To some degree it's hard to be sympathetic, because the people complaining about this are seriously lacking in sympathy themselves. They just wanted to see the content that those users produced for them, they didn't care about the difficulties or preferences of the users themselves. So when those Spez-opposed users took their ball and went home the Spez-friendly people got angry at them for taking their comments away with them rather than at Spez for having driven them to that in the first place.
lol I have to imagine a lot of the people active in Apple are pretty used to eating corporate overlord’s assholes so that doesn’t really come as a surprise…
Tbh - some of us, like me, did leave our most valuable comments to the tech community behind. Whether it helps reddit or not I still posted things to help others. I did delete much of anything outside of very tech related subreddits though. Also I promoted some software I wrote when applicable so it would only cut off my own nose to try and spite Spez too, so no I would rather not do that.
Reddit will die a slow death I am sure, but the heart of reddit is certainly gone.
Also I promoted some software I wrote when applicable so it would only cut off my own nose to try and spite Spez too, so no I would rather not do that.
Yeah, that seems like a reasonable exception to the rule.
Yeah I didnt delete anything either, but if people don't go back that's what will really affect reddit in the long run. They can sit on their precious marketable content but if it stagnates it won't be worth squat after a while.
but if it stagnates it won't be worth squat after a while.
That might be true (but some content remains valuable after long periods of time too, think of all the good stories and classics from the turn of the 19th century for example), but even so, for those who are able it might be better to move the content now and delay even that much to reddit. (Not everyone can do this, and even for those that do it's extra effort, unfortunately.)
I've seen many toots on Mastodon where people argue it is ethical to mirror Reddit now because so many people are destroying their content, and that will make searching for answers more difficult. Sure, I get their stance but at the same time I think is being a selfish scab.
The content that is now lost, will bounce back on some other plattform. Hopefully a better and more democratic plattform.
So I haven't been on Reddit since the blackout, so I don't know what the sentiment there is. I used the official app, so you can't accuse me of not being sympathetic for the cause.
But I have been creating content for years, many of which contained helpful solutions for IT problems in niche areas I took interest in. Now all this content is unhelpful because the sub is private or the original question context was deleted. This really bums me out that all this energy and effort has gone to waste.
The 'npm left-pad incident' is a case where a developer broke the internet by deleting a tiny piece of open source library which many other libraries were dependent on.
There is something to be said about abandoning and moving on without burning the bridges in the process, rendering not only your content as useless, but other people's as well
Now all this content is unhelpful because the sub is private
You could try sending a modmail to see if the mod will give you access to the sub so you can see your own content, or send you a copy of a specific post or comment.
or the original question context was deleted.
One thing to note is that this happened all the time on reddit as folks either deleted their question and throwaway account as soon as they got their answer. Other times folks would ask with their main account but used something like shreddit once a month. So this isn't exactly new to the protest.
When I move my content to its new home, I usually avoid naming the questioner and I briefly summarize their question/responses. This way the content has the added context to be understandable.
If the post is from Feb of this year or older and you forgot the context but want to save the content, you can search for the post in the pushshift torrents - if it was deleted as part of the protest then the pushshift torrent will have the original content in it and you can restore the context that way.
This really bums me out that all this energy and effort has gone to waste.
Additional effort is required to do what I do, but the result is that the effort has not gone to waste, instead folks who want it can view it on the fediverse.
There is something to be said about abandoning and moving on without burning the bridges in the process,
From my POV reddit burned those bridges.
rendering not only your content as useless,
It's not useless, it now serves to move people away from reddit. Remember, with reddit you never know when you will be permabanned - it seems to happen entirely at random nowadays.
but other people's as well
Mostly I've only seen three categories of this.
A throwaway or an account not logged into for a while. The owner if still alive probably doesn't have the access to move it away anymore anyways.
Content that is still present under "[deleted]" - person got hit by a 1k limit or something and missed deleting that before deleting the account.
Content from a mod, who has't moved off yet as they're trying to hold onto the sub for the protest.
I figure I'm better off moving my content with context anyways, since that prevents the person in 1. or 3. from coming back and confusing the context.
The other thing I do when commenting is quoting extensively, that way the context is clear from my own comments.
People love to blame the victim for defending themselves over the problematic person who is abusing them, because if they acknowledge that someone is being abusive that kind of morally obligates them to step in.
And they very much don't want to do that.
And obviously the exploitation of users for their knowledge and content so that the owners of Reddit Inc. can gain wealth for sitting on their thumbs is different from the kind of abuse one's mind might go to when the word is raised, but it's the same dynamic.
Someone is claiming mistreatment, those around them are annoyed by the claims, not by the mistreatment, because the person standing up for themselves is putting onlookers in the dangerous position of examining their relationship to that mistreatment.
i do not like what reddit is doing one bit, but please stop. what reddit is doing is not anywhere near equivalent to real actual abuse, and implying it is is a little offensive. have some perspective
as somebody who has several decades of parental abuse to look back on I don’t consider this offensive. on the contrary. spez and reddit follow many entries of the emotional abuse playbook to a t.
I totally hear you that comments like this can feel insensitive of people who have been abused. I'm an abuse survivor so I get where you're coming from and appreciate your intent.
What I disagree with is that we shouldn't make this comparison at all. The same relational dynamics and structures that give rise to mental, emotional, physical, sexual, etc. abuse and exploitation give rise to this behaviour too.
The same as any form of abuse, no matter how big or small, is underpinned by the same thought patterns, behaviours, power dynamics, culture, societal attitudes and practices, etc.
EDIT: removed preview of pyramid so no one gets smacked in the face with unpleasant descriptions scrolling down. Typos.
I've been abused. I suffer from ongoing complex PTSD from that abuse.
I have some fucking perspective, thank you very fucking much.
And that perspective is that the word is broadly defined, and that exploitation is fucking abuse. It's not physical abuse, no, and I didn't say that it was. I'm fact, I was very careful to avoid such comparisons. But exploiting people for their time and labour so that you can generate obscene amounts of wealth for yourself is exploitative, it involves lying to people, both implicitly and explicitly, and it involves engaging in emotional and psychological manipulation.
And that's a type of fucking abuse. It's the exact same type of abuse that narcissists inflict on their victims. It's just being done in a way that the law and our culture sees as legitimate, because there's a lot of money involved, and we all fall under the yolk of rich mother fuckers who think they deserve more from us, just because they already have money.
I make the comparisons not because I lack perspective, but because I have it.
Because corporate behaviour like this feels too fucking familiar, given that perspective.
Vicious, but true. I'm still struggling with whether or not I'm going to astroturf my comment history and delete my account. I see a lot of folks saying their comments were restored and then they had no way to log back in to delete them again. For now, I'm just going to leave my Reddit account dormant. I suppose it isn't super effective to leave my content there for Spez to benefit from, but I kinda feel like it does more harm to people just looking for answers than it ever will to Spez if I were to remove it. All around, this is just a ridiculously stupid situation we all find ourselves in over the whims of small minds chasing after big money. Again.
Same. I don't begrudge the people who want to salt and burn their Reddit history, but I'm leaving my old posts up for anybody who might be helped by them (plus most of them are just shitposts anyways)
I'm leaving my old posts up for anybody who might be helped by them
You could move them here and link from reddit - folks still get the help but reddit still loses ad revenue overall (as word-of-mouth and search engines slowly start to repoint others in need to the fediverse instead of reddit)
Personally, I'm leaving my comments intact because I doubt that Spez is really going to benefit much from them in the long run anyway.The technology behind AIs currently seems to be moving away from simply throwing vast amounts of data into the training to a more precisely fine-tuned high-quality training dataset, so there's probably not going to be as much demand for Reddit's trove as Spez thinks.
And besides, the old PushShift archives are still floating around. We don't know how the legal or technical situation will shake out but maybe people will be able to use that for free training.
I'm leaving my comments intact because I doubt that Spez is really going to benefit much from them in the long run anyway
The technology behind AIs
I think rather than AI the idea is to reduce ad revenue by moving content off of reddit so folks will stop checking reddit and thus reddit has fewer ads seen.
The question is, does Reddit ownership believe the money is in LLM training data or not. We've seen tech leadership jump on all kinds of bandwagons in the last few years, none of which have panned out. I don't think LLMs will, either, but every time one of these things gains some limelight, someone with an established tech company seems to believe they're about to make a lot of money.
And in this case, they actually might. Just not off of the tech, but off of an IPO where they centre the tech as the opportunity for new investors.
But I have no idea if they're smart enough to see the scam and run the play, or if they're true believers or not.
May I say that whatever you decide to do, you've already "won" this? First, giving a shit about people, and second, spending time grappling with those truthfully complex issues has enriched you, and all of us.
One suggestion is to edit them with wording like fuck spez, so that if he deletes your content it won't be you that yanked it away from people.
But they could just revert that easily enough, rather than delete outright (although are they smart enough to do that...?). Another could be to insert an explanation at the top or bottom of all your (best/all) stuff that you do not condone Reddit's actions but decided not to punish end-users for the actions of that powermod abuser.
And eventually you could migrate it elsewhere but yeah, that's a bit hard to do atm when users would have trouble finding it. OR, you could combine these approaches: for each answer, make a post to kbin/lemmy about the issue, then edit the original to include solely a link to that new location. That would kill 2 birds with 1 stone by helping people realize where to go for high-quality content, while providing the direct answer (there's no need to create an account or deal with fediverse issues, anyone at all can just read it). (The down-side is that spez could easily revert that back too, but if so then you could keep trying, like spell out the link to futz with its automated detection.)
But whatever you end up doing, I see that you are doing it because you care, and that's already a win in my book. :-)
I'm still struggling with whether or not I'm going to astroturf my comment history
I kinda feel like it does more harm to people just looking for answers than it ever will to Spez if I were to remove it
Here's what I recommend to have the best of both worlds, while still taking advantage of mass editing tools.
Create a magazine or two on kbin specifically just to hold your content.
Copy it over and paste it into your mags.
Mass edit your content on reddit with the usual message, but also include a link to your kbin profile. Folks who want to see the useful content can still find it that way.
I think we're all mourning the loss of community and information found on reddit. Being angry that spez has forced protesters into the position to dismantle these communities is a legitimate and understandable reaction.
I don't see in the above comment that this person is spez-friendly or getting angry at the protesters specifically, just acknowledging that the whole thing sucks for everyone.
Exactly. My sympathies are with those creators & moderators who have received awful comments from reddit users that are too naive and impatient to understand the protest actions.
They seem to assume that new mommies & daddies mods & content creators will rise up to take their place. Like all that effort grows on trees or something.
Most of us on the fediverse can sympathize with the idea that "its really frustrating not being able to use Reddit as a reliable spurce for obscure knowledge."
The difference is that we feel "its really frustrating that I can't rely on Reddit, because even if the answer is there I can't in good conscience support spez." Instead of "all the answers are gone because of these stipid protests."
Very much the truth. I cautiously suggested that people leave their content up simply as an archive of useful knowledge, but fbfw was downvoted to oblivion. I understand people wanting to depart and take their ball home with them because fuck you spez, but I still have a hard time with the destruction of the knowledge base.
Same here. I've left all my posts and comments up on Reddit. I'm sure it's made it's way in some form to Bard or ChatGPT. Just never know when some information would be helpful in a pinch, especially if it's tech or programming related.
The loss of /r/homeautomation has set me back a week at least with respect to home maintenance. The loss of knowledge is crazy.
Just never know when some information would be helpful in a pinch, especially if it's tech or programming related.
But wouldn't directing redditors to the fediverse to get their answers (specifically like "Content moved due to reddit's stance on ... link to this answer is at https://kbin.social/m/...") be better?
Just never know when some information would be helpful in a pinch, especially if it's tech or programming related.
That's exactly why we need to work on rebuilding it in the fediverse. The danger with reddit is that this info would have always been lost no matter what. Because of central control a mod could hide it. A reddit admin could outright delete it. The ceo has edited comments before. Why should we trust that our content will be safe with him?
Funny you mention /r/homeautomation, I’m in the same boat. Pro tip, though: if you found the Reddit result using Google, you can always look at the cached content.
If you’re on mobile, first open the search results page as the “desktop” version (for some reason it’s not an option in the mobile view). If you’re or after you’ve done that, click the three dots next to the result. When the modal pops up, click the dropdown arrow under “More options” at the top. Then click “Cached”.
Voilà. Read post and comments despite it being private/in protest.
I posted a similar comment elsewhere but along the same line of thought: The sad thing is that the masses that are still on Reddit at this point dgaf and will likely stay on Reddit forever. There's a real problem of Apathy in today's culture when people are just jonesing for their fix of daily content/memes, or at the very least nothing that disrupts the status quo. They don't give a fuck about "ideals" or what corporations do or farm from them so long as their instant gratification and daily intake of said content remains unchanged.
The most toxic users of Reddit want to stay there rather than come here? Oh boo-hoo, cry me a river:-). If they are happy with their childish toys, then let them be - that's a win for them, and a win for us too?
Okay, so that's glass-half-full thinking, and more realistically the situation is also half empty at the same time, but both are true at the same time, so we'll see what happens I guess.
The sad thing is that the masses that are still on Reddit at this point dgaf and will likely stay on Reddit forever.
I actually consider this to be (mostly) a good thing. Within those that walk away from reddit, I expect the ratio of content creators vs. content consumers to be way above average. So if we get most of the people who used to make Reddit a great source of food for thought, and spez gets to keep the vast majority of cat video watchers, that's not a bad deal at all.
The thing is that it really is no longer about 3rd party apps working or not, rather, the level of disrespect displayed from Reddit towards us, their userbase. That's why I'm not going back.
I’m struggling to find as much interesting content as I did on Reddit. BUT I am much more easily finding pleasant conversations. And that I think is more important.
I’m posting more here than I did on Reddit because I want to be the change I want! Also I’m still learning to navigate this place too. I like it though.
I'm having a different experience with the content but can understand where you are coming from. I spent a lot of time searching out the niche communities I'm interested in and subscribing across all the instances i can find. Trying to actually post more too and encourage others.
The conversation aspect is so true though. It's been the most present surprise and is part of what's driving me to engage and start posting.
I was a RedReader user for quite a while (as in years). While being a bit spartan, I found it to be the best Reddit app for my preferences. Period.
But indeed, nowadays, there is actual (great) content on Lemmy and Kbin, and I am willing to get to it. Not much time left for Reddit. Sorry, spez, fuck you!
The only thing I'll be giving Reddit is my traffic, more than happy to lurk the comment but I definitely won't be posting, commenting, upvoting/downloading or helping admins by reporting spam and rule violations. None of that effort anymore
Traffic quality plays a big role too. If you never click on or engage with any ads your visits aren’t worth much anyway. You could even vpn yourself from a poor country and be considered even less valuable to the ad machines lol
Give Apollo a contract guaranteeing free API access until the end of time without nonsense restrictions on content and maybe I'd think about it. Short of that I'm all set.
(No it's not just Apollo. But he's the most wronged and the one I use.)
After the whole Brock turner the rapist crusade (deserved) I've been sitting here scratching my head why spez wasn't named and shamed with his real name by the same group.
Fact is even if Reddit rolled back the changes it’d be the classic “let’s see how far we can push our user base then we’ll roll that back to acceptable levels while slowly pushing those limits through later updates” strategy
Same. I used to use the official app because when I started using Reddit, I was not aware of third party apps. Then it was just inertia. After this fiasco started, I started trying various apps and used sync for the last 3 weeks. Now i'm here.
Reddit has made clear they have no respect for their users, especially their most active users responsible for creating and moderating their content. No matter what reddit does or doesn't do now, it is obvious it will continue to get worse.
It's also a wake up call to those who created content and did tons of free moderating for no gain other than personal prestige ... it is making us all realize that whenever we put in extra effort into a social media website that is privately owned - we create the content and reason for the sites existence but we don't financially benefit from it, someone else does who did no work to create any of it other than to claim ownership over everything.
It's the same old story from a thousand years ago or even the arguments of worker rights from the 1800s ... we create the means of production but we receive no benefit from our work
The leadership is too much for me. Too many right wing shitbirds with conspiracy delusions, too much open partying with Ghislaine(sp?) Maxwell, and too many mishandled scandals relating to sexual content with minors.
Huffman (Spez) gave some interview where he talks about civilization falling and he’d “be a slaver rather than a slave” (paraphrasing, I don’t have the interview open) which is just wild because he’s scrawny as fuck.
There’s always rumors of an IPO but I feel like the current staff isn’t fit to head a public company and would crumble under wide public scrutiny like on the markets
It’d be a preferable situation if it were either/or but even then I realize I’m probably not big and bad enough to strong arm myself into that position everyone else would rather have.
Spez is/was a doomsday prepper though I think he figures he’s got an edge over everyone else
Little late to the game on this one but I did finally get my words to reflect how and why I feel I do about this situation, I commented it recently on another post but I'm gonna drop it here again as I hope it can add to this discussion.
I quit when rif went down. I've never used an official app, desktop site, mobile site etc. Rif was Reddit to me for 10 years. Maybe leaving as a collective will make some difference, maybe not, but I'm going to start being more firm on how much I'll let companies try to push me around expecting me to just take it. They built it on our backs, then just took it away so a literal select few can cash in, when they are already filthy rich and had other options.
I've been explaining it to others as if you broke your phone. Now it's frustrating getting used to a new phone, but it has lots of new features you never even thought of that make up for the inconveniences. Sure I could go back to my old phone, it's comfortable to use, but the screen is broken and it cuts me now and again, and over time it'll cut me more often. I'd rather get used to the new phone.
This past year I've dealt with food going up, gas, utilities, rent, hell cigarettes and even beer, my fishing license went up. Every single nook and cranny they can pull a cent from you they will.
I'm done choosing to let them. If they want my data, my attention, my content, they can pull it from my cold dead hands damnit.
The mod's response to Reddit, in case people don't want to go there:
According to them, your favourite subreddits going NSFW is too much for you to understand. The infamous Mod Code of Conduct messaged us, demanding we switch back, because “you’re likely confused by all the NSFW content you’ve been seeing”.
They didn’t allow us to reply, so we couldn’t explain that this is a subreddit for an 18+ game, nor has any of our content changed. This subreddit should have been NSFW already, but we’d never thought to change it until recently.
Until we change it back we’re in violation of Reddit’s sitewide rules. We’re not going to change it back, because this is a sexually explicit game, and also fuck them.
If we’re removed at least we got to go out on an fantastically fun flair event (don’t worry this won’t stop your flair from being added I promise), and if this sub changes back from NSFW then you know you’re no longer in control of it.
Rest assured; we have 77 fans all over Reddit, with r/lowsodiumcyberpunk being a decent fall back. We’ve never worked together on anything, but we’ve made an effort to stay on good terms with one another, and I trust them to take care of you all.
Edit: this has hit r/all choombas so assume there are a lot of people here just to feed on the drama
Some time after posting this here, the mods added a second edit:
Edit: since hitting r/all there have been a bunch of accounts created in the last month attacking us and defending Reddit admins with a vigour I’ve never seen before. That seems suspicious, at the very least
So it seems that someone (probably Reddit themselves) caught wind of this and attempted to astroturf it with bots... Now who's recently been caught doing that?
Trust me, before I deleted my account there were so many users in the sub salivating at all the unfolding drama. While they didn't participate in the blackout, I wonder how many migrated to Fedi. Might indicate why there isn't as much activity as I remember.
I am one of them. Only that I wallowed in the drama AND THEN participated in the protests.
I lurk there once in a while and yes, it is fucking dead. That whole sub just fell dead with the only active posts not even being drama at all.
Compare it what it looked like two months ago. Back then I thought that sub would be the last one to still stand, before it too imploded. But no! Everyone who made that sub so funny already migrated here (love y’all, you beautiful fucks) and all that’s left are these sad excuses of posters and commenters.
That whole sub just fell dead with the only active posts not even being drama at all.
After all that hype of how dramatic things would be...yesterday half a dozen posts down on the front page and the posts are 2 days old. Buckets and buckets of popcorn all laid waste...a shell of what it once was...all the buttery goodness is lost in time...like tears in rain.
They stayed open during the blackout and the bootlickers used the place to complain about the protests. And when the blackout ended, the bootlickers never left …
There's also libreddit, which seems to be an entirely separate project to teddit. Kind of like the Federation, it's software anyone can run and there are quite a few instances out there
To all the folks saying that reddit couldn't replace the mods, that it was too big an effort, that they couldn't run a big sub all by themselves, I have only one thing to say to you.
Ever since Victoria got sacked, reddit doesn’t seem to have anyone competent enough to run community relation anymore. They probably can’t figure out how to vet new mods if they were to hire some.
I'm sure users will step forward if they care. Otherwise, it's just a campaign optimization at work. Limit the breadth of organic content to deepen the brand-friendly content and push more paid media into the feed.
Yes they most definitely will...but increasingly such things likely will not happen on the Reddit platform, moving forward. There are actual reasons that the mods left - e.g. to moderate a sub of millions of subscribers takes effort, which needs tools to make that happen - and those reasons still exist.
Im halfway tempted to start claiming demodded subs and filling them up with instructions on how to move to their kbin/lemmy alternatives.
If they kick me out and ban me I won't find out cause I don't go into reddit no more.
Edit: of course they would never give the subreddits to me, but I find the idea really funny
this would have been a good thing to do for some of the people who deleted their accounts. the ones who had accounts which could have credibly been given subs.
Admin realized that despite all the applications, there were:
People requesting the subreddit so they could continue the protests.
People requesting the subreddit so they could give it back to the original mods.
People requesting the subreddit so they could own it.
People requesting the subreddit because they have strong feelings about "moderation" and want to /worldpolitics it.
Absolutely no one who wanted to just do what the old mods did.
From what I could see, there no actual good-faith requests from people who genuinely cared about /TIHI and wanted to moderate it well and diligently. And like, who's surprised? It's a huge subreddit without a concrete community core, it's more of a content category. I don't think anyone except the mods cared about the community itself, because there barely was one.
That's the same issue they're running into with the other large subs. They're too huge and too general and everyone is just another face in the crowd, so there are very few people who care about that specific space in the way that makes for good volunteer moderators - in most cases, when those people existed for those communities, they were already recruited into the old mod team.
And all the people who want to mod are either activists for the protest, the sort of power-hungry weirdos that end up as powermods, but who showed up to Reddit too late, or somebody with an axe to grind about moderation in general seeing an opportunity in the massive unmoderated subreddit.
From the one time I tried requesting a sub there, they don’t just let someone have a sub if they ask and it’d be banned otherwise, they probably won’t give it to you if you don’t have mod experience for example (the reason I didn’t get the niche sub I was trying to revive, which is reasonable enough), or if they feel that what experience you do have isn’t enough that you’d likely be able to handle the particular sub. TIHI is a big sub, so they’d not just be looking for any random volunteer, it’d have to be someone experienced with moderating sizable subs, probably. And those people are, well, exactly the kind of people angry with reddit right now.
Reddit gave the snackexchange subreddit to someone who had no mod experience and hadn't participated in the sub for years. The person claims they didn't even ask for the position and only asked for the head mod to be removed. Reddit removed the top mod and made the person top mod.
That person had effectively no mod experience, but was already on the moderator list there - having been added by the old team.
Head mod chose to reopen under protest by turning off anti-scam bots and similar - letting sub continue to function visibly the same, but without the bot-supported protection it had used prior. He somehow talked his way onto the team during the protests, and then went to Admin and arranged to oust the head mod who had shut down the bots and was doing protest stuff in the sub.
He has since been returned to the bottom of the mod hierarchy there, for whatever that's worth.
Like, I kind of get that guy's point in some senses - simply turning off security features that quietly protect users, without announcing it, sure seems like the kind of thing that would hurt users pretty quick - without ever affecting site Admin. Especially when the head mod who shut down those bots wasn't the user/mod who was responsible for them, it's not 'their' bot if they're gonna go home and take their toys, as it were.
Staging a coup and getting Admin to put him at the top of the modlist is hyper shitty, and Admin's decision to promote someone who wasn't really part of that community to that sort of position is utterly inexplicable if we were trying to square their actions with their stated values.
If I had to guess, there are too many users who would become appointed as moderators, then just shut down the subreddit again. The admins need time to filter through the applications to find the genuine bootlickers.
Yeah I fully expect reddit to replace the moderators but it will take time and effort to select the right people.
If all the mods who protested actually resigned or moved their subs to being unmoderated it would've crippled the site, reddit would not be able to replace them quick enough.
It's unfortunate that the threat alone was enough to get most of them to reopen.
I would drop kick FB in a heart beat if it wasn't for that shitty platform being my only means of communication with some family and friends. WTF happened to email and phone calls/txt jesus.
I wish I could do that. But I'm disabled which is isolating by itself but also makes maintaining friendships difficult let alone making new friends.
So unfortunately the few friends I do have are firmly entrenched in FB and I have little recourse to make more friends. They're good people. Genuinely good people so I don't want to ditch them anyway, they've just been wicked into social media addiction and entrapment the same way many have been.
Hello i hope you dont mind if i post that post, in case someone does not want to go onto reddit:
r/Save3rdPartyApps
u/attackofmilk
Subreddits are starting to see spam from anti-protest, pro-admin ChatGPT bots
Thread on /r/Pics discussing bot spam. (Pics is now NSFW, but this thread is only profanity / vulgarity.)
/r/pics/comments/14puynz/chatgpt_bots_are_spamming_proadmin_astroturf/
/r/Programming closed (by admins?) after community recognition of bot spam:
Looks like r/programming discovered the astroturfing, so in true Reddit fashion they simply shut down the subreddit entirely to avoid the spread of negative public sentiment. Thanks for galvanizing my resolve to migrate to the fediverse, Spez
I noticed this happened before the reddit blackouts. I haven’t been to reddit since. Is this a new occurrence of the same ChatGPT astroturfing or is this that same news?
Agreed. For years I had truly (and naively) believed that Reddit, despite their prior blunders with which we are now all mostly familiar, would maintain an acceptable level of decency and never push things so far as alienate their core userbase. Shot themselves squarely in the foot on this one I think, as their recent changes affect so many.
It feels more like grabbing 2 shotguns and blasting both feet off at the same time. Unless their goal was to sink Reddit at record speed I have no idea what they’re doing…
I’m waiting for my data takeout, so checking old.reddit.com messages once a day. No other engagement beyond that. Lemmy communities are getting really good now.
I understand your pain with that last point. Being an atheist teen in a family that highly values religious holidays (and more) is a life experience I hope people don't have to go through.
Things got better, as I hope things are well for you.
But that's just the dig they did make horrible decisions that fucked Reddit up. But the 3rd party apps fixed most of those problems. Whenever I look at new Reddit it's literally so much harder and spammy to use. For year's now
Like with Twitter, it's a rapid-fire series of knee-jerk reactions, like a hammer, as in - "When you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail", destined to get caught, to not fix what you were supposedly trying to fix, to generate deeper and more baffling situations in the process, to fail.
Sorry to do that, but I believe the world makes a lot more sense when viewed through the lens of punctuated equilibrium. It does not make things better, just makes the chaos more understandable.
The dot com bubble.
The housing bubble.
Basically every economic bubble all the way back to tulip mania.
The Arab Spring.
The changes in the USA post 9/11.
And most disturbing of all, the recent rapid swing of pretty much all environmental indicators into uncharted territory. Our biosphere may be heading into a phase of rapid change.
Nobody wants to change. It's hard and expensive. Until they have to because conditions have required it. Then they change as fast as possible to a new state that works in the new conditions so they can survive.
r/programming was one of the earliest subreddits, I think it was actually #2. Can't view it anymore, but the moderation team of r/programming would have been pretty reddit admin/staff heavy. Pretty sure spez was listed on the moderation team at one point.
The app still works for me. But I've been hearing Reddit has shut down the old mod API token, but not the regular token yet. So that might explain a little. However, RedReader was granted accessibility exemption so who knows what's going on.
I mean, did they steal it? Or did people largely willingly give it away? People willingly left the older decentralized platforms in favor of centralized corporate platforms because, for one reason or another, they felt it was a better use of their time. The old-school forums weren't killed; people stopped using them and left for Reddit and Facebook and Instagram etc.
If we want to reverse this, we need to understand why this happened, what those service provided that lured people, and how we can build better alternatives, and I think there's more to this than just "corporation bad".
Edit: Downvote if you like, but I'd much prefer an actual response, because I think there is an interesting conversation to be had about this.
Of course there's more to this than "corpo bad", it's the economic system that drives these businesses to focus on profit over the quality of the user experience--but I think that's the core to all the "corpo bad" arguments when you really boil them down. These websites and services have become so ubiquitous for two reasons:
The first reason, is that people tend towards simplification, if you can give them a centralized location where they can have all their needs met, they prefer it to the effort it takes to use multiple locations/services. A great example is the popularity and convenience of stores like Walmart or Costco where you can do all of your shopping in one quick go. Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and even YouTube to a lesser degree all offer these one-stop-shop kind-of models by allowing you to connect with a vast amount of people, discuss a large number of topics, and view multiple forms of media. So, unless they have a good reason to remain diversified, people tend towards simplification.
The second reason is also psychological in nature. These companies, (whom we will refer to as FaRT), have designed and redesigned their entire systems to drive up refresh rates, click-through rates, and otherwise increase advertising visibility. In addition to hacking the addiction mechanisms, and the desire for people to feel important, they take it even further using deception and "dark UI". Even when you utilize many of the adblocking systems, for example, FaRT inject advertising content directly into the same stream of other user content(the best example is direct corpo sponsorship of big name YouTube content creators, but at-least that money goes directly to the creators). Plus, advertisers are getting much, much better at disguising this content so that you are less likely to skip it before seeing it.
So it's a two-sided coin, a major part of the problem is that "corpo bad", and now that they're taking it to a degree of harming the public experience for profits (which is why cable television died), it's our responsibility to step out of our comfort zones and show them that we are willing to inconvenience ourselves a little for a better UX.
There comes a breaking point where people and organizations who are dependent on Facebook ads will actually move from the jaws of this giant corporations for more freedom and control. We are certainly seeing it now by example. I'm someone who just left Reddit and actually am here to invest in this platform and you can't say well I'm the exception.
Most of the old internet platforms which failed were bought by corporations - sometimes to do just that, to shut it off.
Livejournal was bought by Russia to stop any dissent. Similarly twitter was bought to kill activism which for ultra rich was becoming an issue as it was undoing their lobbying. (forget all the drama over it, thats a smoke screen to hide real issue)
In the end, only when we leave gluttony and greed behind, and understand the full game - can we have a fair internet. Otherwise there are powerful people with power and money behind them who would like to keep controlling you for their benefit.
There were us knowledgeable early adopters who were ridiculed endlessly by ... pretty much everybody ... who actually worked to build the thing. Then the companies came.... and brought with them the ignorant, unthinking majority of the lowest common denominator who believe everything they're told to believe. I call it stolen. The consumer class that followed the corporations didn't build this place, nor did they represent what we had built.
I get what you're saying, having just nuked my nearly 12 year old Reddit account yesterday. Things changed a lot, and I'd definitely say most of it was for the worse.
However, I don't know if this, for lack of a better term, superiority complex, is particularly helpful The fact is that early adopters and enthusiasts made Reddit a cool and useful platform, and so more and more normal began using it. The only way to prevent that from happening is to make a platform actively unappealing, and I wouldn't say that's exactly a good idea. The best thing, IMO, is to stay isolated from monetization incentives and ensure that communities of like-minded people can be formed and interact with each other in a healthy way, both normie and enthusiast.
I mean, if Reddit today magically became a non-profit, reduced the API fees to cover only costs, and eliminated active monetization schemes, that wouldn't suddenly revert the user base back to the way it was a decade ago. The presence of the "ignorant unthinking majority of the lowest common denominator who believe everything they're told" is not dependent on the pursuit of profit.
While I think you are right and there are surely factors worth investigating, I cannot shake the feeling that 'money for ads' is a really big one.
To the point: I cannot htelp but notice that the bigger services place emphasis on you presenting, ourself, while small decentralized ones place more import on anonimity. I think there's a part in all or most people that wants to present themselves and be lauded among peers. This is to me why platforms with photo capability like fb and insta took off. Also reddit was trying to gravitate more and more towards this with following profiles and bla
That's definitely a pretty important distinction, and I'm definitely interested to see if there'll ever be a federate platform that does emphasize real identities. Growing that would be very hard given the network effects, but TikTok etc show that it is possible, at least.
I think PixelFed is going in this direction if I’m not mistaken. Also to your points and which I keep bringing up… you can have both anonymous and Real identities interacting directly with each other here. Of course other social media sites can do this somewhat but they all encourage you to give them as much info as possible.
Honestly as an early user of Facebook, Reddit, etc., we shouldn't forget that when people first came to these services, they were the smaller, cleaner, more text-based alternatives to bigger corporate bullshit. Myspace was busy, bloated, Malware prone, Facebook was light and organized. Digg became super corporatized overnight, Reddit was clean and simple. Once early users are on that shit when it's good, their friends follow, and eventually communities form and it's very, very difficult if you care about a community to abandon it for an alternative. Websites aren't just "websites," they're people, and just like tech companies eventually always put profits over people, people put people over software. They'll put up with a lot of shit to stay on touch woth the people they loved.
I upvoted you, but I think some people just downvote and move on not because they 100% disagree with you, but because they don't quite have the time to post a detailed reply, and they're probably hoping someone else does on their behalf, which they will upvote if it's close to what they're trying to say.
Not enough hours in a day to type out a detailed response to a downvote (or even upvotes) when you have so many other things on your plate. I'm guessing they were trying to say something like, "I didn't choose to leave decentrazlied platforms, I'm still on them. Everyone else did, I had to follow them if I wanted to keep in touch with my family and friends."
You can't really blame this on the people. The centralized platforms offered something that for most people worked a lot better than what was already existing. In the beginning, those corporate platforms were actually quite good so it's only natural that people flocked to it.
It's only after those companies achieved a monopoly in their market, that they started pulling a bait-and-switch and began to enshittify their sites. Network effect makes it so that mass migration to something that's technically better is unlikely. This bait-and-switch is where they stole it from the people.
I'm not really blaming the people here, and I kind of question how useful an exercise blame even really is in this kind of the thing. Being angry at companies for trying to make money isn't a particularly productive exercise, since that is their entire point, and I'd much rather funnel that energy into building alternatives that are insulated from those pressures. The fact of the matter is that the corporations built something that people wanted, they began using it, and now the monetization is dialing up and sharply degrading the user experience. This was always going to be possible, and they are perfectly within their rights to do what they want with their own platforms, even if it's shitty. I wouldn't really characterize this as 'theft', though I suppose that's really a question of semantics. Exploitation of human psychology, perhaps yes.
But as that experience continues degrading, it does create a big opening for platforms like the Fediverse that aren't bound to those same monetization incentives. Network effects definitely make transitions difficult, but that's not insurmountable, and also is much less powerful in anonymous platforms like discussion boards and forums. I think kbin and Lemmy are in a pretty promising position, though there will of course be some growing pains, and it'll take time for a critical mass of users to arrive and participate in a wide variety of topics.
Hell yeah you can blame the people. They chose to use those platforms, and they choose to stay with them as they grow ever shittier. They're the ones enabling platforms like reddit.
Thank you for posting this here. Really heartwarming to receive so much kindness.
Let's be optimistic for the future of Internet communities. Technology evolves and puts more power into the hands of the users. Excited to see what's next.
Thank you for giving us such a good mobile experience on reddit. RIF suited my needs perfectly and I am both sad to see it go and excited for whatever the future holds.
Jumping on the bandwagon here. Sad to see the current state lead to the end of RiF. The app has been a huge part of my internet addiction. Thank you for all the years of development and patience.
This is your app? You're awesome dude, RiF was the only way I browsed reddit on my phone. Thank you for the years of joy and I wish you success in all your future endeavors.
Glad to share it! Thank you so much for your hard work, I cannot overstate how much I loved your app. I'm sure you've been getting this bunch but seriously the experience on Reddit is fun was what made Reddit. I have barely used it ever on a computer and have never really experienced it any other way. It is by far the number one used to have on my phone and losing access to it is losing access to Reddit for me. I'd love to know about any other projects that you're working on because the quality and simplicity of your product was what made the experience so great all these years!
The moderators were recently contacted by u/ModCodeofConduct, who had this to say:
We noticed you recently marked your community NSFW. This action is likely to confuse your community members, as people subscribe to communities based on the content at the time of subscription. This is a violation of the Mod Code of Conduct rule 2.
While we recognize communities can gradually change as they grow, when your content suddenly changes from generally safe for work to sexually explicit, it harms the community members.
While we can see you haven't taken the step of approving sexually explicit content, we need to separate your community from the communities that abruptly become NSFW and post sexually explicit content, situations in which we immediately take action. Please correct the NSFW marking on your subreddit so that we can separate your community from those violating sitewide rules.
Thank you.
As subscribers to r/PICS are aware, the moderators here have worked very hard to ensure that the community adheres to every mandate and message that Reddit has surfaced. Unfortunately, we were unable to state as much to u/ModCodeofConduct, as they disabled the ability for us reply.
We do not wish Reddit to think that we have ignored their attempt at contact (which would be very rude of us), so we will be offering our response here. We apologize for locking the thread, but as Reddit has yet to answer our previous letter, we are operating under the assumption that it went unseen amongst other comments.
We appreciate your concerns regarding r/PICS being marked as NSFW, and we hope that you will be reassured by our response. In short, the shift in question was not a sudden change, nor is there any risk of users being confused… and most important of all, an abrupt reversion would itself constitute a violation of the site-wide rules that you cited.
On June 16th, 2023, r/PICS (then r/Pics) asked its subscribers to vote on the state of the subreddit, and they overwhelmingly decided to feature only “images of John Oliver looking sexy.” On June 20th, 2023, a second poll was held, and it was determined that “any and all media featuring John Oliver” would be allowed. This also precipitated a change in the subreddit’s name from “/r/Pics” to “/r/PICS,” with the latter being an acronym for “Posts Illuminating Comedian’s Sexiness.”
As we moderated r/PICS, however, we discovered that large amounts of profanity and offensive content – both of which are listed as NSFW by Reddit’s policies – were present in non-NSFW threads. This was problematic, as users expecting work-safe experiences were very likely to encounter non-work-safe material. Rather than abruptly alter our rules without first consulting the community (which would have confused users), we asked on June 26th, 2023 for subscribers to refrain from offering any NSFW content in non-NSFW threads.
We also requested a response from Reddit on that same date.
By July 3rd, 2023, the amount of profanity and offensive content in r/PICS had not declined, and Reddit had not responded to us. It was publicly announced that we had no choice but to mark the subreddit as being NSFW, so as to adhere to Reddit’s own mandates. It was also made clear that our longstanding rules – rules which should have seen r/Pics (in any form) being a NSFW community from the get-go – would be unchanged; that neither gore nor pornography would be allowed, but that tasteful nudity, profanity, and “offensive” content would continue to be acceptable. To reiterate, while we do celebrate a British comedian’s undeniable allure, we do not allow anything sexually explicit to be posted.
Our surfaced resources – our sidebar, our rules, our wiki, and our announcements – make all of this exceptionally clear, but since Reddit provides no method by which users can be required to read said resources before participating, the visible marking of r/PICS as NSFW is vital to establishing reasonable expectations. Furthermore, as Reddit assures its partners that their advertisements will not run alongside profanity or offensive content, the aforementioned marking is also in said partners’ best interests. That same assurance indicates that moderators “set their own standards for conduct and ‘appropriate’ content,” indicating that r/PICS is solely responsible for determining what is and is not offensive (and policing accordingly). A failure on our part to appropriately list r/PICS as NSFW would therefore run counter to what advertisers have been told.
We do understand that the shift may have caused some minor issues for Reddit, however, and as we have no desire to harm the platform, we are more than willing to discuss the situation with you. Please respond to our previous request for communication, and we will look forward to exploring productive paths forward. In the meantime, to ensure that r/PICS is adhering to all of Reddit’s guidelines and requests, we would be happy to revert the NSFW setting, restrict posting, and remove any and all content that could be considered “offensive” by anyone. If this compromise does not meet with your approval, please offer a publicly visible comment in response to our open letter. We understand that you are likely very busy, so we will wait until Friday, July 7th before taking any additional steps.
In the meantime, to ensure that r/PICS is adhering to all of Reddit’s guidelines and requests, we would be happy to revert the NSFW setting, restrict posting, and remove any and all content that could be considered “offensive” by anyone.
Hmm. So they are superficially giving in, they won't keep NSFW on to avoid ads money for reddit. But by going restricted, and going after all "offensive" content (could I read that to mean all John Oliver content? i.e. all content since the protests started) they stand to cause a massive drop in traffic to the sub, which should still hurt the bottom line.
This is exactly what they're gonna do. I'd love to see them implement something like what /r/politicalhumor did and set up automod to react to user comments. So for example, if anyone says "the is offensive" it deletes the post and bans the user
Note the statement to remove any and all offensive content. If they're still going the malicious compliance route, they're implying they're going to nuke the sub.
Reddit will replace the mods with those friendly to Admins/Spez and revert back to the way the sub was run prior to the blackout and malicious compliance. This is unfortunately, the only way it's going to end now.
Replace the mods with who? Reddit doesn't have an endless supply of compliant free labor they can just assign willy-nilly to whatever subs they desire. Especially now that the masks are off about what Reddit admins really think about moderators.
I'm giving the most plausible scenario. They don't need a mod from r/pics to take over; they can use anyone who is power hungry enough to do the job.
Not saying I like it, or agree with it, just giving the most plausible option for Reddit to take at this point.
Because, let's be clear about this, Reddit is winning this battle even if they won't win the war. This overall event spells the end of the site as we know it...or knew it. The malicious compliance, changing to NSFW, the broad interpretation of the rules...it doesn't matter. Reddit is going to win this, or appear to win this in the short term, even if it entirely kills their future. They'll kill a 20 million subscriber subreddit to do it if they need to.
And I'm pointing out how this "most plausible scenario" ends in ruin for Reddit. If Reddit's most popular subs are being run by people whose literally only qualification for the role is that they are power hungry, what kind of subreddit will those end up being? The mods won't be doing anything to cultivate the quality of the place, they likely won't even know what "quality" is. They'll just come up with a bunch of rules to enforce, throwing their weight around pointlessly and alienating anyone who sticks around long enough to interact with them. They probably won't even be good "janitor" moderators because proper janitoring is a lot of hard work that doesn't necessarily result in you receiving the sort of adulation that a power-hungry person would actually crave. Why spend hours dealing with meaningless spam that only bots will see you blocking when you get more of a thrill from bossing around people who slipped up on some technicality or rule that you implemented primarily so that people would slip up on them?
And if the admins try ordering you to do the spam-patrol grunt work with the threat of kicking you out, well, you don't actually care. They're not paying you and you have no interest in the community itself. Rinse and repeat.
Exactly this. Looking at the top response it details it's hard due to a ton of costs like operating costs and hosting costs and stuff, but with federation these costs can be spread around so that it's more manageable for each individual instance (as content doesn't need to be viewed from the original instance but gets spread around).
The mass-scale casual interaction producing flashes of surprising relevance can't happen when the conditions aren't pulling in so many people that the 1 in 300 million person with the answer doesn't casually happen across the question that only he/she can answer. That's the unique content from Reddit.
Link aggregation, message boarding, messaging, all that stuff is merely tech that lots of other places have. Reddit's moat is the user presence which other platforms can't just replicate. Reddit needs to die first so that 1 in 300 person stops going there and goes to other places and somehow runs into the question there, hopefully in a way that they turn up in Google search.
Is the fediverse where that happens? Seriously asking because I'm no expert on it. It doesn't seem like the concept can scale distribution at that level. There will be pockets of interaction, but not everything is shared everywhere.
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