I saw a couple days ago they are not even respecting subreddits that were actually private from the beginning. I saw the mod of a private breastfeeding group freaking out because they were going to make the whole thing public.
I've been on reddit a long time, over 17 years, and I'm a member of some private subs that happen to have some quite influential users in them. It would be really interesting to open those up to the public to see what reddit influencers are saying in closed spaces, and the amount of gaming etc. that goes on between prominent users you see all across the site.
Admittedly, at least the subs I'm in are relatively quiet these days, but in years gone by they'd basically decide what was going to be popular, who was going to mod which subs etc.
You can’t just drop this info without giving us the tea. Tell us more.
The private breastfeeding WHAT? Mother of God, this is vilest of the vile. And, speaking of u/spez, that really is saying something...
I'm really interested to see what happens at the end of this week. I have a group of friends that all hang out in discord and out of the group (about 12 of us) I'm the only one that's moved on from Reddit. Every time I see one of them post a Reddit link I want to say something but I just keep quiet and don't follow the links. I'm guessing this is just going to blow over for 90% of the people on Reddit and I'm fine with that but it is somewhat depressing to me folks aren't as bothered by what they are doing to third party apps.
Honest question, why keep quiet? I assume they are aware of the shit that went down in Reddit, if you provide Lemmy as an alternative some may actually try it and end up liking it more. The more people swap over the more it becomes an attractive alternative for others.
You don't have to be obnoxious about it, but just a suggestion could interest them.
So, say something. It can feel hard, but what's the worst that can happen?
Even just show a friend how one of their favorite communities has moved. Or just share a lemmy.world link instead of a reddit.com link to a similar post.
Getting folks to move off facebook messenger or something like that to Signal felt similar about 5-8 years ago. But... enough shitty news stories and worse-and-worse scandals, and just consistently mentioning it as an option works pretty well. These things snowball
I did bring it up when the protests started happening, I was met with some apathy and something like 'I'll just have to wait and see what the new big thing is, until then I'm going to keep using reddit'. This is all first world problem stuff anyway so whatever, thanks for taking the time to reply and for contributing to the community.
I used to feel the same but I keep reminding myself that I don't actually want all those mindless users to come here and complain or be toxic. So far, the communities are much nicer than reddit because early users wants to see a different social media experience here.
Maybe let the majority sit on ad infested reddit until they can't stand it anymore. :)
Very true. At first I wanted everyone to leave Reddit, now I just want the nicer part of Reddit to leave and come here. I'd rather see less content with more positive interaction than a lot of content with a toxic community.
Same. It's best that most of the people currently on Reddit stay there.
I'm still curious as to what is going to happen on the 1st and moving forward. I haven't seen much news about whether or not moderation focused apps/bots will still work despite Reddit's promises.
My bet is that effective moderation is going to drop significantly. Spam is going to increase to take advantage and trolls (whether to usual kind or as a form of protest) will run rampant. The user experience is going to suffer for the users that currently "don't care". And then Reddit will die.
I think tbh it will be more gradual than that. AI and shills and whatnot will run free and unfettered across the entire Reddit landscape, and people will move on when it hits their personal tipping point and some alternative becomes more useful.
Reddit would crumble badly very soon is those unpaid mods just immediately give up. The chaos will definitely doom Reddit and fast.
But it's clear that mods there would rather suffer than give up their made up power.
Of all the assorted protests I saw, I liked what interestingasfuck did the most. Just said "f it, here is what subs will look like with the bare minimum modding" and walked away. Mess up their front page, their advertising, and actually show what an unmodded major reddit sub would look like.
If every sub had done that instead of some milquetoast 48 hour blackout, I think it would have been at least moderately more impactful.
I wouldn’t call the blackout milquetoast. It made the global news for days. What is needed is additional followup, which we seen such as moderators just giving up, setting the sub to NSFW, etc.
At any rate, I’m gone. Reddit management sucks. There was so many ways to allow third party apps while charging the AI models. Tiered API rates, license agreements and terms of use, mandate third party app API users allow their advertising, etc.
I was happy to pay $5/mo to keep using Apollo. Now I’m gone and wouldn’t go back after we saw Reddit’s masterclass in how not to run a business.
And Reddit killed r/interestingasfuck for it.
r/redditrequest is a disgusting feeding frenzy right now. For every mod that's continuing the protest or has already been "fired", there's a dozen people desperately begging to be allowed to do free labor for that tiny bit of authority they'll get on their corner of reddit.
or more cynically, there's probably some really exemplary members of the human species begging to turn sub's into their particular cesspool.
Hard to give yo virtual power when its all you have sitting in your mothers basement eating cheezy poof because you're a good mod...
They're probably right, depressingly.
I can't make anyone else leave, but I did what I could by leaving personally. I am generally enjoying the experience over here more anyway, so I am not missing a whole lot. Maybe a couple niche subs, but I was considering working on launching equivalent communities over here.
That a Welsh username by chance?
And yea, thoroughly depressing.... I find the situation similar to the old micro transaction / shit game port situation where the masses couldn't care less and the small minority rebel and have little to no effect.
Sadly those that care about these things are generally grossly outweighed by those that couldn't give a toss. I haven't been back to Reddit for 4-5 weeks now and as a very early Reddit adopter I thought the break would be harder than what it has been. I have mentioned in a few posts here that the most surprisong thing to me is how often I was being served subtle ads guised in the form of content on Reddit. In 4 weeks or more I don't think I have seen a brand as such mentioned on Lemmy yet with Reddit it was legit every dozen posts. I knew this went on, but it took a week or so on Lemmy for me to realise the actual extent of it.....
Good riddance to the place, Lemmy feels like the early doors of the internet and I'm quite comfortable here :)
post
actual ad
post
weekly repost of video from Youtuber who's been pushing their content to the front page every week for several months
post
actual ad
random PR post from some Hollywood star's agency: nobody knows about their secret charity work that we've told millions of people about every month!
post
comedian advertising their standup show on reddit
actual ad
wow look at this tshirt/gadget/macguffin that I absolutely must have! If only I knew where to find it...
This is almost certainly true. But what I can't figure out is that Reddit needs Mods for the subs. And surely mods, and potential mods, are more engaged and informed.
There's always been this implicit understanding that Reddit gets free moderation across the whole site, something other SM sites spend millions if not billions on each year, in exchange for those mods having autonomy, control, and a sense of ownership of the subs they mod. That social contract has completely broken down.
I'd guess mods get into modding for one of two reasons. One is power/influence, which is now seriously diminished, and the other is because they care about the community, and they must now be wondering whether Reddit Inc is the best place to host such a community when it appears to be so hostile to users.
That social contract has completely broken down.
The gentry are having their land taken away.
Fuck /u/spez. When it was just the API changes I might have grudgingly continued using reddit, but after this display I don’t think I will. Reddit has shown yet again that huge social media companies cannot be trusted to act in the interests of their users.
That's where I'm at as well.
I was under the impression that I'd just hit it up on desktop every once and again. But now? I feel dirty using the site at all. Really hard to feel comfortable supporting that kind of behavior.
I have been casually browsing during work on my desktop.
The quality of content has dropped significantly. To the point that this morning I replaced the reddit link with a Lemmy one.
The nice thing about that is that only people who actually care about the quality of the content will look elsewhere, while the mindless doomscrollers will stay, where they belong.
I'm surprised none of the big subs decided to say "ok, fuck you." And nuke the sub
If they attempted this Reddit admins would 100% revert it and ban whoever agreed to do it.
They can’t, Reddit doesn’t allow mods to delete subreddits:
https://support.reddithelp.com/...
All part of the plan to keep their sinking ship afloat, I suppose
They could nuke all posts, right? If I remember correctly r/piracy did this once in fear of the sub being delete by reddit itself because of legal issues.
Reddit probably has backups if that happens, but still..
Nuking doesn't delete, but rather sets a delete flag that may eventually later be cleaned. Reverting the flag is trivial.
Posts never really get deleted. Deleting them as a mod unlists them from the sub, deleting them as a user unlists them from the sub and profile. Users can edit their posts to remove the text body but the post title and link stay accessible permanently to people with the url and therefore to reddit. The only thing that gets deleted (if reddit doesn't lie about it) are images attached to the post if deleted by the user themselves.
I heard mods cannot delete their own subreddit https://support.reddithelp.com/...
"Because communities on Reddit are shared spaces that in many ways belong to the members of the community as much as the creator, there’s no way to delete a community."
More like the company then the members of the community lol
Given the lows to which Reddit has stooped lately, I wouldn't be surprised to see Reddit respond to that by filing a lawsuit against the mod seeking nine figures in damages.
Which makes me hope even more somebody does it.
They can't delete it as far as I am aware. They could delete all posts and perma-private it I think, but that would be extremely tedious and the admins could revert everything a lot easier.
When you're working within their frameworks, effective protests are limited. It's why I just left.
Too bad there isn't a free API that could be used to delete all posts /s
They are losing 1. Quality in UGC; 2. Quantity in UGC; and 3. Unpaid mods, which are all considered most important assets in terms of their (Spez’s) IPO.
Are they losing enough to have an impact to their ad traffic however? Something reddit definitely have lost is the monopoly on online communities, now there's a bunch of alternatives that people use which has definitely reduced the value of reddit.
I can't speak to ad traffic, but they're seeing a drop in ad sales, which is worse: https://www.thedrum.com/...
I've dropped all but two of my subs over the years so they have no power there. Those who don't migrate or unsub must be kinky that way. As consenting adults they are free to do whatever they want. Not my problem, anymore.
Take my sub. I could give two shits. Reddit is the new MySpace.
Huh, I just realized, who do people in the Star Wars universe pray to? The Force? The Schwartz?
Running power delete while I still can, just changing everything to a poem I like.
"The taste
Of rain
...why kneel"
They can revert it back or whatever, that's out of my control. Reddit sucks, it's a closed and controlled system, I'm good on that.
go to feed...
go to feed...
Reddit is just a Karen now
save