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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?

#471

Post by vGPU »

kmlevitt wrote: post #298
echelon wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you participate in the blackout? What was your impression of it? Were any of the tools you used impacted by the API ban? I think a much more effective strategy would be a user-led LLM "spamming" campaign. Package up a lightweight, easy to use LLM for Windows users and let them turn their accounts into noise. Purposely generate overly-argumentative, blatantly wrong prose on every subject and in every subreddit. Re…

I don’t go on Reddit that much anymore and I haven’t been active as a mod on that sub for a very long time. But based on my experience doing it, users are quite good at identifying stupid bullshit and reporting it to mods, which makes it easy to spot. Plus they downvote low quality comments like crazy so it gets buried and people don’t even see it. Because of those things Prank spammers usually don’t last long. Usual…

The trick would be to spend a few months making good comments and then have the AI go back and edit them with junk.

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

#472

Post by vGPU »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #329
kmlevitt wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, still. I’m a mod on a few other decent sized subs (30k-ish) actually and most of them are still growing, unless the topic at hand is clearly outdated.

Reddit throttled its API usage a month before the great 3rd party purge, so I'm guessing whatever collection method that site was using simply doesn't work correctly anymore. Or worse yet, the remnants of the API spits out completely incorrect data itself. Sounds like Reddit itself has recovered in terms of raw numbers, but I (and others) have noticed yet another downtick in quality. Lot more bots (AI craze doesn't h…

Bots seem to be more prevalent everywhere. For example, I’d say roughly 3/4ths of the followers on my twitter are obvious bot accounts with names like battery48462628 and that have either no comments at all or random Chinese foods and city pictures with captions like “flowers are the spice of life”.

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

#473

Post by lewispollard »

tekknik wrote: post #470
lewispollard wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it isn't. ADD (now classified as Inattentive type ADHD) isn't having a "short attention span", it's a huge swathe of neurological symptoms of which having a short attention span might be one, sometimes - but it isn't the defining characteristic. The name of the disorder is misleading. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, like schizophrenia and autism, and isn't something that can be induced through forms of entertainment (though those predisposed to the disorder genetically may find symptoms worsen through them).

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

#474

Post by rozab »

fulladder wrote: post #312
rozab wrote: post #111

Some subreddits such as r/malefashionadvice did achieve the critical mass required to fully migrate to another platform. In that case, the moderators never re-opened and were replaced by scabs by the admins. But the sub remained fully dead. The userbase had moved to a discord server, which is well run and has plenty of users in the 50+ age bracket not normally associated with the platform.

That sounds like an interesting place. Can you share the Discord?

https://discord.gg/Z7mACcrfJV

Verge article: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794110/reddit-male-fash...

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

#477

Post by user_7832 »

chaosharmonic wrote: post #419
user_7832 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't been back there much actually. My rabbit holes lately have skewed further toward desktop Linux and the Web as ecosystems, just since I generally feel Android has gotten stagnant over the last few years. Sure, foldables exist, but they're still out of a typical user's price range and are more fragile than either of the things they're replacing. And while personally I more just lost track of it because my las…

Thanks for your comment. I joined lemmy after your suggestion, pleased to see the post quality there is still as high as pre-blackout reddit. I agree that android's sort of slowed down, even though I bought a Pixel (5) for its openness, I haven't rooted it yet.

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

#478

Post by Breza »

cxx wrote: post #21
sorahn wrote: post #7

My outcome was the shutdown of Apollo, rather than the blackout. I no longer read Reddit on my phone. (Except for a link or two clicked from something else, but even then I go to `old.reddit` instead to read the comments). That was really where I wasted the most time on it. It’s kind of a relief. I think I was too “lazy” to stop on my own because Apollo was so comfortable to use.

Apollo's shutdown was a blessing in disguise, I was addicted to Reddit and wasted hours on it before going to sleep. Thanks to that event I no longer browse or even feel the need to see what's going on, it's like quitting smoking, I literally feel better and relieved that I quit. I don't think I would've been able to stop on my own either, Apollo made it too easy.

I feel the same way. I left Reddit altogether in the protest and haven't come back. Suddenly I have hours of time back every week.
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