Not sure if I agree with him (or rather, pretty sure I disagree). The protest was very successful for me - it got me off the site, and I have no plans of going back, even if it fully opens and goes back to “normal”. In my case, reddit is not winning, it completely lost. I see more people like me around here every day and it makes me happy. Can’t remember lat time reddit made me happy, so I’m enjoying the change, even if it comes with a fair bit of jank.
His broader point is that he thinks mods should have stuck to their guns and kept subs private which would include their historic posts. By even reopening, they’re allowing traffic to return to the site even if a few large communities are memeing hard. For the most part, subs that have reopened are going to return to business as usual. All because the mods of those communities didn’t want to sacrifice their control. Spez called their bluff.
While thousands of users have been driven away, there are still more than enough who will remain and continue to engage with the site. The only lesson Reddit will have learned is that they can just wait it out no matter how unpopular of a decision they make.
I’m very curious to see if there will be any meaningful drop in traffic at this time next month.
Reddit was never going to just go away as a result of this. Even if every blacked-out subreddit remained private forever and everyone who was aware of this protest walked away, there’s plenty of oblivious users and remaining subreddits to continue operating.
The “win” condition for the protesters is some or all of the following:
Give Reddit bad publicity in the mainstream press
Cause a drop in ad revenue. Money is life as far as Reddit is concerend.
Harm Reddit’s valuation in its IPO. Money is life.
Help Reddit replacements get established, restoring competition that Reddit thought had long ago vanished. (You are here).
Nothing was going to stop Reddit from going ahead with their API change, all we could hope for was to make it hurt for Reddit. And in that regard I do believe we’ve scored a solid win. The Fediverse is now competition for Reddit, and as they squeeze and squeeze their users for money over the years to come there’s now an escape valve that users can flow out of under that pressure.
My goals in aiding protests were just as you say. I wanted to help consolidate the instances I use, and the communities I use. I’ve always known reddit will stay there. I don’t even think I’m wounding reddit. That beast is too big. All I can do is piggyback some popular posts and get a few hundred to a thousand people to fill up my instance and make me a bit happier about this whole debacle :)
We’re a swarm of mosquitoes. We bite Reddit and it’s painful, but really the only way we’re going to kill Reddit is if in the process of swatting at us Reddit forgets that it’s holding a machete in its hand.
Fortunately Reddit shows signs that it is indeed doing that.
Thing is, Reddit is so big that it can only die due to stupidity on their end
So I see it more as Reddit, instead of swatting, going full bug spray mode and spraying so much they poison themselves instead of a little poison that’s just enough to keep the mosquitoes down (in this case, things like the over priced API, brushing off the protests, the threatening mods, and other self destructive behaviours. The API was going out during dusk, the brushing off protests was going, “It’s fine” instead of applying repellent, and the threatening mods and other behaviours from here on out being them getting swarmed, panicking, and spraying the toxic shit in obscene amounts)
My first account was 14 years ago. Every year or so, I switch to a new account. I nuked every single account I had: nuked the comments, nuked the submissions, just over-wrote then deleted everything. I privated the tiny handful of small communities I modded, turned over the keys in a couple of them, and de-modded myself. I unsubscribed from every single subreddit I was part of.
I found some worthy comments and spent all the reddit coins I’d accumulated from when other people gave me gold. I went through every saved comment and saved it (in context) offline. I PM’d a handful of people my email address, wrapped up a couple of "oh, I’ll get that to you later"s, and … just walked away.
14 years, 17 accounts. My “smallest” account had about 140k karma; my largest over 440k. Probably a couple million between all of them.
I’m done with reddit, I’m gone. I’m not going to fool myself that I’ll be missed there but, given my accumulated karma, I think the loss of some of my contributions (I mostly hung out in news and science subs) will make the site a little less useful to the people still there. Enshittification, indeed.
14 years, 17 accounts. My “smallest” account had about 140k karma; my largest over 440k. Probably a couple million between all of them.
A metric I’d be absolutely fascinated by, for poetic purposes, would be the sum of karma points subtracted from the site by users deleting their shit over the past week.
The majority didn’t move away from twitter either. Some people moved to mastodon, but most either stayed or just straight quit twitter
That said, I Am so much happier here on the fediverse
There’s another group rarely talked about. People who didn’t deactivate or delete or quit but instead reduced their engagement dramatically, or lost interest or otherwise went from daily logins to weekly. I was never a big Twitter guy, but I had some accounts I nuked and my sole presence on the site is an account I redesigned to look like spam. I can’t avoid it altogether because there’s information there I need but I’m no longer interested in being part of a conversation.
Not sure if I agree with him (or rather, pretty sure I disagree). The protest was very successful for me - it got me off the site, and I have no plans of going back, even if it fully opens and goes back to “normal”. In my case, reddit is not winning, it completely lost. I see more people like me around here every day and it makes me happy. Can’t remember lat time reddit made me happy, so I’m enjoying the change, even if it comes with a fair bit of jank.
I think his comments are directed at the moderators who have caved, not necessarily to every viewer of the video
His broader point is that he thinks mods should have stuck to their guns and kept subs private which would include their historic posts. By even reopening, they’re allowing traffic to return to the site even if a few large communities are memeing hard. For the most part, subs that have reopened are going to return to business as usual. All because the mods of those communities didn’t want to sacrifice their control. Spez called their bluff.
While thousands of users have been driven away, there are still more than enough who will remain and continue to engage with the site. The only lesson Reddit will have learned is that they can just wait it out no matter how unpopular of a decision they make.
I’m very curious to see if there will be any meaningful drop in traffic at this time next month.
Reddit was never going to just go away as a result of this. Even if every blacked-out subreddit remained private forever and everyone who was aware of this protest walked away, there’s plenty of oblivious users and remaining subreddits to continue operating.
The “win” condition for the protesters is some or all of the following:
Nothing was going to stop Reddit from going ahead with their API change, all we could hope for was to make it hurt for Reddit. And in that regard I do believe we’ve scored a solid win. The Fediverse is now competition for Reddit, and as they squeeze and squeeze their users for money over the years to come there’s now an escape valve that users can flow out of under that pressure.
@FaceDeer
My goals in aiding protests were just as you say. I wanted to help consolidate the instances I use, and the communities I use. I’ve always known reddit will stay there. I don’t even think I’m wounding reddit. That beast is too big. All I can do is piggyback some popular posts and get a few hundred to a thousand people to fill up my instance and make me a bit happier about this whole debacle :)
We’re a swarm of mosquitoes. We bite Reddit and it’s painful, but really the only way we’re going to kill Reddit is if in the process of swatting at us Reddit forgets that it’s holding a machete in its hand.
Fortunately Reddit shows signs that it is indeed doing that.
deleted by creator
Thing is, Reddit is so big that it can only die due to stupidity on their end
So I see it more as Reddit, instead of swatting, going full bug spray mode and spraying so much they poison themselves instead of a little poison that’s just enough to keep the mosquitoes down (in this case, things like the over priced API, brushing off the protests, the threatening mods, and other self destructive behaviours. The API was going out during dusk, the brushing off protests was going, “It’s fine” instead of applying repellent, and the threatening mods and other behaviours from here on out being them getting swarmed, panicking, and spraying the toxic shit in obscene amounts)
My first account was 14 years ago. Every year or so, I switch to a new account. I nuked every single account I had: nuked the comments, nuked the submissions, just over-wrote then deleted everything. I privated the tiny handful of small communities I modded, turned over the keys in a couple of them, and de-modded myself. I unsubscribed from every single subreddit I was part of.
I found some worthy comments and spent all the reddit coins I’d accumulated from when other people gave me gold. I went through every saved comment and saved it (in context) offline. I PM’d a handful of people my email address, wrapped up a couple of "oh, I’ll get that to you later"s, and … just walked away.
14 years, 17 accounts. My “smallest” account had about 140k karma; my largest over 440k. Probably a couple million between all of them.
I’m done with reddit, I’m gone. I’m not going to fool myself that I’ll be missed there but, given my accumulated karma, I think the loss of some of my contributions (I mostly hung out in news and science subs) will make the site a little less useful to the people still there. Enshittification, indeed.
Obligatory fuck spez inserted.
Every comment and submission deleted is just a tiny bit of value taken away from the site. I did my part, too!
It’s why I unsubbed everywhere as well, I don’t want my zombie accounts used to inflate reddit’s statistics.
A metric I’d be absolutely fascinated by, for poetic purposes, would be the sum of karma points subtracted from the site by users deleting their shit over the past week.
@doctortofu Ditto, fellow traveler.
@Singletona
Left and will not return. It can only get worse.
Money corrupts all
Well said.
The majority didn’t move away from twitter either. Some people moved to mastodon, but most either stayed or just straight quit twitter
That said, I Am so much happier here on the fediverse
There’s another group rarely talked about. People who didn’t deactivate or delete or quit but instead reduced their engagement dramatically, or lost interest or otherwise went from daily logins to weekly. I was never a big Twitter guy, but I had some accounts I nuked and my sole presence on the site is an account I redesigned to look like spam. I can’t avoid it altogether because there’s information there I need but I’m no longer interested in being part of a conversation.