hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout today, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! Thanks!
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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.
I hope one of the archive projects (archiveTeam or others) has backed up r/askhistorians past posts and comments, just in case.
Oh, I hope so as well, that sub is absolutely precious. When people talked about nuking their account(which I get it) it was for post like those that I feared for.
Not to worry, every post and comment on reddit has been archived, and is freely available as a 2tb torrent on Academic Torrents.
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.
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.
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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Missed it, same thing?
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Not surprised in the least that they’re purging mods here, but I’m a little surprised they’re doing it during these 48 hours. Seems like it’d be a better move to at least wait until the protest ends before cracking down on delinquent subs/mods. Not that reddit has done anything to suggest that they’d act intelligently in this.
This has been absolutely wild. Sadly, it’s not that surprising and the corporate speak is strong. While Reddit likely won’t change, the “type” of users that will leave over this is the kind of users that made Reddit the community it is today. These are all likely active members from Fark, Slashdot, Digg, and others.
Good news though, we’ve got a group of people that are experienced in making fantastic communities. I’ll bet we’ll do it again. We’ll see how this goes with the Fedditverse/Threadverse via Lemmy/kbin. I’m sure we’ll figure this community/magazine thing out soon enough.
Sometimes all we can control is how we react to the situation.
I find it a bit disheartening that a lot of comments on Reddit (I know I’m mostly staying away) are labeling us, the people who take issue with not only the API pricing but the entire direction the site is going, snowflakes and whiny babies.
A lot of “I don’t cares” and “I just want to use the site not see this useless protest” etc. I remember a time when reddit could come together and actually get results (for better and for worse).
Even the way people comment is different. Seems like a lot more low effort, mouth breather posts, or suspiciously bad faith arguments that I see in response to the increasingly rare thoughtful/informative dialogue in the form of posts or comments.
I’m not saying the site was ever an iconic standard to the peak intellectual, but there seemed to be more people hungry for that type of content.
Maybe I’m just looking back at everything through rose tinted glasses, but I miss the days of ending up going down a new rabbithole sparked by a random comment chain.
I wonder if it’s just me and I’m just turning into that old bitter dude longing for the “good ole days.”
I posted this on Kbin too, but I thought people might find it interesting here as well. I feel like maybe younger/shorter term users, and other people really don’t fully understand what’s going on with Reddit, and how it’s been building to a crescendo for a while.
I was a Reddit user for 12 years and change. I pre-date the Digg migration, and honestly I thought the years after that were its peak. There were warning signs that it was going downhill at many points in time, but I think the moment that really signaled Reddit was never going to return to what made it popular and successful is when they removed NSFW subs from /r/all…even though they’d rolled out /r/popular a year or two prior, supposedly for that purpose.
It’s not because of the restriction of NSFW subs in and of itself, it’s the implications/precedents that were set for the service as a whole. At that point, it became crystal clear that Reddit wanted to make sure the vast majority of users would be stuck with reddit recommended content only, and from there out it’s felt more like user manipulation for maximum advertising. Think about it - probably 50% of the most popular posts are either thinly veiled ads, or posts LOADED with ads that Reddit is surely getting clickshare revenue for linking to. Then there’s the sponsored posts hidden in with the normal posts, and the banner ads inserted between those.
The point of /r/all was to show everything, in real time, as it was growing in popularity. That’s how people discover things they like that they didn’t know existed - but finding those things, means spending less time in the controlled environment engaging with the content they most want you to engage with, and making them less revenue as a result. When /r/all turns into “/r/onlywhatcorporatewantsyoutosee”, there’s really no going back or improving. This API bullshit is just the next iteration of that same long term strategy - control what users see and interact with by forcing them to stay in their tightly controlled environment
NSFW posts weren’t the primary reason why /r/all got limits. /r/all was littered with hate and bigotry and general garbage. If /r/all had been left alone, Reddit would have continued on the path to becoming Voat.
Not modifying, to some degree, what subreddits appear on /r/all would have made trying to remove the bigotry off the site that much harder. (It will never completely go away; the site is too huge at this point.) While they should have used the idea of quarantines long before they started out with flat-out removal of these subs, these weren’t just “[racist slur] are dumb” type of stuff. These were subs that outright called for the violence and death of people who weren’t them. These were places for racists and bigots who had no qualm about doxxing people with hopes that bad things would happen to them.
You can argue “Well, then, ban the people who do that kind of thing!” Sometimes when the pool gets full of scum, you have to recognize the point where spot cleaning isn’t the cure and you have to drain the pool to stop the scum from gathering.
You’re not wrong at all on that, however, the quarantining and banning of hate communities happened before the removal of any and all NSFW subs from /r/all. The hate groups were largely getting restricted well before that. I realize they’re two sides of a similar coin - but there were different motives behind the shifts. Recall also, that most of those groups getting quarantined and banned were not NSFW communities.
Nobody was using boobs or twerk videos for hate speech. A 4K/60FPS version of that gif of Alexandra Daddario wasn’t being used to advocate violence against political figures. That later shift was done purely for user control of content. Reddit (probably) isn’t getting click shares off of imgur reposts of daddarios boobs. If they’re not standing to gain, they lose every time someone leaves the front page and goes to a sub page to explore more. They also get fewer eyes on their paid content if people are turned off from using /r/all because they don’t want to see said boobs. That particular move was a dollars and cents content control move only.
Controlling the cattle has become the overwhelming purpose of the Haves.
The other side to all commercial social apps is driving engagement, and as you said driving ads and cash generation. These both are harmful to users. Driving engagement seems to be a more subtle thing, but more harmful of the two as it is kind of corrosive. So commercial social apps are just bad.
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 to sustain, or simply becoming Myspace or Digg, a distant memory that’s only in name.
Just my 1/2 cents.
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.
Spez has told Reddit staff that the blackout “will pass”.
He’s right, it will. And that’s the problem.
A two day blackout means nothing to Spez and Reddit. What it tells them is “we can treat the userbase and developers like shit and they’ll still use our platform for the other 363 days of the year”.
The only thing that will force Reddit to the negotiating table is blacking out indefinitely. Not a single protesting subreddit opens back up until they realise what made the company so attractive to investors in the first place.
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Agree. It is not about negotiating. The point is we need a open Forum platform. Usenet use to be that platform, and it got shutdown basically by ISPs that did not want the cost and hassle. Then everything fragmented into separate websites, then it re-consolidated around one commercial platform for each segment. I.E. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Youtube, Instagram, … That is the fundamental problem. The Fediverse frankly is the only thing I have seen to at least makes a credible try to change that. ALL of these should be decentralized or federated, one or the other.
Other point I would make, Forums have a lot less network effect then friends networks like Facebook. My point is that less scale is required.
I think lemmy is pretty much at the number of users now where it can self propagate. I dont care what happens to reddit past this point, as long as lemmy stays active
Blacking out indefinitely won’t change a thing. Reddit has before and will again, if threatened this way, re-open shuttered subs if they believe it is valuable for their bottom line.
The blackout is definitely having an impact on Reddit traffic, especially the level of commenting on posts. Look at https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/ and the posts and comments per minute. The comments are usually up to the top or above the number of posts and they are way down. Posts overall are way down as well.
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.
I just checked reddark over 8400 subreddits are down, pretty much all of the big ones are closed down, that’s crazy! I only had one reddit brain fart today and caught myself before, so I have no idea how things are there, but I do miss all the nature, castles and sculptures pictures from the stuff I followed.
I swapped my Sync app on my homescreen out for Jebroa for Lemmy, so when I instinctively go to open Reddit, I open Lemmy instead. Seems to be working well so far!
Yeah, the problem is my phone has that predictive/sugestion bar at the bottom when you open the search bar and more often than not boost is there and my brain goes “oooh, click it!” and im very bad at deleting apps, my way around hoarding apps was restricting the apps i install in the first place. But i opened Jerboa enough last night that its showing is right beside it and I’m keeping Lemmy logged in on the browser.
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After slandering the Apollo Dev, Steve now starts to slander the entire userbase.
But please continue to mod unpaid and unappreciated!
To be fair, he isn’t wrong.
I cannot see another blackout happening. I think a sizeable chunk of Reddit’s moderators would go back if it otherwise meant losing power and influence on one of the largest social media sites.
Of course a lengthier or indefinite blackout of most of Reddit’s communities would cause major disruption.
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/
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 thes 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.
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 don’t know how to feel about this, that’s the app I use and was mad about losing… I already bought the paid version a long time ago but now it’s moving to a subscription model so I guess that doesn’t count anymore…
The base subscription could cost $2 per month, with an extra $1 for message notifications to account for the additional API calls that such polling incurs.
I just had a Rollercoaster of emotions. I was sad and angry to see relay go be sure it’s been with me for idk how long (more than 10 years? Has it been that long?). But then losing relay would severely cut my reddit time and lemmy being a lot smaller meant that I could potentially kick this habit. So was kind of excited.
Then I read your message that relay is not going and I’m like “fuck! My addiction will never be cured!” Then saw its a subscription model and now I’m really conflicted.
You Can Export Your RiF History.
That is awesome.
First thing I do when the blackout is over is export my history, edit my comments, delete my acc and buh bye Reddit forever.
Thinking about sticking to Lemmy for most things and using my Reddit alt account just as a porn aggregator. Who’s with me?!
There’s lemmynsfw.com as well now.
Oh! Fab. I was under the impression that Lemmy wasn’t going to allow NSFW.
None of the big ones were allowing NSFW posts on their instances, but anyone can create an instance that does allow it 🙂
Just have to say: Has anyone notice that Beehaw is just way faster then Reddit? Sorry new here, just my first impression. By the way. Thanks everyone for this site.
Maybe because I’m using Jerboa, but it feels slower to me. Jerboa has many issues though
Yes, I am on the web UI… Have not tried the app yet.
From join-lemmy.org:
Blazing Fast
Made using some of the fastest frameworks and tools, including Rust, Actix, Diesel, Inferno, and Typescript.
It really is faster, I noticed that too.
Yes, when I first got on mid-day it way crazy fast. It has slowed down a bit for me as the day has gone on but still faster then typical Reddit speeds. I wonder if beehaw load is more late afternoon and evening, or if it is just more people flocking in, or maybe both.
Probably has to do with time of day, but it’s more snappy anyway. Smaller platform I guess, but it’s pretty nice
Indeed! I guess it’s (at least partly) because there’s not as much stuff going on that the user can see (and sometimes can’t see).
