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.
Yeah, I'm thinking that each subreddit's choice to stay private or restricted is a little irrelevant in the long run. The big realization here is how everyone has become so dependent on one single platform: Reddit. Reddit corporate has made it abundantly clear that all of its users and all of its content are simply there to support the compnay's bottom line, and that their needs and preferences are completely irrelevant in the grand scheme. We need some competition across different platforms to help reel in these mega-centralized mass social media destinations, forcing them to cater to their user's interests as well. I understand the idea that Reddit needs to make money to survive, and I don't want to stop them from doing that. But with an entire world of solutions, is this really the only one they could have chosen? If, for example, they were actually responding to the AI companies training their models on Reddit at great bandwidth cost to Reddit, why not just price out the AI companies and leave the 3rd party apps alone? I don't buy their cover up story. It's all ads, content control, and the desire to press people into their own algorithm and behavioral ecosystem.
My preferred app dies at the end of the month. I've tried them all - I only found one I liked enough to continue using reddit. When it dies, I'm done with Reddit.
I know 2 days isn't enough, and I hope the protests continue and reddit ends because of spez and the bs api changes
It's tough for me because I rely on reddit so much, like I look up information at least once a day here. It's my search engine, I can type in literally any question on Google with the word reddit in it, and find dozens of threads with even more comments and discussions of real people with their real experiences, often still actively talking about the subject
I'm in IT, and I haven't tied out both Lemmy and kbin, and I'll admit it was even confusing for me
One of the toughest adjustments is not being able to use Reddit Boost
I have complete faith in the community and it's developers to create something for us even better than reddit. I just worry how long it'll take to grow and whether it'll be a true migration. If not successful, I won't know what to do because I'll feel dirty continuing to use reddit lol
Unless of course.. We somehow get a user made 3rd party reddit app via APK. That'd be neat. Dunno if reddit would be as strict as snapchat about that though, or how possible it'll be (unless that's literally what they made impossible, I just figured they didn't make it public anymore, but can still be modified, like betterdiscord/aliucord/vendetta, Instander, frost for fb, revanced)
I think Reddit is going to be fine after this. The blackout was only for two days, which is nothing in the grand scheme. To have a genuine impact, all of the protesting subs would need to remain private indefinitely.
We didn't get 100% participation in the blackout, we won't get 100% commitment to an extension. But if enough subs commit to an indefinite blackout then it could still work.
And if not enough subs step up. Well then at that point we just hope that enough users are walking away to keep the valuation sunk. If spez won't back down then I hope he loses as much money as possible.
I think Reddit is going to be fine after this. The blackout was only for two days, which is nothing in the grand scheme. To have a genuine impact, all of the protesting subs would need to remain private indefinitely.
I think Reddit is going to be fine after this. The blackout was only for two days, which is nothing in the grand scheme. To have a genuine impact, all of the protesting subs would need to remain private indefinitely.
For me, I was on my way out of Reddit when the new Reddit appeared and features on RES were starting to break, but the I got Apollo. That app was keeping me there and I have no reason stay after it no longer works. I’m just deciding if I want to delete my oldest active account or not. There is a lot of information in there but I don’t see going back. I just look forward to good communities that aren’t drowned out by a million bots over here.
Unfortunately, not much is going to happen. When you put an end date to a protest, then the company can just wait it out. What really needs to happen is all major subs start redirecting to kbin, tildes, beehaw etc
The protest had an end date because it shows that we're reasonable and willing to come back to the table. Now that Reddit has doubled-down, the next stage is to extend the timeline and magnitude of the protest.
The big apps and some of the bigger subs were always going to be going away indefinitely, while others will likely stay dark or even join the protest after staying out initially. Some will go back to normal, too, of course, just like some subs didn't participate at all in the first place.
Yeah, I think some people are seeing this end date and thinking that's the end of the blackout for good. But I think it's more the end of the first blackout. Subs can black out again. Not every sub will, but we're already seeing many are doing so and I know some subs planned to reopen and ask their users what they want to do.
By putting a limit on the first blackout, they certainly improved adoption. How many subs would have even participated if we pushed for indefinite or nothing? The size of the blackout helped it's messaging and media attention.
There is already action being taken to extend the blackout indefinitely with a number of large subreddits joining in. /r/ModCoord is rallying them right now.
The future is the hands of the Reddit community. After the blackout, will we collectively shrug our shoulders and give up the fight even though it has barely begun? Or will the gravity of the situation sink in and inspire us into a second, longer, potentially indefinite blackout until our demands are met? Or at least until Reddit gives some ground. Good lord, please don't tell me everyone's going to throw in the towel without at least some concessions of their part.
I despise the official app and website and it showed me the user that they are gonna go for maximizing profits.
Even if Reddit would cave, they will try this again and again and again. They just don't care.
In the end I wouldn't even mind to be the "product", but what would be in it for me if the experience is gonna be horrible?
If I am gonna pimp out my eyes, time and scrolling fingers for Reddit to monetize, they better be taking me to a 5 star restaurant so to speak.
So for me; Joined the blackout monday 00:00, haven't looked at Reddit the past days and will continue to do that. My account is also gonna be scrubbed/edited and deleted today.
Deleted Facebook and my account months ago.
Never cared or will care for Tik Tok
Have a ghost insta page because my friends like to share memes with me on it (yea idk).
Have a twitter Account I use once a week to see the transfer news from my favorite soccer team.
Reddit will join the above list.
These applications do not define you nor do they deserve your time if you feel unheard or taken advantage of.
The general sentiment I've seen among users here is to not go back unless Reddit is willing to give in.
Some subs will inevitably give up tomorrow, we were never going to get 100% commitment to any protest. But it sounds like a hefty number are holding the line.
Heck, a good few people have already committed to burning their accounts and the original two days aren't even up yet. Though Reddit probably counts them as beyond reach even if they do concede completely.
I suspect the real long-term harm to Reddit is that it will have started the push for alternatives in earnest. That, combined with Twitter and now Discord going to shit, all in such a short timespan, gives me hope that enough people will see the value in the Fediverse.
They changed the username system into a crappier one and are putting nearly all new features behind a paywall, along with just adding stuff that doesn't need to be there that intrudes on the experience. According to what people say.
Alternatives? Well certainly there's Guilded, but it's still pretty small compared to discord. It's also owned by Roblox, a company notorious for making crappy decisions.
At least they aren’t actively working against their community like Reddit and Twitter. The Silicon Valley douchebaggery is off the charts lately, every jackass millionaire (or billionaire) thinks they know what’s best for their users, to the point where they think it’s normal to have an actively antagonistic relationship with their user base. We have the power to pick up our shit and take it to another site
I don’t think the username system is worse. Users had to look up their number appendage every time they wanted to friend someone that they met in game or IRL. Now they just remember whatever their username actually is.
Agreed. I disliked the idea when I first heard of it, but then I read their blog post explaining their reasoning and thought it was actually very reasonable. Some things that stood out were:
Honestly, I didn't even know my own number, which is a pretty strong bit of evidence for their claims that the numbering format is hard to share.
Apparently they had allowed usernames to contain special characters and be case sensitive, which is just an absolute nightmare for communicating your username to someone. "Foo#123" is not the same as "foo#123".
Having to change your username sucks, but I have to admit they have good reasons. I'm admittedly biased though because I was able to get my username (despite not having nitro -- which understandably gave priority to picking usernames).
Matrix is the obvious one, being also on the Fediverse. It's not universally liked from what I can gather though, but that might have just been the people I encountered.
The way I see it Reddit will probably carry on just as most websites do, but will become the place where ‘normies’ do their thing just like Facebook has done.
I’m able to find high effort content here in the fediverse but I think there will need to be some solution to simplify things a little for the less netizen-like population to really get onboard
If Reddit will die after this, it will be slowly over a long time, because that's how Reddit is implementing these horrible changes, slowly raising the heat.
to me the future of reddit is bleak because they are not profitable yet in trying to become profitable they are chasing off the very community that made it this big in the first place. protests ends tomorrow or not, thats gonna be what investors see and what they are gonna base the decision off of to invest in something else.
I think that if the server costs are as astronomical as they claim, that the 40k users on apollo cost them 'tens of millions' per year, I'm surprised they have any money whatsoever considering they have 430m monthly users. their server costs must be in the billions!
I dont believe it either. I think they are more than capable of running the site as it is, but Reddit wants to attract investors, and for that they need "growth", infinite growth, and thats what all this is about. Not about getting money but getting ALL the money.
Exactly. The high price point of api isn't to make money off of 3rd party apps, it's to price then out and force all user into official app. They want all ad revenue. There was the post the other day that showed they are testing killing mobile reddit too. Everything to push all users to their revenue stream.
I believe they are pretty profitable at this point. All this nonsense is because they did the math and realized they were losing a lot of money by allowing third party apps to make API calls relatively cheaply.
I hope the mods resign in disgust and the spez gets scab mods just to make the situation more ridiculous. I am done with reddit. I like the idea behind kbin and the fediverse better, just hope this community can figure out infra better, as well as creating logins. Rather logins all be tied to all the instances, but maybe I am ignorant about it.
Think of it like email. you don't log in to yahoo.com with your gmail account. but you can email yahoo email addresses with your gmail account via gmail's website. To ask that gmail's login/accounts be able to be logged in on yahoo.com is just a silly request, isn't it?
I think @jeebus's issue is that federation isn't quite fully working here on kbin, so he feels the need to "log in to every website" which isn't how the fediverse is supposed to work. We should be able to view and interact with lemmy content just fine, but that bit is kinda not working.
So right now it's like we're all stuck emailing just other gmail accounts, and so we "feel the need" to go log in to yahoo so we can email yahoo accounts. Once federation is working properly again we can just post from one site.
That makes good sense (thank you), but I still don't understand why anyone would want to do that. In the case of email, it's clear to me — I want to send info to someone. But in this case? When did anyone ever browse reddit and think "gee, I wish I could see content from other platforms mixed in here." Nobody ever wanted that. It's a terrible idea.
Because of the situation we're seeing with reddit right now. where reddit admins basically cause problems with the api, the reddit mods close all the subs, and the site becomes unusable and you're forced to leave.
With fediverse, that can't happen. Each "subreddit" is on a different website. So one website's admins can't just fuck up the entire platform. Likewise the moderators of the "subreddit" wouldn't need to just close every single one. If one website in the fediverse fucks up, people can just continue posting elsewhere with no interruption.
In practice, everyone will coalesce around a single instance. News reporters need to be able to talk about "kbin" (or whatever), and then the world hears the news report and creates an account. Various websites around the web need to be able to link to a single instance, where it can be reasonably expected that most people have an account. The chief virtue of competition in a market of commoditized products is that winners take over the market while losers go out of business. There may always be some bit players, for those who prefer indie shops to big players, but it is the nature of markets having commoditized products to coalesce.
I'm not an expert in technology or computing, but I like ruminating in my head a lot (ADHDers like me do this every second). Here is how I understand this situation.
There is a webpage called kbin.pub. In kbin.pub there are a number of instances, kbin.social being one of them. I think that right now there are 6 or 7 instances.
The total number of kbin users can be over 150.000, 100.000 of them are in this instance.
Now, let's assume there is one single login, and with that single login you can configure your user in every instance. That means that every instance has one user, being you.
With 150.000 users, that means that this instance will increase its load 1,5 times more than its current load, but also the other instances will increase its load 100 times its current load, making every instance suffer the hug of death, like happened yesterday here, when it was almost unusable.
Instead, activitypub eases that load, making that with one single user in one single instance, you can interact with every other instance that communicates with the one you belong to. The server load is shared, and hugs of death are very localized.
And keep in mind I talked about kbin.pub, but with lemmy the situation can be more dramatic, because we're talking about dozens, almost hundreds of instances and like 50.000 total users.
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