hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout today, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! Thanks!

  • TheiaTheMoonMaker@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    AskHistorians is taking the approach of “blackout for two days, then read-only moving forward indefinitely.” I think that’s a good approach as it still removes the functionality of the subreddit while reminding people of what they’re missing out on due to the admins’ actions.

    I know there are bigger subs, but AskHistorians is an absolute jewel in Reddit’s crown. For all the dumpster fire subs that raise controversy and drag Reddit’s image down, AskHistorians is the one sub that could always be pointed to as a sub with an inarguably positive impact. It’s also a sub in a unique position because its moderators are probably the hardest for Reddit to replace, because many of them are the historians that answer the questions, or have personal relationships with those that do. In addition most of the historians aren’t really Redditors, participating only on AskHistorians. Removing the current mod team and replacing them would absolutely 100% kill the sub forever.

    Not that I have any faith in Reddit to do the right thing. I just think it’s interesting to realize just how different of a position AskHistorians in than the rest of the subreddits, being at the same time more impactful than their subscriber numbers show, while being fragile enough to be permanently broken if handled poorly. They are also one of the only mod teams I’ve see who have issued a list of actionable goals that Reddit can address.

    Also it’s interesting to see that their participation in the blackout is almost entirely on Spez’s head. That’s some damn fine CEOing there, Lou.

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      The askhistorians subreddit and it’s mod team are absolute gems, I was able to attend one of their talks at a conference and it was honestly one of the best presentations I’ve seen at these types of events. It is giant loss to the academic community to have them shut down tbh, and I hope they are able to migrate and keep their audience.

      But then again knowing Reddit, if they migrate u/spez will probably allow Holocaust deniers to take up the space or something.

    • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I hope one of the archive projects (archiveTeam or others) has backed up r/askhistorians past posts and comments, just in case.

  • Kwakigra@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I don’t care about fixing Reddit and I don’t care about teaching Reddit a lesson. I don’t care if the site buckles or continues to hold on and grow while they regulalry downgrade their service as they have been doing for the 10 years I’ve been an active user. No protest of anything Reddit has done has ever caused Reddit to reconsider what they’re doing. Reddit does not care about anything because it’s not a person. It’s a business entity which will attempt by any means to maximise profit. Having a functional website or having human users or moderation at all are not strictly necessary to secure investment or generate ad revenue. Doing what investors want them to do, regardless of the actual effect it may have long-term, is what will get them investment now. That is more important to Reddit than everything else put together. There’s no mastermind, no one’s at the wheel, no idiot is unilaterally making decisions like a king. There’s only the inevitable consequences of the collective decisions of businesspeople participating in corporate capitalism.

    The main reason I don’t care is that I don’t have to care anymore. The Fediverse has been a breath of fresh air after a very long time.

    • Poot@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      No reason to go back and every reason not to. The Fediverse is my home now.

    • th3raid0r@tucson.social
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      1 year ago

      Right? This was always bound to happen. The only way it wouldn’t be innevitable would require Reddit be a non-profit or co-op or equivalent. Which it certainly isn’t.

      I also agree, the sudden breath into the fediverse (I’ve been poking my head in since I ran a nextcloud instance and they had a plugin for the fediverse called nextcloud social.). This place isn’t just a handful of OSS developers and enthusiasts anymore, but something starting to resemble a community of all types.

      It reminds me of when Reddit was good, way back in like 2010 (for me) - but it feels more consequential now!

    • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t care about fixing reddit either, I don’t care if it lives or dies, not anymore, tho it wouldn’t be bad IMO teaching the CEO a lesson in humility.

    • Dymonika@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      no idiot is unilaterally making decisions like a king.

      Every decision is made by one person or a party of people specifically saying “Yes” to it. Whether they are “idiot[s]” is up for debate, but every single event involving anything artificial is decided by a person/people, not merely a faceless system.

    • dan@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      No protest of anything Reddit has done has ever caused Reddit to reconsider what they’re doing

      To be fair, they did fire that pedo mod they hired. Eventually.

  • Dan_Rachevaski@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    This is just my personal opinion. The 2 day blackout for me, never meant for people to pack their bags and leave Reddit entirely. It’s not a very easy task to do, and honestly, there is still lots of contents and friends back in reddit. Reddit can be sure that lots of people will simply come back, and spez will grinning while working his way to his beloved IPO.

    However, the 2 day blackout has opened a new world of alternatives to Reddit. Now people know other places and other communities that can replace Reddit as a whole. Yes, Reddit will still be an influential website. Yes, Reddit will still be money driven. Yes, spez will not budge. But we can.

    To me, Reddit will not crash, burn and crushed to ash. But rather, it’s either went the FB way, relying to lots of ads and older demographics to sustain, or simply becoming Myspace or Digg, a distant memory that’s only in name.

    Just my 1/2 cents.

    • feetongrass@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I wouldn’t have ever signed up for lemmy if this api thing hadn’t come about. This is my first fediverse experience. I was pissed at reddit, but now I don’t care about reddit one way or another. Lemmy has gained enough users to sustain itself even if there is no more mass migration. There is an active community here that will help lemmy grow organically over time.

    • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      relying to lots of ads and older demographics low-literacy masses to sustain

      FIFY

      Among the “older demographics” there are the most “nerdy” people, those born when personal computers and the internet didn’t exist, those growing up together with technology, used to a world when corporations didn’t destroy the good of sharing knowledge.

      Those are the people most likely to rebel to what reddit is doing and find their way out if it, because they know it’s possible, because they’ve seen it before.

      Youngest people are used to how the world is nowadays because it’s all they’ve seen, but they can be shown the difference if they’ll willing to listen.

      Low-literacy masses are those who don’t listen because they don’t care, people of that sort exist in every age “range” and are unfortunately the majority of content “consumers”, that’s why Facebook(/Instagram/WhatsApp) doesn’t die, and Reddit won’t either most probably.

      • Noedel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Exactly, I’m ‘older’ but I grew up with the internet in the 90s and know what it was before it turned into a monetized cesspool of corporate trash.

    • cfx_4188@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      I’m trying to figure out what kind of blackout you’re talking about. I open up (oh my God, I feel like a heretic) Reddit and guess what? Hardly anything has changed on Reddit. My feed is still there. Yes, a grand total of five ever-fronting subs stopped working, ten more subs took a formal vote, and… it’s still the same. Every social network goes the way of monetizing content. I first joined Reddit in 2015, at the time it was an incomprehensible pseudo-social network with an awkward interface. It took almost 18 years before Reddit became usable. But blackout is still a long way off. While kbin/lemmy is consolidated by the thought of blackout, but people can’t stay in suspense for long.

      • sjm@vlemmy.net
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think the monetisation of content is inevitable for social media . It’s inevitable for companies driven by profit who fully control a platform if that company wants to survive - but there are other ways to structure a community that doesn’t rely on centralised platforms run by a business.

        I guess we might see if i’m right over the next decade or two. I hope I am.

    • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Reddit relies on user generated content, so it if the few users who actually generate entertaining stuff take their business elsewhere it will go the way of Myspace and DIgg. Because there is already a Facebook for old people.

    • that_one_guy@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      This is a sub that could really benefit from just leaving reddit entirely anyways. Potentially being able to have more open discussions centered around piracy would make the content of that sub so much better.

    • antec_30k@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Is the exclamation mark command meant to trigger a link? It doesn’t do anything for me. My “home” lemmy is lemm.ee if that makes a difference.

      • Syliddar@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Lots of Fediverse stuff works like you might know email to work, i.e. thing@place.com, no matter where your email is hosted, you can send and receive messages from other hosts.

        In this Case, the piracy community, within the lemmy.dbzer0.com domain, you should be able to copy-paste the !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, or any community like it, into the search bar of your home lemmy server and be able to subscribe.

      • uthredii@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I’m not sure how to make a link to communities so that it works for everyone sorry. But yeah the ! Does indicate a community usually

  • Damaniel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m glad to see there’s been more of a push for previously ‘48 hours only’ subreddits to move to an indefinite blackout - but I wish that more of them had committed earlier. That leaked internal email shows exactly what I already expected; they just see the protesting Redditors as a bunch of whiny babies who they expect to give up after a couple days and forget the whole thing.

    • mike@s.jape.work
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      1 year ago

      there are also a lot of subreddits that went readonly. which doesn’t hurt much. when the first google result for something is a functional readonly reddit page, reddit has succeeded. When the first result I click is a message about the issue we’re facing that is much worse for reddit.

      At the same time, the couple of subs posting the images and only the images are causing /r/all to have some anti-reddit commentary.

      Either way, r/all doesnt look that different. Ok, normal-reddit-for-thing isnt on the front page, instead smaller-reddit-for-thing is there.

      I’m sure moderators will plan more, but I think it’s going to be difficult to maintain coordination and whether I like it or not, I get reddits approach to just ignore this.

      • Abel@lemmy.nerdcore.social
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        1 year ago

        It’s functional for the users, but not for Reddit who wants more data/engagement.

        But yeah, the smaller reddit thingy is true. r/thesims4 was open when r/sims4 was not.

    • Klinkertinlegs@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I’m not giving up. 11 year account deleted. I might read stuff on Reddit from time to time, but it will be without an account, in a private tab, through a vpn, with an ad blocker on.

        • Klinkertinlegs@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          i want to call complete BS on them making it out like the Redditors protesting would physically assault the staff. Guess that’s probably a reasonable thing now though. People are whacked in the head.

          • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Seems on brand after the CEO doubled down on falsely accusing the Apollo dev of blackmail, even though the Apollo dev posted the recordings proving otherwise.

          • jimmy@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            It at least seems like an attempt to push an “us” vs. “them” mentality.

          • crank@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I thought that was quite an escalation also. But maybe their health & safety committee reccomended it. Probably just trying to make the workers feel embattled and unsafe so they would avoid engaging with the issues and stay to reddits side. Its a PUA kind of doublespeak; spez is the one actually making the threat. But in a way it seems to come from us.

            To be a fly on the wall at the water cooler. Please reddit workers, leak a zoom call.

              • crank@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                was hovering over the link like “is this going to be a rick roll or something?”

                so I click it and YES this is literally what I was imagining. not the rick roll, the previous comment. fucking brilliant. in the comments it says it is the last post to /r/videos

                a lot of people mentioning ./ and digg here. on ./ there was this “first post” joke. it was very boring even at that time IMHO. but now is the moment to be thinking about “last post” if you are a person who has “last post” powers.

        • mike@s.jape.work
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          1 year ago

          i like the part where he implies that redditors are so deranged they will physically assault his employees.

  • poohbear@toons.zone
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, don’t hold your breath for a Lemmy/kbin port of Apollo:

    The amount of work it would take to port all the API endpoints over to Lemmy or Kbin or something, that would be a gargantuan amount of work that I’m not sure I have the capacity for. And then just the complexity of making it work. Long term, it’s a big question mark for me that, at this stage, I’m not sure I’m totally interested in pursuing. But it’s also one of those things where I completely wish it the best. And if something that was decentralized kind of became the norm, I think that would definitely be a win for everybody.

    • ImpeccableMithril@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Great interview from Christian there, it really is so frustrating that Reddit is and has been so hostile towards him. :(

      • spoonful@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Can you imagine the dumbasses at Reddit corporate thinking they could turn him into a villain? lol

        The leadership is so incredibly dumb that it almost feels like sabotage.

        • LemmyAtem@beehaw.org
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          Honestly, it was probably intentional. People shit on spez (rightfully) but he’s doing his job perfectly. He’s looking like an incompetent man child, and finger pointing at a third party using an obviously and probably intentionally weak narrative. He’s put all the focus on himself and how stupid he looks. He’s a punching bag, and in the mean time everyone at the corporate level that actually enacted these changes and is forcing this platform shift is remaining a) anonymous and b) out of the crosshairs.

          • comicallycluttered@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Ah, the business world.

            Fucks over Ellen Pao so that all hatred is directed at her, discovers a few years later that corporate can do the same to him.

            surprisedpikachu

            Although, I think he hasn’t actually learned this yet and still believes he’s doing a great job. His comments a few years ago about how he “sees [himself] as a leader, rather than a slave” speak to his arrogance (and also his weird philosophies; I’m pretty sure this is a dude who unironically considers himself a real life Hank Rearden… shiver).

            It’ll actually be really funny if they just knock him out of the way just before the IPO. CEO makes bad decisions and proves to be a liability. IPO not looking as profitable. Get rid of CEO to gain trust from investors? Launch IPO. Take the money and run. Of course, the decisions were on them as well, but of course they’ll claim no credit for it.

            I’m sure he has contingencies in place, but still. It would be a hilarious end to his tenure if something like that happened.

            • whofearsthenight@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              This is pretty much what I was going to say. I don’t think that people understand quite how the pseudo libertarian tech bro mentality still permeates this space, and in particular with reddit. The site has always been this way, so if you’ve been around for a while, you’ve been around to this play out many times. Free speech is some absolutely inviolate principle that requires reddit to platform pedophiles (jailbait) and pics of dead kids, until it’s not because it gets bad press and starts to affect financials and some overlord steps in, and then, just like in the real world, when my libertarian ideal starts to negatively impact me, it goes out the window. Repeat ad nauseum.

              These people also tend to think that every bit of success they have is only because of them, even though in the case of reddit, most of the success that it’s had has happened in spite of them. One of Reddit’s defining aspects used to be ama’s. Reddit fired the person responsible for making them great. Reddit completely missed mobile even more than Twitter did, and then when they finally got there they did it poorly and can still attribute most of the success to third party developers. Nothing really since the core product stabilized in like 2008 has been meaningful, it’s been about the community the entire time.

              I would still be willing to bet that spez and reddit think that their rugged individualist genius is the reason that reddit is as big when that’s all largely happened in spite of them. None of them will admit the truth - they had a good basic idea at the right time, and they’ve succeeded since based on the backs of a bunch of people they’ll never give credit to, and as soon as they stop listening to those people they fade from relevance. And even though they have plenty examples to look to (the juxtaposition of this compared to twitter is really something) they don’t learn from it.

          • poohbear@toons.zone
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            1 year ago

            I disagree that the punching bag strategy is effective - even looking beyond the obvious example w/ knock-on effects Elon has done from Twitter -> Tesla, you’ve got Adam Neumann w/ WeWork, Travis Kalanick w/ Uber, etc. who’ve taken similar personality deflection strategies - it only caused more long-term harm than good for both medium-term operations and brand reputation.

            It’s not a sustainable strategy and it’s pretty cringy to see it happen from an investor perspective.

    • megaman1970@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Has anyone considered creating a bridging API interface for lemmy? Something that can translate between the lemmy and reddit API to make this easier?

  • Briongloid@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    I’m surprised how quickly I’ve adapted to fediverse, Mastodon just didn’t fill-in for twitter in the way that the lemmy instances have, once I learned how they work together.

    Now that I have gotten over the first hump, it feels new and exciting enough to make up for the lack of diverse content. I really think lemmy/kbin can be the platforms that push forward an interoperable, self-custodial social media.

    • Satiric_Weasel@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Presumably it’s only going to get better over time. I was afraid I’d lose this part of the internet when Reddit went full corpo, but to be honest the quality of discussion on Lemmy makes up for the diminished content.

      • Lemdee@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Honestly, my discussions have been nicer over here on the fediverse than they were on most parts of Reddit.

        • Briongloid@aussie.zone
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          It’s like small town, big city. Smaller communities are usually happier and more friendly.

          I do want it to continue growing, but I will be enjoying it while it lasts.

          • Lemdee@lemmy.world
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            For sure. Which is another great thing about this decentralization. If a community gets too big and has too many asshats, you can easily break off into another instance!

            I don’t think Lemmy will be immune to that, but I think the decentralization will help a lot in controlling that negative aspect.

    • aka_oscar@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Same. Ive already started using lemmy as a place to find solutions to my problems. I just dont google “problem reddit”. I go to lemmy search bar and browse “specific keyword not working”. Been working with certaib topics, and its only gonna get better from now on

      • vocornflakes@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oh yeah, Lemmy has a usable search bar! Kinda forgot that it can be useful after using Reddit for so long.

      • fcuks@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I tried searching for top 10 eyelash extension brands for dogs on lemmy and it didn’t find anytthing pfft

      • ChaosAD@lemmy.world
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        What I am also doing is when the solution is only on reddit, I will create a new topic with it in a lemmy instance.

        Also important topics should be backed up in internet.archive.

    • wahni@beehaw.org
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      I agree, the inherit fragmentation in the fediverse architecture has a certain negative impact on the microblogging experience for me (but I still won’t go back to a centralized platform ever again), but for Lemmy/kbin it fits perfectly. Link aggregation sites are already fragmented into separate communities by design.

      • darius@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yepp, it works surprisingly well. I assume one of the similar communities will eventually “win” on one of the instances, like with similar subreddits over time. Also some instances will go full specific, like nature or movies or gaming etc. See the growth of lemmynsfw already, lol.

        I’m really liking it a lot. I wasn’t too amused by Mastodon either, but as you say: for link aggregation, for specific communities, for discussing topics (and not being about people, but about topics) this is a perfect match.

      • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I even view the fragmentation problem in niche communities as a feature not a bug. Don’t like the coffee community on one instance? Try checking out the coffee community on a different instance. You might like the second group of people better

    • LemmyAtem@beehaw.org
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      I said it elsewhere, but I fuckin like Lemmy man. I’m glad I found it, regardless of how/why I did.

    • Gobbel2000@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      We absolutely must ship what we said we would.

      Nothing new, but shows that there is absolutely no attempt to find a compromise. I won’t be coming back on Wednesday.

    • minimar@lemmy.world
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      Did he just imply people will protest by assaulting someone wearing a reddit logo?!

    • Clbull@beehaw.org
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      To be fair, he isn’t wrong.

      I cannot see another blackout happening. I think a sizeable chunk of Reddit’s moderators would go back if it otherwise meant losing power and influence on one of the largest social media sites.

      Of course a lengthier or indefinite blackout of most of Reddit’s communities would cause major disruption.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      1 year ago

      People commenting on there calling them lame for trying to protect the communities that they care about. Yet these idiots use the platform (for free) and just gobble up promotions and ads from daddy corporate and say thank you

    • Hyperz@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      That’s great news 👏. I really hope most of the subs currently participating end up going indefinite. Especially with Spez shrugging off the whole thing in the media.

    • BlackCoffee@beehaw.org
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      The relay creator did the math and came to the conclusion that an subscription model might maybe work but it would be to tight. It reads as the person is saying that it is unfeasonable.

      Even if the apps would comply;

      • Reddit will jack the prices again when they see fit.
      • Reddit also wins with this pricing because they are gonna pocket the cash.

      Reddit will limit ‘Recommend’ and NFSW content to its official app. >

      And ohw yeah you are gonna get less content for your subscription. It is all in bad faith.

      • 🐝🇭🇪🅻🅻🇪🇧🅴🆁🇹🐝@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I think that a forced paid subscription will probably kill it anyway long term, who in their right mind would pay a subscription to access Reddit?

        Also don’t forget that these app owners themselves are running a business and probably make a bunch of money from their apps that they don’t want to see evaporate with the changes.

        • daguito81@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Another good point he made is about how he’s calculating this. He’s projecting current usage into the sub model.

          But he’s probably very right that casuals will probably leave and power users will probably pay. So it’s the Spotify problem, your power users use you more costing you more but they don’t pay more so you start going in the red. Considering relay is not a VC backed app or anything like that. One miscalculation and one bad month and you could see thousands of dollars in surprise costs.

    • feetongrass@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t know api changes means 3rd party apps no longer can show nsfw content. Nobody’s going to pay a subscription and not be able to see stuff that they can see on the official app. Looks like reddit is giving all 3rd party app developers a shitty deal whichever way you cut it.

    • 100_kg_90_de_belin @feddit.it
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      1 year ago

      The Internet was supposed to be better, but it turned into another set of monthly bills. And caving in to Reddit’s gouging sets a dangerous precedent, because it normalizes the smearing of devs that brought us here.

    • Dathknight@feddit.de
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      I can’t blame him if he wants his app to survive. I used the pro version for years and would happily payed the planed subscription. But because the vast majority, if not all of the money goes to Reddit I just can’t bring myself to do it. I hope his calculations are correct and if they are not, I hope he doesn’t falls into dept.

      I can’t blame the 3P Devs for dealing with this situation as they see fit. It feels like shooting the messenger …

    • DarkGamer@beehaw.org
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      I don’t know how to feel about this, that’s the app I use and was mad about losing… I already bought the paid version a long time ago but now it’s moving to a subscription model so I guess that doesn’t count anymore…

      The base subscription could cost $2 per month, with an extra $1 for message notifications to account for the additional API calls that such polling incurs.

      • daguito81@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I just had a Rollercoaster of emotions. I was sad and angry to see relay go be sure it’s been with me for idk how long (more than 10 years? Has it been that long?). But then losing relay would severely cut my reddit time and lemmy being a lot smaller meant that I could potentially kick this habit. So was kind of excited.

        Then I read your message that relay is not going and I’m like “fuck! My addiction will never be cured!” Then saw its a subscription model and now I’m really conflicted.

      • somniumx@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        I’m in the same boat. It was my go-to app, and at first, I was happy that it will stay open - but during the last few days, I realized more and more… I don’t care anymore. Not about relay, but about reddit itself.

        I’ve uninstalled relay on sunday - and never missed it on my phone. I just stopped wasting time and did better things with my time. At this point in time, I can’t see myself putting out $2 a month just to get angry at ragebait again.

  • poohbear@toons.zone
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    1 year ago

    The Verge: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

    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. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.

    That’s an absolutely tone deaf response from spez. The talking points are exactly what I expected and I’m not surprised, but man, whoever’s running PR at Reddit is really dropping the ball.

    If they do IPO, anyone who buys into it wholeheartedly deserves the deep losses the company will incur long term - it seems no-one on Reddit’s leadership team, or anyone egging the company to float, understands what makes their own product tick.

    • mobyduck648@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      it seems no-one on Reddit’s leadership team, or anyone egging the company to float, understands what makes their own product tick.

      Which is good news for us because even if this does blow over they will fuck up again and every time it happens we’ll profit from it in new users. Spez’s problem isn’t that his dream is unattainable, his problem is that the person having that dream is him.

      • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I’m pretty sure his dream is just to make increasingly absurd amounts of money, every year more than the last: Line Go Up, forever. That dream is attainable in the short term, but utterly unattainable in the long term on a planet with finite resources.

        He’s just in it for the $$$, regardless of how, not for any of the things that’re good about reddit. Someone who cared about reddit for any other reason wouldn’t do this to it.

    • femboy_link.mp4@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Is he wrong though?

      We all know that users are going to come flooding back as soon as the closed subs open again. Reddit has been through controversy after controversy and has only grown in size. The truth is that most people on Reddit don’t really care about third party apps, a lot didn’t even know they existed before the Apollo dev spilled the tea on his conversations with Reddit. Spez knows this and is counting on it.

      For this protest to have any teeth at all, the protesting subs need to stay blacked out indefinitely until Reddit starts negotiating realistically, or they start hemorrhaging users to alternative platforms.

      • Dandylion@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        so - as one of those people who really didn’t know much about the 3rd party apps or even what the protest/blackout was, I was wishing for an alternative for quite some time now. Reddit has become an echo chamber where you’re downvoted for having your own opinion, no matter how vanilla the “dissenting” opinion is. The trolliing and constant arguing gets old after awhile, and I don’t think the current state of reddit is what the original intent of the platform ever was. This, for me, was why I gravitated toward Beehaw specifically. I’m not going back to Reddit. It reminds me of a playground full of bullies, itching for an argument. This platform is so much more my speed. And I feel like there are a pretty decent amount of people here who are in the same mind… for us, the alternative is welcome and Spez can wait til he retires for us to return because it’s not happening.

        • flatbield@beehaw.org
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          Yes… I feel the same way. We will see. The last big blowup there was not a place to go (I went to voat for awhile, but it was just another walled garden filled with a certain type of vibe I did not really like that much). Lemmy seems pretty good now. We all know that moderation and a heavy “Do not feed the trolls” has always been the rule all the way back to Usenet and the early internet. One reason I choose Behaw is they seem to believe in that basic philosophy. Plus federation, people that do not like that, they can go to instances where they are happy too. Seems win win.

          The big counter issue is scale. There are some areas where Lemmy does not cover well. These tend to be technical areas like Law.

          • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I wish Lemmy had a really easy way for people to self host their own instances without having to know really much of anything at all about how it works (or at least an easy and comprehensive Guide to Self-hosting for Dummies!), so that we were less likely to end up with too many people on too few instances.

            I’ve never self-hosted anything, and I know I could learn it, but it’s still a project.

            • crank@beehaw.org
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              I do some self hosting for my own projects… if you want to and have the time an resources it is fun in a way. It is trivial to start with 1 thing so try it out. Probably your OS already has servers installed.

              However it is my opinion that it is better, for the most part, for most people to use tools hosted externally. There are economies of scale. It would really be truely stupid for masses of people to all have their own little homelabs. And being an admin is a serious trade with a lot of skills and it is a time sink. And it is risky. If we are doing stuff online that we want to last, that is important, there are reasons to leave it to smarty pants nerds. Just like home maintenece or health care or hair cuts… there is a role for hobby DIY and a role for getting a pro.

              If you cant parse the documentation to figure out how to set it up, you are not competant to do it. The software is not ready to be run by a person of your skill level. And im not saying that to be shitty to you; i looked at the requirements and i think it would be more than i have the time/knowledge to do. I have tried and failed for this reason at lots of things.

              This is really complex project. Try something simpler Here is a list (simple to ultra complicated): https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

              There are a couple of selfhost(ed) communities on lemmy too

      • poohbear@toons.zone
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        Wrong? No. But leadership is about communication and diplomacy as much as strategy. Short term gameplay aside, it doesn’t take much effort to pretend to attempt to placate power users and it doesn’t cost anything besides pride to do so. At least Reddit had a half-decent communication strategy with the Boston Bomber debacle - can’t say the same with this one.

        In any case, whilst you won’t get the r/funny’s of Reddit going private forever, you do have some big ones like r/iphone saying they’re blacking out indefinitely.

        It’s pretty myopic of the leadership team to think that you shouldn’t at least attempt to make an user relations play here.

    • GiantBasil@beehaw.org
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      At this point I’m convinced there’s no one running PR, it’s just Spez and his admin lackeys coming up with random stuff Musk-style.

    • Gur814@beehaw.org
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      That’s an absolutely tone deaf response from spez.

      Tone deafness is spez’s speciality.

    • FiendishFork@lemmy.world
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      It’s definitely a weird response, since it’s directed at employees I would have expected him to try to be reassuring without downplaying or even really mentioning the blackout.

      Should have been easy to just say something bland like “we believe in the changes we are making and how they will make our company better. “

    • Spzi@lemmy.click
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      1 year ago

      Everything passes. Including reddit. waves hands this is all just temporary.

      Type O Negative - Everything Dies has surprisingly fitting lyrics for the search of people for a place to stay.

      • Evkob@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I wasn’t familiar with the band and for whatever reason based on the names I had thought it was going to be either an indie pop or a folk punk song.

        I was not expecting I LIKE VITAMIIIIIIIIIINS to be growled at me like that, I had a good laugh.

  • confusedwiseman@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    This has been absolutely wild. Sadly, it’s not that surprising and the corporate speak is strong. While Reddit likely won’t change, the “type” of users that will leave over this is the kind of users that made Reddit the community it is today. These are all likely active members from Fark, Slashdot, Digg, and others.

    Good news though, we’ve got a group of people that are experienced in making fantastic communities. I’ll bet we’ll do it again. We’ll see how this goes with the Fedditverse/Threadverse via Lemmy/kbin. I’m sure we’ll figure this community/magazine thing out soon enough.

    Sometimes all we can control is how we react to the situation.

    • Deviance@beehaw.org
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      I find it a bit disheartening that a lot of comments on Reddit (I know I’m mostly staying away) are labeling us, the people who take issue with not only the API pricing but the entire direction the site is going, snowflakes and whiny babies.

      A lot of “I don’t cares” and “I just want to use the site not see this useless protest” etc. I remember a time when reddit could come together and actually get results (for better and for worse).

      Even the way people comment is different. Seems like a lot more low effort, mouth breather posts, or suspiciously bad faith arguments that I see in response to the increasingly rare thoughtful/informative dialogue in the form of posts or comments.

      I’m not saying the site was ever an iconic standard to the peak intellectual, but there seemed to be more people hungry for that type of content.

      Maybe I’m just looking back at everything through rose tinted glasses, but I miss the days of ending up going down a new rabbithole sparked by a random comment chain.

      I wonder if it’s just me and I’m just turning into that old bitter dude longing for the “good ole days.”

      • Azzu@discuss.tchncs.de
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        That’s reddit from 8+ years ago you’re talking about, and small communities. Reddit has long been a mainstream community now, and we all know how the average person is.

        • Deviance@beehaw.org
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          Guess I am getting old. Hope Lemmy here can usher in a new wave of similar content. I’ll have to wait and see.

  • sprightlycompanion@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Thinking about sticking to Lemmy for most things and using my Reddit alt account just as a porn aggregator. Who’s with me?!