Thoughts on apathy and the Reddit protest

Honestly, it's mind-boggling how the top 1% have us believing their relentless greed is just the norm and that we're helpless to do anything about it. This is particularly noticeable on platforms like Reddit, where we, the users, are the real value creators and even volunteer our time.

Just a few days ago, during the Reddit protests, the only thing required from us was to log off. However, it seemed that even this small act was too much for some. It's a stark wake-up call, making you question how and why we don't take a stand when our rights are truly in jeopardy.

In this day and age, it appears we're all too engrossed in our personal lives. If it doesn't directly affect us, it's shrugged off. This "not my problem" mindset is damaging to us all eventually. It hinders our ability to empathize with each other's struggles and to unite against common adversities. This isn't the type of society any of us should want. It's alarming to see our sense of community dwindling, and it's genuinely heartbreaking. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but the large number of people who seem indifferent is truly concerning. This should serve as a wake-up call for all of us. What do you guys think? (Pic not relevant)

Tashlan,
Tashlan avatar

it appears we're all too engrossed in our personal lives.

I understand the sentiment, and when I was younger I probably would agree and I might agree again when I'm older. But right now, my personal life is the only one I have, and the world has organized itself in a way that all I can do is work to slow my losses.

I'm giving the fediverse a real shot, but it's a slow burn It's not "there" yet, there aren't a decade worth of conversations about my favorite topics. For some people, they have more immediate needs and desires that can't be satisfied here and if Reddit is all there is, it's where they'll go. But it's important to me that nobody forget that most people aren't in love with spez and the Reddit corporation, they love their communities, the way many people dislike Zuck but stay on Facebook because they love their friends. Platforms are code, they're also people, and our peers are not mindless sheep for wanting to be with people in spaces they enjoy. It's what's human.

For Fediverse to win, we have to provide more than just platforms, we have to have good people, good content, something to stay for. A reason to join beyond just Fuck Reddit.

I think I've seen enough now to conclude for-profit social media will always end looking like 90s AOL. But you know, I was on AIM until 2010, because despite all my contempt for AOL it wasn't about whether or not I loved Steve Case, it was about whether or not the people in my life could talk to me.

I just have one life. I have strong beliefs about many things, tech ethos especially, but I have only one life and I don't want to empty it wholly of the communities that enrich it to score points for FOSS.

Thorned_Rose,
Thorned_Rose avatar

I was a kid in the 80s. Back then protesting greenhouse gases or saving whales was seen as cool. Nowadays... not so much (why is being a greenie now a pejorative?). I've gone to plenty of protests in my life, small ones, big ones. I've seen a definite trend over time where people care less. People used to say protestors could be annoying but generally supported people's right to protest, even if they didn't agree with it. (I'm talking generally here and in the past 40 years or so, of course history shows some awful atrocities committed against protestors and I've seen first hand some traumatising treatment of fellow protestors more recently).

But now... the general sentiment feels like most people think that protestors are a bunch of annoying loons. I've seen the general public scream at peaceful protestors, yell obscenities, spit on them and at one protest even try to run some protestors over, all because they were annoyed at being inconvenienced by the protest (and I'm talking about an extra few minutes driving or walking time, not anything major). Suddenly a little bit of inconvenience matters more than fundamental rights, including their own.

I don't get it either. The apathy is growing and it's alarming. I've been doing volunteer work for over a decade now and it's the same thing - volunteers are getting harder and harder to come by because everyone is "too busy" (even when they're not). The volunteer work I do is getting harder and harder and I have to put in more hours because there's less people to spread the work between. Doesn't matter how hard you push "many hands make light work", people would rather ignore your struggle as a volunteer and just say, "Thanks for your sacrifice". I don't want thanks! I NEED more people to care. Non-profits don't run themselves.

I don't know what the answer is. Just that I have noticed this slow decline and feel both deeply saddened and incredibly alarmed about the future for us all.

Pheta,
Pheta avatar

Some of that really resonates with me. My personal take on the lack of empathy and the aggression towards protestors, volunteers, or other non-profit work really spirals into one thing; the widening wage gap. I know if I could make enough money without having to work 50+ hours on an above average wage to make ends meet, I'd probably do more things with my life. I'd create, do volunteer work, protest about things I care about. When I was making less and actually struggling, any little extra hurdle on what was supposed to be a fun day off or little chores were suddenly a lot more emotionally draining, demotivating, frustrating, and all the other negative connotations.

I think as more and more people start losing what comforts they are used to, they lose a lot of the safety nets that kept them pleasant in the first place. keep in mind, there are a lot of people who were middle class just 5 years ago that got squeezed out, and even if they were polite people, wealth doesn't make people grow, it just makes problems go away. So we had a lot of people who never grew because they didn't go through these hardships and haven't had time to learn all the hard lessons. Probably feels like they just fell off a fun slide and broke their leg on the dismount.

So, yeah, I do think people are more apathetic to problems. I've been told multiple times to my face by personal friends, "It's not a big problem", "It doesn't affect me, so I don't really care" and other ways to politely deflect the conversation into a "it's not my problem" and that's the real stickler. People like that won't really care until it's a problem that affects them, personally. It's why I think, in a twisted sort of way, that people being ripped out of middle class and others losing some of their safety nets is a good thing.

I do want to clarify that for the generals, it is not okay, and is a worse trend for everyone overall. But it forces these people to suffer the indignities they regularly come to expect, forces them to realize that this 'minor setback' is in fact not minor at all, and will keep them perpetually in this place in life if they do not deal with a problem that is not unique to them. Forces them to think about someone other than themselves, which is a hard thing to do when they don't want to do it themselves, especially if they have no reason to.

Now they do.

jackolantern,

@PixelPioneer

I'm really surprised that more people chose to support the admin over the users. It's sad that users are okay with Reddit admins' unfair actions. It's even worse that moderators are seen as power-hungry and bad. If we let Reddit treat us this way without any consequences, it won't stop. It's scary that many people don't mind being treated badly as long as others have it worse.

iByteABit,
iByteABit avatar

I agree with your points generally, but I also understand the point of view of the general user. Reddit for most people is just a nice app to open while you're lying on your couch between activities and scrolling through some interesting/fun/wholesome stuff. The API changes are completely irrelevant to the average user who doesn't even know about third party apps. I remember a poll on r/polls about 3rd party apps and the people who use Reddit's app was like 95% (obviously r/polls is not scientific statistics but it still shows something).

What you're saying is especially more relevant on platforms like Youtube, where there's people actually having careers and their life's work at stake because of Youtube constantly taking a dump on their platform.

What I'm mostly here (kbin and Lemmy) for is because I believe in decentralization and an open source, free from capitalist milking, internet and I want to be a part of it and support its growth.

Phanatik,

I saw a different set of statistics that third party app usage was higher than the official Reddit app. Obviously that number gets dwarfed when you include the Reddit site old and new but the main point was focused around the apps.

racer983,

I think as an end user of a platform like reddit, it's easy to just want to browse a site and look at some interesting content when you have a few minutes downtime and not think much of it. The vast majority of people on the site aren't even really contributing to content in any way. I barely ever did until hearing about the fedverse.

What got me to care and take the effort to start up here wasn't even really the recent reddit move specifically, like sure this was a crappy thing to do on their part and they've done a lot of bad stuff before too. But it was seeing all these social media platforms and web services in general go one after the other becoming worse and worse for the users and ever more invasive. I think it's just clear now that a centralized social media isn't sustainable and going to work, and will always have that end result.

What's so appealing about the fedverse is I think it's a model for how these problems can be avoided and services can still go forward. I think the best we can do is be active on the fedverse, make it an appealing place to be by contributing, with programming skills if we have them or fresh content if we don't, and continue to point out how these big web companies continue to fail us.

PixelPioneer,
@PixelPioneer@beehaw.org avatar

Totally with you, pal. The fediverse does feel like it could be the answer we're looking for. Fingers crossed that the majority will catch on to this too.

babelspace,
babelspace avatar

Doesn’t have to be “the majority”, literally - a long as the minority is sizable enough, it can have a good influence on the rest.

ZenGrammy,

I actually created an account because the moderator at r/simpleliving took a poll a few days ahead of he protest and set up a new community for us here. I had heard rumblings about Lemmy but hadn't checked it out and her post is what convinced me to do it. It was a small subreddit but I think most of us are here now.

nucleative,

I've been getting some of my Reddit blackout news from Twitter (lol, I know) and have been disappointed to see how many people declared the Reddit Blackout a failure because of how annoying it is to google for something only to find it hidden behind a private subreddit.

My dudes. Don't miss the forest for the trees.

High quality commenters and posters wanted to leave the answers to some of the most important questions because of the community feeling. And now those exact commenters feel ripped off by the situation. Like the CEO of reddit decided he is the sole arbiter of all access to that freely provided content. These power commenters feel forced to use an app they don't want to use, forced to comply with policies and CEOs whom they dislike. He sold them out. But they won't stick around - they are highly mobile and will move to a new site leaving reddit to sink into the hole it's become.

ondoyant,
@ondoyant@beehaw.org avatar

one thing i think needs to be recognized here is that this isn't some moral failing of individuals, its an explicit goal of capitalism. the atomization of communities, the capturing of markets, the exertion of power to maintain the status quo. these are all things that should be expected under capitalism, and are not symptoms of moral decay of some sort. that we have to fight these impulses is not a sign that we're doomed, its exactly the thing we are tasked to fight against.

conceiving of the reddit protests as an unambiguous failure is also, i think, not reasonable. this got a lot of coverage in a lot of places, it forced reddit to act pretty publicly to break a strike, and drew attention to projects like lemmy and kbin. it also isn't over. maybe we'll be able to clearly see what effects this event had in the history of social media sometime in the future, but we ain't done with it yet, and i think assessments of its efficacy are only going to be clearheaded some time after the dust settles.

i do kinda think you're overthinking it. you can't control how other people behave most of the time. societies inner workings are beyond our control. we can only act according to our own values, and hope that others do the same. for me personally, worrying about how successful a movement is going to be is kinda secondary to participating. if this fails, then it fails. lots of things fail. most things, even. this is not a fight we're going to win every time, but if we don't try, we cannot succeed.

fear,
fear avatar

To a certain extent I'm with you, obviously since I'm here. But at the same time, I think everyone needs to settle down a bit. Think about what a mass exodus would have actually done. Kbin/lemmy were overwhelmed with just this trickle, there's no way most of these hosts would have been able to stay afloat had several million came knocking. Not to mention Reddit admins would have collectively shit their pants. We don't need them to hyperfocus on this project, let them focus on burning their own house down.

Zuckerberg is already trying to sink his android hooks into the fediverse. That would be a disaster. It's a fine line of building this place up without letting it get ahead of itself. Reddit will take years to fade away. The fediverse needs that time to grow up properly so it doesn't implode.

In other words, chill my dude. Everything is fine.

orcrist,

I think you're wrong about people's perceptions. I think the vast majority of the people in the world do not believe that the ultra-rich deserve to have all the money and power that in fact they currently have.

It's also true that trying to upset that power balance is very difficult, and many people spend more of their time worrying about things that are closer to home where they have greater control.

The other point is that the blackout was predominantly about mods and power users showing how much of a difference they actually made. And certainly they proved their point. Administrators had to come in and boot mods. That kind of worked, but now we see other antics continuing. All of this is good for the lulz, but it also shows that the blackout was a success. Reddit can probably survive without us, but the quality will go to hell, has gone to hell, will continue to linger in hell until some years down the road the site gets unplugged.

nicman24,

it is a cyclical forest fire kinda of a deal. new platforms rise, old die all the time. the weird part is that reddit survived that long

Poisontaffy,

I stopped using reddit and shared on my other social medias why I made this choice. That's as far as I'm concerned, sufficient and satisfactory. I can only do my best and hope that everyone else does their best. If they don't, that won't stop me from doing my best. Lamenting that it doesn't always work out isn't very constructive for me.

NotAPenguin,

People won't even stop supporting animal cruelty in the form of meat/milk and so on, it's easy but people just don't give a shit.

LostCause, (edited )

I want to share with you what someone else shared with me when I first got here: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

This explains very well what happens to all of these corporate platforms and what keeps the users captive to them (tl;dr: barrier to switch/exit is purposefully high, so we should lower that as much as we can. I hope lemmy/kbin devs can give us export and import functions for that).

If we want this fediverse to be good, we have to watch out for this stuff and hopefully we can finally build lasting communities.

hardypart,

If it doesn't directly affect us, it's shrugged off.

I think that's where the problem lies. Many (most?) people don't know enough about the implications and how this whole ordeal is going to affect them at some point in the near future.

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