this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I don't care about fixing Reddit and I don't care about teaching Reddit a lesson. I don't care if the site buckles or continues to hold on and grow while they regulalry downgrade their service as they have been doing for the 10 years I've been an active user. No protest of anything Reddit has done has ever caused Reddit to reconsider what they're doing. Reddit does not care about anything because it's not a person. It's a business entity which will attempt by any means to maximise profit. Having a functional website or having human users or moderation at all are not strictly necessary to secure investment or generate ad revenue. Doing what investors want them to do, regardless of the actual effect it may have long-term, is what will get them investment now. That is more important to Reddit than everything else put together. There's no mastermind, no one's at the wheel, no idiot is unilaterally making decisions like a king. There's only the inevitable consequences of the collective decisions of businesspeople participating in corporate capitalism.
The main reason I don't care is that I don't have to care anymore. The Fediverse has been a breath of fresh air after a very long time.
No reason to go back and every reason not to. The Fediverse is my home now.
I don't care about fixing reddit either, I don't care if it lives or dies, not anymore, tho it wouldn't be bad IMO teaching the CEO a lesson in humility.
Hard to teach humility to a dude who is surrounded by institutional investors funneling millions into his pockets.
But yeah I hope this is ruining his sleep
Right? This was always bound to happen. The only way it wouldn't be innevitable would require Reddit be a non-profit or co-op or equivalent. Which it certainly isn't.
I also agree, the sudden breath into the fediverse (I've been poking my head in since I ran a nextcloud instance and they had a plugin for the fediverse called nextcloud social.). This place isn't just a handful of OSS developers and enthusiasts anymore, but something starting to resemble a community of all types.
It reminds me of when Reddit was good, way back in like 2010 (for me) - but it feels more consequential now!
no idiot is unilaterally making decisions like a king.
Every decision is made by one person or a party of people specifically saying "Yes" to it. Whether they are "idiot[s]" is up for debate, but every single event involving anything artificial is decided by a person/people, not merely a faceless system.
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AskHistorians is taking the approach of “blackout for two days, then read-only moving forward indefinitely.” I think that’s a good approach as it still removes the functionality of the subreddit while reminding people of what they’re missing out on due to the admins’ actions.
I know there are bigger subs, but AskHistorians is an absolute jewel in Reddit’s crown. For all the dumpster fire subs that raise controversy and drag Reddit’s image down, AskHistorians is the one sub that could always be pointed to as a sub with an inarguably positive impact. It’s also a sub in a unique position because its moderators are probably the hardest for Reddit to replace, because many of them are the historians that answer the questions, or have personal relationships with those that do. In addition most of the historians aren’t really Redditors, participating only on AskHistorians. Removing the current mod team and replacing them would absolutely 100% kill the sub forever.
Not that I have any faith in Reddit to do the right thing. I just think it’s interesting to realize just how different of a position AskHistorians in than the rest of the subreddits, being at the same time more impactful than their subscriber numbers show, while being fragile enough to be permanently broken if handled poorly. They are also one of the only mod teams I’ve see who have issued a list of actionable goals that Reddit can address.
Also it’s interesting to see that their participation in the blackout is almost entirely on Spez’s head. That’s some damn fine CEOing there, Lou.
The askhistorians subreddit and it's mod team are absolute gems, I was able to attend one of their talks at a conference and it was honestly one of the best presentations I've seen at these types of events. It is giant loss to the academic community to have them shut down tbh, and I hope they are able to migrate and keep their audience.
But then again knowing Reddit, if they migrate u/spez will probably allow Holocaust deniers to take up the space or something.
I hope one of the archive projects (archiveTeam or others) has backed up r/askhistorians past posts and comments, just in case.
Not to worry, every post and comment on reddit has been archived, and is freely available as a 2tb torrent on Academic Torrents.
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This is just my personal opinion. The 2 day blackout for me, never meant for people to pack their bags and leave Reddit entirely. It's not a very easy task to do, and honestly, there is still lots of contents and friends back in reddit. Reddit can be sure that lots of people will simply come back, and spez will grinning while working his way to his beloved IPO.
However, the 2 day blackout has opened a new world of alternatives to Reddit. Now people know other places and other communities that can replace Reddit as a whole. Yes, Reddit will still be an influential website. Yes, Reddit will still be money driven. Yes, spez will not budge. But we can.
To me, Reddit will not crash, burn and crushed to ash. But rather, it's either went the FB way, relying to lots of ads and ~~older demographics ~~ low-literacy to sustain, or simply becoming Myspace or Digg, a distant memory that's only in name.
Just my 1/2 cents.
Edit: changed some inacurrate words
relying to lots of ads and ~~older demographics~~ low-literacy masses to sustain
FIFY
Among the "older demographics" there are the most "nerdy" people, those born when personal computers and the internet didn't exist, those growing up together with technology, used to a world when corporations didn't destroy the good of sharing knowledge.
Those are the people most likely to rebel to what reddit is doing and find their way out if it, because they know it's possible, because they've seen it before.
Youngest people are used to how the world is nowadays because it's all they've seen, but they can be shown the difference if they're willing to listen.
Low-literacy masses are those who don't listen because they don't care, people of that sort exist in every age "range" and are unfortunately the majority of content "consumers", that's why Facebook(/Instagram/WhatsApp) doesn't die, and Reddit won't either most probably.
Exactly, I'm 'older' but I grew up with the internet in the 90s and know what it was before it turned into a monetized cesspool of corporate trash.
Yeah I wouldn't have ever signed up for lemmy if this api thing hadn't come about. This is my first fediverse experience. I was pissed at reddit, but now I don't care about reddit one way or another. Lemmy has gained enough users to sustain itself even if there is no more mass migration. There is an active community here that will help lemmy grow organically over time.
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Reddit relies on user generated content, so it if the few users who actually generate entertaining stuff take their business elsewhere it will go the way of Myspace and DIgg. Because there is already a Facebook for old people.
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I'm glad to see there's been more of a push for previously '48 hours only' subreddits to move to an indefinite blackout - but I wish that more of them had committed earlier. That leaked internal email shows exactly what I already expected; they just see the protesting Redditors as a bunch of whiny babies who they expect to give up after a couple days and forget the whole thing.
I’m not giving up. 11 year account deleted. I might read stuff on Reddit from time to time, but it will be without an account, in a private tab, through a vpn, with an ad blocker on.
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I'm surprised how quickly I've adapted to fediverse, Mastodon just didn't fill-in for twitter in the way that the lemmy instances have, once I learned how they work together.
Now that I have gotten over the first hump, it feels new and exciting enough to make up for the lack of diverse content. I really think lemmy/kbin can be the platforms that push forward an interoperable, self-custodial social media.
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So, apparently the mod purge started, one of the mods of /r/tumblr confirms getting booted out of the mod team and opening the sub
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Yeah, don't hold your breath for a Lemmy/kbin port of Apollo:
The amount of work it would take to port all the API endpoints over to Lemmy or Kbin or something, that would be a gargantuan amount of work that I’m not sure I have the capacity for. And then just the complexity of making it work. Long term, it’s a big question mark for me that, at this stage, I’m not sure I’m totally interested in pursuing. But it’s also one of those things where I completely wish it the best. And if something that was decentralized kind of became the norm, I think that would definitely be a win for everybody.
Great interview from Christian there, it really is so frustrating that Reddit is and has been so hostile towards him. :(
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Relay for android gave in to Reddit's demands ... thoughts?
I think this is a bad sign for everyone protesting the changes... a major app giving in makes the rest of the apps look bad for complaining imo https://www.androidpolice.com/popular-android-reddit-app-may-survive-absurd-api-pricing/
I didn't know api changes means 3rd party apps no longer can show nsfw content. Nobody's going to pay a subscription and not be able to see stuff that they can see on the official app. Looks like reddit is giving all 3rd party app developers a shitty deal whichever way you cut it.
I can't blame him if he wants his app to survive. I used the pro version for years and would happily payed the planed subscription. But because the vast majority, if not all of the money goes to Reddit I just can't bring myself to do it. I hope his calculations are correct and if they are not, I hope he doesn't falls into dept.
I can't blame the 3P Devs for dealing with this situation as they see fit. It feels like shooting the messenger ...
The relay creator did the math and came to the conclusion that an subscription model might maybe work but it would be to tight. It reads as the person is saying that it is unfeasonable.
You say he gave in? As far as I can read that is stated nowhere.
Even if the apps would comply;
- Reddit will jack the prices again when they see fit.
- Reddit also wins with this pricing because they are gonna pocket the cash.
>Reddit will limit 'Recommend' and NFSW content to its official app. >
And ohw yeah you are gonna get less content for your subscription. It is all in bad faith.
I think that a forced paid subscription will probably kill it anyway long term, who in their right mind would pay a subscription to access Reddit?
Also don't forget that these app owners themselves are running a business and probably make a bunch of money from their apps that they don't want to see evaporate with the changes.
Another good point he made is about how he's calculating this. He's projecting current usage into the sub model.
But he's probably very right that casuals will probably leave and power users will probably pay. So it's the Spotify problem, your power users use you more costing you more but they don't pay more so you start going in the red. Considering relay is not a VC backed app or anything like that. One miscalculation and one bad month and you could see thousands of dollars in surprise costs.
The Internet was supposed to be better, but it turned into another set of monthly bills. And caving in to Reddit's gouging sets a dangerous precedent, because it normalizes the smearing of devs that brought us here.
We kinda proved we can manufacture scarcity even where there is none.
We are literally slashing unsold sneakers before throwing them in a landfill, criminalizing dumpster diving and handouts of expiring food.
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/r/ModCoord thread working on extending the blackout beyond tomorrow, as a response to Steve's email: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinite_blackout_next_steps_polling_your/
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This is a sub that could really benefit from just leaving reddit entirely anyways. Potentially being able to have more open discussions centered around piracy would make the content of that sub so much better.
That. Being able to actually post links to websites.
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I just used Power Delete Suite to remove all my comments and submissions
https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
I am just a drop in the ocean, but I won't be going back to reddit now that's I've discovered the fediverse
this feels like the internet I fell in love with back in the mid 90s with smaller communities and no corporations trying to control what I interact with
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