hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout today, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! Thanks!
I like reddit. I want its fun little spaces to thrive.
Reddit is making this really difficult.
The suits are all about their metrics and engagement and clicks and they don’t care about the user. They don’t even care about the peeps they hire to talk to the user.
I’m told sometimes admin employees find out they’re fired because they can’t log in to workspaces anymore.
I dunno.
Maybe this space is better. :)
*I like reddit. I want its fun little spaces to thrive.
Reddit is making this really difficult.*
Agreed, but I don’t think they’re going to be moving in a positive direction. I believe we have seen the best Reddit will ever be. When a company becomes profit driven in the way Reddit has, it forces the company to make decisions that aren’t beneficial to it’s users. I understand the decisions they’re making, but their “rip the band-aid” method at least lets us see that they’re unwilling to compromise on their position. It makes switching to a different platform much easier for me. It just sucks because there are small communities that I thoroughly enjoyed and I don’t know if they’ll ever recoup.
This is my first day on beehaw, and I’m planning to shift as much of what I previously did on reddit to this platform or others. Hopefully that will allow me to abandon reddit completely. I’m looking forward to learning more about this place and seeing how it develops.
I just posted this in response to a frenetic YouTube video that claimed that the Reddit protest “failed”:
Get serious. It was NEVER going to stop the IPO. But it has accomplished something even more important: it has decapitated Reddit. A lot of the most passionate and involved users are gone, and more of them have at least tried Fediverse alternatives like Lemmy and kbin. Have you checked those sites out? They’re FLOODED with Reddit refugees, and the communities there are booming! They’re active and vibrant, with great discussions and content.
What’s more, they have hope. The members there aren’t subject to some psychotic money-grubbing corporation; if any one server goes authoritarian, there’s nothing stopping the users there from just moving to another. They’ll have the same access and functionality. And frankly, the odds of a Fediverse server going corporate and having an IPO are infinitesimal. It simply wouldn’t be worth it, particularly since there’s no way they could stop other instances from defederating with them.
So the outcome of the blackout has been twofold: First, Reddit has lost some of it’s best. The quality of content there is diminished, and will continue to diminish as poor quality drives users away. And second, the Fediverse alternatives have been given a huge boost. Almost all users of Reddit are now aware of the ugly truths that underlie that service, and that there are alternatives out there.
That’s not failure. That’s the seeds of success.
And by the way, I think that’s one thing we can all do to help bring down Reddit: mention the great alternatives out there as much as possible to spread the word. The more Redditors who learn that they don’t have to be a product to be sold by the pound for the stockholder class, the quicker Reddit will fall!
I also bet there are people who haven’t already left that will abandon ship once the TPAs stop working. It’s not going to be fun getting stuck with their mediocre app, particularly since they seem to be testing the end of the mobile site.
Many subreddits are holding polls on whether they should continue the blackout. For those who are boycotting Reddit, I would highly encourage you to go vote. Even if you plan to leave Reddit for good, a longer blackout will drive more users here.
Decoupling from Reddit has been easier than I thought.
Am actually rotating between Lemmy instances and Kbin to read the articles and thoughts in between my workday and it works like a charm.
It also really helps that I pavlovd myself to associate Reddit with garbage and instantly make the connection to how they see and treat their userbase.
It made me open reddit only once during the last days.
- To run PDS after the blackout.
For the semi-lurker like me there’s nothing holding me back to Reddit. Some current news, sprinkle of meme, some draft comments that I will never submit and some meaningful discussion from community, fediverse has all those.
It’s disappointing seeing people cave so quickly when under the slightest inconvenience. It doesn’t matter for me, though - I’m not going back. If anything, this has helped me realize the unhealthy relationship I had with Reddit and was a good way to break that.
To new and better things.
I wonder how much of this caving in was, because a lot of lame mods were worried about losing their past time and or control over large communities.
There are a lot of little Lukashenkos out there that will immediately cave to a bully as long as they’re allowed to remain in control.
Then we still win and Reddit still loses. Little Lukashenkos don’t make good moderators.
Have Reddark on a tab. Seems like the number of private subs keeps dropping. :(
Are they caving or is something nefarious up like what happened to r/AdviceAnimals and r/tumblr yesterday?
What happened to those subs? Admin takeover?
They just opened up after the two days were over, like how many of them planned. Not every sub agreed to stay dark indefinitely.
Yes the mods were removed and replaced before the subs were reopened.
Advertisers are starting to take notice, it seems. Gotta keep the blackout running longer to hit em in their pocketbooks - 2 days they can weather out, indefinite dark they cannot. It’s what I’ve been saying from the beginning, a protest with a clearly defined end date has no teeth.
I’ve heard about Reddit removing a mod from a popular subreddit, then turning the subreddit public (sorry, don’t have the reference). They can always stop the blackout by force. But once they do that, those mods will have definite incentive to start the communities in the fediverse.
Also r/tumblr