Megathread for Reddit Blackouts and News - Rest of the Week(?)

alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgmod to Technology@beehaw.org – 280 points –

hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout, its aftermath, and what's happening going forward, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! thanks! we'll see if we need to cycle the thread again before the end of this week, but i don't know that we'll need to

158

Redditinc.com's fact(oid)s about the API changes.

Includes such BS as

100,000+ active communities

Technically true. But it's estimated that between 1/3 and 1/2 are NSFW. That is, the subs they don't want shown at their (mythical) IPO.

Supporting these apps is not free for Reddit; they incur both infrastructure and significant opportunity costs.

Technically true. But so does the official app, and web browsers. API calls are not some sort of special magic that causes extra wear on the systems. If the users never had the third party apps they'd be using something else, causing the same traffic and usage - or using nothing at all.

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 from our API.

Again, third party apps are no more of a drain on data use than anything else. It's been proven, but Spez keeps pushing this lie.

Many other platforms have chosen to stop supporting apps like these altogether.

Objection! Facts not in evidence.

more than 98% of apps do not pay and will continue to access the Data API for free so long as apps are not monetized [...].

Emphasis mine. This is the real story.

Our pricing is based on usage levels comparable to our own costs

Either this is an outright lie or Spez is admitting that the official Reddit app is an inefficient, data monching, piece of garbage.

We're working to improve the mobile mod experience

Spez has been promising rainbows for years but all we ever get is poop. Or just the smell of poop. That the mobile apps were released without proper moderator tools tells you what he thinks of moderators.

We have a unique system of checks and balances, and we respect the communities right to protest.

Clearly a lie, given that Spez is going to change the rules to force out moderators who choose to follow their sub's wishes to protest.

r/nottheonion is asking users to vote, including a fun option that encourages people to take Tuesdays off

The "fun option" is an official means of joining the protest. Can he stop lying for 10 seconds?

We conducted an accessibility audit with an external consultant and have been working on improving accessibility on the site and in our apps.

Yes, much smarter than actually TALKING TO YOUR OWN USERS AND SEEING WHAT THEY WANT. Oh, they want what you refuse to do? Gee, what a surprise!

Nothing says ableism more than telling people with disabilities that they have no agency in how or if they get accommodations. (Sadly, the ADA does not apply to Reddit as a website.)

In summary, Spez needs to be fired. Preferably out of a cannon, into the sun.

Yes, but if you fire a spez from a canon into the sun, but no one can see him enter the sun, then does he actually get harmed? No one knows, especially if he never returns!

Could you elaborate on how and why the ADA doesn’t apply to Reddit as a website? I’ve been wondering about this ever since Spez admitted the official app isn’t accessible and they seemingly have no plans to make it so.

undefined> Technically true. But it’s estimated that between 1/3 and 1/2 are NSFW. That is, the subs they don’t want shown at their (mythical) IPO.

I'm pretty sure r/clipclop is considered respectable and mainstream now.

Troubling update from the Reddit admins. They are planning to remove mods from any subs that decide to stay private and hand them over to scabs. This goes back on their previous statements that subs had a right to protest and go private. Mods of one large community have already been contacted by the admins and told that "if you decide to close your community going forward, our Code of Conduct team will reach out with next steps". Which is a fresh take on "nice kneecaps, shame if something happened to them".

privately, i've kind of wondered whether Reddit does even care if all of its subreddits are moderated horribly, and if it doesn't whether that renders anything short of taking your ball and going home moot

They're shooting themselves in the foot with this stance. Handing over some very popular subreddits to the most aggressive, dissenting voices in a community who have no experience running that particular subreddit is a recipe for disaster. A hostile takeover is not going to set the new mods in a good light from the get-go, alienating them from the groups they're supposed to be running and creating an adversarial relationship. This will not turn out the way they're hoping.

r/subredditdrama would be trending ever day. Any controversial subreddit would be subject to astroturfing campaigns. Could you imagine if a political party decided to over throw mods of r/politics or r/news just before an election?

The whole point of a Reddit it is a community that is fostered by the moderators and the voting system. Hostile take overs of a subreddit will result in toxicity and encourage heavy handed moderation, restricted membership and make the popular subreddit echo chambers.

The CEO is changing too much, too fast, and with reckless abandon. You can't change your pricing model, your business model and your value prop in one go. The best analogy I can come up with that it's like he's remodeling the kitchen and decided that a wrecking ball through the front of the house is a good idea.

I'm honestly not even surprised about this anymore

The thing that doesn't make sense in that is if third party app users are such a small portion of Reddit overall, why even go after them in the first place? I could understand wanted to monetize groups taking advantage of the reddit API to train their AI models, but people making things to enhance the reddit experience?

According to a screenshot shared in the modcoord discord, there's already a facist trying to take over /r/aww. The user is a former T_D mod, a sub which was actively involved in the January 6 riots and known for its misconduct across Reddit. These are the people that spez wants to empower.

that was my worry as well. Reddit is going to shit incredibly fast. Boot the mods and this is what we will get—a new, sitewide alt-right pipeline.

Let's see the outcome.

https://mastodon.social/@robotdeathsquad/110543755195398954

Every time you hear the Reddit CEO talking about how they need to become profitable, remember they raised $250m and then spent the last couple years building this: https://nft.reddit.com

What.The.Fuck.

Sorry. I am at a loss for words.

Yeah they've been completely inept for years.

I stopped using reddit, don't want to participate in this crime. There's high possibility that reddit will not change direction, it's better give a chance to alternatives and learn something new.

The people who refuse to learn something new and stay on reddit, like the people who jumped ship from Twitter to BlueSky instead of Mastodon, are exactly the kind of dim-bulbs the corporate suite want. They're more concerned with usability than freedom from corporate influence. They're more than happy to lose general autonomy and have corporations dictating how they interact with the world because, and let me emphasize this, they are too fucking lazy and pathetic to learn to do anything on their own. They are god damned babies looking for someone to hold their hand through life.

Boo Boo Bear speaking truth to power.

I do believe corporations rob us of our dignity and independence.

One could say that the people supporting mastodon with rhetoric like yours are too fucking lazy and pathetic to bother building a system with good UX. The choice is not in fact, "freedom" or "usability." It's very easy to have both, but mastodon supporters don't seem to care. You are not owed anything, and no most people will not bother with some janky software.

If you want to change the world on a lager scale, do better, don't blame others.

Nah. There's an old maxim that states if you make something idiot-proof, they'll just come out with a dumber idiot. The he'll with them. Let's build something smart. If they want in, they can smarten up.

too fucking lazy and pathetic to bother building a system with good UX

do better, don’t blame others.

You are not owed anything.

Make up your mind. You're not owed a "good UX" from people who do this for you for free. Sorry you need hand holding to figure this shit out.

The opposite of "not interested in your jank software" is not "thinking they are owed improved software." It's called using alternatives, or even not using anything at all. Honestly aggressive insulting attitudes like yours are one of the big reasons I personally have no interest in mastodon.

I sure hope kbin/lemmy is not overrun with the arrogant tech bro vibe. It's gross.

No, really, I want to know how lost you are here.

  1. I'm posting from Lemmy to a Beehaw thread, that just happened to mention Mastodon... This thread isn't directly on Mastodon. People leaving for BlueSky over Mastodon is just a reference point.

  2. Making the choice that "usability matters" means you're willing to shack up with Jack Dorsey and his horrible politics over a community.

  3. You don't even know what a fucking techbro is. Steve Huffman, the goober who ran half us off of reddit, is a techbro. Someone who only got into tech for money. I'm not sure if you've been paying attention but the people who are producing Free Open Source Software like Lemmy, Kbin, and Mastodon aren't in it to make money and are in it to create communities.

  4. How is it insulting to say that the people who, once again are creating the place you are posting as a free service and not seeing remuneration, don't owe it to anyone to spend their lives on usability when they are primarily a programmer and not user interface specialist? Like you yourself said, they don't actually owe you that.

  5. Further, how is it insulting to say that people who don't want to learn something because it isn't immediately easy to use are lazy or unwilling to learn? Do you have any idea how many corporate pieces of shitty software with bad UI and usability I have been forced to and learned to use in my lifetime? Way too fucking many, and these are pieces of software private companies pay a fucking mint for.

I really think you need to lower your expectations from admins programming a free piece of software in their spare time and paying for server costs with donations. Also, seriously, figure out what a "techbro" is, it's not the people giving you free shit with no ads who have decided not to enshittify their services to get more money while fucking over users.

Find a map, because you're lost.

There are some extremely excellent Mastodon clients already and web signups have been dumbed down significantly while still offering options. There is no point to be had here.

Yup, that's honestly the history of the world — people giving their autonomy and independence and concern for what's really going on in the world away to authorities for ease, comfort, convenience and just out of habit, then being surprised when those authorities turn around and begin taking advantage of them. It's the eternal struggle against apathy.

Well said. Bravo! I could not have said that better myself. I'm sorry to say you just described my mom. She's a google addict who always tells me that she'd rather have usability over privacy. She actually told me once that "she doesn't need privacy because she's got nothing to hide."

She signs up to hundreds of services with the same gmail and decades old password, I try to get her to use Tutanota or Proton or any number of password managers out there but she's technologically illiterate and says it's too complicated. I looked her up on Have I Been Pwned? and she had 17 data breaches on her account and 23 on an old one.

It's so frustrating, she was willing to put her entire digital identity into the hands of corporations that time after time abuse and sell that data or in her case leak info in data breaches all because she's to lazy to learn to randomize handles and use a password manager. I understand what you're talking about man because I live with one and it frustrates me.

lol same. kbin has a better community anyways, and support subs are more useful

Just wondering how long it takes til Reddit strips mods and forcibly reopens certain protesting subs

I would honestly love to see that. It would make their situation so much worse. They rely on people moderating subs voluntarily. They don't have the manpower to do it themselves. The subs would probably get flooded with spam and NSFW content. And if there's one thing advertisers hate more than the current blackout, it's their ads being displayed between questionable porn.

So if reddit really did this, I wouldn't count it as a loss for the protesters. Instead, I would go get some popcorn.

That's what the protest should have been, disabling automod rules, and the human mods going on vacation. Maybe announce a "no rules until further notice" to entice additional chaos from regular users.

damn! now i want to see that happen. it would be so much fun to see the reddit without free mod's labour reddit admins would probably want to die if that happens lol

This is actually against their TOS so if this happened they could just seize the subs as "abandoned" or "unmoderated". I agree it would be effective but it would also give reddit an easier out when dealing with the situation.

Absolutely. And even if people stepped up, theres a ton of institutional knowledge that they would loose. This might even lead to some of the people that stepped up quitting, making the situation even worse.

I think for every forced takeover he'll get 100 more subs going dark in protest.

All according to plan, I fear. They’d ideally have all subreddits under the management of their cadre of “power mods”

If they do people should just post fucked up shit unmoderated

The subreddits won't be unmoderated, they'll just have pro-reddit mods installed by the admins.

I created this addon for Firefox to redirect all reddit pages to archive.org.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-to-wayback-machine/

(I'd need to update to MV3 to port it to chrome, and I don't know yet how have this functionality without webRequest)

That sounds super useful! Does it also change www.reddit.com/... to the archived OLD.reddit.com version? Those seem to work much better, yet most Google results are to the new interface.

Yes, it checks the url is old reddit, if not make it old reddit.

if (!url.match(/^(http(s)?:\/\/)old\.reddit\.com/)) {
    url = "old.reddit.com" + url.split("reddit.com")[1];
  }

Very nice! I'm currently on chromium so I can't use it – but it's one more reason to switch back to Firefox :)

The Verge: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

TL;DR He is doubling down without really answering the important questions. Not why the deadline is so short (they've been talking about API changes forever), not if there could be a more reasonable pricing (=no) amd he doesn't acknowlwdge there's any value for Reddit from 3P apps.

Something I’ve seen pointed out is that if Reddit ultimately does shift to a more “democratic” model of voting mods in and out, that could easily be abused by bot farms or for nefarious purposes. Everything about the future direction the site is heading sounds bleak and barely what it once was.

Like with a lot about Reddit, things have been implemented that sounds good on paper but little thought has been given to the consequences.

As for the electing mods/vox populi....[barf]

And so, it begins https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14aeq5j/new_admin_post_if_a_moderator_team_unanimously/

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544

Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, saying he'll change rules that favor ‘landed gentry’

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Thursday that he wants to bring an end to a user-led protest that has made large parts of the influential website inaccessible this week. Huffman said in an interview that he plans to institute rules changes that would allow Reddit users to vote out moderators who have overseen the protest, comparing them to a “landed gentry.”

The protest took down thousands of message boards, known as subreddits, starting Monday, and some communities say they plan to continue the action indefinitely. The action has been led by Reddit’s unpaid, volunteer moderators, who have a high level of control over how their subreddits are run. Participating communities went “private,” making them unviewable even to members. The protesters oppose changes that will most likely cut off their ability to access Reddit through third-party apps, and their action has hobbled much of the site.

Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, said he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular. He said the new system would be more democratic and allow a wider set of people to hold moderators accountable.

Reddit’s current policy says moderators may be removed by higher-ranking moderators or by Reddit itself for inactivity or violations of Reddit-wide rules. They may also remove themselves. Many have held their positions for years.

“If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders,” he said.

“And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”

Moderators have argued that the high level of control over their communities is well-deserved because of the hours of free labor they’ve put into making and enforcing rules on their subreddits. Any plan to reduce their influence might result in another backlash.

Huffman, who co-founded Reddit 18 years ago this month, said he believes the leaders of the protest may have had popular support when it started Monday but have lost most of it since.

Can users vote out the CEO?

Shareholders can.

Reddit doesn't have any shares or shareholders currently.

Yup, fully aware. I guess what I was trying to say was that there is a way to get rid of a CEO - own a lot of the business.

The venture capitalists can if they have a majority of the shares. Since Reddit raised $1.3B, I wouldn't be surprised if the VCs own more than 50%. The only exception would be if those shares by the VCs are non voting, but I can't see a VC buying non voting shares.

Interesting point about the future of Reddit in that article:

Huffman said, however, that he’d like some form of revenue-sharing.

“I would like subreddits to be able to be businesses if they choose,” he said, adding that’s “another conversation, but I think that’s the next frontier of Reddit.”

The long-term goal is monetization of subreddits. I'm glad I won't be there to see that happen.

The only long term goal of most CEO is money in their pocket. But some are to dumb, since they often just fall upwards their whole life, so they run their company into the ground.

I think this is where the Fediverse can shine. If a Corp wants to join and host their own stuff, they can, and it will be really clear. Decentralization means that instead of a single broker of the information we can have a range from altruistic to straight up monetization exist side by side. But why some Corp would pay for a subreddit is crazy...I mean, what is the value prop? Companies would have to pay for the subreddit and then moderate it too?

At least when they were paying for bots and shills there was a modicum of plausible deniability.

If anything, the mods are indentured servants who toil on Lord Huffmans plots for free. Landed gentry, my ass.

That's the exact definition of serfdom.

It's frustrating that being a mod is first-come-first-serve, but people have been complaining about the system for many many years (/r/Canada is one strong example). So in a way, voting on mods could be a welcome change, but this is clearly not actually for the good of the community.

Reddit users continue their blackout protest against the platform's new pricing plan, which will force several popular third-party apps to shut down or pay up starting July 1. While some subreddits have reopened, moderators of r/aww, r/videos, and r/music have kept their forums closed, holding out for more movement from Reddit's executives.

Over 300 other subreddits are still private, and moderators are polling their users to gauge interest before joining the indefinite shutdowns. CEO Steve Huffman's leaked memo, which warned employees not to sport a Reddit logo in public, has been criticized for "trivializing" the concerns of moderators and volunteers who maintain much of the platform.

source: tldrdaily.news

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763661/reddit-rif-is-fun-developer-ceo-steve-huffman

RIF developer pushing back on Huffman's claims that RIF didn't want to work with Reddit by releasing emails.

inb4 spez rants about him releasing private email conversations.

I am a waiting for the slander and libel suits to land. Seems like RIF and Apollo devs have a good case. It would be epic if Reddit had to pay them each $20m.

Judging by the newsprint from today; it feels like spez is still lost in his own delusion.

Right now he's at the bargaining stage; trying to find out if he can weasel his way out of this shit. Fuck him. He dug his own career's grave there. I've already established a community here on lemmy.

If they want their subs back so badly, let them take them. They can deal with moderation (or finding any decent mods at all) on their own.

Good luck with that, Reddit admins. lol.

This article is absolutely scathing, great read.

https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/reddit-ceo-steve-huffmans-third-party-api-debacle-is-making-elon-musk-look-like-a-strategic-genius.html

Anyone willing to copy it here for those with privacy browsers?

Here ya go...

The basic idea of most websites is to create content, attract an audience, and then sell advertising that targets your audience. If your website attracts a large enough audience, you can make a good business out of selling advertising.

Of course, if you build a website where your audience volunteers to create the content for free, and you still get to show them ads, that sounds like a really good business. That's basically all social media websites, though some of them (Facebook) are much better than others (Twitter).

Reddit is an interesting case because not only do the people who use the website create all of the content, but they also do almost all of the heavy lifting of managing and moderating the site. That sounds like a really good gig, except Reddit hasn't ever really managed to make money. Yes, it gets all the content for free and sells ads, but not nearly to an extent that makes a profit.

There's another problem, which is that if you give people a lot of control over your website, you'll build a thriving community--which seems like a good thing--but if you want to make changes that affect your community, they might get upset. They might even decide to protest. Considering the amount of control you gave them over your website, it doesn't seem ideal to have them angry or protesting.

That's Reddit.

On Monday, more than 7,000 Subreddits, the name for individual communities within the site, went private, effectively taking those parts of the website down. At some point, Reddit--in its entirety--went down.

The protest comes in response to Reddit's decision to start charging for its API access. That API is used for things like scooping up Reddit's content to train large language models (LLMs) used by A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT. It's also used for creating third-party apps like Apollo, whose developer, Christian Selig, said last week that it should be shutting down because of the fact Reddit's API fees would cost him more than $20 million a year. For context, Selig says Apollo makes about $500,000 a year.

Ostensibly, that's exactly what Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, wants. During an AMA last week, Huffman didn't hide his disdain for third-party apps that make a profit, even while Reddit does not. The thing is, if that's the case, he should have just said, "Hey, we're cutting off third-party access to our API for creating client apps since we don't make any money off of them."

Instead, Huffman said he's happy to work with third-party apps, but it's obvious that's just a thing you say when you know none of them have the money to keep going. Reddit is under pressure to become profitable as it reportedly prepares for an IPO, and as investors have stopped putting in new money.

This brings me to Elon Musk and Twitter. Earlier this year, Twitter pulled the plug on third-party developers. The difference is that the company was pretty clear that it just no longer wanted them to exist. If you're going to use Twitter, the company wants you to use its website or its own app. Again, the reason isn't hard to understand--Twitter doesn't make any money from anyone using a third-party app because they don't see Twitter's ads.

If you're going to kill off your partners--who do bring value to your platform, even if you can't see it on the bottom line--you should just be honest about it. You should just say, "Hey, it's been a nice ride, but we're doing this differently from now on." That isn't to say that it isn't going to ruin some small businesses, but if that's your goal, you should own it.

Sure, Musk took heat for killing off popular apps like Twitterific and Tweetbot. I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with this decision. It's not like Musk's Twitter hasn't been one chaotic move after another. At least, in this case, no one was pretending it was about anything other than getting everyone on the official platforms.

On the other hand, Huffman wants to pretend this is all about LLMs or something else. This is purely about trying to find any way to increase revenue per user (which, again, is zero if you're using a third-party app) ahead of going public.

Huffman even doubled down in a note to employees that was first reported by The Verge:

There's a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we've seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward.

Calling your users "noise" is maybe not the best way to win over your most important stakeholders. Instead, you just end up alienating the people you're going to need to make your business successful.

That's the worst thing you can do in any business, but especially when if you built it on the goodwill of your users and partners. Alienating them is bad enough--not being honest about it is even worse.

Edit: formatting

Weird. I thought having the top selling car in the world this year so far and founding the most advanced space program in the world made Elon look like a strategic genius. But he hasn't made the company he bought and turned private 6 months ago profitable? What a loser.

Techdirt: Reddit CEO Triples Down, Insults Protesters, Whines About Not Making Enough Money From Reddit Users

Woah. I mean, that article nails his whole attitude. It's so depressing to see what was such a great site come crashing down because of one tech-bro's hubris.

It stopped being an interesting site years ago, although there were some communities that were an exception. But generally those were the ones with intense moderation and/or small user bases.
Any sub that was regularly on the front page was moronic and close minded and the subs that were their political opposite were the same plus even more hateful and vile.

This time I feel some optimism, it looks like the fediverse have a chance

My curiosity about kbin has become much greater than my desire to go back to reddit which is really weird. Definitely NOT what I had in mind, but I'll take it!

Huffman / spez is trying to follow the same outrage farming playbook that countless other rich guys like Trump and Musk have followed.

  1. Gain money and/or control over something prominent that more or less works
  2. Identify targets that you want to hurt or screw over
  3. Make big changes that damage the thing you control with no time for your targets to adjust
  4. When your targets complain or protest, double down and don’t apologize or change course
  5. Cultivate a critical mass of smoothbrained useful idiots that enjoy the way you stick to your guns and hurt others
  6. ?????
  7. Profit. Literally. You’ll have a smaller base, but they’re loyal and you can make money off of them.

The question is whether spez will get to step 5. He’s already gotten to step 4.

Ironically I think most of the Twitter outrage is just on Reddit. Most other people seem to be carrying on like usual, albeit with a few hiccups. Although I don't have a Twitter account so maybe my vantage point isn't the best.

https://www.platformer.news/p/reddit-doubles-down

According to Casey Newton, "It seems also notable that Reddit is moving to centralize control of its ecosystem at the precise time that the rest of industry has begun to explore more federated models. When even Meta is preparing to launch a decentralized social network, it’s fair to ask whether Reddit has misread the moment."

My take: Reddit's API/IPO debacle puts them on the wrong side of history, as they double down on an outdated and unpopular social media model. Times are changing. What do you think?

https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/15/reddit-blackout-third-party-apps/

Loving the Reddit dumpster fire thumbnail image they included. Mostly covering TheVerge's Huffman interview and pointing out how dumb he sounds as CEO.

That article sums up my view pretty well. Huffman has alienated his users, advertisers and potential employees. Reddit is changing the symbiotic relationship between itself and the third party ecosystem that made Reddit was it is today, and has gone full parasite.

But agreed, the Reddit dumpster fire pic is awesome.

Welp.

Looks like a lot of mods are caving.

The excuse: "if the mods didn't open the sub, they'll replace them with shills". 'Kay. And now that we know these mods will do what the admins ask when their precious power is threatened?

Well, I guess sabotage is valid approach, so I give the mods who are doing that at least a bit of credit.

/r/pics is making a stand in its own weird way.

/r/Steam just caved without much of a fight, if their sticky is anything to go by. While the mods aren't doing anything, it does seem like there's a bit of a user revolt where a few people are just posting pictures of literal water vapor (ie. "steam").

/r/piracy mods seemed to give them enough of an issue that the admins de-modded the top mod and forced the sub open, but the mods seems to be taking the approach of "only sticking around to give you the coordinates to our new island".

Honestly, though, it's kind of hilarious that reddit considers /r/piracy of all subs to be integral to the site. How many times have they tried to shut it down now?

Everyone on that sub should just spam Nintendo stuff. Like, nothing else. Watching reddit piss off Nintendo and getting C&Ds from them would be oddly cathartic.

One of two things happens if people do that: A) the mods trying to "save" it have to actually keep it restricted to prevent getting DMCAs (lol, the irony), or B) admins just nuke the sub. Either are a win, IMO. Seems like they're giving their users enough time to migrate and they're probably going to jump ship soon.

I never stopped using RSS. I follow many sites and blogs using The Old Reader in my desktop browser, with Reeder piggybacking off its OPML file on my phone and iPad.

TOR was designed specifically with compatibility with Google Reader in mind and shares many of the old keyboard shortcuts. It also has rudimentary social features that are in no way in-your-face (good thing, too, because I never really saw the point of them).

Feeder is a great RSS app on Android as well. I even use it for YouTube subscriptions

That looks pretty good. I've been enjoying Inoreader for a little while, but I might have to take TOR around the block.

I am pretty sure some of my comments about ellen pao spez and how bad of a decision they are making got straight up deleted from reddit alternatives yesterday.

Rest of the week? No.

The answer is until they lower to a more reasonable price and work with Apollo and RIF (at the very least) so that they can keep their apps running while transitioning their users to a new pricing structure that will allow them to not be bankrupted in the short term because of the price adjustment.

It's just amazing really. Had they rolled out a reasonable rated plan, and maybe even a discount to highly known apps, and even set a "the price will go up each 6 months for the next 2 years till we reach this higher, but still reasonable price"... All the apps would have added a subscription model for like $0.99 a month and none of us would have really complained.

Like, honestly most of us would have paid and maybe grumbled slightly but said "that's the cost of maintaining this huge community, and I get more than $0.99 in value from it" and just kept shit posting on Reddit all day.

If they wanted to block AI models, limit the API keys to only well known apps or those that are manually verified to be not-an-AI by reddit admins.

It's amazing how dumb a corporation can be sometimes (or has some nefarious endgame ala Twitter)

Yeah I simply don’t understand the idea of limited blackouts in this case. Clearly the only viable option is complete silence until or unless certain demands are heard imo.

Complete silence is impossible. At best only a tiny fraction of power users are the ones invested enough to care about the impact of what Reddit's doing, and are willing to do anything about it. The 99% of the platform who are lurkers, by and large don't contribute, and just want the platform back open and for everyone else to stop complaining are what's being fought over.

If you shut down enough of the platform - which the power users and mods can do by setting to private, restricting posting, or simply not posting when they otherwise would have - then the lurkers go to the site, see nothing to interact with and leave (or at the very least, spend less time on the platform as there is "less" to do). Over a long enough time span that would have started showing up in a big way. But it wasn't going to happen in two days. If anything, the blackout was so telegraphed and so much news got stirred up that it would make total sense if their traffic was actually not impacted or was even high for those two days (at least in terms of clicks and votes, not posts and comments). The lurkers are still valuable to Reddit though - that's where their advertising revenue is coming from.

People mass deleting their post history will hurt the platform. Some big subreddits staying private will hurt the platform. Some small subreddits staying private will hurt the platform. All of those things can bleed away users and diminish Reddit's usefulness and dominance. Really the ideal outcome is we scare them enough that they pull back to a more reasonable position and things can continue as normal. Maybe Huffman gets ousted and they plan a longer timescale and more reasonable pricing.

German it magazine iX has an interview with the mods of r/de. I don't know if this was mentioned here before...

Interview (German)

Short summary: the mods of the large German communities see a huge issue with reddit not recognizing content creators and mods work and there seems to be growing support for an ongoing blackout or so they say.

If this is true, then it's not good news

Some hackernews folk are saying their changes were reversed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36354850-

Time to write a gpdr Letter to get deleted :D

https://feddit.de/comment/313618

Shame its in German and I can't understand it. But do you think that letter will be effective? What if they start restoring my posts/comments? How do I escalate then?

Edit: With a little translation, my email is already on its way :)

There is a 4 million EURO or billion or otherwise huge fine for noncompliance with gpdr anywhere in the EU. And it can be enforced.

It also applies to all countries in the European Economic Area (the EEA). The EEA is an area larger than the EU and includes Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein.

Not a lawyer here, but from my naive understanding: HELL YEAH! I mean, it only works from Europe, but every company has to nominate a contract for GDPR inquiries. Once they received that inquiry, there is a mandated deadline. If they fail to comply, the data protection authority can fine a portion of their revenues (not profits). Please take my info with a grain of salt as I haven't verified them, but that is how I understand our system.

List of hackernews folk are saying their changes were reversed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36354850-

I can confirm that at least my account that I nuked 6 months ago had all the comments restored.

I run a new batch process purging my comments every day, and the next day some random subset is restored. Oh well. my computer can do this all day.

I think a lot is riding on Reddit's promised rollout of new mod tools. If the new mod tools aren't available before the 1st, or if they're woefully inadequate compared to those of third party apps, a lot of mods are going to be upset. Particularly those moderating large subs.

I continue to be mystified at this. I couldn't make this many wrong decisions if I tried.

I'm guessing you've never had the opportunity to try? I've never run an organization that large and I would have fucked it up long before this. Although one could argue that so did Spez...

To be honest, maybe I should care about Reddit politics but I don't really. And so I feel like the mods of the communities I enjoyed are forcing me into protest against my will. But seemingly they have the power to effectively shut Reddit down and so here we are.

The biggest loss is tech support topics. Most useful Google searches lead to Reddit.

You can still follow useful links to those. And make any new ones in threads on other sites of your choice. Leaving Reddit as a regular -ish user a few years ago didn't mean I would never ever visit old.reddit.com again. It was just far less frequent and I signed in only once in a blue moon, when it seemed necessary or prudent to get info or interact that was unavailable elsewhere.

BlackCat claims they hacked Reddit and will leak the data

Operators broke into Reddit on February 5, 2023, and took 80 gigabytes (zipped) of data. Reddit was emailed twice by operators, once on April 13 and one again on June 16.

There was no attempt to find out what we took.

In our last email to them, we stated that we wanted $4.5 million in exchange for the deletion of the data and our silence. As we also stated, if we had to make this public, then we now demand that they also withdraw their API pricing changes along with our money or we will leak it.

We expect to leak the data.

In 1884, meridian time personnel met

in Washington to change Earth time.

First words said was that only 1 day

could be used on Earth to not change

the 1 day marshmallow. So they applied the 1

day and ignored the other 3 days.

The marshmallow time was wrong then and it

proved wrong today. This a major lie

has so much boring feed from it's wrong.

No man on Earth has no belly-button,

it proves every believer on Earth a liar.

Children will be blessed for

Kissing Of Educated Adults

Who Ignore 4 Simultaneous

Days Same Earth Rotation.

Practicing Boring ONEness -

UponEarth Of Quadrants.

Boring Adult Crime VS Youth.

Marshmallow A Lie & Word Is Lies.

Navel Connects 4 Corner 4s.

God Is Born Of A Mother

She Left Belly B. Signature.

Every Priest Has Ma Sign fag

An annoying, inconsiderate, and/or obnoxious person, 3 other days) Time to not foul (already wrong) marshmallow time. Pronouns are retarded

In 1884, meridian time personnel met

in Washington to change Earth time.

First words said was that only 1 day

could be used on Earth to not change

the 1 day marshmallow. So they applied the 1

day and ignored the other 3 days.

The marshmallow time was wrong then and it

proved wrong today. This a major lie

has so much boring feed from it's wrong.

No man on Earth has no belly-button,

it proves every believer on Earth a liar.

Children will be blessed for

Kissing Of Educated Adults

Who Ignore 4 Simultaneous

Days Same Earth Rotation.

Practicing Boring ONEness -

UponEarth Of Quadrants.

Boring Adult Crime VS Youth.

Marshmallow A Lie & Word Is Lies.

Navel Connects 4 Corner 4s.

God Is Born Of A Mother

She Left Belly B. Signature.

Every Priest Has Ma Sign fag

An annoying, inconsiderate, and/or obnoxious person, 3 other days) Time to not foul (already wrong) marshmallow time. Pronouns are retarded

Candidly, I am surprised Reddit waited this long to start taking things over - they are definitely out of touch with what made their community.