I still don’t understand why anyone would still be using Twitter today
Lots of content I want to see is on Twitter and the alternatives those content creators use are like Instagram or even worse. If I have to choose between Twitter and Instagram, then Twitter is the obvious choice, still.
Every once in a while I check who is now on Mastodon, and I am always happy when I see a few more users I like. But then I look and many people rather look for Project 92 or Bluesky from Jack instead of just joining Mastodon.
Is there a reason why this is the case? Could it be because it’s a publicity thing where it’s created by tech billionaires that’s why they prefer them over anyone else?
There’s shitloads of secret communities everywhere. Discord is particularly popular. The reason they exist is that average people are only averagely intelligent and averagely interested in most topics, so if you want a higher level of content than average, you have to go where they can’t find you.
When a dance club is cool, nobody knows about it. When everyone finds out about it, those cool people go somewhere else. Being cool, itself, implies being something different enough from normal to necessitate its own word to differentiate it. Think hipster.
Average people made McDonalds the worlds most successful restaurant. Not everybody wants to live on big macs though. But on the internet, where the users control the content, they find your cool burger place and accidentally turn it into a McDonalds because they don’t know the difference.
In my experience, most people outgrow the secret clubs phase eventually. But I’m sure not everyone does. Who doesn’t like feeling special, no matter how unjustified it is?
Yes and no. Invite only clubs risk become extreme echo chambers because they self select their members. Arguably much of social media often becomes echo chambers as people self select what they want to see. But if you then add in secret invite only clubs you're creating echo chambers within echo chambers.
Beware the alure of exclusivity, it can be false gold.
I got added to it for a top post once. I opened the popular subreddit and the top post was something like, “Well, I’m here. Now what?”
I knew immediately it was dumb.
I think “secret” communities can be good when they’re for a specialized interest. But they don’t even have to be secret. Even just niche is great.
For example, the discord for the game PolyBridge is fucking incredible. I mean, it kind of sucks right now because they just released PolyBridge 3, so a lot of new people have (temporarily) joined.
But there are regulars who post hourly years after PolyBridge releases. There is even this one person called Arglin who posts absurdly complex essays on geometry and new discoveries within the game. They could be dissertations on mathematics.
If anyone is still reading this, I have to tell you about the Linkage Repository. This document is insane. For an Indie studio’s bridge building game lol.
In my experience, most people outgrow the secret clubs phase eventually. But I’m sure not everyone does. Who doesn’t like feeling special, no matter how unjustified it is?
** looks around at the Free Masons, Skull and Bones, and Illuminati **
Same with Relay... I checked it to see what the dead so would look like and all the genetic frontage posts loaded in... It'll be interesting to see what happens.
The author of relay put out a post saying that it'll keep going for free while he decides what the subscription model is going to look like - it's the top post in the sub ATM.
Was surprised with that choice, but it doesn't change anything - not using it anymore regardless
I'm no lawyer, however, having gone through this a couple of times as a service provider this is my understanding:
GDPR and similar laws cover data which the provider has gathered about you and may have been shared with third parties.
Generally, user generated content is not covered under GDPR requests. Any content that you chose to post which is self-identifying was posted at your discretion.
The best examples of where this must be true are mailing list archives and Git reposities. E.g., the email address you gave to GitHub on signups and the email address that you attached to a git commit may have been the same, but only one use case provides for GDPR protection. Mostly.
In practice there's a lot of gray area in GDPR and privacy lawyers often have to find the inflection point somewhere between clearly covered and clearly not covered.
for what it's worth, folks from pre-Musk Twitter who looked into this issue determined that tweets basically did fall under the GDPR.
That's interesting! It does set a precedent. I'm just going to have to wait for a European class action against Reddit. I hope someone with time and money in their hands takes the initiative.
Hmm. I wonder though - could follow BrikoX's suggestion. Might be the case that you don't need a lawyer or to spend any money on it, instead the gov't org will hear complaints from lots of redditors (or ex-redditors) and then send its own lawyers in. If so, then these folks will be using public money from taxpayers and of course they got the time - it's literally their actual job. (Of course I speak in generalities and maybes because i don't know the system in every single EU country and it likely varies somewhat between them.)
When the API shut off early, Apollo dev u/iamthatis (@ChristianSelig) revoked his token so I cannot see any of this; but I’m wondering if reddit isn’t pulling a silent reversal of this to stem the bleeding of users and content. There is a lot of useful stuff that has been deleted. The AMA staff resigning and all the stuff migrating to fedi. No matter how much f-u/spez tries to shout “This is fine”; the building is still burning all around him.
I thought access would essentially be the same from the app's perspective, just the app builders would start getting MASSIVE bills in the mail? And they were shutting it down preemptively to avoid this.
That was my understanding, also. I read that the first billing for devs would be sent on Aug 1, so developers who did not want to pay shut their apps down on June 30 so they wouldn't have even one bill for API use. However, it also sounds like Reddit shut off the API early from what Christian Selig said so they continued their petty games.
Reddit is supposed to block api access to anyone not in a contract with them. This is why all the apps stopped working early yesterday. Reddit had to turn access on to any app that is staying. That is why this is weird. Unless all these apps are in deals with Reddit.
Narwhal said they are going to continue and start going subscription only once Narwhal 2 is released. Apparently they worked out some kind of delay on billing.
Yeah I remember how they tried telling the Apollo dev that the bills won't be due for 30 days so that was like giving them more time. I'd expect that any apps that are still open are going to get a bill in a month.
Narwhal is still open too, I pulled up a list of my subreddits to look for equivalents.
You can't just charge people out of nowhere when they didn't sign a contract and blatantly did not consent via their announcements their apps were dead
Are you willing to test. If Boost is working it's a matter of any day it will shut off. Boost Dev is already making a lemmy app. Reddit is gonna die and hard!
@Jcb2016 Good news… at least two kbin apps are in the works. Follow @dansup for their Kbam app, and @hariette for their Artemis app. Artemis sounds like it’ll be heavily Apollo inspired, whereas Kbam is doing something a bit different.
This is a fancy bookmark from wherever your browser is. I have the same "app" and so do people who use Firefox on iOS. What you're looking at is essentially the same thing as kbin on the mobile internet.
The apps in development will have other QoL features that will be more similar to Apollo (but I hope more similar to Infinity for Android).
While Reddit might be fine it also could go down the same path as Yahoo, AIM, or Twitter. Either dying a slow death or ending up a shell of what it once was.
Hell even Slashdot still limps along, a shell of what it what it was before everyone moved from it to Reddit. For large ranges of "fine" I'm sure Reddit will fall into some category for some time at least.
It'll be fine in the same way Facebook is fine. It'll have users, and it'll maybe even make money. But Facebook is filled with negativity, regurgitated content, aggressive monetisation and an ever-increasing lack of personal connection.
I logged into Facebook for something last week for the first time in a long time. 14 out of the first 20 posts in my feed - so 70% - were "suggestions" or "promotions". It wasn't stuff posted by people I know or pages I've liked, and it wasn't even stuff that people I know or pages I've liked had interacted with. It was adverts and shitty, lowest-common-denominator content that I had no interest in.
Facebook isn't dead but it might as well be as far as I'm concerned. It's no longer enjoyable, interesting or useful to me. And Reddit is going down that same path.
Facebook is nowhere near as dead as you think it is. It is still the best place for local groups and many niche hobbyist groups. I really don't want reddit to be another version of that, 1 crappy social site is enough. Also you're missing a key differentiating factor: facebook has actual paid content moderators.
I don't think reddit will die, at least not right away (remember, digg shut down finally in 2018).
Best case scenario is they hemorrhage users, fail ipo, and then join the fediverse. I say this because joining will create a bridge for new users to come here.
Worst case scenario is they become like twitter. which is possible.
My money is on them trying to sell to Microsoft or Google for ai training, and keeping their api private.
You're making a great point about Facebook. It's still insanely popular among older and more rural Americans. I guess these are populations that would be more isolated without it and still see the value in participating. One example: I have a 21 year old niece who is on it 24/7, but then again she is a hour's drive from the nearest Walmart and and her parents. Three hundred miles from her bestie. She's two-thousand-ish miles away from me. She has my number, but she prefers Messenger to text.
It's also good for community groups, online garage sales, in memoriam pages, and the like. Some businesses like to use it instead of having a proper website, probably due to zero cost of hosting and familiarity of use.*
Reddit never fit naturally with any of those, but I'm sure it will find a niche of users in the same way.
*I'm sure there are other dynamics worldwide where Facebook might also be a valuable tool. These are just the first few examples I can think of in the US.
Reddit will be fine in the short term sure, but anyone who actually gave enough of a shit to put in the effort needed for it to work well have left or stated that they will no longer do anything more than the bare minimum. Reddit will still be around for a while, but it will never be the same place it was, and eventually will just become irrelevant as it's overrun with trolls and scammers. I give it 3 - 5 more years before it disappears without fanfare and no one will care.
Exactly my thoughts - it's going to be a slow decline. Probably the first thing that will happen is that mods will drift away and the quality of subs will decline. Any replacement mods may be good but are also just as likely to drift away after a month or two.
The site will slowly attract more and more spammers and scammers when they wake up to this fact... Whether it actually disappears I don't know but it will become irrelevant by becoming more bland and corporate in an attempt to chase money. It'll end up being more like Tumblr or something I reckon, something that exists but only some people actually use.
Be patient, if you want your content deleted you will have an efficient way to do it soon. Don't count on reddit to do this for you. It seems we have enough access to the API to do it ourselves.
I mused in the past that scripts like Power Delete Suite might work as they simulate clicking a button and such on old dot reddit dot com instead of directly calling the API. (Technically they are indirectly using I guess as old reddit uses the API internally but so what - is reddit going to suspend their own API key for going over the limit?) Someone just needs to figure out how to a) modify PDS to be able to accept the archive data and b) longer-term work with the new reddit desktop website instead of relying on old reddit, which a lot of us don't trust to stay around forever.
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.
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