RedditMigration

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Candelestine, in Inside Reddit's path to an IPO, where employees see 'thrash' from constant pivots and say more managers may leave amid a flattening

Yeah, kinda figured the outward chaos probably reflected inner chaos.

dub,

Warms my cold heart to think about spez freaking out about losing valuation and users

bioemerl,

I would love to see reddit succeed, but at the end of the day they have chosen to close of valuable user created information to the internet and declared they they alone possess the right to sell the stuff you freely contribute.

They are shitbags and the company deserves to burn. Bring back forums.

apemint,
@apemint@kbin.social avatar

It's a shitshow and everyone's done with it.
This is reddit employees discussing the current state of the company.

Pagpag,

Can’t seem to access the photo you’ve linked. Now I’m even more curious.

apemint, (edited )
@apemint@kbin.social avatar

Something broke. Here's an imgur link.

panoptic,

Every company’s blind looks like that.

Though Reddit does appear to be a trash fire

abff08f4813c, in Reddit seems to be scrambling behind the scenes to try and limit the effects of the migration. Damage control: ChatGPT bots are spamming pro-admin, astroturfed comments
McBinary, in I just wanted to leave this here
@McBinary@kbin.social avatar

So anyone can pay to manipulate content now, and not just people with big pockets? Neat. I think I'll just buy @ernest more coffee...

abff08f4813c, in Reddit's updated rate limits going into effect over the coming weeks, not entirely on July 1st, as was expected

In my view this means the protests worked. reddit was forced to delay and stagger the API changes rollout over the "coming weeks" (so they don't say exactly how many weeks, but if it's more than four then the rollout as a whole may even be delayed by over a month). Presumably the worst of it won't take effect until after they feel like the protests have lost steam and folks have lost interest in it.

Annoyed_Crabby,

Or, maybe they themselves couldn’t cope with the change in such a short time given.

abff08f4813c,

Still ridiculous. If they couldn't handle it then how could a one-person dev team do it for their own 3rd party apps? I noticed that none of the 3rd party apps that did work out deals have released any new apps yet, even the ones that are trying to make it work can't release on that schedule.

Maybe reddit wouldn't have been so willing to give them a break if not for the protests.

akintudne,
@akintudne@reddthat.com avatar

Yeah. If this was always the plan, then why didn’t they announce this earlier, especially when people were loudly complaining about losing accessibility and mod tools? Either they made the “free tier” in response to the protests, or they have Twitter levels of shit-tier PR. Either way, it’s clear they don’t know what the hell they’re doing over there.

Ashtear,
@Ashtear@kbin.social avatar

It still makes sense if Reddit's negotiation with the subscription-based third-party apps was never in good faith and this was always about killing them.

falsem,

I'd bet money that the engineering side wasn't ready by the original date.

Arotrios, in Reddit braces for life after API changes
@Arotrios@kbin.social avatar

Content quality and the rate of submission has clearly plummeted. /r/all has become stagnant, and completely filled with memes and shitposts. Comment quality has amazingly gotten even worse (4chan level in a lot of cases), and there are definitely less participants on threads.

In comparison, I've found commentary in the fediverse to be more active, engaged, and positive than Reddit has ever been - and I was there since before Digg. My kbin feed, with a bit of tweaking and expansion out to other instances, is more useful by far than Reddit ever was, and it's activity level is beginning to match what used to be common on Reddit.

I think that Reddit was banking on not having a competing centralized corporate entity to absorb their users, and that it would prevent a Digg style exodus from their site. And to some extent, they were right - users, primarily readers still came back to reddit and have continued to do so because it's still the easiest place to find content on the internet. But, as you can see from the slow heat death of /r/all - that's changing.

What Spez didn't count on was that their moderators and content creators - the real engine behind Reddit - would leave. He assumed the thrill of having a large audience would be enough of a carrot to keep them participating while he made the site more difficult to use. This was a significant miscalculation, as anyone who's ever run a forum knows. Only about 2% of your users on a site will post, which means that if you alienate that 2% by any significant amount, you'll see a following degradation of non-participating readers as the content dries up.

Huffman should have realized this, as in Reddit's early days, he and the other admins on the site would regularly post with sockpuppet accounts to keep the content flowing enough to maintain readership. This mess is clearly of his own making, and one that he personally should have anticipated given what he and the other admins had to do to build the community in the first place.

But what's more interesting to me is what this (and the Twitter debacle) has done to illustrate the flaws of relying on centralized media. It's created a discussion about the wider internet and an interest in expanding it that hasn't been really talked about since the last decade. There was no reason to expand out from the centralized services as long as they were working well, fairly, and with an eye towards fostering their communities. It's when they moved into looking at their users as profit centers, and their moderation of content as a means of social control that it became clear that this contract of social responsibility had been broken.

And when that contract was broken, it broke the soul of Reddit's community. Nobody wants to contribute to Reddit, because Reddit isn't about creating a good space for the internet community to grow anymore. It's about how much money it can make Spez, and most of us really don't feel like working for him for free.

electronicoldman,

Content quality and the rate of submission has clearly plummeted.

I’ve noticed this too. Almost all of the subs I regularly go to have been filled by obvious “seed”-content posting by brand new and never before seen in the sub accounts, with upvotes equaling some of the highest voted (for the sub). It actually pushed me to migrate to Lemmy more.

Pandoras_Can_Opener,
@Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz avatar

I’m really fascinated at how in the lead up to this they consistently alienated moderators and users so into reddit that they looked up 3PAs. Like they really went ham on the users that make their site work and go all shocked pikachu when people leave/disengage/protest. That’s a level of social incompetence I can’t conceptualise when the stakes are this high.

HandsHurtLoL,

Extremely well said, and I would repost you to the bestof magazine if I didn't think bestof communities were lame.

As I keep reading about all of this unfolding, a phrase that keeps rattling around in my brain: oppositional defiance disorder.

I am not a doctor or psychiatrist so I am not being too serious by bringing it up, but I am facetiously curious about who has the worst ODD among all the players of this drama.

Is it Steve Huffman and his refusal to back down? Is it the rexxitors who jumped ship on June 12? Is it the redditors who stayed to troll Huffman and his edicts? Or is it the redditors who stayed and are crafting a bespoke cesspool in snoo's carapace?

What are your thoughts, @arotrios ?

Arotrios,
@Arotrios@kbin.social avatar

Huffman has always been a narcissist, and notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to people challenging him - the fact he'd go in and edit other users comments critical of him speaks volumes as to both his sensitivity to criticism and the levels to which he'll stoop. I think these tendencies and Reddit's slow turn towards autocracy were exacerbated with the Tencent investment, and has only accelerated as the site attempts to become profitable.

HandsHurtLoL,

So, I was on reddit for over 11 years, but I didn't arrive there from Digg. I remember a big kerfuffle surrounding Huffman and his willingness to change critical comments, but I was fairly oblivious to the ramifications of all that. I think I was just largely enjoying the halcyon days of Pao where you didn't have to think about reddit's corporate structure too far beyond how skivvy Conde Nast was.

This current controversy I guess seemed more relevant to me because I exclusively used 3PA to access reddit. Back when I had iPhones, I was paying for one of the tiers of Apollo because I liked it so much. I am pretty sure I used to use alien blue way way back in the day. I used these mainly because reddit didn't have an app on offer at all at these times and reddit for mobile was just inoperably clunky to use. As a share of the market, I was already brand loyal by the time reddit finally saw the writing on the wall that there was a need for an app. Now that I'm on Android, I was using Infinity (mixed feelings there about the fact that Infinity kept operating and I've since migrated and deleted my reddit accounts). I still feel resolved in my decision to leave reddit out of the principle of it all, and solidarity with Christian's mistreatment even though my app of choice is apparently staying online.

You refer to the Tencent movement as a notable moment that shifted the course of reddit. Any other pivotal moments that come to mind for you @arotrios ?

Candelestine, in now that i don't have a reddit account, i guess i can tell you guys about secret communities

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?

BananaTrifleViolin,

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.

mysoulishome,
@mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

Eternity club was all boring selfies and what’s you’re favorite movie and shit.

Wolf_359,

Popular club sucked too.

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.

original2,

i understand that sentiment, but making a successful reddit post isn’t the best way of finding people of above-average intelligence

flicker,

The first thing I said when invited to Eternity Club was a Groucho Marx quote; I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

Gargleblaster,
@Gargleblaster@kbin.social avatar

I joined several of those clubs just to see what was happening.

They were all the same thing. Cat pics, personal photos, and inane discussions.

And then left.

cassetti,

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 **

OneSleepyCat, in Christian Selig’s Goodbye to Apollo

Tried to open it out of habit and just got so sad when I saw it crash. It was a wonderful app. Godspeed, Apollo.

judog24, in It's over - Sync for Reddit is offline
@judog24@cheddarcrackers.club avatar

RIP to my favorite Android app. I was being rate limited earlier. Now all I'm getting is a 401 error.

chris2112,
@chris2112@kbin.social avatar

You can sign up for Sync for Lemmy for when it goes live

magnetosphere, in As Apollo and other apps close down, Narwhal seemingly agrees to one-off deal with Reddit to stay in business
@magnetosphere@kbin.social avatar

I still have Narwhal installed on my phone. This makes me want to delete it.

zlatiah, (edited ) in r/TIHI has been banned for being unmoderated.
@zlatiah@kbin.social avatar

So having all the mods quit is actually a viable way to protest? (writes down notes)

btmoo, in Reddit protest plunges user engagement, site activity and ad portal visits

This is a really weird article with sentences in it that don't make sense.

"the amount of time people spent on the Reddit website by close to 16% between June 12 and 13" - what does that mean?

"Web traffic of the platform also declined to about 52 million" - 52 million ?

With ChatGPT getting popular, I'm starting to wonder what I'm reading.

LoafyLemon, (edited )

I trust this was written by hand, because ChatGPT wouldn't make grammar errors.

Unless someone mindlessly copied the parts of the article and stitched them together...

Jon-H558,

it says in the article that the average time people spent on the site went down from 8.4min to 7.16min (assuming decimal min) that is a drop of 16%

web traffic declined from 56m to 52m a drop of 4m or ~7%.

abff08f4813c,

"the amount of time people spent on the Reddit website by close to 16% between June 12 and 13" - what does that mean?

In the article, the full sentence is,

That "blackout" movement, which briefly caused Reddit to go down, dropped daily traffic by about 7% and the amount of time people spent on the Reddit website by close to 16% between June 12 and 13, according to the data shared by web traffic analysis firm Similarweb.

So basically the amount of time people spent on reddit dropped 16% between June 12 and June 13.

"Web traffic of the platform also declined to about 52 million" - 52 million ?

Yeah that could be worded better. No units. Resumably it's about the number of visits.

Again, the full sentence is,

Web traffic of the platform also declined to about 52 million on June 13, compared with averaging nearly 56 million in the days prior.

So a 4 million drop in number of visits.

trynn, (edited )
@trynn@kbin.social avatar

Yeah that could be worded better. No units. Resumably it's about the number of visits.

Looks like that number lines up with their reported DAU (daily active users) metric rather than site visits.

52 million DAU is about where Reddit was in the summer of 2021, per data on Statista. It also tends to vary up or down by a few million at each sample point, so we'd really have to see a long-term trend-line rather than a 2-week data snapshot to know whether the blackout had any real effect.

yoyolll, in Google thinks its new Perspectives tab will finally get you to stop adding 'Reddit' to searches

To that end, Google recently unveiled a new feature called Perspectives, which aims to surface discussion forums and videos from various social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and Quora.

Google used to have this years ago. It was just a search toggle called "discussions" and it would prioritize search results from forums, comments, reddit, etc. It was extremely useful to find real information while avoiding SEO blogspam ad platforms, which is why they removed it in the first place.

Hamartiogonic, in Reddit is ending Reddit Gold and users are furious
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

Wow, Reddit is not joking around when it comes speedrunning enshittification. I think it’s going to be very tough for other platforms to match these moves.

Bozicus,

The real business model here is to win the race to the bottom, and stream re-enactments on Twitch.

fearout, in Reddit mods fear spam overload as BotDefense leaves “antagonistic” Reddit
@fearout@kbin.social avatar

Reddit is already antagonistic af

melroy,
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Indeed. And it didn't improve very well lately..

007v2, in Reddit demands moderators remove NSFW labels, or else

It’s the worst threat ever, do what we tell you or we won’t let your work for free anymore!

IMongoose,

The sad thing is that it’s working. Pics and military reverted after the threat according to the article.

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