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.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Lemmy is also ad free. Love that.
I'm always astounded at how few people use ad blockers. Fuck the entire ad-based system, it is cancer.
The whole internet can be ad free if you want it to be... even from your phone.
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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 I don't feel like getting up again.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
Right now it looks like it's a decisive victory for spez, contrary to the article's title.
Of course, the long-term consequences aren't clear yet, the moderator exodus might result in the whole platform becoming too low-quality to sustain the user interaction, leading to people moving away from it.
Or it becomes mostly unmoderated, near a major election, at the same time as twitter turns into disinfo central.
This will happen no matter what.
Depends, on what you call winning.
Sure, he will get his way. He will make his changes.
But- I do believe the original goals were profit-motivated.
I'd be willing to bet- the mass exodus of users, is going to hamper his plans pretty significantly.
I think we're gonna see another huge blow to Reddit in a few days when all the third-party apps go permanently offline. I'll bet that a lot of people who haven't been paying attention so far are definitely going to start having something to say about it very soon.
Maybe, I'm certainly in that camp. Once RIF stops working I'll stop using Reddit. I don't know that there are a lot of people like me though (and the ones that are are probably here already).
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I’ll bet that a lot of people who haven’t been paying attention
At least Apollo put up a huge honking alert dialog about the situation, it was impossible to miss.
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Sure, and Digg got its way with the redesign back in the day.
Back then, there was an easy and viable alternative. Lemmy, sadly, is neither of those two.
I, for one, just signed up on this website specifically so I can leave reddit
Why isn't Lemmy viable?
Not enough people here (it's a network effect) and it's way too complex to sign up.
My signup process was like this:
- After going through the list of servers, I had to pick one of them. As someone who went through that whole situation with XMPP, I know that this alone is enough to make most people turn away.
- Then I picked beehaw, because most of the communities I wanted to join were there. The signup form turned out to be an application form. I spent about an hour mulling over what to write there.
- Since the page told me that if I didn't hear anything back after 24h, I could consider my application rejected, I wrote another account application at feddit.de after waiting for about 48h.
- The feddit.de account was approved, but I only noticed by my login working a few days later. I didn't get any notification. That's what I'm using right now.
- After more than a week, I got an email that my beehaw application was accepted.
I don't know anybody with even half as much patience as myself. Every single step on this way would have been a dealbreaker for a regular person by itself. Creating an account on reddit takes a minute, not a procedure of several days.
Also keep in mind that most people don't understand what federation means in the first place.
My experience signing up involved no pain at all and I personally liked having my application screened. I had access within an hour or two, it wasn't a complicated process and I chose beehaw because of it's community
It seems pretty easy to understand signing up, from my perspective. The hard part is understanding how everything is connected
My exact feels. I had never heard of the fediverse or whatever, and still don’t even know if I spelled it right lol.
But I just picked the first server that had a good amount of people on it, off a recommended list, and it’s been fine.
To sign up I had to answer 3 super simple subjective questions. Took 2 mins. Had to wait to get approved, but in the meantime I could still browse so it really didn’t matter.
To me, the hard part was learning lemmy/kbin/beehaw etc existed.
All of this is fairly reasonable for the kind of project it is. Sounds like you and those users don't understand what signing up at any site really means and you've been so separated by the front end, you be have no ability to show grace when basically using a website for free hosted and manages by free people what takes money donated by others?
Why is this anyone else's fault but you? You've gotten spoiled. Maybe everything isn't for you if you cannot even do the bare minimum to participate?
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It looks like it is going to be a pyrrhic victory for Spez. You're right in that we don't know the knock-on effects of this decision, including if Reddit can get long time users to jump to the official app and if moderators will continue volunteering time.
I suspect a lot of subs are now going to create contingency plans for leaving Reddit, even if they don't implement them.
The time frame up to the IPO (I don't know how that timing works) seems to be what is critical. Right now Reddit has been unprofitable. The CEO took on massive new levels of expenses via staffing with no real plan (or it didn't work?) for how to pay for those expenses. This bad faith "negotiation" on API seems aimed at... I guess trading 3rd party utility and to some extent the community for the ability to sell data to AI industry?
I guess we will see but pick a time frame and none of it looks good for Reddit.
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This article has so many inaccuracies… I haven’t talked with a single person that thinks Reddit shouldn’t charge for api access. And the final comment about being legally obligated to pursue profit is just factually incorrect. https://legislate.ai/blog/does-the-law-require-public-companies-to-maximise-shareholder-value
You can find plenty of other sources just like that one saying the same thing. I’m pretty sick of this myth, because it gives all these companies a bogeyman to hide behind.
This point struck me too:
Reddit is under no obligation to make its API free. But, it seems, the company has overreached in enforcing the new policy. If its target is the largest AI firms, then it should focus on curbing their parasitic proclivities and not going after beloved and useful software its users and moderators depend on.
This is my feeling. I understand that it could cost something. But the eye-watering rates for the small fish and the speed of the extortion is the issue.
Because the point isn't the costs of the API. Reddit wants all its users to go through the official access points, the Reddit app and the redesigned web. This will allow them to hover the maximum data to sell and ensure ads flow.
They should've just been effing upfront about it instead of trying to scapegoat API creators. Did they think users are too dense to understand what they were/are really up to?
Reddit knows the rates it proposed are extortionist. They don't have the nerve to honestly state that 3rd party access will be stopped from July 1 and accept responsibility, so instead they tried to find a way to blame 3rd parties.
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Hrmm, I wonder who would benefit from perpetrating such a myth
Its difficult personally to believe its a myth due to my memory of the Twitter buyout where I recall the main struggle being that the CEOs of Twitter couldn't deny Elon purchasing Twitter due to the threat of lawsuit from their shareholders, and after announcing his plans to purchase Twitter for the inflated price Elon couldn't back out due to the same threat however I am open to the idea that I could of been misled on that situation.
As for the why of a myth like that circulating I doubt its due to malice and more due to misunderstanding as Ive always understood that any wording made on a legal case could be used as precedent. It could also fit well with people rationalizing why companies seek record profits while underpaying workers for their labor.
If anyone could clarify the Twitter situation without sucking off elon it would be appreciated
The rule is that a corporation is primarily organized for the benefit of shareholders, but it's not exclusively organized for only that purpose, and the corporation has no obligation to maximize the benefit for shareholders today versus tomorrow, in cash versus in future equity, in certain profit versus uncertain risks, etc. So the company can choose to pay out dividends to shareholders, or reinvest profits back into the company. It can give money to charity to improve public goodwill, and it can give bonuses to non-shareholder employees to keep things running smoothly, and shareholders can't sue that their money is going to non-shareholders.
Its difficult personally to believe its a myth due to my memory of the Twitter buyout where I recall the main struggle being that the CEOs of Twitter couldn’t deny Elon purchasing Twitter due to the threat of lawsuit from their shareholders,
The article actually talks about that specific scenario, in the Revlon case. If a company is going private and buying out its shareholders, then there's not an ongoing set of broad interests to balance. The shareholders are being forced to give up their shares in exchange for cash, so if that transaction is going to go through, the corporation has an obligation to maximize the price for those shareholders. There's no today versus tomorrow, dividend versus reinvestment, etc., because that one transaction distills everything down into money for shares.
With the Twitter case, it's a bit in between the two: were the Twitter shareholders better off between taking the cash for shares today, or declining the cash to keep the company and see if that is better for them in the long term? The directors were obligated to negotiate a deal and submit that deal to a shareholder vote. So if the shareholders decide "hey this is a good deal for us," then that pretty much simplifies the question into a clear answer, rather than a complicated set of countervailing interests of uncertain weight.
I didn't originally think that reddit shouldn't charge at all for API access, but after spez's recent interviews I wouldn't go back to the site without a promise that API access will be free forever. Is that reasonable? No, but fuck spez.
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Fuck u/spez
(That was missing from this post.)
They did say he's "the Kmart version of Elon Musk" which I thought was quite funny.
wish.com version, of elon musk!
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Reddit ceo Steve Huffman is an idiot, and also a massive prick.
I do fee so much better now that reddit is dead to me. I check lemmy few times a week.
Feels like Spez won't be taking this one to the chin. Let's just see how deep the ship will sink with its captain.
I don’t think the ship is doomed yet but they’re definitely in ‘what is that ominous noise coming from the bilge’ territory. To carry on the analogy they’ll plug the leaks as best they can and try and make it to the safe harbour of the IPO (where she can sink at her mooring for all Spez cares) which they could still well do, but it’s also likely the captain and his officers being half-baked sons of lubberly farts will smash into several reefs on the way and sink their already damaged vessel.
I mean, Digg is still around. It didn't go under, it just lost a huge chunk of users, which is Reddit's most likely fate.
I think that is what counts as sinking for a large social media site nowadays. They’re technically still alive but they’re empty husks of their former selves and will never return to their heydays.
Judging by the recent less big brand advertising, I think he was trying to shore up the IPO but failed. At the very least Reddit is still alive but it's going to be valued less.
Remember the house always wins. We can play at our casinos today thanks to fediverse.
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