This is where breaking news, the latest numbers, information, and questions about the #RedditMigration will be posted. There will also be a place to discuss tactics to best help users make that jump and feel at home in the Fediverse. Welcome!
Based on observations of which subreddits are going dark/migrating and which ones are staying, IMO Reddit is about to swing hard toward conservative/fascist in the coming days/weeks.
Today I'm undertaking the effort of moving all my persistent post content relating to my projects from Reddit elsewhere. I think in the mid-term future Reddit will be as bad a name to be associated with as Voat or 8chan.
It's a weird timing with how Twitter has changed over the last ~6 months. We've seen plenty of large changes in popular internet culture, and this all feels like another one.
I'm interested to see what all of this looks like a couple years down the line. I don't think Twitter can hold on that long, can Reddit?
Twitter set the precedent, and Reddit is just being a fast follower since they've got their IPO to consider. The people doing this are just looking to make a quick buck and bail, and they could care less about the long term health of the platform.
Struggling businesses don't like it when third parties are able to successfully monetize off of their content. It's their product and they feel entitled to the profit that is being made off of them. (understandable to an extent) Up until now third-party apps have been seen as a "necessary evil" as a submission vector for more content, but now the AI fad has blown up and these sites are all the more covetous of how the content they host is being used to rake in profit. The value proposition has shifted and now they are more interested in capturing income from what is consuming them through the API rather than the content that is being produced through it. The fact that their first-party apps are able to better monetize the user interactions is the icing on the cake.
The irony here being that if they'd made a halfway competent app this wouldn't be much of an issue. But they let someone else do the work, get the credit, and then got greedy.
Huffman has gone full Space Karen. He's now banning users who post links/instructions on how to migrate to alternative sites and is a/b testing the blocking of mobile visitors unless they're using the official Reddit app.
I have been thinking the same. I am in the process of nuking all of my accounts, including my ones that go back more than 12 years. I am using Redact (a Mac app) to delete everything. Sad to see it all go, but not going to leave my content here.
r/reddelete doesn't use the API. It's a browser extension that clicks the delete button on every comment one by one. I just set it and walked away. Came back around 30 minutes later to an empty account ready for deletion.
No OP, but I used a python script called Shreddit. It's not simple for a SW neophyte, but if you have command line experience, you should be able to navigate it to delete your reddit submits and comments.
Beware though, I used it months ago and in two occasions I got a reply message to some really old comment the script was supposed to delete. The comment was still there, with my name and all on it, but it wasn't in my comment history anymore. Really weird. I tried contacting the author of the script but I got no answer. Since then I've been editing and deleting my comments by hand.
As my comment history looks completely empty, I don't know how I would go about checking if everything is actually deleted. Do you have any suggestions?
This! I've just deleted and edited 9 years worth of posts and comments. And although a few failed - that vast majority have gone. Changed my bio to "I've left Reddit"
Hard same. I've been on for 13 years and 10 months, and once the blackout period is up, I'm going back on to delete my entire post and comment history.
Are you also getting the feeling that this was the intention the whole time? To "clean house" as it were and cause an exodus by certain people they deemed to be...freeloading...or not conducive to their future bottom line? Those who tend to have a negative impact (or drag) on their advertising and investor pools?
I think it's just stupidity. Spez called reddit unprofitable in the ama. This pretty much sinks the ship for reddits ipo, and possibly the site as a whole. It's going to be one hell of a train wreck when that ipo goes off.
I feel like the people who are most passionate about this issue are the ones that were most active in posting (quality content, not Facebook tier memes), and they're the ones most likely to move. Reddit can survive on a casual audience, but if the 'experts' ditch reddit, the content quality is going to nosedive further than it ever has, until it's basically TikTok with links.
I've seen a lot of talk of people nuking their accounts, which is both the best and worst thing they can do. Quality posts / comments disappear, and there's no one around to replace them. Lack of said knowledge then makes people look elsewhere, be that here or the other next big thing, whatever that may be. Yeah, yeah, everything's probably archived somewhere, but the days of 'search term site:reddit.com' may be going away, and I'm sure that drives a decent amount of traffic.
Edit to add: It's damn hot here, and I've basically talked around the point I was trying to make; I think reddit leadership is making stupid ass decisions, but I don't think they're stupid enough to call anyone they're driving away freeloaders. The site would be nothing without the people that contributed quality content for years, and these moves are only driving those people away, in turn killing the volume of new quality content. They may make money short term, but I can't personally see the site going another 18 years, not without it being a total husk of it's former self.
It'll take years for that to happen. And I think that's okay.
I'm proud of my history with Reddit, but it's just that, history. We'll see what happens in the future. If they loosen up these new restrictions, I'll probably stay, but for now I've got Reddit blocked for at least the next couple days.
It actually seems nice to have a smaller network with quality discussions and posts. When sites get big these kinds of posts often get drowned out by bots, memes, reposts, drama, propaganda, thinly veiled ads, etc.
I would be happy if we can manage a quality over quantity community here. Feel sorry for the people who will still be using Rexxit though.
I hear you there.
I think that will happen, regardless of a 'critical mass', purely due to the instance based nature. E.g. you want to look at retro gaming content, tips, people's builds, etc. That might have been a 100k+ sub (pulling numbers out my arse), with every 3rd posting being "where do I download .roms from plz". Now that might end up being 20 5k+ communities where there's less noise, and everyone contributing is more likely to be engaged with.
I do think that presents potential issues with sustaining users, as people are so used to everything being in one place / end up feeling FOMO because they're not subscribed to every single community and don't want to deal with that, but I think it definitely looks good for the actual quality of discussion on any given topic.
The intention is to pave the way for the AI creators, who will feed on reddit comment like crazy. They are the only ones able to pay the fees for the new API. Who else can?
Our content was coherent, easy to sort, curated. It was free value that we fed to the AI.
Imagine the writers guild of america giving their scripts well written, in a database, with scores, etc...
Writers also wanted artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT to be used only as a tool that can help with research or facilitate script ideas and not as a tool to replace them.
Can you imagine the value that we gave for free with reddit? We should be paid for what we do.
So overwrite your previous content, don't feed the AI for free, this is worth dollars.
I want to understand why the advertising folks are so hell bent on making safe spaces for fascists. There can't be that many of them that they are the only profitable advertising denomination. I mean, sure, they may be rubes that can be duped into buying nearly anything, but...
Wouldn't that go in the opposite direction though?
My understanding was that the advertiser pool most definitely does not want conservative takes let alone even further down the right wing. And I can't speak to the investors but I imagine they'll mostly follow what the advertising wants.
It's more IMHO that fascists are actively trying to take over every useful socmedia platform and turn it into a propaganda loop bubble. Keeps us from talking to each other.
I guess it's still more about getting the sweet AI/LLM money. Maybe also nuking 3rd party apps bc that means less ad, less user data then less money. Driving ppl that don't like ad etc out is probably the consequences of that.
100% this is what it is. Subreddits with younger user bases are calling this blackout corny among other things, young people do not give a shit about their privacy or possess tech savviness on a level to where they could navigate anything except the most mindless and simple of apps, and they don’t care what that algorithm throws at them
Hey thanks for making this magazine! I'm quite new to Kbin and fediverse in general, but was thinking that maybe linking to the kbin FAQ/Starter guide from this magazine would be helpful. No idea if you can sticky or crosspost from another thread though.
Lazycog, thank you for this post. It's just what I was hoping to find when I clicked open this thread. This is my first kbin post, tho I've been on Mastodon for over a year. I'm hoping to learn about community norms, etc, here.
Thanks for this, question - I clicked the link and read the article. I wanted to upvote your article but it wanted me to login to kilioa. I am currently logged into kbin.social. does that mean I can't upvote things from other servers?
Hey @awol , that's not an article by me, just crossposting it here :) and the link takes you to a different Kbin instance (not kbin.social), but since kbin is part of the fediverse (and so is kilioa), you can actually find the same post on kbin.social and upvote it here. Heres the link to post on kbin.social: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/11493/A-small-FAQ-to-hopefully-help-new-users-to-kbin
I know this is fediverse stuff is confusing, but you'll get the hang of it as you explore, no worries!
Edit: The reason why I posted the link to the original thread on kbin instance kilioa.org instead of the kbin.social one is due to this whole federation thing being a bit broken right now (temporary measures to help the developer of kbin deal with loads of new traffic on this site), so the updated/edited kilioa.org thread "did not yet arrive" to kbin.social.
I would hope for Reddit to really suffer from this and become a shelf of itself maybe even like what happened to dog . I hope In a couple of years people will make memes about what happened with Reddit.
But to be honest I think this is just wishful thinking and Reddit might be fine down the road. Don’t get me wrong lots of people will migrate and this can be great for places like Kbin or squabbles or any other Reddit alternative but my hope for Reddit just going away is not very high.
Not sure what is happening today but people are putting up with a ton of shot and very few are down to actually do something about it.
Like look at Netflix for example, with their new password sharing cracking down policy. Tons of people being vocal about cancelling their accounts and I do believe most of the vocals ones did it. But truth is most people and big part or the ones not being vocal just put up with it and subscribed to their service. According to recent reports (I could probably cite them here but it’s easy to find) their subscription numbers are up even more so than at the beginning of the COVID lockdown. So even tho they did lost some of their subscribers they did gain a net amount of new ones.
I am just baffled and honestly a bit pessimistic about Reddit and Twitter in general to feel much of this.
Sure some mods will leave, the quality of many subreddits will fall but eventually new people will join and new mods will be appointed.
Instead I want to focus on new places like Kbin getting new people or people from Reddit and just making this my new home.
But how knows, hopefully I am wrong and Reddit will actually feel the consequences of being greedy.
But I swear in todays society feels like being greedy is rewarded instead of punished. Something is very wrong with how we as a society are doing things.
“ But I swear in todays society feels like being greedy is rewarded instead of punished. Something is very wrong with how we as a society are doing things.”
So does the microblog feature and mastodon integration on here mean this doubles as a twitter and reddit replacement? Or is it missing features it needs to be a twitter replacement?
Thanks for setting this up! Also just learning of Kbin today after stepping away from reddit. Certainly interested to see how everything pans out! Excited to find some new platforms to check out too 😄
My main is 17 years old. My alt is 8. Going to use one of those tools I read about and nuke them both. Bums me out, but this kbin/Lemmy option seems viable.
Also going to check in with the mods of my favorite niche subs and see about magazine replacements over here.
Replacing a website containing text with a livestream to scale better is hilarious. The tech behind serving a livestream is so, so, much more expensive per user.
But, of course, someone else is eating that cost ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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