This is great, many more subreddits should do something like this. But in the end, it’s us, the end users, who should do the actual protesting since it’s us who have the power to change things. I’ve decided not to give them any kind of traffic from now on. Me, by myself, won’t make much impact but if more of us did the same they’d be force to change their strategy.
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Subreddits doing this will have a much bigger impact than end users, because large masses of people will never do anything inconvenient on their own. This is the reason why capitalism doesn't self-regulate for better environmental standards, for an example. The whole personal carbon footprint thing was invented by an oil company to shame individuals so we can blame eachother for our consumption instead of regulating energy companies. Nothing changes if we rely on everyone to do the right thing without any external motivations (be it environmental regulations or closing subreddits).
It's a shame promoting Lemmy isn't part of the blackout
True that. Kinda weird actually to go dark but not providing alternative avenue.
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I am so happy to see people coming together and moving away from commercial platforms. It feels silly to say it, but it seems like it is a step in the right direction. It is technological and social progress. Decentralization is a really fantastic tool and it seems to be a system that cannot be controlled internally or externally. Mastodon has been great, and I expect Lemmy to be even better.
To anyone reading, if you have any extra cash, look into making a small donation to your instance. The people running it are not just putting in time, they are likely paying hundreds a month to rent server space.
Money is going to be the deciding factor in the long-term health of the entire Fediverse. More users on each instance means more costs -- and to some extent, even users not on that instance will contribute to cost. That money has to come from somewhere, and eventually, if the Fediverse is going to scale up to even a sizable portion of what we're moving away from, we need real, consistent money involved. It doesn't have to be full VC corpo junk, but eventually, some instances are going to need a team.
I want this stuff to work great, but expecting the people running it to pay the cost forever isn't sustainable.
would it be a good idea to have comment/post rewards like gold/silver etc. where the proceeds go to help fund instances?
So... it could work. But that's not going to be consistent, and the federated nature of things like Lemmy makes for some weird structures. Can you give rewards across instances? What if one instance has "gold" at $1, but another has it at $0.50?
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People are usually more willing to spend some money on community projects such as an instance they like. This could be a financially viable way to fund online platforms like Lemmy.
Donations are not consistent, that's the big trouble. Especially after a big exodus, people may move, and they may donate for a while, but those donations will typically drop off eventually, even if they keep using it.
You're right that people are usually more willing to spend on community projects, and that's largely true - but watching open-source software as long as I have, I know that donations rarely cover things in the long-term, and most of the projects that are funded well enough to have a team behind them are actually funded by corporations. Heck, even getting one person able to run an instance as a full time gig is going to be difficult without it turning corporate.
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Well said 👏👏
I suppose many there are also affected by the Apollo debacle too. It just makes that pill even more bitter.
I think so. With the end of Apollo, I have no other way to access Reddit except their mobile website or their app. I have the feeling it’s too late now, Apollo is unlikely to come back, regardless of what Reddit does. Now, I just hope kbin / lemmy will grow enough to become a good alternative (still learning how everything works ^^).
Yes, Kbin/lemmy needs enough good and original content to flourish. What I currently miss is the niche subreddits on lemmy. For specific brands or particular products or hobbies it's easy to find a community on reddit, but there are only a few already available on lemmy.
You are absolutely right. Reddit was so big that it was possible find a community for everything. I don't expect kbin/lemmy to get there anytime soon unfortunately.
Even if a community exists for the content you seek, how do you determine the one that is going to grow? There could be a different version of that community on every server, which is the area I'm struggling to find content. Join every alternative is an option.
Unless there is something I'm missing. Quite possible as the federated approach is all new to me.
I don’t expect the duplication to be too much more of an issue here than Reddit. The only big difference is that duplicate forums can have the same name here. I mean, how many meme subreddits were there? At least for me on beehaw, when I search for communities it shows how many subscribers there are. In this period of rapid growth, it’s certainly a bit of a crapshoot and you may need to regularly search communities to see if any take off, but I expect in the next month or so, some communities will become large and their duplicates will pretty clearly die, just like with Reddit.
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Even if they reversed the API changes, sacked Spez, reinstated i.reddit.com, ate an entire bucket of humble pie, and personally paid me £100 I'd still prefer the vibe here to be honest. It's way less angry and more authentic here.
I like the "indefinite" part. Let it stay dark forever and have people make iphone subs in the lemmyverse. The Reddit is dead, long live the Lemmy!
Anything short of indefinite is just a virtue signal, imo.
I hope there's enough information there for refugees to arrive here safely
I own a subreddit that I'll admit that it isn't the largest but I'm going to be putting a link to the new corresponding Kbin magazine in the private message. I'm hoping other subreddits will as well
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I hope that this protest does something
It will. It will make the mods and the power-users realise that Reddit don’t care and won’t change course. Then it’s up to them.
I completely agree. Reddit has shown no indication of backing down. They will just wait for it to finish if the lockdown is as short as ~48 hours. If a major/big sub goes on lockdown indefinitely, they'll open it and replace the mods. I'm pretty sure there are tons of people out there willing to mod a big subreddit like r/videos for one reason or another. The reddit of the digg migration era is gone. It's just corporate reddit now.
I don't give it much time until they start replacing the mods if the blackout drags on for long.
Yes, I agree. It would be logical to assume they're confidentially seeking out new prospective moderators behind the scenes at this moment ready to take over.
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I’m sceptical. If most subs only protest for 2 days, then all Reddit has to do is weather the storm and then continue on. The only way I see it having any further impact is if many large subs black out indefinitely.
Reddit would either be forced to make concessions or escalate even further by removing the mods of the protesting subs and forcing it open again. That would be a further sign of bad faith and really piss off all these mods that spent up to a decade doing moderation for free.
You make it sound like Reddit does not have the option to turn the subreddit on and replace the mods. However, the users who actually really do care about reddit will leave and will have to take their content with them.
You make it sound like Reddit does not have the option to turn the subreddit on and replace the mods. However, the users who actually really do care about reddit will leave and will have to take their content with them.
Agree. I ended up deleting my 11+ year old account. I was holding out that they’d reverse course but I felt like they also need to see some users leaving as well.
the only thing that's worrying me about the subreddits closing indefinitely (even though I wholeheartedly support it), is that people are going to use even more closed off, unsearchable platforms as alternatives. /r/unixporn mods say their only "official" alternative is currently their Discord "server".
edit: the message on /r/iPhone also directs people to their Discord. sigh.
I second this. For a while, adding "reddit" to every google search gives generally better results. Now all this information will become hidden in unsearchable places.
Which is a good case against the centralization of information.
I have been way to comfortable just using Reddit as my source of information with the usage of 3rd party applications.
What if Reddit puts the subreddits behind a paywall?
What if Reddit is gonna demand that every subreddit generates an x percentage revenue just to exist?
What Reddit has shown with their actions is that they are gonna put monetization of their userbase first and user experience somewhere in 10th.
The possibilities to screw the users in regards of the information they consume is...worrying.
It will end up the same as 9gag did. Some weird facebook/instagram/tik tok clone used for people who have an attention span of 60 seconds.
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!iphone@lemmy.ml is one offspring
I’m worried that all the new large communities are hosted at a single instance, lemmy.ml
Really 3 big players right now.
Lemmy.ml Lemmy.world Beehaw
Those 3 servers are like currently 70% of Lemmy traffic.
Sucks that the UI doesn't auto-link that for you.
Yeah, but we can help out in the meantime!
And if you need the full url for your instance's search: https://lemmy.ml/c/iphone
that Is currently an issue on the radar. Lets hope it gets picked up quickly
In the meantime we can try to be helpful when possible!
And if your instance needs to search for the full url still: https://lemmy.ml/c/iphone
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I'm glad some subreddits are going dark for good, not only will this actually hurt reddit as a company but also it will lead to some people switching to alternatives like lemmy which is always a good thing.
Good. Only way users and communities can be heard is to actively shutdown until further notice
The Reddit community from which
!196@lemmy.blahaj.zone is an offshoot from does this.
They went dark indefinitely (until (or if) the API changes are cancelled/undone.
Lol I can’t wait till this is national news, right before they go for their IPO.
Wouldn't be suprised if more subreddits will follow and start early.
It also has more impact to do it out of the blue.
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