haven't they? Isn't making the API economically unfeasible to use limiting access? My personal plan is to delete all my posts and my account once Apollo goes down. I made most of that content using Apollo, so it seems fitting.
    - monnok 3y ago
      I personally contend that the official Reddit app has already hidden that knowledge. And that it is abusive. As do many others. We are overwhelmed by the urgent imminence of deliberate enshitification. Waiting to be “surprised” is insanity at this point. I’m not having a fun time with this blackout, but Reddit will be effectively blacked out for me the moment old.reddit goes away. I might as well try changing my diet now, if I’m otherwise going to be forced to change it anyway once doing nothing different leads to diabetes in the near future. I don’t own my contributions any more than the mods do. My contributions exist only in the context of moderated mass discussion, and in the context of mass audience participation. All broad changes to the context of this collaboration are abusive… and I’m throwing my lot in with the abuses of the mods doing blackout right now.
ekun 3y ago
I haven't seen people mention it really, but isn't this all in response to ChatGPT deriving a lot of it's content from Reddit? I know that Google search has gotten so bad in the last couple years that I normally have to add "reddit" to the search terms to get a good result.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  No it's reddits most engaged users don't use the reddit app with all the ads like reddit wants you to. If it was ChatGPT they could just manually approve api use for the few popular clients
WhiteDawn 3y ago
I am curious how this will all settle out in the end. I think the majority of users don’t really care about the API or subreddits going private as they primarily just lurk. However, the people that do care are the ones that moderate and contribute the vast majority of the content that the larger group enjoys. I am pessimistic that the minority here will win out in the end, but the majority may begin to lose interest if the quality of new content drops. At least for myself, the blackout gave me enough space away from the site to consider if my time on Reddit was valuable/enjoyable and basically I concluded it is not worth the time. I’ve uninstalled the app and I haven’t really missed a thing.
- pawptart 3y ago
  > I think the majority of users don’t really care about the API or subreddits going private as they primarily just lurk. I agree. These protests have missed the point. There is a (very) loud minority raising hell right now, but spez is right, it's just noise. The silent majority is still hanging around.
  - x86x87 3y ago
    We'll see. Reddit will not die in 2 weeks that's for sure. But some people will leave and maybe a viable alternative will surface as a result of this shifty behavior
  - tester457 3y ago
    They're a loud minority because they've invested more into the platform. It is the 1–9–90 rule in action. When the 1% leaves the platform's quality will go down.
    - floundy 3y ago
      My bet is that quality will go up. I'm not really interested in reading what the small number of people who spend 8+ hours per day on Reddit think, about any topic. Hopefully they'll take their silly Reddit mannerisms and inside jokes with themselves on the way out.
crazygringo 3y ago
Now that the initial 48 hours have passed, I would expect Reddit to override this at any moment now. Any subreddits which had not been private previously will revert back to public and the ability to change from public to private will be temporarily disabled. It's one thing for management to wait out 48h (doable), it's another thing to wait out something "indefinite".
- x86x87 3y ago
  Lol. Sure, make it worse and piss people off even more. What could possibly go wrong? The best bet reddit has now is to just stay quiet.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - yanderekko 3y ago
    There's not going to be a populist revolt against Reddit stopping angry mods from destroying their communities and/or actively siphoning them to other sites. The people who are already angry may get angrier, but they're already leaving so who cares? Once you've chosen Exit as your protest strategy, you lose Voice.
    - x86x87 3y ago
      I don't think that's true. The numbers of lost mods/members will matter. Also, this isn't about having a voice.
      - yanderekko 3y ago
        My point is that the marginal impact will be negligible. The people who would get angry over forced reopenings are the people that are already angry over the API changes. Why would Reddit care about upsetting the people that are already allegedly leaving the site?
  - jug6ernaut 3y ago
hanniabu 3y ago
I've put together a comparison of Reddit alternatives if anybody is interested: https://gist.github.com/hanniabu/6f96c6e820d58d8736f3c15d4c0e8ae6#raw-comparison https://gist.github.com/hanniabu/6f96c6e820d58d8736f3c15d4c0... There's also some notes above the linked table
- ahahahahah 3y ago
  The more useful thing to users would be a list of alternatives for each closed subreddit. No reddit alternative is going to grow to anything useful from this.
  - bradjohnson 3y ago
    Why not? Typically users of reddit are subscribed to more than one subreddit, so migration to a single destination that can handle all of those communities seems like an obvious choice. The network effect of many users advocating that their second favourite community migrate over to the "new reddit" seems reasonable once people start to establish a userbase there.
- elxr 3y ago
  Based on that, Lemmy seems to be the most reasonable alternative. Can't believe collapsible comments is so rare, that's the main thing (aside from voting) making gigantic comment chains readable.
- iza 3y ago
  Isn't Raddle open source? The footer links to https://postmill.xyz/ https://postmill.xyz/ https://raddle.me/wiki/why_raddle https://raddle.me/wiki/why_raddle
  - hanniabu 3y ago
    Oh interesting, I completely missed this. I saw the footer link I thought it was just to the company that runs it.
shadowgovt 3y ago
This may be an unresolvable problem. Or rather, more specifically: a problem solvable via load-shedding, which is what Reddit is now (tacitly) encouraging. Reading between the lines: Reddit is charging money for 3rd-party integration. The Reddit community has interpreted this as greedy (or, more specifically: the mods community has interpreted this as "We will have to start paying money to use services that are necessary for us to mod our subreddits"). But Reddit has not backed down. What if they can't? What if the problem is that the cost to provide the bulk-data API accesses is starting to add up for Reddit itself? If so, then the problem is hosting Reddit has become too expensive and one solution is, indeed, to make it cheaper by having fewer high-traffic subreddits.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Reddit told the Apollo developer the API pricing was more opportunity cost than actual cost. And many people suggested Reddit could make 3rd party access a subscription feature.
- boolemancer 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure the bulk of reddit's costs are the ~1800 employees building things nobody wants, uses, or asked for. Live streaming, chat, avatars and NFTs are all features that should never have been built.
lopkeny12ko 3y ago
Can't Reddit just un-private all the popular subreddits? Why haven't they done this yet?
- anoonmoose 3y ago
  because they'd also need to remove the mods who made the subs private in the first place lest they just make them private again immediately and removing those mods would/could/should be perceived as an escalation in this fight that could make the problem worse not better
  - zzbzq 3y ago
    Doesn't sound that bad, I hope they do it. And word on the street is they've started. I'm not really sure why they have to even ban the mods. Just tell them it's over and ask them if they want to resign, and keep an eye on them incase they misbehave.
    - anoonmoose 3y ago
      I didn't say ban, I said remove, not that I think there's much of a difference. I hope they do it too, although I expect for entirely different reasons than you do. Funny to see "Reddit Delenda Est" come full circle in a way. I think mods might be a bit like members of US Congress. I expect that if you asked redditors if they think the mods on reddit are good, they'd say no...unless you asked them if the mods of the subreddits they use are good, in which case they'd say yes. Not convinced that removing the mods and reactivating the subs will go as well as you seem to.
  - lopkeny12ko 3y ago
    This doesn't sound like a problem to me? Moderators are random volunteers from the public, not Reddit employees. Feels like it should be trivial and easy to dismiss and replace them. Not like they can file a labor dispute with the company...
thwio 3y ago
[flagged]
swayvil 3y ago
A tool that will automagically scrape a subreddit and convert it for transferral to mastodon or whatever. We could really use that right now.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
emodendroket 3y ago
I think if this were really a threat to Reddit’s bottom line they wouldn’t allow subreddits to exist entirely for the purpose of coordinating the protest.
10xDev 3y ago
Why not just stop moderating and let the subs go to shit and naturally let people move? Why take away valuable information from everyone? Most of us don't care about your fight with Reddit.
notShabu 3y ago
This is like the mirror opposite of how VCs burn money to create new behaviors. Eventually the protest (wasteful burning) creates new behaviors that shape the world into one's desired image.
dom96 3y ago
I'm beginning to think that these kinds of "public utility" websites should be run by non-profits. Why is Wikipedia the only success story here?
- sdfghswe 3y ago
  I'm sure it's not the only reason, but one important reason is that because they don't get their revenue from selling ads, they resisted enshittification well.
refurb 3y ago
I’m not sure how this protest accomplished anything? If people blackout subreddits and Reddit continues to chug along nicely with ad revenue isn’t it just proving that Reddit doesn’t need the users who are upset?
koonsolo 3y ago
This whole thing is for sure an outraged mob that the internet sees plenty of times. Just look at this poll for r/indiedev: https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/149uqfc/rindiedev_follow_up_vote_about_the_protest_like_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/149uqfc/rindiedev... Majority of votes want it closed down, and basically all comments want to keep it open. You don't have to be a community member to vote, so this can mean only 1 thing: users from outside of r/indiedev are voting to close it. edit: if you downvote, please solve the mystery of the disconnect between votes and comments.
- jug6ernaut 3y ago
  There is really no reason to comment if your vote is to shut down the sub. The position is already known and well described. What would the posts be? "I agree"? Vs if you want the sub to stay open and are against the shutdown, your position is not obvious, and has value in explaining why you are against it.
  - a_carbon_rod 3y ago
    I agree with your point but there definitely is some brigading going on by the "pro-blackout" crowd. I moderate a small-ish subreddit (~6500 subscribers) and while our poll to blackout received overwhelming support including from well-known members in our community, I definitely noticed that after sharing in the /r/ModCoord thread our intent to blackout the thread started receiving a lot of supporting comments from questionable brand new accounts (or accounts with low karma/had never interacted with the community before). And this was without linking the thread at all - these users were clearly coming to the subreddit, finding the post and making pro-blackout comments to push the community towards a shutdown.
- predictabl3 3y ago
  Literally every single submission on reddit has that sort of vote/comment ratio. But sure, keep dismissing it, enjoy not being able to google stuff I guess.
  - 3y ago
nofeelings 3y ago
[flagged]
nemo44x 3y ago
New people will take over or create new subreddits as most users don't care. Same thing with Twitter - some people leave and new people get ore engagements and fill the gap. Truth is, 99% of the user base doesn't care and hates the mods anyhow.
cantsingh 3y ago
The biggest issue is that it doesn't seem like these subreddits are doing anything beyond closing down. Point people to an alternative. Not just in the vague direction of The Lemmiverse or Squabbles or whatever; if your sub is going dark, you should have somewhere to receive all your refugees. Even better if the mods coordinate so that all subs are pointing to the same place(s). Even a shared Discord would have been a big step up imo. This protest was just gone about the wrong way.
nph278 3y ago
And reddit.com is down again
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
Social media is one of those bizarre parts of the internet. If one social media site becomes unpopular, literally everyone will just leave and go to another one. Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, all abandoned once something "cooler" came around, and nobody wants to sit around on a platform none of their friends are on. That said, I could really give a crap if any of these sites goes away. I'm only here for the articles, and these sites aren't generating them, they're just linking them.
DropInIn 3y ago
On the topic of alternatives: The current options suck. A proposal to address the failures of extant options: Users hold their own data in the account they use for SSO Every comment post etc is in your own account, with sites putting a request in the page from your SSO host The front page is defined by your choice of site or SSO provider. Eg I have a site and users can login with Google or make an account with my SSO provider, when they post a reference pointer is stored and the content is "reported" to the SSO provider by both the client and server with only those items reported by both being "validated" and stored. When site serves page with that content it puts in a js snippet that pulls the content item from the appropriate server. This means users have full control over their content, sites don't have to host as much content, SSO services have better monetization options (Subs or Sales of Data Analysis) while sites don't lose thiers, etc Subforums would just be different servers/sites, with your chosen frontend aggregating them all like a new age interactive RSS
hospitalJail 3y ago
Poor move. The major subreddits will just be replaced. The correct thing to do was to do a weekly blackout or similar. This would have affected the bottom line and hurt the experience of the website. Instead, you are asking people to change their routines permanently. They will adjust.
joduplessis 3y ago
Interestingly Twitter post-Musk has been great for me. Reddit not so much these days (even before the "blackout").
perlgeek 3y ago
I supports the blackout. Yet, addicted me still occasionally opens reddit. And all the content I see is from communities that did not black out, or returned, so all the content is from communities that at least a part of my says I shouldn't want to see. Kinda kills the fun.
- stephenitis 3y ago
  I feel you too, the boycott is hard.
- Applejinx 3y ago
  That's my experience as well. Certain subs didn't black out, disappointing me (just about everything I used did, though). I can take a peek and what I see is a smaller number that returned, and in some cases I have sympathy (certain kinds of support forum) and in some cases it permanently affected my take on the sub. It's made me wonder why I've spent time shoveling engagement and words into the maw of a machine that didn't turn out to be the people I thought I was hanging out with. I spent a YEAR of my life traveling great distances to pursue a long-distance relationship I literally found on Reddit. That relationship turned out to not be as healthy as I wanted to believe it was… …same with Reddit. More's the pity.
Night_Thastus 3y ago
It's already ended for several subreddits. Several are in limbo of deciding what they want to do next, so it's not well coordinated. I'll say it again, this is the equivalent of a change.org petition. Unless all of say the top 10 (maybe more) subreddits completely, indefinitely went private - this will do nothing. There's not enough weight to it. And even then, Reddit could just wait it out. People who really want X subreddit will just make a new one with a similar name. That happens regardless on almost a daily basis. Most of the major subreddits have a half-dozen alts. As for alternatives to Reddit as a site, that's not going anywhere fast. What makes Reddit Reddit is not the tech, it's the content. Alternatives can exist that seem nearly as good on paper, but unless a sizable number of users go there, it means nothing. And most users do not care about this API situation. It's a very vocal, very small minority.
- cm2012 3y ago
  They don't even have to make new reddits. They could just kick out the current mods, install their own, and set it to public.
dontparticipate 3y ago
Just at first glance, and maybe there's a better way to get this data (I guess not anymore with the API changes!), but if you just look at upvotes on popular posts it seems like nothing has changed in terms of how many people are engaged with the site. At a glance, I doubt the blackouts have had any impact on their DAU or concurrency. New subreddits will likely form to replace the permanently blacked out ones, but just like Twitter, all these addicts aren't going to leave, they'll just have a worse experience but carry on. After all, the good fight against the evil Reddit corporation... is taking place almost entirely on Reddit.
rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
I can’t take the protesters seriously. Of course they’re not a homogeneous group, but among the protesters, I’m seeing way too many pro-capitalists who are actually just middle class and who are protesting against exactly what a good capitalist would do.
tduan 3y ago
This might be an ignorant question but why can't Reddit "force" the blackouts the end? Is it because they risk losing a moderation team to manage the content? Because even if that's true, it seems far less consequential to replace the moderators than the potential of another competitor usurping their position.
DiabloD3 3y ago
Good, it should continue until spez admits he needs to step down permanently. By the way, which Lemmy instance is the HN crowd gravitating towards? Programming.dev?
entropie 3y ago
The last 3 days I starred way to many times at the "this subreddit is private" page on reddit. Not because I actively were using reddit but because all my search queries (not all of them with "reddit") went to one or another reddit post with the information not available anymore. Even if reddit decides to comply, we have to change this for a better internet in the future. Go lemmy guys.
- vxNsr 3y ago
  Lemmy could end in a worse situation: some hobby guy hosts his lemmy instance with w/e unique subs, one day he decides it’s too much work and take it offline. Boom it’s all gone and there’s no recourse. Here at least there’s a chance Reddit will unblock the subs if this goes on too long.
  - bl4kers 3y ago
    Users should consider who owns the server before investing time & energy on it. Having a nameless, headless Reddit employee control the fate of any/all communities is a far worse prospect
Logans_Run 3y ago
Would it be possible to create a read-only instance that was federated with every single other instance? Possibly there is already one or it's been tried and didn't work but the way I envision it is this - You sign up to the read-only instance and can see the entire fediverse's contents and posts and when/if you wanted to comment, the app would let you know that you had to sign up to the instance the comment came from to post your own comment and take you that instance's sign-up page. One of the biggest turn-offs for me was finding which ones to join and/or had content I was or might be interested in.
predictabl3 3y ago
I'm starting to enjoy federation conversations here just as much as crypto conversations. I'm so sick of the smug ones, the people saying the protest is useless, the completely missing-the-point statement that most users don't care, and the near gleeful self abuse of people mocking others that don't want to keep using a proprietary platform being sold to china by a liar. I'm done with Reddit threads on HN. I recommend folks interested in federated networks move these conversations there and let the rest enjoy reddit as it turns into digg.
somsak2 3y ago
Anyone else tired of all of these reddit stories? There's like 2-3 a day at the top of HN with minimal new information, pretty annoying
davelondon 3y ago
Virtually all the useful information about Notion is in the reddit group, which is now inaccessible. I sent a message to the group's moderators today "come on guys, this is dumb" and they reported me for harassment Reddit really needs to stop this.
sudhirkhanger 3y ago
1. Reddit is a private company and if you don't like their practices then maybe you want to stop using their services. 2. There is nothing stopping people who don't care about this to create new and similar subreddit.
rldjbpin 3y ago
as a selfish, passive consumer of reddit content without partaking in even voting, i just want to enjoy the threads already out there. i see the arguments and i wonder why the way to protest is not to just stop participating, rather than taking down the subreddit. if moderation is hard without the third-party apps, stop doing it? to my understanding, the mods want to preserve their powers and the subreddits' integrity. so prolonging the blackout does not seem much more effective to me than the initial publicity in tech media. especially if people running the site understand the above point.

715 points by rajeevk 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hitpointdrew 3y ago

"Let's use Reddit to promote boycotting Reddit!"

diffeomorphism 3y ago
Duh, just like protests are close to company buildings.
bicijay 3y ago
I mean, why not, still works?
karmakurtisaani 3y ago
Why is that a bad idea again?
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Other people’s opinions are surely different than mine but… I think the subs that have gone dark actually made Reddit better. It’s all the popular subs, and that’s the really low effort, frankly, basic bitch comments. For me, in protesting they’ve improved it.
  - bick_nyers 3y ago
    I've been trying to fix first layer adhesion issues on my 3D printer and all of the relevant subreddits went private. So there's more subs participating than just the popular ones.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      To be fair, most of the replies to you would be the same old "have you tried leveling your bed?".
      - bick_nyers 3y ago
        Yeah hair spray/glue stick and bed leveling lol. I bought an auto bed leveler and still can't get anything to stick/not curl up towards the nozzle. There are those hidden gems on Reddit though that aren't the typical response, replies that suggest that your plastic filament has absorbed too much moisture and that you need to dry it in an oven.
        dotnet00 3y ago
        Yeah those issues can be really frustrating. I find textured PEI sheets to be the easiest to get working, if adhesion suddenly stops being good, I first try washing with soap and water, then I try adjusting the z-offset, then drying the filament and playing with bed temperatures, curling can happen in both cases of if the temperature is too low and too high. Additionally, with corners lifting on certain prints, you might just need a brim. I had a BLTouch for a few months, but I found it to be way more trouble than it was worth (probably mostly due to its temperature sensitivity and the heated enclosure). I ended up switching over to a Klackender probe, which has been more reliable to me.
        bick_nyers 3y ago
        Yeah the only thing I haven't really tried is swapping out the textured glass bed for something else but I think that's my next move
    - artogahr 3y ago
      Hey, I've spent considerable amount of time in those subreddits! Maybe I can help? You can reach me on artogahr@gmail.com
    - ddingus 3y ago
- Gys 3y ago
  I assume as long as people keep going to reddit (for whatever reason, does not really matter), reddit can show ads and make money. Reddit will only start having problems once the visitor numbers go down. So far (?) that seems not the case.
- George83728 3y ago
  Because it makes other people (such as myself, and probably reddit management I'm guessing) think you aren't very serious and you'll come crawling back to reddit after you get bored of this protest. Do prove me wrong, because I'd really like to see reddit die. But I'm not counting any chickens until they hatch.
ang_cire 3y ago
Yeah, this post is just a ruse to drum up DAU numbers for Reddit by making users unwittingly cross the picket line! /s ;)
George83728 3y ago
Reddit addicts gonna reddit.
Brendinooo 3y ago
"yet you participate in society, curious"

mynameisvlad 3y ago

Original article link is https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-protest-b2357235.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-...

quaintdev 3y ago

[flagged]

mynameisvlad 3y ago
This AMA happened 27 days ago…
- quaintdev 3y ago
  wow completely missed that part. I opened discord after ages and this was first message I saw. I'll redact my comment.
cmiles74 3y ago
I suspect the set of power users that insisted on using Apollo overlaps quite a bit with the moderator population.

trostaft 3y ago

Perhaps you should link to the actual article, as opposed to the reddit thread about the article... https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-protest-b2357235.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-...

opello 3y ago
It seems there's an interesting lever presented in the article: comment about the support being provided to the platform that is so adversely affecting the users so that the advertisers are exposed more directly to the impact.

icapybara 3y ago

The main problem with the protest is that there’s no viable Reddit replacement. Back during the Digg fiasco, it was easy for everyone to jump ship to Reddit.

vkou 3y ago
This is the root of the problem. Large communities can't meaningfully migrate off it. Small communities shouldn't migrate off it. (As they will lose discoverability.)
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  >Large communities can't meaningfully migrate off it. Yes they can, Digg migrated to reddit, Facebook migrated to Instagram. If Reddit becomes insufferable for most of their users to use they will migrate. Never forget the internet 1% rule [1], just the right set of users have to migrate to kill the site. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
  - vkou 3y ago
    Reddit was a better alternative to Digg, which is why people migrated. What is a better alternative to Reddit from the point of view of a community mod? Self-hosting a phpBB forum isn't it, it's way too much work.
    - MAGZine 3y ago
      it's not enough to be marginally better. you need to be a LOT better to overcome network effects and activation energy. reddit became substantially better when digg ruined their product. actually, digg didn't work at all when they rolled out their new version, so it was (approximately) infinitely better.
    - dbbk 3y ago
      You're not wrong, there isn't one
- 3y ago

idiotsecant 3y ago

It seems to me like this is turning into a subreddit migration in slow motion. A lot people still want to post content and a lot of people still want to read content, so what's happening is people are posting it to the less popular 'alternative' versions of the popular subreddits and those posts make the frontpage instead. It seems like there is a noticeable decline in quality but i'm still seeing quite a bit of posting. Not sure if it's having the intended impact or not. I think the missing thing here is a viable, popular alternative. Digg died because reddit existed. If there was a consensus on the next reddit I would think reddit should be much more worried.

rvba 3y ago
I think HN is experiencing a lot more traffic too
- bbor 3y ago
  It's been very interesting, and part of that is my fault - been posting a lot here instead of reddit (when I should probably just post nowhere). The vote counts seem crazy high this week, even for typical stories. I will say that I haven't noticed a decline in quality of posts; not sure if that's due to a strong culture or strict moderation. I suppose most of the Reddit refugees only browse the HN homepage, so HN veterans still have an out sized impact on the New page, which in turn dictates what can reach the top.
pcurve 3y ago
Yep, I'm seeing smaller subs being bubbled up on my front page. Maybe people will start creating their own subs. There is Saidit https://www.saidit.net/ https://www.saidit.net/ but it's not really a viable alternative.
- maxsilver 3y ago
  I'm not sure why those folks would bother leaving, Saidit is basically identical to what an unmoderated Reddit would look like.
3y ago

cmiles74 3y ago

IMHO, Reddit's charging such a high price for API access that it's as good as unattainable is more of a last straw then anything else. Reddit has been clear that they view the data as their sole property, when you think it through, why be a moderator for a for-profit company if you aren't being paid? I don't know why it took this long for moderators to quit.

idiotsecant 3y ago
I don't think many moderators will actually quit as long as the users are there, especially since reddit gave back some moderator API call access. Moderating is already a terrible, thankless job. The people who do it enjoy moderating because (I assume) they're 'in charge' of something big and important. I don't think reddit closing off third party access will be enough to convince most of these people to stop giving labor for free.
- Maxburn 3y ago
  This is the thing I don't get, reddit is getting a heck of a free ride with all these mods. You'd think they would do everything within their power to enable them so why kick them in the nuts? Also the "power" users would probably be happy to pay reasonable prices to interact with it via app/api, so go ahead and charge something REASONABLE. There's something nefarious going on behind the scenes and it's all very suspicious. I'm happy to go back to targeted forums if I need to.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Indeed. I'd happily pay Reddit directly for an API key if that let me run RIF in a "bring your own key" mode. They could split the profits between themselves and app dev. I'm surprised no one is proposing this. But I guess this comes down to people willing and able to pay to avoid adtech cancer being actually the most profitable cohort for the advertisers...
    - tcrenshaw 3y ago

iameli 3y ago

The biggest Reddit communities are in open rebellion. Twitter is, charitably, a mess. Twitch started taking a full 50% of the revenue of their top creators, who are furious. What's going on? What's the bigger trend that's causing all these platforms to go so user-hostile?

hiddencost 3y ago
Interest rates
xmonkee 3y ago
no more free money
dmitrygr 3y ago
The end of free money from the fed?
ls612 3y ago
Interest rates go up.
rvba 3y ago
[flagged]
- LegitShady 3y ago
  I disagree with a lot of your post. You’re correct that the Reddit IPO will likely lead to traditional finance holding the bag, much of which will be large funds. Twitter was bought by musk, but your comments about his wants are fever dreams. Twitch is losing the streaming wars to Youtube.
- roastedoolong 3y ago
  [flagged]
marklar423 3y ago
I would add on - enshittification driven by money, as coined by Cory Doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

bluetidepro 3y ago

@mods can we update this link to the real article and not just going to reddit? https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-protest-b2357235.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-blackout-date-end-...

probably_wrong 3y ago
FYI, The Independent redirects based on location. I am not surprised to learn that Bill Cosby has been sued by 9 women in Nevada, but that's probably not what you wanted me to read about. If the link is changed, it would be better to do it to an archive version. Here's one: https://archive.is/NcsuT https://archive.is/NcsuT

facet1ous 3y ago

People are treating this as if this is the Reddit of 2011. If you really think this protest is going to stop the momentum of a Reddit IPO payout you are sorely mistaken.

tensor 3y ago
I personally don't care one way or the other about any reddit IPO payout. Happy for them if they get paid, reddit has been an amazing service for many many years. What I DO care about is being able to browse without ads and recommendations I don't want shoved down my throat. They could have done things in a way that preserved 3rd party clients but required payment for an ad-free experience. People would be mostly fine with that I think.

chongli 3y ago

I was really skeptical of lemmy [1] when I first heard about it during the blackout. I joined yesterday and it completely changed my mind. Yes, it is going to face some growing pains (see the total user growth in the past few days) [2] in the coming weeks and months but it really has the potential to replace Reddit with a federated system of communities. One that won't be damaged by investors or executives attempting to pivot over to the latest social media trend. As many people have recently noted, Reddit quietly became an extremely important repository of text-based knowledge. Distinct from Wikipedia and Archive.org, but no less important, Reddit is full of valuable procedural (how-to) and consumer (product-related) knowledge. Reddit has countless small communities built around hobbies and other niche interests, which places it in the same role once fulfilled by Usenet and later independent web-based forums. While those technologies still exist, they face enormous challenges with discovery (try to find a new forum on Google recently?), single-sign-on, and moderation. These were all solved by Reddit and I believe lemmy solves them too. The fediverse [3] truly has the potential to liberate small internet communities from the vagaries of Big Social Media, of which Reddit is only the latest example. [1] https://join-lemmy.org https://join-lemmy.org [2] https://the-federation.info/platform/73 https://the-federation.info/platform/73 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

jurassicfoxy 3y ago
Yes, I just saw the r/StarTrek migration, and visited Lemmy for the 3rd time or so this week, and quite frankly, I could drop reddit entirely now, if I knew how to find communities. I feel some real hacker/dev excitement for the future of Lemmy.
- soundsgoodtome 3y ago
  Let us know if/when you figure out how to find communities. Discoverability seems to be a real problem with Lemmy.
  - Solvency 3y ago
    I literally can't even sign up for Lemmy.world. The button after entering a new username/pw just spins indefinitely, forever.

pgrote 3y ago

When do replacement subreddits start forming? /r/picsnew or something.

Simulacra 3y ago
They already have, people who don't care about the API issue were creating their own "unlocked" subreddits of popular Reddit's that have gone dark
- floren 3y ago
  Once enough of those get created, it would probably be more harmful to Reddit if the mods then opened up their original subreddits. Now users have to pick between /r/foo and /r/foo_unlocked. Communities are fragmented.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    Powerjannies probably aren't too worried. Most users will choose the r/foo instead of foo_unlocked especially in the 6-month+ timespan. Building some community of 1000 people is a complete waste of time, if it starts to get traction the powerjannies will unlock their own communities and maintain their personal power/influence. There simply is no circumstance where building a replacement community to bypass the powerjannies' control will be a worthwhile use of anyone's time. If there is a feeling that this is a loud minority waving pitchforks and that subreddits that re-open largely go on unaffected... the move to bypass the minority has to come from reddit themselves, otherwise the powerjannies will just regroup and come at it a bit more subtly once they realize they're on the losing side. They ain't gonna give up that mod slot when they know how much personal power it affords them. And people can say there isn't power in it, or they're in it for the community, but, this kind of "keeping it closed for everyone because some users don't want it to be open" is exactly the kind of thing that gets a powermod all bricked up. There's enough power for some people to get a thrill out of it. The current protest falls into a perceived gap in the "inactive sub" rules - if a sub is inactive and the mods are gone, that sub can be reassigned to new mods and reopened. The mods are saying "no, we're not inactive... we're just not letting anyone talk, but, there's 1 post a week in a private thread, see?". And the reality is that even if you accept that's a valid gap in the rules (arguably this is already covered by mod reassignment rules) this certainly will not be allowed to persist forever, Reddit will simply change the rules around what constitutes abandonment. The pressure is already on from community members who don't feel represented and are willing to take over the mod work if the current mods simply no longer wish to mod under the new system: https://old.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/149z2nd/requesting_rscience_due_to_inactivity/ https://old.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/149z2nd/requ... You can protest at the factory gate all you want, and shame people for "crossing the picket line". You can't obstruct the actual factory floor, and if that happens the cops will remove you. And that's what things are fast coming to with the whole situation. Mods are free to not mod. Users are free to not post. That's the "protest at the gate" approach. You can't be disruptive on a commercial platform, or you're gonna get removed. If mods no longer wish to participate and abandon the platform, Reddit is perfectly free to execute its "abandoned subreddit" procedures and reopen the sub, or to alter those abandoned-subreddit procedures in any way they want. If users/mods wish to behave in a disruptive fashion because they don't want to be members anymore, they will be banned. And yes, there are people willing to step in and do the work too. Powermods are not that special, actually they're kinda awful at times.

baby 3y ago

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. This is a huge opportunity for Facebook. They sort of tried to do Reddit in the past and ended up with shitty Facebook groups. If I were them, I would rush to add some reddit features to Facebook group (reddit-like threads, upvotes/downvotes) or try to launch something new that’s more like reddit on top of the facebook/insta social graph. Just call it “Groups”

kramerger 3y ago
Facebook? I'm all in favour of bringing back G+
- baby 3y ago
  people who say that have clearly not used G+ x)
bmarquez 3y ago
It would be interesting to see Facebook Groups divorce from Facebook itself. Maybe allow people to login using an Instagram or Whatsapp identity, or better yet an independent login. I don't really want my group activity to be linked to my Facebook identity for tracking/advertising purposes.
- jacooper 3y ago
  An Instagram account is as bad as a Facebook account, if not worse.
  - bmarquez 3y ago
    How is it worse? From a privacy perspective they're both terrible and the data flows to the same Meta servers, but Facebook demands you use your real name (and demands photo ID if it thinks it's fake) while Instagram doesn't care.
starik36 3y ago
> shitty Facebook groups Are you serious? That is the most useful and well done function of Facebook! The accounts are all mostly real names so there is much less toxicity. Instead you get enthusiasts around a topic that can discuss issues in a constructive manner - or at least more constructive than Reddit.

quaintdev 3y ago

Reddit has become pretty popular in India and this new population is okay with new site and policy changes because they simply are not aware of what Reddit use to be. Reddit blackout has almost 0 effect on Indian subreddits. Reddit still has numbers to show even if most subreddit are down. Just check r/India r/Mumbai r/Banglore r/Delhi r/Pune and other India subreddits and you will see.

NotYourLawyer 3y ago
I’m sure that fact will really pump up demand for their IPO.
- bbor 3y ago
  Is this sarcastic or am I missing some point? More users == more money, and India is the biggest under-tapped single market in social media, if you consider it a "single market". I don't get why being popular in India would be a bad thing...
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Reddit sells ads, and ads that aren't going to US or UK users are priced at rock bottom rates. Ask anyone who owns a website that runs adsense.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - berkle4455 3y ago
    Investors do not care about just DAUs (daily active users) anymore, they care just as much about ARPU (avg revenue per user) At Facebook, users from Asia Pacific region monetize at around ~1/15th of US&CA users. The costs to serve those users remains relatively fixed on a per-user basis, so expect those costs to inflate by 10-15x to earn the same revenue. Will Reddit drastically change their business model to appeal to Asia Pacific users and advertisers? It's possible but extremely unlikely and pivoting your business model months from IPO isn't a good plan. A flood of India users to a western-centric platform is how you kill that platform (see Quora).

bena 3y ago

All reddit has to do is remove the ability for subreddits to be private. Or put the ability to make subreddits private behind a paywall. Much like how Github treated private repos. End of the day, reddit is going to have to figure out how many users are willing to boycott. Moderators are one thing. They are a minority. But if they remove the ability for /r/funny to be private, would users honor the protest? The subs that have ended their blackouts are going on like nothing happened.

darknavi 3y ago
GitHub private repos are free now by the way.
- bena 3y ago
  Which is why I used the past tense.
boolemancer 3y ago
Okay, so you take away the power from the mods, and expect them to still do the work to moderate the subreddits for free?
- bena 3y ago
  A single power. And I don't think it's a power all mods have. If it is, it would only take one rogue mod to re-public the subreddit. And really, whether or not the mods continue to moderate is the thing being tested with such a move. Reddit did the API thing, the mods responded by escalating to this. Reddit can either blink and walk back some of their choices, wait for the mods to blink and reopen (of which, some have already), or reddit can escalate further and see if that makes the mods blink. I believe a non-zero number of mods will continue to moderate. I also believe there are more than enough people willing to moderate to replace any of those who refuse to return. Then you have weird situations. Because I'm willing to believe that some people believe it is extraordinarily difficult to moderate a subreddit and that they are uniquely gifted at it. Some of these people will believe that they have to moderate the subreddit because they believe the community will go to shit without them. Others will believe that their replacements will cause the community go to shit and Tim Reddit himself will come begging them to rejoin the moderation team. And neither of these things are true. Moderating a forum is mostly drudgery and the only real skill it takes is having the time to do so. This is a battle I don't think the current mods can ultimately win.

MuffinFlavored 3y ago

major subreddits keeping reddit alive basically: r/politics r/worldnews r/movies r/tech r/television r/news r/technology r/gadgets r/sports minor ones i've noticed: r/indieheads r/boxing It's a pretty serious blackout, but it'd be even more serious if those went dark too (and stayed dark).

ahahahahah 3y ago
The "major" subreddits you listed are ranked #74, #76, #77, #4020, #946, #165, #875, #2324, and #1584 by posts per day. The claim that they are "keeping reddit alive basically" is rather generous.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  How can I see those stats?
  - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
    https://subredditstats.com/ https://subredditstats.com/ I found this
    - ahahahahah 3y ago
      Yeah that's where I took the stats from. I spot checked them a bit to see if that metric seemed like it was affected by the recent blackout, but it looked like it wasn't (maybe they lag by some number of days). You could take the #users instead which shouldn't be affected by the blackout, but I thought posts better reflected how much activity they were producing (the first couple listed were really low on users but much higher on posts), but really I think for any of the metrics you pick will make the "keeping reddit alive" claim look rather questionable.
- smbullet 3y ago
  Subreddit posts per day is really not a great metric to track engagement. You probably want comments or votes per day.

luxuryballs 3y ago

They have already started removing mods of popular subs and giving the mod powers to less disruptive users.

seydor 3y ago
Where did this happen? Link?

veave 3y ago

I hope the admins of reddit will start taking control of the closed subs and opening them up. The content of each one of those subs has been written by the users and it makes no sense that a handful of mods are taking the content and holding it hostage by keeping the subs private. If I were a contributor to one of those subs (for example by posting answers to programming questions) I would be fuming.

Fauntleroy 3y ago
...so that the admins of reddit can exploit their content instead?
- veave 3y ago
  Letting users create a database of knowledge with the premise that it will be available and then massively deleting (or hiding) that knowledge is abusive. The admins of reddit haven't done so (yet). The day they do it I will call them out for it, but by now, it's the mods.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    > The admins of reddit haven't done so (yet). Haven't they? Isn't making the API economically unfeasible to use limiting access? My personal plan is to delete all my posts and my account once Apollo goes down. I made most of that content using Apollo, so it seems fitting.
  - monnok 3y ago
    I personally contend that the official Reddit app has already hidden that knowledge. And that it is abusive. As do many others. We are overwhelmed by the urgent imminence of deliberate enshitification. Waiting to be “surprised” is insanity at this point. I’m not having a fun time with this blackout, but Reddit will be effectively blacked out for me the moment old.reddit goes away. I might as well try changing my diet now, if I’m otherwise going to be forced to change it anyway once doing nothing different leads to diabetes in the near future. I don’t own my contributions any more than the mods do. My contributions exist only in the context of moderated mass discussion, and in the context of mass audience participation. All broad changes to the context of this collaboration are abusive… and I’m throwing my lot in with the abuses of the mods doing blackout right now.

ekun 3y ago

I haven't seen people mention it really, but isn't this all in response to ChatGPT deriving a lot of it's content from Reddit? I know that Google search has gotten so bad in the last couple years that I normally have to add "reddit" to the search terms to get a good result.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago
No it's reddits most engaged users don't use the reddit app with all the ads like reddit wants you to. If it was ChatGPT they could just manually approve api use for the few popular clients

WhiteDawn 3y ago

I am curious how this will all settle out in the end. I think the majority of users don’t really care about the API or subreddits going private as they primarily just lurk. However, the people that do care are the ones that moderate and contribute the vast majority of the content that the larger group enjoys. I am pessimistic that the minority here will win out in the end, but the majority may begin to lose interest if the quality of new content drops. At least for myself, the blackout gave me enough space away from the site to consider if my time on Reddit was valuable/enjoyable and basically I concluded it is not worth the time. I’ve uninstalled the app and I haven’t really missed a thing.

pawptart 3y ago
> I think the majority of users don’t really care about the API or subreddits going private as they primarily just lurk. I agree. These protests have missed the point. There is a (very) loud minority raising hell right now, but spez is right, it's just noise. The silent majority is still hanging around.
- x86x87 3y ago
  We'll see. Reddit will not die in 2 weeks that's for sure. But some people will leave and maybe a viable alternative will surface as a result of this shifty behavior
- tester457 3y ago
  They're a loud minority because they've invested more into the platform. It is the 1–9–90 rule in action. When the 1% leaves the platform's quality will go down.
  - floundy 3y ago
    My bet is that quality will go up. I'm not really interested in reading what the small number of people who spend 8+ hours per day on Reddit think, about any topic. Hopefully they'll take their silly Reddit mannerisms and inside jokes with themselves on the way out.

crazygringo 3y ago

Now that the initial 48 hours have passed, I would expect Reddit to override this at any moment now. Any subreddits which had not been private previously will revert back to public and the ability to change from public to private will be temporarily disabled. It's one thing for management to wait out 48h (doable), it's another thing to wait out something "indefinite".

x86x87 3y ago
Lol. Sure, make it worse and piss people off even more. What could possibly go wrong? The best bet reddit has now is to just stay quiet.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- yanderekko 3y ago
  There's not going to be a populist revolt against Reddit stopping angry mods from destroying their communities and/or actively siphoning them to other sites. The people who are already angry may get angrier, but they're already leaving so who cares? Once you've chosen Exit as your protest strategy, you lose Voice.
  - x86x87 3y ago
    I don't think that's true. The numbers of lost mods/members will matter. Also, this isn't about having a voice.
    - yanderekko 3y ago
      My point is that the marginal impact will be negligible. The people who would get angry over forced reopenings are the people that are already angry over the API changes. Why would Reddit care about upsetting the people that are already allegedly leaving the site?
- jug6ernaut 3y ago

hanniabu 3y ago

I've put together a comparison of Reddit alternatives if anybody is interested: https://gist.github.com/hanniabu/6f96c6e820d58d8736f3c15d4c0e8ae6#raw-comparison https://gist.github.com/hanniabu/6f96c6e820d58d8736f3c15d4c0... There's also some notes above the linked table

ahahahahah 3y ago
The more useful thing to users would be a list of alternatives for each closed subreddit. No reddit alternative is going to grow to anything useful from this.
- bradjohnson 3y ago
  Why not? Typically users of reddit are subscribed to more than one subreddit, so migration to a single destination that can handle all of those communities seems like an obvious choice. The network effect of many users advocating that their second favourite community migrate over to the "new reddit" seems reasonable once people start to establish a userbase there.
elxr 3y ago
Based on that, Lemmy seems to be the most reasonable alternative. Can't believe collapsible comments is so rare, that's the main thing (aside from voting) making gigantic comment chains readable.
iza 3y ago
Isn't Raddle open source? The footer links to https://postmill.xyz/ https://postmill.xyz/ https://raddle.me/wiki/why_raddle https://raddle.me/wiki/why_raddle
- hanniabu 3y ago
  Oh interesting, I completely missed this. I saw the footer link I thought it was just to the company that runs it.

shadowgovt 3y ago

This may be an unresolvable problem. Or rather, more specifically: a problem solvable via load-shedding, which is what Reddit is now (tacitly) encouraging. Reading between the lines: Reddit is charging money for 3rd-party integration. The Reddit community has interpreted this as greedy (or, more specifically: the mods community has interpreted this as "We will have to start paying money to use services that are necessary for us to mod our subreddits"). But Reddit has not backed down. What if they can't? What if the problem is that the cost to provide the bulk-data API accesses is starting to add up for Reddit itself? If so, then the problem is hosting Reddit has become too expensive and one solution is, indeed, to make it cheaper by having fewer high-traffic subreddits.

pseudalopex 3y ago
Reddit told the Apollo developer the API pricing was more opportunity cost than actual cost. And many people suggested Reddit could make 3rd party access a subscription feature.
boolemancer 3y ago
I'm pretty sure the bulk of reddit's costs are the ~1800 employees building things nobody wants, uses, or asked for. Live streaming, chat, avatars and NFTs are all features that should never have been built.

lopkeny12ko 3y ago

Can't Reddit just un-private all the popular subreddits? Why haven't they done this yet?

anoonmoose 3y ago
because they'd also need to remove the mods who made the subs private in the first place lest they just make them private again immediately and removing those mods would/could/should be perceived as an escalation in this fight that could make the problem worse not better
- zzbzq 3y ago
  Doesn't sound that bad, I hope they do it. And word on the street is they've started. I'm not really sure why they have to even ban the mods. Just tell them it's over and ask them if they want to resign, and keep an eye on them incase they misbehave.
  - anoonmoose 3y ago
    I didn't say ban, I said remove, not that I think there's much of a difference. I hope they do it too, although I expect for entirely different reasons than you do. Funny to see "Reddit Delenda Est" come full circle in a way. I think mods might be a bit like members of US Congress. I expect that if you asked redditors if they think the mods on reddit are good, they'd say no...unless you asked them if the mods of the subreddits they use are good, in which case they'd say yes. Not convinced that removing the mods and reactivating the subs will go as well as you seem to.
- lopkeny12ko 3y ago
  This doesn't sound like a problem to me? Moderators are random volunteers from the public, not Reddit employees. Feels like it should be trivial and easy to dismiss and replace them. Not like they can file a labor dispute with the company...

thwio 3y ago

[flagged]

swayvil 3y ago

A tool that will automagically scrape a subreddit and convert it for transferral to mastodon or whatever. We could really use that right now.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

emodendroket 3y ago

I think if this were really a threat to Reddit’s bottom line they wouldn’t allow subreddits to exist entirely for the purpose of coordinating the protest.

10xDev 3y ago

Why not just stop moderating and let the subs go to shit and naturally let people move? Why take away valuable information from everyone? Most of us don't care about your fight with Reddit.

notShabu 3y ago

This is like the mirror opposite of how VCs burn money to create new behaviors. Eventually the protest (wasteful burning) creates new behaviors that shape the world into one's desired image.

dom96 3y ago

I'm beginning to think that these kinds of "public utility" websites should be run by non-profits. Why is Wikipedia the only success story here?

sdfghswe 3y ago
I'm sure it's not the only reason, but one important reason is that because they don't get their revenue from selling ads, they resisted enshittification well.

refurb 3y ago

I’m not sure how this protest accomplished anything? If people blackout subreddits and Reddit continues to chug along nicely with ad revenue isn’t it just proving that Reddit doesn’t need the users who are upset?

koonsolo 3y ago

This whole thing is for sure an outraged mob that the internet sees plenty of times. Just look at this poll for r/indiedev: https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/149uqfc/rindiedev_follow_up_vote_about_the_protest_like_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/149uqfc/rindiedev... Majority of votes want it closed down, and basically all comments want to keep it open. You don't have to be a community member to vote, so this can mean only 1 thing: users from outside of r/indiedev are voting to close it. edit: if you downvote, please solve the mystery of the disconnect between votes and comments.

jug6ernaut 3y ago
There is really no reason to comment if your vote is to shut down the sub. The position is already known and well described. What would the posts be? "I agree"? Vs if you want the sub to stay open and are against the shutdown, your position is not obvious, and has value in explaining why you are against it.
- a_carbon_rod 3y ago
  I agree with your point but there definitely is some brigading going on by the "pro-blackout" crowd. I moderate a small-ish subreddit (~6500 subscribers) and while our poll to blackout received overwhelming support including from well-known members in our community, I definitely noticed that after sharing in the /r/ModCoord thread our intent to blackout the thread started receiving a lot of supporting comments from questionable brand new accounts (or accounts with low karma/had never interacted with the community before). And this was without linking the thread at all - these users were clearly coming to the subreddit, finding the post and making pro-blackout comments to push the community towards a shutdown.
predictabl3 3y ago
Literally every single submission on reddit has that sort of vote/comment ratio. But sure, keep dismissing it, enjoy not being able to google stuff I guess.
- 3y ago

nofeelings 3y ago

[flagged]

nemo44x 3y ago

New people will take over or create new subreddits as most users don't care. Same thing with Twitter - some people leave and new people get ore engagements and fill the gap. Truth is, 99% of the user base doesn't care and hates the mods anyhow.

cantsingh 3y ago

The biggest issue is that it doesn't seem like these subreddits are doing anything beyond closing down. Point people to an alternative. Not just in the vague direction of The Lemmiverse or Squabbles or whatever; if your sub is going dark, you should have somewhere to receive all your refugees. Even better if the mods coordinate so that all subs are pointing to the same place(s). Even a shared Discord would have been a big step up imo. This protest was just gone about the wrong way.

nph278 3y ago

And reddit.com is down again

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

Social media is one of those bizarre parts of the internet. If one social media site becomes unpopular, literally everyone will just leave and go to another one. Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, all abandoned once something "cooler" came around, and nobody wants to sit around on a platform none of their friends are on. That said, I could really give a crap if any of these sites goes away. I'm only here for the articles, and these sites aren't generating them, they're just linking them.

DropInIn 3y ago

On the topic of alternatives: The current options suck. A proposal to address the failures of extant options: Users hold their own data in the account they use for SSO Every comment post etc is in your own account, with sites putting a request in the page from your SSO host The front page is defined by your choice of site or SSO provider. Eg I have a site and users can login with Google or make an account with my SSO provider, when they post a reference pointer is stored and the content is "reported" to the SSO provider by both the client and server with only those items reported by both being "validated" and stored. When site serves page with that content it puts in a js snippet that pulls the content item from the appropriate server. This means users have full control over their content, sites don't have to host as much content, SSO services have better monetization options (Subs or Sales of Data Analysis) while sites don't lose thiers, etc Subforums would just be different servers/sites, with your chosen frontend aggregating them all like a new age interactive RSS

hospitalJail 3y ago

Poor move. The major subreddits will just be replaced. The correct thing to do was to do a weekly blackout or similar. This would have affected the bottom line and hurt the experience of the website. Instead, you are asking people to change their routines permanently. They will adjust.

joduplessis 3y ago

Interestingly Twitter post-Musk has been great for me. Reddit not so much these days (even before the "blackout").

perlgeek 3y ago

I supports the blackout. Yet, addicted me still occasionally opens reddit. And all the content I see is from communities that did not black out, or returned, so all the content is from communities that at least a part of my says I shouldn't want to see. Kinda kills the fun.

stephenitis 3y ago
I feel you too, the boycott is hard.
Applejinx 3y ago
That's my experience as well. Certain subs didn't black out, disappointing me (just about everything I used did, though). I can take a peek and what I see is a smaller number that returned, and in some cases I have sympathy (certain kinds of support forum) and in some cases it permanently affected my take on the sub. It's made me wonder why I've spent time shoveling engagement and words into the maw of a machine that didn't turn out to be the people I thought I was hanging out with. I spent a YEAR of my life traveling great distances to pursue a long-distance relationship I literally found on Reddit. That relationship turned out to not be as healthy as I wanted to believe it was… …same with Reddit. More's the pity.

Night_Thastus 3y ago

It's already ended for several subreddits. Several are in limbo of deciding what they want to do next, so it's not well coordinated. I'll say it again, this is the equivalent of a change.org petition. Unless all of say the top 10 (maybe more) subreddits completely, indefinitely went private - this will do nothing. There's not enough weight to it. And even then, Reddit could just wait it out. People who really want X subreddit will just make a new one with a similar name. That happens regardless on almost a daily basis. Most of the major subreddits have a half-dozen alts. As for alternatives to Reddit as a site, that's not going anywhere fast. What makes Reddit Reddit is not the tech, it's the content. Alternatives can exist that seem nearly as good on paper, but unless a sizable number of users go there, it means nothing. And most users do not care about this API situation. It's a very vocal, very small minority.

cm2012 3y ago
They don't even have to make new reddits. They could just kick out the current mods, install their own, and set it to public.

dontparticipate 3y ago

Just at first glance, and maybe there's a better way to get this data (I guess not anymore with the API changes!), but if you just look at upvotes on popular posts it seems like nothing has changed in terms of how many people are engaged with the site. At a glance, I doubt the blackouts have had any impact on their DAU or concurrency. New subreddits will likely form to replace the permanently blacked out ones, but just like Twitter, all these addicts aren't going to leave, they'll just have a worse experience but carry on. After all, the good fight against the evil Reddit corporation... is taking place almost entirely on Reddit.

rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago

I can’t take the protesters seriously. Of course they’re not a homogeneous group, but among the protesters, I’m seeing way too many pro-capitalists who are actually just middle class and who are protesting against exactly what a good capitalist would do.

tduan 3y ago

This might be an ignorant question but why can't Reddit "force" the blackouts the end? Is it because they risk losing a moderation team to manage the content? Because even if that's true, it seems far less consequential to replace the moderators than the potential of another competitor usurping their position.

DiabloD3 3y ago

Good, it should continue until spez admits he needs to step down permanently. By the way, which Lemmy instance is the HN crowd gravitating towards? Programming.dev?

entropie 3y ago

The last 3 days I starred way to many times at the "this subreddit is private" page on reddit. Not because I actively were using reddit but because all my search queries (not all of them with "reddit") went to one or another reddit post with the information not available anymore. Even if reddit decides to comply, we have to change this for a better internet in the future. Go lemmy guys.

vxNsr 3y ago
Lemmy could end in a worse situation: some hobby guy hosts his lemmy instance with w/e unique subs, one day he decides it’s too much work and take it offline. Boom it’s all gone and there’s no recourse. Here at least there’s a chance Reddit will unblock the subs if this goes on too long.
- bl4kers 3y ago
  Users should consider who owns the server before investing time & energy on it. Having a nameless, headless Reddit employee control the fate of any/all communities is a far worse prospect

Logans_Run 3y ago

Would it be possible to create a read-only instance that was federated with every single other instance? Possibly there is already one or it's been tried and didn't work but the way I envision it is this - You sign up to the read-only instance and can see the entire fediverse's contents and posts and when/if you wanted to comment, the app would let you know that you had to sign up to the instance the comment came from to post your own comment and take you that instance's sign-up page. One of the biggest turn-offs for me was finding which ones to join and/or had content I was or might be interested in.

predictabl3 3y ago

I'm starting to enjoy federation conversations here just as much as crypto conversations. I'm so sick of the smug ones, the people saying the protest is useless, the completely missing-the-point statement that most users don't care, and the near gleeful self abuse of people mocking others that don't want to keep using a proprietary platform being sold to china by a liar. I'm done with Reddit threads on HN. I recommend folks interested in federated networks move these conversations there and let the rest enjoy reddit as it turns into digg.

somsak2 3y ago

Anyone else tired of all of these reddit stories? There's like 2-3 a day at the top of HN with minimal new information, pretty annoying

davelondon 3y ago

Virtually all the useful information about Notion is in the reddit group, which is now inaccessible. I sent a message to the group's moderators today "come on guys, this is dumb" and they reported me for harassment Reddit really needs to stop this.

sudhirkhanger 3y ago

1. Reddit is a private company and if you don't like their practices then maybe you want to stop using their services. 2. There is nothing stopping people who don't care about this to create new and similar subreddit.

rldjbpin 3y ago

as a selfish, passive consumer of reddit content without partaking in even voting, i just want to enjoy the threads already out there. i see the arguments and i wonder why the way to protest is not to just stop participating, rather than taking down the subreddit. if moderation is hard without the third-party apps, stop doing it? to my understanding, the mods want to preserve their powers and the subreddits' integrity. so prolonging the blackout does not seem much more effective to me than the initial publicity in tech media. especially if people running the site understand the above point.