this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023

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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is fighting a losing battle against the site's moderators (qz.com)

submitted 3 years ago by xuxebiko@kbin.social to c/technology@beehaw.org

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The company wants to charge for API access. Its volunteer moderators have other ideas

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[–] PurelySnype@vlemmy.net 109 points 3 years ago (23 children)

For me, no matter what Reddit is dead. Lemmy is enough for my time wasting and has enough content that I have not missed it one bit. I feel like the communities are smaller, less toxic, and I want to contribute more here. They could completely reverse their decision and I will not return and I hope there are enough like me to make a difference. It just amazes me a site that exists to link to other content on the web and store text comments about said content isn't profitable.

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[–] bankimu@lemm.ee 34 points 3 years ago (15 children)

Lemmy is also ad free. Love that.

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[–] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 14 points 3 years ago

I'm always astounded at how few people use ad blockers. Fuck the entire ad-based system, it is cancer.

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[–] ericjmorey@beehaw.org 11 points 3 years ago (10 children)

Any instance or community can include paid content, but the numbers are still a bit low for that now.

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[–] x2XS2L0U@feddit.de 13 points 3 years ago

Thing is, if there was in instance or community doing ads, I now can simly block, mute or defederate them. With reddit I had to use an adblocker, scriptblocker and the reddit enhancement suite to be adfree. And I could not be sure it'd stay that way.

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[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 7 points 3 years ago* (8 children)

The only whiff I got of anything money-related that's not a donation drive for hosting costs is a post by an artist asking whether there's instances ok with them posting links to their patreon alongside their artwork.

...and when it comes to hosting I think things will continue to be donation-run as even 1/1000th of users making comparatively small, regular donations cover costs for the rest. There's always going to be enough people willing to throw in a fiver a month.

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[–] HobbitFoot 3 points 3 years ago (7 children)

I don't see that continuing over time. There is no way that donations alone can sustain major servers as they see growth over time. You're also going to get to a point where a server's admin switches from being a hobby to a job.

There aren't that many websites that can run on donations alone.

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[–] Bluebird@beehaw.org 3 points 3 years ago

Unless you have a huge red banner across the top of your screen like Wikipedia lol

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[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 1 point 3 years ago (5 children)

Well the decentralized nature of the Fediverse helps spread out the cost. For example you can rent a VPS (virtual private server) for like ten or twenty dollars a month and throw a Lemmy instance on it. That's where many Lemmy instances are currently living. There's your own time involved in maintaining the instance, but the cost should remain pretty stable.

Conversely, a centralized service where all users have to be supported by an individual or company owned cluster of machines can get very expensive. I can't imagine the operating costs for a site like YouTube with the demand for data storage and bandwidth.

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[–] HobbitFoot 1 point 3 years ago (4 children)

The cost gets spread out, but not completely. You are also going to run into problems if an instance takes off.

The costs are manageable now, but is that sustainable?

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[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 1 point 3 years ago (3 children)

Well I think it depends on the balance of growth between nodes and users. If growth of users and growth of instances is proportional, it should be sustainable.

That leaves the question of how well Fediverse software can deal with increasing node numbers. I hope that engineering question has been properly considered. It's like the available number of IP addresses when they initially designed TCP/IP, they never considered four octets might not be enough for future growth.

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[–] HobbitFoot 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

Nothing on the Internet seems to indicate that use distribution will be even. Power law is going to get involved and some nodes are going to get massive.

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[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

Well yeah that will happen. Initially I looked for instances with the biggest subscription base. Then after some reading about the Fediverse I realized that kind of thinking does not apply. You get everything regardless of which node you're on (barring any defederation). Maybe most will realize that, but you're probably right most will not. We'll see how it goes.

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[–] HobbitFoot 1 point 3 years ago

The hosting costs isn't on the user end, but the instance end.

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[–] stown@sedd.it 10 points 3 years ago

The whole internet can be ad free if you want it to be... even from your phone.

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[–] HobbitFoot 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

For now, but this isn't going to be sustainable.

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[–] arbitrary@lemm.ee 6 points 3 years ago

For potentially large communities or a large enough group of related small communities, it can be. A core of people could spin up their own server off their own back and/or through donations. Communities exist this way outside of reddit already, this would just be a way to tap into a common interface and interoperability that federation provides. Or is there some centralised thing that means that no matter what someone might impose restrictions?

But not video and maybe limited images to keep costs in check. Maybe video hosting through unlisted youtube videos if that doesn't get curbed.

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[–] Deestan@beehaw.org 13 points 3 years ago (1 child)

Same here. Reddit had me going only on inertia for the past few years. Whether they revert their API lalala doesn't matter - the communities are broken.

And even if through some divine intervention they manage to repair the communities, I'm like... eh. I went to sit over here now and it's comfy.

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[–] Auzy@beehaw.org 3 points 3 years ago

At the end of the day, they treat their volunteers and users with disrespect too. The value in reddit isn't from spaz, but rather from the users. Yet Spaz is pretending the services are why people use it.

In fact, I almost wonder if spaz is purposely trying to kill reddit, or whether he's just another narcissist who genuinely believes reddit doesn't need users

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[–] BReel@lemmy.one 10 points 3 years ago

Im pretty close to this as well. I think if they did a 180, and like, showed an ACTUAL attempt to right the ship, I would consider going back via Apollo.

But that said, I've been using Lemmy this week, and out of curiosity I've been comparing it with my reddit feed at the end of the day, and yeah. I really haven't missed out on anything important.

I mostly used Reddit as a way to waste time, or get info on the latest big things, like all the Trump stuff for example, and Lemmy is doing just fine getting me that kind of info.

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[–] ericjmorey@beehaw.org 9 points 3 years ago

If they allowed RiF to continue, I'd still use it. I'll pop over on certain subreddits occasionally after July 1st. But I'm enjoying various lemmy instances right now, especially Beehaw.

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[–] MagicShel@programming.dev 6 points 3 years ago

I'm currently refusing to visit Reddit on principle. If Reddit relented, I would stop actively avoiding them, but I would not go back to it as a primary social outlet.

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[–] NumbersCanBeFun@kbin.social 6 points 3 years ago*

I’m with you friend. I’ve used Reddit daily since it practically opened. Sure the people who don’t care might stick around but the people who really loved Reddit are scorned and I have zero reason to go back to someone after they already backstabbed them the first time.

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[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 5 points 3 years ago

Lemmy is filling that void for me nicely. My only complaint is some bugs and lacking features, but that will get ironed out as Lemmy matures. Being wholly community driven is a hugely more solid foundation. And yeah, no ads. I see them rarely anyway because I mainly use a browser with an adblocker, but it's good to know there's no profit motivation for the Fediverse and never will be.

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