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How has reddit community changed since it's API permission changes that removed all third party apps? A lot of people forecasted doom for the network and many s

by bko 3y ago

How has reddit community changed since it's API permission changes that removed all third party apps? A lot of people forecasted doom for the network and many subreddits went private to protest. Have the predictions come true? Presumably all those changes were to juice numbers pre IPO. In hindsight, did it work?

nicce 3y ago
From personal perspective, discussion quality has gone to the rock bottom on various subreddits. And platform is even worse when using from the browser. Other than that, no idea.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Discussion isn't allowed. Dissent from the groupthink will be deleted if not banned outright.
  - 12345hn6789 3y ago
    Yup. It seems like the mods that left were replaced with narcissistic people who are only there to throw their power around. A few subs were ruined after for me.
NotYourLawyer 3y ago
The content has suffered. It’s even shittier than it was a year ago.
bun_terminator 3y ago
It's 100% the same. The official app isn't even that bad if you remove the ads. The biggest problem (powermods) still remains ironically after all of this. Bummer really, I thought they would use the opportunity to clean up
- nicce 3y ago
  The main concern with the official app is the data it hoards. Back in the day it even needed permissions for your Google account on Android, and did not work without it.
  - bun_terminator 3y ago
    Fair enough. I've accepted that everyone knows more about me than myself and moved on haha
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- Mashimo 3y ago
  > It's 100% the same. To be honest, I only looked at a few niche subforums, but on them the daily posts have halved. But maybe it's also how those sites now gather the data. Do you know more about this?
  - bun_terminator 3y ago
    The daily posts we see are mostly a function of the algorithm. I don't frequent small enough subs where the number is so small that they can't be saturated - so my experience might be tainted
JackMorgan 3y ago
Hard to say, I ended up leaving for Lemmy, which isn't as big but it gets the job done
Havoc 3y ago
It’s very subjective but Quality of moderation has dropped in my opinion. Things like giving moderators the ability to moderate anonymously (you can now conceal names of moderators entirely but on sidebar and in coms) has also result in power tripping moderators having a field day. On the whole though the Reddit won - all the serious protestors left and the remainder (majority) folded
- tsss 3y ago
  It was always clear that the nazi mods would never ever give up their power, which made this whole "protest" ridiculous from the start. The only ones who left were the few good people in small subreddits, who just wanted a forum to talk about their niche hobby, leaving behind an even larger percentage of powertripping narcissists.
phpisthebest 3y ago
My usage of reddit as dropped by a considerable amount, and I am now only active in the sysadmin subreddit mainly for professional reasons..
politelemon 3y ago
It did work in terms of what the Reddit owners wanted, which was engagement - they did get more people onto their app and using their platform. The owners got just what they wanted. In return, quality has fallen off a cliff. Moderation on some of the most popular subs is scarce, so all the popular ones have started to coalesce into a 'blob' of sameness. Discussions are poor as well, and misinformation is rife. For the niche subreddits, often dedicated to one topic, where there isn't a lot of traffic, not that much has changed. There's still a decent amount of engagement. It might be that some quality has fallen off there, but it's the "new normal".
- TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
  > In return, quality has fallen off a cliff. Moderation on some of the most popular subs is scarce, so all the popular ones have started to coalesce into a 'blob' of sameness. Discussions are poor as well, and misinformation is rife. All the more poignant in light of the recent announcement that they were going to sell access to their "content" to train someone's AI. Good luck with that.
ramon156 3y ago
Can't be bothered to log into every device to read a reddit page. It requires an account for some pages as simple as r/rust
- addandsubtract 3y ago
  old.reddit.com is the only reddit worth using.
  - dorchadas 3y ago
    I worry it's going soon after the IPO.
- warhorse10_9 3y ago
  For stuff like that use https://old.reddit.com/r/rust https://old.reddit.com/r/rust In my experience that solves the issue. It’s not the most mobile friendly but workable and my go-to regardless.
- bilchly 3y ago
  You can use old.reddit.com instead of www.reddit.com, and that will bypass the login requirement.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kibwen 3y ago
Reddit drove away lots of users via that change, although I expect Reddit's MAU still grew overall due to the continued worldwide penetration of the internet. In addition, while in the short-term it almost certainly lost users, it drove the remaining users towards frontends that were more profitable to Reddit (i.e. away from the website and towards the app), so I expect the company still sees that as a win, at least as far as the IPO is concerned. However, the deleterious effect on Reddit's overall culture cannot be understated. The people who were most driven away by the API changes were power users, and Reddit has become far more bland and repetitive as a result (to anyone familiar with the tenor of Reddit it may seem hard to believe that it could lower the bar any further, but I assure you, it has). The difference in trending subreddits from immediately before the blackout to immediately after was dramatic; whereas before you could expect the site-wide trending posts to have the nutritional content of cardboard (with the occasional gem from e.g. AskHistorians), it has been replaced with a flood of celebrity drama, ragebait from "unpopular opinion" clones, and ragebait creative writing exercises via dozens of similar "am I the asshole" clones. This is normalizing somewhat as the clones compete with each other and coalesce (Reddit's algorithm tries to limit trending posts to one per subreddit), but it's still a regression. That said, it's still not the worst that Reddit has ever been; that title still belongs to back to 2016 when TheDonald popularized how to game the trending algorithm via brigading their own stickied posts. But I'm using Reddit less and less as they keep making the experience even worse, especially on mobile, which is more hostile to the Oldreddit interface than ever. After the IPO I expect them to jettison Oldreddit entirely, at which point the site will be beyond useless for anyone who actually wants to use it as a place to read comments rather than as a poor TikTok imitation.
- bilchly 3y ago
  As someone who enjoys writing ragebait posts, I can confirm that in recent months it's been easier than ever to get thousands of people raging over some nonsense. The relative lack of moderation has been very useful in this regard. Perhaps that actually benefits Reddit though? More engagement even if it is mostly dimwits responding in earnest to troll posts.
  - boston_clone 3y ago
shmatt 3y ago
Of course it worked. No popular website gives people unlimited use of an API for free. Its financial death. Reddit kept it on far too long, Facebook was suitng anyone attempting to build an app based on unofficial APIs more than a decade ago, and it worked great for them I also haven't really seen any of the major (Reddit mods are not spread out, a very small group control the majority of large subreddits) mod just quit. Anyone who edited their content "so reddit doesnt profit" just gave the internal Reddit DB more value to sell to the LLM companies Reddit moderation, like Facebook Group moderation, works for free because people are bored and love the power grab. There are SO MANY Facebook Groups with over 100,000 and 1,000,000 users, their mods work endlessly 24/7 to stop spam and make sure everything is kosher. They've never once asked Zuckerberg for cash, the ego boost is just too big to give up

by bko 3y ago

nicce 3y ago

From personal perspective, discussion quality has gone to the rock bottom on various subreddits. And platform is even worse when using from the browser. Other than that, no idea.

bluescrn 3y ago
Discussion isn't allowed. Dissent from the groupthink will be deleted if not banned outright.
- 12345hn6789 3y ago
  Yup. It seems like the mods that left were replaced with narcissistic people who are only there to throw their power around. A few subs were ruined after for me.

NotYourLawyer 3y ago

The content has suffered. It’s even shittier than it was a year ago.

bun_terminator 3y ago

It's 100% the same. The official app isn't even that bad if you remove the ads. The biggest problem (powermods) still remains ironically after all of this. Bummer really, I thought they would use the opportunity to clean up

nicce 3y ago
The main concern with the official app is the data it hoards. Back in the day it even needed permissions for your Google account on Android, and did not work without it.
- bun_terminator 3y ago
  Fair enough. I've accepted that everyone knows more about me than myself and moved on haha
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
Mashimo 3y ago
> It's 100% the same. To be honest, I only looked at a few niche subforums, but on them the daily posts have halved. But maybe it's also how those sites now gather the data. Do you know more about this?
- bun_terminator 3y ago
  The daily posts we see are mostly a function of the algorithm. I don't frequent small enough subs where the number is so small that they can't be saturated - so my experience might be tainted

JackMorgan 3y ago

Hard to say, I ended up leaving for Lemmy, which isn't as big but it gets the job done

Havoc 3y ago

It’s very subjective but Quality of moderation has dropped in my opinion. Things like giving moderators the ability to moderate anonymously (you can now conceal names of moderators entirely but on sidebar and in coms) has also result in power tripping moderators having a field day. On the whole though the Reddit won - all the serious protestors left and the remainder (majority) folded

tsss 3y ago
It was always clear that the nazi mods would never ever give up their power, which made this whole "protest" ridiculous from the start. The only ones who left were the few good people in small subreddits, who just wanted a forum to talk about their niche hobby, leaving behind an even larger percentage of powertripping narcissists.

phpisthebest 3y ago

My usage of reddit as dropped by a considerable amount, and I am now only active in the sysadmin subreddit mainly for professional reasons..

politelemon 3y ago

It did work in terms of what the Reddit owners wanted, which was engagement - they did get more people onto their app and using their platform. The owners got just what they wanted. In return, quality has fallen off a cliff. Moderation on some of the most popular subs is scarce, so all the popular ones have started to coalesce into a 'blob' of sameness. Discussions are poor as well, and misinformation is rife. For the niche subreddits, often dedicated to one topic, where there isn't a lot of traffic, not that much has changed. There's still a decent amount of engagement. It might be that some quality has fallen off there, but it's the "new normal".

TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
> In return, quality has fallen off a cliff. Moderation on some of the most popular subs is scarce, so all the popular ones have started to coalesce into a 'blob' of sameness. Discussions are poor as well, and misinformation is rife. All the more poignant in light of the recent announcement that they were going to sell access to their "content" to train someone's AI. Good luck with that.

ramon156 3y ago

Can't be bothered to log into every device to read a reddit page. It requires an account for some pages as simple as r/rust

addandsubtract 3y ago
old.reddit.com is the only reddit worth using.
- dorchadas 3y ago
  I worry it's going soon after the IPO.
warhorse10_9 3y ago
For stuff like that use https://old.reddit.com/r/rust https://old.reddit.com/r/rust In my experience that solves the issue. It’s not the most mobile friendly but workable and my go-to regardless.
bilchly 3y ago
You can use old.reddit.com instead of www.reddit.com, and that will bypass the login requirement.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kibwen 3y ago

Reddit drove away lots of users via that change, although I expect Reddit's MAU still grew overall due to the continued worldwide penetration of the internet. In addition, while in the short-term it almost certainly lost users, it drove the remaining users towards frontends that were more profitable to Reddit (i.e. away from the website and towards the app), so I expect the company still sees that as a win, at least as far as the IPO is concerned. However, the deleterious effect on Reddit's overall culture cannot be understated. The people who were most driven away by the API changes were power users, and Reddit has become far more bland and repetitive as a result (to anyone familiar with the tenor of Reddit it may seem hard to believe that it could lower the bar any further, but I assure you, it has). The difference in trending subreddits from immediately before the blackout to immediately after was dramatic; whereas before you could expect the site-wide trending posts to have the nutritional content of cardboard (with the occasional gem from e.g. AskHistorians), it has been replaced with a flood of celebrity drama, ragebait from "unpopular opinion" clones, and ragebait creative writing exercises via dozens of similar "am I the asshole" clones. This is normalizing somewhat as the clones compete with each other and coalesce (Reddit's algorithm tries to limit trending posts to one per subreddit), but it's still a regression. That said, it's still not the worst that Reddit has ever been; that title still belongs to back to 2016 when TheDonald popularized how to game the trending algorithm via brigading their own stickied posts. But I'm using Reddit less and less as they keep making the experience even worse, especially on mobile, which is more hostile to the Oldreddit interface than ever. After the IPO I expect them to jettison Oldreddit entirely, at which point the site will be beyond useless for anyone who actually wants to use it as a place to read comments rather than as a poor TikTok imitation.

bilchly 3y ago
As someone who enjoys writing ragebait posts, I can confirm that in recent months it's been easier than ever to get thousands of people raging over some nonsense. The relative lack of moderation has been very useful in this regard. Perhaps that actually benefits Reddit though? More engagement even if it is mostly dimwits responding in earnest to troll posts.
- boston_clone 3y ago

shmatt 3y ago

Of course it worked. No popular website gives people unlimited use of an API for free. Its financial death. Reddit kept it on far too long, Facebook was suitng anyone attempting to build an app based on unofficial APIs more than a decade ago, and it worked great for them I also haven't really seen any of the major (Reddit mods are not spread out, a very small group control the majority of large subreddits) mod just quit. Anyone who edited their content "so reddit doesnt profit" just gave the internal Reddit DB more value to sell to the LLM companies Reddit moderation, like Facebook Group moderation, works for free because people are bored and love the power grab. There are SO MANY Facebook Groups with over 100,000 and 1,000,000 users, their mods work endlessly 24/7 to stop spam and make sure everything is kosher. They've never once asked Zuckerberg for cash, the ego boost is just too big to give up