The end of Reddit? Why the blackout is still going – and what happens next

What happen next is we move on to this better platform

This is not the end of reddit. It is just a hiccup for them as they go public. But the protests was a good opportunity for folks to learn about alternatives. I certainly didn't know alternatives existed. I'm glad to have found fediverse. I fully support the idea and want to see it grow.

Many subs are already opening up again sadly.

The real sub closings and mass exodus from Reddit will most likely begin after the end of the month, when significant and popular 3rd party apps like Sync and Apollo will be shut down.

Add a month to the blackout each time Spez refers to Reddit's employees as "Snoos"

Honestly, there won’t be a mass exodus and Reddit will live on. I’m sure a bunch of users will flock to other platforms but in the long run Reddit only care about people that are already using their new UI and their new app. And those users won’t be leaving.

Regardless whether Reddit survives or not I am glad I found this space and excited for the future of Lemmy/Fediverse.

Man, it's sad to see comments about how this isn't the end of Reddit. I want one of two things: Either to see Reddit straight up die because the communities stayed down, or for them to be forced to relax their API fees. For me personally, Reddit is straight up dead if I cant use old.reddit or Reddit via Apollo / Relay Pro. I need these third party apps. The Reddit app is HORRIBLE in every way, from the layout to the ads.

Reddit isn't special- it's just where everyone is at atm. And why are they at reddit to begin with? It's because of what it was - community focused, and community driven. Now it's profit driven, and the community is pissed.

If you're mad now, just wait till they are publicly traded, and are legally obligated to milk every last dime from their user base to satisfy investors.

I may be missing something, but the article completely loses the thread when it starts grousing over "why won't the 3Ps pay up? " Because even if they pay, NSFW content is still not available for users. Reddit is attempting to force third party devs to charge for an inferior product, which is obviously untenable for all parties.

Huffman says the blackout hasn’t had “significant revenue impact”

So two-day revenue change is his preferred metric? If I were a Reddit investor, I wouldn't want this guy as a CEO...

I think the real test will be when these API rules go into effect at the end of the month. Will all these people who showed solidarity the last two days leave the site then, or will they just quietly download the official app and continue on?

I'm getting used it here and Kbin and that's all it took for me to leave Digg back in the day.

I'd love to turn the subreddit into a mere front to funnle new people onto lemmy or another community forum but I doubt the average user would enjoy that very much 😅 I think we will put it up to a vote, we also did one to determin if we should join the protest in the first place

Rome wasn’t built in a day. But people forget that it also didn’t collapse in a day.

Reddit higher ups have shown their hand. Will this end reddit? Not in the short term I think, but I believe whatever reddit will be in a year or two will be very different from what reddit was up until now

I posted this on a Reddit thread this morning about the effectiveness of the blackouts and what happens next:

Some people have just shut down and will never look back. Some just don't care and need their Reddit fix. A LOT of comments on these types of threads are Reddit bots/employees trying to run a propaganda campaign to stop the shutdown. Most of the users though (IMO), are probably like me and opened up a Lemmy, Mastodon and Kbin account and are using all of them. Lemmy and Mastodon will continue to grow (2x-3x in the past week) and users will continue to migrate over and spend more time there than here until Reddit feels some pain. Reddit will eventually make some grand gesture like replace the CEO or "compromise" on API pricing, but it will be too late and the glory days of Reddit will officially be over.

The issue is that the momentum to go to other platforms has started. Reddit had their chance to stop it and stay the dominant platform, but the CEO is inexperienced and didn't know how to handle it. Until a few weeks ago Reddit had no real competition, but Spez fucked up big time and now the blood is in the water. The Fediverse is a great idea and takes social media out of the hands of corporations and puts it back in the hands of the users (does anyone remember IRC?). It didn't really have a lot of momentum until now, but its got a LOT of press because of Reddit's fuck up and now it's going to be a slow juggernaut sweeping not only Reddit's market, but Twitter (Elon is just as big a fuckup as Spez), and Facebook.

I would bet $20 that this time next year Reddit will be 50% or less of their market, and several other alternatives will be growing faster than we've ever seen platforms grow. Alternative platforms already have the formula for a successful project. Reddit did all the experimentation, now the alts just need to copy the look/feel and features to knock Reddit down to the Digg dungeon.

Billionaires seek to control the media and the narrative, but Fediverse is harder to simply buy and control. Profit seeking corporations will always put profit first, and we've seen time and time again that it's the "product people" that make a company great, and the "business people" who kill it. The capitalists will continue to kill long term growth for short term profits, but Fediverse can't be killed that way. We've just seen the beginning of the new internet revolution.

This site has a graph that shows how many subs are private: https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/

I find it a good way to see how the situation is evolving as a whole.

Unfortunately Reddit is almost too big at this point to fail. The fact that official communities exist over there is enough to keep them afloat. But Reddit as we all knew it is dead. I was always worried about Reddit going public effecting it’s quality, and the staff have only confirmed my fears. Luckily Reddit offers nothing anyone else can do, and jumping ship to a competitor had never been easier.

Long live the Fediverse.

No mention of alternatives in the article :(

I replaced all my comments with garbage and deleted my account

Support style subs will continue to operate, reopen, or stay open. Heart conditions, addictions, etc. Until those groups are created in Lemmy, there is no way those users will go. And if there are those that scrap their account on Reddit, they would likely create a lurker account there just to participate in those subs

Maybe I'm pessimistic but nothing will come from these protests. Most subs did a half-assed useless two day blackout. The subs that have gone indefinitely dark are good, but it's the users that make a difference. Reddit most likely won't see a significant drop in users or traffic.

I feel like most will just stay but it will never feel the same. As for what could possibly replace it, at least for me, it has been a conglomoration of different things serving different purposes. Lemmy is good for seeing discussion, RSS for my own personal link aggregation, and then the occasional browsing of something like Mastodon which just hits a bit different personally. Those together have more or less quenched my desire for reddit for anything except hitting it on Google Search results.

Steve Huffman (more like Steve Huffspaint) should resign as CEO of Reddit.

If you looking for a degnerate alternative to WSB, consider signing up to wallstreetbets.

I dont think reddit survive this and I sure as sheet dont think they'll allow subs like wsb to persist.

The end coming through with a bang.

I spent a few hours manually deleting all my posts in my subreddit this morning, and changing the name to Deleted. So no going back for me now ;-)

Apart from the attitude, it is just amazing that there was no option for me to just delete my (their) subreddit, even though I'm the creator/owner. I anyway do believe more in the decentralised federated model of social networking.

Great article and summary but man, whatever happened to editorial review? There are three or four major grammatical errors in that short piece. It's unfortunate because it's extremely well written otherwise, and does a great job of reporting objectively which is very rare these days.

I just installed the Mlem TestFlight and I’m very encouraged.

It’s already got a similar feel to Apollo and I’m excited to see it develop further. I like the Lemmy web interface as well, but it has its fair share of bugs at the moment (which is to be expected). In particular searching for communities across all instances is really easy on Mlem.

I’m not sure what is next for Reddit, but I’m feeling more and more hopeful that it doesn’t include me at the moment. If I can have a thriving home on the fedeverse, I’ll take that most definitely.

I'm confused, I can't access to private subs that I'm following. Is there two level of private subs?