Took a peek on Reddit, it really boggles my mind how oblivious and obedient people are.
I decided to take a peek at Reddit to see what kind of activity is happening, a good handful of the subreddits I am subscribed to are still super active with posts and commenters.
There's quite a few news articles on the front page regarding Spez and the blackouts, I am surprised those articles are even still up for people to see.
The comment section is filled with people saying how they should just kick the mods out of the dark Reddit's and take over, ofcourse these posts are heavily upvoted...
Perhaps there is some AI activity going on, I mean it's kind of easy to do in this day and age. You just prompt an army of AI bots to defend Reddit, and try to keep users engaged.
I am so happy I found Lemmy, and I am so happy that there is a comfortable level of activity. Sure it's only a small fraction of what Reddit is activity wise, but it's so much more hearty and welcoming.
Reddit has just turned into one big toxic mess. Lemmy reminds me of what Reddit used to be 10 years ago.
The comment section is filled with people saying how they should just kick the mods out of the dark Reddit’s and take over, ofcourse these posts are heavily upvoted…
Thing is, all the people in favor of the protest left Reddit. So now pro-Reddit content is being upvoted.
This may just an old interwebz man talking, but I'd say "Don't worry."
It's not a 1:1, but this is similar to what happened with Digg in the mid 2000s. I was there. I migrated from there to Reddit - specifically because Digg had decided to ignore its vocal user base and fundamentally change what the site was.
Reddit app lacks efficient Mod tools and accessibility settings.
That's not my problem.
This is the attitude of Reddit rn. Shit's disgusting in all honesty. It's genuinely depressing how people try their hardest not to push the world to be better.
I caught my husband on reddit yesterday. Went into full attack mode, explained the blackout, and offered to help him switch to Lemmy. Showed him that some if his subs have lems and even tried to sway him with lemmy porn. He didn't care...at all!!! Now, if i want to read anything on reddit i have to go outside or to the bathroom so he doesn't see me.
They can't admit they're addicted. I was a daily Reddit user. Stopped going there once the blackout hits. And now, the subs I care about are still private. Good.
Survivorship bias. I've only been active in posts about leaving Reddit or pushing for change on Reddit lately. Everybody else who cares either left or is doing the same as me.
The users that believed in/supported the protests and are most against the changes are still not there. So you're left with the echo chamber of doom scroll monkeys that need their fix. Quite appropriate for reddit, honestly.
often, when someone suggests lemmy, they dont get upvotes, but people replying that you can't go there because its full of tankies, get many upvotes.
I saw several times: this subreddit cant move to lemmy, that would exclude people like me, where lemmy is blocked at work.
People have been saying it but were being ignored for weeks: this blackout thing will not work. And we were correct. It was a useless attempt to try and win over the majority.
Plenty of people use the main app and are the majority of users, and it is what it is. The ones who care about the Reddit API fiasco should move away. That’s the only valid move.
I’ve done it, and everyone else who care should. Leave the ones who are fine with Reddit on Reddit.
Millions of users are about to stop using the platform overnight when they nuke the third party apps. The culture is going to change dramatically no matter what.
There are many articles and videos on the subject of bot accounts, it's incredibly easy to hire companies that specialize in organic looking posts and comments meant to sway public opinion.
In the case of Reddit they don't even need them for their own platform, they can just run a script to generate all the comments.
I mean, is it out of the realm of possibility that bootlicking comments are those made by Reddit themselves? Comment sections can quickly become echo chambers, I'm sure reddit knows this and uses that to their advantage.
Not to say that there aren't plenty of addicts and general idiots all over reddit.
The majority of Reddit's 57m users do not use 3rd party apps. In fact I'd argue most don't (or didn't) even know you could use a 3rd party app or understand why you'd want to. To them Reddit is just the app. So yeah, of course they're not participating in the protest.
I don't expect Reddit to go away or to be adversely impacted by this movement. But I'm not going to worry about what goes on there, similar to how I don't have a FB account and I don't worry about what the 1B other users are doing. I left Reddit for myself, if other people continue to use it then so be it.
When all the A+ student's leave (moderators doing the work, people writing good comments), the class goes on, but in a diminished form. It'll be a slow decline.
kbin.social feels lively. Reddit just feels like a mine field of trolls/bots/conspiracies.
Can't expect the millions of people who don't even understand what an API is to care about the API changes. Hell, I didn't use a 3rd party app or really care about the API changes but I've wanted to get into the fediverse and disliked reddit for a long time, so it's as good an excuse as anything.
I'm shocked by the content I've seen over there. I know quite a few reddit users IRL and none of them support what spez is doing. I think you are right about AI being involved in some if the posts.
I think this is partially resulting from that bias of people here, who more than likely care about the community involvement aspect of online forums/platforms. If the forum I used to live on 15 years ago was still well trafficked, I likely wouldn't be exploring these spaces the same way.
The reality is that reddit today ISN'T what it was 10 years ago when it killed a lot of forums. It is now a platform, like facebook, that has mass appeal and is going to therefore operate to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Maybe a lot of "redditors" support the strikes, but I'd believe that a majority of people who use reddit don't.
People want their feeds. They want their dopamine. They want their predictable comments and hot gossip. That's what people are in larger groups. That's who reddit is now designed to appeal to.
I think about this kbin/fedithing as a chance to reboot online conversation in an environment that is different than what reddit has become, but I don't expect reddit to change in any way other than to continue to become boring and ad-data driven.
Don't worry too much about it. There's still going to be people using Reddit. You're never going to convince everybody about everything. My parents still use Facebook.
It's funny reading posts that say something along the lines of "I've always used the reddit app and it's fine, I didn't even know there were third-party apps". I get this might be astroturfing or bots but if not, congrats on not having a clue, I guess.
what made the switch easier for me, was installing an RSS feed widget to my desktop and adding lemmy instances to it. gradually, i start to notice topics that interest me more and more which are viewable straight from the rss widget itself and i am able to comment on it, thus i have interacted more on here in the last few days than reddit. though it is still hard not to add :"reddit" to my searches online.
To be frank, it’s not that people are oblivious, they just don’t give a shit. Who cares, let them not give a shit. Internet communities are only ruined by too many people, this one can continue to exist autonomously and not have to be “new Reddit”
The lack of societal solidarity for the betterment of everyone is sad.
But that's ok, reddit was never going to die after this protest.
I think what took place was a successful test of what alternatives exist out in the wild.
Now it's up to those of us who migrated to post through the highs and lows of early adoption in order to encourage others to come and stick around when the next shitty move by Spez takes place.
For example, I migrated to Mastodon in late 2018 during an initial surge. And over the years tried to keep posting content so that when the next migration took place when Elon took the reigns, people were able to possibly feel more at home.
This shit takes time. A lot of time. But the internet is a big place and there's plenty of opportunity for things to be better. We just can expect things to rush themselves
It would appear it's mostly bots, probably paid for by reddit (or interested groups) to muddle the waters.
I have seen countless posts trying to discredit the fediverse, how it won't work because it isn't financially backed (completely ignoring that email is still a thing), or how Mastodon apparently failed. On top of that, there are tons of comments in the threads for subs that went dark where the commenter argues "all this does is hurt the sub". but when you look into the commenter, they have no previous history of being active in these subs at all.
But, i've seen this kind of activity all over reddit for the past 2 years. Especially when something unpopular is happening. There is a lot of the same type of crap you see during the presidential elections of the US. A lot of fake comments, posts, and statistics, and other things to try steer the public opinion in an engineered direction.
It's pretty simple. Most people won't do anything unless it directly impacts them.
This has been true time and time again throughout history as well. People only revolt or start an uprising when things get so bad that it directly influences them. Even then most won't do anything unless they aren't able to ignore it anymore.
Its such a weird complaint that these people are having right now. They're demanding that unpaid people come back and labor for them for free and/or give away the tools they've created for free.
It's like they have no idea how reddit works. People whining that the NFL sub is closed and demanding it to be reopened for instance. They can go make their own sub and moderate it themselves, but they dont. The entitlement to just demand that people do free labor for you is insane.
I'm suspecting phantom upvotes. Neutral or pro-Reddit comments get highly upvoted suspiciously quickly after a sub comes back on line, drowning out anything else.
My friend started using reddit about 3 years ago. He doesn't care about the blackout at all and told me I was being mad about a free service trying to make money. He'll just keep using it until he can't then lurk elsewhere. I told him to stop being an ass, but that's unlikely. His stupid attitude is shared by a vast swath of reddit and will ultimately lead to the site's total decay.
They gonna keep there until they feel the real consequences. Most people just don't get what's the real problem. I'm happy in the fediverse, feels like I make better use of my time, instead of scrolling like an idiot.
personally i'm loving the fact that they're laughing at us in the mistaken belief that this can't work and we'll be back there before the end of the month, yet after a bit of lag and a couple memory overruns combined with some utterly HILARIOUS glitches they still don't realise that the system survived its' stress test and is in the process of being upgraded and expanded so that it can take the rest of the load (i'v heard that 20% of traffic has moved over, which is enormous) by the end of next week, we're very easily capable of funding it entirely ourselves, and we know it
right now i'm having difficulty sitting still, waiting in eager anticipation for the horror to cross their faces when they realise that they have nobody left except for unironic trump voters. rekon it might even be the very last piece of entertainment i might get from the website
I've been on reddit for almost a decade and a half. Never have I seen so many users gilding pro corporate reddit/pro spez comments. It is almost always the former. It's very unusual and makes me a tad suspicious. I'm not sure if reddit has evolved into a platform overflowing with users that I truly don't synchronize with, or perhaps reddit is virtually augmenting these posts/comments, increasing bot posts to augment activity, etc. I accept either or and for that and many other reasons I have contently moved on from the platform. It's just not for me anymore and has been fracturing into an environment that lost its luster. Too many common folk have saturated the platform, too many bots, too much corporate shenanigans, too many miserable users, too little civility, too much ignorance and a lack of analytical literacy. The fediverse has given a breath of fresh air and something of nostalgia from the early days of reddit. I do think this is the way forward with time and I'm here for it.
I do agree they should replace the mods who do the strikes. The mods should've quit out of principle. They will go back to modding as usual soon if they haven't already to fill their need for the sensation of power. They're doing unpaid work for a for profit organization. I'd like all the mods to quit and for Reddit to have to pay for moderation or face the consequences. But I don't care about the third party apps at all. I'm just perplexed by mods letting themselves get exploited like that.
Orrrr... get this; some people don't think like you. Or give enough of a shit. Which is not a bad thing. Your elitist attitude on the other hand is shit.