Things are about to get real messy. It makes you realise how much free work goes into reddit and the community only for the higher ups thinking they can treat everyone like shit and make decisions purely for greed, while thinking it won’t damage communities within the site.
A big thing to bear in mind is that Reddit has been around since 2005, but has only had an official app since 2016. For context, the first Facebook app came out in 2008, and while Reddit certainly wasn’t that big at the time, it’s still weird that it took so long to actually get an official app out there. More over, Reddit didn’t start from scratch. They bought up the Alien Blue 3rd party app, which was the top dog on iOS at the time, and reworked it into the official Reddit app.
The point here being that, for a very long time, 3rd party apps were the only reasonable way to browse Reddit on mobile. Even after the official app came out, Reddit themselves stated there was no intent for 3rd party apps to go away. For a lot of us, those 3rd party apps simply were Reddit on mobile.
To more directly answer you question though, I used BaconReader for 11 years on Android. BaconReader still to this day has a slew of customization and tweaking options that the official app just doesn’t have. Even simple features, like color coding the left edge of comment blocks, thereby making it much, much easier to keep track of where comment threads diverge. These things also weren’t limited to BaconReader, as most 3rd party apps came to the same conclusions: there’s pretty simple ways to improve the Reddit experience by just offering a few extra options and thinking a bit about how people use the site.
BaconReader was light, fast, barely used any data, and just worked really well. By contrast, the official app just… doesn’t feel all that well put together. The basic usability options everyone else figured out years ago aren’t present, the app is more than double the size of what BaconReader was, it positively guzzles data, and while there’s lots of updates and feature adds, none of them do much to actually enhance the experience of… you know, browsing and interacting on Reddit. For me, the official app really isn’t any better than just using a web browser on my phone, and that certainly uses less data and is less fussy, so that’s what I use now. Certainly cuts down on just endless scrolling though.
The Verges coverage of this has actually been really good. Most other media outlets that have covered it at all have had 1 or 2 that demonstrated a superficial understanding of the conflict.
The verge has been regularly keeping up with what’s going on and seem to have a pretty good grasp on the issues.
They're DMing mods. No one else is doing the investigative journalism on this.
I think someone at The Verge is really committed to this, and with good reason. Reddit is showing what can happen when you invest your energy into a corporate platform.
Maybe we need a Fediverse wiki with specific sections to guide people through choosing an app, an instance, account creation and migration from another platform.
One thing about Kbin and Lemmy is we are probably the best positioned to create these guides, at least, due to the redditlike nature of these apps.
Different things. Tumblr actually banned NSFW, Reddit is reminding its mods that using tools provided by a platform to try and harm that platform is pointless. I have no idea what people thought would happen tbh. That Reddit would look at subs going "we're going to go NSFW mode entirely for the sake of denying Reddit ad revenue", not even bothering to change rules, and just say "yeah, fair cop"?
Didn’t they say this same thing last week? Maybe the admins are protesting too, and instead of doing their jobs are just looking at porn, memes and John Oliver as much as they can get away with…
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.
Just wow. Never knew it was that bad. I've been browsing with adblock since forever and quit Reddit immediately when RIF stopped working. Wouldn't be able to tolerate that official shit one minute.
This ad is bad, but them being just masked as a normal post did grind my gears even more. Reading half way through the title until i figure that it’s just an ad is something i can’t accept.
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