Megathread for Reddit Blackouts and News - Rest of the Week(?)
hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout, its aftermath, and what’s happening going forward, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! thanks! we’ll see if we need to cycle the thread again before the end of this week, but i don’t know that we’ll need to
I never stopped using RSS. I follow many sites and blogs using The Old Reader in my desktop browser, with Reeder piggybacking off its OPML file on my phone and iPad.
TOR was designed specifically with compatibility with Google Reader in mind and shares many of the old keyboard shortcuts. It also has rudimentary social features that are in no way in-your-face (good thing, too, because I never really saw the point of them).
Reddit users continue their blackout protest against the platform's new pricing plan, which will force several popular third-party apps to shut down or pay up starting July 1. While some subreddits have reopened, moderators of r/aww, r/videos, and r/music have kept their forums closed, holding out for more movement from Reddit's executives.
Over 300 other subreddits are still private, and moderators are polling their users to gauge interest before joining the indefinite shutdowns. CEO Steve Huffman's leaked memo, which warned employees not to sport a Reddit logo in public, has been criticized for "trivializing" the concerns of moderators and volunteers who maintain much of the platform.
source: tldrdaily.news
Reddit users continue their blackout protest against the platform's new pricing plan, which will force several popular third-party apps to shut down or pay up starting July 1. While some subreddits have reopened, moderators of r/aww, r/videos, and r/music have kept their forums closed, holding out for more movement from Reddit's executives. Over 300 other subreddits are still private, and moderators are polling their users to gauge interest before joining the indefinite shutdowns. CEO Steve Huffman's leaked memo, which warned employees not to sport a Reddit logo in public, has been criticized for "trivializing" the concerns of moderators and volunteers who maintain much of the platform.
I would honestly love to see that. It would make their situation so much worse. They rely on people moderating subs voluntarily. They don't have the manpower to do it themselves. The subs would probably get flooded with spam and NSFW content. And if there's one thing advertisers hate more than the current blackout, it's their ads being displayed between questionable porn.
So if reddit really did this, I wouldn't count it as a loss for the protesters. Instead, I would go get some popcorn.
Rest of the week? No.
The answer is until they lower to a more reasonable price and work with Apollo and RIF (at the very least) so that they can keep their apps running while transitioning their users to a new pricing structure that will allow them to not be bankrupted in the short term because of the price adjustment.
Complete silence is impossible. At best only a tiny fraction of power users are the ones invested enough to care about the impact of what Reddit's doing, and are willing to do anything about it. The 99% of the platform who are lurkers, by and large don't contribute, and just want the platform back open and for everyone else to stop complaining are what's being fought over.
If you shut down enough of the platform - which the power users and mods can do by setting to private, restricting posting, or simply not posting when they otherwise would have - then the lurkers go to the site, see nothing to interact with and leave (or at the very least, spend less time on the platform as there is "less" to do). Over a long enough time span that would have started showing up in a big way. But it wasn't going to happen in two days. If anything, the blackout was so telegraphed and so much news got stirred up that it would make total sense if their traffic was actually not impacted or was even high for those two days (at least in terms of clicks and votes, not posts and comments). The lurkers are still valuable to Reddit though - that's where their advertising revenue is coming from.
People mass deleting their post history will hurt the platform. Some big subreddits staying private will hurt the platform. Some small subreddits staying private will hurt the platform. All of those things can bleed away users and diminish Reddit's usefulness and dominance. Really the ideal outcome is we scare them enough that they pull back to a more reasonable position and things can continue as normal. Maybe Huffman gets ousted and they plan a longer timescale and more reasonable pricing.
It's just amazing really. Had they rolled out a reasonable rated plan, and maybe even a discount to highly known apps, and even set a "the price will go up each 6 months for the next 2 years till we reach this higher, but still reasonable price"... All the apps would have added a subscription model for like $0.99 a month and none of us would have really complained.
Like, honestly most of us would have paid and maybe grumbled slightly but said "that's the cost of maintaining this huge community, and I get more than $0.99 in value from it" and just kept shit posting on Reddit all day.
If they wanted to block AI models, limit the API keys to only well known apps or those that are manually verified to be not-an-AI by reddit admins.
It's amazing how dumb a corporation can be sometimes (or has some nefarious endgame ala Twitter)
Redditinc.com's fact(oid)s about the API changes.
Includes such BS as
100,000+ active communities
Technically true. But it's estimated that between 1/3 and 1/2 are NSFW. That is, the subs they don't want shown at their (mythical) IPO.
Supporting these apps is not free for Reddit; they incur both infrastructure and significant opportunity costs.
Technically true. But so does the official app, and web browsers. API calls are not some sort of special magic that causes extra wear on the systems. If the users never had the third party apps they'd be using something else, causing the same traffic and usage - or using nothing at all.
Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use from our API.
Again, third party apps are no more of a drain on data use than anything else. It's been proven, but Spez keeps pushing this lie.
Many other platforms have chosen to stop supporting apps like these altogether.
Objection! Facts not in evidence.
more than 98% of apps do not pay and will continue to access the Data API for free so long as apps are not monetized [...].
Emphasis mine. This is the real story.
Our pricing is based on usage levels comparable to our own costs
Either this is an outright lie or Spez is admitting that the official Reddit app is an inefficient, data monching, piece of garbage.
We're working to improve the mobile mod experience
Spez has been promising rainbows for years but all we ever get is poop. Or just the smell of poop. That the mobile apps were released without proper moderator tools tells you what he thinks of moderators.
We have a unique system of checks and balances, and we respect the communities right to protest.
Clearly a lie, given that Spez is going to change the rules to force out moderators who choose to follow their sub's wishes to protest.
r/nottheonion is asking users to vote, including a fun option that encourages people to take Tuesdays off
The "fun option" is an official means of joining the protest. Can he stop lying for 10 seconds?
We conducted an accessibility audit with an external consultant and have been working on improving accessibility on the site and in our apps.
Yes, much smarter than actually TALKING TO YOUR OWN USERS AND SEEING WHAT THEY WANT. Oh, they want what you refuse to do? Gee, what a surprise!
Nothing says ableism more than telling people with disabilities that they have no agency in how or if they get accommodations. (Sadly, the ADA does not apply to Reddit as a website.)
In summary, Spez needs to be fired. Preferably out of a cannon, into the sun.
undefined> Technically true. But it’s estimated that between 1/3 and 1/2 are NSFW. That is, the subs they don’t want shown at their (mythical) IPO.
I'm pretty sure r/clipclop is considered respectable and mainstream now.
If they want their subs back so badly, let them take them. They can deal with moderation (or finding any decent mods at all) on their own.
Good luck with that, Reddit admins. lol.
Judging by the newsprint from today; it feels like spez is still lost in his own delusion.
Right now he's at the bargaining stage; trying to find out if he can weasel his way out of this shit. Fuck him. He dug his own career's grave there. I've already established a community here on lemmy.
Like with a lot about Reddit, things have been implemented that sounds good on paper but little thought has been given to the consequences.
As for the electing mods/vox populi....[barf]
The Verge: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down
TL;DR He is doubling down without really answering the important questions. Not why the deadline is so short (they've been talking about API changes forever), not if there could be a more reasonable pricing (=no).
And so, it begins https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14aeq5j/new_admin_post_if_a_moderator_team_unanimously/
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544
Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, saying he'll change rules that favor ‘landed gentry’
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Thursday that he wants to bring an end to a user-led protest that has made large parts of the influential website inaccessible this week. Huffman said in an interview that he plans to institute rules changes that would allow Reddit users to vote out moderators who have overseen the protest, comparing them to a “landed gentry.”
The protest took down thousands of message boards, known as subreddits, starting Monday, and some communities say they plan to continue the action indefinitely. The action has been led by Reddit’s unpaid, volunteer moderators, who have a high level of control over how their subreddits are run. Participating communities went “private,” making them unviewable even to members. The protesters oppose changes that will most likely cut off their ability to access Reddit through third-party apps, and their action has hobbled much of the site.
Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, said he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular. He said the new system would be more democratic and allow a wider set of people to hold moderators accountable.
Reddit’s current policy says moderators may be removed by higher-ranking moderators or by Reddit itself for inactivity or violations of Reddit-wide rules. They may also remove themselves. Many have held their positions for years.
“If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders,” he said.
“And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”
Moderators have argued that the high level of control over their communities is well-deserved because of the hours of free labor they’ve put into making and enforcing rules on their subreddits. Any plan to reduce their influence might result in another backlash.
Huffman, who co-founded Reddit 18 years ago this month, said he believes the leaders of the protest may have had popular support when it started Monday but have lost most of it since.
That's the exact definition of serfdom.
It's frustrating that being a mod is first-come-first-serve, but people have been complaining about the system for many many years (/r/Canada is one strong example). So in a way, voting on mods could be a welcome change, but this is clearly not actually for the good of the community.
Interesting point about the future of Reddit in that article:
Huffman said, however, that he’d like some form of revenue-sharing.
“I would like subreddits to be able to be businesses if they choose,” he said, adding that’s “another conversation, but I think that’s the next frontier of Reddit.”
The long-term goal is monetization of subreddits. I'm glad I won't be there to see that happen.
If this is true, then it's not good news
https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112/Heads-up-Reddit-is-quietly-restoring-deleted-AND-overwritten-posts-and
Time to write a gpdr Letter to get deleted :D
https://feddit.de/comment/313618
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