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Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

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Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#141

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

makin wrote: post #6
aunty_helen wrote: post #3

Incredibly impressive to see the community unite with nearly 80% of the subreddits blacked out.

Keep in mind this is 80% of the subreddits that announced would be participating in the event. There are over 3.5 million subreddits altogether, though of course most of them are dead or with a single user.

One however also has to keep in mind that on Reddit you need either a tight-knit topic specific community, or a lot of users to have an active subreddit.

Just randomly clicking around I see that subreddits with ~50k users already qualify for Reddits top 5% largest subreddits.

If you randomly browse subreddits of that size you will notice that for many of them the newest threads are at least days old. So in reality the amount of active subreddits, let's say subreddits that get at least one thread per day or more, is probably in the realm of a few thousand.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#142

Post by JeremyNT »

mathieuh wrote: post #4

This sounds ridiculous even to me, but it’s a strange feeling to see the death of Reddit. It’s the only quasi-social network I’ve used for a decade, and there are many communities that I feel at home in. It’s almost like grief, or feeling untethered somehow.

> This sounds ridiculous even to me, but it’s a strange feeling to see the death of Reddit.

The reports of Reddit's death are greatly exaggerated.

I imagine everything will go back to the status quo as soon as this protest is over. The mods have no real leverage, and a temporary outage like this isn't going to suddenly make a bunch of people switch to some other site.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#143

Post by Bajeezus »

JeremyNT wrote: post #142
mathieuh wrote: post #4

This sounds ridiculous even to me, but it’s a strange feeling to see the death of Reddit. It’s the only quasi-social network I’ve used for a decade, and there are many communities that I feel at home in. It’s almost like grief, or feeling untethered somehow.

> This sounds ridiculous even to me, but it’s a strange feeling to see the death of Reddit. The reports of Reddit's death are greatly exaggerated. I imagine everything will go back to the status quo as soon as this protest is over. The mods have no real leverage, and a temporary outage like this isn't going to suddenly make a bunch of people switch to some other site.

The mods have all the leverage. They’re literally volunteer workers, they can quit their duties with no real downsides.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#144

Post by Balgair »

stale2002 wrote: post #24
Exmoor wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but if Reddit doesn't backtrack what's the endgame here? I've seen multiple subs indicate they intend to fully shutdown if the API changes continue, but for the popular ones what's to stop Reddit from just appointing new mods and starting the sub back up?

Hey, reddit mod of a top subreddit here. I can give some insight into what mods are thinking. This current 'movement' is extremely organic and decentralized. A couple power mods started rallying the troops, and the movement went viral among mods over the course of about 2 weeks. There is very little direct coordination between subreddit mods, and it is mostly people deciding on the fly to make big decisions. TLDR, no…

From the outside, this seems very much like a classic labor dispute. Management (reddit) and labor (mods) are at odds over what they see as the future of the corporation. As such, some form of mediation needs to occur between both sides for work to continue.

Again, as an outsider, I see a few problems here:

1) You're not being paid at all, so you're not really 'labor' per se.

2) You're not unionized, so you don't have a spokesperson and can't coordinate your desires.

3) Reddit can't pay you to begin with, as they have basically no money for each mod, and isn't willing to negotiate before the IPO

4) Reddit seems perfectly fine and able to just get new mods and turn the subreddits back on, spam be damned.

5) Reddit also seems like they will just let the wildfire of outrage pass (really spitballing here) and most users will likely not even remember this by the 4th of July.

I think someone with actual union experience could really help you all. If you managed to get something of a 'standard' going, with payment in stocks or some other token monetary amount, then I'd say that would be a huge boon to the internet in general and a great roadmap for other companies. A real big opportunity is hiding in this and I wish you all the best in grabbing it.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#145

Post by zirgs »

rglullis wrote: post #133
zirgs wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a small group like a family or a couple of friends it's simply easier to use apps like Discord, WhatsApp or Signal. But if you need something bigger then you can't avoid the problems that I mentioned. My country's gamedev community had a phpbb forum that was created 2 decades ago. But now it's dead and everyone is using discord instead.

> For a small group like a family or a couple of friends it's simply easier to use apps like Discord, WhatsApp or Signal. None of them are can be composed into an open web of links, and you are still at the mercy of large corporations. > But now it's dead and everyone is using discord instead. And RSS was a big thing until Twitter killed it. Your point?

Good luck convincing other people to use something else.

My friends aren't going to leave Discord. And talking to myself isn't very fun.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#146

Post by evandale »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #131
Takennickname wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News is a news aggregator.

Reddit is better than other social media because it doesnt ask for phone number, and HN is better yet because it doesnt even ask for email.

Reddit asks for email but it's not required. They use dark patterns to make it seem like it's required though.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#147

Post by ryanstorm »

TheAnachronism wrote: post #35
radarsat1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will users and communities end this protest and go back to business as usual? Maybe. It's hard to get back to business as usual when your usual client just stops working. We'll see how people adapt. I'm not sure I want to install the official reddit app. Switching apps may as well switch sites too.. I've already got Jerboa installed, trying to see if content picks up there enough for it to remain interesting. Defin…

> I'm not sure I want to install the official reddit app. You probably don't as most requests that app makes, are tracking requests. And they clutter the app so much, it's basically unusable with all the ads and broken video players.

To add to this, the app downloads a significant chunk of data because of its inefficiencies. Not ideal for tight budget data plans.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#149

Post by r00fus »

JeremyNT wrote: post #142
mathieuh wrote: post #4

This sounds ridiculous even to me, but it’s a strange feeling to see the death of Reddit. It’s the only quasi-social network I’ve used for a decade, and there are many communities that I feel at home in. It’s almost like grief, or feeling untethered somehow.

> This sounds ridiculous even to me, but it’s a strange feeling to see the death of Reddit. The reports of Reddit's death are greatly exaggerated. I imagine everything will go back to the status quo as soon as this protest is over. The mods have no real leverage, and a temporary outage like this isn't going to suddenly make a bunch of people switch to some other site.

Read what I posted earlier [1]. tl;dr - everyone knows 2 days isn't enough time for a protest to work unless decision makers are really on the fence.

What it does is to set the terms of the argument. Think 2 days is manageable? How about 30? Or 180. I wonder how good that would feel as you try to close your IPO? That is the threat - that it doesn't ever come back unless it's on better terms and it risks the real golden egg of management - the IPO.

I theorized the best way for management to fight back is to engineer a way for them to claim the threat isn't real (ie, the outages today). We'll see how it impacts the metrics and whether engagement falls off a cliff.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36288240

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#150

Post by olalonde »

davidgerard wrote: post #67
olalonde wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> appointing new mods and starting the sub back up That's what I'd do. Most subreddit mods are easily replaceable. And in many subreddits, the people who are mods aren't necessarily the best suited for the job. They often got there through luck, bootlicking, etc. It isn't a meritocracy.

spoken like someone who has clearly never done mod work

I think you misinterpreted my comment. What I was attempting to convey is that the mods on Reddit are easily replaceable, not because good mods are easy to replace, but because Reddit mods are generally not good mods. I wouldn't make the same comment about HN mods for example, or of the few subs that do have good mods (but from my experience, they are a minority).
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