this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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178
The Reddit Blackout Is Breaking Reddit (www.wired.com)
submitted 1 year ago by sexy_peach@feddit.de to c/technology@beehaw.org
67 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

“They’re shooting themselves in the foot,” Mir says. “The content of the users is what makes the platform worth visiting. These hosts kind of run into this confusion that their hosting is the reason people are going there, but it’s really for the other users on the medium.”

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[–] dan@lemm.ee 125 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

If it wasn't hurting them they wouldn't be doing damage control.

It's working, keep it up.

[–] lunacybooth@readit.buzz 21 points 1 year ago

They wouldn't be lying about trying to work with devs

Its fascinating watching him keep digging. He bullshits, gets caught out, so he bullshits about a different dev. Rinse. Repeat.

[–] redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com 14 points 1 year ago

I haven't been to Reddit for a few days and they did these stuff already? Let's keep this up.

[–] CarolinaBlues@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] dan@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Thanks I've been trying to fill in those claims with links so this one is great :)

[–] lixus98@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I'm so glad that me deleting my account made them mad, I'm so glad it hurt them

[–] Bobbinapples@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They wouldn't be posting propaganda notices on new reddit's homepage

I want to know more about this, i haven't heard of this yet.

[–] dan@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This appears at the top of the page until you dismiss it (at least for me): https://i.imgur.com/Uo3t2TI.jpg

Here’s what it links to: https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16693988535309

Yesterday they were linking to some much more blatant propaganda, here's the link: https://www.redditinc.com/blog/apifacts

[–] QHC@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I like how it says their "updated" API rate limits but doesn't mention when those rules went into effect or how much warning they gave developers.

Spoiler: the answers are "very recently" and "not even a month".

[–] CaCtUs2003@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I got a bunch of that propaganda the other day even when signing in on old.reddit.

[–] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 40 points 1 year ago

funny how the article does not mention lemmy or kbin, but put in disclosure that their parent company have stakes in reddit. And the best the author can do is

If users have invested significant time in a community, it’s going to be a pain to find something amid the sea of federated upstarts that all claim to be the next best thing.

The mentioned article by Rory Mir actually mentioned lemmy and kbin, cause it's EFF. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/what-reddit-got-wrong

[–] holo_nexus@kbin.social 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What really did it for me was Huffman’s quote on how “Reddit users, communities, and discussions are one of the largest data sets that cannot be given away for free” (summarized quote).

The rumored IPO made an entire corporation do a 180 so ruthlessly and clumsily in a way that I have never seen. It’s destroying itself and rightfully so.

[–] dan@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I honestly can't believe he's being so egotistical about it. Insults mods as "landed gentry" and users' concerns as "noise" - those are literally the people that have created this "valuable dataset" he's coveting so greedily.

[–] minorsecond@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

That's why I nuked all my posts and edited every one of my comments to point to kbin / lemmy before deleting my account. They may revert my changes, but I at least wanted to try to prevent them from benefiting from me in any way.

[–] Bowen@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Fidelity dropping reddit's valuation by ~40% made me go "oh boy that's bad news" when I saw it at the start of the month.

Imagine thinking you're cashing out at 10 billion and now you're only getting 6. The horror.

[–] techno156@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

Except that it already has been. They've already scraped it, and can refer back to either the archives, or just scrape Reddit like they do with other websites if they want to pull more information.

They didn't pay before, why would they bother paying now? Worst case is that they just exclude Reddit (like they did Twitter), and train from other sites instead. It's no great loss.

[–] Johnnypneumoniac@lemmy.one 28 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I want it to hurt them. I want it to fail. But I fear they're doing this now because they've run the numbers and are pretty sure the vocal minority that will leave permanently won't be noticed in a month.

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.de 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Look, I am happy as long as there are enough people on lemmy and kbin to have a fun website here. I can go and visit reddit now and then to see what kind of stuff they're upvoting, that's not a problem. But I want the potentially better alternatives to grow.

[–] rglullis 18 points 1 year ago

That's the spirit. We don't need to complete obliterate reddit to make it the better alternatives viable. We just need to get a minimal mass of people here to keep momentum growing.

I keep thinking of Taleb's essay where he talks about how effective a intolerant minority can be on affecting change in general behavior.

[–] holo_nexus@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly. Reddit itself should be a case study. Lemmy and Kbin offer an opportunity to build something great and learn from what made current Reddit (the good and the terrible) what it is and some things to avoid.

[–] dan@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

The only real problem with Reddit is Reddit Inc.

You're right, Lemmy/etc represent a great opportunity for the users and mods to regain control over the communities they build.

[–] Fu3go@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Regular users don't care about the mod drama. The real backlash will start on July 1st when all the apps stop working.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 9 points 1 year ago

I hope the real thing is more just stop doing their volunteer work. I hope spam and bots run amok, NSFW gets posted everywhere, reports to unanswered and people devolve into screaming matches.

[–] Shhalahr@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When the "vocal minority" are the ones providing quality content and weeding out the crap (i.e. power users and mods), it will take its toll. That minority is critical for making the whole thing work.

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Power users maybe, but the last days have shown how little spine some mods have. The moment Reddit threatens to kick them as a mod they tuck their tail and say "We we're all in until they threatened to take out mod positions. This sub now goes back to normal because there's no world where we get removed as mods."

[–] mrmanager@lemmy.today 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think it's fine. If Reddits All page is anything to go by, I won't miss it.

[–] Mintyytea@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think that is true that most people will not leave reddit. I’m in a subreddit called redditalternatives, and lately not many people are posting in it anymore. It definitely feels like a niche thing, but I think it’s okay. Reddit won’t last forever, and in the meantime, we can be seeing if fediverse is the way forward. This isn’t the first time reddit screwed up and it won’t be the last.

They’re also I think trying to become like tiktok and give lots of forever scrollable content, but I think tiktok/youtube shorts already fill that niche

[–] IncidentalIncidence@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

honestly, part of the reason I made a lemmy account at all is because it feels a little like reddit when I first started using it -- pretty niche, and less toxic and low-quality because of it.

reddit in the last few years has become very toxic. The smaller communities are still okay, but on all of the main subs it's just page after page of the same snarky jokes and tired memes.

so while more growth would be nice, I'm fine if most of reddit stays on reddit in the short-term. the fediverse can be its own thing.

[–] MaggiWuerze@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Lemmy and Lemmymigration subs have like 2k users, which also didn't really change over the last few days. If that is anything to go by I don't expect a digg like exodus anytime soon.

[–] QHC@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Where you on reddit when Digg collapsed? Because it wasn't just a solitary wave. Like human migration around Earth in prehistory, it was multiple waves, each motivated by different reasons.

The important thing is that this wave may have been enough to jumpstart something that can survive on its own. Just need to be ready for the next wave.

[–] ElysiumXII@beehaw.org 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hope Redditors don't cave and cease protesting, clearly it's working if Reddit has to force subs to reopen.

[–] Smellmop@beehaw.org 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I haven't been on since the 10th and I was on it near constantly before that. If reddit sync isn't going to be around 10 days from now then I have no plans to use the site anything like I used to. I literally have no desire to learn their crappy app and lose the curated experience I had set up for myself. The only redditing I plan for the future is googling for specific questions in niche communities.

[–] ElysiumXII@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only redditing I plan for the future is googling for specific questions in niche communities.

Same, though you could possibly find some non Reddit answers to your questions

[–] worfamerryman@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

That’s kinda what I have been doing. Sadly Reddit has Ana amazing database for tech stuff. Luckily I was able to find most of my info in non-Reddit spaces.

[–] TechyDad@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I went back on briefly today for the first time to:

  • Make sure I had read all my replies.

  • Check the Boost subreddit to confirm it was going dark at the end of the month. (There was an update so I was wondering if there was some hope of it saying online.)

  • Check is the two subreddits I actually still care about are closed. (One is. Another isn't.)

I didn't read any posts (except in the Boost subreddit to confirm that it was being shut down) and definitely didn't comment or post anything. After that brief check in, I'm not going back for some time.

[–] kazarnowicz@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Same here. I'm trying to find other ways to support the protests. The community I'm moderating there will migrate over to here (yay!) but I don't expect more than a couple hundred to move. I will keep moderating the community over there (because we're a gay community and a safe space for trans men which is sorely lacking on Reddit), but I've deleted the app from my phone and only use old.reddit.com with uBlock origin to make sure I'm not contributing to Reddit's bottom line.

[–] slartibartfast42@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Reddit’s plans—driven by an urge to make the company more profitable as it inches toward going public

Correction: Reddit's plan is driven by an urge to make the company profitable.

[–] xc2215x@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

Glad it is doing something.

[–] coupland@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It boggles my mind that I read this sentence near the end of the article:

"Force everyone to interact on one app, and it’s easier to fill their feeds with whatever advertising you want."

This isn't a quote from an expert, these are the actual words of the author of the article. "fill their needs.... with advertising."

Nobody has "advertising needs." It shows how fucked-up the internet has become when a journalist writes something like this unironically, without even attempting to explain themselves. They just assume everyone believes they have advertising needs. Unreal.

[–] bebrusas@readit.buzz 6 points 1 year ago

You might wanna reread that quote

[–] Hexarei@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

That says fill their feeds, no? Not needs?

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[–] runarskoll@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not trying to sound like La Palice but in all the articles and posts about this issue, they seem to miss the core of what is making users mad (the mods fight is different, although in the same direction, but solvable).

The thing to the user who's generating content and not only swiping their finger is: they don't want to experience Reddit as other users experience Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or Twitter. They follow issues, not people. If you get in the middle of this relationship between the anonymous user and their discussion on an issue, with your tricks to track them, to show them your promoted content, etc. you'll be told to fuck off.

There's nothing to improve in the Reddit Official App. Everybody hates the principles it's created on, much ahead of the poor design choices and lack of features. That's what's being taken from us, by hijacking third-party apps: the possibility to focus strictly on what's being discussed.

[–] RadioRat@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

[–] Bluebird@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lol I love this shrew, my friends and I loved this video in high school

[–] RadioRat@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THAT SNOUT!

[–] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

For Reddit, it is not even specific people. It is people interested in a topic. So easy to go elsewhere.

[–] sourcerer@fosstodon.org 0 points 1 year ago

"Your API is a hall of shame!"

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