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Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

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Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#431

Post by ghostpepper »

chongli wrote: post #37

I was really skeptical of lemmy [1] when I first heard about it during the blackout. I joined yesterday and it completely changed my mind. Yes, it is going to face some growing pains (see the total user growth in the past few days) [2] in the coming weeks and months but it really has the potential to replace Reddit with a federated system of communities. One that won't be damaged by investors or executives attempting…

Can I just join "lemmy" or do I need to pick a specific sub-group to join? Which one did you pick?

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#432

Post by SrZorro »

coryfklein wrote: post #299
chongli wrote: post #37

I was really skeptical of lemmy [1] when I first heard about it during the blackout. I joined yesterday and it completely changed my mind. Yes, it is going to face some growing pains (see the total user growth in the past few days) [2] in the coming weeks and months but it really has the potential to replace Reddit with a federated system of communities. One that won't be damaged by investors or executives attempting…

Having heard the Lemmy recommendation multiple times, I went ahead and tried the Lemmy.world instance but it appears completely broken. As far as I can tell, clicking "Login"[0] doesn't even trigger a network request? [0] https://lemmy.world/login

> doesn't even trigger a network request?

It does via websocket

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#433

Post by sudosysgen »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #412
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Creating an ideological and technical filter at the mouth of the funnel is absurd. So then just pick a large, popular instance and be done with it. You've already made it clear you don't care what the platform's policies are, so why are you pretending this is a barrier?

> pick a large, popular instance and be done with it .world is having technical issues. (I could sign up. But first login spawns an infinite spinny. The only reason I know that's one of the larger servers is because of this thread.) I'm doing it. But it's tedious, and the hacker in me sees an opening for a competitor to scoop out the 90% of users who don't care about federation, they just want it to work. > you don't…

The problem is that there's no reason it won't end the same as Reddit if you don't have federation, so you actually can't scoop out 90% of users because they might as well stay on Reddit.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#434

Post by goatlover »

bamfly wrote: post #300
goostavos wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? Despite everyone saying this, Reddit seems to be humming along. I log onto the front page and have something of the "normal" reddit experience. For instance, "heh. Look at that fish, that's crazy". I mindlessly scroll past all the "REDDIT IS BEING BAD" posts the same way I scroll past Youtube drama posts, or "How Elon is ruining Twitter" drama posts. I'm here to look at funny pictures. Maybe I'm in a revers…

> Maybe I'm in a reverse sub-bubble, but outside of the tech circles complaining, the protest still seems to be "what protest?" My wife noticed day-1 of the protests (I know because she asked me for the TL;DR of WTF is happening) and she doesn't move in tech circles, and the subs she likes (liked?) are all pop-culture stuff. Pretty sure she's just not been using reddit since then, as all of what she cared about is go…

You realize this is anecdotal and not statistical evidence of the larger population of Reddit users, right? What percentage are like your friends, versus how many continue to use Reddit, or will go right back when things return to normal, one way or another?

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#435

Post by jacooper »

bmarquez wrote: post #52
baby wrote: post #35

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. This is a huge opportunity for Facebook. They sort of tried to do Reddit in the past and ended up with shitty Facebook groups. If I were them, I would rush to add some reddit features to Facebook group (reddit-like threads, upvotes/downvotes) or try to launch something new that’s more like reddit on top of the facebook/insta social graph. Just call it “Groups”

It would be interesting to see Facebook Groups divorce from Facebook itself. Maybe allow people to login using an Instagram or Whatsapp identity, or better yet an independent login. I don't really want my group activity to be linked to my Facebook identity for tracking/advertising purposes.

An Instagram account is as bad as a Facebook account, if not worse.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#436

Post by smbullet »

ahahahahah wrote: post #124
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #44

major subreddits keeping reddit alive basically: r/politics r/worldnews r/movies r/tech r/television r/news r/technology r/gadgets r/sports minor ones i've noticed: r/indieheads r/boxing It's a pretty serious blackout, but it'd be even more serious if those went dark too (and stayed dark).

The "major" subreddits you listed are ranked #74, #76, #77, #4020, #946, #165, #875, #2324, and #1584 by posts per day. The claim that they are "keeping reddit alive basically" is rather generous.

Subreddit posts per day is really not a great metric to track engagement. You probably want comments or votes per day.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#437

Post by ketchupdog »

rchaud wrote: post #389
ketchupdog wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I block ads, nuke cookies, and use old.reddit.com exclusively, but somehow I still manage to spend a lot of money on shit I don't need. Most of it was found on reddit. All of it got a google search that included "site:reddit.com" before buying. This anecdote is not unique. The fact that reddit gets $0 despite being part of my typical buyers journey is a failure of Steve Huffman, not the users.

If Reddit automatically added product links to comments like Viglink did in the bad old days, you wouldn't be using it. Reddit's failure to capture affiliate revenue is precisely what prevented it from being gamed, thus making it a credible source of information.

Reddit has been gamed for years and I'm still using it.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#438

Post by nullityrofl »

redundantly wrote: post #422
nullityrofl wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federated services will never become mainstream. This is just the reality that people need to come to accept. I find them heavily talked about in circles with my colleagues and in my profession but the attraction of decentralized services just isn't there for the vast majority of people. I find Lemmy frustrating to use and it isn't just growing pains: it's the same reason I find Mastodon frustrating. Do I care if use…

> Federated services will never become mainstream That's kind of the point Mastadon, Lemmy, Etc, they're not replacements for Reddit or Facebook. They're an alternative. A social network doesn't require millions of users to be useful. It's okay that they're not for everyone. > Centralization works. It's convenient. It doesn't require a user guide. It's approachable for laypersons. For a technically inclined person on…

> you sound an awful lot like a luddite.

I'm not sure if this is meant to be some kind of childish insult or gotcha but no: I'm talking in representation of luddites.

> A social network doesn't require millions of users to be useful. It's okay that they're not for everyone.

That might be true if you only ever want to read technical things with a technical audience in a technical forum. But that's not why Reddit is valuable or popular. Lemmy is an alternative to Reddit like water is an alternative to beer. Sure, they exist in the same kind of universe, but no sane person would tell you to switch from water to beer because they don't meet the same needs.

Reddit is popular because I can read /r/netsec one day and /r/lawncare the next. Because when I wanted to learn to make my own coffee at home I knew I could just go to /r/espresso and get a 101. When my 3D printer broke, I knew I could go to /r/bambulab and ask for help. When the historic winter we just had in NorCal ripped shingles off my roof, I knew I could go to /r/roofing to ask for advice.

Sure, you might want to live in a world where you only talk to software engineers about software and maybe Lemmy is a good fit for that.

That wasn't my point, though.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#439

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Solvency wrote: post #197
chongli wrote: post #37

I was really skeptical of lemmy [1] when I first heard about it during the blackout. I joined yesterday and it completely changed my mind. Yes, it is going to face some growing pains (see the total user growth in the past few days) [2] in the coming weeks and months but it really has the potential to replace Reddit with a federated system of communities. One that won't be damaged by investors or executives attempting…

I know it would be technically feasible, but would it be fully legal for Lemmy to scrape and re-populate posts from all of Reddit's niche community subreddits (and threads and conversations), 1:1, even maintaining the original user names associated with them... but not connecting them to actual accounts? Almost like static content. And they could use that as a basis for the new community, so that there is at least a…

That depends entirely on whether they want to get sued through the floor.

I granted reddit the right to use my submitted content.

I never granted that to lemmy. Someone would sue, and they'd win.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#440

Post by jtode »

brainfish wrote: post #317
danudey wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't affect them directly , but the moderation tools a lot of subreddits need are built into third-party apps because Reddit refuses to build mod tools itself, and when those stop working then the job of moderating large and active subreddits will become vastly more cumbersome and frustrating, and far less efficient. Maybe this issue only affects 0.1% of users, but those 0.1% of users do a lot for the site that…

This comment contains one of the most-repeated pieces of misinformation from the whole blackout: moderation tools. Reddit has stated repeatedly that moderation tools will be exempted from the API changes. "We will ensure existing utilities, especially moderation tools, have free access to our API."[1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/141oqn8/api_update...

But the app developers are not developing the apps as moderation tools, they are operating them as income projects by providing features users want. The mod users of their apps are a tiny subset, and they are underwritten by all the regular users.

There is a balance struck by any business when setting prices, and I would wager that every one of these app developers put a lot of thought into it based on Reddit's broken commitments. The mod userbase is not enough to support a single app, so this is just forked tongue doublespeak in the final analysis.

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