Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

news.ycombinator.com

221–230 of 478 posts

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

#221

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…

Anecdotally, it certainly feels worse with an inflection point around July. There are a lot more pop culture posts full of meme comments appearing in global top

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

#222

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…

Many subs did this and the mods got removed real quick. I did the only thing that I could do that actually hurts them, delete my data.

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

#223
post #216

Reddit has a right and a need to figure out monetization. This was part of that effort and it was likely painful but Reddit is dead anyway if it never figures out monetization. I didn't participate in the blackout. I felt the mods were wrong to take that approach. I did go to bat for blind mods. They need better mod tools than they have. That comment is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36232441 Hopefully Re…

They have a right yes, but they will also rightly suffer from their approach. I not only participated in the blackout, but because of the CEOs arrogant comments about how valuable my data is and how they deserve to sell it, while destroying the tools I value and use, I also deleted all of my valuable data from reddit and after handing off the one sub I moderated I left the platform forever. I think reddit is a wonder…

I'm a blogger and freelance writer. I've spent years saying that programmers make good money, then expect slave labor from writers and content developers.

If the only way people will "allow" a valuable service to live is as their bitch, the entire internet is welcome to go die in a fire while we dream up some new answer for the future of this world.

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

#224
I signed out of reddit during it, wont ever sign back in or click a link ever again. But then again, Ive abandoned the consumer web at this point, with hacker news barely holding on as the last vestige of a dead era... I'll say, there was some real kicking and thrashing this year as the high water mark became visible.

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

#225

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…

I'm not sure any platform can nosedive quite like slashdot. I'm not sure what the wreck looked like but the entire culture of slashdot and fresh meat seemed to disappear at some point.

No, we just never really cared to rise above the noise...

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

#227
post #213

Nothing. They correctly surmised that there are enough people that don’t care and won’t notice the drop in quality. Then again Reddit is doing all it can to make the site as UX hostile as possible so I guess their network effects are powerful

I think it's more than nothing, though app monetisation may still be enough to justify the loss. The vast majority of users do not contribute content and they certainly don't help moderate communities - a lot of the content that is good on reddit either comes directly from or is facilitated by the people who care a lot, and those people are the most impacted by third party apps going away, old reddit being abandoned, moderation tools being weakened, new reddit obsoleting per-subreddit CSS, etc.

reddit was the place for a lot of communities (and for the most part still is) but there's a lot of places on the internet you can get generic mass-market content, that might be what drives reddit's bottom line but it's not what makes it special. The masses will go to the next popular platform, people interested in specific communities will stay as long as reddit doesn't piss them off. The beauty of reddit is that you can be interested in one or two niche communities, but you soak up the rest of the ecosystem along the way. If the masses go somewhere else and the niche communities are pushed away, there's not much left.

Also to clarify, I don't mean niche as in small, I just mean specific hobbies or interests etc, that's what reddit was good at - not needing to go to some forum to be able to talk about your thing. And by masses I mean whoever is participating in r/pics or r/funny or r/tifu or whatever else.

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

#229
post #120

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…

That data seems wrong. I don't use Reddit much, but I checked the data aginast some smaller subs I sometimes check, and according to those charts they have just a few comments per day, but I know for a fact that's wrong. It's wrong for all subs I checked. For example: https://subredditstats.com/r/thethickofit Just 3 comments for Nov 22, 8 for Nov 23. But how does that square with the existence of this thread from Nob…

My sub has around ~2K subscribers and still growing, ~200-300 new subscribers every month.

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

#230
post #21
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.

Now I’m addicted to TT :dead:
Post reply on HN