- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
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What happen next is we move on to this better platform
Absolutely, even without all the reddit drama a decentralised version clearly seems to be the smartest way to go. Reddit is it’s community and I think the ceo lost sight of that.
This is not the end of reddit. It is just a hiccup for them as they go public. But the protests was a good opportunity for folks to learn about alternatives. I certainly didn’t know alternatives existed. I’m glad to have found fediverse. I fully support the idea and want to see it grow.
It may not “end” Reddit but I do think this will end Reddit as we know it. It will just be a shell of itself just like Facebook is no longer a place for college friends to connect and share photos.
It’s ironic how I heard from a Facebook employee that the staff members of Facebook have their own internal Facebook network, and it functions a lot more closely like how Facebook was originally supposed to be designed—versus the public model’s cesspool of marketing, ads, privacy violations, and manipulation that is the only one we now all know.
Wow that’s really interesting but not surprising.
This is what I’m expecting. A year from now someone will mention “reddit” to me and I’ll be like “that’s still around?” and I’ll check it out and it’s just turned into TikTok challenges.
This I can believe. The only reason I still have facebook is for the precious few friends whom I use messenger with, as well as the group that the rescue I adopted my dog from uses. Every time I scroll through my timeline it’s 90% random garbage, advertisements, and “suggested” bullshit.
You can actually use messenger without a Facebook account which is what I do for the rare occasions I need that
That brought back memories of AOL Instant Messenger for me :)
I bullied my friends into using Telegram. Although, I do use Instagram, so some of them message me there instead.
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Yes I did the same. I used redact on my 14 year old account and edited all my comments and posts saying “removed due to Reddit’s new api policy”
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If I want to nuke my reddit account. I’ll just do a GDPR request for my data to be deleted.
I’m making my transition a somewhat gradual one. I’ll still be on Reddit, in the more esoteric subs, though I feel dirty every time I go there. As all the cool kids migrate over, I’ll spend less time there and more time here.
As long as you only use on a browser with adblock, and don’t actively support their changes, it isn’t letting them win. Spez is trying to built a wall around his garden of extremely useful information, go nab some tomatoes while they’re not yet rotten.
Reddit wins as long as actual people are posting and commenting. Selling advertising is just a stopgap; the goal is to sell peoples behavior patterns and current trends in communicating about information. He sees the cash cow as being a legitimate AI training corpus to sell subscriptions to.
Of course, this will fail as soon as people deploy chatbots using those same models across the redditverse.
During the last site-wide protest in 2015 I set up a VOAT account with all the similar subreddits that I had at the time. When people first started suggesting abandoning ship, I thought “Well, at least I still have Voat”. Checks Voat. Turned into a alt-rght haven and then shut down in 2020. Dho!
TIL Voat shut down. Shocker.
Yup. I checked Voat several times and checked out when I saw it was alt right bullshit.
I also set up a Voat account then and tried using it for a few days, but it did not take off anywhere near like what Lemmy has with this protest.
This is the gist of it. It will happen again, and again, and again. After they go public, every quarter that they need to come up with some shenanigans to satisfy shareholders, it will happen again. Eventually, either a new thing will come up and start it all over again, or we will be mostly decentralized.
I think on top of that each time we get more and more of the creators. The vast majority of users are lurkers on Reddit, purely consuming content and ads. If content starts moving to new platforms then the users will follow. That’s why power users are important, they’re most of the discussion. We saw it with facebook, they lost the communities that made it fun and over time more and more people left the platform to go where the content was, the slow death of a social media titan.
Death? Facebook is still lumbering with no problem, because there are groups on there that help people make money, which keep them there forever. I manage one such network and have no idea of how to get away from Facebook, because it’s basically like a non-anonymous equivalent to Craigslist jobs, which makes it so much safer and easier to find and post work on. Anything else would require more separate accounts that people probably just don’t care for, etc.
Fluctuation of user numbers should at least impact the value of their stocks when they go public.
Agree. I don’t plan to leave Reddit but it’s good to look at the alternatives that are available out there.
I would like to leave Reddit but I don’t know if my favorite communities will migrate or grow here (and I sure don’t have the time to maintain them all, or the know-how to keep generating the content that they do).
@Dymonika @rimlogger Give it some time. Took Reddit 13 years. Mastodon and lemmy are gaining traction. We got to get out of the Reddit mentality to every break free
same. i’d like to spend most of my browsing time here on lemmy rather than reddit if possible, but i doubt i’ll fully leave anytime soon. unless my favourite communities (r/battlejackets, r/visiblemending, r/posthardcore, etc.) migrate, i’ll be going back from time to time for them and their like minded user base
Same boat as you, but now we have a new way to connect to other people on the internet. On top of that, lemmy has a bunch of new users now. Far more people can make content to make this engaging and exciting at the same time. I will miss f/nba though.
What’s that?
sorry, r/nba sub for nba fans. It’s private at the moment so the refugees of the sub are in r/nbacirclejerk
I’ve also learnt about several awesome subreddits. That made me double mad, knowing all the things I’m just missing.
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This is kind of what I see happening. They’re on their way to making reddit Facebook where it’s only 1. Memes, 2. Hot chick’s, 3. Angry people
Many subs are already opening up again sadly.
It still looks pretty bad (in a good way): https://reddark.untone.uk/
Almost 7,000 subs private, including many of the biggest ones. This is by no means letting up.
It will be interesting to see where things stand in a few days and whether it’s causing ongoing pain to Reddit. I doubt they will comment until and if there’s a risk of ongoing, widespread blackouts.
True but I see the number of closed subreddits getting lower each time I look at that page.
I think a lot of them are either going to be support subs (like stopdrinking), or they will be subs asking their users what they should do.
The modcoord subreddit is full of support for continued protestYep, we opened up, polled the users, got told to keep it closed, and down went the shutters.
I see major subs like /r/gaming, /r/todayilearned/, /r/space opening up but they’re not asking their users what to do :(
Between this comment and my last at least 25 subs have opened up again. Even while typing this one opened up.
Huh? Last I checked r/gaming was asking for user feedback on whether they should remain closed and the comments look like a resounding “yes”.
When/where?
Force openings
Has that been confirmed yet? I saw one person saying it was happening, but the comments below proved they were wrong, and then they scratched out their comment and apologized for spreading false info.
I saw another post with screenshots
You mean this one right? https://famichiki.jp/@Tsutsuku/110537730270070245
Reddit’s CEO is a vile PoS
undefined> https://reddark.untone.uk/
Would be great if more of those communities moved to the fediverse :')
They are either coming or we’ll have to create them. I see no way forward with Reddit. Anyone who’s for Reddit deserves to stay in that cess pit run by spez now. Bridges have been burnt.
Oh my, I expected a few thousand to go up after an hour or two but a few big ones are even still down this is great :D
The subs going dark should have only been half of the protest. Users should have also stayed away from the site but I don’t think that was really coordinated.
The number of new posts didn’t drop much, the comments dropped a bit more but only by like 20%, which isn’t a lot given the amount of subs that went dark. Reddit doesn’t care about subs, they care about users and it seems engagement was still pretty high.
The next protest should be to all users to stop using the site. Drop the users and they’ll start to listen.
Before asking people to leave, subs creator should create similar communities on Lemmy
Exactly this. A long term blackout, especially a user blackout, is not feasible without a replacement place to go to.
leaving this in lieu of lemmy gold.
I’m pretty sure none of them thought about that because they’re basically just doing this out of anger. They know it won’t change reddits decision so they want to take it away from all the users that don’t really care about third party apps or mod tools.
Create coordinated groups on lemmy and dump all comments in the sub they mod. Sure, Reddit could restore, but it would be just one more hassle for their IT staff
I tried to do my part and heavily restricted my visits to the site. I checked the state of my feed and user profiles a select few times but always left almost immediately.
I even redirected my reddit browser bookmark to a local website which acted as a warning wall, just to stop me from my subconsciously opening and browsing the site.
I did similar, I swapped my shortcuts/apps for ones going to Lemmy. The muscle memory has worked in my favour.
Honest question, (I don’t expect you to know) how many of those were some form of bot?
Nobody really knows, but I personally don’t think there were any more bots on Monday than there was a week earlier. It’s a nice story that users dropped with the subs going dark, but I think it might be wishful thinking on our part. To my knowledge there’s zero evidence to suggest that they were mostly bots.
The submissions remaining steady while comments dropped off a cliff is eyebrow raising, however given how much the site struggled to handle so many private subs from a technical perspective, I strongly suspect reddit didn’t really do much ahead of the blackout. I think the steady submissions compared to the decreased comments tell us more about an average day of reddit how many submissions are bot submitted than it tells us about a change in bot behavior that day.
Indeed. Users should have joined in. I did my part at least, I haven’t used the site in days and I’ve also removed all of my comments and submissions.
I think a non-insubstantial amount of the comment activity was bots to be fair.
So, a substantial amount? :D
Medium-substantial. Midstantial?
I think this is true but I think it has always been the case. The question is were there more bots than usual and I’m unconvinced there was.
Yeah when the blackout started I disabled my Reddit app and haven’t been back there once since. We need more people doing this.
I went back to post on the “We’re back from the Blackout” posts to go let them know about the new communities that were started up here.
Wall the subs I liked were dark anyways so opening my app showed super old posts that were cached or blackout notices. Couldn’t go back of I tried
Reddit admins are starting to boot mods and force open subs. Total desperation move
Has that been confirmed yet? I saw one person saying it was happening, but the comments below proved they were wrong, and then they scratched out their comment and apologized for spreading false info.
if it’s not happening yet it’s inevitable.
I think they’re seriously underestimating the work mods did in the bigger subs
Fuck Reddit. Fuck /u/spez.
I am just waiting on r/askhistorians. Whatever they do next I will follow.
edit: i should clarify that if they decide to stay on reddit, then probably my reddit user will become an askhistorians lurker.
Honestly it is one of, if not the most, valuable communities on reddit. The fact that it just exists makes me feel a sense of wonder.
It’s the most valuable for me for sure, and I love everything about it. They’re back but currently restricted. I’m really curious about what is their next step.
IIRC, they said they were going to stay restricted so it could be an archive.
The real sub closings and mass exodus from Reddit will most likely begin after the end of the month, when significant and popular 3rd party apps like Sync and Apollo will be shut down.
I deleted RIF on Monday and went to Reddit today via mobile and it was such a pain in the ass as soon as I shut it off I instinctively hit the Jerboa icon (I intentionally put it where RIF was on my homescreen).
Also the Jerboa app is getting better almost daily.
The official reddit app has actually made significant improvements to their mod tools in the last month, but holy fuck, it should not have taken this long. It still has a long way to go, and the app as a whole sucks balls. But I’m not planning on modding any longer, so, I don’t really care any more, I guess.
I wish Lemmur was still being developed. It looked pretty clean and was built on Flutter, but the devs stopped working on it in February due to lack of interest and political differences (I guess referring to the tankie Lemmy devs). I was thinking of making my own Lemmy app with Flutter for fun. If I do, I’ll probably write the UI myself but fork and use the dart API library from Lemmur for the backend stuff. Jerboa is nice, but I’d prefer more of a native Android looking app, kinda like Sync.
making the ui more like googles material style you mean? for that flutter would be a great option
I wish iOS has an app like Jerboa :( Mlem misses so many features unfortunately…
I’ve been using Memmy since it became available yesterday and it looks promising so far. It’s already had about 4 updates just today:
Running the Memmy update today with dark mode and I had moments where my brain thought I was scrolling through Apollo. Gonna be very happy with the app if it continues down this route.
Same brother. Same. I’m actually surprised how good the Jerboa app works. I thought it be way crappy since everything now is scrambling to get away from reddit and catching mass exoduses is a hard thing to do. But it’s smooth as soft serve ice cream. I think that’s why Lemmy might work. It’s not a single break, it’s more like an ABS and it’s kinda magical (to me) how you can go and discover new communities. If one instance breaks you can always go to another one and it works almost the same atleast on a technical level.
I read that the Sync app was being shut down at the end of the month, then the blackouts started and I just thought Fuck it and set Sync to 0 minutes screen time on my phone while I set up Lemmy. I’m liking it so far just needs more users
I installed Jerboa and put it where Sync used to be and so far the transition has been pretty easy.
I really refuse to use Reddit on my phone using anything other than Sync so it’s an easy decision there. Will probably still browse Reddit on my desktop though since at least there I’ve got old.reddit with RES to make the site useable.
Yea the past few days I saw posts about the biggest influx is coming today at the start of the blackout, but I gotta say most people are fine with reddit if they get to use their 3PA. I think when some shut down there might be a bit more people comming opposed to the last few days
I’m here and plan a complete exit from reddit at end of June. I love my 3PA and won’t continue without it.
Today I logged in on my trash account to see what’s going on. On r/gaming there was a really interesting conversation about the protest. Seems to me that there is no shortage of people who merely see the protest as an inconvenience. Many of them don’t even see any issues with the default reddit app. It’s sad that there are so many people like that.
Well, they seem to like the ad infested reddit, so let them stay there.
This could cause more of a Reddit userbase fork than an actual full exodus which could be a good thing for us.
Having the ex-reddit users that were willing to stand up and leave/ flip off Reddit all in one place seems like a pretty cool community to be a part of.
Just noticed that r/tifu had a pretty good summary too: “ Without effective tools (which Reddit has frequently promised and then failed to deliver), moderators cannot combat spammers, bad actors, or the entities who enable either, and without the freedom to choose how and where they access Reddit, many contributors will simply leave. Rather than hosting creativity and in-depth discourse, the platform will soon feature only recycled content, bot-driven activity, and an ever-dwindling number of well-informed visitors. The very elements which differentiate Reddit – the foundations that draw its audience – will be eliminated, reducing the site to another dead cog in the Ennui Engine.”
In other words, people who actually create quality content will be gone. I wonder if the remaining people don’t mind the bot spam and reposts. If they really don’t, then Reddit can just milk them for ad money forever, and I guess this is the plan. However, if people do mind, then ad revenue will begin to decline as more and more subs begin to be filled with trash.
Yeah, they can have it then. I’m done with that site.
Agreed. I’ve still been checking Apollo everyday out of habit. Once July 1st hits, Apollo is getting deleted off my phone and then I don’t really see myself using Reddit much.
You need to pull the bandaid off. I started yesterday and replaced Apollo with Mlem and I’m not looking back.
Yea I wanna see if any are going to be deleted if its possible. That would be a interesting metric. Because if they arent listening to the black out I think they might start to listen if dubs get permanently deleted and A LOT of their content dissapears
I remember back at Digg and MySpace. Same vibe.
“This will blow over.”
It always blows over until it doesn’t. Only take once.
I think back to this article quite a bit, lately. The basic idea is that social media sites seem, by the numbers, to be doing fine, and then they abruptly collapse. The trick is that when the people who create high engagement - people who make posts that make people super happy or angry or whatever, as long as they are feeling something and therefor getting engaged - when those people start to post less because they’re spending some of their energy on some other new site, the old one gets kinda hollowed out. It’s not obvious it’s dying until it’s dead.
I don’t know if reddit is done for, but I can say that lemmy and mastodon are feeling a lot more fleshed out, lately, compared to past waves of people coming from twitter. It feels like turning a corner, or crossing a critical mass threshold; it’s getting easier to stay engaged and not feel the need to check the old giant sites.
I wanted to insult you and swear a bit as a bit of a funny take on driving engagement…but it’s mostly just so darn nice here that I can’t bring myself to roll around in the gutter.
Have an upvote and be happy instead.
I fart in your general direction, your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries! :P
I’ve loked at my front page a few times, and man, it’s pathetic. Literally just a bunch of useless askreddit and AITA threads. It’s basically quora lol.
The repost bots are becoming a massive problem on the front page as well. Used to just be Gallowboob, now it’s hundreds of bots endlessly reposting TikToks or Twitter screenshots and regurgitating comments. Hoping the application process on this site helps to mitigate that.
You‘re saying you don’t like seeing the same meme get posted 8 times in the span of an hour every few days?
I feel like that entirely depends on the subreddits you’re subscribed to. For me I have an /r/WTF post at 13, and then not another default sub until… an /r/AdviceAnimals post at 47.
While I love Lemmy and will continue to contribute to it. My reddit experience feels very much the same as it always has. The key was to abandon most of the large subs a long time ago.
I bet NSFW fans won’t notice anything.
I spend about 2 days gathering communities that I want to sub for and make sure they are subbed. Then starting yesterday I just need to click the subscribe tab and switch to “New” and there is usually ~10 new posts every 2 hours. I don’t even visit the “All” or “local” tabs anymore. If I run into something I feel not enough, I will just search for the community instead of waiting for them to pop up in “All”.
It’s funny how these social companies get huge and think they are irreplaceable… when all of them started as a replacement for something else.
Once you think you’re too big to fail? That’s when ya trip.
Slammed gate syndrome
Add a month to the blackout each time Spez refers to Reddit’s employees as “Snoos”
I know it’s the name of the little alien, and it’s cute and all, but I’ll never be able to read that name and not think of bone-crushing Amazonian snoo-snoo from Futurama.
“Femputer sentences them to death… by SNU SNU!”
“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.”
😦😀😦😀😦😀😦😀
Can we build an interface for it? And call it a Snoos Button?
Man, it’s sad to see comments about how this isn’t the end of Reddit. I want one of two things: Either to see Reddit straight up die because the communities stayed down, or for them to be forced to relax their API fees. For me personally, Reddit is straight up dead if I cant use old.reddit or Reddit via Apollo / Relay Pro. I need these third party apps. The Reddit app is HORRIBLE in every way, from the layout to the ads.
Reddit isn’t special- it’s just where everyone is at atm. And why are they at reddit to begin with? It’s because of what it was - community focused, and community driven. Now it’s profit driven, and the community is pissed.
If you’re mad now, just wait till they are publicly traded, and are legally obligated to milk every last dime from their user base to satisfy investors.
I’m reserving all my opinions until after the 30th when all the 3rd party clients die. A lot of people dont even know their client is about to reach end of life because they dont check reddit every day or follow the news close enough.
Usage statistics saw a 15-25% hit in traffic during the protest. It’s still around 8% lower than it was pre protest.
My personal opinion though is that reddit doesnt have to die. It just has to lose it’s status as the front page of the internet. That happens when there is an alternative to reddit that has a critical mass of users to be a rival. I think we are close to that right now with lemmy.
Near a billion active users per month, Reddit isn’t going to die. Doesn’t matter to me what other people do, I’ve left.
While I can’t see it dying in anytime soon in how many visitors it receives, the general “vibe” and communities of the site will differ I imagine and that’s what matters to me. The end of Apollo was it for me. Like you said, others can do whatever but I’ve left.
Depends on how you define “Active Users”.
Reddit has shitload of spam, bots, and lurkers. Only a very small slice of users actually contribute anything in the form of posts and comments.
Once it loses it’s status as “front page of the internet” its the beginning of the end for Reddit (although it has already started, perhaps just the prologue or prequelmeme of the end?).
Still learning lemmy but I’m liking it so far.
As someone in the advertising industry - I felt overwhelmed by ads and served content. I want a place where my content isn’t driven by a corporation trying to manipulate my spending habits… And I want a place where no one is trying to monetize my eyes and brain. That’s why I can’t support reddit. Yeah, I know, companies need money. But back in the olden days, people weren’t the product if that makes sense. Getting everyone on the same app/platform isn’t a mistake. Apps have all sorts of other purposes designed specifically to see what you’re up to, where you are, what else you do when you’re on your phone. Corporate apps watch you. Plain and simple. Getting people off of 3rd party apps and onto a reddit app, while increasing making their users the product, isn’t an accident or coincidence.
Huffman says the blackout hasn’t had “significant revenue impact”
So two-day revenue change is his preferred metric? If I were a Reddit investor, I wouldn’t want this guy as a CEO…
Two days ago they were, as of his words “not profiting”, and suddenly a blackout doesn’t affect them? What a clown.
His unethical behavior is why I’d want him out as an investor. His decisions are directly harming Reddit’s reputation and damaging the IPO when it happens. The point is to increase value, not damage it. He must really think that the revenue syphoned by third party apps is worth all this.
At this point, with the way he has behaved and things he said, I am convinced that this was just an effort to shut Reddit down. There have been a lot of dissenting voices on there, just like on Twitter, and they cannot control this content as easily. So they send in Musk and this other clown to run these companies to the ground and make everyone flee, then they can claim the only people that are left on these platforms are the extreme crazies. Then the general public will no longer take things said on these platforms seriously. We have been watching this systematic effort to silence free voices everywhere, this is just another example. I would not be surprised if they take this time to permanently shut down sub-reddits that doesn’t agree the main narrative we are being given.
If you listen to Behind the Bastards, they have a fantastic episode on I think Sam Zell buying and making small town newspapers terrible, right before the 2008 election. The hypothesis is that Elon Musk is doing the same thing, and I find it hard not to include prepperdipshit spez in that sort of ilk.
Please check out behindthebastards@lemmy.blahaj.zone if you are a listener.
Can you elaborate a little more? If I were an investor in reddit, my primary concern would be whether the blackout was actually impacting revenue. If the revenue is flat, then the blackout is just noise and things will return to normal soon.
Impact on revenue could take months, if not years, to materialize. Most redditors will probably stick around for the time being, but if content posters / moderators leave the ship, the site will eventually die.
If I were him, I’d be looking at account deletions (especially from mods), number of new posts/comments, etc.
Those are a great points, especially about the mods- they are a key piece of the future-of-reddit puzzle. Thank you!
Exactly. Ain’t no way you can get an accurate view from 2 day. Though I don’t think he really cares as long as it doesn’t affect the IPO.
I think he means that long term effects are the real concern, not the effects of two day revenue
I think the real test will be when these API rules go into effect at the end of the month. Will all these people who showed solidarity the last two days leave the site then, or will they just quietly download the official app and continue on?
People are ADDICTED to Reddit. So much so that they are using Reddit as their primary resource to talk about how much they hate it.
Once the craziness around the API stuff dies down and it’s time to stop using Reddit for good, I’m willing to bet nearly all of these people cave in some way.
It is truly an addiction platform.
To my credit though I shredded all of my accounts today and deleted them. I’m 100% all in on lemmy and this new and exciting fediverse stuff.
Hey I’m even a mod now for NSFW! I’m a big boy now.
I never realized how much some people rely on Reddit for social interaction. It’s truly fascinating. Also, their unwillingness to even consider using other platforms.
I’m sort of one of them? I mean I’m married, got my own place, now got a stable job etc, but I barely ever see my friends (all moved away), and my work friends from an old job I have just lost touch with.
Trying to replace the online social life with Lemmy, maybe something like IRC? Who knows.
Just look at all the people who claim to hate Musk and everything he stands for, but continue using Twitter like nothing changed.
I think a good portion will do both frankly. Half will go elsewhere or reduce usage. Half will stay like nothing happened.
A 25% loss in overall user traffic would be a low number I think to an extent. This would be enough for the valuation of Reddit to drop. If anything, it would hurt spezs pockets.
It would hurt Spez’s job - that guy is on pace to get shitcanned.
If people have to download a new app to replace apollo, sync, RIF, etc then they should download Jerboa and sign up to Lemmy. If you’re gonna have to get used to a different app interface nows the time!
I agree, but the whole “instances” and federation stuff can be overwhelming for the average user. As long as enough power users and content creators make the move, then Lemmy has a good shot long-term.
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At the start of all this when Christian first posted I figured I would just use some sort of workaround like old.reddit in mobile browser; the official app and new reddit are non-starters for me, it’s just not how I browse.
However, in the days since I have been increasingly dismayed by Spez and the rest of the leadership response, a lack of interest in even engaging on the subject and outright hostility towards a community that has been dedicated to reddit for years. I can’t see myself going back there, it’s been poisoned for me.
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@wecalledhimmavis @TipRing Once they get rid of old reddit then I’m gone completely. Old reddit makes reddit bareable. I prefer mastodon and lemmy now. Only been on since the 12th and can say both are hands down better then Reddit
I’m curious about the mod tools. Is it possible to moderate a small to medium sized subreddit without those tools? To me, the mods are the glue behind it all. If a subreddit goes off the rails because of bot spam and toxic/hate posts, people will just go elsewhere.
So if mods stop moderating because they don’t have access to their tools, this will likely happen at one point or another.
My guess is, the downhill has already started. The remaining users just aren’t annoyed enough to migrate yet, but when the spam wave hits every sub, they are going to find Lemmy a lot more appealing.
I may be missing something, but the article completely loses the thread when it starts grousing over "why won’t the 3Ps pay up? " Because even if they pay, NSFW content is still not available for users. Reddit is attempting to force third party devs to charge for an inferior product, which is obviously untenable for all parties.
I agree, the Verge’s coverage has been much better on this subject. It isn’t about not paying for use, it’s about a reasonable price that isn’t so exorbitant to essentially bankrupt them and make them go away. Christian has addressed this point several times already.
Regardless of whether or not anything serious happens to Reddit, it’s just not the same for me anymore and I won’t be going back. I can see the vibe and audience further shifting ala Twitter. It’s too big to just fail, Digg, MySpace and other older sites still exist, they’re just shadows of themselves now.
Exactly. There is no winning here, but at a minimum, another corner of the internet grows that isn’t controlled by a singular entity. That should be real goal along with moving away from Reddit.
That wont happen I dont think. Louis Rossman explained it quite well. The API pricing is not meant to be fair market price. Its a fuck you price. Basically reddit wants to kill 3PA but doesnt want to outright state it does so it doesnt seem as such a bad guy. Case in point: people who think the blackout might make them rethink their pricing. Now I wont say it 100% wont because everything is possible and no one really knows what will happen in the future, but since the beginning it seems the move was not “lets get some cash for API calls” but “lets kill 3PA without looking like an ass”
It’s just a small multi-time fee of 500 morbillion dollars, jeez, just pay the redditorino CEO a fair price, you 3rd party bullies.
There’s also been a lot of misinformation and misunderstandings going on regarding the blackout, which doesn’t help.
Honestly, there won’t be a mass exodus and Reddit will live on. I’m sure a bunch of users will flock to other platforms but in the long run Reddit only care about people that are already using their new UI and their new app. And those users won’t be leaving.
Regardless whether Reddit survives or not I am glad I found this space and excited for the future of Lemmy/Fediverse.
The 90-9-1 rule of internet communities applies though. If you’re unfamiliar:
90% of people lurk, 9% interact, and 1% create content. Reddit has an additional 0.1% snuck in there of people who moderate.
If you’re in that smaller echelon of users who interact or submit/create content, you’re more than likely a user who these api changes affect. So the 90% doesn’t really matter in the long run if you have no content, and the content that does come in is poorly moderated or not modded at all.
This kills the reddit.
Yeah, I definitely agree with that rule.
I have several friends that work at Reddit and from what I gather they ran all the numbers and determined that most mods use old.reddit and not 3P apps. So Reddit did their calculations and they have determined they will make more money in the long run by steering people to their new app. They know Reddit drama always seems bigger than it is and will blow over in a month. They know they will lose some users but they think the majority will stay, including mods and content creators.
I definitely understand why they made all these decisions from a business perspective but holy shit was this poorly handled by Spez. I think they could’ve given developers a longer shutdown period and they could’ve handled PR way better + the whole Christian (Apollo) debacle also didn’t help.
Yeah, I think reddit is going to die (if only due to the process of enshittification and the consequences of going public) but the idea of a mass exodus is a bit of a dream. Anyone who has had a conversation going on in one channel, and then have a mod tell them to move it to a more appropriate channel should know this. The conversation doesn’t move, it just stops 9/10 times.
But we shouldn’t be preoccupied with reddit as a community. Give what you can to Lemmy and enjoy it for what it is, not wishing it to be reddit.
Why not? I honestly loved Reddit as a community. Sure it’s toxic like just about every online space but people actually weighed in with their own actual opinions. Also it was just about the fastest and easiest place to get other peoples experience and opinion on something you’re not sure about yourself.
I can’t even list the times I googled “<new gadget> worth it reddit” and almost without fail I got a good discussion about pros and and cons, what to watch out for and alternatives. No place on the internet comes even close to that. Youtube, Insta and FB are pushing ads and sponsored content like mofos. Tumbler shot themselves in the foot with the no porn stuff (atleast it seemsto recover a bit). Twitter is just a cesspool of noise and I never joined it. The only places close to Reddit in actual useful and fast human conversation is Stackoverflow and the stackexchange communities.
I’m almost always a lurker but I have abandoned Reddit on principal and come here. I’ve replaced the infinity app on my homescreen with Beehaw and It gives me my reddit fix. I’m more likely to comment here too, since It doesn’t feel pointless due to the size of most subreddits. I’ve been leery of Reddit for a long time with ownership changes, the crap websites and apps, and their lack of reaction to toxic and hate riddled subs. This place is a welcome change.
I replaced RIF with Jerboa. So far it seems to work great. Even the layout in the comments looks similar.
I realized today that maybe all I need is something to scroll and some comments to read.
Sunday, this place felt dead. But each day the traffic seems to pick up and I miss Reddit less and less.
In a few weeks, I won’t miss Reddit at all (at this pace)
Feeling and hoping the same. I never commented on Reddit, so it’s not like I’ll be missed, but I can replace it easily with how much more active Lemmy feels now. I’m getting plenty of new posts vs a few days ago when it felt very stagnant.
I don’t want to nitpick, but I used the default reddit app and have switched Lemmy based on principal. I don’t think most or even many people are like me, but there are a few of us out there that just don’t like supporting companies that clearly don’t have users interests in mind, and this has been the wakeup call needed to get us off the platform.
Honestly, I’m almost glad their doing this. Gives me a good reason to leave and stay gone. Reddit as a whole is circling the drain with the constant AI and spam posts.
The official app is so terrible. I’ve tried it a couple of times. I think once people are forced to use that, we’ll see more folks move away from reddit. Looks like they are already killing browsing on a mobile browser to force you to use the app.
I hat an account on reddit since 2006 but only started using it 3 years ago and only ever used the new app and website and I think it was fine. At least I could send my comment by pressing Ctrl+Enter which I can’t here on lemmy. I still am switching (even installed my own one user instance) because I think the internet will be better when more people use the fediverse. But I also half agree that reddit will just keep going even though it will be worse, mostly because there is no clear contender for a successor like reddit itself was back then with digg.
I’m getting used it here and Kbin and that’s all it took for me to leave Digg back in the day.
That’s the thing that kills me. There was a time when Digg was the king. Also for a while Slashdot. We left before and we can leave again.
I am liking Lemmy so far.
I feel like this thread is a circlejerk. I agree that reddit screwed up bad, but there is a difference between now and the migration from Digg to Reddit. When that migration happened, Reddit was already reasonably sized with active communities. I’m trying to move to Lemmy but I don’t feel that it has the vibrance that Reddit did when Dogg died.
I’d love for this to bring Reddit to heel, but I don’t think Lemmy has the momentum needed just yet. Maybe some other parts of the fedivers does?
I’m going to keep trying to switch to Lemmy but I am skeptical that the momentum is there. Look at how many threads there are per day in the main news community… There isn’t enough buy-in…
Not only lemmy is not as big as reddit back in the migration days. But reddit is also not as small as digg in the migration days.
Were assuming that these migrations follow a set pattern but in reality each iteration has been slower and harder to materialize.
Take also into account that the UX is very different as well and not very casual friendly. Take also into account that in a span of a few hours a gigantic part of the community lost access to some of the biggest communities out of the blue because beehaw defederated world (it’s their right and choice but the UX impact still exists) . So some people might even be like “Yeah fuck this, I’ll just go back to my tried and true subreddit interface” others will be like "Why do I bother posting content in X community if I might lose access to it later on if someone decides to defederate? "
Lemmy is pretty awesome and I’m liking it here. But to think we’re the “silent minority” of reddit is just not true. Vast majority a of casual users are like " why do you use a 3rd party app of there’s a reddit app and it’s OK…? "
What brings your comment into focus is the remark upthread “remember IRC?”
IRC still exists, but the heyday of UnderNet and irc.net is long past. An entire generation has grown up not using it, not experiencing netsplits and the like.
The Fediverse is kind of like the IRC and Usenet of a new generation. Over time, it will rediscover the same issues felt by those early protocols of the Internet. Hopefully it will navigate past them and we won’t just swing back to centralization again.
But in the meantime, Reddit is not going anywhere, and I’m not sure I’d want it to. It attracts certain types of people that I’d be happy to never see on Lemmy, at least not until it is significantly more mature and has tools in place to manage them.
I posted this on a Reddit thread this morning about the effectiveness of the blackouts and what happens next:
Some people have just shut down and will never look back. Some just don’t care and need their Reddit fix. A LOT of comments on these types of threads are Reddit bots/employees trying to run a propaganda campaign to stop the shutdown. Most of the users though (IMO), are probably like me and opened up a Lemmy, Mastodon and Kbin account and are using all of them. Lemmy and Mastodon will continue to grow (2x-3x in the past week) and users will continue to migrate over and spend more time there than here until Reddit feels some pain. Reddit will eventually make some grand gesture like replace the CEO or “compromise” on API pricing, but it will be too late and the glory days of Reddit will officially be over.
The issue is that the momentum to go to other platforms has started. Reddit had their chance to stop it and stay the dominant platform, but the CEO is inexperienced and didn’t know how to handle it. Until a few weeks ago Reddit had no real competition, but Spez fucked up big time and now the blood is in the water. The Fediverse is a great idea and takes social media out of the hands of corporations and puts it back in the hands of the users (does anyone remember IRC?). It didn’t really have a lot of momentum until now, but its got a LOT of press because of Reddit’s fuck up and now it’s going to be a slow juggernaut sweeping not only Reddit’s market, but Twitter (Elon is just as big a fuckup as Spez), and Facebook.
I would bet $20 that this time next year Reddit will be 50% or less of their market, and several other alternatives will be growing faster than we’ve ever seen platforms grow. Alternative platforms already have the formula for a successful project. Reddit did all the experimentation, now the alts just need to copy the look/feel and features to knock Reddit down to the Digg dungeon.
Billionaires seek to control the media and the narrative, but Fediverse is harder to simply buy and control. Profit seeking corporations will always put profit first, and we’ve seen time and time again that it’s the “product people” that make a company great, and the “business people” who kill it. The capitalists will continue to kill long term growth for short term profits, but Fediverse can’t be killed that way. We’ve just seen the beginning of the new internet revolution.
Something this “blackout” caused me to notice as an individual is just how much of my time and attention I was giving away for free for a faceless corporation to monetize. I quit Reddit entirely and, while still visiting Lemmy/a few forums, I’ve noticed my “Doomscrolling” habit is rapidly dying.
I would bet $20 that this time next year Reddit will be 50% or less of their market, and several other alternatives will be growing faster than we’ve ever seen platforms grow.
I fervently hope this prediction comes true, and the internet becomes a little healthier in the process.
Insightful and hopeful.
I’d love to turn the subreddit into a mere front to funnle new people onto lemmy or another community forum but I doubt the average user would enjoy that very much 😅 I think we will put it up to a vote, we also did one to determin if we should join the protest in the first place
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1048
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113
I think once these two issues are solved, the average user really isn’t going to have any problem with lemmy.
They should first add errors messages so people know why there’s an infinite loading icon when registering or signing in
I think you’re going to need to elaborate, or create an issue on the issue tracker yourself.
Fully agree.
I’m not sure I agree. I don’t like those two solutions. They basically try to centralize the platform. I think Lemmy is a little confusing at first, but that’s a UX/UI problem and not necessarily a good enough reason to change underlying features of the platform.
I think a user subscribing to communities across instances is a pretty tough technical challenge and it would be very difficult to manage. How are particular communities decided to be a part of a multi-community? Is it voted on? Is there a mod of the multi-community? If so, that could still lead to bifurcation wherein you now have a multi-community that claims to provide all /c/pokemon content across instances but is potentially missing many viable communities on some instances due to things like moderator in-fighting or moderator preferences.
I like how Lemmy allows for sort of duplicate communities. Reddit already had that issue and people naturally flocked to the communities that had the content that suited them. I think it would behoove Lemmy to stay away from trying to centralize it all.
However, I agree that it is confusing. I think this is a UI/UX challenge which needs to be solved. I don’t have the solution, but I think it’s clear that the app language needs to help users naturally feel comfortable living within an instance and moving across instances.
I am open to suggestions and I am fully happy to be proven wrong. But as a software engineer, the second GitHub issue gave me the heeby-jeebies on a technical front. Seemed a little hairy for a young platform to take on right now. I think there are plenty of other lower hanging fruit id prefer for the community to solve:
- Building a nice mobile android app Jerboa is pretty good but it needs some TLC. Timeouts happen frequently on my app and crash it/erase content I was reading
- Provide better documentation/marketing materials for new users. I’m open to the idea of a centralized website where users can go to create accounts, learn about Lemmy, and maybe initially subscribe to popular communities
All in all though, I feel like Lemmy is totally usable. Actually, the most confusing thing to me was learning that I could see my comments and posts on Mastodon. That threw me through a loop. I still don’t understand Mastodon since the UI - to me - just seems to be random comments. I don’t really have any thread-based context to understand the comments I see on my Mastodon app. So for now I stick to Jerboa.
They basically try to centralize the platform.
No, they don’t, I don’t know why you think that, this is really what federation is all about, seamless communication between servers, all they do is make it so that linking to different posts across the fediverse doesn’t log you out, or remove you from your instance unnecessarily
The other one ALLOWS you to categorize subreddits. Neither of these are bad things in any way, and if you don’t like them, you can manually visit other instances, and simply not use the multireddits.
I like how Lemmy allows for sort of duplicate communities. Reddit already had that issue and people naturally flocked to the communities that had the content that suited them. I think it would behoove Lemmy to stay away from trying to centralize it all.
This won’t change anything about that, it’ll just sort them by category
Building a nice mobile android app Jerboa is pretty good but it needs some TLC. Timeouts happen frequently on my app and crash it/erase content I was reading
this isn’t worth focusing on right now because: https://github.com/derivator/tafkars/tree/main/tafkars-lemmy
Provide better documentation/marketing materials for new users. I’m open to the idea of a centralized website where users can go to create accounts, learn about Lemmy, and maybe initially subscribe to popular communities
join-lemmy definitely needs an upgrade.
Oh I didn’t know about the Derivator app. That’s awesome! I will contribute if I have the time.
In case you want to go that route: I made a bot that posts links to posts in a list of lemmy communities to a subreddit, optionally with flair and a comment of what is going on, to be run in a fully restricted subreddit (i.e., no comments show up at all, new posts need to be made via lemmy)
Would it be possible to make the bot post the content of the Reddit posts, instead of links to Reddit, via web scraping? That way we could avoid giving traffic and engagement to reddit.
It’s the other way round: It posts links to Lemmy posts to reddit, and then adds a top level comment stating that to post and comment you need to go to Lemmy.
That is great, will look into it!
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Excellent point. Even if the 2 day blackout doesnt hurt reddit in the short term, long term it could. It convinced many people, myself included, to start using other options. If (and frankly when) reddit makes more stupid choices the other options will have something of a community when more of the masses get outraged
