How Reddit Crushed the Internet's Largest Protest
3 years ago by return2ozma to c/technology
I mean, it's a victory if they shout it loudly enough, right? A lie repeated long enough, so it goes:
Company is going bankrupt, users are gone, laying off the bottom quartile of the company, but they stopped the protest! Etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...
It's like reading the top two lines of a disaster report and declaring victory. Fuck Reddit.
Even during the protest a lot of users thought it was caused by "power-mad" mods, some people just eat what they're fed.
It’s more of a Plato’s cave situation. You only know what you see.
Only partially, it was stated in lots of places and ways that it was in protest of the API pricing changes, and of the reaction of Reddit admins.
Well, I still visit Reddit once a week since there are communities there that don't yet exist here (or they are nearly empty).
I'm now all the time on Lemmy and am even much more active than what I ever was on Reddit, but I only have so much time.
I noticed there are slightly less quality posts in some subreddits, but I wouldn't call Reddit crushed.
In fact, subscribers in all the subreddits I used to follow are actually up and even by a lot, while Lemmy users don't really seem to increase by much (though I'd like them to).
I'd like to see a sudden growth in Lemmy and fall of Reddit, but I don't think it's anywhere near (though I'll keep doing my part here!)
The comments on Reddit are way worse now, it's extremely noticeable. Look at comments on /r/science for example. They're all shitty jokes which used to get deleted.
The vast majority of subs are completely unmoderated now or taken over by a small group of people. Like /r/worldnews allowing people to openly support literal genocide of Arabs.
Reddit quality absolutely took a hit after this debacle.
Reddit always had a problem with far right/anti science dogwhistlers, but it also seems like it's gotten much worse. Maybe I was just desensitized and I'm noticing it more because I don't go there much, or maybe it is actually worse because it's an election year, but it also wouldn't surprise me if the .01% of frequent commentors who left full-time for Lemmy represent a significant brain drain.
not to mention the continued guarantee of enshittification. We've only just seen the beginning of their pursuit of short term profits at the expense of their core value: the userbase.
Ah, I hadn't noticed this level of worsening. I suppose because when I visit I still go to niche subreddits and there the impact is less noticeable (but you do notice it).
I suppose great moderators have left the platform and they've been replaced by others who would like to be as good (but are crippled by new Reddit rules allowing many more trolls) or those that just don't care or are straight crazy!
Wasn't there like a bot defense team that published a ban list or something but they just gave up during the exodus?
I’d like to see a sudden growth in Lemmy and fall of Reddit, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near
I don't. Let the idiots stay on reddit. Leave lemmy how it is. Is it so terrible that one might have to visit reddit to find some niche communities?
I don't disagree with you!
I just would like to see certain niche communities grow here too because Lemmy is great and (so far) it feels like the conversations here are nicer, so I'd like people to move here to make Lemmy even better
Fair point.
There's nothing wrong with Lemmy growing in an organic sustainable way, but I dislike the attitude that lemmy ought to be a reddit replacement or that lemmy should grow from the ashes of reddit.
Lemmy should be it's own thing with it's own culture and history and communities.
I get a bit peeved when lemmy users (not necessarily you) get a bit obsessive about transferring communities to lemmy from reddit. Just focus on creating good content for Lemmy and forget about the rest.
🙄
Crushed. Lots lots more of over at reddit as well as a smaller percent reposting.
Lemmys front page is a ton of bots reposting content from Reddit.
Neither of the services have a lot of OC.
It took a couple weeks but I've found that blocking some bot accounts and adjusting the sorting on the app I use has plenty of fresh content with active posts. It isn't exactly the same as reddit in its prime, but I shouldn't expect it to be either.
It's causing me to branch out into other topics and conversations that I probably would've missed on a gigantic platform like reddit. I think reddit made it easy to see interesting content because of how long it had to develop into a community. Lemmy is still a bit jumbled and fragmented, but the community seems to be sticking around and forming a new identity apart from reddit.
If I did that I'd feel obligated to remove the user accounts I've blocked from my list before posting it and frankly that isn't worth the time or the trouble since I'd have to manually recheck all the accounts to see why I blocked them. No thanks lol.
I think it's pretty easy to replicate what I did with minimal effort though. All I really did was change the 'all' page in my Lemmy app (Boost) sorting to the newest posts. It becomes obvious pretty quickly when a couple communities have 4+ most recent posts, by the same accounts, etc. Most of the bots that exclusively repost reddit content are very obvious with just a couple clicks.
Once I had the worst offending reddit reposters blocked I noticed certain community/instance/users were either spamming content I'll never care about or were NSFW bots, or were too region specific, etc. so I blocked them too. I spent a day or two doing more blocking than browsing.
After that I changed the sorting on the 'all' page to active posts, which at that point was mostly posts by real people again. From there I've only had to block the odd account here and there like I would on any other social platform. Every so often I'll notice a bot post that's slipped through but if the community is active someone else has usually posted something similar that's getting more interaction anyways, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on much I'd be interested in or the stories that are actually newsworthy.
Is "Crushed" a new term for driving away the most active and interesting users away?
I sometimes use Instagram though and it's soo much bot and ai contend.
Idk Reddit cuz I don't go there anymore, but it seems the internet is fakker and fakker.
I just hope it's real people that im messing with here in Lemmy. Because at least y'all still fight and argue XD, the comments aren't brain dead.
Except for these guys that I just talked to that said they didn't like Oppenheimer
As an example, I don't understand people decrying reposted content from reddit. Also we have Risa, they don't.
But reposting is literally what reddit is too. And how it got started, reposting and bot comments from Digg. At least here you lot are all great to talk with.
r/Risa actually started on Reddit (source: I created it) and the mods who didn't quit for Lemmy decided to reopen, but the Lemmy version is definitely the more active and superior of the two, IMO.
This post made by a normal human person
Sure thing, 7u5k3n 🤔
AI are built to be digital humans, not emulate
Hello fellow human
My only problem with Oppenheimer is that they should have issued earplugs upon entering the theater. Shit hurt my ears.
Like, I get that bombs are loud, but I don't need to actually feel pain and probably damage my hearing to get the picture.
This is so true, when you go there now it’s full of “reply guys”, gatekeepers and trolls. There’s little to no sense of community and the money grabbing is even more upfront and obvious.
I havent used reddit at all since August and from June 12 to August i was on the site for ~10 minutes total. I am a total lemmy user now with no need to use reddit at all. I dont even miss it since i can get everything here i did over their.
Same. I had an account that was probably 12+ years old. Reddit was a huge part of my recreational schedule.
I genuinely prefer Lemmy. The lack of algorithms pushing engagement is good for the soul. It's here when I want it and I can leave it whenever I'm done.
Reddit was a big part of my day too. I had redreader easily accessible so i could just pop it open whenever i wanted to. Now Thunder has taken its place.
I did the same, but athough I love this place, there's still a huge scarcity of contents. Sometimes, as a lurker, to find more stuff. Here we're just an handful, thus I cannot still find here what I used to find on Reddit.
What is really lacking is all the very specific communities centered around common interests. The more specific the harder, especially if it's not a traditionally nerdy subject. I mean, there's an obvious bias, and I won't pretend I am not part of it.
Those used to have dedicated forums, but Reddit manage to capture them all for convenience, and now very few subsist. A good part of what's left has been abandoned to AI spambots.
Part of this activity is now on discord, but the invite structure isn't great for those. It makes this content hard to discover and impossible to search if you're not aware of it.
IMO they didn’t crush anything?
The apathetic remained.
Those who have niche communities that aren’t available elsewhere likely remained.
Several of my subscribed subs are completely gone or functionally extinct due to lack of participation.
Anecdotally I find reduced participation in other subs, people seem less willing to have a discussion.
Personally I’ve moved on to Lemmy/KBin/etc. and spend most of my time there now.
But “crushed”?
Nah I'd say crushed because they started forcibly reopening subs, removing moderators, etc etc
Crushed is a funny way to spell "all the good people left"
Fucking lol
I know how everyone just wants to pipe up and say, "well it didn't crush me hur hur", but I actually watched the video. It's a good record of what went down. I wish it would've mentioned Reddit alternatives, but it's still solid work.
And to anyone who still maintains that the protest has fatally wounded Reddit, look, I'm on your side but Reddit is still the 800 lb gorilla of link aggregation, and most folks still don't get why they should care about API pricing.
🍆🙊
Oh yeah I feel soooooo defeated and crushed just like soooooo sad that I have to be here and not with spez
Good video, though I feel that it just ended abruptly, almost as if they had more to say.
Reddit did stop the protest and after a month, Reddit was back to business as usual. With that said, due to the protest I got exposed to Lemmy, Mastadon and the Fediverse. And if you are a company, the last thing you want to do, is expose your customers to competition.
From a personal note, outside of a few niche communities I am subbed to on Reddit, like /r/vita. I've noticed a decline in quality in the posts, and outside of these small communities discussions are far and few between as well. Lemmy I've found is a lot more active, and I am interacting with it more.
I too have noticed a general drop in the quality of content on Reddit. Some of the smaller communities keep providing good information but now it's a bit harder to find and sort them, others have absolutely went to shit.
From what I’ve heard a lot of subreddits continue to exist but have lost some of their best contributors and mods. Some migrated to the fediverse, some elsewhere, others gave up entirely.
Despite being forced back open after the blackouts etc they are not the same as they were, the tone and quality of discussion has shifted a fair bit.
I was just on Reddit for the first time in awhile and all of my old subs, which are mostly niche interests, aren't doing too well. There are far fewer quality posts and lots of spam. I was getting Facebook vibes.
Going onto a major subreddit like worldnews is just insane.
On the Palestinian genocide it’s just completely full of IDF posting pro-Israeli content. And all the comments are just propagandists agreeing with each other.
I have to say that I was shocked at the disgusting state of the Reddit commentary over this topic. The amount of shameless genocide apologist rhetoric was unnaturally high.
I'd you disagree with the wrong mod or say something "offensive" banned. They look at your appeal and nothing changes.
At this point it's just adult children "working" in their parents basement not making any money.
Even with a modlog, the mods are clearly removing comments. I can't tell you how many times I'll click on a link that reads anywhere from 10-25 "more comments in this thread," only for it to tell me there are no more comments when I click to load them.
I don't know how bans work over here, but I have seen lemmings complain that they got banned temporarily, but never got any notifications of the ban.
It's clearly better than what happened to Reddit, but there still seem to be some bad faith actors about.
I used to go to the The Last of Us subreddit to just vent about the horrible writing in the second part of the game. Jesus, that was s cult. People had to create s second subreddit just to criticize the game. Now, the original subreddit calls names and bans anyone mentioning "the other" subreddit.
Now, I'm from Mexico. The subreddit /r/Mexico is the equivalent to /r/Conservative to the USA. But named after my country, people goes there without knowing this, it's so damn alienating.
I'm one of the mods of a few subs even though I'm no longer active. I hopped on yesterday and had a chat with the remaining mods of a couple of subs. They've been SO busy moderating assholes, propagandists, aggressive conspiracy theorists, and spam bots. They're suspending and banning accounts every day or two when it used to be an account or two every month. These are all small to medium sized, niche subs dedicated to helping people and sharing various ideas and people are trolling and harassing users like they've never seen before.
I checked out some of the subs's contents and in short order found I let myself get sucked into trying to educate an anti-masker in a sub that really shouldn't attract that type. It went how you'd expect, and it made me realize I haven't had a single interaction like that on Lemmy. It's nicer here.
I was pretty active for about 10-12 years. Then things gradually started changing. As the platform got bigger it also got more toxic. I found myself commenting less and less because when I did I'd often be met by trolls or contrarians who didn't want to have a discussion in good faith.
Outside a group of fellow mods who I got to know very well (and who I spoke to more outside of reddit anyway) I was disengaging from reddit, and I was getting disillusioned with it.
Lemmy feels a lot like reddit from around 2009/2010. In some ways it feels even better: it doesn't have that underlying unpleasant corporate odor, and you have more confidence you are talking to a real person who is what they say they are, instead of a bot or a troll.
Saying reddit crushed the protest is accurate in some ways. But the next question is: what did they lose in doing so? I think they lost a lot of their charm, their character, their very essence.
I was already sniffing around for a new reddit before the whole protest thing. Turns out Lemmy is what I had been looking for off and on for the last couple of years.
I'll take 1.5m or 150k or 20k or whatever the actual user count is over the shit show that has been reddit for the past few years.
I was a pretty active user. I check in maybe a few times a month now at most.
I haven't been back since the exodus. Fuck reddit. Fuck spez
I had a specific problem today that googling didn't help (it was a google account problem, go figure). I added reddit to the search terms and clicked into reddit for the first time in months. All I can say is that their UI is purposely horrible. Like, so fucking bad.
I would rather join tiktok than use reddit at this point. That should sound like sarcasm, or hyperbole, but it isn't. Lemmy is feeling like the last social media network I'll join, and as soon as lemmy gets to the toxicity levels of reddit, which no offense but I feel will be soon, I'm probably going to be the weird person that just uses their phone to call their family, utility companies, and watch hardcore anal fisting, footing, and prolapsing videos.
Whoa, I was with you there until the last bit.
In all seriousness, I do feel like Lemmy (and oddly, this community in particular) is quite toxic. There's a lot of shouting matches and aggressively partisan one side vs. the other commentary and voting. Even on Reddit there was more civility that encouraged discourse.
Here on Lemmy—and to continue your theme of closing a comment with an awful visual—it's often a bunch of circle jerking.
I noticed immediately that Lemmy was far less vitriolic than reddit was, but that seems to be changing quickly.
Some of my comments are entirely satire. Some are formal, but a lot of them are my not-so-hard takes or opinions on general bullshit. One of the first comments I made on lemmy a few months ago was still how I feel about social media. Once the "/s" is necessary to distinguish jokes from reality in a community, hate has already won.
While a lot of my comments are generally well received, I've been finding that my purely satirical comments have been being disliked at increasingly larger rates, seemingly because users aren't sure if I'm joking or not. Maybe it's the audience changing or maybe my satire isn't landing, but that leads me to something worse.
What I find is a more dismal indicator is that my inoculous opinions aren't being refuted, I'm just being called stupid for having them. I don't think I've outright insulted someone, or called someone stupid since I was an 11 year old on AIM, but that is what seems to be becoming the norm on lemmy.
Now I'm not saying i can't take the bullshit. Ill embrace it when given, but if this place was supposed to replace reddit, or be a more free and accepting group or communities, it's failing. Newcomers aren't going to stay here long if we can't get along, and communities aren't going to thrive with toxic echo chamber tendencies.
Anyway, if anyone wants to have tongue in cheek banter, too bad. I'll be watching Latex Angel and hotkinkyjo videos. HKJ can fit entire human leg in her torso.
Edit: I also seem to have a follower.(?) I find it odd that most of my comments have a single downvote. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I'm not, downvote away stranger. At least I know you care about me.
Are you my alter ego? I feel exactly the same way!
In many subreddits that I used to follow, there was that kind of healthy banter. I genuinely appreciated that there was a community where the collective mindset was to encourage constructive conversation, even if the content of the discussion wasn't something you'd necessarily agree with.
Looking back, I appreciate how much effort it must have taken to create and foster that space. Lemmy is unfortunately, from my experience, a much more toxic place. It would be great to see the majority of readers adopt a mentality of voting based on discourse. I know that I try to do my part…
I moderated a couple dozen specialized communities. I left them after 15 years of being on Reddit, and haven't been back in 5 months. They're effectively dead now, weeks between posts and no activity.
Many niche sub's have been murdered but the big shitsubs are still going strong with bots and spammers, so they have that going for them, I guess.
Thank you for your service.
Unfortunately, the vast storehouse of information on Reddit makes it impossible to remove it from your life completely. Of course, a lot of that was built up before the douchebag decided to kill third party apps and tell Reddit users that they didn't really matter that much to him. You mean the people whose comments built your site brick by brick? Okay, sure. Why would they be important?
If I'm that unimportant to you, I can be unimportant elsewhere.
It's not even remotely impossible. Inconvinient, maybe.
Right? My brother in Christ, I could add a single line to one text file and reddit would be gone from my life except for the fact that people on Lemmy seem to never shut up about it. I keep it around for research, but I could live without that too, if it mattered.
I use a 3rd party API modded app with a burner a and check on niche communities that Lemmy doesn't have yet...I do not comment, upvote or engage.
I have RSS set up for the things I want. It's quite nice, I see what I want quickly and easily, and don't engage.
It wasn't really a protest to me. It was more of a migration. Some people stayed I guess. Whatever
I left digg for reddit and back in those days that's how Reddit was too. I think the beautiful thing is that there are phases for new online communities in this category. They start small like Lenny is now then grow to be more well known. At some point when the general population starts to flood in it starts to get weird anyways. I think this was overdue. I'm liking Lenny right now the way I used to like reddit in the beginning. I'm still learning what it has to offer.
The big difference is see is that Lemmy requires a fair bit of onboarding to learn about federation, different instances, etc that may make it difficult to gain mainstream appeal. Reddit/Instagram/Facebook/etc are a little easier in that they autopopulate your feed with defaults, whereas on Lemmy the defaults are whatever instance you sign up with.
Reddit was unknown when Digg imploded.
Good.
The title does make it look like reddit is completely fine...when it's like them burning down their own house to get rid of a house guest that was just staying to long.
It was probably more akin to smashing up the conservatory but the owners have enough money that they just got the windows replaced the week after. The windows have a slight tint to them that wasn't there before but the owners don't care enough.
The only thing that matters to me is that the vast majority of my interactions on Reddit are shite ones with negative assholes, while the vast majority of my interactions here are pretty chill. Reddit won't die, but if it did.. I wouldn't miss it one bit.
If it did all those assholes would look for somewhere else to go. They might come here...
Reddit crushed itself more than anything. Sure they ended the protest, but that place is a ghost-town now, all that's left are the bots and politcal propaganda pushers. Stale links that are several days old populate the front pages of the big subs.
All reddit did was unmask themselves a little but only for those with their eyes open. Social media is close enough to a cult operation utilizing addictive behaviors and conditioning to control people. People are scared to leave their church and be shunned. Reddit is just another exploitative techbro run business. It isn't a social enterprise or open source community and it is weird that volunteers invested so much of their time and effort propping up shareholder value instead of contributing to real communities.
Plenty of independent thinkers left and found federated alternatives or walked away. The predatory and manipulative nature of social media was bad enough when it was all about controlling and manipulating the masses but now it is also a huge machine learning harvesting operation. The only people who really benefit are the ultra rich.
Hey, I'm over here in Methadone Reddit, getting by. It's not as fun as Reddit used to be, but after the bug-eyed lemur boy decided to be a leading tech giant(tm) and fuck over his users in the process, I decided it was time to amscray. Sorry, King Julien. It was fun for a while, before your embarrassing power trip, but now you're just going to have to kiss my mad-ass-gasgar.
not as fun as Reddit used to be
Reddit isn't as fun as Reddit used to be either
Joined Lemmy a few months ago as a direct result of how the responded to the protest
Yeah, they threatened and when I didn't budge, they disabled my account. I found out lately, because I have been gone from that hellhole since summer. Somehow they forgot to reopen my subreddit I've marked as Private. I'm (was) the sole admin. Well, go fuck yourself Spaz.
They haven't crushed Reddit yet, but the fight isn't over.
Ah makes sense.
This video sponsored by Reddit!
To be honest, the quality of content went down even years before this spez/API thing started. It's like Reddit got more polluted with shit even tho some quality stayed intact. The time was ripe for a change is what I felt anyways. So it was nice to learn more about the fediverse, and easy to move here because of all of this.
I agree, however, for my use cases little to none of that quality content came here and I've struggled to get it through other channels. My local subreddit I've taken a peek at and it's as active as ever, along with a few others that are top of mind.
I'm glad to have learned about the fediverse but it is, currently at least, something different and I'm disappointed I might work in a quick web based scroll through some key subs.
Honestly the same thing I used to do with Facebook before it became a total and complete wasteland.
Went back to Reddit and immediately saw some homophobic trite. Friend of mine also had something happen to them and Lemmy users have said they experienced similar things.
Reddit is no better than Elon's plaything at this point. In fact I'd say they're just as bad. (and yes, I know Spez is influenced by Elon)
Reddit sucks donkey balls
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/ikhGvUpdu40
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This video is from August. Doesn't reddit still have millions of users? There's still bots copying content from there onto the fediverse and the number of active users on the threadiverse is dropping. 40k or so? That's a drop in the bucket.
It doesn't feel to me like anything changed besides there being more lemmy users.
Me too!
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats
Naa lemmy is growing, and I'm actually starting to see the opposite. Shit from here being copied to Reddit. Only have witnessed it a few times but it was odd seeing it be the reverse.
The monthly active users dropped significantly (probably expected) and december has seen a slight upwards trend. Hopefully that continues.
I’m actually starting to see the opposite. Shit from here being copied to Reddit. Only have witnessed it a few times but it was odd seeing it be the reverse.
That's a pleasant surprise! 👍
The data I saw yesterday shows a marked improvement for active users in the last couple weeks. We're organically steadily growing again, I think.
using their linux device to whine about linux bros, classic
i got booted from Reddit for saying "fuck Ukraine" in respose to some idiot praising a Van Gogh painting for "having the colors of the Ukraine flag". It was my third strike on Reddit. After explaining to the moderator of that particular sub that I was just irritated at the idea of politics creeping into art apreciation (and the fact that the painting in question was painted 100 years before Ukraine was a country), they recinded my strike, but too late apparently- still banned. I get a cute little red hammer emoji next to my name when I try to log on, which I haven't bothered trying to do for 8 or 9 months now.
You got banned for being obnoxious. Which you know, and get off on. For the good of the fediverse I hope you grew up a bit in those 8/9mos. Trolling is boring for everyone but you.
Just being obnoxious isn't a crime, but that's not enough of a reason to get a ding. I've seen way worse comments to others and to myself from assholes on reddit who never got banned. "fOr ThE sAkE oF tHe FeDiVeRse, I dO dEcLaIr..." seriously with this shit? This place is already turning into Reddit. Apparently trolling isn't boring for you yet, huh?
The internet is not a court of law. Go outside.
to make that statement right now with current world affairs is pretty shortsighted.
Reddit was heavily taken over by Russian bots the past few years, so any impropriety in regards to the Ukraine war is taken as that person likely being a Russian bot or propagandist. Hence the ban, which was arguably not that unjustified.
The Steele Dossier debunked the whole Russian bot thing. Assange proved that that was some shit Killary pulled out of her twat because her plan to run against an orange gameshow clown backfired. If you still watch CNN, MSNBC or Fox to find out what's going on in the world, then you are still just a brainwashed drone.
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Crushed? Or drove away tons of OC creators and active members leaving a bot filled wasteland?
save