Megathread for Reddit Blackouts and News - Day 3locked

alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgmod to Technology@beehaw.org – 190 points –

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!

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It's disappointing seeing people cave so quickly when under the slightest inconvenience. It doesn't matter for me, though - I'm not going back. If anything, this has helped me realize the unhealthy relationship I had with Reddit and was a good way to break that.

To new and better things.

this has helped me realize the unhealthy relationship I had with Reddit and was a good way to break that

Exactly, now that I have an unhealthy relationship with Lemmy I can't put effort into the one with Reddit.

Same. Replacing doom scrolling on Reddit with posting on beehaw.

I started reading Reddit (and now Lemmy) through RSS feeds because I was exhausted from the constant scrolling. I think that's really helped me cut back on my link-aggregator of choice. The RSS feeds here could use some TLC though -- the feeds smoosh the title and url together and if there is any sort of post text, it's not much to go on.

What RSS feed application are you using? I’m thinking of doing the same. Just pulling in everything from multiple sources into one interface

I'm probably going to delete my account or at least cut back drastically on my usage, but I'm currently the only active mod for a small fan sub for an old fantasy book series. I don't really want to leave that sub unmoderated but I'll have to find another user willing to take on mod duties before I feel alright abandoning Reddit altogether.

only active mod for a small fan sub

That attachment is what they (Reddit) are counting on. It's your community, not Reddits; and they don't care. But you do... while admirable in itself, its being used against you.

I don't disagree with you, but I still feel a certain responsibility to that community. I'd like to start divesting myself of that responsibility, but it'll take time if I don't want to just abandon it.

How about you make a lemmy community or a kbin magazine and officially migrate your subreddit there? (including making a stickied announcement in the subreddit)

Since you're its only mod, that should be possible and even easier to do than migrating a bigger subreddit like /r/TalesFromTheFrontDesk

I've considered it, but honestly I'm kind of tired of it lol. It's an older series and so all of the arguments/discussions are just kind of retread endlessly, and I'm not as into it as I used to be. Also there are discussions about making a tv show and I wouldn't mind being as far away as possible once that kicks into high gear. I saw what r/WoT was like when that show came out and I don't want any part of moderating that crap.

Which series? My guess is Riftwar based on that description, but I’m curious if you’re open to sharing.

Not Riftwar, although I did love those books and even had a rogue on Ultima Online named "Jimmy the Hand".

It's a series called "The Chronicles of Amber" by Roger Zelazny. Great series but not without its flaws and never super huge in the public consciousness.

I remember reading Amber it was was a great series that unfortunately didn’t age as well as others from the same era.

From what I understand of how this whole system works here - you can just host/create your own instance for that community. Make some mod post on your subreddit about how you're migrating the community, if anyone can help host it if you're unable, and if they want to follow over they can.

Yeah it's an idea for sure. I responded to @curiosityLynx a minute ago that I'm really burnt out on that particular series so I think it's probably time for me to find somebody else to take it on and just move on myself.

Yeah, the niche subreddits are what I really hate to leave behind. I could care less about leaving r/politics, r/AskReddit, etc. But I'll miss r/EtrianOdyssey (niche video game series).

But we'll just have to create these communities on Lemmy. I'm in it for the long haul.

Malicious Compliant Deep Thoughts : You could create a group here on Lemmy, start topics and discussions there. Then link those Lemmy posts on Reddit. The Reddit Users will figure it out. :)

As the only mod, would you be able to export the data to lemmy and inform the users that they can continue posting here? I have no idea, genuinely just interested.

I have no idea whether that would be possible, but I'm also not sure I would want to do it. It would be one thing to encourage folks to move but I don't own that subreddit (I'm not even the founder or the head mod, just the only one that actively moderates) and I wouldn't want to grab other folks' posts and comments and put them elsewhere.

That makes sense. It sounds like you are the right person to be that moderator, so I tip my hat.

...an old fantasy book series...

(My ears prick up)

An old fantasy series? I'm big time into old fantasy series. May I ask what it was?

The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny.

Cool! Zelazny is one of my favorite authors. I assume you've read his Lord of Light?

Incredibly, I have not. It's on my TBR list, I've just never gotten to it. Pretty bad for somebody moderating a Zelazny fan sub but it is what it is, lol

It's his magnum opus. Enjoyable as Amber is (and I wish he'd written more), Lord of Light is absolutely incredible. Although a lot of people get confused by the flashback that starts with Chapter 2 and lasts for more than half of the book.

Well, give young people some credit, though. Mostly they're the ones that have been closing their subs and migrating here and working to develop FOSS software like Lemmy. I say this as someone in my late 30s.

It won't be the last time reddit fucks up. And everytime they do, more people will come this way, especially as this place gets better and better

I’m happy to stay on lemmy. Just like mastodon, it had a boy that will fade but then I think it will continue to grow.

Reddit’s always had inept management, Spez in particular can’t help but antagonise his users with a daft unforced error every couple of years. We don’t need to ‘win’, we don’t even need to actively do anything but exist. As long as nice places like this exist and Reddit does too Reddit’s inevitable cockups will provide a small but steady trickle of users.

I wonder how much of this caving in was, because a lot of lame mods were worried about losing their past time and or control over large communities.

There are a lot of little Lukashenkos out there that will immediately cave to a bully as long as they’re allowed to remain in control.

Then we still win and Reddit still loses. Little Lukashenkos don't make good moderators.

It’s disappointing seeing people cave so quickly when under the slightest inconvenience.

The whole protest was slacktivism of the highest order. Minimum effort, minimum results.

Advertisers are starting to take notice, it seems. Gotta keep the blackout running longer to hit em in their pocketbooks - 2 days they can weather out, indefinite dark they cannot. It's what I've been saying from the beginning, a protest with a clearly defined end date has no teeth.

I've heard about Reddit removing a mod from a popular subreddit, then turning the subreddit public (sorry, don't have the reference). They can always stop the blackout by force. But once they do that, those mods will have definite incentive to start the communities in the fediverse.

I think it was r/AdviceAnimals

That seemed to be a situation where the head mod was going against the wishes of the other mods. Not sure how I feel about it, personally, but it's not quite as simple as "Spez made the subreddit open against the wishes of everyone involved".

It was done because the head mod (who barely contributed anything) showed up out of the blue and decided to enroll the sub into the protest. The rest of the mod team was not in agreement with it.

For now at least, the only instances of that have been absent mods who swoop in and start taking action. They've had a rule about that since KotakuInAction had that happen where the founder of the sub came back and wanted to shut it down (for good reason, that place sucks). Reddit admins undid it and kicked the founder out to preserve the community.

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.

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.

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.

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

I imagine the devs have stats on uninstalls - I wonder what they show.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall at Reddit HQ right now in general!

@mobyduck648 @Deebster Who cares what Reddit thinks anymore. IF they do bring back third-party apps I will use Reddit, Mastodon and lemmy regardless. Reddit messed up big time

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!

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

I don't know how to make this not about me. So, I'm just going to say it. Friday I closed a 13 year old Reddit account. Saturday and Sunday I brought up multiple Fediverse servers. I now have Mastodon, Lemmy, PixelFed, Owncast, and NextCloud working. I have yet to get Element Chat and PeerTube running. They will happen by Friday. When I opened my Owncast I killed my Twitch account. When PeerTube is up and running I drop YouTube. My point is, I want to thank Reddit for providing me the motivation to leave corporate social media and switch to my own platform. I'm not going back... I'm going forward.

Thanks for this, I hadn't heard of half of these projects and now I'm also looking into them! Pixelfed in particular look amazing. I have a few friends that have been wanting to rid Instagram so will definitely be sending this their way.

I am fascinated by how the experience of other people can be completely different from mine, alien even. We can look at the same situation and come up with exactly opposite conclusions. I keep trying to put myself in the shoes of the other, figure out how they think. The behavior of u/spez is abhorent to me, but here's how I would imagine he thinks about the community list of demands:

<AH mode>

Bringing the API pricing down to the point ads/subscriptions could realistically cover the costs.

The costs are reasonable and down to earth! We've been extremely generous. Our prices are in line with industry standards. The app devs are greedy and do not want to pay. In fact they are so greedy they are choosing to shut down and go out of business rather than pay their fair share! Also some apps are ahem inefficient. Those devs could stay profitable if they just code their apps better.

Reddit gives the apps time to make whatever adjustments are necessary

The apps had plenty of time. We've been perfectly transparent. The API changes were announced months in advance. The first bills do not arrive until months from now in August, and are not due for another month after that. The apps have enough time if they are serious about working with us.

Rate limits would need to be per user+appkey, not just per key.

Rate limits are for the free tier. The paid tier is a flat fee per 1000 API calls without rate limit.

Commitment to adding features to the API; image uploads/chat/notifications.

We are always working on new and exciting features! We have so many mod tools in the pipeline. All the hottest features will appear in our native app first, which is where we can best ensure everything stays compatible. Have you tried using that?

Lack of communication. Why were disabled communities not contacted to gauge the impact of these API changes?

We are always in communication with our communities! We've been discussing these API changes for months, collecting community input, and interacting with our users in AMAs!

You say you've offered exemptions for "non-commercial" and "accessibility apps." Despite r/blind's best efforts, you have not stated how they are selected.

We communicate with developers on an app-by-app basis. We have already confirmed the inclusion of two accessibility apps! We support accessibility for blind people!

Parity in access to NSFW content

Cannot be done for lawyercat reasons.

Now that we have addressed all of the listed community concerns, we are looking forward to welcoming all of you back to reddit!

</AH mode>

P.S. the fact that u/spez specifically stated that "old.reddit.com isn’t going anywhere" confirms in my mind that old.reddit will be gone within 9 months. Screenshot this.

old.reddit.com isn’t going anywhere

"We are keeping it right here on our servers and it's not going over the internet to your browser."

Cannot be done for lawyercat reasons.

I can't say for sure, but I suspect they are trying to push nsfw in-house for the sake of monetizing it. Nsfw drives quite a bit of traffic, and with the falling out of Imgur, Reddit itself has become the primary host. They just can't state their intentions publicly because Reddit has a bit of problem with non-consensual material.

Right! I was trying to model u/spez as sincere, but with views so diametrically opposed to mine as to sound insane. "Lawyercats" was an actual reason he has cited previously. I agree that the much more likelier explanation is that reddit execs are lying out their ass and are simply deliberately killing off 3rd party apps to make their IPO look better somehow, and using the fuck-you pricing as a convenient excuse. The execs must have been drinking their own start-up cool-aid, having forgotten that the real value of reddit is not in them but in the community. u/spez keeps calling it HIS data that 3rd party apps are profiting off, when it is really OUR data. Or maybe they are aware, but are expecting that they can bend the community to their will regardless.

Man, I read your word vomit like 4 times, I believe you are right about all of it.

I read all of the apps threads about why they're quitting on the 30th, for Apolo which has already charged its users he would have to foot the costs the whole time until the next subscription re-up for many/most of his users, and we're supposed to believe the reddit guys?

For others, even the ones that want to make it work with added subscriptions, the lack of full reddit access via the API makes one wonder, what's the point of even trying?

Reddit has been an awful site for nearly 20 years, the only thing that made it usable was third party apps.

I'm not sure I'm going to miss it, I hated it before 3PA, and I'm willing to hate it again now.

The only thing I'm going to miss is world news updates and stuff that is here, the volume is basically muted in comparison.

It's disappointing to see some of the larger subreddits going public with a 'what's the point?' tone. Most are staying private, but some aren't. As if Reddit doesn't exist solely because of its user generated content. If enough subs permanently shut down they'll have to reconsider their API position.

I decided to write a message to subreddits I've been lurking for years via messaging the mods saying how vitally important it is for subreddits to protest right now, at this critical time, before it's too late. I've politely implored them to continue the protest saying how these API changes with have a long-lasting, permanent impact on Reddit as a platform for the worse.

I'd suggest you guys come up with your own letter template and message the mods of those subreddits in polite form. It'd be great if we can convince these exceptions to go private again. I also understand some moderators may be afraid Reddit will just replace them with mods willing to reopen the sub, so I added a section saying it they're treated like that, Reddit don't deserve their time and maybe they should consider rebuilding elsewhere if that happens. Its their prime chance to stand up for the right thing right now for the future of Reddit.

I used Reddark to determine which subreddits to contact. I'd say only contact hobbyist ones such as sports rather than more politically-inclined ones like Ukraine that have a fair reason to stay open. Also some subreddits have made poll posts asking their users if they should go private like Gaming and NotTheOnion, so please don't message those ones.

I agree with everything you’ve said and that it is disappointing. I do think there is merit in continuing to protest and send a message.

However, I don’t think there’s anything that can move the Reddit leadership team back. Because even if they went back on this API issue, the continued process of the degradation of reddit as a service has been a long term thing. It seems to me that the Fidelity downgrade of their evaluation has pushed them even further down this path.

I truly am done with them. Even if they come back from all this, what’s left there? Somebody else pointed out that over the year, generally interactions became more unfriendly on reddit, spam and changes to the algorithm increasingly pushed away from the platform we all loved.

I see this situation and how it was so exacerbated by Spez and the leaderships absolute failure as a blessing. There’s a lot of alternative ways to spend time on the internet, to connect and learn. Beehaw has been really good to me the last couple days, I am excited for a future here and ready to not contribute toward the mess that reddit has become anymore.

It's become increasingly clear that Steve and his cronies are desperately trying to get Reddit to its IPO with value intact so they can cash out and leave someone else holding the bag. As I've said elsewhere, I wouldn't be surprised if he and others end up shorting Reddit.

If he does, that's insider trading and wildly illegal. Not saying he won't, just that the ethical thing to do would be to treat Reddit as a Conman's scheme and withdraw any value you've put into it sooner rather than later. Reduce the IPO value by not going back

I'm excited to see how these new platforms flourish too. Even if Reddit do eventually concede and they drop their API pricing, the writing is on the wall. They've shown how little they care about the community that uses their platform. I'll likely be leaving Reddit permanently, but I want to know I've at least done everything in my power as a long-time user to protest their awful decisions.

What the big subreddits don't realise is, on Fediverse many of their subreddits have not yet been recreated. If they don't do it, someone else will and then they come in as just contributors. So may be in their interests to actually establish a presence, and gauge how much take-up they get.

May be they already realize it, meaning, they saw all the popular communities already created here, and would much rather stay there as mods.

I think so too but I don't see why they wouldn't want to come on the fediverse nonetheless. They can participate but not as mods. Once they build a reputation on the fediverse then of course they could apply for mod.

I was wondering if I should delete all or leave some of my posts, but seeing subs I subscribed to come back was what made me decide to just wipe everything. Can't do anything about the mods or what other users do, so felt like deleting stuff was the one tiny bit of control I had over the situation. Which itself is nothing, but at least it's something.

You can request your data under EU's new GDPR law https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request

They have to send you all your personal data. Once you have your data, you can they use a tool to delete all your data and wipe your comments before you deleted your account. Like Chrome/Edge extension RedditZapper.

Note that it might take a while though, so if anyone wants to get this done before the 30th (so you can use API-based tools to wipe comments), request it ASAP.

I requested...maybe two weeks or so ago? And it only came through today. So get to it y'all

I used Power Delete Suite to overwrite my comments and posts via API, it includes an option to export everything from your account to a CSV before it takes any destructive actions, and it's super easy to use.

I was cool seeing years of comments get wiped. I could see why some people would purge their history every year even before the reddit controversy. It's cleansing in a way.

I'm planning to wait and see what happens on June 30th before I do that. Over the years I've made some educational posts on music production that I still occasionally get messages about, so I'll be manually going through my content to decide what to preserve and what to delete. I'm glad I'm not someone who decided to post a lot over my many years of Redditing or I would be in for a long dig lol (if you'll pardon the pun RIP Digg).

I have started calling the mods of those subreddit "Scabs"

There are over 6000 subreddits that still aren't public. Like looks like Reddit is over waiting for them to come back online. https://famichiki.jp/@Tsutsuku/110537730270070245

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.

Will kneel next to my desk top tonight and recite this under the glow of the divine monitor.

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...

For me its really exciting. it is like watching history happen. I am really glad the people have managed to come together for something important.

Yeah I don't have a strong opinion about whole API access controversy but it does spark a greater debate about how we let centralized services like Reddit subsume the Internet forum culture of old. Of course, Reddit in many ways is a superior product to the decentralized forums of old (you only need one account to post) but at the same time, this whole protest has proven especially damaging to people who rely heavily on Reddit as a resource for support (like the mental health subreddits, the chronic disease ones, etc.).

This is just me, personally, but I hate Reddits stance on the API situation about AI learning, and how it's not profitable to offer the data for free. Excuse me, the data doesn't even exist without the users. I get we are all data-harvested, but to completely pull the rug like this is unforgivable. I mean the TPA's were the only way I interacted with Reddit. For me, it's not about the ads, the money or anything, it's deliberately killing the TPA to drive their profits up. I mean fuck, I'd pay a subscription to access reddit if it kept TPA open. But nah, gonna act like they earned my data and are entitled to it, no thanks.

This is probably a dumb comment, sorry. I can't word very well and I don't usually get out what's going through my head

Many subreddits are holding polls on whether they should continue the blackout. For those who are boycotting Reddit, I would highly encourage you to go vote. Even if you plan to leave Reddit for good, a longer blackout will drive more users here.

It seems problematic to have a poll to about boycotting when those actively boycotting won't be there to participate.

On many subreddits that have polls, it seems like a majority favor keeping their subs open. It seems like the userbase is generally ambivalent or even hostile towards the protest at large.

Makes sense considering everyone who is pro-blackout is not on the site…

IDK I also see plenty of posts supporting keeping subs closed too. I doubt a lot of people have left the site for good. But those voices are generally outnumbered by people who don't understand what's going on or don't care about the protest.

Don't get me wrong... Lemmy is fine, but I am finding that most of the active posts here are about the protest on Reddit... plus a few discussions on current news and gaming... but little else. I am still spending most of my time on Reddit.

The Reddit drama is still the hotness right now, but soon maybe 2 months into the future it won't be as new and you won't see it as much.

I think this newest wave of decentralization is a good thing. Though we might lose knowledge held in those niche subreddits that choose to not go back that knowledge will inevitably migrate somewhere else.

Because, while we know how shitty Reddit as a company has behaved, there are millions who have no idea (despite the popular posts by mods across thousands of subs) and now feel that the mods and subs which went private/restricted are the ones damaging Reddit, rather than Reddit shooting itself.

To be honest, not that many people seem to actually care and I think this would have gone better if they didn't announce their "for 48 hours" bullshit. Imagine if the WGA said they were going on strike for two weeks and then getting back to writing. They would accomplish literally nothing.

Subs saying "for 48 hours" is the equivalent to that. If they just went indefinite from the start, they wouldn't have to be polling people who are now mostly just annoyed that their experience has been unpleasant for two days.

Honestly, as much as I support the whole thing, it went about as well as expected. Mods kind of shot themselves in the foot, now the community blames them.

In a way, those users are right. Either go all in or do nothing. Middle-of-the-road shit doesn't work for things like this.

Also, the constant image with the black background and large white text saying Reddit sucks (that's at least how it appears to general users) is becoming literal spam. Regular users see it, and it becomes one of those things where it's like "we heard you the first dozen times, please shut up". Also, because it's being spammed, it loses impact and people gloss over it or filter it out.

At best, they'll annoy enough people to leave (kind of roundabout way of accomplishing things, but I guess it works). At worst, they've given reddit a reason to declare the mods as promoting and engaging in spam which "doesn't benefit the users of the site, so we're going to step in and get things back on track so everyone can enjoy Reddit" or some corporate shit.

Honestly, Reddit's in a position where they may even have the upper hand now in terms of PR. Users angry, but not at them.

The thing is, the people who don't realize what this is about are going to be having a really rough time in a couple of weeks when moderation slides. Of course, they're going to blame the mods again and say they're doing it on purpose because the "protest failed and now you're just being spiteful and hurting the users".

We know that's not the case. The majority doesn't and won't care.

I think the real issue is that the protest coordinators were not able to succinctly explain why they had to protest to begin with. Charging third party app developers for API access is an esoteric topic. Most people don't even know what an API is. Most people don't use third party apps. Most people also don't care.

Yeah, I was going to mention that as well.

Longtime users and especially power users and mods have been on third party apps for ages. And because third party apps are the most "visible" examples of the API, that's what drew the attention.

As soon as they tried to explain "it's not only about third party apps, but also third party tools", that's when they lost people because explaining what those tools are and accomplish to users who aren't mods (or even familiar with tech at all) becomes a subject without much clarity.

To a massive portion of users, there is no "reddit(dot)com", it's just the app. The fact that so many subs are still using titles like "save third party apps" is a bad sign. It's not "save Reddit from spam bots and other awful shit" (which is one of the things this is mainly about), but you're telling a bunch of people to "save" apps that they don't use or care about.

There's an added cog in the machine here. Every time someone tries (and succeeds) in explaining the issues, the astroturfing (or just regular bootlicking) begins and suddenly there's seeds of doubt.

One thing we can count on is Reddit fucking up again. And again. And each time, it'll lose the more active users. It's not ever going to be a mass migration, but waves over time. Even then, what can we say Reddit will be in another five years? Probably different from what it is now, with users who expect different things.

There’s an added cog in the machine here. Every time someone tries (and succeeds) in explaining the issues, the astroturfing (or just regular bootlicking) begins and suddenly there’s seeds of doubt.

I am seeing many users (especially those who haven't been around for as long) asking people what the big deal is and why their favorite subreddits are down. Half of the people trying to respond aren't giving these people satisfactory and succinct answers. The protest is breaking down as soon as it began.

Most (60%) of Reddit users either use 3rd party apps (~30%) or old.reddit.com (~30%)

You can't throw out an enormous number like that without further explanation or a source at least. The only post I found on my first Google search is from a reddit post (6 days ago) where it's said that reddit reports about 5% of its users coming from third party apps.

Apollo also reported having around 1.2M users while not being a small app at all.

So with 400M MAU as the lowest possible amount of users, somehow all others 3rd party apps have over 118M users between them?

I could believe 30% of users being old.reddit ones due to it not being deleted after all those years. But for mobile apps, that 5% quote seems the most realistic.

Asking the people still posting/commenting if they want a subreddit to stay open seems kind of pointless. Of course they want it to stay open, they didn't care for the blackout in the first place.

Every poll I voted on was overwhelmingly in favor of indefinitely privating the sub. And it was like 7 of them

This situation made very clear what writing is on the wall for reddit. I don’t care if people go back, it hasn’t been the reddit I knew and cared about for a long time.

To all the people saying “oh well this won’t replace reddit,” I wouldn’t want it to. Reddit has changed.

Here’s to new beginnings

I accidentally posted this outside the megathread — reposting here to help make life easier for the mods:

https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16693988535309

Reddit attempting to offer free API usage for moderator tools (but not 3rd Party Apps)

They've now added that "non-commercial" qualifier to accessibility apps and mod tools. So they're totally cool with 3rd parties adding value to their platform. As long as all of the revenue resulting from that unpaid work goes straight to Reddit.

I like how they state the following:

As of July 1, 2023, we are increasing the API limits for our free API usage from 60 to 100 Queries Per Minute for those using OAuth authentication.

They're making it sound like they're increasing the rate limit, whereas they're actually changing it from 60 queries per user per application per minute to 100 queries per application per minute. So if you had a 3rd party app with 1000 users, you'd have 60 queries each minute for every single user, now all those 1000 users will have to share 100 queries each minute (so that'd be 1 query per user every 10 minutes), unless the app developer is willing to pay up.

This is now going to end up costing them more money cause they'll have to police the usage of thier api with all these exceptions lol

Well not necessarily, you just give the mod tools a different api to use. It'd be simple, but you'd still be restricting some stuff for api tools

Can anyone tell me what the "196" community is? If I sort my feed by All, it gives me a ton of memes from there but I can't tell what it is.

It began on reddit as the general sub for the college dorm #196 at some university, one thing lead to another, and now it's a meme sub which exists everywhere.

The joke is "you have to post something when you visit the subreddit" so the content there is just all over the place, but there are a bunch of in-jokes that spawned (was they always do in situations like that).

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!

Overwrite all your comments with “move to beehaw!”

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]

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. :)

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!

Sad to see that many people in the larger subreddits don't care about any of this. I guess it's fine; I guess you don't truly know what you have until you loose it.

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.

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?

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.

Dang, I never thought about that. It explains a lot though

2 more...
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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.

2 more...

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We need democracy online. Down with the unelected aristocracy!

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.

I visited Reddit for the first time in two days and had a thought that has occurred to me constantly for years, "I hate this site." It's still the same alienating crap and it will never change. I glanced over my home page, made a comment about the fediverse being a better alternative in a blackout thread for one of my subs that came back, and popped back here.

I agree completely. I don’t care if people go back to reddit, I don’t care if they even reverse some of their decisions, the damage is done for me. I’ll look forward to a new future here and elsewhere on the internet.

My first day off Reddit, I had severe withdrawal. I kept trying to launch Boost (my third party Reddit app of choice) despite not really wanting to. Thankfully, a focus app I installed for just this reason stopped me. I eventually moved the app shortcut and put Jerboa in its place so that muscle memory took me to Lemmy instead.

By the second day, the withdrawal wasn't as bad. I did miss some things, but I was starting to realize how little I really cared about much of it.

By now, Lemmy has replaced about 40% of my Reddit usage. Another 50% I've deemed not important enough to replace. I now have only one subreddit that I really miss. I've found a Lemmy alternative, but of course Reddit has a bigger community.

That one remaining subreddit is still dark. (I tried to see how many subscribers it had and saw it was still dark. I wasn't going to read any posts if it had gone back online.) If it comes back, I might stick around there, but I'll also stay on Lemmy and will push this as a Reddit replacement. (I think Jerboa and Lemmy have some rough edges that need to be improved upon before they can truly be a replacement, but they are surprisingly close.)

I just uninstalled Apollo to stop any chance of accidentally going to reddit.

Speaking of Jerboa, I installed it, but it opens to lemmy.ml and I can't figure out how to change it to beehaw.

You probably have to log in. If you are in anonymous mode, the app defaults to showing lemmy.ml (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

I went back yesterday night to check out the Starfield sub and was surprised at how little interest I felt in even skimming the comments in case there were interesting theories. I grabbed the Imgur albums for screenshots I wanted to look at and left. the fediverse is my place now. :)

Have Reddark on a tab. Seems like the number of private subs keeps dropping. :(

Are they caving or is something nefarious up like what happened to r/AdviceAnimals and r/tumblr yesterday?

It's probably a mix of both. Er, what exactly happened to those subs?

I wouldn't sweat it, though. Reddit will never recover from the events of the last two days. They'll be bleeding users from now on.

This isn't the end for Reddit by a long way but it might in hindsight be seen as when its slow decline reached the point of no return.

I don't know if it will be the end. But the quality is likely to go down. The power users were using 3rd party apps. And without a lot of those being around. It's going to go down in quality like Twitter did when Elon acquired it.

What will really kill them is when they officially go public. That will kill the site dead.

I missed the whole Twitter-after-Elon thing. I never really got Twitter, and I was permabanned from it before he acquired it. Ironically, for a Tweet about (among other oligarchs) Elon!

I regretfully still have mine. Mostly because I love sports and a lot of Twitter accounts I follow for news are still active. And accounts like Wario64 for when things go on sale for games or 4K blu-rays. That said, Elon will never get my fucking money.

Neither will spez.

Apparently oligarchs have no sense of humor. Who knew?

What happened to those subs? Admin takeover?

They just opened up after the two days were over, like how many of them planned. Not every sub agreed to stay dark indefinitely.

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

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.

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

There is so much bots who repost on reddit it's a nightmare...

I was wondering about how much of reddit activity is bots. Are bot posts/comments possible with lemmy?

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.

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.

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 willingly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think the best thing that protesting redditors can do now (if they haven't already) is delete all of their content on the platform. Not before backing it up to post on Lemmy, of course.

Check out PowerDeleteSuite, a Chrome* plugin that can edit/delete posts in a user's history. https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite

Just follow the install instructions on the page and let it rip. You can act on or exempt specific subs, act on age, exempt by status, etc. It will also export deleted and modified comments to a CSV for your own use.

I nuked my accounts, editing all comments to "This comment has been deleted in protest of the Reddit API changes of June 2023. Consider visiting Lemmy.world or Kbin.social for an alternative news source."

I'll probably go back in on the 29th or 30th and delete everything before closing the accounts.

  • worked on Chromium for me. Never had success with Firefox, and I don't touch Edge.

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

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.

I'm going to keep Reddit for specific interests like specific sports teams or specific game franchises. I haven't really seen a replacement for decent engagement for those. But other than that I've already trimmed down my subs to almost nothing. There's a lot less activity on those, so my Reddit time will be about like my Facebook time, which is a couple minutes a day to see any updates before closing.

I think it's going to be a nice change of pace to not have those big subs taking up so much of my time doomscrolling.

I like reddit. I want its fun little spaces to thrive.

Reddit is making this really difficult.

The suits are all about their metrics and engagement and clicks and they don't care about the user. They don't even care about the peeps they hire to talk to the user.

I'm told sometimes admin employees find out they're fired because they can't log in to workspaces anymore.

I dunno.

Maybe this space is better. :)

*I like reddit. I want its fun little spaces to thrive.

Reddit is making this really difficult.*

Agreed, but I don't think they're going to be moving in a positive direction. I believe we have seen the best Reddit will ever be. When a company becomes profit driven in the way Reddit has, it forces the company to make decisions that aren't beneficial to it's users. I understand the decisions they're making, but their "rip the band-aid" method at least lets us see that they're unwilling to compromise on their position. It makes switching to a different platform much easier for me. It just sucks because there are small communities that I thoroughly enjoyed and I don't know if they'll ever recoup.

If you're considering leaving Reddit, consider also salting the earth on your way out.

Check out PowerDeleteSuite, a Chrome* plugin that can edit/delete posts in a user’s history. https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite

Just follow the install instructions on the page and let it rip. You can act on or exempt specific subs, act on age, exempt by status, etc. It will also export deleted and modified comments to a CSV for your own use.

I nuked my accounts, editing all comments to “This comment has been deleted in protest of the Reddit API changes of June 2023. Consider visiting Lemmy.world or Kbin.social for an alternative news source.”

I’ll probably go back in on the 29th or 30th and delete everything before closing the accounts.

worked on Chromium for me. Never had success with Firefox, and I don’t touch Edge.

(Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with this project)

Discussion: I arrived at posting this after some soul-searching about destroying inforamtion. In the end, my contributions were derivative from still-extant and viable sources, while I consider Reddit to be a lost cause. I decided it was more abhorrent to me that they continue to profit off the back of my freely-contributed content than to reclaim my contributions, and rehost those contributions at a later date under a more friendly banner.

That was my calculus. You, reader, are welcome respectfully to disagree.

I for one, will most definitely not be doing this. Reddit was such a vital part of the internet during the mid-2010's to early 2020's... it would be a shame it all that history was permanently lost.

I will, however, likely not be going back. I've actually really wanted to take part in a decentralized social community like this for a long time, and I am very excited about what the federation brings to the table, and about the role that Lemmy fills in that network. In a world where the internet seems so much to focus on what is currently going on now, I reckon not contributing to Reddit anymore will have a much greater long-term impact than nuking my previous content, and will allow me to leave my piece of internet history intact on their archive.

There's an argument to be made that it's all been captured in the internet archive, but I still think that reddit gets most of its value from active users, not drivebys looking at posts from a decade ago. I'd rather those vital parts of internet history be findable in their original, SEO captured location, but I also understand the reasoning behind getting rid of all that and moving it strictly into internet archives. The thing is, the 2010s have taught us that the addage "once it's on the internet it's there forever" is patently false. The internet has turned out to be incredibly fragile with big chunks of history that wasn't archived going away forever. Our collective memories have been edited by companies going out of business and deleting all their cloud storage to avoid incurring further cost.

From the perspective of preserving useful knowledge, I wholeheartedly agree that it's a horrible thing to do. Especially when your comments relate important niche information rather than just being the millionth meme on the same template.

That said, I still edited everything (weren't too many niche info things on my account anyway), because I read a couple times that Reddit's big goal here would be to sell the immense amount of "real people conversations" to AI language model companies, thus possibly still making more money off what's already there even if no new content would be posted again.

PS: I have no idea how or why my phone did this but while typing, a popup suddenly came "Report Created!". If I somehow reported your (or any other) message here, please ignore this, whoever gets the report!

I've thought about deleting specifically noninformative posts

I had the same though. But then I started scrolling through my post and comment history and decided I'd rather do something else with my time than consider whether or not a comment I made will be exactly what someone searches for years from now.

But, I should add, that my valuable contributions on reddit are pretty few. I can see how that would be entirely different for someone who is/was incredibly active in answering r/AskHistorians posts.

Thank you, just ran this over my account. I didnt delete comments, just edited them to say I've moved to lemmy :)

Cool, I think I'll do the same. I wasn't popular or super active but hey, doin' my part

wonder if regular carpet bombing the open subs with a black "Reddit is killing third-party app (and itself)" might be effective? gives the mods an "out" because it's not against TOS - and if it were widespread enough eventually a few of them will hit front page

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.


Just found out that that mod changed their mind and decided to go dark anyway, and was promptly removed by Reddit. Well, I guess they *did* see it coming!

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

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?

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

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.

According to reddark, there were more than 7K subs closed this morning, right now there's a bit above 6300, with many opening as we speak. We'll see.

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.

I've checked in on reddit a few time to see the chaos but otherwise I'm staying away, ain't giving them my traffic.

Just got a big blue headline on old.reddit.com, trying to negotiate their way out of the modtool API debacle. Anyone know the request rate of modtools? I can't imagine a 60->100 query per minute increase is substantial

Especially because that's basically a lie. The free tier right now is 60 requests per minute, per client, per user. The new free tier is 100 requests per minute per client. If for example you develop a bot or tool and you'd like to give others access to use for their own purposes. You're now sharing those 100 requests per minute with everyone else using it.

I went ahead and posted a goodbye message on my Reddit profile, linking to my Lemmy and Mastodon profiles.

Now we'll see if the Reddit admins have the audacity to ban me for “spam” over a single post on my own profile.

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.

There is a LEGO community there https://lemmy.world/c/lego

That's the one I joined. Only 19 people are subscribed there, though, versus over a million in the LEGO subreddit. It's got some room to grow before it can be a complete replacement for me, but I'll definitely be sticking around there.

Someone has to be the early adopter, right? Give it time. People will follow.

What's the Lego place? I want to hop over there. Also if we could get the Phoenix Trainworks guy that'd be great.

Could you share that tool? Seems useful

It is https://redditmetis/. You put in your username and it will tell you stats about where you post and comment among other things. (Look for Top Subreddits By Number of Comments and Top Subreddits By Number of Submissions.)

It seems to be down.

Webpage not available

It's working for me. I typed out the address before. Let me try copy/pasting: https://redditmetis.com/

Yes, that worked - although not on my phone for some reason. Or rather, it opened on my phone, but crashed when I tried to get it to process my username. It worked correctly on my desktop, though.

Can't say I like it much. It knows too much about me in some areas, and it's completely wrong about me in others!

This is my first day on beehaw, and I'm planning to shift as much of what I previously did on reddit to this platform or others. Hopefully that will allow me to abandon reddit completely. I'm looking forward to learning more about this place and seeing how it develops.

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.

That’s so funny. I deleted my app - what’s happening on the other side?

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.

r/dankmemes commentators are all whining about the mods powertripping and how the protest is only hurting users and what right they have to destroy the experience for everyone 😂

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

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.

That makes sense. Thank you for sharing.

The sun rises, then sets.

Reddit's sunset appears nigh.

Thanks for the laughs.

So far the event went as expected. Reddit seems to be back and will continue to live on. It's really unfortunate. I was hoping that this event could the the catalyst to break the monopoly. A 2-day protest just doesn't cut it. And while I was keeping an eye on it a couple of really big subs were still "discussing" whether they'd got dark or not. If subs go dark one by one it just doesn't have the same effect as a concerted, well organised simultaneous blackout. Without a fixed time.

With that much impact all combined subs could have made a difference. But they botched it.

A lake doesn't empty in a day even after the dam bursts. This will take time, but they lost a sizeable chunk of their mods and content creators, the users follow the content they like. Lemmy has grown to a point now where it is starting to get noticed and the press around reddit continues to get worse. Stay here, keep making content, keep telling others how to join. This can happen.

Meh - maybe Reddit will live on, maybe it’ll die. It’s immaterial and worrying about it is a waste of energy. What we need to concentrate on is keeping the forward momentum going and making Lemmy into a truly viable alternative. The rest will follow.

Yeah. Reddit was never going to magically die overnight. If it dies, it's going to be a long and slow process. But that process starts with with some number of us jumping ship and focusing on bringing alternatives like Lemmy to life.

Plus, communities like these need quantity as much as quality to thrive. Each wave of Reddit expats makes this place better and more attractive to the next one, rinse and repeat. There'll be another exodus when the TPAs officially die, most likely bigger than this one since it'll hit in a more personal way. And then there'll be more after that, because we both know Reddit isn't gonna stop digging its own grave anytime soon.

It may never really "die". Digg still exists, MySpace still exists, aol still exists. It will just slowly wither, the user base will get worse and worse, and its value as a resource will diminish. It's not about reddit anymore, its about getting good people to come here.

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.

Admins are starting to take over subreddits https://lemmy.intai.tech/post/2262

What's weird is I didn't actually delete this comment. But it shows I deleted it? Strange maybe a mod removed it and it's just a bad message.

The good news is our mod logs are public, the bad news is in not sure what may have happened. I can say there wasn't anything bright to our attention on the post. There's been a number of glitches in the lemmy code that may have caused this. I'll ask around.

I'm going to chock it up to user error and just assume I fat fingered the delete button or something.

Somehow I doubt anything is gonna come of the blackout.

If things get concerning the admins will step in and replace mods with plants. No real winning at all

The thing with this is that it will take a HUGE amount of money to do this, unless you're suggesting they'll replace them with new unpaid moderators that are pro-being abused for free labor.

If that's the case, the quality of those subreddits will tank fast because there's no way they'll replace the existing mods with ones as motivated or as experienced as the ones already there.

As much as people love to mock Subreddit Moderators, there's a definite learned skill to doing it well and keeping a community thriving. That's not going to be something easily replaced.

No to mention subs like r/AskHistorians has mods that are actually historians. You can't just replace them and have the sub maintain it's quality.

personally it's a little hard for me to believe that reddit admins are hellbent on making sure things are quality seeing how they're acting right now. :p

I really don't think it would be THAT hard to find unpaid scabs, people like power, no matter how small

But that's the problem. It's easy to find people who will abuse their mod position. It's harder to find people who will use their mod powers fairly. If the mods in a subreddit - who use their powers fairly to help foster the community - are replaced by power seeking mods who just want to force their views on everyone, then the community will suffer. People will leave and the subreddit will slowly degrade.

So Reddit could definitely replace all the protesting mods with power seeking folks. Reddit will even see a short term gain with the subreddits opened again. However, it will just reinforce people's negative views of mods and will hasten Reddit's decline.

If they replace protesting mods then the communities can just overload the new mods until they restrict the sub (again). The real problem is people giving up (which just so aligns with what reddit wants). Personally, that's the reason why I'm leaving because apparently a lot of people genuinely thought that a 2-day blackout would cut it. Yeah, right.