Mastodawn

If we go back to Reddit, they win

https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/28009

If we go back to Reddit, they win - FMHY

I’ve seen that some subreddits went dark and said they’d come back in 2 days (June 14th), and others said they’d go dark indefinitely, until the API changes are rolled back. I’d like to make an appeal for the admins who’re willing to go back: please don’t. I think Reddit wouldn’t withstand 2 weeks to a month without their largest subreddits, and maybe they’d change their minds about API changes. Some may say they’d just make the subreddits public again and promote someone to mod (which I totally agree, they’ll probably do that if the blackout endures for too much time), but I think most people don’t realise the PITA it is to be a good mod, and just want to be one because of the status (I’m not an ex-mod btw, I just heard it is very complicated to moderate and I believe it really is). Secondly, there’s no guarantee that Reddit won’t pull the rug again. Even if they roll back the changes and everyone goes back, they’ll probably come up with this strategy again some time in the future. So instead of going back, stay in the Fediverse: all applications are open source AFAIK; you can run your own instance if you wish; you can defederate other instances if you wish; you can contribute with new features you miss or create a fork aplication of your own if you want to; heck, you could create your own Fediverse application if you want. And there won’t be a scumbag to come and try stop you.

Alatain Jun 12, 2023

Agreed. I have given a fair amount of my time and energy to creating a sense of community in several subreddits and have been a member for over a decade. But the fact that they suddenly see dollar signs and want to burn that social capital for a quick buck does not speak well for the future of the site. One way or another, they are going to sell out and fuck over the user to make money.

I'm done.

ski11erboi Jun 12, 2023

I haven't been this excited about the internet in a long time. It feels good to be a part of something that belongs to us, the people. Watching this grow gives me hope that one day we actually will be able to break free from capitalism.

TheGruesomeTwosome Jun 12, 2023

I ran a tiny subreddit dedicated to my favourite author, Bill Bryson. That's gone forever. I used Apollo.

NisiMarie Jun 12, 2023

I love Bill Bryson!

MF_Jun 12, 2023

I'm going to try to take some time away from the internet. Might return to make content (mostly tabletop gaming stuff) sometime in the future. But for now I'm over it.

knowncarbage Jun 12, 2023

It's looking promising between Lemmy & Mastodon, things seem smoother than when I last checked them back when Elon started snapping Twitter.

It still doesn't seem to be anywhere near mainstream, it's mainly tech people and bots by the looks of things and I'm not sure how this is fixed without advertising and maybe not having to copy and paste links between servers.

Reddit had variety. Some of the neckbeards there didn't even use linux which, whilst being wrong, added a little color.

Reddit was moaning about the cost of maintaining a public API that is being heavily farmed by AI learning, could this be an issue for the hosting of Lemmy?

On the plus side, copy & paste in a browser works here!

redlila Jun 13, 2023

Since Lemmy is based on federated servers like Mastadon the worst that happens is the admins of an instance see the excessive traffic and block the IP.

knowncarbage Jun 13, 2023

thanks

valveman Jun 13, 2023

Agreed, I think it's a good time to be here: Mastodon has been gaining a lot of ground these days, thanks to Elon; other apps like Peertube, Pixelfed, Lemmy and Kbin are growing as well. Now I actually enjoy the experience of the Fediverse, and I hope it keeps growing and maybe dethrone current mainstream media.

Reddit was moaning about the cost of maintaining a public API that is being heavily farmed by AI learning

TL;DR: Spez is a scumbag and don't care if people use Reddit content to train AI models, he wants to kill 3rd party apps.

I don't think they're actually worried about people using their data to train AI models, since Sam Altman (OpenAI's CEO) is a Reddit investor and was a former chairman until 2022. I mean, either spez knew Sam was using it (my theory is that they're "friends" and spez knew it all along) OR spez didn't see Reddit content as valuable until now. Either way, Reddit started to limit access from mobile browsers, forcing users to use their official app. I don't know, but it seems to me spez is trying to kill 3rd party apps instead of just creating a better protection against scraping.

Companies Sam Altman invested in: Reddit, Neuralink, more

Sam Altman, who was president of Y Combinator until 2019, invested in several tech and energy companies, like OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk's Neuralink.

Insider

knowncarbage Jun 13, 2023

I was more meaning large scale pressure AI could be an issue fom small community and self hosted servers like the fediverse.

Reddit's change of mood on API is not a surprise, glad they kept it up for so long. What did seem shitty was the notice period and scale of the price hike.

RandyLeRam Jun 14, 2023

It was so short notice and so high a price for a reason. Forced 3rd party apps to close. Mission accomplished for Reddit.

penisthightrap Jun 13, 2023

I agree. Front page of reddit has been trash for the past 5 or so years. But it's smaller subreddits are where I spent my time. It became mainstream enough that there were communities for literally every topic or hobby imaginable. And they'd been around long enough for extensive wikis and info, and every question you can imagine has probably been asked and answered at some point. That's the part that I'm going to miss, something that took a decade to build.

But it's worth rebuilding that somewhere with the infrastructure like Lemmy. Not tied to a company.

knowncarbage Jun 13, 2023

I'm not really fussed about the wiki's and historic data but the fractured communities are a sore one.

I suspect after the blackout has eased it may be time for some evangelism about the fediverse on Reddit. But before evangelizing to anyone I need some experience of the platform and how it relates to the other areas of the fediverse to see if this is a realistic option for the majority of people who want something that 'just works'.

I heard quite a few subs mentioning backup Discord & Telegram groups and it would be nice if we could sell the fediverse to these groups as I'd really rather not deal with Discord, Telegram & Reddit regularly. I will tolerate it, like I do Whatsapp, as a tool to communicate with worthwhile people who don't really care about my views on software, if the alternative is a social media stream that's 95% free software enthusiasts.

valveman Jun 13, 2023

I like your idea of evangelizing people on Reddit, but I'm kinda concerned with how we'd keep this infrastructure up and running in the long term. I don't think everyone would like to donate some bucks to help keep their home instance running, and the massive migration has already made some instances to upgrade their servers, raising their cost.

I'd love to see the Fediverse expand as a whole, but it must be a sustainable growth if we want to get somewhere.

knowncarbage Jun 14, 2023

The longterm is anyone's guess. There's a lot of people not happy with Reddit and Spez at the moment and a viable alternative could see a rise in funding in the short term alongside the increased activity due to this.

I may be overly optimistic but suspect if Reddit refugees found a safe space they may donate a few pennies to the cause.

The reddit blackout is a nice stress test for Lemmy. I have to say after joining on lemmy.fmhy.ml everything has been really smooth from the server side, no complaints there. My main issue is that even fairly techy friends would find it confusing atm, I couldn't go onto r/randonsubreddit and explain Lemmy is a simple alternative everyone on the sub can easily migrate to.

valveman Jun 14, 2023

Yeah, I've been facing the same issue. I miss my country's subreddit, specially now we're having big things happening politically speaking, but people here don't have that much of interest in tech things, specially if it's a bit harder than normal.

I've been thinking of running my own instance and try to bring these people here, but i don't know if it'll be worth my time. I think I'll just enjoy Lemmy for a while and see what happens in the next weeks. If people get at least interested, I might give it a try

C. Jonah Jun 12, 2023

Correct - I’m out. I’m sure many will go back and my absence won’t make a difference, but I’m out and I’m not budging.

Lemmys_Worst_Night Jun 13, 2023

I will remain on reddit until 1 particular community moves here, but this will likely become my new "reddit"

coderade Jun 13, 2023

What community is that? Make it here and start the move. I’m sure others from there are looking for an alternative

0x4E4F Jun 14, 2023

It's peobably something niche and made up of people that just see it as a place to gather and share stuff, not into ideology, politics, etc.

veaviticus Jun 14, 2023

That's my issue. Loads of very niche subreddits that are the opposite of technical (gardening and plants and stuff). So the users will never switch... It took 5+ years to build those communities up in the first place.

But I popped back in to check today, and they're all back open and the users are terrible, just ranting against the blackout and licking reddits boot like crazy. So it makes me sad to lose those communities and all that information, but if thats the quality of the userbase... I can't bring myself to go back.

You'd think there'd be overlap between organic gardening, or NoLawns, or homesteading that would click with the federated, less capitalistic Lemmy... But nope.

Granary Jun 14, 2023

Oof just had a look at the comments on NoLawns. That's definitely disappointing how much negativity was on there

veaviticus Jun 14, 2023

The official lemmy community is over at https://slrpnk.net/c/nolawns, spawned by the same mod who ran NoLawns btw

0x4E4F Jun 14, 2023

Yeah, not part of that sub, but read a bit of the comments... well, what can I say 🤷. I'm part of this local sub, it was asked whether they'll join the protest or not, the comments were mostly "no one uses 3rd party apps here, plus what good whould it do". I mentioned Lemmy in 2 comments, hoping someone will actually write me a PM or reply to my comment asking me more about the platform... nothing.

That's the mentality of most people. If it works, leave it be. If it doesn't bother us, why change. Very few people can see the bigger picture, or even care about it... this is also one of my biggest standpoints when I argue that we are doomed as a species. Everyone cares only about hi's/her's wellbeing and not about the community's wellbeing. But, things are what they are I guess 🤷.

LetterboxPancake Jun 12, 2023

I will go back. To delete my users.

MrGreebles Jun 12, 2023

Just did this, it felt really nice to leave a message as to why I deleted it

penisthightrap Jun 13, 2023

I'm sad thinking about all the valuable info out there that'll be deleted while people leave reddit, but I also don't think the company deserves the value the users have put into it.

testworldlemmy Jun 13, 2023

👍

panckage Jun 13, 2023

I am hoping that a community without advertising can be created. It would be a community where users PAY a monthly fee... as content creators should be rewarded for their contributions and MUST receive a fair share for their contributions. It would also have an open API so that tinkerers (and most of all, disabled people) can interact with the site in an accessible way.

I think its the perfect community, but how can we create it???

HectorBarbossa99 Jun 13, 2023

do you really think that they kind of stuff that you would see on reddit deserves payment? Most of it is just typical forum style community posting, I feel like charging for that would kinda defeat the purpose tbh

Finsub Jun 13, 2023

I posted a lot on Reddit and in fact i never wanted to see any money for it. I don't post because of the money. Instead, I post for fun and for discussion.

penisthightrap Jun 13, 2023

Nothing of value was added by the megausers that were all over the front page.

The value was added in community discussion and the aggregation of knowledge from random people who had value information and knowledge to share on certain subjects.

exododo Jun 14, 2023

That's what social media with paid ad-free option does already. So called "content creators" will be where the coin is, competing for monetization, making clickbaits, unnecessary filler and putting stupid faces on thumbnails. All that already exists. The point of reddit was being free and community sourced, wich means there is no separation between users and content creators. Absence of economic interest was what lead to relevant and reliable content, to the point people started adding "reddit" to any google query.

DarkTides Jun 13, 2023

I won't go back to a place where I was worried of my wonderful piracy communities getting the plug pulled on them. This place is home now.

anonynorbi Jun 13, 2023

I feel the same. Can't believe those piracy communities survived this long on that platform...

HectorBarbossa99 Jun 14, 2023

I was pretty baffled by it myself and I'm a newcomer

angrylittlekitty Jun 13, 2023

creating a spark to start a fire takes patience and time.
maintaining a fire less so. burning a giant city down doesn't happen overnight -- but it can't happen without that first little spark.

i like to think of these communities as those little sparks from where i can sit and watch that while damned city burn to the ground as it deserves to.

Saitama Jun 13, 2023

I thought from the beginning that planning a blackout for just 2 days was self defeating. All they need to do is ride it out. And they got enough disinterested users and subs still active these two days that it's not really hurting them long term. The only way it hurst them is if it's a longer strike against engagement with Reddit

0x4E4F Jun 14, 2023

Probably not, but I'll be happy if I was proven wrong.

Undefined0968 Jun 13, 2023

"I think the wouldn't last 2 weeks"

Unlike digg, I think they would. I think they will :(

valveman Jun 13, 2023

I don't know about Digg, but the blackout kinda crashed their website/app. I think if we keep the protests going, they'll either have to roll back the changes, or open the subreddits by force and deal with low quality moderation.

Also, I think they did some irreparable damage to their image by not listening to their users, and this hopefully will kill their platform on the long term.

0x4E4F Jun 14, 2023

It's bot FB or Twitter, thus, no one actually cares. There was only one news report regarding the blackout, one.

BeMoreCareful Jun 14, 2023

There were bunches, most of the major news networks. Hell pbs newshour covered it.

0x4E4F Jun 14, 2023

Didn't know to be honest. I don't watch a lot of TV. I only saw 2 posts on Lemmy that shared the same article on a newspaper (can't remember which one TBH), so I thought that was the only one.

BeMoreCareful Jun 14, 2023

I don't mean to be offensive or anything, but maybe a quick Google before definitive statements like that.

It's easy to get caught up in negativity, but remember what Thumper's dad used to tell him.

0x4E4F Jun 14, 2023

Agreed. As much as I'd like to think they won't, they will. They'll find a way to monetize the OF promotion subs, plus make the site more microblogging like... cuz apparently, that is what works regarding social networks. That and the fact that crowd that now they dislike (us) has left, leaves them a clean slate to do whatever they want. And they will, just not with us.

Reddit is not gonnna crumble, wait and see.

Saitama Jun 14, 2023

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I agree but I think also most of the quality posters will begin leaving as the platform becomes more shittified, beyond those of us that are quitting in protest. I have been noticing a significant decline in the quality of conversations in the last couple of years in a few of my subs, as some people obsessed with karma started inserting themselves in every possible conversation and steering the subs in the direction they wanted. Which is not Reddit's fault, but it seems to happen every time a social media platform reaches critical mass, and the karma system encouraged that. Some people almost literally live for the karma - how many times have you seen redditors complain about being downvoted? That sort of thing ends up attracting people desperate for attention.

0x4E4F Jun 14, 2023

Quality posts may be gone, but that doesn't mean more people will leave the platform. For most of humanity, it just works. Shitposts, OF promotion subs and just general "show me your genitals" subs will continue to exist. And that is what most of humanity cares about. I myself do enjoy that from time to time, but in a regulated manner, which is why I have multiple accounts here and on reddit. Most people just wanna see some nudes, wanna laugh at some posts, cringe things, etc. Those subs won't go dark and didn't go dark. I have a few of them on one of my accounts and they still thrive. Not to mention the relationship/dating/amiugly subs, they also have a massive following, more than 1k comments on a single post, that's huge.

So, basically, that just leaves the tech (and not all of them BTW) and politics related subs that might shift directions to switch to lemmy. Everythings else will more or less stay on reddit.

That being said, there is a spike of bots posting on reddit for the past 2, 3 days. Most notably on the NSFW subs cuz no one actually cares what's being posted there (moderation is almosy none existent). And that, allong with the subs with most posts, that will make up for the posts of the communities protesting and everything will continue as if nothing happened.

AtreidesHawk25 Jun 14, 2023

I honestly don't plan to. I've been way less into it in recent years, I used to doomscroll for hours at a time but now I have TikTok and Discord servers that I am more occupied with. I like Lemmy a lot better already, we just need more people to use it.

CptBlewBalls Jun 14, 2023

How do you find Discord servers you are interested in? I have some game-related ones but not much else

HectorBarbossa99 Jun 14, 2023

I always find discord stuff weird because you really have to initiate conversations and its definitely the most "social" of social medias.

May sound stupid but idk its prolly just a mental block

Poiar Jun 14, 2023

I feel the same. Also, you cannot see threads in a tree structure.

Discord could become the next Reddit if they introduced this feature.

Right now, it seems Lemmy is the best safe haven - albeit still in its infancy.

nintendiator Jun 15, 2023

Isn't Discord more of the same tho? Closed platform, not indexable (unlike Reddit), centralized, etc.

nullishcat Jun 14, 2023

I'm prob gonna get downvoted but I wanted to share exactly why FMHY is only doing 2 days.

I do not like Reddit or their actions, I know there's a lot of other people who do too, but it's a necessary evil for resources (like FMHY.) Even after having multiple backups and linking them in the private subreddit's message, lots of people were still relying on the Reddit version. (Apparently some people can't see the message - possibly a bug on Reddit's end.) There are also tons of people who are unable to get answers and whatnot from private subreddits.

Also, FMHY is going to fade to obscurity if and when it gets off of Reddit. It's where nearly everyone came from, and outside of that, there's not a lot of places people can find out about it. Same for r/piracy and other similar subreddits.

We're probably going to do a poll on whether or not to do a one/two day/s per week blackout, but doing it indefinitely is off the table.

valveman Jun 14, 2023

I'm one of those who found FMHY and piracy related things through Reddit, and I understand you, like a lot of other communities there. But if everyone thinks the same, then Reddit will have almost every big community up and running, thus making this protest pointless.

AnyOldName3 Jun 14, 2023

A subreddit I moderate is shut down. When the other moderator started it, he checked the message showed up for both old and new reddit, and it did. Later, I got a flurry of notifications about join requests, and checked again. The message still showed up in old reddit, but not new. They might have intentionally hidden stuck messages either to keep people unaware of the reasons for the shutdown or to annoy moderators into reopening, or it might have been that they were A B testing something that accidentally broke it.

RedditRefugee Jun 14, 2023

I'm sure as hell not going back unless they revert the API changes, greedy fucks.

𝕾𝖕𝖎𝖈𝖞 𝕿𝖚𝖓𝖆 Jun 14, 2023

I'm not going back even if they do. I like it here.

EndyDiD Jun 14, 2023

The latest response from Reddit personally makes me quite furious https://tenor.com/038z.gif

So yeah.. Even if they revert shit I'm probably not going back there as much as I possibly can.

I say "as much as I possibly can" because Reddit has a stupid large archive of problem troubleshooting and solutions, which would make it difficult to completely abandon it in my opinion

Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says in an internal memo that the latest protest over API changes “will pass.” He also warned employees about wearing Reddit items in public.

The Verge

anonynorbi Jun 14, 2023

I am actually done with Reddit at this moment. This blackout showed me what Reddit is without the communities and the people. It felt really empty and unusable and it won't get any better. CEO of Reddit is a certified idiot. Right now trying to figure out how to delete my posts/comments and stuff (with a script) before deleting my Reddit account.