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Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

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Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#231

Post by bobsmooth »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #70
rabbits_2002 wrote: post #43

A massive decline in post quality. I don’t know what happened but ever since the blackout only garbage gets posted. Even the quality of niche subreddits has fallen. I think the blackout meant that all the well moderated “good” subreddits closed while the bad ones stayed open. Now the bad subreddits are more popular and have eclipsed the good subreddits. As for other websites, Lemmy and other federated aggregators hav…

As I see it, post quality declined massively starting from when the smartphone became the device most users were browsing from. No matter how proficient people claim to be with a phone keyboard, it is a medium that discourages longform text. The blackout made no difference with regard to that, the damage was already done. Post quality also declined after the 2017 redesign. The old design had a sidebar where subreddit…

The concept of "gatekeeping" has ruined online communities. Remember when "lurk more" was the common advice to new users?

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#232

Post by wizzwizz4 »

screye wrote: post #112
thaumaturgy wrote: post #48

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

The exodus was worse than the numbers indicate. Platforms are heavily Pareto skewed.[1]. The top 5% of reddit users are the primary (posters, mods) and secondary (commenters) content creators who are responsible for 95% of the life on reddit. The protest was led by this top 5%, and I presume they're also the main group that atrophied. The scale of damage is therefore underreported in simple usage statistics. [1] I ju…

"Pareto skewness" appears in https://hal.science/hal-00700465 (doi:10.1109/asonam.2012.91) from 2012, though I'm not sure whether it has the same sense. Unfortunately, https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewtopic.php?t=319... from 2013 is a perfect match:

> Etsy seems dominated by stores that sell nothing with a few that do rather well. It's severely Pareto skewed.

This is a relatively rare use of language, so you might deserve co-invention credit.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#233

Post by irrational »

adr1an wrote: post #192
irrational wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I say that anonymous sites like Reddit are not Social Media. If I am on there, there is zero proof that anyone else commenting is a human. They all could be bots and I have no way to prove otherwise.

What would be a non anonymous social network, Facebook? This very much applies to them too, iiuc..

On Facebook, there are connections to my family, friends, acquaintances. I know they are real because I’ve interacted with all of them in real life.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#234

Post by jacquesm »

jjcm wrote: post #198
58x14 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent half my day following your launch, and it looked like things were going downhill pretty quickly. How have things been since? You turned on your paid subscription signup?

I apprecate you joining in on the chaos! It was definitely WAY more attention than I was expecting. That's why I had encouraged people not to pay during the announcement post - I was more aiming to show off a side project rather than launching a platform. It was an absolutely crazy week, especially considering I was launching a larger feature for Figma (my day job) two weeks after that. Three of the biggest issues wa…

Welcome to the valley of despair. It is dark. It is cold. You feel alone. You will get through this and emerge stronger than you ever were. Stay the course.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#235

Post by bluGill »

sixothree wrote: post #136
candiddevmike wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you switch to?

For me it is YouTube 100%. I really just used Reddit as a way to kill time. Now I just watch makers doing their thing.

I wish I could find a non google version. Peetube exists but needs more content. I check it often but. ..

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#237

Post by breckenedge »

jrflowers wrote: post #226

If you hated the mods, the mods lost. If you hated the admins, the admins lost. If you were a longtime user that is familiar with Reddit wholeheartedly supporting r/jailbait to bootstrap growth, you won because nothing about the website could bother you.

Was r/jailbait as bad as the name implies? I was a user for about 11 years and have never heard of it.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#238

Post by bobsmooth »

miki123211 wrote: post #171

I have already said this multiple times in different threads, but I think the protestors took entirely the wrong approach here. The only thing that genuinely scares companies whose primary business model is ads is content that is not considered "brand safe". Posting such content, particularly on subreddits where it doesn't belong, would have been a far more effective strategy IMO. Filling the frontpage with porn, slu…

>slurs, racist memes

Reddit has spent a lot of time cultivating a community that would not accept that, even ironically. Any attempt at using "racist memes" to fight the admins would get shutdown by the powermods real quick.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#239

Post by user_7832 »

chaosharmonic wrote: post #86
rabbits_2002 wrote: post #43

A massive decline in post quality. I don’t know what happened but ever since the blackout only garbage gets posted. Even the quality of niche subreddits has fallen. I think the blackout meant that all the well moderated “good” subreddits closed while the bad ones stayed open. Now the bad subreddits are more popular and have eclipsed the good subreddits. As for other websites, Lemmy and other federated aggregators hav…

Yeah, several of the more technical subs that I used to frequent either just never reopened or splintered off to Lemmy. Some (like /r/Android) actually have entire instances. I personally wrote a userscript to wipe every post comment I've ever made, and have limited my usage to a few particular subs that I still lurk (/r/LocalLLaMA in particular) just bc Lemmy still doesn't seem to have a comparable level of activity…

Since you mentioned r/android, I wanted to ask - have you noticed a drop in quality post the blackouts? There was a point of time when I had read nearly every post there, and all posts would either have 100+ upvotes or would get removed. Now there appear to be tons of low upvote (while legitimate) posts.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#240

Post by [deleted] »

rchaud wrote: post #22

All the 3rd party client apps are dead, but the RES extension still works for now. In terms of outcomes, Reddit appears to have made their mobile website less user-hostile. Dismissing the "download app" modal still has to be done, but after that the experience is OK. Funnily enough, there are not that many ads on the official site, because Reddit seemingly doesn't have many advertisers to begin with.

[deleted]
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