Engadget shouted out Lemmy, Kbin, and Mastodon in their Reddit coverage today: The Reddit blackout is already forcing unexpected changes

dirtmayor@beehaw.org to World News@beehaw.org – 121 points – The Reddit blackout is already forcing unexpected changes | Engadget
engadget.com

From the article:

Meanwhile, the blackout has affected Reddit in other important ways. There’s been a small, but growing push among some power users to federated Reddit alternatives like Lemmy and kbin. These decentralized platforms are still niche, and have many of the same challenges as Mastodon and other Twitter alternatives. Yet there seems to be growing interest from some corners of Reddit in recent weeks.

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So ironic that he talks about getting something for free when literally all the content is also provided to Reddit for free.

It’s especially galling because Reddit themselves have created so little actual additional value beyond that content they get for free from users. Yes, sure, they built and maintain the infrastructure on which the communities run. They should be compensated for that. But beyond just those infrastructure costs, they’ve created a bunch of crap no one asked for or wants. NFTs, awards, automatically enabled chat “features,” “suggested for you” algorithmic posts that get in the way of what you actually asked to see, etc. Do they honestly think they should be compensated for providing that “experience”? It seems like the whole corporate social media playbook right now is relentlessly pushing out things users don’t want and then getting mad when they won’t pay for them.

Anything from the new interface on has been bad

“These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free,” he said in an interview with The Verge.

I find this an irritating statement. Before this shit-show, I would have paid ~$5 /month to keep using Reddit the way I was. I got huge value from all the different communities - and their history - that Reddit made possible. But they never made that a real option and instead burnt a lot of bridges.

I think he is mad, because for years he's been getting all this content for free...

I wonder how upset he would get if mods start demanding compensation for their free labor

Yeah spez could have easily cashed in on a lot of money with Apollo and the other 3rd party apps if they worked together. So glad he chose this path though, fuck him.

Of course they're talking about the Reddit getting content for free, right?

I think they got things wrong, this protest now is mostly about just fucking reddit up majorly, mods have the power to do that and if reddit mistreats them even more they likely just leave and never come back. its completely ridiculous to think that you can mistreat people that do your work because they like it and they will just bend over for you. These people have 0 legal obligations towards reddit and reddit can't be unmoderated... Otherwise people will flood it with Child Porn.

I think in the corporate world chefs are just used to mistreating people and they just taking it because they need the job. Obviously does not work with volunteers.

That's nice to get a bit of media coverage. I do agree with the article's assessment of "small but growing" communities, and that it consists of many power users and tech hobbyists, considering that the active user ratio overall is above 10%.

I think the key is element is that these new communities are "growing". If they can get and maintain a critical mass of users to provide enough content and interactions to remain viable, then they can continue to develop as alternatives.