this fucking sucks. i am very disappointed that the protests lost steam and everything is just back to normal, swept under the rug. they showed their hand, acted like fucking dictators, and everyone is just like "welp thats it!" and gives the fuck up. it's just sad. it feels like 90% of the people who said they were in this were all just being performative.
so many of us dedicated a lot of time to the protests, left our communities, migrated, all for everyone to just go crawling back. i won't go back. i am staying on kbin. but man, it fucking sucks to see reddit face 0 consequences because Spez was right, "this will blow over"
I think this has done damage to Reddit, but it'll be death by a thousand cuts rather than a big instantaneous failure.
To be honest, I really don't care what happens to Reddit at this point. I'd rather have Kbin be a smaller, more dedicated community than have it "kill Reddit".
I don't necessarily know if I agree with your take on "smaller" but it definitely would help stem the tide of enshitification. We could be that glowing bastion on the hill that always pops up in zombie flicks.
Most social networks have this "growth at all costs" mentality that is usually the root cause of enshittification. When I say 'smaller', I mean it more in terms of fostering a healthy community of dedicated contributors rather than trying to make the fediverse grow as much as possible as fast as possible. This is why I mostly support the notion of preemptively defederating from Threads. While it would help the fediverse 'grow', that's not necessarily what I want out of it. I don't want us to win, I want us to be good.
Yeah, this. It often takes a lot to kill titans of any particular industry... and like it or not, the old tech bro sites like Reddit, Twitter etc. have grown too large to kill with a single arrow or a single trip of their own.
Instead their death often has to happen as a slow and gradual reforming of opinion. The most popular media sites have been thrown into chaos, and have lost most all of their goodwill (or what amount they may have had of it anyways) leaving them gasping for air. Facebook didn't become "a place for old people" over night. It was a gradual thing.
Reddit will die off. Them locking the API behind a huge paywall will hurt them, not help them. VC's have already lost a lot of faith in the tech industry including social media. They'll have to find a way to make money... and I'm sorry to say, but if they couldn't make money all this time, they probably won't really ever be able to.
The age of high valuation with promises on return are gone.
There's always some people walking around dead malls, even if the mall died years ago. Reddit will be around for at least 5-10 more years but it's overall influence will start to decline. It will be slowly at first but I'd bet three years from now reddit will just be seen as a forum site for scammers, bots, incels and alt-right lunatics (more than it is now).
Let’s be real, Joe Public doesn’t care about the changes that caused the protests. They just want somewhere to go to see content, and reddits algorithms serve them content. If they have to scroll past some apps on a less-than-ideal app or the regular website, so be it. Most of the internet is shit anyways, reddits clients aren’t much better or worse in that regard.
It’s introduced a lot of people to the fediverse, which is awesome. And will probably have done a non-zero amount of damage to Reddit. But it’ll survive so long as Joe Public is willing to put up with it to see their cat pictures.
You get used to it. Change is slow and a website like reddit won't die overnight. Much better and productive to focus on building up a new community than tearing down the old.
The goal here shouldn't have been to kill reddit. The goal is to start fostering the next community for the inevitable next meltdown. Start the fire, not set the toen ablaze. Which I feel is a when, not if.
I'm betting before the end of the year they start to make a big hit on sexual content on reddit. THAT is going to make the fire really rise.
If this is how the admins choose to act, so fucking be it. I'll deltree my 12 year old account and never go back. As it stands, the fediverse is already my new home, and the users who decide to remain on reddit can explain to all the new users what the fuck went wrong.
The only people on reddit who are against the blackout are conservative assholes who hate picket lines. They're going to be the majority of remaining users.
Nah I’m “conservative” (at least that’s what they call me on Reddit now), and most of us support this blackout. The site has been hostile to diverse political opinions for a long time. Note how one of the largest subs, r/Politics, remained open the whole time. They are, by every metric, very left wing.
Don’t let the silly culture war divide us on this one. We all think Reddit has jumped the shark.
I hear what you’re arguing. People are much more complex than “left” and “right.” But, colloquially, the people on r/Politics, are left wing. They support abortion, and gay marriage, and trans people, and universal healthcare, and higher taxes, and a hundred other values typically shared by those on the left.
Old school liberals are certainly different to what we see on the left today.
It's all rather opaque, isn't it? I suspect you're correct, but if Reddit is actually paying for and controlling the moderation of /r/Politics, that raises a number of serious questions; both ethical and legal.
What they did to The_Donald where Spez edited comments to make the sub seem to be inciting violence, so he had an excuse to ban it, is a prime example and should be a red flag regardless of someone's politics.
The banning from several subs automatically of people who joined joke subs like "ChurchofCovid" is also a prime example.
Very hostile to differing political opinions.
I don't think it's a social media site any more, I think it's a propaganda site and a data harvesting operation.
where Spez edited comments to make the sub seem to be inciting violence, so he had an excuse to ban it
Not what happened. Spez, fuckwit though he is, actually managed to do a halfway decent trolling there.
A bunch of t_d people were slagging him off and insulting him in their comments. Spez got drunk as shit one night and edited their comments, swapping his name with Trump's so that it made them look like a bunch of anti-trumpers. Much gnashing of teeth ensued.
Absolutely shouldn't have done it, especially as CEO of Reddit FFS, but definitely funny as shit.
Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely a mark against him, but he didn't get them banned. They thouroughly got themselves banned on their own.
Also the people who say "well I'm not using third party apps so who cares anyway"
The thing they should care about is how reddit has handled this situation. Imagine what nonsense they'll come up with next if they're willing to turf away some of the oldest and most dedicated users
Exactly this. I've used RIF since forever, so RIF is Reddit for me. Even if they take it all back and everything goes back to normal, there's still a bad taste in my mouth. Reddit is clearly against the community, literally fighting it. Not even trying to find some sort of compromise or anything. So screw it, kbin seems pretty cozy so far, to be honest.
Honestly, even if they walk everything back, I still know they want to kill it eventually. Might as well already make my way over to other places like here, and stay with them.
I don't know, but I already think I like it here.
I actually used the newer official desktop site, and really didn't mind it at all. What I minded was Reddit acting like their company was Reddit. No, you just provided the website and infrastructure. You were not Reddit. WE were Reddit. And we liked Reddit as it was, not what you are turning it into to make a quick buck on your IPO. We didn't appreciate providing ALL the value and then being treated as if we weren't important or to be listened to. I'm tired of good sites being whored out for mega-bucks and then transformed into another sub-par lowest common denominator that is a ghost of its former self. I'll skip the wait and pain of watching that happen yet again, and leave now.
So yeah, I wasn't a third party app user, but in the long run I'll still be effected by everything corporate management is doubling down on right now.
"Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die." Reddit is in step 4.
You're completely right from a user's perspective. I think this post from Cory Doctorow helps explain what we're seeing. He doesn't talk about Reddit specifically, but it should be easy to infer the implications for Reddit from what he writes: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/
JUST LIKE TWITTER! I love that the new internet comes in two flavors, "open source hippie (doesn't work well)" and "vaguely fascist (also doesn't work that well tbh)"
I replaced every comment I had with a rant about how Reddit has become corporate shills and none of their actions are about profitability and all about easing corporations with the ability to targeted advertise to users while being openly hostile to all their volunteer labor and users.
We're early adopters. Early adopters have a higher tolerance for (and ability to deal with) things like bugs, confusing UI, uncertainty, and probably continual change for the short term.
But hey, someone's gotta do it. The end result of this will be an established community and a more polished product. Over time, more and more people will show up as this place gets better and better, and Reddit continues to worsen. (Everyone knows that old.reddit is going away, it's just a matter of when.)
We're early adopters. Early adopters have a higher tolerance for (and ability to deal with) things like bugs, confusing UI, uncertainty, and probably continual change for the short term.
Not to mention, a lack of content. While it's populating nicely it's still not like Reddit, especially for niche subjects. You definitely have to endure a lot of shouting in the wind situations while this builds up.
Yeah, I've certainly found myself subscribing to any and every magazine that looks even remotely like it could be interesting. Getting inundated isn't a problem around these parts just yet. But the volume definitely has gone up recently.
It's genuinely hard and needs to be improved. Subscribing to a magazine that someone else on kbin has subscribed to already isn't too bad. Go to the magazine (eg, click what looks like the subreddit name in the post) and scroll alllll the way down and there'll be a subscribe button.
But if nobody has subscribed yet in the instance, it's hilariously hard. You have to search in the general search (not the magazine search) for specifically "magazine@domain.com" and you should see a subscribe button then. You will not content in that magazine that existed before you subscribed. If that sounds terrible, it's because it is. Thankfully, most of the time, you won't be the first to subscribe to a magazine and thus can just use the magazine search or browse the front page to see posts.
PS: the subscribe option is also as the bottom of each thread. So you can alternatively just open a thread in the magazine instead of the magazine itself.
PPS: I've mentioned the subscribe button being at the bottom because that's the placement on mobile and I think many of us are on mobile. On desktop, it's in the sidebar.
Standup response, I hope Christian finds a promising career ahead of him.
If I'm being honest, I wouldn't be nearly so kind to Reddit following his ordeal. Even if Reddit renegs on the API pricing completely and go back to making it free, the trust has already been sufficiently broken that I wouldn't return. They won't stop monetizing the site just because they lost some users and pissed off their developer partners. They'll just be subtler, quieter the next time they try to screw you over.
Second chances are important, but there are limits to trust. Reddit slapped their users across the face today; despite any promise or apology they make in the meantime, there is no indication that they won't do it again tomorrow to get what they want.
I agree, I don't think they would just keep the API free forever, they've already said that Reddit is not profitable, and so they will continue to add more "features" to be more like tiktok.
Third party devs have said they don’t mind a reasonable API rate, but both the cost (~$20 million/year just for Apollo) and the timing (30 days to make the pricing changes, update the app, work out bugs, get Apple to approve it, etc) were just stupid.
It was done this way to kill the third party apps, period.
If Reddit didn’t insist on hosting all pics & videos themselves, they would probably already be profitable.
If the API pricing was reasonable, users & third party devs would happily pay it.
If Reddit had given more time (3-6 months) for third party devs to implement changes, then they could and would do so (assuming reasonable API price).
Rains Bran is the only one I still buy sometimes. I prefer to cook my breakfast but it’s great for when I’m stoned in the middle of the night and want something to snack on.
If I could only pick one, probably cornpops. I have some s'mores cereal right now. It's basically just a mix of Golden Grahams, Cocopuffs, and Marshmallows, its great and is a strong contender.
Honestly I don’t know anymore. It used to be Cookie Crisp but now that I’m older I’m realizing it’s kinda mid. But idk what would replace Cookie Crisp in my life. I like Krave but it feels more like candy/snacks than food to me. I say I like Lucky Charms but what that really means is that I like the marshmallows, not the cereal itself. Cinnamon Toast Crunch is solid though, so maybe that.
I don’t eat cereal that much these days, but I love the Golden Grams type cereal, whatever brand. Cinnamon Toast Crunch is solid second choice, tho. These days tho, I go with the more adult cereal… being a healthy adult is kinda lame sometimes.
I love Lucky Charms but unfortunately, they're not sold where I live. The sugar content is probably above the official EU limit for cereals or something :(
I don't know why, but whenever my blood sugar is low (I'm a t1 diabetic) I crave Rice Krispies so much. It's now my favorite cereal even when I'm not low.
Every once in a while I catch that off-brand Fruity Pebbles (Fruity Dino-Bites!) with marshmallows in it. Just blend that shit up and shoot it directly into my fucking veins please.
Weetabix, that soggy cardboard taste in your mouth in the morning isn't there to enjoy, it's to make you feel like you're doing something good and healthy for your body. No more than 2!
Definitely delicious, I love that cereal. I also started getting into Cinnamon Cheerios Crunch or whatever it’s called. really tasty. I guess I just love cinnamon.
I don't eat cereal anymore, or when I do it's the non-sugary healthy kind. But among all of them it's really difficult, but I think I like Captn Crunch with berries. But it really depends on what I would be craving for I!
It's not really a power trip for some mods. Community and support are things some people REALLY need, especially veterans and disabled people. Would you say the same if the Mods of r/blind capitulated as well? They are blind people modding for other blind people, having random Reddit mods step into their job doesn't make sense and will hurt the community.
Ik a lot of mods do power trip, but you're just being a cynical ass because you want to feel superior for having left the website when I reality you're just another person with another opinion. Nothing special
Would also like to add that even if they did step down, it might cause issues.
For a good deal of subs, I imagine a mod team opening and promoting a Fediverse equivalent, and totally dropping the Reddit community would be fine. Move to the Fediverse, or deal with spamming and random trolls from potentially inactive new mods or the community being led in a strange (possibly hateful) direction from active new mods. Or just stop looking at the Reddit community entirely. Although it’s still possible these mods stay because they want to prevent people from having their day ruined by inactive new mods allowing some surprise NSFL gore on a very SFW sub.
For other ones, like r/lgbtq, this suddenly doesn’t seem like such a great choice to force on people. I acknowledge targeted harassment might still happen outside of r/lgbtq, but if I wanted to be homophobic, I’d seek out people on the subreddit for gay people. It probably gets more of it than the average sub. And there’s an expectation of that sub being safe from harassment in a world where many of its users expect harassment in most other spaces. Do you want to leave these users out in the cold if you pack it up for good and abandon Reddit modding? It’s possible your new replacements might also remove harassment and homophobia and transphobia, but I think it’s more likely they’ll do nothing. It’s also possible some homophobe signs up to mod it and starts posting homophobic trash. Do you want to subject people to this if they don’t move accounts? Most people would probably choose leaving at least one person from the current mod team to prevent just that.
Also, the potential of getting less activity on the Fediverse might actually matter. Say 1% of people browsing a support sub will give needed help. If 100 people would see the post on Reddit, but then you migrated to the Fediverse and now only 30 people see each post, posters have a smaller chance of getting the help they need.
Maybe mods of stuff like r/aww won’t cause too much damage to their users by jumping ship and leaving Reddit, having to quit looking at cute pictures because now it’s being spammed isn’t really the end of the world. Mods of support communities could do more damage if they quit. Not getting the money for your insulin could be the end of your world. Popping into r/lgbtq after receiving hate in real life from loved ones, expecting to find community support for your struggles only to get hate speech on your feed and your post, could help push you along to ending your world a lot faster.
Fully aware that a similar situation could happen on r/aww too. Could be the one bright spot in someone’s day, they go there after receiving hate from loved ones, now there’s NSFL gore of a guy killed for being gay with the title “[insert slur here] gets what’s coming to them,” could help push them along to ending their world a lot faster. I think this kind of case is probably closer to “edge case” than “would probably happen frequently if mods left,” but it’s probably still present in the minds of some mod teams who didn’t totally step down yet.
Community and support are things some people REALLY need, especially veterans and disabled people. Would you say the same if the Mods of r/blind capitulated as well
Probably. I've been told for years to touch grass anytime I talk about issues important to me. But there are no local communities for my issues compared to veterans and the disabled. Maybe they should use that time to make actual connections.
you're just being a cynical ass because you want to feel superior for having left the website when I reality you're just another person with another opinion. Nothing special
People can do what they want. I was the same way in 2015. I just hope they open their eyes one day and realize that it's best to let go when you're disrespected for years on end. You have more power than these corporations want you to think.
I feel like people are overcomplicating this (& it doesn’t help that most early adopters are techies, who enjoy talking about things like federation protocols)
One doesn’t need to understand the Fediverse in order to use it. That’s like trying to understand the mechanisms of internal combustion engine because I want to drive a car. I mean, that is fun and there are not-too-esoteric scenarios where the knowledge might even be helpful, but it sure as hell isn’t necessary!
Migration was a breeze once I stopped worrying about the internal combustion engine.
I mean, if you're feeling vindictive then replacing ll your comments with essentially spam helps trash Reddit's search engine ranking for at least the pages you're comments are on.
Reddit was antagonistic when they removed moderators from subreddits, banned their accounts, and did everything else they possibly could to quell the protests. The behavior they're exhibiting to this day isn't new.
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