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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

#511

Post by jtode »

EatingWithForks wrote: post #415
jtode wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's endlessly fascinating to me - I basically assume that everyone here knows how to do computer stuff, at least at the enthusiast/power user level. Nobody at that level should have an issue with a system that requires a bit of extra configuration or a really, really tiny learning curve. And yet, every single one of these fediverse discussions is full of people basically saying "This doesn't spoonfeed me with zero e…

I think you're making the mistake that just because people on the forum have the skills, knowledge, and general capacity to learn a new tool that they are convinced to put in the effort to learn the new tool. Social media specifically has thrived on a culture of extreme low effort to learn how to start having fun with it (think TikTok showing you cool videos, then an easy prompt to sign up, then an immediate "for you…

Perhaps low-effort users are part of the problems we're experiencing? I think maybe it's time to dial back the user-friendliness just a weeeny bit.

Anyways, I see zero evidence that Reddit will come back from this conflagration in any sort of good shape, and I see even less evidence that the VC business model is going to do any better with anything else.

Edit: Just sitting here thinking about this. Who exactly gets any benefit from low-effort users of a system?

The members of the community? Absolutely not.

The mods? F%@k no.

The site operator who makes money from attention. Get this guy out of the equation and we can have nice things again.

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

#512

Post by anigbrowl »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #479
anigbrowl wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not concern trolling, drama exists because everyone gets distracted by organized trolling and federation stans don't have a good answer for this problem. Federation is confusing and alienating to non-technical users, and nerds who love federation tend to have a mediocre grasp of social dynamics and gloss over the inevitable abuses. Federation stans need to grasp the fact that nobody who is not a full time nerd c…

> Federation is confusing and alienating to non-technical users, and nerds who love federation tend to have a mediocre grasp of social dynamics and gloss over the inevitable abuses Doesn't this also describe Reddit mods?

It does, and that's another opportunity to repost this evergreen paper describing how these issues manifest on Reddit.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03697

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

#513

Post by tduan »

This might be an ignorant question but why can't Reddit "force" the blackouts the end? Is it because they risk losing a moderation team to manage the content? Because even if that's true, it seems far less consequential to replace the moderators than the potential of another competitor usurping their position.

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

#514

Post by roastedoolong »

rvba wrote: post #32
iameli wrote: post #19

The biggest Reddit communities are in open rebellion. Twitter is, charitably, a mess. Twitch started taking a full 50% of the revenue of their top creators, who are furious. What's going on? What's the bigger trend that's causing all these platforms to go so user-hostile?

[flagged]

[flagged]

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

#515

Post by wccrawford »

ghostpepper wrote: post #431
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?

I just joined. My understanding is that you pick your home server (I chose sh.itjust.works) and then you can add the local communities from there, as well as other communities on other servers. SJW (unfortunate acronym, IMO) had a list of local and remote communities that it already knew about that I could easily choose from, and my understanding is that there's a way to add more, but I didn't look into that because it had all the communities that I had considered joining directly anyhow.

It was pretty painless, though I haven't tried actually posting anything yet.

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

#516

Post by mock-possum »

tazjin wrote: post #235
ihateolives wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it happens, another big server, Beehaw, just defederated lemmy.world today. So drama has already begun. https://beehaw.org/post/567170

What's the reason? US culture war stuff?

dismissing the ongoing campaign for equal rights as 'US culture war stuff' is awfully heartless, don't you think?

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

#517

Post by ddingus »

bick_nyers wrote: post #393
ddingus wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try a Garolite Bed. Get a sheet about 1 to 2mm thick. Yes, that is PCB material. It is fantastic! Use the smaller sized office clamps to hold it in place. These can be placed on a few sides. Check that they do not collide with your printhead. Then, prep it with a light ScotchBrite scrub. Just enough to see the light abrasive marks and a bit of texture in the surface. Finish with high purity isopropyl and a dry cloth…

Some notes about my setup: Ender 3 v2 (textured glass bed), added a CR Touch, swapped out the bronze for a hardened steel nozzle, and installed Klipper firmware. I have PLA, PLA+, and PETG, I dried the PETG at I think 140F (convection oven) for 6ish hours, and then was finally able to print a Benchy boat if I set my first layer print speed to 5-10mm/s. I tried to print something that had small shapes on the first lay…

Also, with those materials there's no need for the steel nozzle or the hardening. They will work fine with the brass nozzle, and I would use a new one.

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

#518

Post by anigbrowl »

zozbot234 wrote: post #497
anigbrowl wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not concern trolling, drama exists because everyone gets distracted by organized trolling and federation stans don't have a good answer for this problem. Federation is confusing and alienating to non-technical users, and nerds who love federation tend to have a mediocre grasp of social dynamics and gloss over the inevitable abuses. Federation stans need to grasp the fact that nobody who is not a full time nerd c…

"Raiding behavior" has been around forever, including on Usenet. It's not a serious objection to federation, since "raids" and other obnoxious behavior can happen irrespective of it.

I'm not objecting to federation as such, I'm objecting to the belief that users want to become federation evangelists in order to engage in social conversation. It's limiting the uptake of federated services because it forces users into making a meaningless-seeming choice before they can participate.

When I show a site like Lemmy to my non-technical friends, their eyes glaze over and they are confused by the necessity to choose an instance and the inability to make any kind of meaningful comparison between them. This is the exact same reason that Mastodon has never really taken off.

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

#519

Post by vineyardmike »

goatlover wrote: post #456
vineyardmike wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …and that is the way it should be. I don’t know, it’s looking like most people prefer businesses that eschew profits. Yea my business-101 textbook says businesses should run a profit, but my sociology-101 textbook says we should do things that are good for people. Maybe Reddit (et al) should be recreated as non profits dedicated to community building… before Facebook becomes the sole source of internet social inter…

How will non-profit Reddit pay its costs? What makes you think doing things for the good of people is excluded by for profit businesses? They create all sorts of products and services that people want and need. Yes, there are abuses. Same with non profits. Because humans are in charge. The problem with doing things for the good of people in a general sense is that you still need to have a functioning economy where sc…

> What makes you think doing things for the good of people is excluded by for profit businesses?

This entire thread is proof. The entire thread is platforms that people liked started to suck as soon as they decided to make a profit.

Sure theoretically profitable businesses can be good for people, but I’m not holding my breath for an example.

> The problem with doing things for the good of people in a general sense is that you still need to have a functioning economy where scare resources are allocated somehow.

Scarce resources is a cute textbook term but very few things in society, especially on the internet, are scarce. Profits must come from somewhere, and that somewhere is your customers. So it’s almost tautological that profits are bad for customers.

Reddit was built on free content from unpaid users being moderated by unpaid mods for the benefit of the community. Reddit is discovering that they can’t charge for a scarce resource they don’t own. The scarcity wasn’t internet bandwidth or servers or engineering efforts. The scarce resources were community contributions by users and mods.

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

#520

Post by opello »

paulmd wrote: post #293
TeMPOraL wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I'd happily pay Reddit directly for an API key if that let me run RIF in a "bring your own key" mode. They could split the profits between themselves and app dev. I'm surprised no one is proposing this. But I guess this comes down to people willing and able to pay to avoid adtech cancer being actually the most profitable cohort for the advertisers...

> I'm surprised no one is proposing this. this is explicitly blocked by TOS. You can notionally do it by taking a "RedditIsFun" APK and injecting your own API key and then sideloading, but they'll do app store takedowns for any third-party app that supports it natively (because it's a TOS violation).

Presumably one of the app store platform's terms of service?
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