It's funny, but I don't quite get the point of this. If you are boycotting Reddit then you shouldn't be going there to post about things. If you ARE going there, you are no longer boycotting. Reddit doesn't care what you post about. You are still participating in the site. It's just driving traffic back to Reddit, which harms the cause.
The point is the lurkers subscribed there are going to get bored of steam pictures and unsubscribe, if it happens to enough subs then a lot of the passive userbase will end up either spending less time or leave entirely. Since the vast majority of users are lurkers, it'll outweigh the number of people creating these rebellion posts and Reddit should see a net loss in traffic. At least, that's what I've gathered. Please don't shoot the messenger if I'm wrong or it's a stupid idea
I'll add that I think another aspect to this is: if the site declines quietly, you'll end up with users shrugging and either continuing to use it or not. Most people don't understand why this matters at all, and if the post quality declines it probably will be a lot like Facebooks decline. People knew it got worse, but the prevailing narrative is "that's just how social networks work, the kids are always jumping on the next thing".
By doing this, it makes it very clear that the mods and power users are pissed by actions taken by Reddit. People are starting to hear about it, but it's not common knowledge.
If people hear "Reddit users protested then left because of Reddit corporate", investors are going to be pissed, advertisers are going to find it less attractive, and (most importantly) when discord or YouTube consider their own anti-poweruser moves (which they're currently talking about) they'll remember "we need to be careful with changes or we'll have a reddit moment"
I think this all started with Musk and his instance that despite pissing off users left and right, he's made Twitter more profitable than ever and only kicked off bots and scammers. It's absurdly unlikely (not like he's releasing numbers and they are deciding to not pay bills).
But by creating that very attractive narrative, other social media companies are looking for their own ways blatantly grab cash
This reminds me of the early days when you would goto steam.com only to realize that was not the correct website. I just checked and it seems like steam.com has been taken down but if I remember correctly it was some engineering company. I wonder if they are holding out for more cash from Gaben.
I dunno, I think just remaining closed would have worked better. This will attract additional attention to Reddit. Also, the subreddit wasn't 'forced' back open, the mods just caved under a bit of pressure from the admins (which we don't even know is true. why on earth are they asking the steam subreddit to open back up when there are so many largers subs still private?). Smells like slacktivism to me, and mods who don't want to lose their power. Meh.
They sent mail to every moderator of a closed subreddit I think. I wasn't specifically targetted. I doubt reddit would really care if /r/piracy opened back up, but they got the threat mail
This is what I want to see from every subreddit that is forcibly reopened. The admins can try and force mods to 'do their jobs', but they sure as shit can't force what can be/gets posted!
I modded one that was like 20-25 active at any given time and even that was a pain in the butt, I can only imagine how much harder it gets as you increase the orders of magnitude.
Especially since it is super easy to both open a new community on Lemmy with yourself and your friends as mods and to also advertise it as the official new home to all users.
I mean makes sense they might be a little cautious about what they do, cause like if they get removed the people reddit replaces them with aren't gonna let anything supporting the protests go through.
Well, right now they aren't supporting the protests so what's the difference? "Oh we don't want new mods because they won't protest, so we will stop protesting to avoid that!" the only difference is who gets to be called the mod.
I was talking more about the subreddits that are reopening but still doing stuff to effectively keep their subreddits not usable. They're at least trying to toe the line so they can still do stuff like that where as if they just ignored what Reddit says they would just get replaced with mods that will go the complete opposite direction and stop any talking about protests.
Ah I didn't know what they were doing, I assumed it was something similar to what r/pics is doing. Haven't been back on Reddit since I uninstalled it the day before the blackout started.
I think they could if they wanted to, I know that some subs actually hide your posts with automod until they get released by the mod team so it stands to reason you could do that on one of the core subs. It wouldn't be fun for the mods and would definitely cause a lot of frustration and issues with people all trying to be the first to post something but then they have to wait 8 hours for a mod to wake up and approve it.
Reddit literally refuses to comply with GDPR rules and tonight after work I am going to lodge a formal complain about GDPR violations as I do have proof of this in my emails.
Can a non European make use of this. Or do I have to be in Europe to make and register a complaint. I assume there is nothing I can do here but I might as well ask.
For companies, GDPR applies to people in European Economic Area whose data is used by companies, or companies that have an office in EEA or another stable arrangement in EEA and process personal data of people located anywhere.
You can file a complaint with any EU supervisory authority, even if you're not personally an EU citizen, as long as the company you're complaining about does operate specifically and targeted in the EU. It is better if you are a citizen though. But as long as they're mishandling EU citizens data, doesn't matter who tells the authorities.
If you are not a European citizen you cannot ask for your data to be deleted but you 100% can report a company, in this context Reddit, for not complying with GDPR.
They are supposed to verify that the person requesting deletion or another right under GDPR is the same as the person whose data it is, or that at least the requester is authorized to act for the person whose data it is.
The controller should use all reasonable measures to verify the identity of a data subject
Huge emphasis on reasonable. If by asking me to log in for the sake of verification results in me not being able to delete my data as I've demonstrated above, then this is 100% NOT REASONABLE.
They are actively hindering the process that GDPR requires me to take.
I don't care about the small letters, this is a GDPR violation. I should have an easy way to delete my data and this ain't it.
Personally, I'd file the complaint with the Irish government. They seem to have a habit of going after big social media companies like Meta for GDPR violations.
Frankly one of my favorite parts about the blackout - and opinions like this - is that Lemmy is going to end up being populated by people who have the capacity to think about others and form intelligent opinions. All of the people with this attitude will stay on reddit, which is what will ultimately kill it. I hope he stays.
That’s what I’m hoping and expecting. The people who left are better quality contributors. Those that stayed are addicts or just casual users who don’t know don’t care.
An unfortunate corollary of that is that we can only have a limited good time in the Fediverse. Eventually Reddit collapses and then they will all flock over and ruin it for us. (Or this’ll happen very gradually rather than suddenly.)
I mean a good portion of us aren't leaving reddit because we dislike reddit's content or userbase. We left to get away from the abusive admins. If we can smuggle the community and content in our coat pockets on our way out the door, that's just stealing back what is rightfully ours to begin with.
I think it depends on how successful the blackout is, because truthfully, most Reddit users probably don't care about 3rd party apps, and just want to continue using Reddit, but if their favorite communities shut down indefinitely, I think there's a chance.
But Spez also seems dead set on their plan, so only time will tell. But on the bright side, if it doesn't we'll see tons of new faces here
I have over the years bought licenses for three different third party reddit apps, so yes it does matter to me. The same way it did when all five third party Twitter apps that I owned licenses for went dark.
I like to support apps that make my life easier, and I hate seeing ads.
Agreed that most Reddit users don't care about 3rd party apps. They are also more likely just to be lurkers and not interact with the content as much, besides up and downvoting.
So if a larger number of the power users leave, Reddit's content could become more stale and just turn people off from going to the site.
Of course this is all very hypothetical and I don't have stats to back any of this up. It's just a hunch.
Valid point, I wonder how the quality of posts will be if power users leave... and then you got the moderation site of things too. Will be interesting to see how it all turns out.
My guess is that it'll still exist, but worse overall. Less content, less quality content, less engagement, more shitposts. It'll live on as a shell of what it used to be.
I hope you're right but I think most people will go on and use it. If they quit for the next couple of days, they will go back after a while.
Does anybody have the numbers for twitter? How many people stayed away?
When on pc I exclusively used the new reddit format (so not old.reddit) and was used to it. But on the phone it was only Apollo for years, and I mostly consumed reddit on my phone. I was considering ditching reddit mainly because of how they've now (most likely successfully) tried to muscle out 3rd party app developers in order to force mobile users on their own app; but now sifting through kbin here the conversations and the topics seem much more genuine than reddit as well. I think you kind of start to become desensitized to the bot network and hivemind with time, so it's a nicely refreshing experience really.
This is how I feel, too. I spent a long time on reddit searching for places with genuine, meaningful conversation, and Reddit had it more compared to other social media, but it's clear that fediverse exceeds in providing that space.
Very much this take. I came to Reddit because it mostly housed the communities/topics I cared about. I can't in good faith continue using a platform that has decided it is worth more than the users who provide content for it.
Most of the time I was logged out, and using Reddit new UI on phone or desktop. I mostly wanted to see the random stuff that were getting in r/all. I logged in sometime to comment on stuff, but it was not my main use. Reddit was mostly my main news source. I tried to pull the plug on social media once and it took only a couple of days to realize that it was cutting me off from all news...
As kbin gets more popular, I can clearly see that the news are also getting shared a lot more here. So I can move, subscribe to a couple of magazines, and have the same experience.
I never used 3rd party apps, but I know how the API is a core feature used to help moderators. Or at least I can easily figure out how important it is being a developer myself. Spez's AMA showed us how little Reddit care about their users, but also how little they care about sharing information... and that's a huge insult to Aaron Swartz. I believe that without his death, Reddit would be really different now.
Even then, I am really curious if someone at Reddit Inc crunched the numbers about the amount of power users that use 3rd party apps.
Or even the people who are maybe not power users but just people who are not lurkers.
For some reason and it is just a hunch, I feel that they are more or less desperate for the userbase that used 3rd party applications mainly.
I mean they say that is an "insignificant" amount that use 3rd party apps. If that was true then they would not go in "this" hard on the crackdown I assume.
I think the AMA and certain other interactions have revealed what limited knowledge u/spez and other Reddit admins have of how Reddit actually works. They seemed unaware of the need for third party apps for moderation and accessibility.
It’s also revealed what a clumsy set of data (with lack of insight) they have about Reddit usage.
Really, we don't even need a full on reddit collapse to have success. What is needed is enough traffic for the fediverse so it can evolve and grow into something even better than reddit/twitter/etc are now. At least imo.
In the short term, the blackout literally can't be successful. Admins will just boot mods and re-open subs. Now, if, as a result of all of those shenanigans, enough power users leave the site, then maybe in the medium term Reddit will have problems with a lot of content creation and mod experience leaving. I'm not sure how likely that is.
Manifold markets thinks there is a 90% chance that Reddit goes through with the API changes, so it seems unlikely that the blackout will be succesful in changing Reddit's course, and Reddit admins won't let the (big) subs stay dark. It's the medium term that is a more interesting question, and that all depends on how much of the actual content generation/moderation leaves the site and how much of it can be replaced from the users who don't leave.
Ultimately, what went wrong is that most Reddit users were screeching at individual leaves littering their garden, without noticing the tree creating those leaves on first place. They failed to connect the dots between: arbitrary bans, subreddit suspensions, user-on-user harassment, the idiotic way that rules are enforced, the presence of powermods, then Reddit trying to get rid of the powermods, the 3PA being killed… while focusing too much on a braindead clown called Steve Huffman.
It’s all about profits. You can’t enforce any demand if you don’t make Reddit lose money. Blackouts and John Oliver posting only go so far, you need to migrate out of the platform. And if you’re staying in the platform you need to transform it into an advertiser-hostile shithole. But for that you need more coordination than just “HURR DURR WE WRITE FUCK SPEZ IN PLACE LOL LMAO”.
Honest question: how is Lemmy safer against power tripping mods, user-on-user harassment and everything else? Sure it’s a super nice place now but eventually the powertippers etc. will pop up. ?
In Reddit those problems backtrack to the Reddit admins giving no fucks about the users. Why would they? Even if the users are mistreated, network effect still keeps them in Reddit, as they don’t want to lose the content.
Here in Lemmy however, if the admins of an instance are arseholes, negligent, stupid etc., their users will simply migrate to another instance. The users won’t lose access to their content, and they know it.
And in some cases, admins of other instances might even defederate the instance with problematic admins, to protect their own users. (Specially useful when it comes to harassment, as harassers tend to gravitate towards the same places.)
So for example. In Reddit you got the powermods going rogue, being abusive towards the users, and the admins went like, “NOOOOO THEY’RE A PRECIOUS PART OF OUR COMMUNITY”. Until the powermods turned against Reddit itself; then the admins took action. Here, the admins would need to act as soon as the powermods become an issue for the users, not just for themselves.
Additionally: it’s hard to power-trip when you got a public modlog telling people what you did.
It contains the fallout of site-wide issues to some extent. Mods and user-on-user will still be issues. If one federation owner goes on a power trip everyone can just leave that server while continuing to use other Lemmy instances.
Essentially you’d only lose access to some subreddits instead of all of reddit in that situation.
You also would have 3rd party apps that would continue to work. Unlike now where apps like Sync are just down for a few months until they finish development for Lemmy.
But don’t worry, reddit had a run of like 6-10 years there where mods weren’t an issue so we have some time before that all starts.
The John Oliver thing was so dumb. Like, so what? Doesn't matter if you're posting John Oliver as a protest, you're still using the platform on a sub that allows advertisement.
The only thing that could actually go anywhere was making the subs NSFW, since those will actually hurt Reddit's finances, but obviously they forced the subs to revert and most easily gave up.
I think that the John Oliver thing was useful to raise awareness, but people eventually confused a situational strategy with an actual solution.
Besides NSFW-ing, mods could’ve also promoted ad blocker usage, the sort of consumption criticism that advertisers outright despise, scorched the earth (slowly removing content from the subs), and harshly restricting the scope of the subreddit, not just through a “haha John Oliver” but a permanent solution. Or just stop moderating at all, since all those clowns that u/ModCodeOfConduct is putting on the place of older mods are incompetent clowns and powertrippers.
Except a huge number of people only ever use reddit on mobile. There are no ad blockers that can target specific advertisements inside of an app itself. You can do network wide advertisement blocking with things like pihole, but the people using reddit on mobile aren’t the people setting up a network wide domain filter. I only ever used reddit on the desktop through old.reddit.com, but I could see the writing on the wall that they’re going to get rid of that sooner rather than later.
Around 70% of the users are on mobile, more specifically. However my point still stands - even if only 10% of the desktop users pick an ad blocker, this means at least 3% less ad revenue for Reddit Inc., it’s quite a bit.
Another thing that they could be doing is to create a bunch of rules that would displease mobile users the most, but that would not be detected as “targetting mobile users”. Such as banning for emoji usage, or for writing “R/subreddit” instead of “r/subreddit”, this sort of stuff. Aiming at actually destroying the subreddit, so people migrate elsewhere.
But for that they’d need to accept that their Reddit communities are lost, and yet most of them are still wallowing in that “no, we can recover Reddit!” wishful “thinking”.
This is getting so stupid, it’s beginning to sound like The Onion. Why don’t they just start charging for reading posts.
Here’s an idea: Every day you get 5 Reddit Emeralds for free, and you can use them to read 5 posts. If you want to read more, you can get more emeralds from Common Reddit Loot Boxes. You can buy those boxes with Reddit Rubies.
You can get Reddit rubies from Rare Reddit Loot Boxes, and in order to get those, you have to use Reddit Diamonds. If you have 19 Common boxes you can also craft 1 Rare Loot Box. Doing so will also require 10 rubies.
You can also buy Reddit Diamonds with Superior Crypto-Augmented Money (SCAM), and getting those coins requires real world money.
Ok, so now that you have all these gems, you can put them to good use. Emeralds are used to read posts. When you comment, there’s a 50% chance that it will be deleted within 30 minutes, but you can improve your odds by spending 1 Reddit Ruby. For each Ruby, the odds improve by 10%. Posts have the same mechanism, but you need to spend Diamonds instead.
While working on a software project, you could turn that job into mini-game where you try to squeeze each and every one of those tricks into the app. Who knows, there could be a secret achievement for that.
Got half way through your post and started to feel sick. Not because it’s ridiculous, but because it sounds like actual other apps and this is our reality now.
Still waiting for spez to tell us what thatis said in private that differ from what he did in public. That's one correction I don't see his comm guy doing.
I mean, this totally fits the pattern of enshittification and the extraction of all actual value to maximize shareholder returns. Cut costs, make the product shitter, spend less money and claim losses to minimize taxes so that you can MAKE BANK BRO
It's times like this where I wish "stakeholders" had a say in the matter besides just the shareholders. I know it isn't my company and they can do what they want, but it's hard to just sit here watching it commit corporate suicide. It's gone way downhill since I joined in 2008 but still.
That would be pretty fantastic, wouldn't it? I'm not sure what that would look like in practice, but I'm 100% with you. Reddit has been a pretty central part of my life for the past 15 years or so. It's really sad to say goodbye - it feels like the family dog got bit by a zombie (or, more realistically, got rabies). You've gotta put it down because the version of it that you know and love is already dead.
It’s times like this where I wish “stakeholders” had a say in the matter besides just the shareholders. I know it isn’t my company and they can do what they want, but it’s hard to just sit here watching it commit corporate suicide. It’s gone way downhill since I joined in 2008 but still.
I mean, reddit users paid for servers basically out of pocket for almost a decade. The levels of corporate greed and lack of shame are simply baffling.
I'm on kbin exclusively now, with the exception of a couple weeks ago. I was looking for exceptional rock shops near where I was visiting. Wanted suggestions/reviews from the more geological geared, and specifically not metaphysical/crystal shops. Reddit was the best resource for my purpose.
That said, I believe the fediverse can become a similar resource. For the time being, there just isn't a large enough, or old enough library of information to draw from. Given time this should change, but for now Reddit still fills certain types of needs that other areas of the internet cannot.
Because it something does not affect them directly, they simply do not care. Heck, even when something does way too many people are so apathetic as to not bother doing anything about it.
They just want to consume their funny memes and fake internet points and continue on with their lives.
For real. My brother is one of those people who is like “they aren’t gonna die from this so why should I care blah blah blah”. He thinks if protesting won’t have the immediate impact that people want then those no reason for it to happen
Thing is, they are still going to put in unpaid (or at least are maintaining that they will), at least in the subs that I was frequenting. Some mods believe that they need to maintain their communities, that the years of building and guiding their community is more important to them than leaving the platform or giving up volunteer work. Even after the discourse and blackouts and whatnot, they appear to believe that their work is important to the availability of niche information that isn't otherwise available on a 'global' platform.
Thing is, they have a point, and moving to another service isn't as clear cut as it appeared to be when Digg was in a similar position of disruption. There are alternatives, but not the de facto alternative. Perhaps this is the ultimate takeaway from the last month - the realisation that the Reddit alternatives exist, and that the Reddit alternatives need to clearly define who they are and what they stand for.
I put a request in a few weeks ago, have not heard back and am now shown a message that I can't do so again for 30 days, even though I only did it once.
Reddit is not complying with GDPR becaues their processes are dogshit. And instead of fixing that, they instate an arbitrary (and also illegal) 30 day waiting period.
EDIT: replied to the wrong comment and server 500's on deletion.
Lemmy is not a company offering services, and doesn't store personally identifiable information besides IP address, so whether it even falls under GDPR is questionable.
Yeah same. They might be holding back until the last minute deliberately in some 4D chess move, but like you I think it’s more likely some poor soul is preparing them manually.
I don't think they want that, they have a month before they have to come back with something or you can escalate it to a supervising body. Imagine getting taken to court because redditors flooded your GDPR response process
Correct, most requests under GDPR have a 30 day time limit. They must reply within that time, but they can reply and explain special circumstances that may delay the completion of request. Still, can certainly complain anyway if it's a wack excuse.
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