hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout today, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! Thanks!

  • Nicbudd@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Was going to send someone at work an interesting article which was linked from Reddit but the subreddit was shutdown. I hate that reddit is doing this, and I hope more subs shut down permanently for protest so that reddit can’t just “wait it out”, but man is it inconvenient as hell.

  • Vex_Detrause@lemmy.caEnglish
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    2 years ago

    For the semi-lurker like me there’s nothing holding me back to Reddit. Some current news, sprinkle of meme, some draft comments that I will never submit and some meaningful discussion from community, fediverse has all those.

  • rimlogger@beehaw.orgEnglish
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    2 years ago

    Lol I’m posting on both here and Reddit. I’m kind of enjoying the drama even though I don’t have a strong opinion about the API controversy personally.

      • rimlogger@beehaw.orgEnglish
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        2 years ago

        It was business as usual on some of the subreddits I post on a lot (e.g., /r/credibledefense, /r/historywhatif). Those never shut down. But other ones where they re-opened, there’s a bit of debate going on about whether or not to stay shut down or not. At least on the subs I visit and post on, most people are in favor of keeping the subs open.

  • t0fr@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I went back into Reddit a couple times during the blackout as it’s so easy to click the Infinity icon on my homescreen. And I’ve got to say, the quality of posts on my feed were so much worse. Zero text posts, only images. I started unsubscribing from a bunch of those subreddits. Starting to realize how little value most of Reddit gives me. The only things of actual value are behind subreddits that have gone dark. I’ve been enjoying Lemmy so much more and having more meaningful conversation. It’s so much better

  • can@beehaw.orgEnglish
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    2 years ago

    Is the community really bit enough to necessitate a mega thread?

    • Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgEnglish
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      2 years ago

      Though this community is not extra-dextra-large, there’s still a lot of posts and comments about Reddit - so much so that before we started doing the megathreads, it was clogging up the local feed and preventing people from seeing other posts. Even in general, because !technology is such a big community on Beehaw, subscribing to it drowns out a lot of the other content we have.

  • TechyDad@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Before the subreddits went dark, I used a tool to see which subreddits I’ve posted to and commented on the most. Then, I added in a few subreddits that I had newly joined and so weren’t represented in the data.

    I had a list of 17 subreddits. I actually subscribe to over 30, but clearly the others weren’t that important to me. I’ve replaced at least 7 of those (including the top 2) with Lemmy. Most of the others really need no replacement as they were just time killers.

    About the only subreddit that I really care about that I haven’t found a good Lemmy replacement for is r/LEGO. Yes, there’s a Lemmy alternative and I’ve subscribed to it, but there are few people there.

    So if I do return to Reddit, it will likely be for 1 subreddit only. I’ll unsubscribe to everything else and deal with Reddit trying to push me into other discussions while I help the Lemmy LEGO community grow.

  • books@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    The way Reddit has handled this has been so disappointing. Aaron Swartz been rolling over but man look what Reddit has become. I believe now more than ever that any site that revolves around a community should be in the hands of said community and not corporations or else this eventually happens. Corporations need to produce profit to survive, but when we’re talking spaces for open discussion that need more often than not works against the very community that makes up the content.

    • femboy_link.mp4@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I believe now more than ever that any site that revolves around a community should be in the hands of said community and not corporations or else this eventually happens

      This is how it used to be before the internet for most people basically became five websites run by enormous faceless data mines. Forums/bulletin boards/IRC channels used to be run by the community for the community and in my opinion the internet was better for it. Sure you’d get the odd flame war or power-tripping mod, but it was super common for a large portion of the community to just up sticks and start a new forum somewhere else if it became too much of a problem. Then Reddit killed most of the hobbyist forums stone dead. There’s nothing to go back to so we have to start fresh. But honestly, I’m here for it. I’m tired of being the product for a bunch of advertisers. Take me back to 2004.

      • nofunbergEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Agreed! I was super-active on a few small bulletin boards until about 2003. I definitely miss the smaller, targeted community and sense of place.

      • setsubyou@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        In 2004 I was still running a Usenet server. Online games were run by the community too. I spent so much time on MUDs.

        It seems like now we are in this cycle where someone builds something shinier and fancier, it briefly becomes the next best thing, and then they find out it can’t make money (or just survive) unless it becomes significantly worse, and then the next best thing appears. But because of all the steps back there is little real progress. Lemmy too is, functionally, not that different from Usenet. It has pictures and votes and is generally more modern. But what I see highlighted in contrast to reddit is that it’s distributed. Like Usenet. It’s not supposed to be a breakthrough but after reddit it feels like one.

        • BobQuasit@beehaw.orgEnglish
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          2 years ago

          I started on Usenet back in the 80s. Those were the days! We had real freedom back then…

    • pbjamm@beehaw.orgEnglish
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      2 years ago

      This was a predicted outcome, at least for the larger subreddits. Expect to hear much more of this in the coming couple of days.

      Gods of the Internet, with this offering I ask you to summon Cerf, Torvalds, and Stallman so that they may witness this curse. By the spirits of my ancestors I curse Reddit. Let its profits wither. Let its networks crack. Let it see its legions of users disperse. Gods of the Inferno, I offer to you its networks, its mouthpiece, its servers, its “free” speech, its hands, its liver, its black heart, its stomach. Gods of the Inferno, let me see Reddit suffer deeply, and I will rejoice and sacrifice to you.

    • asukii@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 years ago

      Welp. Wish I could say I was surprised. Time for the handful of power mods still licking admin boots to get even more subs under their belt, I guess. No way that could possibly end badly…

  • BobQuasit@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I just posted this in response to a frenetic YouTube video that claimed that the Reddit protest “failed”:

    <BLOCKQUOTE>Get serious. It was NEVER going to stop the IPO. But it has accomplished something even more important: it has decapitated Reddit. A lot of the most passionate and involved users are gone, and more of them have at least tried Fediverse alternatives like Lemmy and kbin. Have you checked those sites out? They’re FLOODED with Reddit refugees, and the communities there are booming! They’re active and vibrant, with great discussions and content.

    What’s more, they have hope. The members there aren’t subject to some psychotic money-grubbing corporation; if any one server goes authoritarian, there’s nothing stopping the users there from just moving to another. They’ll have the same access and functionality. And frankly, the odds of a Fediverse server going corporate and having an IPO are infinitesimal. It simply wouldn’t be worth it, particularly since there’s no way they could stop other instances from defederating with them.

    So the outcome of the blackout has been twofold: First, Reddit has lost some of it’s best. The quality of content there is diminished, and will continue to diminish as poor quality drives users away. And second, the Fediverse alternatives have been given a huge boost. Almost all users of Reddit are now aware of the ugly truths that underlie that service, and that there are alternatives out there.

    That’s not failure. That’s the seeds of success.</BLOCKQUOTE>

    And by the way, I think that’s one thing we can all do to help bring down Reddit: mention the great alternatives out there as much as possible to spread the word. The more Redditors who learn that they don’t have to be a product to be sold by the pound for the stockholder class, the quicker Reddit will fall!

    • lamentforicarus@beehaw.orgEnglish
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      2 years ago

      I also bet there are people who haven’t already left that will abandon ship once the TPAs stop working. It’s not going to be fun getting stuck with their mediocre app, particularly since they seem to be testing the end of the mobile site.

      • westheimer@lemmy.oneEnglish
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        2 years ago

        I imagine there’s a meaningful amount of users that only exist in the context of the third party apps, that will disappear after the apps lose support. I’m sure most of them are lurkers, but that’s still something.

        • Whirling_Ashandarei@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          I mostly lurk with a few comments a day on Reddit. My oldest account is like 6 years old and has 60k comment karma, so I’ll at least be bringing that here and away from there.

          But, I am going to use it a bit more before the end of the month since I’m not paying for it and I’m not getting a new app, this is my reddit swan song I guess. I’ll also be nuking the old comments of course ;)

      • zurohki@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        This. For a lot of people Reddit isn’t reddit.com, it’s Apollo or Relay or Sync or Reddit Is Fun.

        After the apps stop working, they won’t be able to keep using the thing they’re used to. They can’t just go back, they’ll have to switch to something different.

        • ReMikeAble@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          That’s me, avid Relay Pro user, I’m not going back to the pos native app. Loving Lemmy and the Fediverse! Also, kinda psyched to see it grow.

        • herosquad@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          I stopped using Twitter when they pulled this API crap, and as a Boost user, I won’t use reddit when I can no longer use Boost.

          Currently using Jerboa for beehaw and I’m liking it so far, and the dev seems really responsive to user requests. Excited for the communities to get some traction moving forward!

        • BrooklynMan@lemmy.mlBannedEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          not toot my own horn, but the 3d party app community for lemmy is quite active right about now… wink-wink

          the community has risen to meet demand, and it’s a very exciting time right now!

    • t0fr@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Oh shit. I need that including saved posts. There’s a bunch of stuff in there that’s super useful

    • KerooSeta@beehaw.orgEnglish
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      2 years ago

      Does that include your saved posts? That’s what I’m worried about losing the most.

    • GadgeteerZA@beehaw.orgEnglish
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      2 years ago

      I think the big subreddits especially fear starting all over again from scratch ;-) I have a smaller subreddit and am thinking of just closing it anyway. I already post on Beehaw but into different public groups.

    • Lockely@pawb.socialEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      The site is being astroturfed by bots as well. So many FirstWordSecondWordBunchaNumbers comments that are all exactly the same trying to pin this on the mods.

      Reddit has been caught astroturfing their site before, multiple times. It’s just not been reported on because it usually doesn’t happen in English, or happened when the site was small and young. Except for the admin moderated subs like r/programming. Seriously just go read the Controversial comments in those posts. It’s blatant ChatGPT spam.

      There are entire alternate language versions of big subreddits filled with nothing but reposts of popular old posts run through a translator. Comments section and all.

      SubredditSimulator was fun as an experiment but it’s clear they’ll artificially prop their engagement and I really hope advertisers catch on. If you’re a journalist in tech reading this, you’ve got a hell of a story to break about a top ten website fluffing up its stats for an illicit IPO grab.

      • mkwarman@beehaw.orgEnglish
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        2 years ago

        What do you mean by mentioning SubredditSimulator here? Wasn’t that a GPT experiment made by a random user or was there something more nefarious at play that I completely missed?

        • Lockely@pawb.socialEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          SubredditSimulator was a fun experiment by a random user with increasingly improving realism, training ChatGPT on real comments.

          It also showed Reddit Inc you can fake engagement and community interaction with bots, which are now astroturfing the fuck out of the site.

          • deephurting@beehaw.orgEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            There’s another sub with GPT in the title, r/subGPT or something. The subreddit simulator always amused me, it was blatantly artificial - the content on this new one made me queasy, it was precisely the kind of one note jibber jabber we’d skim past constantly.

  • oranwolf@beehaw.orgEnglish
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    2 years ago

    Holding strong on not returning to reddit. Using Jeroba for Lemmy for any free time I get, been enjoying it