I can see a lot of people moving to Lemmy, just because the other alternative that's popping off (Tildes) is a far more serious discussion-driven site.
That post seems to be missing.
bionicjoey 35 points 3 years ago
Yeah from what I've seen, migrating to tildes is a bit like migrating to hackernews. In theory it's a Reddit clone, but the purpose of the site is so different from how Reddit has been used that it's not really a substitute.
cityboundforest 13 points 3 years ago
It does require an invite, although us over at Beehaw moved over from Tildes.
Mog_fanatic 1 point 3 years ago
From what I've heard, it needs an invite right now only as they are still kinda dealing with startup issues and trying to slow the migration a little to handle it. I don't believe that's a permanent thing but I don't know for sure
mobyduck648 11 points 3 years ago
Yeah I like HN but it's too niche for what this place and others are trying to be. I've used it a while but I don't think it's particularly relevant to people outside of the tech industry or at least broader STEM interest even though other things are discussed there from time to time.
PorkrollPosadist 14 points 3 years ago
As somebody who's generally interested in science and technology, HN also sufferers from terminal libertarian VC-brain. It's a club for wannabe founders of unicorn tech companies who view themselves as enlightened ubermench. This doesn't always bubble to the surface, but at times of controversy it is quite glaring. Most recently, when the founder of CashApp got murdered they were practically calling to liquidate the homeless, even though the incident - predictably - was the result of a personal dispute with somebody he knew.
Even if the subject matter scratches an itch, the community is not for me.
HeartyBeast 29 points 3 years ago
Kbin is interesting too. I'm using it now. Nice UI and federates with Lemmy, of course
GiantPacificOctopus 14 points 3 years ago
Excuse my newness - how does one go about federating Kbin with lemmy? I like both, and I’ve figured out federating within lemmy, but getting kbin looped in is stumping me
noodlejetski 15 points 3 years ago
you can subscribe to kbin's communities with your Lemmy account the same way you can subscribe to another Lemmy instance's ones.
PorkrollPosadist 3 points 3 years ago
They all share an underlying protocol, ActivityPub, for sharing content between instances.
socsa 22 points 3 years ago
I definitely get the sense that spez is just going to nuke these mods until they get compliant ones in there. It's going to end up being a bloodbath, and I think it perfectly fits with his weird fantasy of being a post-collapse tyrant.
imkmiaw 85 points 3 years ago
I honestly think more subs need to do an indefinite shut down.
If it's only for 48 hours Reddit can just wait it out, and if not a lot of subs join in on the indefinite shut down they can just replace the mods for new ones.
However, in my opinion, the buggest change will come June 30th when 3rd party apps shut down since that's when users will actualy stop using Reddit.
Let's hope it's enough users to make a change. I myself will be deleting everything and my account on June 30th. Let's hope something changes.
rimlogger 19 points 3 years ago
An indefinite shutdown would not work - the moderators of the subs who perform them will be kicked out and be replaced by people who want to keep the subs in operation. Plus, it's a disservice to people who do use Reddit as a resource for work or otherwise. I think a 48 hour protest is reasonable, but beyond that, there's not a whole lot you can do.
wiredfire 20 points 3 years ago
it’s a disservice to people who do use Reddit as a resource for work or otherwise
While true, between this and the Twitter fallout I’m hoping more people are seeing the folly of making dependencies of centralised services that they do not own and have zero sway over management decisions of.
There were many people pleading with folk to stay on Twitter because of the communities they had built or the activist work they had been achieving.. but that was all built on a house of cards.
Now is the time to do the work to shift away from depending on platforms that don’t care about their users real needs & embrace a better way of being!
I appreciate I’m likely preaching to the choir here 😂
dogmuffins 11 points 3 years ago
I appreciate I’m likely preaching to the choir here
Yeah but it amazes me how many people just don't get it. People on reddit looking for an alternative... "let's go to lemmy", "nah there's lefty weirdos", "ok let's go to ", "ok this is gonna work out great!"
Cheander 5 points 3 years ago
I’ve been trying to constantly educate others about the importance of shifting to de-centralized platforms. That’s the conversation that needs to be happing. Both online and IRL.
I’m new to Lemmy but started using Mastodon 3 years ago. Been exciting to see it explode since the enshitification of Twitter and really hoping to see the same thing here.
skater 2 points 3 years ago
I run a site for owners of a very specific model of RV, of which they only made less than 2,000, and who knows how many are still on the road (they ended production in 2000).
There's also a Facebook group. The Facebook group is good for general conversation - hey, I'll be in Colorado, anyone near there? - but for technical issues, it's frustrating, because if someone does answer the question, it's difficult to find in the future. And Facebook's algorithms mean that the topics aren't presented in time order or anything like that, so you can easily miss a post that has something important to you but isn't a major discussion topic.
And then, it's all controlled by a company, so if Facebook decides to clean up old stuff tomorrow, there's nothing we can do. "But it's so hard to use the forum!" because I have self registration turned off and you have to email me for an account (spammers). Meanwhile the Facebook group gets t-shirt spammers about twice a month.
It drives me nuts.
foggenbooty 1 point 3 years ago
Lemmy and personal forums have a similar issue though. Just like users were previously at the whim of the large company to provide service, now they rely on you. What if you were to get board of running the forum or (however terrible) something were to happen to you?
Now the site and all of it's content is lost for the users permanently. Lemmy instances also have this problem. They rely entirely on a single administrator, (or small group of them). In the Web1.0 days this wasn't such a large issue, because websites were most often read-only for content consumption and web forums were small and populated by niche tech savvy people. These days however, the users create a lot of the content that is hosted and they naturally expect it to persist.
Lemmy needs some way of allowing users to port their profile and content from one instance to another, and a redundancy system where instances can partner with others to host data for redundancy purposes, or something to that effect. Maybe users pay a small hosting fee for their own content and it's not tied to an instance? Though I'm not sure how that would work, I'm just spitballing.
There's a lot of problems to solve, and this fediverse is a very interesting idea, but it's not perfect and introduces a lot of questions. I don't want perfect to be the enemy of good, but I'm not sure entrusting the longevity of the content to admins of a particular server is the best plan.
pumpkin 20 points 3 years ago
To some degree, you're right, reddit probably won't change regardless of what mods do. If they really are feeling the blackout, as you'd say they'll probably just replace the moderators and open the community back up, rather than reverse their decision.
However, I feel like it's reddit doing the disservice to their users, not mods who are taking action by protesting. Ultimately, and if reddit do replace the mods and try and continue as normal, then it sends a stronger message to the community that reddit doesn't care about or respect them and it's not a not a good place to continue being.
In the dynamic between reddit the company running the site and the users, there is limited power users have against reddit which holds a lot of power, but protesting like what's happening now one of the main tools users have.
Fluffysquash 6 points 3 years ago
I’m also dubious of how possible it is to replace moderators outright. These are all individual communities with at least somewhat separate tools of moderation let alone unique practices that have made the community what it is. Does videos still feel like videos with an entire different moderation team? Maybe, but I bet the niche crochet community won’t.
mobyduck648 84 points 3 years ago
Good on the mod team of /r/videos! It must have been a difficult decision to walk away from a 26M+ sized community but I think it's definitely better to scuttle the ship and go down with it than capitulate at this point. This is a bold choice that's left Reddit between a rock and a hard place.
HandOfKarma 68 points 3 years ago
This is huge news! Hopefully other gigantic subreddits will follow suit.
sup 32 points 3 years ago
Yup this is massive and it's not a niche subreddit. That means, most likely, more will follow. Sure, reddit will probably force it back online with new mods or whatever, but THIS is how you make a statement. Hat's off r/videos!
Senseibull 8 points 3 years ago
Damage is done, there’s no coming back for reddit. Spez showed his true hand and how he doesn’t care and is willing to lie to us all for the sake of profit.
Opensource for the win
Federated sites for the win
We don’t need a for profit company to provide what reddit provided.
Even if they backtracked, I sorely hope no one believes them and goes back.
It’s not just about the API to me, reddit became toxic and there’s government psy ops all over it using botnets
setsneedtofeed 4 points 3 years ago
Never underestimate people. One app, ReddReader, got the exemption that allows it to live for now and people are already getting hyped about switching to it. Time is a flat circle.
Senseibull 5 points 3 years ago
Is that due to accessibility? I can see it’s for android, but apollo was the pinnacle of the reddit app space so it’s a substandard experience, plus if the power users go and some subreddits stay dark, damage is still done.
RagingNerdoholic 3 points 3 years ago
Damage is done, there’s no coming back for reddit.
I don't know what reddit's corporate structure is, but if it's possible to shitcan spez and give up on the IPO, that's the only way I can see it making a comeback at this point. Other than that, yeah, the reddit we knew and loved is dead.
Cube6392 39 points 3 years ago
Force their hand. Reddit needs to learn their actions have consequences. They need to experience firsthand how much higher their operating cost will be if they can no longer rely on free labor for their site to be engaging. They need to learn that their goal of moving to a more ad supported model won't work if they don't have ads to show people.
Also on reflection. I don't think I once saw an ad on Reddit I found interesting or tempting. I get worthwhile ads on Instagram all the time. Maybe reddit needs to reevaluate their marketing departments insights into their userbase instead of rolling out a paid API scheme
Stormyfemme 15 points 3 years ago
There's absolutely no way they won't find suckers willing to mod a megasub for free.
Inspectigator 15 points 3 years ago
You know, that's a good point. Facebook may be littered with ads, but at least they are relevant to my lifestyle. My wife has purchased a fair few things she saw from Facebook ads. Reddit ads pretty much are universally uninteresting garbage.
setsneedtofeed 3 points 3 years ago
Inspectigator: He gets us.
IrritableOcelot 5 points 3 years ago
The cynical side of me says that's because they dont collect as much personal data as FB, or aren't as good at extrapolating invasive details from it...
GraceGH 7 points 3 years ago
That's what everyone liked about reddit though! That you could be relatively anonymous, I mean. Of course, this had some pretty significant drawbacks too, which is why there's so much unbridled hate speech going on there.
TheButtonJustSpins 2 points 3 years ago
100% agreed on the quality of ads. I've even ordered a few things off Instagram ads. Reddit? Nah, always crap. And I hate that they made the ads look like normal posts. That's when I started hating them.
Hyperz 21 points 3 years ago
I can't think of a better way to put more gasoline on the fire. If it happens I hope the users revolt and completely shit up any sub where they pull this stunt. Let's see how long those new mods last then, and how many advertisers they lose.
SturgiesYrFase 8 points 3 years ago
Sooooo...1000 days of baby shark? Nothing but baby shark, 1m posts a day.
falcon 12 points 3 years ago
With a subreddit that popular, I wonder if doing that will just turn it into another Digg/HD-DVD situation. Protest posts inundating the subreddit until it's essentially shut down again.
setsneedtofeed 4 points 3 years ago
Some of the more wussy mods have already said that if they protest longer than two days, they’ll be removed.
Those mods therefore intend to keep their position and the protest is only a show. Unless mods are willing to actually leave Reddit, they have no leverage.
satouru 41 points 3 years ago
I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going to happen too.
They’ll kick dissident mods out, install their own, and just reopen the subs like nothing happened. There’s precedent of that happening I believe (although for much more reasonable reasons, like mods going rogue for stupid or anti-free speech stuff).
And it’s going to be an absolute shitshow. I feel sad, but I also kind of love it. You reap what you sow, I guess.
aaronbieber 29 points 3 years ago
If they force a reopen, we should all get ready to post Never Gonna Give You Up music videos all day long.
satouru 11 points 3 years ago
Or a certain four-letter word starting with F followed by a famous Reddit administrator’s handle…
But yeah. My Reddit account is pretty much worthless now, so might as well express my discontent, right?
GraceGH 28 points 3 years ago
Someone on the fediverse (might be here?) asked "Do you want Lemmy to succeed or do you just want reddit to burn?"
I've landed on "both, for independant reasons." Its been high time reddit's corporate greed gets checked, and what a better way to go than an icarus flight?
satouru 19 points 3 years ago
I agree!
I want Reddit to fail because they overestimate their value and think that their software is why Reddit is popular (even though, let’s face it, the software was absolute garbage during the time where Reddit became popular, and is still is, albeit for different reasons).
I want the Fediverse (and not specifically Lemmy or Beehaw, although I’m in love with both at the moment) to succeed because I think that the idea behind it gives the communities that it hosts total control about what they want to do, regardless on the people that hosts them.
So it’s not really that different, as it all boils down to the same point: the importance of communities is paramount, and the tools that are given for that are important but also mere accessories. Well, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but I think that it gets the general idea.
satouru 15 points 3 years ago
But here’s the thing: are you going to miss Reddit or the communities that they allowed you to partake in?
Because there’s no reason to miss the former - and you’ll miss the latter either way because a lot of people are going to just stop using Reddit after the changes come into effect anyway, so the community will certainly change.
I think that this move made most of us lose something. Which is certainly sad, but we’ll lose it either way, so might as well get rid of the platform they hurt us, right?
shanghaibebop 4 points 3 years ago
Call me paranoid, but imo, Reddit might just install ML based mods. I’ve seen quite some progress from these tools recently and they might pull it off.
What that will do to the emergent culture of each sub will be a big unknown.
ghost_of_spez 14 points 3 years ago
They can't force free moderations with their staff. This may be the end of Reddit.
Kaldo 6 points 3 years ago
I'd kinda love to see that, it'd be huge. Could even get some of the larger sub mods to maybe open kbin or lemmy instances instead? I'd be great to have their motivation and talent in a community not dependent on reddit's good will.
runarskoll 56 points 3 years ago
For me it's a double sided problem. Even if reddit solves the moderation tools problem which user the api (and they will because those are the tools of the free labor they explore) there will be still the problem with the user experience. Even if subreddits reopen I will never use the official reddit app, the same way I refuse to use the official twitter app since apps like Falcon Pro, Flamingo or Talon stopped working.
Reddit CEO can bargain the deal he wants that I don't care anymore. For me reddit is now only a repository where I will continue to search specific information. It is no more a place where I want to participate in online communities.
heartburn 32 points 3 years ago
That was my line of thought as well, however...
Reddit will stop being a good information repo very quickly as users who actually know what they're talking about leave and the information stops being up to date. The trend of adding "reddit" to every google search will die out soon.
lawliot 17 points 3 years ago
I already edited my reddit submissions to something along the lines of "this has been deleted in protest against API..." using PowerDeleteSuite. Some of my past comments has useful information in them and people might end up there via google. I'm taking my data with me when I walk out.
ReversalHatchery 5 points 3 years ago
I've read this from someone on reddit a few days ago, but I think it's true: reddit-archive like read-only lemmy instances should be set up. The data is available, see the-eye.eu/redarcs
r/DataHoarder also has some more info on this with tooling in a pinned post. They didn't private the sub, it's only read-only so it's still readable
learning2Draw 2 points 3 years ago
Far too late for that
Domiku 18 points 3 years ago
Yeah - the AMA with spez was the writing on the wall. No matter what/how users protest, they can only delay the inevitable changes. I deleted my 10+ year old account and cut my losses. The last thing I want in my social media is platform drama.
howdy 53 points 3 years ago
Absolutely incredible to see. Very happy that one of biggest subs called reddits bluff. Which I believe is where we are. Reddit thinks the users that actually care about 3rd party apps will move on at this point and reddit will have the everyone else switch to their apps with no more of a thought than swiping up to the next tik tok video. I'm deleting my last account on Reddit now in solidarity. Lemmy and the fediverse feels nice. I am in near complete control of my data running my own instance while still being able to interact with literally everyone I want and don't want. My ublock isn't blocking a single thing, no trackers, no more being a commodity. Already fine communities are springing up with thoughtful moderation, rules and inclusivity.
I am super excited about what is happening here.
BigVault 23 points 3 years ago
As someone who used to love r/selfhosted and all the stuff posted on there I'll have a look at hosting my own instance when I get the time to figure out how it all works.
I didn't even think about the privacy/tracking aspect. My Pihole isn't blocking anything and my Ublock isn't blocking anything. This is quite refreshing to see.
howdy 6 points 3 years ago
I have a pihole as well... So I totally get that. Getting Lemmy going wasn't terrible but the documentation has a lot of assumptions and lack of detail. Do the Ansible setup if you decide to do it. It did work and very easily however now I am having to figure out additional configuration now. I tried the manually docker install method and couldn't ever get it working but only tried a few hours.
Have any questions I'll try to help.
ghostalmedia 38 points 3 years ago
The tricky thing will be the small niche communities that are already hosted on Reddit. For example, there is a group of us dorks who are really into home automation with HomeKit. I'd hate for that small group to splinter into smaller groups that are so small that they're no longer a good source of collective knowledge.
I don't really have a great solve for that problem, but as someone who does experience and service design by trade, I've found this to be a fun puzzle to marinate on over the past few weeks.
psuasno 16 points 3 years ago
That's where most of my devastation lays with all of this. Parting ways with reddit was more and more in the back of my mind steadily over the last few years. I was only holding on due to being active in some of those small, niche communities. I finally deleted my reddit account the other day and have no intention of going back, and I feel horrible about what will happen to those little communities but I cannot continue to support the big, soulless corporation that reddit has been striving to be.
It's going to be a weird and interesting transition period for a part of the online commhnity going forward. We can only hope for the best!
Rat 16 points 3 years ago
Yeah that is a really tricky thing, even if those communities decide to go "we're moving to ______", they will inevitably be leaving behind a lot of their userbase, and be giving up a large amount of SEO and discoverability. The large number of users is what gave reddit its value, so I can only hope that groups that might disperse find a central place again. I definitely don't envy the position this leaves moderators in rn.
pwnappl 32 points 3 years ago
My big fear is that a lot of niche communities might move to discord, which will really hurt discoverability. One of my favorite things about reddit is that if I am listening to a new band that I like, there's a good chance I can find a subreddit named after them with plenty of fans who are happy to discuss their music.
Being locked behind a discord server is even worse, because it is very difficult to preserve the messages and posts made there.
Rat 28 points 3 years ago
Absolutely - discord is probably one of the worst choices to host a "discussion board" type page for those reasons. They are well on the path of enshittification too with all the bloaty unnecessary features they've added over the years.
Zagaroth 14 points 3 years ago
Agreed. I love Discord for having a hub for friends groups or gaming groups or whatever, it's nice to have everything in one place, but when you want a discoverable forum, discord is not the place. It's a communications hub, not social media.
Cratermaker 13 points 3 years ago
I share your concern, there are so many niche subreddits that are the most active community for the given thing. Lemmy is awesome but it doesn't seem to have that same consolidation power just yet.
closure1170 13 points 3 years ago
I was thinking the exact same thing. My interests are home automation with Home assistant and media management with sonarr/radarr and associated programs. Reddit is such an incredible resource for those communities, it's gonna be hard to replace.
misguidedfunk 11 points 3 years ago
I’d be for starting a community for that here. If it’s well moderated I think word would spread.
talon 15 points 3 years ago
@misguidedfunk @closure1170 As long as it's started on one lemmy/kbin instance, users from any other can join. People using different fediverse tech can also join (hi from mastodon)
skater 2 points 3 years ago
There's a home assistant group on one of the servers, I found it the other day. It doesn't have the traffic of reddit's of course, but it does exist. I'd link it but I don't know how in the app.
closure1170 2 points 3 years ago
Thanks. Just subscribed to one at homeassistant@lemmy.world
lamentforicarus 6 points 3 years ago
It sort of feels like someone should download all of reddit, pull out the actual good information, and discard the rest. That's likely an impossible task though. It would take forever.
surrendertogravity 12 points 3 years ago
you too can download the json archive of Reddit from 2005 through 2022!
But agreed, a more curated version of the archive - or at least a tool to make searching the archive easy - would be super nice to have.
SomeGuyNamedPaul 9 points 3 years ago
It's be a shame if someone used that as the input set for generative AI, set it for "stupid", and then used it to flooded Reddit with bots attached to high karma accounts that the owners no longer give a damn about.
ghostalmedia 3 points 3 years ago
First uploads, The safe, cum box, magic tournament butt cracks, poop knife, banana for scale, and "with rice."
Targox 3 points 3 years ago
Same! 90% of my Reddit time was simply r/homekit and r/Apple . I see that there’s now a Homekit community, !homekit@lemmy.ml it doesn’t really have content yet but we have to start somewhere right?
kalipike 1 point 3 years ago
This is absolutely a concern for me as well. There are plenty of niche communities of which I am a part on Reddit and I hope they don't splinter out. We will see what happens! Guess it's hold your breath and explore alternatives (hence me finding Lemmy).
kherge 49 points 3 years ago
I appreciate the effort, but since this is one of the main subreddits the Reddit admins will simply purge these subreddits of their mods, install new ones, and reopen it (they’ve already done something like this before).
The real question is how well will the sub operate then? I imagine not very well since all of the experienced mods and their tools are gone.
LimitedBrain 24 points 3 years ago
This is easy to do for one subreddit. And it's a large one. Would easily need 10+ mods to keep it running. But if a few of these large subreddits revolt, I don't think reddit can simply replace them all.
Not only that but I think replacing the entire mod team would cause a revolt anyways. Tensions are extremely high
setsneedtofeed 7 points 3 years ago
I wonder if Reddit might just end up like YouTube: mostly relying on automated content moderation bots, and the human review being a big pool of low paid people who aren’t assigned to specific subs who just do quick checklist reviews.
It’s gonna be great.
Silverhand 3 points 3 years ago
I can see that happening, they're definitely not going to pay for all the mods they'd need to replace current ones. Sounds like that would absolutely kill a lot of smaller communities, but I doubt they care.
bionicjoey 21 points 3 years ago
Yeah I don't imagine that Reddit has a deep bench of people who have the skills needed to moderate a sub with millions of users and are willing to do it for free
bionicjoey 14 points 3 years ago
Spez just admitted they aren't profitable. I can't imagine they will pay new people when they could have paid the old mods
setsneedtofeed 3 points 3 years ago
Unless he was lying about profits in some half baked attempt to look like the underdog against the big mean apps.
terribleplan 48 points 3 years ago
indefinitely != permanently
fernandofig 28 points 3 years ago
It's not pedantic. There IS a difference, and it's relevant in this case.
Hamartiogonic 7 points 3 years ago
The way I see it:
Indefinite = Not defined. Could be short, long, infinite or something in between.
Infinite = Clearly defined to never end.
dogmuffins 2 points 3 years ago
Well yeah but in this case, won't reddit just replace the mods ?
shakesbeare 1 point 3 years ago
Yea, probably. Especially for the bigger subreddits. But something like most of the entire website is going to experience suddenly shifting to a moderation force with little to no experience as Reddit just tries to get things online again. If we all thought moderation was a shitshow now...
blitzen 46 points 3 years ago
I’d like to see the big subs each create an official mastodon account for the sole purpose of announcing trustworthy information. One the subs come back up, especially if it’s earlier than expected, how will we know if they were taken over by the admins?
learning2Draw 1 point 3 years ago
Well since the admins can't control their discords too, I would assume there would be a very quick backlash there and then spread literally everywhere
SmugBedBug 46 points 3 years ago
Wow! I didn't expect something like this from such a big subreddit. I expect the admins will just take it over though.
Depending on how many other subreddits do this, they won't be able to run all of them on their own.
bionicjoey 29 points 3 years ago
Admins may take it over, but a big default sub like that has a big moderation team, and they are all volunteers. I expect the admins won't be able to find suitable replacements to match the level of free labour they've been getting
SkepticElliptic 12 points 3 years ago
I have long suspected that many moderators are actually paid by third parties with their own interests. I wouldn't be surprised if reddit was able to sell mod positions or entire subs outright to corporate or political actors.
Senseibull 2 points 3 years ago
Exactly
CheshireSnake 11 points 3 years ago
Gonna be a spam fest there for a while if they replace the present mods to open the sub forcibly.
makingStuffForFun 29 points 3 years ago
The admins will take over all the high profile subs. You know it
ulu_mulu 13 points 3 years ago
Do they have the manpower to manage them tho?
This protest is supported by the overwhelming majority of reddit users, it's not just mods decision, if they replaced the mods of "my" subs, I wouldn't be happy at all about it.
If admins replace mods, all user should start spamming those subs with all the worse things they can think of, see how well they deal with it lol.
socsa 10 points 3 years ago
Nah, they will just nuke mods until the top mod pledges compliance. There are plenty of people out there looking to get drunk on a small amount of power.
In practice, what will happen is that a lot of right wing trolls and provocateurs are going to jump into the top mod spots on big subs.
net00 5 points 3 years ago
path: 0 45170 45230 49349, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
Let them take over lol, see how well they manage actually working on their communities for a change :think_bread:
flibbertigibbet 18 points 3 years ago
Sure, but from what the mods have been saying in the AMA, Reddit neither has the staff nor the expertise to take over one let alone many subreddits.
patchymoose 8 points 3 years ago
And once they do that, there will be very little difference between Reddit and every other social media site. They'll be shooting themselves in the foot.
ganbaro 5 points 3 years ago
Maybe many subs will just fizzle out into irrelevance once power users moved away and NSFW got blocked. Then they can have their IPO of platform in decline
All the users posting one-liners or reposting Memes at aww,videos,soccer and other large subs are not what makes Reddit great. Its OC content going viral on large subs and the deduction of mods and some power users on small subs
bashrc 1 point 3 years ago
I've seen this floated a few times, and this is a genuine question, how would Reddit do this? I don't really understand how they could force a community open by removing mods and adding new ones - what rules are they breaking by closing the subreddit?
alternativeninja 51 points 3 years ago
I think the neat thing is while you're on KBin, I'm on Lemmy and we can still interact. I just wish it was easer to understand for the non tech savvy people. It's going to make adoption by the mainstream hard
Jarmo 2 points 3 years ago
In my opinion having mainstream adoption is a double edged sword. It’s nice to have that larger user base, but at the same time most subreddits went to crap when they became default subs. I’ll never forget starting out my career r/personalfinance was not a default sub and I could get very insightful specific advice from people who really seemed to understand what they were talking about. Flash forward and it became a default sub. Now it’s an echo chamber and borderline circlejerk sub. It feels like a parody of what it used to be.
So far I don’t miss that or mind the smaller feel here.
Spaghetti_Hitchens 14 points 3 years ago
Me too! I had no idea this even existed before Reddit's shenanigans.
setsneedtofeed 11 points 3 years ago
After the AMA I feel like the tone of the shutdowns shifted from a protest hoping to change policy, to mods announcing they were done with Reddit and trying to do as much damage as possible on the way out.
There has been way more talk of indefinite shutdowns. Reddit will obviously reopen those places with their own hired goons, but the damage will be done at that point.
flying_gerbil 36 points 3 years ago
How long before reddit replaces the mods and reopens it? I give it a day or two after the 48 hour blackout
CobraChicken 13 points 3 years ago
I wish the blackout was different.
Keep all the subs open, but suspend all but the sitewide rules.
All the subreddits would've been filled with off topic content, spam and advertising. It would've been far more annoying to the average user.
LetterboxPancake 13 points 3 years ago
Possible, but I doubt they'll find enough that can keep the quality. Videos isn't the only main sub.
acmon 11 points 3 years ago
Hopefully other subreddits follow suit and help push people out to new sites. Too much is held by the big corporations, love the idea of more options and a wider source to take from rather than just a handful of micromanaged sources.
LemmyAtem 6 points 3 years ago
I'm really using this as an excuse to be more active again. I used to engage with Reddit ALL THE TIME in college. It was so fun to just comment back and forth and talk to people. I haven't done that in ages, and even though I feel like I have nothing all that worthwhile to post, I'll post anyway. Nobody is going to discuss content that isn't there!
AllBetsAreOff 34 points 3 years ago
Man it's just so wild to watch what's going on over there right now. Even when subreddits come back after a couple days it may not matter if bot-assisted becomes impossible over there in the long run.
If reddit backs off enough to save the accessibility and moderation issues, I hope enough people still leave to help create a strong alternate ecosystem.
If alternatives like this site had existed through previous years, I don't think Reddit could have survived a lot of its previous mistakes.
ajimix 12 points 3 years ago
If alternatives like this site had existed through previous years, I don’t think Reddit could have survived a lot of its previous mistakes.
Lemmy exists at least since 2020, when I registered to the platform. That is 3 years ago and it hasn’t had much of activity until the Reddit drama started recently
Cheander 11 points 3 years ago
What’s happened with Twitter and now Reddit is hopefully enough to make people realize the pitfalls of corporate-owned, centralized social media. Mastodon has really taken off with some major news outlets now posting on there. I could see the same happening with Lemmy now.
lowleveldata 11 points 3 years ago
If reddit backs off enough
They might do that, but for how long? I can only see them gravitated toward doing the same thing in more subtle ways if that's what earns them the most money.
AllBetsAreOff 8 points 3 years ago
Yeah I mean that's a fair point. Their motivations seem pretty clear. I just know that getting people to migrate, especially non-technical people, is hard. So I can see how many communities might end of staying there if it is at all viable.
saigot 31 points 3 years ago
I think there may not be enough competent volunteer mods to take it over. They could replace them with paid reddit employees like other big platforms but that's gonna cost them more than the 20mil a year they apparently think 3rd party apps are costing them.
cheerytext1981 9 points 3 years ago
How soon is the IPO? New mods on the biggest subreddits would make those subs horrible for a long time while they figure out how to moderate it properly. Even when mods do their regular work, regular folks can get very heated about mod behaviour. Can you imagine that happening across all major subreddits, all at once?
Senseibull 6 points 3 years ago
It doesn’t have a hard date yet and they will likely wait till the economy is generally better, likely when the nasdaq hits a new high so they can float for the highest price per share
eight_byte 21 points 3 years ago
In case Reddit admins will take over those big subs. I wonder what would happen if users just flood them with spam and inappropriate content.
FriendlyFusion 1 point 3 years ago
Totally. They already aren’t turning a profit. In their minds they have to protect the advertising revenue at all cost.
jack 34 points 3 years ago
I think any and all subreddits should go this way.
Reddit is only popular because of the users. We create the content. Yes, a lot of posts on the website are external links but all discussions are generated and concluded by us, the users.
Shutting subs down for 1-2 days and going back to normal is not going to have much of an impact. It's akin to a server blip. If subs shut down indefinitely then reddit has a real problem. 'Normal' users will start to take notice, whereas they currently might not be paying much attention. These subs should go the other route. Shut down and promote alternatives (such as lemmy!) to divert traffic away from reddit.
Pigboy Spez talked about not being profitable. No shit, you dick. This is how you become even less profitable, by pissing off the entire user base.
ulu_mulu 16 points 3 years ago
It's also the mods, working for free while other platforms spend millions on moderation.
I remember several years ago there was another exodus towards Voat, it didn't last long because that place was an unmoderated mess, 99% was spam, unbearable, people got back to reddit really quick and Voat shutdown a few years later.
I really don't understand how spez cannot realize this, piss off all the mods (on top of users) and you're doomed because you have nothing to moderate the platform anymore, see how your investors can be happy about that.
ramenbellic 11 points 3 years ago
Wasn't the exodus to Voat largely due to Reddit cracking down on a few hate speech subs? Really narrow segment of the user base moving to other platforms vs. what's happening today.
ulu_mulu 10 points 3 years ago
Yes but my point is that lack of moderation is devastating for these platforms, even to those thinking they don't need it.
People who left reddit for voat had even more reasons to stay there because of voat's explicit policy of not moderating anything, yet they didn't and the platform died (literally).
That's why I said I don't get what spez is thinking, since reddit mods are not paid for it, take mods away and reddit dies, regardless of how many people are currently moving away from it (that I believe are still a minority of the entire reddit userbase, many of them probably don't even know what's happening).
lemmein 3 points 3 years ago
Honestly I'm waiting for the day when AI takes care of the moderation. No more biased mods/government actors/who knows what kind of people run the very big subs that manipulate people and gaslight them.
TempleSquare 4 points 3 years ago
Yeah. They shut down subs like fatpeoplehate. So those are the type of people who went to voat.
MaajiB 13 points 3 years ago
the 1-2 day blackout is a shot across the bow. a lot of subs have committed to going private indefinitely on 6/30, I know there's at least some that are planning on that as well, but haven't gone public about it.
Running_Out_Of_Ideas 23 points 3 years ago
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Cory Doctorow is a got-dang witch. This was about Tiktok and it was written in January. Literally describing the process to a T.
iamstevenrivers 6 points 3 years ago
Damn, that's a loooong read. Worth it, but long.
unfazedbeaver 1 point 3 years ago
Its a useful concept for explaining life, the universe, and everything.
That and the number 42 :P
girlfreddy 2 points 3 years ago
Cory Doctorow will always be my hero.
Moneymunkie 31 points 3 years ago
Good god I knew it wasn't going to go well but I didn't think they'd crash and burn it THIS bad.
The bar was on the floor and they still managed to somehow clip underneath it through the floor, end up in some backrooms-esque dimension only to trip on a banana peel and land face first in a pie.
overlordror 13 points 3 years ago
That's inevitably what happens when you get a call from your VC backers asking why you're still bleeding money into a pit instead of milking the community for profit.
Moneymunkie 7 points 3 years ago
But we need the sacrifices else how will line go up? :(
worfamerryman 27 points 3 years ago
What other subs are going private inefinitely?
jherazob 22 points 3 years ago
Here's a dashboard:
SturgiesYrFase 2 points 3 years ago
Beings a tear to the eye doesn't it?
Haunting_Tale_5150 2 points 3 years ago
Woah that list is huge
Aninjanameddaryll 25 points 3 years ago
I took r/edc restricted yesterday, though we are/were tiny. While I still plan to find replacement mods from within the community after reddit goes full dipshit, I'm done ring their work for free, with shit tools, next to zero support, and (worse, imo) taking a lot of flak from admins because of bullshit unrelated to moderation.
I dunno if lemmy is going to become the reddit replacement or not, but I'm done with giving reddit anything at all. Overwrote and deleted everything from my author account that had some decent amount of fiction, and my personal account that had a lot of real stories from my life. That ain't much, but since I've seen my stuff being read on YouTube, and reposted by the copy/paste bots, it's something I guess.
sweetholymosiah 4 points 3 years ago
correction "they" going to...
zinklog 23 points 3 years ago
Wow even if admins take over that subreddit, such a big subreddit will surely create a snowball of many more subreddits doing it.
I don't see reddit ever recovering from this (They'll not die, but things won't be the same)
quantumantics 18 points 3 years ago
@Clbull A highly-upvoted comment suggests moving to Tilde. Is Tilde federated? I can't find anything that indicates it might be.
Rocket 28 points 3 years ago
No, tilde is its own thing. Resembles Reddit in the beginning, promotes a few long and deep conversations instead of a lot and short comments. It’s interesting but their philosophy makes growth really slow (by choice) and the serious nature of most of the threads tends to turn a lot of people off (it’s not very fun most of the time). I like it but it’s not Reddit nor is trying to be.
fernandofig 10 points 3 years ago
More importantly, Tildes is invite-only at the moment (for signups)
grundelgrump 12 points 3 years ago path: 0 55232 55286, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0
distractionfactory 6 points 3 years ago
Having trouble finding information about a reddit alternative called Tilde, it's one of those words that is too open ended. Is this what they're talking about?
ulu_mulu 18 points 3 years ago
There are 5 subs joining that are bigger than r/videos, tho they're not going dark yet: https://reddark.untone.uk/
SturgiesYrFase 2 points 3 years ago
It's good to see so many of the really big subs on there, not just the little ones.
ulu_mulu 2 points 3 years ago
Yes, it's also amazing to see thousands (more than 4000 currently) different communities, with totally different interests, a few even hating each other, being capable of putting aside their personal interests to band together for a common cause.
If governments were capable of doing the same, the world would be a paradise.
SturgiesYrFase 1 point 3 years ago
Call me an Anarcho-Sydicalist, but I feel like governments would still find a way to fuck it up.
autumnplains 16 points 3 years ago
This is such a big win! I really hope that capacity increases on kbin. Perhaps the mods/admins can organise a donation link? I'm sure there are many of us that would be happy to donate to improve server capacity. (Provided it was secure etc etc)
autumnplains 8 points 3 years ago
Rexxit 😂 love it
RuefulSkinkMotel 3 points 3 years ago
Rexxit lol. Works for "they wrecked it" and Brexit.
Hagarashi8 6 points 3 years ago
Well, good luck in finding free labor for it afterwards.
DarkThoughts 12 points 3 years ago
Things would definitely be better overall if more people had a spine to stand by their principles, or have some in the first place.
foopo666 9 points 3 years ago
I'm not super technical but can someone please explain why the third party apps can't just require each user to enter their own oauth token? That way all the API calls get tied to the users instead of the app and there's no cost. Am I misunderstanding something?
rknuu 11 points 3 years ago
It's a good point, and could alleviate things a bit, but its not easy and still would have problems. The root of it is that there's a rate limit for normal accounts in the new data api, so you would quickly get a message saying you've done too much in one minute and basically stop working. This also assumes the app can move over to a user provided authentication within the time window of one month. Given many of the big apps use support servers thar help manage the api calls (such as apollo's), this can be a big ask depending on how it was coded, especially when they didn't need to in the past and have built up around the lack of a need for oath for a decade. There's also an education process to get users to request and wire in the oath (could be done well, but it would be much rougher than today).
Additionally, there is still the censorship of nsfw posts, which enforces a walled garden, so third party apps would always be inferior. This sets a precedent more so than a problem, because next up could be whole subreddits being omitted from the api because of future reason here.
Also there's legal concerns it might bring up like stated by andrew
foopo666 2 points 3 years ago
I agree with all the responses but based on the Apollo post I think the average user was making something like 300 requests per day? Isn't the 100 per minute rate limit more than sufficient for the average user or am I missing something? Either way the timeline, NSFW restriction and everything else is just stupid so I fully agree on that. Was just not getting the pricing part. 😁
andrew 10 points 3 years ago
Apps are registered with a unique key per app, which devs have to get and use. Then, each app authenticates the specific user that is using the app.
Having users provide their own key would probably be considered circumventing the developer terms and open themselves up to a lawsuit
kiwifoxtrot 6 points 3 years ago
Not if the app went open source and each user was working on a dev version of the app.
Rentlar 5 points 3 years ago
RedReader is going to be like this somewhat going forward. Other developers of the app need their own API key, but QuantumBadger's version, the Fdroid and Google Play version will keep the same API key.
doctorzeromd 3 points 3 years ago
Yep, that's possible. An impassibly high barrier of entry for the average user, but technically possible.
doctorzeromd 1 point 3 years ago
I doubt that would be circumventing the developers terms of service since the user becomes the developer in that instance, but each user would need to register for paid API access which 99.9% of people wouldn't do.
Could be totally wrong about the terms, please lmk if I am.
Subito 2 points 3 years ago
You already got a good answer from @andrew@radiation.party
Another way to think of it is: Would Reddit really want to make an API Application Key for each user of their site when the point of the API change in the first place is to make Reddit profitable?
LIke, even if I could build an open source "Reddit App Whatever" from scratch when I got to use it I would need to request an Application Key from reddit.
Read about it here: https://github.com/...
noodlejetski 13 points 3 years ago
Digg exodus, I guess. and, to a smaller extent, the 2015 Blackout.
FIST_FILLET 8 points 3 years ago
LETSGOOOOOOOOO
CookieJarObserver 7 points 3 years ago path: 0 46314, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
Azurestripe 7 points 3 years ago
Good on them; destroying third-party apps is absolutely disgraceful from Reddit.
collegefurtrader 6 points 3 years ago
I closed r/skookum early, just couldn’t take the suspense anymore. New Skookum: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/33682
LongtimeLurker1999 4 points 3 years ago
I never really checked that sub out, but I look forward to their community making the jump here.
Jezebelley 4 points 3 years ago
I hope most of the other subs follow suit.
ghost_of_spez 3 points 3 years ago
I welcome our new home at kbin.
D-ISS-O-CIA-TED 3 points 3 years ago
I will miss all the nice features we had with 3PA though :(
noodlejetski 3 points 3 years ago
holy cow.
Toxinflora 1 point 3 years ago
well thats good
thanks for using Leebra!
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