Reddit Migration

People discredit every type of protest, IRL or not. I think back to every major protest that's happened in response to some major event, and the response every time is "That won't ever work", "You're wasting your time", "Imagine caring about that".

This isn't the death of Reddit, not even close to it. Reddit may even get more popular after this. However, that doesn't mean all of this was pointless.

The Fediverse continues to grow, and that's genuinely a good thing. Every time a platform fucks up, people give X ActivityPub app a new set of eyes and continue to help developers strengthen these platforms and build up the community.

A lot of times the things we want don't happen in 1 big moment, it's a lot of continuous smaller moments that eventually form into something greater.

It's going to take a lot of effort to build out a new platform, especially one built off the concept of decentralization. I think we should continue to build our communities here, and do our best to help this platform thrive.

Reddit is redirecting some impressions away from existing communities, and some advertisers are pausing campaigns.

A Reddit result in Google might take you to a private page now

At least for me, the API changes are just a final straw and something which mobilised enough redditors to make other platforms viable alternatives.
Here are the reasons I won’t be going back:

[Removed by Reddit]

Admin power is misused. I’ve seen memes [Removed] where the only logic to their removal is if you’re a little bit of a bigot and are butthurt about it, or if you want to appeal to advertisers over actual people. In general, admin decisions seem less about people and more about business, how else do you wind up with a site where subs that exist to hurt people or put them down thrive openly but NSFW subs wind up a topic of debate or censure? Make no mistake this will go the YouTube direction, where things like LGBT content are determined not safe for advertisers. Having this in the context of a site known for cradling the manosphere and the incel movement and you can see where the dumpster fire is headed. Spez has no backbone so neither will Reddit.

The Advertising

It is so bad, my previous point is largely an issue so Reddit can be an advertising platform and then they fail at being an advertising platform. Other social media that relies on advertising revenue rewards advertisers for honest, accurate, and well targeted ads. Reddit has their audience opt in to their interests, how hard can it be to serve a fair quantity of relevant adverts? Reddit is the cheapest platform to advertise on and it’s treated like a big old billboard. The average CTR on Reddit ads is a third of that on Facebook. If they could manage to target even the right country half the time they could make more money showing less ads, and ads people at least don’t mind seeing.

This is assuming advertising is necessary at all, what’s interesting here, and with the federated internet in general, is that we can have communities that aren’t expected to be profit centres and try out new ways of financing platforms that centre users and not the advertising industry.

The bots

I’ve been on Reddit for at least 6 or 7 years, and it feels like outside the news and current affairs subs, there’s been very little new for about three of them. The place has been suffocated by repost bots. Even now, if you dare to look, you’ll see a lot of Reddit’s current activity is coming from unaware bots on dead subs reposting whatever hit r/all in 2020.

The most blatant bots are porn accounts, spamming their dead eyed content indiscriminately across the platform, spare a moment for the poor users of r/analog.

These issues can be improved on by cutting off access to the API, though I don’t doubt they would just rely on web scrapers without it. Users have already made bots to flag the bots, is Reddit less capable than it’s userbase? Or are they relying on bots to keep the site in a mundane content loop?

The experience

I’m really enjoying using alternative sites now Reddit has given them a userbase. It feels like the internet used to feel before it got carved up between the “platforms” for advertising revenue and I love it. The major points above are massive contributors to user experience but so are the users here, Lemmy and Raddle, the ethos and terms of service for these spaces and small design choices that centre users.

TLDR: I’m deleting my Reddit account(s), not because I want Apollo, but because the alternatives are better.

Link from the About section at the bottom.

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kbin

Copy of text:

#redditmigration #reddit One of my friends is a mod of a very large subreddit that went private for the blackout. Last night she received a message saying that she had been stripped of her moderator rights and the subreddit was taken public again. To be very clear, the subreddit members had specifically voted in favor of going private. It seems like reddit will stoop lower and lower to try and break the blackout. I'm seething.

This article was published yesterday but I did not see it posted here. Please merge if there's already a post about this.

"Reddit’s winding path to a potential initial public offering hit its latest bump after the site’s plans to make more money from access to its data drew condemnation from volunteer moderators."

On Monday we wrote about the changes that Reddit was making to their API pricing, causing some services to shut down, and leading thousands of subreddits to choose to blackout (some temporarily, so…

In a memo to employees, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman cautioned them not to wear branded gear in public. He also said the mass user backlash "will pass."

This will get interesting.

As an effect of the recent Reddit blackout, the company is now surrounded by disappointed investors and community. I predict that Reddit may end up facing the same fate as Tumblr: being sold to another company. Only time will tell what the future holds for Reddit, but one thing is for sure - the protest will leave a lasting impact on the platform and its users.

Spez, and Reddit as a whole is basically counting on most subreddits opening back up tomorrow after the 48-hour period.

Really hope that mods can hold out for longer, make them really panic.

Apollo has become the center of a platform-wide fight between Reddit and its users.

https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
_https://kbin.social/stats

Feels like being part of internet history. I wonder how many of us have accounts on both :D.

EDIT - turns out I was wrong - here's a better way of seeing the stats for the "Threadiverse":

https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse - we're up to 169,312 users now!

As of 12:56pm GMT (7:56am central time), 7742/8299 subreddits are no longer public

The information I initially posted is misleading. Thus, I have edited the title and this content area to report accurate numbers.

As @roofuskit mentioned, the 8299 number is the amount of subreddits that committed to going dark, not the total number of subreddits, which is over 3,000,000.

And as @8thiest was keen to observe, 204 of the top 250 are dark, as you can see from this site: https://save3rdpartyapps.com/

In this video, i'll be discussing the api changes Reddit made that effectively has killed third party reddit apps. I'll also share a few reddit alternatives. Lemmy: lemmy.ml/ Kbin: https://kbin.pub/en Support me at: 💵 Liberapay: https://libe...

I have been joking to a couple of friends today who were also redditors that I've been feeling withdrawals from reddit throughout the day. Like I knew I was addicted, I just never thought I was going to have to face the consequences of withdrawals!

But there's also a major part of me that's feeling a sense of loss. I had two reddit accounts that were 11+ years old. I used an app called Redact last night to totally expunge my comment and submission history, and I just was hit by so many emotions watching my old content turn to ashes.

Reddit is where I always spent my depression spirals, but it was also where I found hobbyist communities and group help support. I found sexual partners through reddit, and used to even moderate in my early days. It's where I used to keep up with a TON of current events but also read from so many diverse perspectives with expertise on topics.

As much as I am tentatively excited for the culture and community we can build on kbin, I truly am feeling the inconsequential reality of all that karma and browsing. Reddit felt like it was going to be immortal, but even the mighty fall.

Anyone else bummed??