Reddit communities with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
Reddit communities with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
The major Star Trek subs all have. Started their own Lemmy instance (startrek.website) and have their private message directing folks over.
Well they uave been familiar with the Federation for very long time.
that would explain why Im suddenly seeing a ton of star trek posts on my federated feed, I mean Id expect some but Ive seen a lot more all of a sudden
That's awesome. Starting a community is cool but starting their own instance is next level.
Oh nice I was looking for a good Trek community. Did /r/tuvixinstitute /r/daystrominstitute move over?
That is awesome! how soon until Beehaw is federated with them?
This only proves that you can't unilaterally migrate a subreddit. That instance currently has ~250 users. I don't know how active the subs it represents were, but surely they had at least an order of magnitude more active users than that?
Oh nice! I'm gonna have to follow them on here too- now I just need other subs for my interests (cars, aquariums, etc) and shitposting sites (dccirclejerk, batman arkham) to make their way here
Does anybody know yet if you are allowed to criticize startrek on those communities? I had a major problem with /r/startrek in that you couldn’t say anything less than glowingly positive or you were banned. Like, not even about the whole woke bullshit, you couldn’t even say the writing was below par - banned.
I just wanna talk about startrek, both the good and the glaringly bad lol.
And they have made a lemmy based icon already!
I would be cautious too if I were a sub owner and guiding people to an alternative honestly. Lemmy and Kbin both are relatively unstable right now, even if they are pretty good. Waiting a little to see which instances are more stable and likely to last is a good move before planting people somewhere and making an official replacement sub.
This is the main issue I see right now as well. I created my own instance for my account to live on, just so I know it will be there as long as I want it to. But that doesn't do anything for communities I'm subscribed to that could, potentially, be on an instance that later goes down.
I think communities of similar topics are going to need to coordinate in the long run, and perhaps run their own instance to house their communities. This way the folks running the community and the folks hosting it are one in the same. You'd have instances that mainly house users, and perhaps a community or two. That's where most folks would have their main account. Then you'd have instances that mainly house content, with few users besides the moderation/admin team(s).
This will be like the YT changes in 2017 only much sharper. The utility of reddit is already dead. The whole point in all of this is to be another mindless zombie platform. The native app and nu(ked) reddit were already like this. Now you won't be able to search and find anything anywhere on the internet unless you are escorted there by an algorithm.
That and there is some rapid development for the apps going on right now. Lemmy definitely still needs some UI improvements and has a bunch of little problems which could turn away new users prematurely. So it would be good if there was some advertisement in July when the reddit apps shut down.
Fittingly I had two rewrite this comment and another comment 10 minutes ago because I got errors when trying to send them..
I mean...Reddit was taken offline by subs going private, and they had forewarning this was going to happen. Lemmy is handling a veritable monsoon of new users
they are playing the long game so should we
that's why we should be spreading the word about the fediverse
I think the big Mastodon push last year has made things a little bit easier for Lemmy. Basic awareness of the fediverse has broken into the mainstream of social media, rather than being a niche interest of Free Software enthusiasts.
Now that Lemmy's gotten this initial nudge of mainstream support, I'll be far more engaged here than I ever was on Reddit.
This may seem a tad ironic since I'm posting here in the fediverse, but I think we should also be encouraging a variety of alternative, self-hostable options, e.g. Postmill (similar to reddit but not federated), Discourse (more of a classic forum structure but with some modernizations), etc.
Not everyone will want to try to figure out federation/ActivityPub, and that's okay, because there are more options that folks can spin up. The fediverse, imo, benefits as much from other self-hosted sites as it does from those that connect with it.
There are enough people posting to see a fresh dozen or so posts an hour my Subscribed > New feed and I don't have a ton of subs, mostly STEM. Honestly a few days ago that was a crazy pipe dream. With this kind of mass threshold passed, we only need is to expand the scope/quality of posts and this can be a permanent home that organically draws people to the platform. I think we need a page on the major instances that show the plans and limitations if those hosting the instance and where they need support. Like learning Ruud has a bunch of other federated .world servers and seeing his remarkable ability to handle scale makes me much more confident to be here.
Can the various servers take it? The one I'm on (BeeHaw) has held up admirably but I've heard of others going down with an influx of users.
The answer is prompting users to spread out to different instances, at least in the short term
Apparently the head mod of /r/Tumblr has already been forcibly demodded. A bit weird that Tumblr of all places has been the starting point.
The real question I think is will Reddit retaliate back and forcibly recover communities and install new mods?
Also /r/adviceanimals, we'll see which others
I predicted this but kind of surprised that it happened so fast. I'm guessing this mod won't allow anything critical of spez.
I predicted forcible demods...
But like, I feel like the one thing that would work is the one thing no one has been talking about.
A mod strike!
Maybe it has been suppressed because it would seem too radical but like, if the communities are going to die anyways might as well go out with a bang. Mods should all go on strike and spammers can run free and burn the site to the ground. That's basically what happened with Twitter, right? Has Spez seen what has happened to the valuation of Twitter this past year or what?
I went on Reddit during the blackout and on the front page there were shitty tattoos of bdsm furries with their dick and balls out... If the front page could all turn into that and the enforcement of NSFW tags was lost due to lack of mods, I can't imagine that the shareholders would be happy about what the site has become.
Mod + user direct action - everyone should post spacedicks/porn and mods should refuse to enforce the rules. Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like... Especially before the IPO. Plus, the internet can get VERY active when it comes to participating in mischief instead of watching things slowly fall apart. I'd upvote spacedicks for the cause.
I have no idea why no one is talking about this unless posts/comments like that are being suppressed. Since it seems like most 3rd party apps have the best mod tools and most mods won't keep up their work if they don't have the right tools, the end result will be the same anyways.
Edit: they literally cannot afford to pay enough people to take over all mod duties so this could work. Spez should get a preview of what he's looking at BEFORE the IPO in my opinion.
Do you have any source or details? Would love to read about it.
Good. I really hope this causes a snowball effect. After spez (fuck spez) basically told all the moderators "fuck you" today, I'd say there is enough momentum to get at least a good half of the participating subs on board with an indefinite blackout. And with more moderators checking their inboxes and feeds tomorrow, "after the blackout," I anticipate seeing a second wave starting tomorrow and throughout the next week, as these mods return to reddit temporarily to coordinate.
KEEP IT GOING!!!
It was truly unexpected to see how large social networks find new and innovative ways to ride and accelerate their downfall.
From my perspective: - Facebook --> Cambridge Analytica fiasco - Twitter --> Elon was bluffing but Twitters Legal team forced him to proceed otherwise the SEC was already looking for blood and an excuse to make his life very difficult for all his previous shenanigans - Reddit --> already downhill since just before Ellen Pao nonetheless may I speculate that perhaps one or more of the larger shareholders/investors forced the current situation but Huffman underestimated and did not realize that the power users and pro bono moderators were entirely dependent on third-party apps.
Moreover, I exclusively used reddit through old.reddit.com I have no idea how current Reddit actually looks like nor do I care as it was unusable.
Sad to see great things go but life continues onward.
Always felt that the way redditors treated Ellen Pao was horrendous. That place is a cesspit
https://nextshark.com/ellen-pao-reddit-dacvak-ama You sure about that?
It's inevitable, honestly. All things end.
At least we got to see a REMARKABLE flame-out of a once incredibly popular website. I thought Digg was wild, this is something else entirely.
Imagine how differently this would have played out if Reddit CEO Steve Huffman had taken a collaborative approach with app developers and stake holders. A few months ago, he could have called them up and humbly asked them for ideas and assistance in making Reddit profitable. Reddit would be on path to financial success by now.
I don't think it's wrong for Spez to charge for API access, but the rates he's vowing to charge are excessive and clearly designed to nuke third-party apps from their ecosystem.
As for how I'd make money from Reddit in his shoes, I'd:
Twitch is hardly a profit center, streaming isn't where you'd go to boost profits.
Lemmy is growing but we need to work to make easy to allow reddit mods to setup instances and fund them
I am a Reddit mod. Gimme the step-by-step tutorial!
Be mildly competent at computers... or know someone who is and willing to help you.
Either setup your own instance, or find an instance that's already setup that you like and the owner will let you add stuff to the database...
Start a community...
Read here... https://github.com/rileynull/RedditLemmyImporter
Success! now you've migrated your subreddit to lemmy!
(This is a little sarcastic. I'm not good at legit guides. But it is possible!)
Edit: tweaked phrasing... doing this to general public servers would be unlikely.
Well, on Beehaw you cannot create new communities, but you certainly can be made a mod of one even from another instance. Find the ones you want and ask the current mods of it.
Maybe pick an existing one and help it get off the ground:
I haven’t found many moderator features on Lemmy so far. The community that I created does not seem to have any way of blocking posts.
You should be able to, here's the mod docs
Reddit declined to comment
I am guessing their comment would be something like, "FUCK!!!!!!"
Well now they have to take over the subs and get new moderators. They won't just sit there and watch Reddit burn further.
For the 2 days private protest, their comment that it will be over soon was appropriate. As giving an exact time frame allows to know the exact end of it. They could just sit there and wait it out.
Now with the indefinite protest, they have to act. And to get to content onto Reddit again, they will probably be looking for new unpaid strike breakers mods for those subs, so they don't have to actually hire and pay people to moderate content on their soon publicly traded company website.
No, it would've been something along the lines of "A: We are evaluating it at this time for the best approach moving forward"
Also there alot of bots going around Reddit saying the protest is not working and all the subreddit mods are going to be easily replaced, with who I don't know.
Well if only bots are talking, mods can be bots too. /r/SubredditSimulator will just take over the whole Reddit
Pretty much already there on some subs.
Stuff’s already starting to go back to public, I expect nothing to change for the better.
I mean it seems like only a couple thousand went public, the site is still very much noticeably short on content.
Cool, well the reason I'm here instead of on reddit is because of this. Last time I did this was when I found reddit after digg.
Can I get an eli5 on digg? It seems to have happened years and years before I joined reddit
Digg was a site that was a lot like reddit, it was incredibly popular until they did a site redesign that many users hated and they were unable to roll back, engagement went way down, users looked for alternatives, and reddit got most of the refugees. I haven't been back on digg for many years.
I thought reddit learned its lesson from digg given they kept legacy old.reddit.com running even after their own redesign, but they failed to remember that 3rd party interfaces to their API is almost the same thing; users like interfacing with their social media using the UI/UX design they chose and grew accustomed to. If they take that away, it risks alienating users and driving them to alternatives.
If reddit was smart they'd make it so that people with reddit gold can keep using API access instead of locking them out entirely.
Same but different. The site sold out and made some changes that were good for investors, but bad for users. It also happened to slashdot. When that went bad, we all went to digg.
Looking back, I'm surprised reddit lasted as long as it did. Digg and slashdot still exist, but aren't what they were in their heyday. I'm sure reddit will continue in some form.
And reddit still don't give a shit. Just shows how much they care about the community.
I honestly don't care whether or not reddit (the company) gives a shit. I just want users to realize that reddit deserves to be replaced by something more open and user focused.
RSS is one thing I have yet to dive into. There are videos that I want to watch and channels that I want to be subscribed to but I'm disliking the constant monitoring if activity online.
Cirfsnglh on travel with AirBNBs and the smart TVs with logins feels so weird knowing what others are up to, and I don't feel comfortable adding my recents to their lists.
wait, I've never used quora. whats bad about it
@soiling @BendyLemmy the quality of answers is low, you're not missing out
Other than blocking you from browsing their site unless you join (or clear your cookies) you mean?
I realised after a while that Quora is full of dumb question askers and question answerers wanting to sound smart. I earnt $5 from it though so can’t complain
Can you elaborate further on the YouTube - RSS feeds? Seems like something I'd like to use too
Hey folks. Looks like I let this one get by so I'll leave it since there's already some discussion happening, but for the next few days please try to keep discussion of the Reddit situation in the megathread.
Here ya go!
Sorry about that, I've been away from the computer for a bit. For future reference if we have a megathread about a big event like this, it will most likely be pinned at the top of the relevant community. This one is pinned at the top of !Technology here: https://beehaw.org/c/technology
Cool that sites are reporting on it. Maybe that’ll add pressure.
I suspect we’re about to see a lot of mods lose their permissions. Reddit will allow some protest but not at the expense of investors getting spooked.
You're exactly right. It's not that I don't want it to work, I would love for it to. But what you're suggesting isn't new. They've done it before and they'll do it again.
Mods need to follow the path of the star trek community. Pick a new home server migrate folks out of reddit. Just going dark is not enough
Ahead of the Tuesday post, more than 300 subreddits had committed to staying dark indefinitely, SpicyThunder335 said. The list included some hugely popular subreddits, like r/aww (more than 34 million subscribers), r/music (more than 32 million subscribers), and r/videos (more than 26 million subscribers). Even r/nba committed to an indefinite timeframe at arguably the most important time of the NBA season. But SpicyThunder335 invited moderators to share pledges to keep the protests going, and the commitments are rolling in.
A surprising amount of big names there. I figured it would be more obscure/niche subreddits like /r/TaylorSwift, /r/SpaghettiWesterns, or something like that
While I would expect the larger ones to see admin takeovers, I wonder how easy it will be recruit capable mods to police those large subs...
Oh 100% i see moderation suffering. But reddit will only care about that when it directly affects them financially. Which is to say that there is an amount of abuse and bigotry that reddit is cool with as long as it doesn't bring lawsuits or scare advertisers
Will it really matter if all the power users and mods end up leaving? All that will be left is low effort stuff
It already is full of bots upvoting/replying to posts by karma bots. They just need to start having bots moderate the subs, and turn the whole place into r/subredditsimulator (still the best thing that ever came out of Reddit, imo).
As much as I do hope this helps, I'm afraid it won't change a thing: Like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well." -Spez. Seem they will ride out this storm. This have to be permanent to make any changes at Reddit.
Maybe Spez is right (obligatory fuck /u/spez comment), but this blowout also brought Lemmy and other similar sites to the limelight. We're on the stage where we early adopters are testing the waters, it's just a matter of time until a new competitor stands above the others and Spez's Reddit irónico s going to have to eat those words.
But not for me. I'm forever gone.
And if there are enough power users (lots of comments, posts) like me who feel the same, it will have an impact.
There's a HUGE middle ground between "nothing changes" and "reddit goes out of business." As we see with Twitter, you can have a zombie platform that persists but slowly loses inertia month after month.
It's not that Reddit dies abruptly. It's that the platform is wounded now and, without attention, will bleed out slowly over many years.
At a communications conference last week, a Bloomberg reporter told the attendees that most tier 1 journalists are looking for stories on LinkedIn now instead of Twitter. It’s gone from vital to junk in just a few months. Without its moderators, Reddit faces the same fate: lots of activity, but most of it junk.
My goal is to hurt Reddit’s IPO to prevent a capitalisation on the platforms recent string of real world impacts, such as the Game Stop short squeeze and the intelligence leak that happened on a Discord server.
I don’t care if Reddit’s CEO caves in, just so long as Reddit doesn’t get the large influx of capital to prevent the corporation from achieving any larger impact like Twitter and Facebook did in their respective times.
The secondary marketplace to sell your Reddit accounts to bot farmers is very active, accounts are being bought at upwards of $200.
https://www.upvotes.io/sell-your-reddit-account/
The social bots work just fine inside reddit’s Infrastructure without 3rd party apps and/or API data.
Reddit is going to be just another Twitter for the 2024 US election, where the conversation is managed and directed by bots, but pro-democracy based. When that becomes known Wall Street will act accordingly and Reddit won’t be worth much…
a lot of people back on Reddit could not give less of a shit about the issues and just want their content; they even see this as just mods powertripping again
it's kind of annoying to see that, tbh, even if I sort of get it
A look at their comment histories might be interesting, to see if they're the ones contributing content worth reading.
I suspect I can guess the answer.
they could easily have their cake and eat it too by signing up to lemmy. There are a lot of instances out there and they could make their own if none fit.
it's kind of annoying to see that
Why would that be annoying? It means the strike is working, it does exactly what it is meant to do. If the consumers don't find content, they will ultimately move elsewhere
Damn, the apathy is strong but I do get it. After all, Reddit was mostly a place for me to deflate and relax or just read things during downtime.
Problem is it will work lul. Just read some comments in some subs that are restricted like the Star Wars one. Kinda sad to see people bend over so easily only because they cannot post in their sub for a few days. Like, geez doesn't matter at all what % of people use 3rd party apps. A little bit of inconvenience doesn't kill anyone and it's good to stand up for stuff like this as well.
Keep in mind that Reddit is running a propaganda campaign to try to squash the blackout. Notice most of the comments are almost exactly the same. As we saw with Trump, all it takes is a few well placed comments to stir up dissent and get people to parrot dumb talking points. Reddit can easily manipulate votes and comments to make it look like most people don't care, but obviously they do, because there was the biggest blackout I've seen on a social media platform ever.
I hope the struggle continues until Reddit feels the pain to their bottom line.
Who cares? We're here now, the only thing we should hope it's that the good content creators move from reddit to here, aside from that, they may do what they want with the site from here on.
It wont. They are going to step in.
The thing that worries me is if they do manage to get through this without losing anything significant, it’s only going to give them confidence to go further. How long before old.reddit.com goes? NSFW content?
Don't underestimate the power of spite.
correct.
It will not pass until it is made right.
I guess Reddit has introduced free API calls for moderator apps. They're trying to placate the mods, but screw the users. Good luck with that.
It's almost like they never considered that moderators use the same third party apps as the rest of their users, either.
Though based on the leaked internal memo, it looks like Reddit doesn't think very much of their users at all.
It turns out though, the mods are also users. That's the whole free labor market Reddit has tapped into. They don't have to pay mods and so users are mods. Yet now they are trying to monetize just half and completely failing to understand what their user base even looks like. I don't know many mods but the ones I do know are users first and moderators because they want the community to be decent.
The community literally has reddit by the balls, and are just gonna let go by ending to so early. Good thing at least some are permanently shutting down
good 💙
Hit them where it hurts the most!
Couldn't the Admin team just force-open subs, at least the big ones?
Am I missing something? I mean they could just hire new mods.
I hope they don't, but spez isn't exactly known for being righteous
They could, but this would probably anger people further. So they’re hoping it blows over without them needing to take aggressive actions.
Thats what they are doing
Comments around that tweet are a dumpster fire
Sure, they could go find new people who do this job for free (and thanks to the API changes virtually tool-less) or hire people to do it for them. Whether those people will be equally successful in nurturing their communities, who knows.
But it's definitely an option and probably only a matter of time before it happens.
I think they're going to face a shortage of moderators trying to do that, but apparently it has happened at least once already:
They kinda already are. The problem is finding new volunteers to cover them.
This is basically on the level of a church or homeless shelter disrespecting their volunteers. NPOs only thrive on the contributions of random people investing their efforts, and a social media platform has some parallels to the model.
Zzzzzzz....fuck u/spez.
I'm happy to find a place like Lemmy. It's good to have federated services that don't have to be at the beck and call of a group of heartless investors with the face of a petulant manchild like Spez.
This was precisely the wrong thing for him to say if he wanted that to happen
Seriously. Talk about poking the bear, he got me pissed all over again. Never going back to reddit now.
That's because spazzy spez didn't think his internal memo would leak.
Nah I think it's clear he wanted it to leak. He's just an egomaniac who thinks he's actually a good leader. That section of the memo was for investor confidence. (It'll pass, no revenue effect so far, etc.) The other part about warning employees not to wear Reddit gear in public for fear of violence was meant for the press and for the uninformed, to try to garner sympathy and paint the protestors as bad actors.
What internal memo?
He expects so because he's going to have his admin staff de-mod all the rebels, open the subs back up, and ruthlessly ban anyone who says a word about the controversy. The user population that remains will eventually go back to sleep, and all will be well in Reddit-land.
Lol good luck finding new mods that will be any good after pulling a stunt like that. They certainly aren’t going to pay for any either.
That's why I'm not sure that letter was intentionally leaked. He said all the wrong things for de-escalating this situation, he just added more fuel to the fire.
I mean, the charitable read is the CEO of the company reassuring the entire company that they'll be OK. That's his entire job. Yes, it's a pretty crappy thing to say but we all weren't the intended audience. He's there to rally the troops and keep morale up.
That said, fuck u/spez and I'm way happier over here than there.
After reading his message I blocked Reddit at DNS level. I wasn’t planning to leave it completely before, but now I’m not planning to unblock it till when u/spez will be there.
Every person counts