- cross-posted to:
- RedditMigration@kbin.social
- F-Lambda ( @f_lambda@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English170•1 year ago
Reddit’s CEO said he expects this blowup will pass eventually.
This was precisely the wrong thing for him to say if he wanted that to happen
- Gravelsack ( @Gravelsack@lemmy.one ) English66•1 year ago
Seriously. Talk about poking the bear, he got me pissed all over again. Never going back to reddit now.
- girlfreddy ( @girlfreddy@lemmy.ca ) English39•1 year ago
That’s because spazzy spez didn’t think his internal memo would leak.
- EvilColeslaw ( @EvilColeslaw@beehaw.org ) English91•1 year ago
Nah I think it’s clear he wanted it to leak. He’s just an egomaniac who thinks he’s actually a good leader. That section of the memo was for investor confidence. (It’ll pass, no revenue effect so far, etc.) The other part about warning employees not to wear Reddit gear in public for fear of violence was meant for the press and for the uninformed, to try to garner sympathy and paint the protestors as bad actors.
- Scrubbles ( @scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ) English52•1 year ago
Obvious tactic, paint the other side as violent and you’ll get sympathy. Won’t someone please think of the corporation.
Make no mistake, spez would love to see someone in a reddit tshirt beat up on the street. He’d be able to plaster that everywhere he could showing how sad his side is
- j4k3 ( @j4k3@lemmy.world ) English20•1 year ago
A false flag is a typical right wing move. I can picture spez doing it. He should pick some kid name Aaron just to make it that much more spiteful.
- riper_banana ( @riper_banana@beehaw.org ) English8•1 year ago
I dislike u/spez as much as the next guy, but man, that’s dark.
- maynarkh ( @maynarkh@feddit.nl ) English4•1 year ago
I mean there is a lot of money riding on this. I’ve seen people getting killed for 3 grand.
- HQC ( @HQC@beehaw.org ) English9•1 year ago
It’s working, too. The Forbes article which I saw posted either here or on Kbin didn’t even push back on Huffman’s claim that traffic from LLMs was the reason for the price hike, and I haven’t seen any big publication use the audio or transcripts showing a slam-dunk case of slander (or libel, whichever one applies to text) against the Apollo developer.
- SickIcarus ( @SickIcarus@sh.itjust.works ) English4•1 year ago
slander (or libel, whichever one applies to text)
Easy way to remember: Slander is Spoken. (They both start with S)
- Scrubbles ( @scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ) English3•1 year ago
LLMs were just the catalyst for sure. They saw that as the opportunity to start milking all API users. They could have classified the users into groups and charged those groups differently, but they didn’t, and here we are
- EvilColeslaw ( @EvilColeslaw@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
The problem with the libel/slander is unless it falls into a few categories of what’s called per se defamation, you’re required to prove damages. (From the libel’s/slander’s damage to your reputation, not from something like Reddit’s API change destroying his business.)
- GraceGH ( @GraceGH@beehaw.org ) English32•1 year ago
The other part about warning employees not to wear Reddit gear in public for fear of violence was meant for the press and for the uninformed, to try to garner sympathy and paint the protestors as bad actors.
Glad people aren’t blind to this obvious ploy. When LGBT violence is at an all time high I don’t think you need to be worried about wearing a reddit shirt.
- Uniquitous ( @Uniquitous@lemmy.one ) English19•1 year ago
He expects so because he’s going to have his admin staff de-mod all the rebels, open the subs back up, and ruthlessly ban anyone who says a word about the controversy. The user population that remains will eventually go back to sleep, and all will be well in Reddit-land.
- Blissingg ( @Blissingg@lemmy.world ) English7•1 year ago
Lol good luck finding new mods that will be any good after pulling a stunt like that. They certainly aren’t going to pay for any either.
- Clbull ( @Clbull@beehaw.org ) English9•1 year ago
The News and Worldnews subreddits prove there are people still willing to lick Spez’s boots.
- Uniquitous ( @Uniquitous@lemmy.one ) English6•1 year ago
This. There will always be people attracted to power, even power as ultimately meaningless as being a reddit mod. Spez will enlist a new squad of wanna-be petty tyrants.
- Clbull ( @Clbull@beehaw.org ) English3•1 year ago
They could easily do that by:
- Threatening to site-wide ban moderators who keep their subreddits dark (on the basis that they’re disrupting the regular function of the website.)
- Actually banning them if they follow through on another blackout.
- Doing a bit of overtime to moderate /r/redditrequest, on the condition that people don’t request subs that already have more than two million subscribers.
- deephurting ( @deephurting@beehaw.org ) English5•1 year ago
They never shut down, along with a few other biggies. TiL just reopened.
- ipkpjersi ( @ipkpjersi@lemmy.one ) English12•1 year ago
That’s why I’m not sure that letter was intentionally leaked. He said all the wrong things for de-escalating this situation, he just added more fuel to the fire.
- Ethereal87 ( @Ethereal87@beehaw.org ) English9•1 year ago
I mean, the charitable read is the CEO of the company reassuring the entire company that they’ll be OK. That’s his entire job. Yes, it’s a pretty crappy thing to say but we all weren’t the intended audience. He’s there to rally the troops and keep morale up.
That said, fuck u/spez and I’m way happier over here than there.
- Daniele ( @daniele@feddit.it ) English6•1 year ago
After reading his message I blocked Reddit at DNS level. I wasn’t planning to leave it completely before, but now I’m not planning to unblock it till when u/spez will be there.
- Silviecat44 ( @Silviecat44@vlemmy.net ) English2•1 year ago
Every person counts
- Clbull ( @Clbull@beehaw.org ) English82•1 year ago
Apparently the head mod of /r/Tumblr has already been forcibly demodded. A bit weird that Tumblr of all places has been the starting point.
- Emi ( @Emirose@beehaw.org ) English32•1 year ago
The real question I think is will Reddit retaliate back and forcibly recover communities and install new mods?
- Mjb ( @Mjb@feddit.uk ) English27•1 year ago
It’s already started.
- Emi ( @Emirose@beehaw.org ) English7•1 year ago
It makes sense from their perspective but still kinda shitty.
- AGTMADCAT ( @AGTMADCAT@infosec.pub ) English3•1 year ago
If they tried to hire enough mods to do a quality job of it they’d be bankrupt by the end of the year. I don’t know if they’ll have enough capable volunteers for a significant fraction of the subreddits.
- Emi ( @emi@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English1•1 year ago
True, although the way things are going, some instances don’t have the mod capacity right now. Lemmy needs more moderators and moderation tools as people move to the service. https://beehaw.org/post/567170
- jherazob ( @jherazob@beehaw.org ) English23•1 year ago
Also /r/adviceanimals, we’ll see which others
- maynarkh ( @maynarkh@feddit.nl ) English13•1 year ago
Do you have any source or details? Would love to read about it.
- halfcalf ( @halfcalf@beehaw.org ) English11•1 year ago
Removed by an admin or another mod? There aren’t really enough details in that story to know exactly what happened. It also seems strange that it says the sub went public briefly and then back to private. That doesn’t really sound like an admin forcibly stopping the blackout.
I feel like subs being forced public is a real possibility as things continue on, but I’m not sure this is a good example of that.
- xavier666 ( @xavier666@lemm.ee ) English13•1 year ago
I predicted this but kind of surprised that it happened so fast. I’m guessing this mod won’t allow anything critical of spez.
- Mango ( @Mango@beehaw.org ) English25•1 year ago
I predicted forcible demods…
But like, I feel like the one thing that would work is the one thing no one has been talking about.
A mod strike!
Maybe it has been suppressed because it would seem too radical but like, if the communities are going to die anyways might as well go out with a bang. Mods should all go on strike and spammers can run free and burn the site to the ground. That’s basically what happened with Twitter, right? Has Spez seen what has happened to the valuation of Twitter this past year or what?
I went on Reddit during the blackout and on the front page there were shitty tattoos of bdsm furries with their dick and balls out… If the front page could all turn into that and the enforcement of NSFW tags was lost due to lack of mods, I can’t imagine that the shareholders would be happy about what the site has become.
Mod + user direct action - everyone should post spacedicks/porn and mods should refuse to enforce the rules. Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO. Plus, the internet can get VERY active when it comes to participating in mischief instead of watching things slowly fall apart. I’d upvote spacedicks for the cause.
I have no idea why no one is talking about this unless posts/comments like that are being suppressed. Since it seems like most 3rd party apps have the best mod tools and most mods won’t keep up their work if they don’t have the right tools, the end result will be the same anyways.
Edit: they can’t afford to pay people to replace enough mods. Spez deserves a look at what reddit will become BEFORE the IPO in my opinion.
- LastThreeOfItsKind ( @LastThreeOfItsKind@lemmy.world ) English5•1 year ago
Mods are basically the slave labour that make Reddit profitable and allows for its existence.
The exploit is taking superuser’s hobby or specialty and getting them to work 24/7 in an permanent unpaid internship position that doesn’t run counter to labour laws.
No one wants to upset that tenuous (and likely quasi-illegal) system of exploitation by empowering the mods to know that they can make changes by organising or going on strike.
Neither Reddit executives nor the protesting app developers and other API data users have the actual interests of reddit superusers at heart.
- ASCIIansi ( @ASCIIansi@infosec.pub ) English1•1 year ago
Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO
To be fair… reddit was originally designed to be self-moderated by the users… and it use to work really well. It would be a miracle if they moved back to that model and I would no doubt switch back to them from lemmy if they did. Those were the hey days of reddit and the internet as a whole.
- Gollan ( @Gollan@beehaw.org ) English70•1 year ago
Imagine how differently this would have played out if Reddit CEO Steve Huffman had taken a collaborative approach with app developers and stake holders. A few months ago, he could have called them up and humbly asked them for ideas and assistance in making Reddit profitable. Reddit would be on path to financial success by now.
- nyander ( @nyander@beehaw.org ) English24•1 year ago
It’s a corporate us vs them mentality. I don’t think Steve would even ask his own employees for help - the people who are on the ground running the company. The internal memo strongly indicates that Reddit doesn’t have a two-way communication channel with leadership.
It’s a shame, because refusing to take feedback is what ends up sinking most companies.
- Clbull ( @Clbull@beehaw.org ) English22•1 year ago
I don’t think it’s wrong for Spez to charge for API access, but the rates he’s vowing to charge are excessive and clearly designed to nuke third-party apps from their ecosystem.
As for how I’d make money from Reddit in his shoes, I’d:
- Add more features for Reddit Premium, like being able to view more than 1,000 items on the front page, video uploads in comments, or enhanced search functionality.
- Add OnlyFans-style subscriptions or revenue sharing for partnered subreddits/users, with a 90% to 10% cut between content creators and Reddit.
- Bring back RPAN as a full time streaming platform to compete with the likes of Twitch/Kick.
- AGTMADCAT ( @AGTMADCAT@infosec.pub ) English2•1 year ago
Twitch is hardly a profit center, streaming isn’t where you’d go to boost profits.
- ubergeek77 ( @ubergeek77@lemmy.ubergeek77.chat ) English68•1 year ago
Good. I really hope this causes a snowball effect. After spez (fuck spez) basically told all the moderators “fuck you” today, I’d say there is enough momentum to get at least a good half of the participating subs on board with an indefinite blackout. And with more moderators checking their inboxes and feeds tomorrow, “after the blackout,” I anticipate seeing a second wave starting tomorrow and throughout the next week, as these mods return to reddit temporarily to coordinate.
KEEP IT GOING!!!
- Nix ( @Nix@lemmy.world ) English67•1 year ago
It was truly unexpected to see how large social networks find new and innovative ways to ride and accelerate their downfall.
From my perspective:
-
Facebook --> Cambridge Analytica fiasco
-
Twitter --> Elon was bluffing but Twitters Legal team forced him to proceed otherwise the SEC was already looking for blood and an excuse to make his life very difficult for all his previous shenanigans
-
Reddit --> already downhill since just before Ellen Pao nonetheless may I speculate that perhaps one or more of the larger shareholders/investors forced the current situation but Huffman underestimated and did not realize that the power users and pro bono moderators were entirely dependent on third-party apps.
Moreover, I exclusively used reddit through old.reddit.com I have no idea how current Reddit actually looks like nor do I care as it was unusable.
Sad to see great things go but life continues onward.
- somniumx ( @somniumx@feddit.de ) English37•1 year ago
I have no idea how current Reddit actually looks like nor do I care as it was unusable.
Just for fun, I opened reddit in a fresh browser, without my settings and extensions etc. It was… shit. No other way to put it. 1/3 of the screen was used for content, the rest was some form of trying to feed you crypto stuff, advertisement or “hey you should rather watch this video than read text, you loser!”.
For now, I can, thanks to some plugins, bring new reddit to something that is close enough to old reddit to be usable. But if this is the way reddit is heading, I’m out, alternative site or not.
- animist ( @animist@lemmy.one ) English28•1 year ago
Always felt that the way redditors treated Ellen Pao was horrendous. That place is a cesspit
- DreadedChalupacabra ( @DreadedChalupacabra@latte.isnot.coffee ) English7•1 year ago
https://nextshark.com/ellen-pao-reddit-dacvak-ama You sure about that?
- DreadedChalupacabra ( @DreadedChalupacabra@latte.isnot.coffee ) English6•1 year ago
It’s inevitable, honestly. All things end.
At least we got to see a REMARKABLE flame-out of a once incredibly popular website. I thought Digg was wild, this is something else entirely.
-
- possiblylinux127 ( @possiblylinux127@beehaw.org ) English62•1 year ago
Lemmy is growing but we need to work to make easy to allow reddit mods to setup instances and fund them
- Dymonika ( @Dymonika@beehaw.org ) English40•1 year ago
I am a Reddit mod. Gimme the step-by-step tutorial! There are certain subs that I want to see reproduced ASAP, like /r/LifeProTips and more!
- TeaHands ( @TeaHands@lemmy.world ) English17•1 year ago
Maybe pick an existing one and help it get off the ground:
- !lifeprotips@lemmy.world (direct link) this one seems like it’s newly set up by a community squatter, but you might have luck approaching them
- !lifeprotips@lemmy.ml (direct link) - this one is older but was inactive for a long time before the recent migration so idk if the mod is active
- Dymonika ( @Dymonika@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
But we’re now splitting away from lemmy.world, right? Or how does this federation stuff work?
- Saik0 ( @Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com ) English16•1 year ago
Be mildly competent at computers… or know someone who is and willing to help you.
Either setup your own instance, or find an instance that’s already setup that you like… (ask around if you’re unsure, but most people generally like beehaw.org [the instance you appear to be from])
Start a community…
Read here… https://github.com/rileynull/RedditLemmyImporter
Success! now you’ve migrated your subreddit to lemmy!
(This is a little sarcastic. I’m not good at legit guides. But it is possible!)
- blindsight ( @blindsight@beehaw.org ) English13•1 year ago
Just wanted to add that not all instances are allowing new community creation, including Beehaw.
- Saik0 ( @Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com ) English3•1 year ago
Yeah, there’s an edit. Seems not to have propagated back to beehaw. yay for beta!
- palitu ( @palitu@lemmy.perthchat.org ) English2•1 year ago
Well, that is an interesting script. I wonder how many will come across? Maybe they will pull the top 20% or something.
- jherazob ( @jherazob@beehaw.org ) English15•1 year ago
Well, on Beehaw you cannot create new communities, but you certainly can be made a mod of one even from another instance. Find the ones you want and ask the current mods of it.
- Dymonika ( @Dymonika@beehaw.org ) English2•1 year ago
Why can’t we create communities on here? Do the Beehaw admins specifically restrict this? Thanks, by the way.
- rknuu ( @rknuu@beehaw.org ) English2•1 year ago
We’ve outlined the rationale in this thread: https://beehaw.org/post/140733
The tl;dr is that having many communities make it difficult to govern and ensure a safe space exists for the overall community and having too many can result in highly fragmented discussions that would be a challenge to grow and nurture organically like we do in the physical world.
It’s not that we don’t permit new communities, but more towards we moderate their creation based off the communities interests.
- Silviecat44 ( @Silviecat44@vlemmy.net ) English15•1 year ago
I haven’t found many moderator features on Lemmy so far. The community that I created does not seem to have any way of blocking posts.
- jherazob ( @jherazob@beehaw.org ) English24•1 year ago
You should be able to, here’s the mod docs
- Silviecat44 ( @Silviecat44@vlemmy.net ) English10•1 year ago
Thanks!
- worfamerryman ( @worfamerryman@beehaw.org ) English52•1 year ago
Reddit declined to comment
I am guessing their comment would be something like, “FUCK!!!”
- BeardedSingleMalt ( @BeardedSingleMalt@beehaw.org ) English18•1 year ago
No, it would’ve been something along the lines of “A: We are evaluating it at this time for the best approach moving forward”
- Chup ( @Chup@feddit.de ) English18•1 year ago
Well now they have to take over the subs and get new moderators. They won’t just sit there and watch Reddit burn further.
For the 2 days private protest, their comment that it will be over soon was appropriate. As giving an exact time frame allows to know the exact end of it. They could just sit there and wait it out.
Now with the indefinite protest, they have to act. And to get to content onto Reddit again, they will probably be looking for new unpaid
strike breakersmods for those subs, so they don’t have to actually hire and pay people to moderate content on their soon publicly traded company website.- worfamerryman ( @worfamerryman@beehaw.org ) English6•1 year ago
Have subs continued to stay blacked out? I have not checked it out since the first day of it.
- OfficialThunderbolt ( @OfficialThunderbolt@beehaw.org ) English5•1 year ago
Yes. For instance, at this time, /r/nba is still blacked out even though the NBA season ended recently, and this week would’ve been its prime time.
- worfamerryman ( @worfamerryman@beehaw.org ) English2•1 year ago
Good for them!! Did they make a lemmy instance?
- TheRtRevKaiser ( @TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org ) English47•1 year ago
Hey folks. Looks like I let this one get by so I’ll leave it since there’s already some discussion happening, but for the next few days please try to keep discussion of the Reddit situation in the megathread.
- Ben ( @BendyLemmy@lemmy.world ) English8•1 year ago
How do we get to the ‘megathread’ ? I never knew one existed.
- Ben ( @BendyLemmy@lemmy.world ) English4•1 year ago
WTheRtRevKaiser - you didn’t post a link to the ‘megathread’ - I’m not sure I know where that is. Sorry… I need a tutorial for every suggested action ;)
- TheRtRevKaiser ( @TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org ) English5•1 year ago
Sorry about that, I’ve been away from the computer for a bit. For future reference if we have a megathread about a big event like this, it will most likely be pinned at the top of the relevant community. This one is pinned at the top of !Technology here: https://beehaw.org/c/technology
- flak ( @flak@beehaw.org ) English46•1 year ago
Stuff’s already starting to go back to public, I expect nothing to change for the better.
- Rick ( @Rick@lemmy.world ) English13•1 year ago
I mean it seems like only a couple thousand went public, the site is still very much noticeably short on content.
- Space Sloth ( @stagen@feddit.dk ) English43•1 year ago
And reddit still don’t give a shit. Just shows how much they care about the community.
- Swuden ( @Swuden@lemmy.world ) English46•1 year ago
I honestly don’t care whether or not reddit (the company) gives a shit. I just want users to realize that reddit deserves to be replaced by something more open and user focused.
- UselesslyBrisk ( @UselesslyBrisk@infosec.pub ) English1•1 year ago
Im surprised they havent just performed takovers of the private subreddits and installed new mods.
Maybe they have but are doing it at a slow pacing, either because its manual or because it may attract less attention.
- JayDurst ( @JayDurst@beehaw.org ) English40•1 year ago
While I would expect the larger ones to see admin takeovers, I wonder how easy it will be recruit capable mods to police those large subs…
- Raye ( @RayeRei@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English31•1 year ago
Oh 100% i see moderation suffering. But reddit will only care about that when it directly affects them financially. Which is to say that there is an amount of abuse and bigotry that reddit is cool with as long as it doesn’t bring lawsuits or scare advertisers
- JayDurst ( @JayDurst@beehaw.org ) English15•1 year ago
100% agreed. Pulling out my fake crystal ball, I predict “Click-baitification” ™ with an emphasis on quantity over quality to keep engagement numbers up for the IPO, while the comments will devolve into only low effort memes
- girlfreddy ( @girlfreddy@lemmy.ca ) English6•1 year ago
Guaranteed the ipo backers will have their eye on that. I mean if all it’s gonna be is bots and click-bait (ie: few real people) who the hell wants to spend millions/billions on that?
- CookieJarObserver ( @CookieJarObserver@feddit.de ) English2•1 year ago
Oh if its going to effect them legally…
- lohrun ( @lohrun@fediverse.boo ) 9•1 year ago
Will it really matter if all the power users and mods end up leaving? All that will be left is low effort stuff
- GroteStreet 🦘 ( @GroteStreet@aussie.zone ) 5•1 year ago
It already is full of bots upvoting/replying to posts by karma bots. They just need to start having bots moderate the subs, and turn the whole place into r/subredditsimulator (still the best thing that ever came out of Reddit, imo).
- CorrodedCranium ( @CorrodedCranium@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English36•1 year ago
Ahead of the Tuesday post, more than 300 subreddits had committed to staying dark indefinitely, SpicyThunder335 said. The list included some hugely popular subreddits, like r/aww (more than 34 million subscribers), r/music (more than 32 million subscribers), and r/videos (more than 26 million subscribers). Even r/nba committed to an indefinite timeframe at arguably the most important time of the NBA season. But SpicyThunder335 invited moderators to share pledges to keep the protests going, and the commitments are rolling in.
A surprising amount of big names there. I figured it would be more obscure/niche subreddits like /r/TaylorSwift, /r/SpaghettiWesterns, or something like that
- BitSeek ( @bitseek@beehaw.org ) English35•1 year ago
As much as I do hope this helps, I’m afraid it won’t change a thing: Like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well." -Spez. Seem they will ride out this storm. This have to be permanent to make any changes at Reddit.
- Temple Square ( @TempleSquare@lemmy.world ) English28•1 year ago
But not for me. I’m forever gone.
And if there are enough power users (lots of comments, posts) like me who feel the same, it will have an impact.
There’s a HUGE middle ground between “nothing changes” and “reddit goes out of business.” As we see with Twitter, you can have a zombie platform that persists but slowly loses inertia month after month.
It’s not that Reddit dies abruptly. It’s that the platform is wounded now and, without attention, will bleed out slowly over many years.
- LastThreeOfItsKind ( @LastThreeOfItsKind@lemmy.world ) English10•1 year ago
My goal is to hurt Reddit’s IPO to prevent a capitalisation on the platforms recent string of real world impacts, such as the Game Stop short squeeze and the intelligence leak that happened on a Discord server.
I don’t care if Reddit’s CEO caves in, just so long as Reddit doesn’t get the large influx of capital to prevent the corporation from achieving any larger impact like Twitter and Facebook did in their respective times.
The secondary marketplace to sell your Reddit accounts to bot farmers is very active, accounts are being bought at upwards of $200.
https://www.upvotes.io/sell-your-reddit-account/
The social bots work just fine inside reddit’s Infrastructure without 3rd party apps and/or API data.
Reddit is going to be just another Twitter for the 2024 US election, where the conversation is managed and directed by bots, but pro-democracy based. When that becomes known Wall Street will act accordingly and Reddit won’t be worth much…
- ihavenopeopleskills ( @ihavenopeopleskills@infosec.pub ) English1•1 year ago
$200? Is that all?
- superflippy ( @superflippy@beehaw.org ) English7•1 year ago
At a communications conference last week, a Bloomberg reporter told the attendees that most tier 1 journalists are looking for stories on LinkedIn now instead of Twitter. It’s gone from vital to junk in just a few months. Without its moderators, Reddit faces the same fate: lots of activity, but most of it junk.
- ASCIIansi ( @ASCIIansi@infosec.pub ) English2•1 year ago
Its not the loss of moderators, its the loss of content. If reddit hadn’t changed their original self moderation model this couldn’t happen. Or at least, not like this.
Moderators are not responsible for making content, they just moderate a sub where others create content. Originally users moderated content on their own.
Pretty funny how reddit’s move to authoritarianism has worked against them this time.
- Meloku ( @Meloku@feddit.cl ) English20•1 year ago
Maybe Spez is right (obligatory fuck /u/spez comment), but this blowout also brought Lemmy and other similar sites to the limelight. We’re on the stage where we early adopters are testing the waters, it’s just a matter of time until a new competitor stands above the others and Spez’s Reddit irónico s going to have to eat those words.
- arcturus ( @sangle_of_flame@lemmy.world ) English19•1 year ago
a lot of people back on Reddit could not give less of a shit about the issues and just want their content; they even see this as just mods powertripping again
it’s kind of annoying to see that, tbh, even if I sort of get it
- ono ( @ono@lemmy.ca ) English6•1 year ago
A look at their comment histories might be interesting, to see if they’re the ones contributing content worth reading.
I suspect I can guess the answer.
- RedSky2200 ( @RedSky2200@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English5•1 year ago
Damn, the apathy is strong but I do get it. After all, Reddit was mostly a place for me to deflate and relax or just read things during downtime.
- shani77 ( @shani77@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English4•1 year ago
they could easily have their cake and eat it too by signing up to lemmy. There are a lot of instances out there and they could make their own if none fit.
- arcturus ( @sangle_of_flame@lemmy.world ) English6•1 year ago
but that’s not immediate and requires some work and effort (to figure out how federation works, to figure out how Lemmy works, to learn how to create an instance and to make one, to start over with an entirely new community); many on Reddit want the easiest path to get their content
which again, understandable, but still annoying to see
- ASCIIansi ( @ASCIIansi@infosec.pub ) English1•1 year ago
Perhaps… but once a certain amount of people left DIGG for reddit back in the day, the whole thing quickly fell apart. I mean, yea, DIGG still exists and I assume there are people who still use it, but I’ve never met one since I left it about 15 years ago.
Its not like the API issue is the only reason, much less the main reason people want to leave reddit. A lot of people have been wanting to do it for a long time now, it is only that there haven’t been any other options with a crowd big enough to hold a conversation beyond only a few people. There is a big chance that that is now changing.
- 14th_cylon ( @14th_cylon@lemm.ee ) English4•1 year ago
it’s kind of annoying to see that
Why would that be annoying? It means the strike is working, it does exactly what it is meant to do. If the consumers don’t find content, they will ultimately move elsewhere
- Rivalarrival ( @Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ) English1•1 year ago
I haven’t seen that. Everyone seems to be rather upset about Apollo, RIF, Relay, etc. The only person I’ve seen suggesting power tripping mods is u/spez.
- Stahlreck ( @Stahlreck@feddit.de ) English16•1 year ago
Problem is it will work lul. Just read some comments in some subs that are restricted like the Star Wars one. Kinda sad to see people bend over so easily only because they cannot post in their sub for a few days. Like, geez doesn’t matter at all what % of people use 3rd party apps. A little bit of inconvenience doesn’t kill anyone and it’s good to stand up for stuff like this as well.
- lunarnexus ( @lunarnexus@infosec.pub ) English3•1 year ago
Keep in mind that Reddit is running a propaganda campaign to try to squash the blackout. Notice most of the comments are almost exactly the same. As we saw with Trump, all it takes is a few well placed comments to stir up dissent and get people to parrot dumb talking points. Reddit can easily manipulate votes and comments to make it look like most people don’t care, but obviously they do, because there was the biggest blackout I’ve seen on a social media platform ever.
- Stahlreck ( @Stahlreck@feddit.de ) English3•1 year ago
I’m sure they do but I have no doubt a ton of people also simply are in the typical “I don’t care, it doesn’t affect me directly but the subs going dark does so it’s bad” mode as many are with lots of things these days sadly.
- DarkGamer ( @DarkGamer@beehaw.org ) English33•1 year ago
Cool, well the reason I’m here instead of on reddit is because of this. Last time I did this was when I found reddit after digg.
- sounddrill ( @sounddrill@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz ) English17•1 year ago
Can I get an eli5 on digg? It seems to have happened years and years before I joined reddit
- DarkGamer ( @DarkGamer@beehaw.org ) English35•1 year ago
Digg was a site that was a lot like reddit, it was incredibly popular until they did a site redesign that many users hated and they were unable to roll back, engagement went way down, users looked for alternatives, and reddit got most of the refugees. I haven’t been back on digg for many years.
I thought reddit learned its lesson from digg given they kept legacy old.reddit.com running even after their own redesign, but they failed to remember that 3rd party interfaces to their API is almost the same thing; users like interfacing with their social media using the UI/UX design they chose and grew accustomed to. If they take that away, it risks alienating users and driving them to alternatives.
If reddit was smart they’d make it so that people with reddit gold can keep using API access instead of locking them out entirely.
- HQC ( @HQC@beehaw.org ) English22•1 year ago
But that would be contrary to Reddit’s actual goals, which is to monetize their user’s data as much as possible. They can’t do that if third party apps are providing a better experience, so they are trying to force everyone to use only the website and apps that are directly controlled by Reddit. So they can track our behavior and sell more ads.
- DarkGamer ( @DarkGamer@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
I read somewhere that a lot of the API pricing has to do with people training LLM’s on reddit comments for free; reddit wants to get paid for it. I guess they’ll just have to scrape instead. /shrug
There’s still a lot of tracking that can be done via api calls but you’re right that they lose ad revenue and UI/click info.
- HQC ( @HQC@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
That is the claim from Reddit, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because LLMs are not using the API to get content from sites like Reddit. They are scraping data from the entire Internet, much like Google does.
Even if it was using the API, however, it’s still a bullshit excuse because Reddit would be fully within their rights to enforce existing rate limits or other TOS violations.
Nobody would have been complaining if Reddit revealed that apps like Apollo or OpenAI were abusing the rules that were already in place and everyone agreed to. For that matter, nobody would even be complaining if the pricing and timeline for the changes was anything close to reasonable!
- Thorny_Thicket ( @Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz ) English20•1 year ago
What reddit doesn’t seem to get that for many people old.reddit (or a 3rd party app) is reddit for them. If they take that away they’re forcing them to learn a new UI or to get a new app. It’s naive to think that everyone is just going to switch to the official ones. Might aswell find an alternative to reddit and learn to use that.
- kofe ( @kofe@lemmy.world ) English7•1 year ago
It’s not just about learning the new interfaces…I’ve used the new site design and have heard the official app is just as bad about shoving ads down our throats. Baconreader made ads at least fairly unobtrusive, but with all the drama I’ve decided: fuck it. I appreciate Lemmy and other decentralized options for being user-funded rather than reliant on corporations
- Silviecat44 ( @Silviecat44@vlemmy.net ) English2•1 year ago
Thanks for the explanation
- giloronfoo ( @giloronfoo@beehaw.org ) English28•1 year ago
Same but different. The site sold out and made some changes that were good for investors, but bad for users. It also happened to slashdot. When that went bad, we all went to digg.
Looking back, I’m surprised reddit lasted as long as it did. Digg and slashdot still exist, but aren’t what they were in their heyday. I’m sure reddit will continue in some form.
- imaqtpie ( @imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works ) English19•1 year ago
Tbf, reddit is infinitely more mainstream than digg and Slashdot ever were. Reddit has well over 500 million monthly active users. We are just reaching 100,000 here.
I’m all in, I’m committed here and never going back to reddit. But I want to manage expectations about what we should expect in the coming months and years. People need to understand that this isn’t going to be a seamless transition like that one. Part of the reason that was even possible was because reddit got hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital funding as they rapidly grew. We don’t have that option here.
It will take years for this platform to come anywhere near the current size of reddit, if ever. Now, many of us would argue that reddit was better back when it only had say 50 million MAUs (which was about 10 years ago). That still leaves us 49.9 million users short.
If we want to build a truly free, independent, decentralized space, it’s going to take a lot more commitment and time than switching from digg to reddit did. And I think it will be a rewarding journey for those that stick around.
But don’t count your chickens yet people, we are still in the first round and it’s going to take more than this to bring down the big bad reddit. I’m just glad I finally have some way to fight back.
- pimeys ( @pimeys@lemmy.nauk.io ) English7•1 year ago
Mastodon/Akkoma/Calckey/Misskey/Pleroma side of the fediverse is somewhere over 10 million users right now and it’s already starting to be quite active and having lots of quality content. It went from less than a million users to the current numbers in about six months. We’ll see where Lemmy is in December…
- RomanRoy ( @RomanRoy@lemmy.world ) English5•1 year ago
Yeah, I’m committed as well, and you’re right about your input.
A few notes in my mind, tho:
1 - Reddit became really mainstream, yeah, but I figure a huge part of the user base were tech people. Probably work in tech somehow.
2 - those who came to Lemmy/kbin already are also tech people, I figure. Right now, I think it is just normal that the first to pull the trigger are in tech. It’s not too friendly to the average user (despite the forum format really not being what the average user goes after today)
3 - these people will start to contribute to the development, even if not providing actual code and developing apps or creating their instances, most will post issues about their user experience and will have valuable input about the platform.
4 - I think the true take off of the Fediverse will come once content creators start to post their content in here. And I expect the first of them, at least, to also be tech content creators.
I’ll try to encourage some of the guys I follow, mainly course creators, to invest a bit in the Fediverse. Some of them already do. I know that Twitter puts food on their table, but it should be easy to automate and crosspost to Mastodon, for example.
I hate social media overall. It’s not really hatred, I just don’t use most of them, don’t find the motivation and don’t really value what they have to offer me. I think Instagram sucks for searching anything (who would say searching pictures would be hard, huh?).
I, for one, started lurking on Reddit because of fantasy football. Reddit was really good as a link and content aggregator, and I got most of my news from there. But it depends on Twitter as well, since the reports mainly come from there. And you see where the problem is at? Most of the people who advocate for the Fediverse don’t really use Twitter as well.
So I can only dream of the day Ian Rapopport will post some breaking news to Mastodon and a bot will auto-crosspost it to /c/fantasyfootball.
A man can hope about this ideal future.
Edit: JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, I DIDN’T REALIZE MASTODON HAS 7 MILLION USERS ALREADY
- TeaHands ( @TeaHands@lemmy.world ) English4•1 year ago
In this utopian vision, I hope only that we leave Schefter behind.
- sounddrill ( @sounddrill@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz ) English5•1 year ago
I see, thanks for the backstory.
- xuu ( @xuu@social.sour.is ) English3•1 year ago
Wild time. Remember that brief offshoot to voat?
- DarkGamer ( @DarkGamer@beehaw.org ) English3•1 year ago
I’ll be darned, looks like voat shut down a few years ago.
- Hexarei ( @Hexarei@beehaw.org ) English6•1 year ago
Honestly, good riddance. That place was a cestering fesspool.
- DarkGamer ( @DarkGamer@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
It was quite toxic indeed. I think that’s what sent most people who tried it back to reddit.
- vriska1 ( @vriska1@lemm.ee ) English32•1 year ago
Also there alot of bots going around Reddit saying the protest is not working and all the subreddit mods are going to be easily replaced, with who I don’t know.
- Hexorg ( @Hexorg@beehaw.org ) English30•1 year ago
Well if only bots are talking, mods can be bots too. /r/SubredditSimulator will just take over the whole Reddit
- psudo ( @psudo@beehaw.org ) English13•1 year ago
Pretty much already there on some subs.