‘Front page of the internet’: how social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit
theguardian.com
‘Front page of the internet’: how social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit::A mass user protest six months ago over technical tweaks had big downstream effects, and now the ‘front page of the internet’ is changed for ever
They respect it so much they forcibly remove mods to make them public again. That's so respectful.
"We will teach them our respectful ways. By force."
Come on now, give him some credit. He waited a whole few days before completely going back on his words.
Dozens of us!
I wonder if thats because most of the traffic was just bots all along who obviously aren't going to leave in protest
Same as it ever was.
Am I crazy or did the number of bots and 'new users' ramp up quite a bit around the protest also? Moderation was basically nonexistent, I would see obvious bots and trolls stay around when they would have been banned in no time before. I find it hard to trust any data on Reddit.
If I remember right, there was a spam detector bot or similar which I'm sure was third party and it either went off altogether or the project was suspended after accessing the API was going to come in.
I only go back to Resdit when my Google search doesn't take me where I need to go.
Which, unfortunately, is far too often. In my recent experience..
I literally use Reddit to fix Google Search results when I actually need an answer. At the very least I'll typically find the starting string. Though that's less due to the quality of Reddit and more because of its longevity.
Sometimes Lemmy pops up on my google search! That always makes me smile
I've often found removed responses, which is a good thing, just makes my quest to find an answer harder.
At least use a redirect extension that gives you an alternative, lighter frontend. Teddit might be mostly gone, but there are still Libreddit instances alive and active. And on Android, Stealth still works.
Tried Kagi?
The data is coming from the reddit admins, they have an interest in not looking like the idiots they are. Basically I call bullshit, I think they're lying for the IPO that'll never actually happen.
A third party website analytics company probably couldn't track the traffic of the users who left in the first place- the whole ordeal was about unofficial apps and API usage.
That's actually a great point. If everyone using the apps bailed it would be a huge number decline that wouldn't register as even a blip on similarweb so it's a terrible metric.
Yep. Haven't touched my account. Only time I go there is if a Reddit result is the only decent result of a search. But I don't browse reddit at all.
That's probably cause the userbase was flooded with bots to make up the difference
Not one mention of where said moderators who left went to..
Spend more time with my wife mostly
Is she spending time with all the former mods?
Hey! There's a sign up sheet man, get in line
I also spend more time with OP's wife wife. /s
Damn. I left Reddit to spend more time with your wife, too, but I’ve only been seeing your mom lately.
The Granuiad has been pushing a lot of sideways shit lately. That’s a shame.
The what?
The Guardian used to be notorious for spelling mistakes so it's jokingly referred to as the Grauniad
Haha, that's awesome!
A lot of which were good mods too. I've noticed a lot more racism and otherwise right wing posting being left alone/unmoderated since the protest, in the subs I used to browse actively - nowadays I just check in with them every now and then without an account and the intentional or not lack of moderation is making me want to stop doing even that.
Probably depends on your subs. Most of mine have went far, far left and have become a tiresome dog pile of virtue signaling from behind keyboards and screens.
And I'm a leftist. There seems to be a huge difference these days in being a leftist and being a "this is now my only personality trait" leftist through which all views must be fundamentally filtered. Even non-political/non-social. It has made some subs unreadable for me, specifically my state and city subs.
Edit: I guess where I am going with it is that the extremes are becoming more extreme and seeking out new frontiers now that moderation is light.
I started an entire instance - https://lemdro.id - to provide a home to Reddit subreddits such as r/Android and r/Google Pixel (and other technical stuff)
I don't post on reddit any more but I still look there now and then. I don't notice much change. From everything I've heard, the protest failed. A few snowflakes like me quit posting and/or moved to Lemmy, but mostly things at reddit were back to normal within a few weeks after the blackout.
Yaknow, i guess i get why people feel like it is hopeless to try to change the world, that trying to stand up against powerful corporations is useless, to "force their hand"impossible. and that's because it is.
But i feel that is missing the point. When you tell a company that they need to treat you a certain way or you leave, and then you follow through, you win. Forget a large company, when in this life can you ever force anyone to treat you right? You can't.
You tell em what they can do to keep your around, and if they don't, you take your self respect with your on the way out the door, and your life, the one that matters, is improved, and the next step in ending that bad relationship is no longer caring who else they might be seeing.
I for one am happy with you cats. Me n reddit are quits
That's true - it bums me out that more people didn't follow through on their threats to leave, but I did and I don't spend hours doomscrolling every day anymore. That alone is a good outcome. I learned to embroider to keep from picking up my phone over and over during the blackout and it's one of my favorite hobbies now. Also a good outcome. For me, the protest was a success. Reddit can make every stupid choice under the sun, and it doesn't impact my life in the least anymore.
I think I'm getting better at leaving, I was surprised to see today the last time I posted there was over a month. No so on Lemmy, though.
I took part in the blackout and moved to Lemmy and hoped that the blackout would be successful, but realistically it looks in retrospect like it didn't matter much to Reddit. I still don't post there. I avoided reading for a while, but found myself still wanting to check on things / lurk. At least I have all the ads blocked.
I think most people who stayed on reddit didn't care about some disagreement between geeks, or (in the case of some moderators) too addicted to the attention that they got, or too full of self-importance about how their subreddit needed to be kept alive. I can sort of understand r/news being thought of as important and that's a sub I still look at sometimes. But I mostly looked at niche hobby subs and sometimes a sub devoted to a specific brand of power tools (because I have some of those tools). And I mean, who cares if those subs dry up or move to Lemmy? Get over it, Reddit.
Well said. I'm not going to be a fairweather-ethical-decision-maker. Every time I make a right choice (and I decide what's right for me) I'm rebelling against the machine of marketing and convenience. In fact, often the more inconvenient it is, the more confident I am in my decision.
People like to think that they've made some far-reaching change with what little actually happened. The painful truth is: they didn't. There wasn't a big hit to the userbase, most people on Reddit already hated moderators and didn't give a shit if they got removed, and overall people caved far too quickly (how many people folded instantly when their internet moderator position was threatened? (I say this as someone who was one of those moderators that flat out quit everything and nuked my account rather than continuing to toil for free for a corporation that hates me)).
The actually important thing that was accomplished by the protesting was platforms like Lemmy getting enough of a userbase boost to become stable - in the future, Lemmy and others may be able to act as viable alternatives to Reddit, because there's already a community here (however small). Reddit will continue to enshittify, and people will continue to leave in small numbers that may escalate to big numbers if they commit a truly massive fuckup. The more heavy Reddit users (read: more invested, not necessarily more active) are small in number compared to the vast majority who lurk, don't give a shit about any ongoing meta-drama, and don't particularly care about any changes to the UI or browsing experience as long as they can still get an endless feed of memes.
Even if it hurts to realize this, it's important to make sure people get this message beat into their skulls so that we aren't stuck with a bunch of Redditors (derogatory) with over-inflated egos that think Reddit will bend over backward to appease them, then cave as soon as they receive literally any pushback from the corporation running the site.
I think this is a good point. Lemmy pre protest sucked. There was just no content or activity. Post protest, it’s not too bad here. It’s viable. Slowly, hopefully more people end up here over the years. I still browse Reddit (not logged in, my account is kaput) and it seems the same as it was before though. However, digg too died, so there is hope yet.
Yeah, I knew of lemmy long before any protests, but it was more linked as a back up sub for like the rom sub in case a ban happened. But, activity was pretty nonexistent compared to now. For lemmy this is a success with it leading to many more consistent users of the platform.
I came to explore Lemmy with the migration after Reddit's API changes. Baconreader was my app of choice, and it died with the change.
I didn't have any anger against Reddit - there was no righteous "fuck you!" in my actions - but the reason I stayed on Lemmy and very rarely touch Reddit is because the concept of the fediverse really speaks to me. I want to see a more decentralized internet succeed and so that is where I will spend my time, niche as it is.
I totally agree.
There were definitely people who were trying to start a revolution there or proverbially burn the place to the ground. But for a lot of people who left, like me, it was just an appropriate time to move on. I had been on reddit for about 12 years by then, and I had seen the place change, especially over the last few years. And not for the better.
It happens to any organization or system that grows beyond a healthy critical mass. Quantity goes up, but quality goes down. And the atmosphere starts to get toxic.
I had been looking for an alternative to reddit for a year or so when the situation last Summer came around. I was disillusioned over on reddit, and aside from interactions with two or three of subs (and about two dozen awesome people on one of my mod teams, who I'm still in touch with thanks to other communication options), I didn't really enjoy engaging with other users there. It was exhausting to have to frame everything to mitigate the trolls and the contrarians (who invariably still pulled that shit anyway). And the stench of hyper-partisanship was getting everywhere.
The Fediverse intrigued me, but the reddit variants of it hadn't reached a critical mass of minimal usage (the other critical mass metric) to make it compelling to use. The June protests changed that, and regardless of whether reddit 'won' or not, I'm glad I found this place.
You can have multiple 'winners' and 'losers' in situations like this. Even if reddit fought off the protests and won by not seeing their traffic stats drop off (which let's be honest is all they really care about, no matter what touchy-feely smoke their spokespeople are blowing), I feel like those of us who landed here also won.
I dunno the front page seems way lower quality than it was before we left. Like not just a little.
I basically only go there for the two stupid flash games I play on my phone and sometimes a Google search ends up with reddit as the best answer. Otherwise I don't go. I used to go there dozens of times per day.
I agree. The change in total Reddit users ended up small, but the drop in quality is huge. A lot of my favorite subs are now just memes, reposts, and astroturfing. There's very little left of genuine worth. But it's no great loss. The days of Reddit being the front page of the Internet and a hub of discussion are long gone. C'est la vie.
Personally I'm glad to see Reddit fading away. I have found so many more artist, makers, and thinkers on Mastodon, Lemmy, and Pixelfed than I ever did on Reddit. The fediverse is hard to navigate and has a higher barrier to entry. But those same qualities keep the influencers, astroturfers, and advertisers at bay. I love the experience of exploring people's feeds and follow lists as a means of exploring. It feels so much more organic and engaging. It's not for everyone, and the fediverse will probably never become a giant of social media. But maybe that's for the best.
At any rate for now we have our own corner of the internet to explore and enjoy away from the some of the more negative influences wrought by social media. Enjoy it. It may not last. Just like old Reddit.
I use a work account there on old.reddit on the desktop only.
The content there is [Picture](dae think that XY or Z should have / have not happened?) Or some variation of a question meant to drive engagement. The Minecraft and marvel studios subs are prime examples.
That's all it is now. No higher quality content except in a few niche subs.
Hopefully folks will continue to move away.
I've been noticing lately that the front page of reddit now only contains some posts from the last few subs I visited, even more posts from subs I barely even read before, and currently two posts from subs I've never seen but are now part of my subscribed reddits. And when I take the time to go through the posts that actually look interesting, those read posts stay on my front page for the rest of the day and no new content is brought up. At this point the front page is completely worthless and the only reason I visit is for r/comics and r/facebookscience, all my other content is found on lemmy and mastodon.
Try surfing on your porn account. Totally obvious when all you intend to browse is NSFW
Interesting. It never really occurred to me to look at the front page but I guess it is supposed to be popular. I look mostly at a few specific subreddits and afaict they haven't changed much.
Haha. You made a comment about nothing changing on Reddit, yet you haven't checked the main selling point of the site or anything outside your old sub bubble?
I've checked both, and believe that content and comment quality is much lower ... but there was a steady decline in quality the entire time Reddits user base grew ... because the majority of the human population are, quite simply, idiots.
Yeah, Reddit became read-only to me after they killed RIF. I still check in on a couple subs, but all my comments and posts go on Lemmy now.
Same. I read a few subs that haven't yet fully grown here on Lemmy, but I don't post.
I used to live on reddit basically. I left due to the API shit they were pulling but did eventually get curious after closing my account but when I took a look, it was hot garbage. I unsigned from many of the big traffic subreddits and engaged in a lot of smaller and technical forums. Those users seem lately gone, or the ones who remained aren’t as knowledgeable or maybe there’s just been enough site changes that discussions aren’t happening like they used to.
In the meantime I’ve found fallbacks that I enjoy more, this place feels like early day Reddit which is super fun.
For now reddit seems fine (even though I feel a noticable deterioration of multiple communities). Though the important change is that alternatives have established themselves. Lemmy might not be big right now but from now on reddit has to be extra careful not to upset redditors. Every new step they take that worsens the experience will drive a new wave of users away from their site and now more of them will find communities elsewhere that have been established during the first exodus this year.
At the same time I'm unfortunately quite certain that the enshittification of reddit will continue as investors demand higher profits. So we will see more waves of redditors leaving. Such a migration in waves could also be observed with Twitter, after every new step that Elon took to ruin the site.
I scroll through all/hot a couple times a week and I don't find the content nearly as funny, interesting or engaging as it used to be. There's definitely something different about the algorithm that is making the content more sanitized for a wider audience.
Yeah a lurk but I don't post unless maybe it's for work or something like that. I do feel like the quality has dropped pretty sharply. The home feed is absolute trash. Constant feed of random shit like r/decks, the ads were pretty bad before I discovered RedReader but overall it doesn't capture my attention the way it used to. Even the comments feel dumber but that could be my imagination.
I’m honestly not at all surprised. Social media has turned into both an addiction and a way to feel like you’re doing something you’re not doing. Jessica changed her status to: “Black lives matter!” (Jessica continues to do nothing about racial injustice or inequality). “I stand with Paris!” “We are Charlie hebdo!” “Fuck spez!” (Continues posting on reddit with the title “fuck spez” on every post). Now, I know these all vary wildly in importance, I was just recalling every topical “i care” post I could remember.
People don’t do anything. Social media gave us an out to bitch and moan for the purpose of people seeing that we know enough to bitch and moan about the topical, popular issues (read: the “right” issues)—but only while they’re topical and popular and then never think about them again because now we’re talking about the new tragedy or war or injustice or crisis, etc.)
People don’t actually care about anything anymore. I know that sounds like an old person hing to say, but I mean that everything is superficial. We either don’t have the attention or the passion or the heart or the capacity for caring anymore. We care when other people care—we care when other people can see us caring. So the entire populace is incredibly malleable because if people are paying attention to a touchy subject for capital or establishment, well, manufacture another. Or, really, why even bother? It’s not like we’re going to do anything about it.
I thouht, for a brief moment, that Reddit was actually going to be hurt by a larger portion of people leaving. I thought, for a brief moment, that we were learning how to act as a collective to stick it to large companies treating us like the fuckin bottom of the barrel of capitalism that we’ve collectively become. We aren’t the customers anymore. Other goddamn companies are the customers. We’re the fuckin goods. And it’s so deeply disturbing to me that people just…don’t seem to care past recognizing this as the reality—if that.
I hate being a pessimist. But at what point is pessimism just realism about the bleak outlook for humanity?
It may be due to many different factors, but I've noticed a lot of content from my niche subs just downright fuckin sucks now. Like, a lot of posts are stupid af, either being a question that is very easily googled, or some sort of "pick me" bitch post try to low-key show off and humblebrag about something.
There used to be really good content like write-ups, visual guides, or discussion builders, but it feels like a lot of it is just grabbing at the low hanging fruit for fake internet points
Yeah, nothing changed. People might say /r/all changed, but that place has always been crap and avoided by long time users in favor of subscribed feed.
I'm another snowflake but I feel like the protest did alot to slow down and water down reddit's obvious money grab. Where I would have been a stockholder at their IPO before, I will now be warning others against it.
Came to Lemmy because it's FOSS and doesn't fuck me in the ass
Meh the reddit software isn't that important, and it was once mostly FOSS. It's about the data, not the code. Spez has a ridiculous sense of entitlement.
Completely stopped using Reddit since they blocked third party apps in July 2023. I never accessed Reddit through other channels than smartphone.
Exactly. This wasn't a protest as far as I'm concerned. They shut me out. So I no longer visit reddit or moderate any of my subreddits. It's that simple
Yup. Both the desktop website and the official app are garbage UX. With no third party app option, I could not use Reddit even if I wanted to.
old.reddit is still usable, but I've also pretty much stopped using reddit since the blackout.
You can still get to the compact interface with /.i on the end of the URL. But they are making it harder and harder to not use their terrible default interface, which is clearly focused on ad delivery not UX.
None of the Reddit interfaces were ever any good IMHO. The service was only usable thanks to third party readers that redefined its user experience. Without them it's about as pleasant as gopher.
Oh compact was just right for me. Fast and mobile friendly and not loads of space taken by pictures.
RedReader on mobile still works. You can find it in the fdroid app store. There's also rtv for a terminal reddit client on the desktop.
Wait, how is it still working?
Just FYI, I can still access Reddit through the Infinity app on F-Droid on Android. I don't have a clue why or how, but it works.
Same, my version of boost still works for some reason. No idea why but it's useful if I'm trying to search for something
That's why I'm here too 🤝
Completely quit Reddit. It's a shame that the article fails to mention the fediverse as a new rising alternative in response to enshittification.
Windows is experiencing enshittification as well, but I still have yet to see anyone recommend Linux to me. The only mainstream device I know that runs a Linux distro is none other than the Steam Deck.
It really is a shame that not many people are actually trying to use these genuinely great alternatives.
Windows 10 is for me like Infinity for Reddit was (now I'm on Eternity 🙏). As soon as Windows 10 is EOL it's Linux time. I'm already getting used to it with VMs. Maybe even before that depending on how long my current device will last.
This is a surprisingly good comparison.
Thanks.
2024 will have mentions of ActivityPub and Fediverse.
Probably in context of Meta and Threads, sadly.
Leaving Reddit basically helped me use social media a lot less. And I'm proud of myself.
Yeah it has been nice. I definitely miss out on some news, but it's worth it to avoid a lot of the other content there. I pop in with redreader every so often, but honestly it doesn't seem worth it to ever fully go back.
Despite spending around 15 years on Reddit, I found it surprisingly easy to quit. I do miss some niche subreddits that just won't get traction here, but overall my switch to Lemmy worked out for the best.
With that being said, Reddit is still going strong, and you're deluded if you think this will change their IPO fortunes. The quality will plummet, but once the shares are owned and sold they won't care.
It will definitely affect the ipo. Ipo's are all based on expected growth. Any loss of users, mods, content, etc affects that. It was already in the news that whatever company wrote down the value of their holdings.
And people are getting wise to traffic numbers being inflated by bots.
As a moderator of a fairly large sub over there, I strongly suspect this is happening on a mass scale. According to our stats, we're getting 120k unique views a month (dropped dramtically during the exodus, but has seemingly returned to normal now), but posts rarely get more than 20 upvotes or comments. I know most redditers are lurkers, but even still, that just seems like an oddly high number of views.
Give it time. Eventually the AI with learn to completely mimic human activity. Just not their actual spending habits.
In fact, they've already failed their quarterly projections from ad revenue which has already negatively affected their IPO evaluation.
Exact same. Was there for 12 years. Easy switch.
I've been having trouble finding another site with so many sub topics.
I'd use discord - but you have to manually find each room. There's no generic search function (not that I've found on mobile anyway - feel free to correct me)
If there's another large site I could use (other then lemmy which lacks the numbers) let me know. I'm watching reddit die and I genuinely feel the void it's leaving in my heart.
Damn I hate Discord for information. It's not open. It's nice as a chat (except for the whole thing with using Electron), but not for having information available.
I used to be a daily Reddit doomscroller, but now I just vibe on Lemmy. I only ever visit reddit now to experience my niches that don't yet have a community here, and that's just to watch, not contribute.
I look forward to the future, where communities aren't corralled into one website, where different interests can be free of anything overarching.
I somehow end up doom scrolling here on Lemmy. Seems all my feed is news and technology is doom and gloom. I wish there were more discussions and jokes in the comments like ask reddit had. I participate every once in a while but I miss lurking and reading this type of content on my phone.
Doomscrolling bad news is really bad for your health. https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/what-is-doomscrolling-and-why-is-it-bad-for-us/143139/
Bad news is also literally addictive and it is important to break that habit https://www.fastcompany.com/90269566/how-to-stop-your-brains-addiction-to-bad-news
I'd suggest subscribing to some of the more positive news threads on Lemmy. I ended up blocking those ones that only seem to post negative stuff. The world is a bad enough place as it is without Lemmy ramming it down my throat to. I'd also suggest regularly visiting other positive news sites to remind yourself that there is good news happening, you just don't hear about it from the normal places. Certainly helps put things into perspective. https://www.groovnow.com/blog/where-to-find-good-news-online
It's important to try and stay happy, friend, now more than ever.
Thanks for reminding - that is a good point. Do you have any good mood communities here on Lemmy to recommend?
Sure! There's goodnews@kbin.social, lemmybewholesome@lemmyworld, goodnewseveryone@sh.itjust.works and upliftingnews@lemmy.world. They're all small communities, but they're worth checking out. I'd recommend those news sites on that link I listed to. Definitely eye opening to see all the good stuff that is just ignored by the mainstream media. Stay positive out there, friend! 👍
Thank you so much! I sincerely appreciate your suggestions and have already subscribed to the communities. I actually have already noticed lemmybewholesome, but I havent known there were the other ones as well, so thank you a lot for the information :)
Doomscrolling being bad is literally implied in the name.
Just block the news and politics communities. It's good for your sanity.
Yeah I've started doing that, just too depressing otherwise.
It is different. I had cause to go back a week or two ago to look for an old post of mine and I did have a bit of a poke about in my old subs too. It was like a war zone. Blatant no fucks given racism, incel level women hating, transphobia and ableism of the most vitriolic kind. And these weren't just the massive general subs, some of them were niche interest subs where I felt I belonged at the time. Has it changed to become like that since June or was I just so used to it before that that I'd never noticed how toxic it was? Did I just used to shrug and say to myself 'well, that's just reddit'. Literally everyone seemed angry and hateful.
I'm not claiming the fediverse is perfect or free from that sort of shit but either through the practicalities of federation, or better moderation or a smaller userbase or a more mature userbase or a mix of one or more of those things it doesn't feel exclusionary to me. I often see on posts like this some people calling Lemmy a left-wing echo chamber and whilst I do agree there's more people of a left-wing bent on here I think echo chamber is a bit much and is a phrase maybe used by those who live in a country without a functioning left-wing political party. I've not encountered a communist or tankie since Hexbear fucked off back to their kindergarten.
As for the Guardian article, they've fallen into the same trap as I'm concerned the fediverse might fall into by federating with Meta - assuming high numbers equal success or victory. If you have corporate/economics based mindset I can see how that works, but to me success equals a popular, useful community site entirely free from algorithms and other forms of manipulative control. One that isn't gathering data via ads and tracking on its userbase to sell on (lets remember that reddit weren't upset that AI were scraping reddit, they were upset that the company weren't seeing any money from that). A community that grows organically, with all that that implies - sometimes growth might be very slow, it might stop entirely for awhile, maybe even reverse - but the emphasis should be on the people making the community better.
Reddit forgot somewhere along the way that it was the users who made reddit what it was. Look at the stats for r/askreddit - in particular the posts per day and comments per day - look at the trend since 2020. There may well be the same amount of users on reddit, but we all know a certain percentage of them are bots and even if they weren't, just looking at those two graphs tells you everything about people's level of interest in participating on reddit.
The only thing high user numbers guarantee sites like reddit is ad revenue. Nothing else.
Well said! I agree with almost everything, except I still want algorithms. I think I'd say "free from algorithms that serve corporate interests" instead. Algorithms that help me find content I genuinely enjoy are sorely missed.
I think algorithms can certainly be useful tools, but if they can somehow be made client-side, transparent in what they do, and customizable/replaceable, that would be ideal. In that scenario, they'd actually be working for the end user instead of the platform owner.
With Lemmy you probably can do that "fairly easily"
Wow, this stats website is interesting. I checked a number of subs I used to frequent: r/thenetherlands, r/idiotsincars and r/Europe . All of them see meteoric rice in subscribers, but number of posts goes down significantly since 2020-2021 (r/idiotisincars is the outlier here, you can clearly see the pandemic, but once it resumes the trend is downward again).
I just checked a couple old subs I used to visit. And the stats are very dramatic in the drop of actual content. So i tried to actually go to reddit to check. Something I haven't done since opening my Lemmy account 7 moths ago. Somewhat surprisingly to me the stats actually seemed to reflect reality. One of the subs hadn't had any activity for 5 months!! And it used to be reasonably active for a niche sub, with new content every day.
I also tried to look at the most popular non controversial sub I could think of. Which is r/funny by subscribers, and indeed it's ranked #1 since 2019, and that too had a dramatic drop in activity. https://subredditstats.com/r/funny
From these stats, it really seems like reddit is dying, it's going about as bad as some of the worst plausible predictions 7 months ago!
The most notable thing IMO is that content doesn't seem to be picking up again, but rather the decline continues.
Take those stats with a huge pinch of salt
You're trying to measure the effect of something that affected your measurement system.
Even if you ignore the latter half of 2023 there is a huge and consistent decline in number of posts per day.
Thanks, I wasn't sure where the data came from, but I tried to check up on a few subs, and they were definitely not doing well.
Am I taking crazy pills or something? Subs and users get put down HARD over that sort of stuff (See r/politicalcompassmemes). I haven't seen content like that unless I actively searched for that sort of stuff due to morbid curiosity. Would you mind sharing the subreddit/posts in question? Not to deny what you're saying but I find it hard to empathize without any evidence.
I also don't understand this infatuation with "old reddit" when that allowed subreddits like coontown to exist.
I'm not suggesting hateful content wasn't edited or removed, I'm saying when I went back there was a lot of it that had obviously just been posted. I've no doubt it's mostly gone now if I went back and looked (which I really don't want to do unless I absolutely have to) but my point is that it happens so much and so often that its often there for awhile if a mod or mod team is a bit slow off the mark. It's indicative of the type of user on there.
I guess when I think about 'old reddit' I mean reddit as it was before there were even subs or when subs first launched. Reddit was created by Digg users who were annoyed with Digg's direction. There was a lot of hope and effort put in to it being 'better' - not just technically but also in terms of ethos. I'm the first to admit I stupidly just ignored the influx of bad subs like the one you mention or jailbait etc. But it's become impossible to ignore to the point where it feels like its a constant drip-drip of hate content that mods are barely on top of.
And even without that outright race (or gender, or sex, or sexuality etc) based hate, reddit just feels to me like there's a constant undercurrent of aggression and sneering. Maybe, like I said before, it's always been there and I was just so used to it I became inured to it but revisiting it after several months away it was impossible to not notice.
Correct
"Old Reddit" generally refers to the design and layout of the page. You can find it by replacing the www. portion of the link with old. It's a more user friendly layout for some people.
On occassion I also go back there and some comments of mine felt like were downvoted way harder than I felt usually about reddit.
Granted they were bad takes but I felt like responses were way harsher.
Lemmy feels more direct in a sense that the discussions are more fact based instead of the aspects you already mentioned.
Never before has the sheer inevitability of enshittification been so aptly summarized.
What's the saying? "You can't control what you can't measure."
And the concurrent point : "‘If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.’
If you dont measure your failure, no one can prove you failed. Its a win win.
I used to spend hours a day on Reddit, if you add up all the little time waster breaks I take just scrolling on Baconreader.
Now i rarely visit the site.
I had 3M karma over 4 accounts, and spent about 3-5h a day there. Been a daily user for 12 years, moderating some 1M+ user communities for 7+ years.
Left reddit for good, never been back. Not once.
I wasted so much time there that I took on a part time PhD to fill the gap, and I'm excelling at it.
Thanks, u/spez... I guess?
When enshittification hits so hard that it breaks your addiction and improves your life lol
There are DOZENS OF US!
DOZENS!
Author didn’t seem to have a clue. Many of us didn’t protest or leave because of the fact that they implemented charges for their API - nope, was totally open to that! - it was the way they started charging.
I don’t think I’m alone either here. So many were open to paying fair prices for usage. But reddit repeatedly promised it’d be fair and reasonable. For months. And then when they finally dropped pricing info it was outlandish and would be taking effect before third parties had a chance to make appropriate changes.
This amounted to a power play meant to drive mobile users back to the reddit app. Why? Money and control. Bad for mods, users, and developers, it was a selfish play I will never forgive them for.
How did the author not know this, or if they did, why was it not front and center? Feels like they were parroting company talking points.
And if you add how Steve Huffman(Reddit's CEO, AKA u/spez) lied and manipulated information about the API talks, painting the third party developers as greedy, money hungry assholes, then got caught with his pants down when the recorded call was made public, shows how absolutely planned that move was.
Exactly. The app developers were willing to make changes but they didn't give them nearly enough time to do it. They dropped the changes at the last-minute and then lied about what they and the developers said in their private conversations. Then they got mad at the Apollo dev for recording it to cover their ass. It's like getting mad at your partner when you cheated on them lol.
I deleted a 13 yr old account due to spez's fuckery and I haven't been back. I used to be very active in several subs but now I want fedi to happen.
Thank you for your service 💪
Eh it failed in the most reddit way imaginable: Most of the users are too addicted to astroturf accounts posting heckin puppers and epic memes to organise a boycott beyond a few days. Reddit ownership knew how pathetic the "protest" was going to be from the outset and didn't even bother trying to disrupt it beyond nudging out a few of the remaining holdouts on subs too small to matter in the grand scheme.
All the mods who thought they were irreplaceable just discovered their users are all the more happy to digest low quality slop moderated by amateurs who are more interested in the title than doing anything to protect the quality of said content.
People are even relenting and PAYING for access to the API to use previously-free apps.
...and yet, here we are. I left Reddit recently because of the drop in quality, and a lot of folks I know agree that it sucks even if they aren't yet tapped into the fediverse. The internet still has a lot of friction and inertia. These things take time. But the momentum has shifted. These social media cesspools can't last, even the most idiotic knuckledraggers will eventually smell the stink.
The downside is that they will find their way here. Lemmy will be bigger and less cool. Eternal September, am I right?
I found in recent years the quality was hit by spammers who were basically regurgitating content from other social media sites and spamming it to whatever subs would allow. Even though they'd get banned they'd have like a dozen alts, all co-mods on the same subreddits, and just make new accounts to get around it. You'd report them for ban evasion and nothing would happen. It would be political spam too, like you'd have accounts posting to "antifascist" subs and red pill subs just so they could cover all the bases.
Speaking of quality, it basically became the things your parents like on Facebook or Google Image results for "epic internet meme." Political humor was reduced to AI images of angry Trump looking damp with captions like "oh no I'm going to jail." For niche-interest subs it basically becomes people posting pictures of boxes of products they bought or asking which products to buy, people getting angry and debating about products and people who sell products.
Case in point that Oliver guy who would sell his books and shit on his subreddits and respond to every comment with links to his own blog posts, sold anti-Trump merch that hilariously looked like it was pro-Trump, posted ACAB stuff but also made racist copaganda comics, pretended to be an enlightened leftist but also wrote a red pill book about how rape is natural. Guy got banned for harassing mods of other subs and got his network of 20+ spam subreddits and dozens of alts banned, but the admins don't do anything when they try and rebuild their spam network.
Gangrene is natural, etc., etc.
The pathetic-ness of the system stems within the fact that Moderators and Subreddit Creators cannot delete the Subreddits they created. I don't know how we didn't see this as a red flag.
/HFY did. A ton of authors including Hambone stopped posting there at all around 2018 or 2019 because we found out that Reddit was claiming that they owned our work, since we had posted it to Reddit, or something like that
What is /HFY and who is Hambone? Sorry for my ignorance.
Humanity, Fuck Yeah! It was a subreddit that focused on a subsection of Science Fiction, where humanity is frequently not the underdog at all.
Hambone is the author of The Deathworlders series, also referred to as The Jenkinsverse.
https://deathworlders.com/books/deathworlders/chapter-00-kevin-jenkins-experience/
That "chapter" got posted and Hambone forgot about it for five years, then came back and posted a chapter a month for seven(?) years to turn it into a book. It's a long book.
He did this because at least three other authors wrote their own stories in the universe he created.
Salvage (this one is only canon until Adrian attempts to "blow up" a black hole. Something like chapter 73 or so. Jennifer Delaney, the main female protagonist, makes an appearance in The Deathworlders)
Humans Don't make good pets ( Canon, but we never meet the unnamed main protagonist in The Deathworlders)
The Xiu Chang Saga (Totally canon, and Xiu becomes one of the main characters in The Deathworlders)
All of these can also be found as audiobooks, in varying degrees of completion, on YouTube. There's also a guide somewhere as to when all this stuff takes place. A large amount of it takes place between chapters 0 and 1 of The Deathworlders.
Your passion for these stories is endearing. I'm going to check them out.
HFY = Humanity Fuck Yeah! A place for writers to post their stories about humans being awesome. Many of them were sci-fi space operas which is what I loved.
I used to read there a lot on my phone. My main activity on reddit at the time.
Then Bacon reader died, and I just stopped reading there
On the note of traffic, I still browse Reddit because it has niche communities that I want to interact with. However, I don't comment, post, or even up/downvote anymore. My interaction is now purely browsing, and I imagine it may be similar for other once-power users.
It's the same for me
Except, i try to give reddit as little traffic as possible, unless i need it for reference for something
It's annoying to me that sometimes I have to use Reddit because the only answer I can find to a problem I'm having is in a Reddit post or comment. I would prefer to never use it again, but I'll settle for only using it when strictly necessary.
And, don't forget to use uBlock among other add-ons to keep that infrequent visit as unlucrative for those fuckwads as possible.
http://farside.link/teddit.com
Unfortunately Reddit became such a database of niche information it's damn near unavoidable when it seems to comprise most of my search results nowadays.
I redirect from reddit to lemmy in my main web browser. I wish there were some sort of proxy so I could read reddit without that information being lost - but that's exactly the sort of service the API changes have killed. Fuck them for what they did to reddit.
archive team runs a distributed effort to scrape and archive all of reddit, it gets uploaded to archive.org, so at least a large amount of it is accessible through there
Well that's good at least but ideally I'd like some way of automating it like through an extension. I try viewing an answer to a question on reddit, and I get redirected to somewhere that stores the answer without giving reddit any traffic.
https://farside.link/teddit.com
Same here. I actually went a step further and decided to browse the site permanently logged off. I do not wanna access my old account anymore (which I still didn't delete).
This is what I do. Also, I mostly access reddit from a RSS feed so I don't even really visit the site much. I read everything I want in my feed reader, and maybe look at the comments on the site if a particular post looks interesting. Never logged in, never comment, never vote on a post.
Good.
This is the way.
I'm still glad Reddit actually lets you browse their site logged off.
That's something that Twitter-I mean X doesn't do anymore.
I'm in the same boat. Lemmy has some decent 'gaming' communities, but very few active communities around specific games. So when I need to find advice or discussion I still end up having to search Reddit for that sort of thing.
Which are your favorite on Lemmy?
These are some of the generalish gaming communities I'm subscribed to across lemmy:
Be the change you want to see.
That's my problem right now. Recently a couple of friends and myself got into the Antistasi mod for Arma 3. Tons of fun but getting everything setup and being able to host the dedicated server took a few trips to Reddit. Had to find stuff on the Arma sub and the Antistasi sub.
I am the same - I obliterated all my posts and comments, and try to see whatever answer I can't find elsewhere, and run.
It was much easier than I thought it would be, which was a nice surprise. :)
I'll copy/paste a comment I made above again here in case it helps
If you find you want to go back to browse but limit the ad revenue, you can still reach it with some front ends like teddit.
Here is a good link: http://farside.link/teddit.com
Or, for example, you can directly access subreddits by appending /r/yoursubreddit to the end http://farside.link/teddit.com/r/memes
Sometimes an instance will be down. If so, try it again in a few minutes or in a new browser or tab so another loads.
I only use reddit for tech related inquiries, but besides that I quit it.
I went from 8 hours of screen time a day to an average of 2 to 3 hours and Lemmy often isn't on the top. For me it has to do with a lack of content at some point, but I started enjoying it like that. If there's nothing new, I shouldn't have a reason to stick around in an app
Exactly. I still occasionally land there due to google searches for obscure tech issues, but that’s only to read and lurk. I used to be a regular poster, (I had ~1.2m karma between all my various accounts) but haven’t even commented since the API lockout.
Same here. Spend several hours a day on reddit since 2014, but haven't logged in since the API shutdown. Only the occasional Google search brings me there.
Damn! That's an insane amount of dedication lost to greed :(
Weird how it feels manageable to keep in the loop on Lemmy compared to Reddit. I like it a lot more.
Reddit having a huge audiences feels more like a disadvantage than a advantage
I was on reddit for 12 years. My time spent on that platform and posting directly correlates to when I first found it (posted a lot) vs. when I quit earlier this year.
Reddit in it's infancy was great and the users and the subreddits, with a few notable exceptions were great too.
Once it got too big/popular... About 6 years ago you could note the decline and quality of the posting
Well that’s the issue. Reddit as a tool/service is fine. The only thing that I have an issue with is the api / third party app stuff and their leadership. Subs like Homelab , league , etc are ones I used heavily and they still function the same more or less. I just lurk more and use Reddit in browser with an extension that helps.
Lemmy and the various instances and apps are cool, but the lack of content(or content creators rather) is what makes it a little depressing. Outside of memes and discussions like this, it doesn’t replace Reddit because the user base is like 10+ years behind. I can show up and find posts from days ago which just leads me to keep using Reddit and rss for new content
Same. The UI got so much worse on mobile.
That's why I use boost for Lemmy as well
The changes that lead to the protest were only the preparations for an IPO. When that sale actually happens, I think things will get even worse with new corporate interests and influence. This story isn't over.
it happens to every sacred tech company once it inevitably decides to become profitable
When it comes out how many hundreds of millions spez made of the back of unpaid mods, they'll rightfully ask themselves why they're doing all that free work just to make spez rich.
Second American Revolution Now
Maybe Reddit didn’t die, but what was Lemmy before this? And what is it now?
A microscopic collective few had ever heard of.
That same thing, just slightly less microscopic.
Honestly while I'm obviously still here, anyone pretending this is any sort of apples-to-apples replacement of the overall Reddit community is only engaging in so much wishful thinking.
Not that it's impossible for Lemmy to get there eventually, but it's not even close to it, and honestly I really don't see it happening.
Maybe if you’re only referring to the relative popularity of Lemmy compared to Reddit you’re right. That’s not what I was referring to.
Look at the quality of content showing up on Lemmy before compared to now and you will agree it is night and day different.
It’s still a far cry from what Reddit is, but it’s at least a functional service.
I haven't seen much of a content quality change at all since I've been here, so no, I wouldn't agree.
I was browsing reddit anonymously but have stopped since they killed 3rd party apps. Anyways all the news and posts are on Lemmy so no point of using reddit. Also fuck spez
I haven't been allowed on Reddit since I upset the AITA mods by creating the username AITA_mods_are_all_incels and have found Lemmy to be a much healthier environment.
You created a username that insults someone else and then cried because it was your own fault? Did you stop to think that you were the unhealthy environment?
Did they ever cry or say it wasn't their fault? It seems like an obvious easy way to get banned, I don't see any complaints about it. I don't think calling an asshole an asshole is an unhealthy environment, I would blame the asshole first for being the asshole.
I think most of aita is creative writing...but I definitely brought it on myself. I was super irritated and evading bans had never actually been a consequence..mind you I want rolling... probably more harsh not crass, but some bullshit is more bullshit than others.
I mean I was being a shit head...but most of the time I wasn't being a fuck face my karma was fairly high from a medium contributer.... And before Idefinitely acted an asshat, I felt aita was especiallt petty...I was fine Just No Mil and lots of aita posts...but in the end I definitely shot myself.........I'm just surprised at how deeply banned I am...I still used it passively until the API shit. Lemmy is pretty good...and my posting history doesn't show trolling here
I agree with the healthier environment, it's kind of nice being able to make a comment and have people actually see it rather than there being 2k+ comments. It's a small community but I don't mind that and it's actually good in that I don't doom scroll as much cause there just isn't enough content, so I don't spend hours on it.
I've been slowly getting back into reddit lately. While I want Lemmy to thrive and will keep contributing to help it do so it's still hardly a replacement for reddit. Compared to it, Lemmy is basically a single moderately active subreddit. If I had to name a type of person Lemmy at its current state is ideal for I'd say a left-wing activist type whose into tech and politics. While that has some overlap with what I'm interested about it still leaves out all my deepest passions and to be honest I feel really uncomfortable knowingly being in such an obvious echo chamber. I'd really wish there was more of the kind of users here that most of you probably dont want. Just to even things out a bit.
My problem with Lemmy is that it seems/ feels empty.
This might be a me-issue, not doing something right but all I see is technology & politics articles.
I’m subscribed to many communities (like multiple anime communities) and I barely to not see them). I quite miss the conversations on Lemmy.
However going back to Reddit seems to be no point either, everyone just repeat what another one said - or just people fighting each other.
For example; saw a Reddit thread about relationships. Everyone just echo-chamber “leave the relationship”. But what happened to adults just communicating to each other? Lol
Yeah I know what you mean about the "empty" feeling. Lemmy.world site info on the tab has 2.2k users a day and under 6k a week. Those are miniscule numbers compared to almost anywhere on Reddit.
I too used to post daily here to help generate content but got down voted so badly the thread was deleted, so now I don't post.
Edit- so many communities here are virtually dead. Federation may be a solution but it's a far cry from the user base even a decent sized forum has.
I hope you keep posting again sometime, shit will get downvoted for stupid reasons, I don't blame you though I probably would have stopped too because of my shame lol. Even the best poster will have those posts that get hated too.
I didnt participate in the anime polls but remember that moat of it was episode discussions or fan art.
Also remember that the subs there were in the millions with probably high 50-100k posters and remaining lurkers.
I'll be honest, there was a recent thread bitching about me that got taken down where the dominant complaint seemed to be "The jerk just posts every little thing that pops up in his head, fuck that guy, but ya sometimes he creates some interesting discussion".
It was absolutely pathetic and banal and kinda shows why it doesn't always pay to be contributing and organically creating engagement. I don't post as much anymore cuz I just don't have as much enthusiasm for participating anymore.
Edit: to be fair, one takeaway for me that nobody actually said was I wanted to be way more handsoff in my posts cuz it was a bit much to be as engaged/in the weeds as I was gettting and also, I prefer to let my posts and top-levels + responders to speak for me and I can avoid tampering or influencing the way the discourse plays out as to how the truth-seeking dynamic of it is consequently served
That's ridiculous, messed up, and sad. I'm really sorry that happened and I'm sorry they killed your wonderful enthusiasm. :( That kinda breaks my heart a little. Why do people have to be such needlessly mean turd faces?
This same guy stalks people into other threads to post comments that can only be followed by someone encountering a psychotic break. Had to put a user note on them so I could more easily avoid engaging
So my guess would be it wasn't just that "this guy posts too much" that got on people's nerves
And God forbid you're anywhere right of Marx himself or you'll get people telling you you'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Like come on, we want 95% of the same stuff, let's just work together and have some productive discussions and enrich our political mindsets instead of flinging shit at people who are basically on the same side as you.
Ohhhhhhh yeah - I remember reddit. Thats where thedonald nazis live right?
And that guy Warlizard from the gaming forum
I used to love Reddit, but I’ve totally abandoned it. It’s not one particular reason, but the broad effect is that I and many others no longer feel welcome.
We lost a lot of good users; people who contribute to topics, make good posts and comments. We also lost good moderators; people who cared about the content quality and vibe. The Reddit-appointed replacement mods by and large are not people who ran or SHOULD run communities.
Add in the fact that both subreddit mods and Reddit admins are going hog wild with the ban hammer on both subs and users, and it’s hardly a wonder that users aren’t having it. They’re trying to turn it into a gentrified Disneyland and that’s not what we want.
I’m hoping we can grow the Fediverse and prevent it from getting fucked by people with bad motives.
This has been a long term process. I was on reddit since 2012 or so. In the early days I used it to help me change careers and grow as a developer, and keep track of tech and space news and other topics that mattered to me. But the reality is it wasn't even the API stuff that drove me away. The first thing that really got to me was when I couldn't get rid of r/all as a subscribed sub, and that was full of quick dopamine hits and clickbait. Then every sub seemed to go downhill in terms of content, filled with outrage and pictures of tweets as if I would use twitter if it only used images of text instead of raw text. By the time the blackout happened reddit had become a net negative time sink in my life and I figured it was time to cut it off for good.
Crickets on the fact that so many users of 10+ years left, deleting their content on the way out? Seems writer didn't dig very deep. Not that Rodent would give them accurate numbers or anything.
Yeah, I browse Reddit sometimes. I come across the mass-edited comments very often.
I'd heard that Reddit was going around undeleting stuff.
I think that conspiracy grew out of bugs in the mass-deletion tools. I found and reported a few on my way out. I wound up rewriting big chunks of an FOSS tool because Reddit was quietly throttling delete calls to the API. The requests would return 200 codes, but the payloads themselves would include ambiguous "error" text about the throttling behavior. So while the mass delete tool insisted that content had been deleted, large chunks had NOT.
Once I got the scripts running it took nearly a week for the scripts to fully delete and replace all my content.
It's long write up with a misguiding title. No numbers to back anything after a protest phase. And with problems with API access, there won't be any from unaffilated sources.
I did found my favorite communities dropped some in activity and I myself access it just like once in a week or two from a desktop, signed off. But it didn't die. Default subs can't care and most NSFW posters are still there.
The important thing though is that Lemmy grew a lot. And it's now enough to have a hit of that reddit poison. And, arguably, it feels a little bit more personal.
It feels a lot more like Reddit used to be, back in the old days. It feels less like social media and more like actual people are here.
This. While yeah at times it certainly feels a bit empty, Lemmy feels like old Reddit or maybe even the days of Forums before. Interesting, engaged discussions, rather than vapid one-liners that reddit ultimately became.
Yeah and it even hits that wierd hardcore nerd vibe that reddit used to where it was like 50% programmers and IT people and you'd see computer geek in-jokes everywhere
I've never returned.
Me neither.
yea lemmy is good now thanks reddit
This is a terrible thing for most social networks, which are expected to grow continually. When the IPO hits, who wants to buy stock in a stagnant social network? Especially one that has been described as stifling creativity?
I deleted all my posts and stopped using the place almost entirely. I go back, like, once a month because I moderate a niche subreddit that I haven't been able to find a home for on Lemmy.
My most frequented community (/r/hockey) didn't even try to move, so I have to stay because I love hockey and it's the biggest community. But goddamn is Reddit filled with so much more dumb shit now, just all kinds of weird self posts, people asking if a free game is worth it, why X thing is happening (and it's something they're doing wrong) and so many subs have just turned into random people with default usernames posting about things because they don't know how to Google it. It's so much worse since the downturn and I hope the admins feel it.
There's been a huge rush of new accounts posting shit that's clearly biased in favor of Russia, China, Iran et al too I've noticed. Like an overwhelming amount of articles that drown out any sort of balance or ability to discuss a topic.
I still use reddit on the browser, but I don't want their app. I simply don't enjoy the experience.
As long as old.reddit stays arround I'll still be there from time to time. But my commenting dropped from ~5 comments per day to ~5 comments per month and my clicks drooped to ~1% of what it used to be. I simply used it much more on mobile.
I use an app on Android called stealth to view Reddit but I cannot vote or comment. I'd like to see Lemmy/kbin grow enough that the niche communities move here.
Sorry to anyone who sees my multiple duplicates on this thread, but most only get notification of direct replies.
I'll copy/paste a comment I made above again here in case it helps
If you find you want to go back to browse but limit the ad revenue, you can still reach it with some front ends like teddit.
Here is a good link: http://farside.link/teddit.com
Or, for example, you can directly access subreddits by appending /r/yoursubreddit to the end http://farside.link/teddit.com/r/memes
Sometimes an instance will be down. If so, try it again in a few minutes or in a new browser or tab so another loads.
I said I’d leave Reddit on July 12 and July 12 is when I left. Sure, I miss it, but it was an unhealthy, 4 hour per day/8 year addiction that’s been broken.
Now I scroll Lemmy for maybe 30 mins a day.
I want an internet where admins don't control the world. Where moderators don't become megalomaniacs that get to control the way submissions and comments get banned without reason.
I want a place where someone's passion for their unique hobby doesn't get stripped away by corporate interests, exploitative third parties, and ad agencies.
I know it might be a pipe dream but I'll keep trying to fight for what I believe.
I think the Fediverse is a good step towards your ideals. It's not perfect, but it is a step.
Definitely a baby step in the correct direction.
As much as it's distasteful, forums need admins. The bots and nazis habitually take over anywhere that doesn't moderate.
It's necessary. I agree. Admins exist for a reason and serve a purpose. But when you get into a "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" debate it becomes a topic that needs to be addressed. I don't have enough expertise to give an answer to such an existential question so I'll have to leave it to anyone else to hash it out from here.
Fuck the front page. The value of a book is the substance inside. Reddit should be renamed flyleaf because the first page is blank with only a minor function as part of the binding.
I removed reddit from my DNS whitelist on June 9th. It is dead to me.
Edit: 130 posts, 1030 comments on Lemmy since June 9th; 0 posts, 0 comments, 0 views on reddit.
Hell yeah keep it up! And moderating communities too!
I think the most important problem with how this worked out is that many of those who left Reddit by deleting their content didn't find a place to transfer it to on Lemmy or other platforms...
I personally have been intentionally starting conversations recently...
I personally had no problem with them charging for API access, the rate was my bigger issue. I suspect they were basing it off of the money and hype behind the large language models that were previously training using their data for free rather than the relatively few 3rd party app users. I don't get how there weren't more people using them considering how bad the official Android app is, but there's no way it was substantially impacting their bottom line.
Charging comparable rates or even 2-3x what they would get from users of the official app seeing ads also wouldn't be an issue to me, paying to support software is generally good as it aligns user and developer interests. But with 20x higher rates than they'd get from the user using the official app that couldn't genuinely be the case.
They have wanted to kill third party apps for a long time. Reddit's issue is that it badly wants to market "through the API" by charging for bespoke viral marketing campaigns. Simple stuff like just giving shill accounts free gold and elevated thread positions and stuff. Or on the upper end, engineering whole features like the Thanos Snap thing. That's why they spend so much time doing the cheesy little April fools games - these are tech demonstrators for their ad engineering team. The problem is that nobody is paying for this kind of marketing without telemetry to show that it's working, and third party apps really threw a wrench into that equation (in addition to the more traditional ad model).
That's a big part of where they are getting their ridiculous valuation from - their ad impression value is probably super low because their users are pseudonymous, and because the API breaks ad tracking. I suspect their equation is simply "this would be our revenue if we got Facebook rates for ad impressions."
“Technical tweaks”
Omg, understate much?
It's like the camel that was crushed due to a single piece of straw, who knew just one little bit of straw could break a camel's back.
ironically, reddit banned me, which stopped me from using it pretty much entirely, which coincided with the "happening" if anyone is curious it was "violence" even though specific targeted satirical threats seem to be perfectly acceptable, generic statements of violence are not things that reddit seems to put thought into. Anyway little fun fact though, they don't delete your acc, and they dont stop you from using it, they just stop your posts/comments from showing up, to mine engagement i suppose.
for anybody looking for a bit of laugh, look at the ban appeal forum, i promise you there is a couple of days worth of amusement on it. (unless they changed it)
for me personally, the sheer unusability of reddit is why i dont use it. On desktop it leaks ram so bad it's worse than a java MC server, on mobile it's literally unusable, i just can't use it, that's how bad it is. It's bad enough to the point im starting to think that reddit is a programming based money laundering front, with some of the functionality that exists in it. I've pasted text into reddit before only for it to completely disintegrate. It's actually laughable how badly it's put together.
Though i dont think i'll miss reddit at all, these federated communities are much more my speed anyway.
I was banned for "violence" as well. Specifically referring to child molesters. I saw people saying the same type of shit about other types of people (capitalists, bad drivers, etc.) and nothing happened to those posts but make 1 comment suggesting an actual child molester deserves to suffer and you're not welcome there. Makes you wonder why the admins are so concerned about protecting them... Anyway fuck that website.
I made a comment about punching a Nazi.... got banned. Meanwhile, some of the most virulent Antisemitic shit I've ever seen was getting posted and some of it hit the front page.
That platform is going to follow twitter into the shitter in short order.
amusingly enough, the comment that got me banned was on a post about punching nazis, i just made a stupid haha funny about how punching people was fun think it was "i just came here to punch people" (the humor is that its a reddit thread, doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure it out.)
but no, me threatening to pull out the teeth of a pro lifer was perfectly acceptable according to reddit. Some fascinating moderation there.
Easy, you advocated violence against reddit mods.
I moved to Reddit during the great Digg exodus.
Last year I had the exact same experience with the same subject in a r/Europe forum. I decided after the temporary ban that I wouldn’t use Reddit. Deleted my beloved Redditisfun App and never looked back.
it was a nice place before it was took over around Brexit
I've cut down on my Reddit use by a lot since the protests. I only occasionally browse the site, and I don't comment on any subreddits save one niche one that hasn't moved over to any other site.
If you find you want to go back to browse but limit the ad revenue, you can still reach it with some front ends like teddit.
Here is a good link: http://farside.link/teddit.com
Or, for example, you can directly access subreddits by appending /r/yoursubreddit to the end http://farside.link/teddit.com/r/memes
Sometimes an instance will be down. If so, try it again in a few minutes or in a new browser or tab.
Anyways spez will go down as one of the innumerable examples of greedy hurensohns.
I don't like reddit and I never have. Their whole platform is designed to be anti speech and pro corporate. Once Swartz was out of the picture it was over for good. It has become a cesspit of corporate shills and anti free speech. It's a platform that should be avoided by anyone who values freedom.
I don't know the exact timeline but it seems like when they fired Victoria and brought in Ellen is when it went to shit, but it's been a while
Dude, that era was so tumultuous. And then Unidan turned out to be a POS??? He was my first reddit hero :'( lmao
Front page of the Ai bots.Not even feeling real some comments.
Yep; other then forgetting blind people exist, that was one of my main reasons for leaving. There were all these weird numbered accounts that were probably definitely just bots regurgitating someone else's comment or post. I'm disappointed that wasn't mentioned in the article.
How does one simply incite viral popularity of an alternative like Lemmy? And what is reddit doing to hinder that?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In June, thousands of Reddit communities plunged into darkness – making their pages inaccessible to the public in a mass protest of corporate policy changes.
With rumors of an imminent IPO swirling, the company is under pressure to make money – and CEO Huffman has acknowledged as much, stating at the time of the change: “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”
Stevie Chancellor, an assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Minnesota who has studied Reddit for years, echoed these sentiments.
“It bothers me that social media companies are increasingly restricting our abilities as researchers who care deeply about these sites and who believe they can provide many benefits for people,” Chancellor said.
Reddit’s corporate overlords were ultimately unmoved by the massive blackout, and most of the thousands of dark subreddits went back to normal after a few weeks.
Users who have long been dedicated to the site, some of whom have spent countless unpaid hours working to make it better, are exhausted and resentful – and many have simply left.
The original article contains 1,685 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 88%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Biggest issue with reddit are the abusive mods with no oversight.
That place has become nothing but a propaganda mill for whoever is in charge.
no oversight and ability to permaban your account from the whole platform through the automated anti evil bot
I miss /SuspensionPorn
Be the change you want to suspend.
Deleted my account but end making another just for ... (work-safe material, if you work in it). Maybe it actually hasn't changed due to the protest but it seems worse. Maybe it's just changed as those people moved to ... (if you don't use water cooling in your computer you would use)
Reddit is just like Digg to me now.
im only on reddit for 1 single subreddit that is a very small community
I requested my data (because your regular comments page only goes up to 1k comments) and replaced all my data with something semi-negative (generated by ChatGPT, because I'm lazy like that).
I really should just delete my account, but I somewhat still like the programming subreddit - about the last bastion that hasn't completely gone to shit over the years.
"Rocked" ... notice it's in past tense.
I left Reddit to call their bluff. I stay away from Reddit because I want to help grow the fediverse. It's already better than when I joined. And I believe, perhaps naively, that it will continue to get better. I'd rather be the part of the beginning of something great than lingure around as a great thing rots.
Company entirely reliant upon an army of hard working volunteers makes some noise about listening. Noise is just air vibrations.
I remember reddit was constantly advertised by their users as a more "elite" platform and everyone was moving to it at digg 2.0 times. What I seriously started getting curious about is: Did the collective IQ level drop on Reddit, way before the API golden shot? I sometimes share my opinion there and very interesting things happen. They clearly "don't get it". The scene of my native language (Turkish) went totally hopeless. Think like Storm Front for Turkish audience. It all happened in 3–4 years, they say, after Bitcoin madness.
For those in the thread who say it is hard not to go back for specific content, if you want to go back to browse but limit the ad revenue and clicks, you can still reach it with some front ends like teddit.
Here is a good link: http://farside.link/teddit.com
Or, for example, you can directly access subreddits by appending /r/yoursubreddit to the end http://farside.link/teddit.com/r/memes
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