Reddit CEO: We're Sticking With API Changes, Despite Subreddits Going Dark
Reddit CEO: We're Sticking With API Changes, Despite Subreddits Going Dark
'Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable,' Steve Huffman says in defending the move to charge for high-volume API access.
'Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable,' Steve Huffman says in defending the move to charge for high-volume API access.
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I have thoroughly enjoyed Lemmy and Beehaw over this weekend. I’m not expecting anything out of reddit.
Reddit was my home for 12 years and I really feel like it boiled down to three really uses of my time:
- cultivated communities
- niche knowledge
- scrolling through all
I have had a taste of being part of a community this weekend that reminds me of what reddit was like a decade ago. This really removed the sting of disconnecting all my apollo widgets and shortcuts. Lemmy, kbin, etc may lead to a new future for those of us looking for somewhere new.
Niche knowledge? I think that’s one thing that just will be on reddit for the foreseeable future but as communities move and shift away, it’ll disperse across the internet. I do see myself still searching through reddit results via google when searching for a personalized review or specific information. But it will become a get-in, get-out process.
Scrolling? Reddit leadership is so dumb. they’ve catered to this feature and this user base for all the marbles of their IPO. Scrolling is the least unique feature to reddit compared to other social media. And reddit’s scrolling was highly dependent on your feed and could sometimes not be that great. Scrolling can be replaced by anything from tiktok to instagram to other forums and new sites
Even this weekend on Beehaw, I’ve seen reviews of fountain pens, a storm over Scotland, trailers for new games on the horizon and little bits of people’s lives shared and connected. If I can continue to have an experience like this? I won’t even miss reddit.
It’s going to be an interesting new future
Agreed. I replaced the Reddit app icon in my launcher with the one for Lemmy (Jerboa). 98% of the time I'm just mindlessly scrolling and looking at images or memes and occasionally the interesting article. So far, even the minimal content on Lemmy (and Instagram and Tumblr) has filled that need.
Probably two or three times now I've pulled up Reddit specifically to look something up, and that just says to me how often I actually engage with the communities there that matter to me. Reddit will no longer be getting hundreds of hits per day from me. If I need to look something up, maybe I'll go look, and hopefully the communities I joined, like guitar, motorcycles, ADHD, pizza, and other niche interests, will develop elsewhere.
Same exact situation for me, down to putting Jerboa where RIF used to be. I think the appeal to Beehaw for me is its emphasis on community. I've been on the internet for a hot minute, and I didn't realize that I actually missed having a sense of community online. Reddit was basically a source of content for me, and I would lurk almost exclusively. With Lemmy, I'm finding myself commenting and responding far more often. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is here, but I just feel more inclined to actually participate here.
Same for me, but I used Boost (and before that, Slide).
On my phone, Jerboa is good enough. On the desktop, I'm more interested in finding specific information, so I still read Reddit sometimes. If Reddit doesn't reverse course, I'll just drop my account and only use Reddit read only with an ad blocker.
Most of my Reddit browsing was on my phone, and about half of the rest was me providing content to Reddit. I would've been happy to pay for an ad-free tier (say, $5/year; I paid for a couple others before I recently switched to Boost) on a decent mobile app, but I want my choice of app because the official one sucks. I would also be happy to pay for an ad-free desktop tier per account (say, $10-20 fixed), and if so, I would still be contributing content.
But no, Reddit had to go and ruin their platform. So I'm out, and I'll simply be a leech from now on.
same here im accually interacting with people instead of just lurking i think the community aspect helps but for me its also thw fact theres less users around so the chances of accually having a decent conversation is higher
Yeah, I've noticed the same. I also don't really have the same feeling that replying in a post with a bunch of comments already on it is a waste of time - on Reddit, if a post had 100 comments on it then it was kind of pointless for me to add my voice because nobody would see it anyway. Here, I've actually gone through and responded to various comments and posts regardless. I think that's more of a "social norms/community culture" thing than a technological difference though. I mentioned my thoughts on what went wrong with Reddit elsewhere, but basically the way Reddit set things up led to the encouragement of low-effort popularity contest type replies so people would rush to get the highest-karma responses as quickly and easily as possible. There isn't an easy way to see someone's total score here though, so upvotes aren't really the focus and actual conversation can happen instead.
From what i understand the karma system was meant to be a way to encourage people to be active early on to drive even more traffic to the site but as it went on it definitely devolved into a popularity contest like you said
The karma system had its advantages in that early on it encouraged people to be active and make the site seem more alive from what ive heard but as it went on it ike you said just devolved into an popularity contest
Yeah, tapping into dopamine bursts to encourage activity is a great short-term solution, but I guess it was also foreshadowing into what Reddit would become. I'll take what I've seen here so far over the quick and easy hits any day; having a constant stream of bite-sized content to consume was wreaking havoc on my attention span and I didn't even realize it until I found myself having to stay focused on some of the longer conversations I've seen around Lemmy.
Same here accually having convesations with people has been pretty fun and ive yet to see anything not civil for now wich is a plus
Definitely! The big reason I decided to join Beehaw after taking a look at what instances were available is because the focus here seems to be building that feeling of community more so than just replacing Reddit, and I've already been feeling it in the best way. It's almost like a return to the days of forums where there were actual conversations happening, and I've actually slowly started recognizing names and avatars as I poke around in different topics. I'm not sure what things are going to look like further down the line, but hopefully it keeps developing in the way it has been! I do think it will, for what it's worth, since the admins and mods seem to be on the same page and dedicated to keeping the momentum going in that direction.
Reddit’s spiral down was the boiling frog analogy for me.
I’d forgotten what it was like for people have conversations with each other. The change was gradual.
100% agree with you there. It’s been a nice change on here this weekend :)
Welcome to the Fediverse! I've found that people tend to have a little more realness when they're part of something they co-create vs merely participating in a company's space. Even if the server this "sub" is on dies, Lemmy and the Fediverse will continue.
It will hurt, leaving so many meaningless internet points behind, but like you said, I'm hopeful this can be my new home.
Make it meaningful and sell your reddit account!
Can you explain the difference between Lemmy and Beehaw? I'm very confused, and currently (I think?) Using Lemmy... I'm on the Jerboa app right now.
Lemmy is the whole of federated instances. Beehaw is one specific instance. Jerboa is an app that allows you to navigate and interact with others on Lemmy.
Think of communities like beehaw as neighborhoods. The actual community groups are houses in those neighborhoods, and the town made up of all the different neighborhoods is Lemmy. Jerboa is the vehicle you use to visit different neighborhoods and houses.