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r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

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Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#151

Post by arp242 »

Solvency wrote: post #135
bryancoxwell wrote: post #55

I’ll be honest, HN is the last place I’d expect to find people who underestimate the difficulty of creating a social network, but every single post about Reddit lately has had one or more comments about how the creators of Reddit clients should “just” make their own backend and take their users with them.

I mean, it's 2023. Web-based simple threaded conversation platforms should be absolutely trivial to develop/clone/deploy. I'm not convinced building a Reddit is hard, at all. But getting a mass adoption of users to make it worth using is. Which is why I'm continually surprised some startup+VC combo doesn't just build it and then pay the top 1000 broad-to-niche influencers out there to sign up and start relentlessly h…

Building the software is the easy part. It's everything else that's hard.

Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#152

Post by OkayPhysicist »

ipaddr wrote: post #40
diego_moita wrote: post #7

I wish I had a lobste.rs membership now.

Why, it's closed to new members so no one comments. It's not a place to replace reddit. You are better off going to slashdot.. similiar level of conversation as reddit and many more comments and similiar number of daily stories compared to lobste.rs

Frankly, I think relatively insular communities are better for the web as a whole. In particular "anybody can invite people, but you're responsible for your invite tree" is a pretty healthy way to foster a community. It ensures a basic level of decency, and a high level of trust.

IMO, the option to deal with invite trees like the other site should be an option everywhere. Some basic moderation tools, like being able to view and ban an entire invite sub-tree should be available for things like Discord servers.

Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#153

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #17

HN might as well just run the headline that Reddit is shutting down permanently. All the major subs are either temporarily or permanently shutting down in protest. Do we have a federated Mastodon-esque system to replace Reddit yet? Its the only way to ensure the community survives at this point; Reddit leadership has already proven they only wish to harm both shareholders and the community at large under the guise of…

> All the major subs are either temporarily or permanently shutting down in protest.

But I'd just add there is a pretty major difference between "temporarily" and "permanently". Major kudos to r/ProgrammerHumor and other subs that are doing it right - saying they will be shutting down indefinitely unless Reddit changes their stance.

Just saying you're only going to shut down for a couple days is essentially theater - Reddit can certainly wait out some popular subs being down for a few days. More generally, that's really the only way protests have a way of achieving their goals, by saying you'll engage in some behavior (or boycott) until your demands are met, or at least met with some change. Anything that's time limited is pretty much doomed to fail. For example, I'm not sure what the organizers of the recent Amazon "walkout" hoped to accomplish. That wasn't a walkout, it was lunch.

Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#154

Post by duped »

evandale wrote: post #54
dvasdekis wrote: post #9

The worst part about this is that blind Reddit users are being left completely without a solution, and won't be able to read Reddit at all. Multiple attempts at engagement with Reddit itself have been ignored. See the discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...

That's why the blackout needs to be permanent. If even 25% of the users have no clue what's happening and thinks Reddit is crapping out for a couple days they'll shrug their shoulders and use it 48 hours later when it's back up. I don't understand what they think they're protesting by timeboxing it .. Reddit can afford wait it out 48 hours and plan for that. I guarantee people are going to get an error they can't vie…

Reddit will just ban the mods and force the subs to go back online. They've already alluded to that.

Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#155

Post by makeitdouble »

riku_iki wrote: post #99

did they run some poll, or moderators self authorized to act on behalf of community?

This move is totally on brand for r/ProgrammerHumor, I don't see the community having much qualms about how the decision was taken.

To answer your question, the move is of course discussed in the sub, and yes the reaction seems heavily positive.

Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#156

Post by ksherlock »

kgwxd wrote: post #63
davidktr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quit Reddit half a year ago after 15 years of daily usage. 11/10, would quit again.

Did you go to extensive lengths to block yourself from easily getting there or just will power?

I stopped using reddit about a year ago (shadow banned... no idea why). I deleted everything reddit from my browser history so it wouldn't pop up as a suggestion or auto-complete and that was sufficient.

Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#157

Post by [deleted] »

threetonesun wrote: post #127
bryancoxwell wrote: post #55

I’ll be honest, HN is the last place I’d expect to find people who underestimate the difficulty of creating a social network, but every single post about Reddit lately has had one or more comments about how the creators of Reddit clients should “just” make their own backend and take their users with them.

It's hard if you want it to be a social network, and hard if you want it to be under one domain. If it's a forum to talk about hats for cats at hatsforcats.lol that's not hard, and that's pretty much what the web was pre-Facebook. Is Reddit/Twitter "better" because everything is in one place? Maybe. But then it's a hard problem that requires money, and we end up where Reddit/Twitter are today.

[deleted]

Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#158

Post by fooqux »

jacksnipe wrote: post #147
Solvency wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's 2023. Web-based simple threaded conversation platforms should be absolutely trivial to develop/clone/deploy. I'm not convinced building a Reddit is hard, at all. But getting a mass adoption of users to make it worth using is. Which is why I'm continually surprised some startup+VC combo doesn't just build it and then pay the top 1000 broad-to-niche influencers out there to sign up and start relentlessly h…

Serving nearly-consistent content and ads to 1 Billion people worldwide is fucking hard!

Not according to the marketers from Cloudflare I talked to awhile back.

Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#159

Post by bryancoxwell »

Solvency wrote: post #135
bryancoxwell wrote: post #55

I’ll be honest, HN is the last place I’d expect to find people who underestimate the difficulty of creating a social network, but every single post about Reddit lately has had one or more comments about how the creators of Reddit clients should “just” make their own backend and take their users with them.

I mean, it's 2023. Web-based simple threaded conversation platforms should be absolutely trivial to develop/clone/deploy. I'm not convinced building a Reddit is hard, at all. But getting a mass adoption of users to make it worth using is. Which is why I'm continually surprised some startup+VC combo doesn't just build it and then pay the top 1000 broad-to-niche influencers out there to sign up and start relentlessly h…

That’s the thing though. It’s not purely a technical problem. Building a Reddit clone may be easy (I don’t know, I’ve never tried), but building a social network is more than just building a web app!

Re: r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes

#160

Post by tredre3 »

Solvency wrote: post #123
awesome_dude wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do we have a federated Mastodon-esque system to replace Reddit yet? Yes - it's all the sites that people link to on reddit :-P For the record, there's something happening to all the big Social Media sites over the last few years IRC/Freenode - dead, replaced by Libera, but not nearly as vibrant as its heyday Twitter - dying, replaced by Mastodon, Bluesky, and Instagram, none of them really capture the magic that was…

Why does everyone forget Discourse? It's quietly enabling all of the best topic/product/niche-specific commmunities out there. https://discourse.mcneel.com as an example is a thriving treasure trove for CAD/Nurbs/product modelers/architects/etc.

I'm trying to forget it. Honestly Discourse is truly awful. Navigation is terrible, finding stuff is terrible, the UX in general is just so bad compared to what it tries to replace (BB forums).
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