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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?

#461

Post by starkrights »

w-m wrote: post #101

Another data point, the top AskReddit posts of the past year [0]. Zero of the top 25 posts of the last twelve months are younger than five months. Two of the top 50 posts are younger than five months. Comments (using subredditstats from a sister comment) have gone from around 70k per day to around 12k per day. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/top/?sort=top&t=year

This was extremely intriguing to me- I started looking and noticed that I was getting into the 400-500s of posts in the top/year, and not a single had been from within 8 months.

That said, on second glance there is something weirdly fucky here. This post [0] from a day ago has 4.2k upvotes- and yet, it does not appear in the spot it should in the top of year [1]. Tf?

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/185g0tf/whats_th...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/top/?sort=top&t=year&coun...

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

#462

Post by to11mtm »

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 SNR has dropped poorly on a lot of subreddits that are still active.

One of my former favorites (the one I made an account for!) went from a very good and healthy moderation to a weird form of 'If we have to go into the thread more than once we have a short fuse for harsh enforcement of rules, nonpopular threads can still be cool though'.

It will be very interesting to see what happens next year; historically election cycles tend to make SNR worse and people just break.

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

#463

Post by johnnyanmac »

dragontamer wrote: post #458
johnnyanmac wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the "Adults in the room" know about the problem. But there's also the need for the underlying community to believe in the problem and have an ideological shift to successfully keep the community in unison. much easier said than done. That's the one big issue on surges of traffic driven through controversy, you get "Witches": "The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found…

This sounds like a libertarian-exclusive problem to me, and Lemmy's culture leans away from the Libertarian / Reddit style. The overall plan seems to be: major centers of relative openness (sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world), a few hybrid locations, and finally well curated gardens (ex: Beehaw.org). The different groups will federate, or de-federate, with each other as they see fit. You're right in that the more libert…

>Lemmy's culture leans away from the Libertarian / Reddit style.

They are most vulnerable, but I see it as the natural pressures of the network effect. Unless you are some sort of status symbol, you can't reject 99.9% of visitors and expect to grow your community. So being lax in the beginning is necessary to growth. But being lax is exactly what ne'er do wells will take advanadge of, so it's a careful balance between growth and community fostering.

I say this mostly to assert that early users are the most valuable and usually the most opinionated ones, so those politics you speak of can be hard to balance. Don't want to end up too much like a dictator, but you also can't be a pushover either.

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

#464

Post by muzani »

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…

Many of the subs had a moderator protest, where mods were purposely not moderating and major subs would fill up with porn. Then Reddit removed the old mods and it seems that it hit the same old low quality that was always there.

Power vacuums filling up always lead to lower quality governance, but it seems that reddit did not have to be governed that well after all.

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

#465

Post by johnnyanmac »

system2 wrote: post #257
whalesalad wrote: post #157

Absolutely nothing came from it. Except for the fact that the best Reddit client and arguably one of the best iOS apps of all time disappeared off the face of the earth.

For some reason, Apollo's creator declined to turn Apollo into a new Reddit. He could've tried at least.

tried what? He made a very nice front end, but hosting and moderating a server himself is a lot of thankless work for a hostile userbase. I don't really blame him.

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

#466

Post by johnnyanmac »

derbOac wrote: post #147

Wanted to plug this alternative that was developed as a result. I have no association with this, just a fan of the design (the whole thing, not just the visual design): https://limereader.com/ I haven't posted much there (at all) in awhile so I'm guilty as anyone but am not sure why. I think a chicken-and-egg thing? My sense is the quality of posts on smaller subreddits I frequent declined perceptibly but not dramati…

>I haven't posted much there (at all) in awhile so I'm guilty as anyone but am not sure why. I think a chicken-and-egg thing?

It really depends on the person. Even on reddit, the number of posts and top level comments I made can be counted on my hands. I don't really "make content", I respond to others' conversation that result from it. But that's not what a new site needs in order to get off the ground.

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

#467

Post by wingerlang »

wkat4242 wrote: post #291
akaij wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apollo still works perfectly if you sideload it: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14nzii3/how_to_c... https://github.com/ichitaso/ApolloPatcher/releases/latest https://github.com/EthanArbuckle/Apollo-CustomApiCredentials

What's so great about Apollo I wonder? I've never tried it before :) what does it do differently? Edit: oh never mind, I've been digging into the links but it looks like it's iOS - only. So that explains why I've never come across it before.

It's a well made app from an underdog, versus a good app from big bad reddit.

In my experience, based on reading complaints about the app, is that many use it for 5 minutes on the default settings and claim it is the worst app ever made.

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

#468

Post by system2 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #465
system2 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason, Apollo's creator declined to turn Apollo into a new Reddit. He could've tried at least.

tried what? He made a very nice front end, but hosting and moderating a server himself is a lot of thankless work for a hostile userbase. I don't really blame him.

His users could've helped. Apollo's userbase was better than Reddit's average and they wouldn't crap where they eat. If Apollo dev asked for money people would gladly chip in $1 a month for the servers.

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

#469

Post by lewispollard »

tekknik wrote: post #456
denimnerd42 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tiktok made tv shows and movies unwatchable for me haha. that kind of media is just too slow. only sports at this point. I would say I watch 45m/day of tiktok. 5m here and there.

So tiktok causes ADD and we’re ok with kids using it? Sounds like it needs to be used less by adults too.

That's not what ADD is.

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

#470

Post by tekknik »

lewispollard wrote: post #469
tekknik wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tiktok causes ADD and we’re ok with kids using it? Sounds like it needs to be used less by adults too.

That's not what ADD is.

yes it is. and when you grow up with short form videos being your form of entertainment you’re just teaching kids to have short attention spans.
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