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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

#581

Post by silverbax88 »

Animats wrote: post #424
TechBro8615 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lemmy has the same discoverability and usability problems as Mastodon. Especially for non-technical users, there's too much friction required to find their communities and aggregate them into a single usable feed with a nice client. And that's assuming they can even conceptualize what the fediverse is. I'm a technical user, and I closed join-lemmy.org after ten seconds because it was too many clicks to get to an inte…

The front page of lemmy: Lemmy - A link aggregator for the fediverse. Join a Server - Run a Server - Follow communities anywhere in the world Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. No, no. You lead with the benefits to the user. This isn't Github. It suffers from the same problem as Mastodon - "Join a server". But which one? These federated things need to be set up so that there's "no…

Agree with this. When I first hit Mastodon and Lemmy, I was hit with 'Join a server'. OK, but I want to at least start with one that's a 'main'server before I jump somewhere else. I can always splinter off later.

Now that I've been on Mastodon and Lemmy, it makes more sense, but this is a HUGE barrier to adoption.

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

#582

Post by monktastic1 »

yadingus wrote: post #577
TechBro8615 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lemmy has the same discoverability and usability problems as Mastodon. Especially for non-technical users, there's too much friction required to find their communities and aggregate them into a single usable feed with a nice client. And that's assuming they can even conceptualize what the fediverse is. I'm a technical user, and I closed join-lemmy.org after ten seconds because it was too many clicks to get to an inte…

> Especially for non-technical users, Is this actually an issue? If you're looking for a straight up reddit alternative in all its scope, I can see it being an issue, but if we simply want a better iteration, then isn't one more catered to technical users, perhaps be a good thing? To me this feels similar to windows vs linux. The pains you describe in learning to use lemmy reminds me of windows users who complain abo…

That depends on whether you consider a community that's missing all non-technical voices to be "better." By contrast, operating systems are an individual choice with individual impact.

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

#583

Post by floundy »

tester457 wrote: post #332
pawptart wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the majority of users don’t really care about the API or subreddits going private as they primarily just lurk. I agree. These protests have missed the point. There is a (very) loud minority raising hell right now, but spez is right, it's just noise. The silent majority is still hanging around.

They're a loud minority because they've invested more into the platform. It is the 1–9–90 rule in action. When the 1% leaves the platform's quality will go down.

My bet is that quality will go up. I'm not really interested in reading what the small number of people who spend 8+ hours per day on Reddit think, about any topic. Hopefully they'll take their silly Reddit mannerisms and inside jokes with themselves on the way out.

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

#584

Post by kristopolous »

yardstick wrote: post #555
kristopolous wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a useful comparison. The fact that IRC existed in 1988 does not bring a user onboard in 2004. That same argument didn't save WAIS, Fido, or Gopher. Nor did it keep Tymnet or Bitnet around and didn't give Compuserve and The Well a seat at the winners table. It also wasn't a saving grace for Friendster, MySpace, or LiveJournal. Magnavox putting out the first home gaming console in 1972 hasn't made them a gam…

Probably a few reasons. Text only, transient/short life data, is a lot cheaper to process and serve than images, permanent posts, etc. It won the initial buy-in of us geeks/nerds/hackers/whateverthephraseofthedayis who gave it a rather solid base. It’s a very personal type of communication. Real-time, immediate, and to a lot smaller audience (more intimate) compared to web forums, Reddit etc. And finally, I would pos…

> I would posit that it did actually die.

This is an interesting question. Wikipedia claims 230,000 users at peak times which is still quite a bit more than say, gopher. A 98% drop is real but you'll still see IRC occasionally for software purposes (like say, Debian)

Maybe it was a coalition of people there for different purposes and some of those groups have fallen away for different places.

For instance, people were doing dating and sextalk on irc back in the day along with file-sharing. Those applications have been superseded by many other places. I don't expect to see anyone sincerely asking "a/s/l?" in modern IRC chatrooms.

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

#585

Post by Forgeties79 »

llampx wrote: post #373
wvenable wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps setting up your own instance for a single community is the wrong approach. You're basically hosting an entire Reddit for a single subreddit. It probably hurts discoverability a bit. There are already 3D printing communities on Lemmy. https://lemmy.ca/c/3dprinting@lemmy.ml

The crux of the problem right here. Modding is ultimately a power trip, and no mod wants to give up their power. A "head mod" of a popular subreddit wouldn't just join a random lemmy where they can't assert their power.

I’m a mod for a 1.5mill sub community and I’d gladly drop it! The only thing I care about is the community being able to move somewhere where we can continue to have interesting discussions about the thing our sub is dedicated to. I could not care less about continuing to be a mod. I only do it at this point because the community is awesome and I still learn a ton there.

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

#586

Post by yadingus »

nullityrofl wrote: post #387
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…

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…

It works for what?

Take a step back. What is social media achieving in its current state. If you only look at the shiny cat videos and dances and memes, that's not the purpose. The purpose is the mass collection of data.

If your only standard of "is working" is "it's what the majority uses", then yes, "it works". But do you really want that to be your standard? Just number of users, at any cost?

If you're competing against algorithms fine tuned to make people pretty much addicted, do you really want to play the same game? And is this mindset not fueled by ideology as well?

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

#587

Post by NeuNeurosis »

mistercheph wrote: post #569
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, no. You lead with the benefits to the user. This isn't Github Seriously. Have a default server (or set of defaults) newbies dump into after completing a simple sign-up flow. Then let them move it as they benefit from the product and gain an incentive to learn about it. Reddit is up in arms about API pricing and mods. Do you think the average Reddit user would have signed up if they had to first jump through hoo…

This is not about an IPO or infinite user growth potential in the next quarter. If we want to build a better world, some people must be left behind.

If you leave too many people behind you aren't building a better world, you're building a walled garden.

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

#588

Post by superfrank »

Exuma wrote: post #56
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?

This is a very stupid question - but can someone explain what the "interest rates" and "no more free money" replies mean? Is it because reddit isn't profitable so relies on constant money supply from investors? Or is it something else

Super simple EIL5:

Rates are low: I can borrow money at 1% interest and my bank pays me 0.1% interest on any money I leave in my account. I'm getting basically no return on my money in the bank, so it makes sense to start a project that might make me money. If I have to borrow money, I only need to make a 1% return for it to be worth it.

Rates are high: It now costs 7% to borrow money and my bank pays me 4% on any money I leave in my account. 4% is a decent return and if I borrow money I need need a project that returns >7% for it to be worth it. Leaving my money in the bank seems like a much better option now.

How this applies to Reddit: VCs and investors are trying to figure out which projects are worth putting more money into, but the bar to make an investment worth it is much higher. Reddit (and many other companies) now need to show that giving them money is more profitable than leaving money in the bank (or other "safe" investments).

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

#589

Post by LordKeren »

Ecstatify wrote: post #490
seydor wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderators are more than guilty of abusing their powers. Reddit should remove powers from them instead of enabling. They can easily find replacements

The people complaining about moderators are the very same people who don’t read the rules and complain that the moderators are on a power trip. I moderate a small sub 15K and the amount of spam is insane. I can’t imagine the amount of work involved in a 1M sub.

I'm a lead mod of a 1.5M+ sub and we maybe remove 1-2 bits of spam per week. Usually the very few that do get through our filters are quickly reported by the users and are removed long before it gains traction

I realize giving reddit mod advice on HN is a bit weird, but here is what we've done that has significantly helped

1. Operate off a white list for links instead of a blacklist -- allow posts from domains like twitter, github or whatever is a normal for your community. Set up auto mod to filter any domains outside of the whitelist so mods can review and approve the appropriate ones

2. No URL shorteners at all. There are very good anti-url-shortener scripts for automod. Adding this cut out 90% of the spam we got

Those are two suggestions that i would give to any subreddit. Here are some that you should carefully weigh before you implement

1. Set up automod to filter a post / comment if it gets to a certain threshold of reports. 2. Enforce a minimum karma amount & age to post w/ automod 3. Enforce a minimum karma amount to comment with a link w/ automod

To give you a starting point -- even our large subreddit, our requirement to post is an account older than 6 hours and >0 Karma. For comments with a link, we do >25 karma

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

#590

Post by Forgeties79 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #12

It seems to me like this is turning into a subreddit migration in slow motion. A lot people still want to post content and a lot of people still want to read content, so what's happening is people are posting it to the less popular 'alternative' versions of the popular subreddits and those posts make the frontpage instead. It seems like there is a noticeable decline in quality but i'm still seeing quite a bit of post…

Interesting enough Tumblr has had a big surge in users the last few days, they’re pretty convinced it’s mostly redditors. I don’t know how big of a surge it is, and of course Tumblr is not Reddit to say the least, but people are definitely poking around. It’s interesting!
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