Hate to by the pessimist, but he’s not wrong. Most subs will open back up tomorrow, I doubt most will close again. The users that aren’t on board will jump ship, but a greater percentage will likely just grumble and complain while they continue using the service. It’s what they’re banking on.
They’re not getting me back. I doubt that will affect their bottom line much, but it’s all I can do.
While you’re absolutely correct, keep in mind Reddit heavily relies on a smaller number of people dedicated to creating the communities, the rules, moderating, engaging users, fixing issues.
Sure, the large number of people from all across the world interacting and that are missing from Lemmy is a major letdown… But can Reddit sustain itself for another decade while actively pushing away the dedicated moderators? The community creators? The people carefully writing full blown wikis? Can they keep their userbase by slowly filling their app with bad quality clones of services like TikTok, NFTs, Twitter Spaces? How many ads will people tolerate? How many times can Reddit push “random” livestreams to people’s feeds and remove communities they dislike?
It won’t be today, and it won’t be thanks to the blackouts… But Reddit is already done, it just takes a while to fully halt a moving train even after the engine collapses.
For me the benefit of the various mismanagement crises at Twitter and now reddit is that they push enough people to alternatives to create a critical mass there. Mastodon will likely never be what Twitter was, but enough interesting people and enough of my professional network now have a presence on the latter that it’s become a viable alternative for me. Same thing here. Whether or not Lemmy ever reaches reddit’s proportions, there are enough interesting links and discussions here to keep me occupied. And if not, I could probably stand to spend a bit less time on social media anyhow.
I agree completely. Also, I mentioned elsewhere that I feel more likely to actually contribute to this smaller community. I’ve already made more posts (2…3 maybe?) in a week here than I did in the last 2 years on Reddit. When you don’t feel like you’re shouting to 3 million people who aren’t listening, it’s more fun! It’s hard to really talk to anyone when you don’t know anyone at the party right? Is that enough analogies? I feel like that’s probably enough…
Yes! I recently went to a professional conference for the first time since the Twitter debacle and found that while most of the participants were still tweeting, Mastodon felt like a fun secret society within the meeting. We recognized one another, said hello in the hallways, had conversations that felt like secret handshakes. It emphasized for me the difference between having a community and shouting into the void.
Now, if only I could follow you on Lemmy. lol
Yup, they did their market research, they know most will pop up online. Hopefully the leaked memo will piss off more admins to stay down, I really do hope most will, but most of those mods love being in power - and they’re not in power if they are down.
“There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen.”
They’re not just noises Spez. They’re voices, they’re trying to talk with you.
Yeah it’s been said he has contempt for the users but i think it’s more just utter disconnection. He thinks he owns a website, instead he’s got the infrasctructure for a community - one that’s angry and can go elsewhere.
But will enough us jump ship? i hope so but am not that optimistic
It’s mostly irrelevant to me whether Reddit crashes and burns or just enshittifies itself into oblivion. The API pricing change as an event made me realize how little value Reddit was providing, but if others are content with the site’s direction, they have an audience.
Same thing happened with Facebook a decade ago. So long as Reddit doesn’t go the Facebook route of covering the web with bullshit to the point I have to add their domains to pihole, it would be difficult to care less about whether this is the end for Reddit.
As opposed to spez talking over us. I don’t think he understands the distinction.
That said I won’t be going back. Just deleted my account. :)
It’s the voices of the dead
Ya this blackout needs to be indefinite at this point if we want any actual reddit changes.
well, only if we let it. which we prolly will.
I do like how the Verge is treating this like a real news story and not just “some weird thing on the internet”
Yeah, their interview with Christian Selig was an interesting read as well: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit — and why users revolted
I found it fascinating (and exciting) that Lemmy and Kbin were directly mentioned!
A significant number of Verge staff are actually pretty active on Mastodon nowadays too, which is awesome.
Shame Christian doesn’t see the value in developing a client yet, but let’s hope that changes 🤞
I intend to stay here on beehaw. It will take me a while to get over the habituated behaviors I had with reddit, but the quality of the posts over here is high. I don’t feel like voices are getting drowned out over here. So reddit won’t miss me. Over time, I won’t miss reddit. All good things must end.
Now time to enjoy watching how new communities and the software driving Lemmy develop.
Yeah, I also will be staying on Lemmy. There’s bugs and performance issues but the quality of conversation is better and interaction feels genuine. There’s also actual possibilities to contribute instead of getting lost in a sea of rehashed comments.
The main thing that is missing now (and I assume will remain missing) are the hobby communities, especially those aimed at non-techies, like sewing, cross stitch,… I feel the people there aren’t going to bother with figuring out Lemmy/Kbin/Fediverse… because they tend to be less tech savvy.
Yea this blackout needs to be indefinite at this point if we want Reddit to actually make changes.
I wonder if the comments about no significant revenue drop still holds true today. I was quite surprised to see that there doesn’t seem to be too big a drop in posts & comments (~1k) aside from the crash yesterday. https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/
Bots have been turned up to 11 to help curb the stats. It’d make sense if this is to prevent the IPO from being impacted by the blackout.
I think that’s kind of proof-positive for just how much content on Reddit is now controlled and pushed by Reddit itself in some way. If 75-80% of the subs where content gets hosted are not adding content, but there hasn’t been a meaningful dip in content, it’s because Reddit is the one controlling the content.
It’s also part of why this API change is so important for them. Have you ever wondered why certain links/stories/things get posted to like 20+ subreddits seemingly all at once? Or no matter how many times you refresh, or which sub you visit it’s the same 3-5 links at the top? It’s because Reddit is being paid to push people to those links. They are getting click share revenue each time someone follows that link from their service. It’s not banner ads they’re worried about, it’s the links themselves. That’s a MASSIVE amount of revenue they’re not getting because if you click it from outside their environment, they get zero money. You can’t ad block the content itself, but make no mistake it is an ad.
That’s my thought too. Even before this, I felt like I was reading automated posts and chat bot responses on reddit. It seems like a zombie forum where most of the “people” weren’t really real, it was just recycled content, laugh tracks, and being force fed content posted by reddit itself (versus users) scraped from other places.
I edited my comment to expand because probably a lot of people don’t realize their being manipulated. You bring up a good point though, because you’re right. The reason it feels like there’s so many polarizing takes and arguments in comments and bot generated discussion is because there is - think about it, say you’re like me/most people and rather than go to the link you just go right to the comments. Well if you see “people” arguing back and forth and posting polar takes, you’re more likely to go to the article and form your own opinion.
The whole bot comments accusing bot comments of being bot comments surely was intriguing. And that’s with them copy-pasting existing comments - wonder how many “users” are GPT bots lately.
reading the comments here is a breath of fresh air compared to the endless recycled posts and comments from bots and users who might as well be bots
“I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public,” CEO Steve Huffman says in an internal memo. “Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.”
Oh piss off, Spez. First you slander /u/iamthatthis and accuse him of blackmail and now you insinuate people mad about your greedy business decisions are out to commit physical violence against your employees?
The question is whether a significant number of mods will stay away from the platform, enough to affect the quality of the experience for the run of the mill reddit visitor. If r/popular starts to fill up with trash or fash then the platform will start to look less appealing to advertisers.
But that might not happen. Mods might return in the most part and Reddit life will go on. In that respect the blackout itself is just noise. The real decision lies with the mods. Their work makes the value proposition to advertisers.
“I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public,” CEO Steve Huffman says in an internal memo. “Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.”
Oh piss off, Spez.
He’s not wrong.
A lot of people will/have moved to Lemmy. The question is, can we take advantage of the momentum and turn this into a real reddit alternative? Because when the blackout ends a lot of people will return to reddit.
At this point it’s not only about the subreddits standing up for their values but each and every one of us. Right now it’s easy to join the boycott Reddit. It will get harder and reveal who really meant it and who just joined the drama
I imagine anyone who’s already made an account here has already made a decent effort to leave permanently but there’s clearly many more people that have not jumped ship to lemmy/kbin. I think that as more people join these services people will improve by their open source nature. Hopefully the kinks will iron out over time. If lemmy can make it a much more seemless process generally, more people will jump ship
We absolutely must ship what we said we would
This absolute blind faith that what roadmap they have set for themselves is “right” is not a sign of good leadership. Maybe they are right and these protests are meaningless in terms of business metrics, but that is not what Steve is saying here. He is dead set on the path he created, outside metrics be damned
Maybe Reddit won’t fail now, but if I were on the board I would be paying close attention to how Steve is leading Reddit through this period and consider whether his complete dismissal of user feedback is a good model for a company preparing for an IPO.
Ignoring their users wholesale will eventually come back to bite them in a meaningful way.
