💯 Lemmy is 🔥. People need a place to go, and with subreddits closing down, this is the perfect time and place for folks to express themselves and have fun.
Personally, as much as I loved Reddit, I think there needs to be a move away from centralized platforms that can keep pulling this shit time after time. Hopefully there's a way to ensure the contents of r/flashlight are archived for posterity, but I don't think I'd be terribly inconvenienced if it was, for instance, permanently locked.
The community is the people, not the place, and I'm happy to be seeing familiar faces here already.
IMO, it would be best to leave r/flashlight in restricted mode forever, so people can still see the useful info. Then officially announce the transfer to Lemmy (or kbin), and just rebuild the community.
At this point, completely opening r/flashlight again will make the community look weak, in the eyes of the R3ddit the company. In my honest opinion, of course.
I have now been on Lemmy for approximately 90 seconds! Layout feels an awful lot like Reddit, seems like it’ll be relatively easy to navigate. Are there apps that work well here, or is web-based the best way to go? I thought about downloading the Mastodon app and trying to access this community from there, but I honestly don’t have a solid understanding of the entire decentralized Fediverse thing.
Either way, thanks for creating a backup community Zak!
Appreciate it. I just got Mlem from TestFlight, will check it out in a bit. One of the most recent patch notes seems to imply that they hope they fixed the issue of accounts being deleted between logins, so I might hold off for juuuust a little bit.
Checking in! I initially signed up for kbin and just got a lemmy account too. There’s very little, flashlight related going on at kbin at the minute. I know the site’s struggling with traffic. The UI seems odd.
Ditto, exactly my impression so far. Perhaps when r/flashlight comes back we can start to encourage people there to move to here massively and just tell Reddit to go eff itself in the lake...
For those who are new to federation and want to see what it looks like, note that friftar's account is from feddit.de while this community is from lemmy.world.
Just reading the descriptions I found was really confusing, but actually seeing and playing around with it, it's decently intuitive.
Also, it's great to see some of the old names on here already! Hoping some more of the legends move over instead of just leaving the community entirely.
For those who are new to federation and want to see what it looks like, note that friftar’s account is from feddit.de while this community is from lemmy.world.
From what I've seen so far (less than 15mins here yet :-)) it looks like old FIDONet did in the 80s, but without the 9600 USRobotics modems exchanging bundles of messages all day :-)
I'm actually impressed with Reddit's management stupidity of not only shooting itself in the foot with that idiotic API fees thing, but then to actually sawing off the whole foot by sticking to it. I just posted a comment to that effect on an r/AskReddit topic to that effect: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1470boa/comment/jo2y3qm
I guess the so-called "management" doesn't care because it doesn't see losing users and communities as a problem: as long as they can make some profit in the short run, the long run be damned -- and even if they end up losing money in the short run too, the worst that can happen to said "management" is pulling the rip cord on their golden parachutes and going on to some other promising company to eff it up like they're doing with Reddit, rinse and repeat... "other people's money" (and interests) and all that... :-(
Thanks again @Zak for prodding us to move to Lemmy with your decision to black out r/flashlight and your awesome blog post -- initially I was pissed at the blackout, but now I support you 100%.
I strongly suspect Reddit shareholders want to IPO and cash out with no regard for what happens to the company afterward. That means pumping up metrics like app installs and ad impressions without regard to the long-term impact. They probably underestimated the speed and severity of the backlash.
Best way to punish these creeps is to shove their precious IPO to the curb -- hit 'em where it hurts. I for one haven't logged into Reddit since the SNAFU began, between IRC and BLF and Lemmy (in that order) I have all the fun I need, and Reddit be damned.
I actually hated the move from digg to reddit, mostly because I thought digg having post previews was so much better for readability and avoiding clickbait than reddit. But now Lemmy has them!
The interface is a bit of getting used to, but I'm already noticing lots of nice features.
Like, did you know you don't need a multi-billion dollar company in order to make a functional mobile site? Crazy!
Seems to imply that even smaller subs being closed could be generating a noticeable impact on Reddit’s long-term advertising. Would suggest that these strikes will have an impact if they go on longer. I’m unsure honestly, trying to listen with an open mind but this at least seems like an actual attempt at looking at the situation as opposed to anyone saying ‘this is dumb, won’t do anything so there’s no point.’
That said, I’m still sympathetic to those who say they want the sub back. I do too! Locking out my favorite place on Reddit has been very obnoxious—but I voted to keep it closed and re-vote again with more info on Monday.
I really wish I'd used contest mode instead of a poll. Some people were upset and confused about the result, but I really do want to do whatever the majority of the community who's engaged enough to vote about it prefers.
I have my own opinions of course, but I'm trying to be realistic. I don't think shutting down communities permanently is a good approach, and completely moving a community to a new place never quite works. I don't plan to move away from Reddit entirely and will continue to participate as long as there's a friendly community there and old.reddit remains usable.
I do, however believe Lemmy is a better approach than Reddit going forward, and I will be de-emphasizing Reddit in some ways TBD.
How would contest mode have improved the outcome? Right now this whole vote feels like a sham, as the mods didn't like how it was going so they skewed the results by adding two opinions together. If you don't want to be there anymore I encourage you to seek out someone else to take your spot instead of just restricting the community and walking away.
Well, now the "reopen" supporters are complaining about contest mode... there's no pleasing bots. Ether way, whether the community splits or not, I'll be on both as long as Reddit is still usable and as long as I can find an apolitical Lemmy instance. (I do wish this community was founded on a better instance, but I'm still going to post here as long as I can find one that's welcoming.)
The whole API thing is a non-issue to me personally other than the effect on moderators because I never used the apps. Tried Reddit's app once and found it pretty basic, almost crude, so stayed on the PC Browser side of Reddit.
I mainly use old.reddit.com on a PC, but this decision tells me that Reddit takes its users for granted, especially the volunteer moderators and content creators who actually make the site valuable enough to attract other visitors. Building communities on top of somebody else's for-profit walled garden was probably always a mistake.
Is there any plan to port some information over such as popular emitters / buying guides? Also, is it possible to have it quickly accessible in the sidebar (kind of mimicking the ‘About’ section of our Reddit?) it looks like posts can be favourited/saved. I’m still learning the ropes here so apologies if I’m missing it.
OK, I think I've found the instance I'll be using at least for now. Might eventually set one up - if there's an interest in an instance for the community, might open it to people from here who are looking for a Lemmy instance without political baggage.