a megathread for developments on Reddit and with third-party Reddit apps

just so this doesn't overwhelm our front page too much, i think now's a good time to start consolidating discussions. existing threads will be kept up, but unless a big update comes let's try to keep what's happening in this thread instead of across 10.

developments to this point:

The Verge is on it as usual, also--here's their latest coverage (h/t @dirtmayor):

myk,

I think this reply by spez has been badly overlooked:

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/913fbf2a-11e2-4503-bb0c-8bb238e56f75.jpeg

“the LLM explosion put all Reddit data use at the forefront”.

What he means here is that earlier this year the board realised they were sitting on a massive gold mine, and their single focus right now is to exploit that as ruthlessly as possible. Jacking up the prices to access Reddit data to eye-watering levels is intended to fleece desperate AI bros, and this may well be the only revenue stream Reddit cares about in the future.

The fact that they have put no thought or care into managing the damage that this does to third party apps and to their own reputation with the Reddit user base tells me something else too. Why bother being a good custodian of a community website that has never made a profit, when you could live off selling access to one of the largest bodies of good quality human-generated text-based content out there?

Do they even care if Reddit goes to shit in the future? Maybe not, especially now we are beginning to realise how easy it is for careful bots to poison the conversations with AI-generated replies.

mortuum,

It's going to become a barren wasteland of bots communicating with each other.

myk,

Haha, you just reminded me of this cartoon: https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/1fb7d3d5-a8f4-46c6-ac62-b0c51dcc6644.webp

tango_octogono,
@tango_octogono@beehaw.org avatar

Sharing this because it should be shared

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/c7867c2c-1322-40d5-8f83-5a231bd734f3.png

MoodyCat,
MoodyCat avatar

Christian also responded to another comment made my Spez

Contend6248,

'nuff said i guess, who doesn't want to leave someone this full of shit.

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

Wait what! Things have gotten this bad!? Like, this actually happened? I’m guessing there was no follow up question.

I mean, it’s either a dumb corporate strategy to discredit or psychopathic behaviour, or, sadly, both.

tango_octogono,
@tango_octogono@beehaw.org avatar

Yup it did

Also something weird, when I saw this combo, iamthatis was the first reply. Now it's way down there, despite the upvotes and gilds.

I really don't like putting on the tin foil hat, but since spez admitted in the past that he changed other users comments, I'm calling it, this guy is still messing around with things behind the scenes

sprocket,

Christian should sue him for that, looks like libel to me.

I'm not a lawyer though.

DarbyDear,

This was the moment that cemented my choice to move away from Reddit. My plan initially was to see how the blackouts would play out, but this showed even more clearly than the initial thread about Apollo's woes with Reddit just how garbage the decision-making at Reddit is.

shep,
@shep@midwest.social avatar

Lol. This sounds like a dig at spez.

https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/0c428133-52de-4b9a-a8fa-9be0f6dcbd13.jpeg

argv_minus_one,

I'm not sure if there's a SelfAwarewolves community somewhere in the Fediverse, but if there is, that belongs there.

sunaurus,

There is! !selfawarewolves

mobiuscoffee,
@mobiuscoffee@sh.itjust.works avatar

If Yishan is on twitter I hope he responds too

tango_octogono,
@tango_octogono@beehaw.org avatar

In my opinion, we're reaching a moment where people are realizing that having lots of users doesn't matter that much if you can't monetize them. We took a lot of services for granted that maybe don't make any financial sense, which probably only survived because both the company and investors hoped that as long you could attract users, you could monetize them later.

I think that "later" is now.

Today I noticed that youtube has a new feature that unlocks more bitrate, but only for premium users (there's two 1080p options, one normal and another with more bitrate). I'm expecting that these social medias and other tech companies will try to monetize us further

peteriskrisjanis,
@peteriskrisjanis@toot.lv avatar

@tango_octogono @alyaza YouTube basically spams ads and begs to sign up for Premium.

UpperBroccoli,

Thanks to adblock i never see those on PC. Wouldn't dream of opening u-toob on mobile though..

rimlogger,

Yeah exactly. I think what we need is decentralization and a move back to smaller hobbyist message boards - the costs of running such communities is more sustainable for individual owners and they are not so big that their owners would look to sell them out.

cafuneandchill,

That's what I've been thinking, as well -- if a message board (or any other service) doesn't reach that critical user mass where it's no longer sustainable, then there's less chances of it selling out

peteriskrisjanis,
@peteriskrisjanis@toot.lv avatar

@rimlogger @tango_octogono there is good argument to be made that these "unified services" were created to monetize them in first place.
Said that, federation as a concept of new era of social networking is good foundation. Hope it sticks and we work out quirks and people learn how to use it.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

That's certainly my hope for the federated model. Scope and scale have been issues since the advent of social media, which encouraged users to centralize all of their interactions in one spot. One hundred people shooting the shit on a specific interest will always be a better experience than orders of magnitude more people who know nothing of the context spouting off to feel good about themselves.

I found the quality of my Reddit interactions had gone so far downhill that I took a month off to start the year. I'd gotten sucked into the belief that upvotes == quality of what I was writing, which creates perverse motivations completely unrelated to being more informed about the world.

rimlogger, (edited )

I mean upvotes are related to how old a post is.

Anyways I don't expect places like Lemmy to fix the ills of social media - eventually running something like this will cost their owners too much money and something will have to give. Also moderation has always been an issue, even with the message boards of old.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

Agreed on the last point. That's part of what I was alluding to in terms of scope and scale. The smaller communities from early internet days (my experience overlaps with the time of BBSs but never included them) were pretty light on moderation. If you were a dick on IRC, you got booted. If you spouted off about politics in places that weren't about politics on phpBB, you were ignored then booted. These days, that sort of dynamic has moved to Discord, with people expecting that they should be able to say whatever they want, wherever they want everywhere else.

But I feel you're begging the question on funding. The ownership and profit model is the problem. User subscriptions can solve that funding issue in a vacuum; reality tends to be a bit messier, but I'm hoping we'll find that it works.

rimlogger,

Well on the Lemmy subreddit, some people are already complaining about moderation issues here, and how you can't block federated servers you don't want to see individually - that is up to the federated server itself. Honestly, while Lemmy seems cool, I can see issues arising as it scales, especially with regards to moderation.

Beehaw seems to be fine, but some users have explained that they take issue with Lemmy.ml's moderation - chiefly from the main developer who created this platform to begin with. And that's troubling too. For example, on Lemmy.ml, any talk about Russia or China (or anything similar) is banned. You can't safely talk about the war in Ukraine here without getting banned from the main federated server.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I'm versed in ActivityPub to the extent the Twitter imbroglio landed Mastodon on Ars and Techdirt, so ... not very well. But wouldn't someone who really wants control over which instances they see be able to spin up one of their own and then just not let people join?

Klaymore,
@Klaymore@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yep, can always make your own instance and look at whatever instances you want

rimlogger,

I guess. I'm kind of new to whole idea of federation myself, never jumped on Mastodon, for example. But we will see as Lemmy and its federated instances scale up.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I didn't get on Mastodon either, as I never got the appeal of Twitter.

I misread the last sentence in your prior response the first time around. That's worrisome. What's the practical impact of being banned on the main server? "Decentralized" is not the term I'd use for a network where one node has absolute control.

rimlogger,

Let's say you sign up on Beehaw. You post a comment that gets you banned from Lemmy.ml. That means your posts will no longer show up to users of Lemmy.ml. If all federated instances were equal, then that wouldn't be a huge problem; your comments will still receive enough interactions. But right now, since most of the activity is on Lemmy.ml, getting banned could reduce the quality of your experience on Lemmy as a whole, i.e., you receiving fewer interactions from your posts.

Kovari,

Wait is that really how that works? Geez..that doesn't seem right.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

So, you'd only be able to interact with those on instances that believe the Ukraine war is a valid topic of discussion? Kinda seems like a feature. Reddit is the easy example of why quantity is not my goal in online interaction ...

rimlogger,

Yeah I imagine as Lemmy scales you are going to see moderation issues. But that's message board culture in general.

cousinofjah,
@cousinofjah@twit.social avatar

@Powderhorn @rimlogger the cool thing about decentralization and activitypub is that I'm replying to you now from a Mastodon instance. The conversation isn't as nicely threaded but it works.

yozul,
@yozul@beehaw.org avatar

As Lemmy gets bigger there will be more and larger communities that aren't on Lemmy.ml, and if you're worried about the software itself, aside from being open source, there's also already a fediverse alternative called kbin. You can even used it to follow Lemmy communities if you want.

The whole point of the fediverse is that it can't reaaly get screwed up by a small number of people.

uthredii,

It's because of market conditions. Low interest -> Companies spend money and chase growth High interest -> Companies try to monetize users

elight,

No more low interest rates...

dirtmayor,

The Verge: Reddit’s users and moderators are pissed at its CEO

ulu_mulu,
@ulu_mulu@lemmy.world avatar

adding

engadged: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman defends API changes in AMA
despite the title they're not going light on him lol

mashable: Reddit's CEO's AMA turns into disaster

p.s. non-English tech magazines are covering the protest too, I guess it's worldwide known at this point.

Radikole,

Reddit refugee here just doing my part to help with engagement!

Intrepid_Corvid,

Don't forget Relay is shutting down too

jon,
@jon@lemmy.tf avatar

Hate to see reddit die like this, but Lemmy does feel like a suitable alternative, and I'm glad I switched over. Hopefully we see a lot more users move over as subreddits go dark.

ctrl_alt_cocaine,

This is so weird and cool, like a bunch of different entire Reddits connected together, each with redditors all Redditing together. I am also a refugee, hi.

Kaiser,

It’s sad to see Reddit go down this path, but the writing has been on the wall for awhile now. Losing Apollo is what had me make the jump to Lemmy.

Hopefully we build a strong community here.

Edit: typo

angrylittlekitty,

new refugee - hello and thank you for welcoming us 🙋🏻‍♀️ very first of what i'm sure will be many posts here in the fedverse. nice to meet you all!

reddit know the list of named 3p apps out there are. likely tens not hundreds.

they could have implemented an api management solution to charge those folks differently than what they charge a corporation training lllms.

i sell this solution to enterprises for a living and it's not technically hard to implement. truly. thousands of companies large and small with fewer resources than reddit have done it.

reddit could have done it in less than a couple of hours and charged a fair rate to these developers while making bank on ai.

but no, spez the egocentric jackass chose this path instead.

corp controlled social media is both dangerous and toxic. the only way to fix this is to burn them to the ground so burn it we must.

deleting my reddit account & data on the 30th and watching the latest developments re: blackouts, communities going indefinitely dark even today ... with excitement for the future.

would have never thought in just a week i couldn't go from loving to loathing something so much.

isosphere,

undefined> media

i think the goal is to shut them down - the pricing + time they were given is pretty effective at making sure the only way to access reddit content is via the paths reddit owns. they can collect more data, change whatever, charge whatever, and compete with nobody

it's enough to make us leave forever, hopefully everyone else follows suit

dirtmayor,

r/iPhone mods 6 hours ago: In less than 24 hours, /r/iPhone will be going private indefinitely.

zerkrazus,

I hope this bullshit kills their site. Monetization is necessary in some ways, but this is just pure greed.

monobot,

If they started with something more sensible and than increase control if needed - cool, they at least tried. But this is just ugly.

nvck,

what blew my mind, and the minds of many other people on reddit is that they (reddit) have 2,000 employees and yet still can't piece together a good and accessible experience for their users...

GraceGH,

No matter how many developers you get, you're never going to have a good product if the guy calling the shots won't allow it. I'm confident that the developers working on Reddit probably know damn well that their product is trash and there's nothing they can do about it because their job isn't "make a good site" its "do what your boss tells you to do"

neavts,

That's absolutely right, I'm not a developer, I'm a UX/UI designer. I recently had a contract where the contractor slaughtered my initial design to the point where I almost started to hate it, but I was bound by contract to finish it.

If reddit wants, their developer can absolutely build a top notch app.

spicyjimmy87762,

I've been a developer for awhile and you would be surprised how many companies can't get out of their own way to improve their products.

lee,

This is so true it hurts.

dirtmayor,

Hacker News: Reddit bans subreddit detailing how to move to competitor Kbin

KbinMigration Subreddit URL: https://old.reddit.com/r/KbinMigration

Hacker News Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36268458

doctorzeromd,

I've been getting used to lemmy for the last couple days, going back and forth between here and reddit and following what's going on, and I think I just realized something that I hadn't been able to put into words.

The lemmy community feels responsive and fun to talk to, and I think that's because the people who are coming here from reddit are the people who are motivated to communicate, and are people who care about the topics in each community. That's pretty cool.

chillybones,

I’ve been feeling weird about leaving Reddit; mainly because it’s been my main source of entertainment, news, and community for over 10 years but this is a really good point about any ‘social’ network. Even the link aggregator sites like Reddit. Over the past couple of years, I feel like my engagement has dropped significantly because it hasn’t been FUN to engage with the communities I was a part of the same way it was when I first joined. I’m hoping to recapture that a bit here specifically on Lemmy and in the fediverse at large.

hi_im_catherine,

There is an energy here that I haven't really felt from reddit as a whole in years...

Certain (smaller) subs could still get that same feeling sometimes, but so far I am very much enjoying lemmy. Yeah there's a bit of a learning curve to figuring things out but I think people will catch on fast!

withersailor,

Exactly! Reddit turned in a whine site.

misguidedfunk,

I think you hit the nail on the head for me. I’m excited to see what comes from this community far more than Reddit.

knova,

Great point. There will be a big wave i'm sure (it happened w/ Mastodon/microblogging fediverse platforms) and after a few months, some of the people tried it and left. The people who remained are such an engaging and fun group to talk to.

nhgeek,

I'm out. Redact is busy just now deleting everything under my account.

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