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Reddit communities with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Can I get an eli5 on digg? It seems to have happened years and years before I joined reddit
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.
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.
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.
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 the Apollo app or OpenAI were abusing the rules that were already in place and everyone agreed to. Actually, nobody would even be complaining if the pricing and timeline for the changes was anything close to reasonable!
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
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
In this utopian vision, I hope only that we leave Schefter behind.
Wild time. Remember that brief offshoot to voat?
I'll be darned, looks like voat shut down a few years ago.
Honestly, good riddance. That place was a cestering fesspool.