SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36268458

Inflammatory picture obviously related.

A lot of deletion/edition tools rely on the API in order to work. As such, they'll stop working on the 1st of July, as the API price changes start being enforced. Better do it now than never.

In my humble opinion, the easiest of them to use would be Power Delete Suite. It allows you to export your content if you so desire.

There's also dessalines' Reddit-History (yup, the Lemmy admin!) that helps you to export your stuff, in case that you want to do it in a more fine-grained way.

There are other tools to do it, however, so pick the one that you like the most.

Should I delete my content? Or edit it?

Up to you. I think that it simple deletion is enough.

However, if you want to edit your content, keep in mind that Reddit likely wants to capitalise on data model training, so pick one of the two choices:

1. Blabber.

Random words, in an agrammatical word order, devoid of any sort of meaning. Introducing noise on the data models makes the data from Reddit considerably less reliable.

If you feel specially uninspired, here's a random word generator. You could also try Zompist's gen, it's a tool intended for people constructing languages, but it's damn good to generate non-linguistic babble.

2. Some message against Reddit.

Don't use swear words, as those might get filtered. Something as simple and short as "potatoes are great because Reddit is a scummy company" goes a long way.

That would also help to pinpoint which companies are doing businesses with Reddit, and pressure them to stop doing it.

Noooo! Think on all the helpful threads!

You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. While it's true that some information will be lost (less if you back up your content elsewhere), overall you're doing better for the internet by not playing along a clearly hostile agent in it.

EDIT:

Thinking about Reddit Inc.'s strategy to get money, perhaps it is better if you replace the content of your comments with random babble than if you simply delete it, if you want them to lose money.

Random babble is not just less useful for those large language models; it's outright poisonous, it's worth less than nothing. I might be wrong but I think that it decreases the value of the platform even further than plain deletion.

Popcorn, anyone?

I think that it's useful to look at older events, in the light of the newer ones. You won't change the past, but you'll understand the present better.

Also keep in mind that I'm not American, so I'm not really attached to all this discussion about Trump. I'm strictly focusing on Reddit here.

In 2019, the subreddit The_Donald (onwards, "TD") was quarantined, under the allegation it was promoting violence against cops. The same subreddit would be then banned in 2020, as Reddit changed its content policy to disallow hate discourses.

The tweet that @Reddit then released was the following:

>"As Snoos, we do not tolerate hate, racism, and violence, and while we have work to do to fight these on our platform, our values are clear." // A letter from CEO Steve Huffman.

Let's skip the hilarious "as snoos", showing how clueless Spez is about his fiefdom's community. And let us ask the following question:

Was TD a hate subreddit? (I know, I know, might as well ask if two plus two equals four; but let us entertain the doubt, for a single moment.)

If it was not a hate subreddit, then it shouldn't have been deleted in 2020. Under this unlikely, Devil's Lawyer style hypothesis, Reddit is lying about the reasons why that subreddit was banned.

However, even if we acknowledge that TD was a hate subreddit, it should not have been quarantined; instead it should've been banned on the spot. What changed in the meantime that prompted Reddit to quarantine a subreddit until it was devoid of activity, only to delete it months later under another reason?

Perhaps the values of the company changed, in such a short time. Or the company is lying about holding values that it does not. No matter how you address this, Reddit does NOT stand against hate, racism, or violence. Ellen Pao, its former CEO (2014-15) is being spot on, when she says that

>I am obligated to call you out: You should have shut down the_donald instead of amplifying it and its hate, racism, and violence. So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don't get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all day long

Reddit Inc.'s actions get more understandable if you acknowledge that:

1. It is a business. As such, it seeks profit maximisation.
2. There is no guiding principle for or against hate discourses within the company. Or any other social cause. They'll simply play with both sides as long as profitable.
3. Steve Huffman sees no problem on lying to the users, when it is convenient to do so.
4. Given that this fucker became CEO of Reddit again, those lies have the implicit agreement of the rest of the company.

Let's recontextualise those four points into the light of the current events.

• The third party mod tools will have free API access. Does Reddit care about its users, including moderators? (No; see #4, if you're eager to lie to someone you don't care about them.)
• Huffman claims that the Apollo developer threatened them, then backs down as a "joke". Is this anyhow credible, given Huffman's previous behaviour? (No; see #3.)
• Reddit Inc. is now claiming that API access will be free for disability-focused apps. Does Reddit care about blind users? (No; see point #2, they don't care about marginalised groups). EDIT: as @[email protected] correctly pointed out, this only applies to non-commercial apps.
• Why is Reddit so fucking scummy? (See #1.)

The API events are just the tip of the iceberg. Don't be fooled by thinking that Reddit will magically become better over time; it won't.

A TL;DR:

• Laying out context and background info (API prices)
• Exposing maths on API access prices, in comparison with Imgur ones, to show that they are unreasonable.
• Concluding that Reddit is using the huge prices to intentionally kill third party apps*.
• Talking about the poor quality of the official app.
• How the move effectively deplatforms blind people, followed by a Torvalds style "fuck you, Reddit".
• ~~Cat tax at 7:20~~
• Devil's lawyer point: the fact that we cannot see Reddit's finances, as it is not a public company.
• The "fever dream" of the 2010s, and how many companies of those times were never profitable, as they were focusing on [my own words] on the value instead of the profit [/my own words]
• Mentions on how even the site originally hosting the video [Youtube - NB, the link is from Odysee] lost money in those times, as well as Twitter did, implying that Reddit is probably in the same bag.
• Talking about transparency - i.e. that if Reddit is bleeding money, it should say it, so the users do not assume the worst. That concludes the devil's lawyer point, as he shows that even if it was a necessary action from Reddit's side of the thing (is it?), it's still scummy as fuck.
• On users losing trust on Reddit and saying "we're leaving". Ipsis litteris "the community will remember what you did, and screwing over vast swaths of disabled people is a really, really great way to look like the type of piece of shit that nobody wants to give money or revenue to, ever again."
• Telling Reddit to either reconsider the decision or at the very least give it a damn good reason, otherwise users will outright refuse to use Reddit or do it with the most restricted ad blocking possible.

*personal note: Rossmann didn't mention it, but I will. Reddit is lying that it doesn't want to kill third party apps, and the lie itself makes everything worse.

I'm posting this here because it's often helpful to see things from a third point of view.

For context: Reddit decided to kill off third party apps that are used to access its platform, by demanding unreasonable prices off those apps' developers, while claiming that it is not trying to kill said third party apps. As a reaction, a lot of moderators in Reddit are coordinating for a blackout, where they make their subreddits inaccessible from the 12th to the 14th of June.

On Hacker News:

• It amazes me how little Reddit's leadership understand about their own history. // Reddit essentially took off because Digg screwed the pooch so hard with their redesign and just general mismanagement of their community.
• Ask HN: Reddit alternatives (that aren't Mastodon) - spoilers, you're already in the alternative suggested across that thread, Lemmy.
• I wish they would just let Reddit die. // I hate it so much. I'm tired of ecosystems. // We need to get away from content farms. [...] Part of me wants this to happen to Hacker News too. This community sucks, but for different reasons.
• I said something akin to this on a 4chan post a little while ago and people hated me for it, but I stand by it. People need to 1) get more in touch with the technology they're using and 2) take back control of their content.
• [On issues associated with the creation of a Reddit alternative] Hosting costs [...], moderation [...], network effects

Personal note: it's rather interesting for me that the userbase of Reddit is getting it right, people outside Reddit are also getting it right, but only the Reddit administration is getting it wrong (way to go, vulture capital!). In special, I think that the comment about how people need to take back control of their content is specially sensible.

Remove your content from Reddit.

As a platform, Reddit is only as valuable as the content in itReddit is as valuable as the content in it. So by removing everything that you posted or commented from the platform, you're discouraging its usage. No more suckers being lulled into Reddit by your content.

If you're concerned about the potential loss of internet information, consider storing anything that you feel as "valuable content" elsewhere where other people can access. And, if you're too lazy to do it by hand (like I am!), two helpful tools are u/dessalines' Reddit-History and Power Delete Suite.

It should be obvious too, but don't produce new content for the platform.

Feed the Fediverse. (Or other alternatives.)

If you're reading this, odds are that you're already feeding lemmy.ml with some content. Good! Bring content here to the Fediverse, or to Tildes. It could be your own original content or stuff copied from Reddit (just don't advertise that site when doing it.)

Even building your own personal blog helps, as information found in Reddit becomes way less valuable if it is also found elsewhere.

If you're still using Reddit, do not install their app, and do not consent to their targetted advertisement.

I think that it is no surprise for anyone that Reddit Inc. lives off adbux (advertisement money) and data mining its own users. As such, by accessing the site through an advertisement blocker, and by refusing consent to personalised ads (check the preferences), you're already helping a bit.

Scorch the land, make it unpleasing.

Being obnoxious, mocking users, being abravise, or overall being a jerk is not illegal. You can always do it there, specially in subreddits with large numbers of subscribers.

Evading bans is also not illegal. If a moderator kicked you off, make his work extra hard by coming back and shitposting in the same subreddit.

Derail serious threads with uninteresting content. Noise makes any environment less valuable.

Raise awareness.

Reddit killed the third party apps out of greed, because they want to datamine you through an official app that sucks.

Reddit has been censoring its users since forever.

Reddit used to host the alt group site called The_Donald, and refused to take action against it for too long.

Harassment is rampant in Reddit, Reddit has the tools to prevent it (as the Aimee Challenor case shows), and yet refuses to protect its own users with them.

The Reddit administration is consistently lying to Reddit users, as it expects them to be stupid.

There are a thousand issues with Reddit. You can - and should - make people know them.