Quote from the post:
Hello everyone, I’ll try to keep this short as I know there’s been a lot going on over the last few days. When we made our announcement last week, we intended to get Reddit’s attention on a subject that our team found extremely concerning. /r/Videos is joining a larger coordinated protest and signing an open letter to the admins found here.
The announcement was of exceedingly high API prices which we all know was to intentionally kill 3rd party applications on reddit (Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Boost, Relay, etc.) Since that post several things have become clear; Reddit is not willing to listen to its users or the mod teams from many of its largest communities on this matter. Yesterday all major third-party Reddit apps announced that they would be shutting down on the 30th of June due to these changes. There were no negotiations and Reddit refused to extend the deadlines. The rug was pulled out from under them and by extension all of the users who rely on those tools to use reddit.
In addition to this, the AMA hosted by Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, which was intended to alleviate concerns held by many users about these issues, was nothing short of a collage of inappropriate responses. There are many things to take away from this AMA but here are the key points. Most disappointingly it appears that Reddit outright misconstrued the actions of Apollo’s creator /u/iamthatis by saying that he threatened Reddit and leaked private phone calls, something done only to clear his name of another accusation.
So what’s happening? The TL;DR? Effective tomorrow (6/11/2023), /r/Videos will be restricting posting capabilities. Anything posted before the cut off date will likely be the final front page of our community before we go private indefinitely. In the unlikely scenario that Reddit ownership has a sudden change of heart and capitulates on their decisions we will reopen, but until that happens /r/Videos will stay closed. Many other communities have come to similar decisions and we support those who have decided to take a stand.
Wow even if admins take over that subreddit, such a big subreddit will surely create a snowball of many more subreddits doing it.
I don’t see reddit ever recovering from this (They’ll not die, but things won’t be the same)
@Clbull A highly-upvoted comment suggests moving to Tilde. Is Tilde federated? I can’t find anything that indicates it might be.
I don’t think so. It just seems like a reddit clone. I like the layout it’s just kinda boring over there. Most of the “high quality discussions” are just discussions about how high quality tildes discussions are or how they could be even higher quality.
No, tilde it’s is own thing. Resembles Reddit in the beginning, promotes a few long and deep conversations instead of a lot and short comments. It’s interesting but their philosophy makes growth really slow (by choice) and the serious nature of most of the threads tends to turn a lot of people off (it’s not very fun most of the time). I like it but it’s not Reddit nor is trying to be.
Lemmy is a much better choice because there will never be a need to migrate away from Lemmy. Also, no investors, no dark patterns and no pursuit of infinite growth.
More importantly, Tildes is invite-only at the moment (for signups)
Oh wow, already? I made an account a few days ago without restrictions.
Having trouble finding information about a reddit alternative called Tilde, it’s one of those words that is too open ended. Is this what they’re talking about?
Yeah, that’s the one
Yes.
I managed to get in because apparently now it’s invitation only but I still MUCH prefer lemmy.
Mostly because everyone is moving towards
ActivityPuband Tildes isn’t.
deleted by creator
After the AMA I feel like the tone of the shutdowns shifted from a protest hoping to change policy, to mods announcing they were done with Reddit and trying to do as much damage as possible on the way out.
There has been way more talk of indefinite shutdowns. Reddit will obviously reopen those places with their own hired goons, but the damage will be done at that point.
yeah, this whole thing just made it clear that Reddit is the enemy
Tsk tsk, reddit…
Man, why does everything I like have to go to hell?
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.
Cory Doctorow is a got-dang witch. This was about Tiktok and it was written in January. Literally describing the process to a T.
Damn, that’s a loooong read. Worth it, but long.
Cory Doctorow will always be my hero.
What a great word. You’ve single handedly improved my life. Thank you.
I never really checked that sub out, but I look forward to their community making the jump here.
deleted by creator
I can see a lot of people moving to Lemmy, just because the other alternative that’s popping off (Tildes) is a far more serious discussion-driven site.
I am always 1050% serial
Yeah from what I’ve seen, migrating to tildes is a bit like migrating to hackernews. In theory it’s a Reddit clone, but the purpose of the site is so different from how Reddit has been used that it’s not really a substitute.
Doesn’t Tildes also need an invite? So it’s less likely to have a mass migration.
It does require an invite, although us over at Beehaw moved over from Tildes.
What motivated the move, was Tildes the place overtaken by Rationalists?
That was an interesting read. This is a shot in the dark but was this community related to less-wrong (and HPMOR tangentially)? That’s the only other place I’ve seen where it is sort of like this.
Oh snap so that “other platform” mentioned in that post is Tildes? Veeeeery good to know. Thank you.
Yeah I like HN but it’s too niche for what this place and others are trying to be. I’ve used it a while but I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to people outside of the tech industry or at least broader STEM interest even though other things are discussed there from time to time.
As somebody who’s generally interested in science and technology, HN also sufferers from terminal libertarian VC-brain. It’s a club for wannabe founders of unicorn tech companies who view themselves as enlightened ubermench. This doesn’t always bubble to the surface, but at times of controversy it is quite glaring. Most recently, when the founder of CashApp got murdered they were practically calling to liquidate the homeless, even though the incident - predictably - was the result of a personal dispute with somebody he knew.
Even if the subject matter scratches an itch, the community is not for me.
Yeah that’s a good point, I don’t love its politics either and I’m a fair bit to the left of most of its posters. I usually see it in the spirit of ‘you can entertain an idea without agreeing with it’ and trying to avoid staying in a place where people largely agree with me but you’re right a lot of the reactions to the murder were really grim and showed some unpleasant qualities in parts of the userbase.
On the other hand a lot of the less political content is really high quality there and on technical topics the signal/noise ratio is better than most places on the internet. I guess any site with user generated content will always be a case of ‘how much crap do I want to sift through to find a diamond?’ and a lot of the ways HN is bad can be equally applied to a lot of Reddit as well in my opinion. It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea though and that’s fair enough.
Edit: spelling (do we do that here?)
Most recently, when the founder of CashApp got murdered
Wait…what?
Search up San Francisco CEO stabbing.
I did, and…wow. I don’t live in the States, and don’t follow the news much, but I was sure I would have heard about that…
Kbin is interesting too. I’m using it now. Nice UI and federates with Lemmy, of course
deleted by creator
It’s for kbin. I don’t think it would work for lemmy.
deleted by creator
Isn’t having a choice amazing?
Not OP, but yes, yes it is! This is what the internet should have been and can be in the future
Excuse my newness - how does one go about federating Kbin with lemmy? I like both, and I’ve figured out federating within lemmy, but getting kbin looped in is stumping me
deleted by creator
Amazing, thank you!
you can subscribe to kbin’s communities with your Lemmy account the same way you can subscribe to another Lemmy instance’s ones.
Does this only work from a browser, or can one do it via the apps e.g. Jerboa, as well?
no idea how it works on Jerboa, it’s still a bit too glitchy for my taste so I removed it for now and stick to the PWA on my phone.
PWA?
They all share an underlying protocol, ActivityPub, for sharing content between instances.
Also using Kbin, only need to get used to how everything works, and more people need to join.
deleted by creator
I definitely get the sense that spez is just going to nuke these mods until they get compliant ones in there. It’s going to end up being a bloodbath, and I think it perfectly fits with his weird fantasy of being a post-collapse tyrant.
For me it’s a double sided problem. Even if reddit solves the moderation tools problem which user the api (and they will because those are the tools of the free labor they explore) there will be still the problem with the user experience. Even if subreddits reopen I will never use the official reddit app, the same way I refuse to use the official twitter app since apps like Falcon Pro, Flamingo or Talon stopped working.
Reddit CEO can bargain the deal he wants that I don’t care anymore. For me reddit is now only a repository where I will continue to search specific information. It is no more a place where I want to participate in online communities.
That was my line of thought as well, however…
Reddit will stop being a good information repo very quickly as users
who actually know what they’re talking aboutleave and the information stops being up to date. The trend of adding “reddit” to every google search will die out soon.I already edited my reddit submissions to something along the lines of “this has been deleted in protest against API…” using PowerDeleteSuite. Some of my past comments has useful information in them and people might end up there via google. I’m taking my data with me when I walk out.
You should make your past comments available in lemmy somehow.
I’ve read this from someone on reddit a few days ago, but I think it’s true: reddit-archive like read-only lemmy instances should be set up. The data is available, see the-eye.eu/redarcs
r/DataHoarder also has some more info on this with tooling in a pinned post. They didn’t private the sub, it’s only read-only so it’s still readable
Far too late for that
Yeah - the AMA with spez was the writing on the wall. No matter what/how users protest, they can only delay the inevitable changes. I deleted my 10+ year old account and cut my losses. The last thing I want in my social media is platform drama.
well thats good
Good god I knew it wasn’t going to go well but I didn’t think they’d crash and burn it THIS bad.
The bar was on the floor and they still managed to somehow clip underneath it through the floor, end up in some backrooms-esque dimension only to trip on a banana peel and land face first in a pie.
That’s inevitably what happens when you get a call from your VC backers asking why you’re still bleeding money into a pit instead of milking the community for profit.
But we need the sacrifices else how will line go up? :(
I’m honestly super surprised by this. I assumed the mods of the big subreddits were in kahoots with the admins or were Reddit loyalists or something
@Clbull test
Lemmy is gonna be rough for a few days at least but after the growing pains we’re going to have an even greater community
indefinitely != permanently
</pedantry>
The way I see it:
Indefinite = Not defined. Could be short, long, infinite or something in between.
Infinite = Clearly defined to never end.
Well yeah but in this case, won’t reddit just replace the mods ?
It’s not pedantic. There IS a difference, and it’s relevant in this case.
LETSGOOOOOOOOO
Good on the mod team of /r/videos! It must have been a difficult decision to walk away from a 26M+ sized community but I think it’s definitely better to scuttle the ship and go down with it than capitulate at this point. This is a bold choice that’s left Reddit between a rock and a hard place.
