How reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history: Did it, though?

I'm here now and not there. So I guess it at least did a little something 🙋‍♂️

It really really hope Lemmy takes off. For me, there’s enough here that I’m set. I look forward to the apps getting better and the platform getting more stable.

This feels short-sighted. The odds of the protest having a major and immediate impact were always low. It's not like the suits were going to have a sudden change of heart and realize they were alienating their users. The majority of Reddit's userbase weren't going to suddenly leave the site forever. But that wasn't the point.

Here's what's changed since the API changes were announced:

1. Reddit's responses to user concerns and protests have alienated even more users than the initial changes themselves, showing users exactly how Reddit's administration sees them.
2. A whole bunch of mods, devs, and contributors who put in a lot hard work improving Reddit for free are now much less motivated to do so (if they're still willing to do it at all).
3. The protest raised awareness of federated Reddit alternatives, which have grown substantially as a result. A lot of those people who helped improve Reddit for free are now turning their attention to kbin and Lemmy instead.
4. Reddit is on a clear trajectory. They've shown they will continue making user-hostile decisions and antagonizing their userbase in pursuit of further growth.

We now have an established alternative to Reddit that has reached a critical mass for growth. A lot more people are now working on making the fediverse better, and communities are forming that will attract new users on their own. From now on, every time Reddit makes another move like this, more people will move over (or get closer to moving over) and Reddit will drop in quality even more as a result. If there's ever a Digg V4 moment (maybe when they kill old.reddit), the fediverse will be much more prepared to take on the mass exodus that results.

Saying that it's over and the Reddit won is a bit naive. The majority of the subs that I used to frequent have come back online, but they are definitely still protesting. ProgrammerHumor is making new troll rules based on majority vote every week. Madlads made everyone a mod. Many subs are posting John Oliver or troll versions of their original purpose.

It's not over. Will they succeed? Who knows. But Reddit is currently a completely different place than it was a month ago because of the ongoing protests.

The big reveal on the impact from this will be in the aftermath from the future IPO. I believe the damage on the brand certainly had a big impact on the target price Reddit can ask.

Also, it showed how fragile its ecosystem is to a bunch of unpaid volunteers which may not have the shareholders interest at heart.

No, it didn't get crushed. The goal was never to move everyone off reddit, it is to trigger the death spiral by having the people who cared about and actively contributes to abandon reddit and being redditors.

If this trend continues, reddit will get Facebook'd as their algorithms will make contents there get louder and dumber and angrier than ever before and cause more people to leave.

Remember, reddit is cynicism and despair, and despair is the enemy of progress.

I have nothing to back this up and I haven't spent any significant amount of time browsing Reddit since the end of June. Yesterday, a search result took me to a section of Reddit and eyebrowsed through a bit. I feel like the people that left were the people that contributed and a lot of the remaining traffic is the people that just browse. Social media and the internet are not like real world businesses that just tank. Online social media is made up of the people who view it and the people who contribute to it. Facebook became boomers, memes that aren't as clever as people who post them think they are, You're great and posting pictures of a family reunion you didn't know existed, and a substitute for craigslist. It didn't used to be that way, but I think overall they would say their numbers are solid. Social media evolves, and Reddit is evolving in a direction, that a core group of users who I speculate were some of the more useful contributors, don't want to participate in. We're not going to wake up tomorrow and find Reddit gone. But will it ever truly be the front page of the internet again? Will it ever be where I'm glad my search took me for a specific tech problem? Will information that used to be on individual bulletin boards scattered throughout the net which had centralized on Reddit remain on Reddit? Reddit will probably cash out in some way and we'll be left with the Facebook equivalent of Reddit. If that's something that quality contributors don't want to participate in, then it will be even more akin to Facebook. So is it going to go away? Probably not. Could you argue that it's basically already gone? I would say it's at least headed that way.

Reddit went from the 5th most visited website in the world to the 20th. That's not nothing.

Lemme put on my tin foil hat for a second and say that this degrading of reddit was just in time for it to go public. It could only go up from here.

I can't predict the future, but I think this whole federating thing is good. The internet and its traffic was too localized. The people don't want to keep being sold.

Now if we could somehow get everyone that uses a site like this to actually PAY - say - $1 a YEAR, the internet would be better for it.

Reddit ex-pat. I don’t think they crushed it. A lot of people definitely left.

I have to be honest, the fact we have an active alternative(s) to reddit at last makes this a complete success for me. I've lowkey despised reddit for years. Particularly from 2016 on when bots kind of overran the website and the front page was just filled with toxic garbage that never really went away to this day. I actually did use the revanced patch to get my RIF app working again (though I can't get my ad-less premium back unfortunately), but I've been on here far more than there. I think im just having more fun on Lemmy than I have been on reddit in years. The only reasons I hop back are for sports team specific communities (and really the game threads because I like interacting with other people watching when im watching alone). On the instance i'm on currently there are generated game threads but it hasn't got the users to make them particularly active as of yet. If that ever happens i'll happily cut off reddit for good

Inertia will carry them pretty far, and I'm sure they'll find some way to increase profits — most likely by changing the rules to the point where the site and community is unrecognizable. It will take a while before anyone really notices, and many people probably never will. Reddit will continue boiling the frog indefinitely in search of profits, the same way most social media corps do. Today's YouTube is nothing like what it was when it became popular. Same with Facebook, same with Twitter.

Reddit just needs to pivot before they fall. They probably are in good position to do so, tbh.

There's more money in passive, less-savvy users. The ones who don't use ad blockers, don't use third-party apps, and just consume the feed.

I shouldn't be surprised that Reddit is actively alienating people like me, because people like me do not bring them ad revenue. We DO bring them users, in theory, because we contribute to conversations and make original posts — you know, the things people go to Reddit too see — but what does that really mean for the bottom line? Possibly nothing. There's no shortage of posts on Reddit, many of which never see the light of day because they never get the upvotes. If the top contributors leave, it will just create more room at the top. The feed will remain full, and the subjective quality of that feed probably won't affect the bottom line very much.

Reddit certainly has changed and I don't think it will bounce back so easily. It feels like the Mall you used to love that slowly fell from grace where all of your favorite stores slowly closed up shop and you found yourself going elsewhere instead. One day someone brings up the old mall in passing and someone else chimes in that it's now a flea market. It feels like that's where Reddit is heading... it feels like Reddit is turning into the Dirt-Mall.

Everything that reddit has that is of any value is the contributions of it's users. Disrespecting those users will make them leave the platform, if not today, someday soon. Redditors! Choose to delete all your content NOW and let Spez IPO the ashes.

The fact that the Reddit API scandal has now been spun into some 'battle' of salty users vs Reddit is, in microcosm, a win for Reddit. By all appearances, when viewed under that lens, they 'won'.

It was never a struggle, it was a statement of intent. And that statement of intent has, in my opinion, been actioned because here we are now, with a promising alternative.

Reddit will probably flourish under its new guise, accepting that isn't a sort of capitulation. Just move on.

It's still massive and wasn't going to die over the period of a month. People are looking elsewhere but currently have no good alternatives. Lemmy/kbin is awesome, but still not ready for the entire Reddit community. We'll get there eventually!

Reddit is too big to die quickly (unless they suffer a catastrophic failure), but it's easy to see that it was an inflection point for them, that it's downhill from here. Remember: at one point, it looked like Yahoo Directory and Internet Explorer would be around forever too.

I made the move too. Doing my part.

Maybe I'm biased but I feel like the soul of Reddit as a social media site is much more dependent on its users than other sites. Reddit will continue on but if the company keeps undervaluing its users and moderators (and everything points to that), it will end up being as vapid and pointless as people are saying Threads is now.

It's too early to say I think. We all think the most active posters have left but only time will tell if the content left on reddit is sufficient.

There are a lot of people who find Reddit useful and aren't really interested in the politics of it. As the site fills up with spam and hate because mods are gone, more of the people who just enjoy the site will leave. Unfortunately by then the the IPO will have happened, people will cash out and start the next thing. I don't think the leaders at Reddit really care about anything except the money.

If they do care they are really going about things the wrong way. For me, I really hope we can switch to things like Lemmy and Mastodon that are not controlled by corporations or advertising.

Sometimes it feels Lemmy community cares a bit too much about what happens on Reddit.

Let's be honest, it is unlikely Reddit is going to die or change policy. And who cares.

I'm just happy there is much better alternative and I'm not looking back.

Joke's on them. I set one of my communities to NSFW and then unmodded myself.

They may have quashed the protest, but at what ultimate cost? The reputation damage has happened and people have definitely left. Lemmy saw some significant growth. I'm new to Lemmy but so far it definitely feels like what I enjoyed about reddit without all of the corporate bullshit. It's nice not seeing shit-take ads either.

The impact is already noticeable, especially on subs where the mods remain in conflict with the admins. Regardless of how that pans out, I’m thankful to have discovered Lemmy along the way.

It only cost them the trust of those who trusted them most.

Trust is like a mirror. When broken, you can put it back together but you will ALWAYS see the cracks.

For me it's a 100% win

It’s been hard to get my sub users to switch to my Lemmy. Since they do not really care and are a mainstream Reddit app user you can see the struggle 😅.

Hard to say. Mant of us reading this are reddit deserters though.

Without the shit show that's the Reddit exodus I wouldn't of found kbin and wouldn't of had a fun new side project to work on. Super keen on all the fancy things we've been able to improve kbin.social over the last few weeks :)

That's a very sensational title for what the article actually is.

Corporation sacrificed user trust, but isn't completely gone yet. More at 11, stay tuned!

Wasn't hard to win when you threaten to remove power from power trippers.

The fediverse got a nice boost and there's enough people here to make it worthwhile to scroll and interact. Much nicer than reddit, they can keep the masses honestly.

Reddit didnt crush the protest, redditors and mods did. Mods acted like mods (their stereotypes mostly deserved) and users were so addicted to the site that they lost their shit that their favorite sub went dark for 2 days. The mods never had leverage and 99% of the users have no desire to lift a finger to meaningfully protest.

Reddit doesnt have any real competition (yet... hopefully lemmy does well) so they dont really care if what theyre doing pisses off users. The site is thoroughly in the enshittening phase of its life cycle and the apathy of its users ensure that reddit has no incentive to reverse this.

To be honest the cost of their decisions was the creation of a now viable competitor. Lemmy is still small, has less users and less content but importantly creates a destination for mass migration in the future. Reddit used to just be a crappy offshoot of Digg right up until the major Digg redesign that everyone hated…and overnight Digg was toast. History tends to repeat.

I just don't understand why mods form big, popular subreddits don't switch over to lemmy/kbin/whatever? If it is sunk cost fallacy that is irrational. They have a big following, all they have to do is say "hey guys, we are moving to another site. Go <here> to sign up." If it is because (as some people suggest, not me) they are power-hungry mods and fear losing that power, it is also irrelevant since they can host their own instance and have all the power they want. If they could organize a blackout, surely they can organize an exodus? What am I missing?

Lemmy now has enough early adopters to be sustainable. And that's the only thing that matters. As to Reddit, my account there is 17+ years old but I was there since the beginning. The early years were amazing but in the last half decade or so it was a visibly dying platform. We should be thankful that its current leadership has now put it out of its misery.

Couldn’t stand Spez’s response to the whole thing. So here I am.

Yeah that's reddit trying to control the narrative.

They just lost their unpaid bot defense team like two days ago.

Swirling the drain.

I thought that there would be no difference with this drama event, like the big boohoo when they fired various people and the time it spearheaded the creation of the toxic dumpster fire Voat, but I have to say that I can see a noticeable difference at Reddit.

I still read Reddit daily on my computer as I use RES on my computer, and I like the layout and ZERO ads and notice that the volume of new posts is WAY down. I read a bit last night, and when I viewed it this morning, the posts were almost all the same, with hardly any new content.

On the flip side, I have noticed a HUGE influx of quality posts here this past week. If a few more of my favorite subs from Reddit move here, I'll be set. I just wish there was a browser extension like RES here for Lemmy.

Completely anecdotal, but when I had a look at r/all, it looked way less busy and lower quality, full of subs I'd never heard of, and generally...not that great.

There are so many potentially NSFW posts showing up in the main feed because of all the odd subs it is probably a good idea to report them so there are no issues with the advertisers.

Now, if only /r/NoSleep would move here, I wouldn't have to keep visiting Reddit. But I am just too addicted to the stories there

In tech subreddits there's a ton of deleted posts. And noticeable less responses.

Reddit just became less relevant for tech troubleshooting, specially on Linux or foss communities. That they lost.

I guess if all the protesters leave and move to a new platform, they win?

Left on June 30th and never went back. Meanwhile, I’ve posted more comments on lemmy than during 11 years on Reddit. Really hoping lemmy takes off (but without becoming a new Reddit, trolls and all…)

They won the battle, but they haven’t won the war. What u/spez’s actions have fomented, much like Elon Musk with Twitter is to create an opening for other platforms that would have never really had a chance at growing and competing with them.

It’s one of the reasons facebook moved quickly with threads(yes I know we dislike the likes of facebook), but Elon gave Zuck a freaking wonderful gift.

Hopefully, Lemmy picks up some serious steam.

A lot of people deleted their account and moved elsewhere but that's just a small percentage of reddit user. The rest, all the brain dead users, the same kind of brain dead users that dump thousands of dollars in mobile games will continue to use reddit as if nothing happened.

Reddit already had other issues (bots, spam, etc.), so leaving wasn't a big effort on my part.

I know this is really anecdotal, but it does feel a little different over there now, and not for the better. I can't really put my finger on what it is, but it does

well I hope they don't miss the 11 years of posts and comments I wiped on my way out as I bet many others have, power delete suite, if anyone needs the tool to wipe still I think it still works.

It's shown that reddit isn't the end all for these kind of sites. There's now multiple players. The end has begun for them.

Funny thing is I actually got a weeklong ban after I left reddit. I held out until infinity stopped working and then fully switched over to here.

I honestly wished I switched sooner, I always had an interest in Lemmy but never went full on until now. I can't speak for the popularity it will gain because of the nature of FOSS in relation to the general public, but it is definitely a better system overall.

The quality of posts on Reddit have dropped off in my eyes. I still go there during the work day, just don't have it on mobile because the app is so bad.

What I see during the work day on the top of /r/all just isn't that interesting.

It shows how impactful the moderators can be when united in a cause. Curious how that'll pan out with any future potential investors.

I only visit Reddit on occasion to watch how bad the dumpster fire is.

The conflict has demonstrated how crucial Reddit’s community is to the site and also revealed the limits of that community’s power.

Power is irrelevant. Only power-tripping egomaniacs even notice an "issue" like that. The only significance of this event is that the voice of the community was heard, and the response from spez was a shameless attempt to shout us down.

There are boat loads of shitty platforms that people love and use daily. We're here and we're digging the space we're sharing, so it's a win to us regardless.

I think more and more will make the switch once they experience more and more ads on the official app. Those who used 3rd party apps and are now using the official one will likely give up and switch after a little while.

Nothing great was ever built in a single night or even a month. Things take time to grow, and die. Give it time.

My corners of Reddit -- the apolitical, narrowly to very narrowly focused subs -- never protested or gave up. Some are trying to move to various platforms: one to Lemmy, another to Squabbles, a third thinking about Tildes. The one that posted about moving to Lemmy appears to be a moderate success; the others not.

I'm there with ya!

"Feeling the pressure, many subreddits did reopen", what pressure? just abandon the sub then but no they want to keep their power. they owe reddit nothing