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!

  • 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
          0·
          2 years ago

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

  • jaydurst@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Still holding strong and staying here. Might as well get it over with though, as once RIF is dead, I wouldn’t be browsing reddit anyway.

    • grumbul@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I put the Lemmy web app shortcut where my Rif app used to be on my phone, so my muscle memory from always opening up rif has me going to lemmy instead. I’ve barely been looking at reddit at all and really enjoying seeing these lemmy communities grow. Once rif is gone I don’t plan to use reddit at all (aside from the occasional specific Google search for “specific question reddit”) and I don’t think I’ll miss it.

    • DarkBug@lemmy.oneEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I tried the official app a few times before the api announcement and can’t stand it. I’m supporting the blackout and if RIF dies, I will be done with reddit for good. I will miss the mass amount of knowledge.

    • mobyduck648@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I decided to jump before I was pushed and binned off Apollo the weekend before the strikes started. This place existing made that jump a lot easier I think!

        • BobQuasit@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          I had the official Reddit app because there was one function that it could do that my 3P couldn’t. But I decided the hell with it and uninstalled it yesterday. I assume I’m not the only one.

          And meanwhile, I can’t say that I’m holding strong. I still have no desire to go back to Reddit. No strength is required!

    • LemmyAtem@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Hi welcome. Have fun with it! It’s new, it’s exciting. It’s less developed but that just leaves tons of room for growth and polish! Reddit was over saturated and stagnant. Embrace the relatively empty pond!

    • Cylinsier@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Stayed off Reddit completely for the last 2 days but checked back in in a couple of the smaller subs I browse today. But I have found I am checking back in here on Lemmy more even now that all the Reddit subs I usually post in are back open. This really feels like a viable alternative to me.

      • that_one_guy@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I’ve also stayed off reddit so far, but doing so taught me something. I’m definitely addicted to scrolling reddit on my phone. The number of times I just opened reddit on reflex and then caught myself and killed the app was insane. Even if there’s a miracle and reddit changes their ways, this is something I should probably address.

  • spoonful@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I think I’m happy with the outcome. People were always looking for an alternative to Reddit and all that was missing was critical mass. Now the alternatives are totally usable outside of small niches which will catch up eventually.

    Reddit is definitely shitting its pants. They used to have zero direct competitors.

  • 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.

  • Clbull@beehaw.orgEnglish
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    2 years ago

    I’ve been a lot more active on Beehaw over the past few days than on Reddit. Tried to get into Kbin but the servers have been remarkably unstable and I don’t like the fact that you can only view 25 comments at once.

    I think a lot of subreddits will fold. Your typical reddit moderator is hungry for power and having that power taken away from them is probably more terrifying to them than losing Apollo/RIF/BaconReader/Sync/Relay.

    • Melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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      2 years ago

      I was impressed with the honesty of the /r/tumblr mod who told the community the only reason they weren’t blacking out was because they thought they might get removed and they wanted to keep their “job”. Way to make the community hate you

      • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        There’s an extent to which I get it. You think by staying you’ll protect your users from worse abuse and that by playing ball you’ll make things more tolerable. But at the end of the day, Reddit is not a prison. Everyone is free to leave at any time. If someone wants their sub to protest they should do it. If they’re scared reddit will take over the sub entirely, let them. Reddit will run out of people to act as mods real fast if everyone who wants to protest can, and that will also degrade the user experience. Let’s lead our communities how we want and if reddit makes decisions that bleed users, let them

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          You think by staying you’ll protect your users from worse abuse and that by playing ball you’ll make things more tolerable.

          When in the ugly, violent history of humankind has that ever worked?

          • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.orgEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            Yeah I didn’t explicitly want to get into that since I was being long winded already and I was on my phone, but yes. 100%. Creating safe spaces requires very specific activities, and working with people who prevent you from doing those activities in order to keep things from getting any worse is not a winning play

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I think a lot of subreddits will fold. Your typical reddit moderator is hungry for power and having that power taken away from them is probably more terrifying to them than losing Apollo/RIF/BaconReader/Sync/Relay.

      Then let them stay in their Reddit fiefdoms and far away from the Fediverse.

  • Cora@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I do not cross picket lines. Later this week, once the protest is officially over, I plan on going on Reddit, backing up my data using the PowerDeleteSuite another user posted about, and then overwriting and deleting my comments and posts with a message about the protest, before closing my account entirely.

    Lemmy has already grown a nice community of people, and I’ll be glad to contribute and watch it grow over time!

      • Deestan@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I considered that for mine, but given that replacing all my comments can be taken as hostile, I’d rather not associate them with Lemmy or Beehaw.

        I just went with setting every one of my comments to [user data has been purged]

      • Cora@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Yeah, I’m on the lemmy.world instance, but I was planning on doing something like that. I’ve heard that some bots have been going around deleting posts that mention Lemmy / the Fediverse though, so I guess we’ll see how it goes. :)

    • mediocreatbest@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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      2 years ago

      I don’t know what kind of comments and posts you’ve made on Reddit, but if any of them are technical how-to’s or something that may come up when people search for specific problems, then it might be good to leave those comments, or else just prefix each comment with your “purged” message instead of overwriting them entirely. I mean if it’s fun memes or discussions, then you do you 😅 I’m just thinking of the tale of DenverCoder9. Plus, it probably costs more for Reddit to store a longer comment than a shorter one! Pennies or less, but still!

  • deephurting@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Looking at the tracker comments seem to reaching parity with posts again, as they were pre-blackout. For the two days of the protest 67% of subs were private, yet posts hardly deviated from the norm - and comments only slightly below. Is the implication that people in subs that didn’t join in like r/news etc just posted/commented that much more in a show of support ha ha ha, or is this a de facto admission that much of the site’s traffic is just bots? Are investors down with that? I haven’t seen this actually hashed out in discussions much.

    • spoonful@beehaw.orgEnglish
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      2 years ago

      I think a more realistic implication is that big chunk of reddit content is bots and propagandists.

        • spoonful@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          It’s impossible to tell how much of the posts are bots but if you look at the default subreddits I’d say that it’s definitely noticable.

          Reddit is a popular grey marketing area - be it shilling products or political propaganda. Lemmy/Federation hasn’t reached enough mass for this to be a real problem yet but it’ll happen eventually and Lemmy is an easy target right now. I used to work in bot detection area and modern, well made bots (the ones you should worry about) are essentially indisguishable from real users but script kiddies can be an issue too.

          The only real way to fight bots is to reduce the incentive which is more of a cultural thing - people have to call out shills and a more transparent platform definitely helps.

          Sorry for the rant but I think bots/spam will play a big role if federation ever reaches the point where there’s enough eye-balls for shilling to be valuable.

          • MrSpectroscopy@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            There has to be a way to limit these accounts. Perhaps ban accounts with inhumane levels of activity? If possible, this would be awesome. I think that’s what makes a platform for me - interacting with real humans on topics of mutual interest. It would be such a bonus to have a feed not dominated by bot reposts and inevitable drivel.

            • spoonful@beehaw.orgEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              Behavior analysis is definitely a popular way to handle this but it’s very difficult and resource intensive. Major issue is false positives as users are hard to predict in flexible environments like forums - is this person interested in all Honda posts as they are researching their new car purchase or they’re shilling for Honda?

              It’s tough.

          • th3raid0r@tucson.socialEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            I dunno, there’s a particular instance here in the fediverse that seems like an alt-right bot operation. I don’t want to mention it directly to avoid the ire of said community, but once you find it your Head might explode.

            • spoonful@beehaw.orgEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              I’m certain lemmygrad is a propaganda operation by China or Russia. Well at least I want to believe that people aren’t that toxic and ignorant.

        • Kwakigra@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Probably, but it wouldn’t be as easy since each instance has different design, admission criteria, and access to other instances. A bot would have to be based on a given instance, so a botnest instance could be cordoned off. If it becomes a bigger issue, each instance may have their own way of dealing with it so the bot would have to be capable of not only negotiating the above obstacles but also how to get around a variety of different ant-bot measures.

        • 🦊 OneRedFox 🦊@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Yes, there’s nothing stopping someone from creating bot accounts on Lemmy and pretty much every other Fediverse platform. Even if APIs are restricted, they can just parse HTML instead (though that’s a bigger pain in the ass). This is an area where the decentralized nature of the Fediverse works in our favor, though, as it inherently limits reach and discoverability (thus minimizing the benefits of doing this). For example, Mastodon’s flagship instance (mastodon.social) had a spambot problem not too long ago, so what happened is when other instances noticed this spam wave, they limited/defederated with mastodon.social and the problem was solved on their end. The host instance can temporarily close off sign-ups to prevent new accounts from being made. Every other instance can control federation to effectively quarantine the spam problem.

    • Lockely@pawb.socialEnglish
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      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?

          • 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.

        • 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.

    • GadgeteerZA@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      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.

    • asukii@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      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…

    • pbjamm@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      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.

  • BlackCoffee@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Decoupling from Reddit has been easier than I thought.

    Am actually rotating between Lemmy instances and Kbin to read the articles and thoughts in between my workday and it works like a charm.

    It also really helps that I pavlovd myself to associate Reddit with garbage and instantly make the connection to how they see and treat their userbase.

    It made me open reddit only once during the last days.

    • To run PDS after the blackout.
  • oranwolf@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

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