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

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121–130 of 340 posts

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

#122

We get it, a lot of subreddits are going on strike to protest the API changes. I just wish this forum does not become the place-to-be to discuss how much reddit sucks. There's been at least 3-4 stories about the reddit API changes on the frontpage of hackernews for the past week at least.

Reddit was a Y Combinator startup. It only makes sense people talk about it here. That said, I don't expect this to last long regardless of outcome.

Talk about it, sure, but we've had multiple threads already about the site's new API policy, and at least one thread about subreddits boycotting. I think OPs point (which I generally agree with) is that we don't really need multiple threads discussing specific subreddits doing the same thing.

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

#123

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…

>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.

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

#124

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.

The hard part of making a social network is the userbase accumulation. Apollo already has the userbase, if they switch all the api calls over to their own backend it truly wouldn’t be that hard. Especially considering the money involved.

The only sticking point is in all the people who want things to be “federated” for whatever (generally bogus) reason.

Better yet: cloudflare/etc’s preexisting backend.

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

#125
post #83

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…

> Do we have a federated Mastodon-esque system to replace Reddit yet? Back in the day, that was the World Wide Web. Federated gardens are a modern invention.

Whippersnappers and their dubya-dubya-dubya's. Reddit is nothing but a glorified Usenet!

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

#126
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Twitter is far from dead but you’re choosing a bad example. > The main Twitter video view metric is triggered when a user watches a video for at least 2 seconds and sees at least 50% of the video player in-view. So anyone that had the (auto playing) video in view for two seconds as they scrolled through their feed. Multiplied by the number of times it’s in their feed. It’s a pretty meaningless number.

How about: > 845.9K Likes > 237.6K Retweets In a day and a half for a ten minute video of a guy in his basement talking. It isn't even a video platform.

But what is the argument here? 237k retweets is a lot, sure. This tweet from 2020 has 883k retweets and is just four photos:

https://twitter.com/BTS_twt/status/1296701109340237824

So does 237k retweets in 2023 mean the network is as vital as it was in 2020? I have no idea what basis this argument is being made on.

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

#127

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.

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

#128
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be as consequential as the time all Reddit shut down to protest net neutrality.

[flagged]

It will be the best for the sanity of the users. Their online activity doesn't look very healthy.

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

#129
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also incredibly risky. You need a tipping point of people on the platform.

If I recall correctly, the first version of reddit had an extra "username" field when admins submitted a post, to make it look as though the site had users.

Yes they famously did a fake-it-until-you-make-it strategy early on to present a false picture to early adopters of a more vibrant user base.

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

#130
post #3

I decided to use this as a good excuse to delete Reddit. I find myself going to it too often, and scrolling for too long, and afterwards I feel worse about the direction of humanity and down about the world. I’m not getting anything positive from it so for my own mental heath I’m deleting the app.

You must’ve been subscribed to some news/current events related subreddits. My subscriptions are all hobbies and specific games that I’m interested in. Reddit is my escape from all the stuff you mentioned. I use Apollo to browse and comment on my phone. I’m really upset about the API changes. I really want to see people come together with a solution to migrate away from Reddit. Aren’t there any angels out there who w…

>You must’ve been subscribed to some news/current events related subreddits.

Not necessarily. If you really want to lose hope in humanity go to the advice subreddits.

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