Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely • Hacker News Board

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

#591

Post by fnovd » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:31 PM UTC

rakoo wrote: post #580

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…

> benefit from the product and gain an incentive > An infintessimal fraction of users care about philosophy or architecture [...] Users came for their cat pics. Give them their cat pics. Pitch them on the back end afterwards. I'm afraid you don't understand the concept of the fediverse. The philosophy is the point. Making reddit2 is completely useless. This is not a product, it's a vision of how we manage communicati…

If the philosophy is the point, it's a dead platform. Utopian ideals are fine, if that's your thing. Shaming people who don't share them is just rude. I don't see how you can compare the platform to the democratic process and not expect the same warts you see in democracies. A few people care a lot, some people care a bit, most people barely care at all. Grandstanding will never change that.

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

#592

Post by wccrawford » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:31 PM UTC

Tempat wrote: post #564

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…

I don’t know much about how the fediverse thing works. Would it be theoretically possible to have something kind of like how torrents work, with some central list of all servers acting as the “tracker list”?: - Servers choose what they want to host and what their personal bandwidth limit is - A user visiting a specific subforum automatically downloads from whatever servers are currently available to serve it Then you…

You don't have an identity on a torrent unless you join a server.

Similarly, you need to join a Lemmy server to have an identity there, or anywhere on Lemmy. Unlike private torrent trackers, you only need 1 Lemmy identity, and you can subscribe to other servers' communities from your original server.

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

#593

Post by kristopolous » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:33 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #530

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…

> Citing an early creation date is a survivorship fallacy here Separate problems: getting off the ground versus surviving. IRC got off the ground because it didn't have centralized competition with a capability advantage. Why it persisted is a deeper story. Lemmy is still trying to get off the ground. It, unlike IRC, does have such competition. As such, the old playbook is obsolete.

> the old playbook is obsolete

I'm going to disagree. The old playbook is to empower users in unique ways that at the time feel almost forbidden and magical and to competently execute that.

You could claim all those avenues have been explored but I disagree there as well. The surrounding context and possibilities are always on the move so the underlying potential is always changing.

That's why say, YouTube, the 40th or so on-demand video company, which happened to launch when digital cameras and broadband internet were becoming widely used, was the first successful execution or why smartphones didn't take off until the rollout of 3G or, looking into the future, VR might finally take off at attempt 50 after some related thing changes.

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

#594

Post by fnovd » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:33 PM UTC

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #302

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

It's not "drama", it's protecting their community from an instance that's currently being bombed by trolls. Seriously, the concern trolling around here regarding federation is almost comical. Apparently when major private corporation admins or volunteer mods arbitrarily intervene in the functioning of a platform it's totally fine, but when local server admins do it by moderating locally or de-federating from problem…

If the federated system can't handle the trolls and bad actors that Reddit is currently equipped to deal with then the whole idea is dead in the water.

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

#595

Post by mdhen » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:33 PM UTC

ihateolives wrote: post #441

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "drama", it's protecting their community from an instance that's currently being bombed by trolls. Seriously, the concern trolling around here regarding federation is almost comical. Apparently when major private corporation admins or volunteer mods arbitrarily intervene in the functioning of a platform it's totally fine, but when local server admins do it by moderating locally or de-federating from problem…

It's literally throwing thousands of babies out with bathwater. Beehaw in their attempt of building a happy place has disabled downvoting so community can't downvote trolls and only tool they apparently have to fight trolls is to defederate two of the biggest instances. Problem solved? It's like blocking entire small country by IP because your had two port scans from there.

Beehaw disallows the creation of new subs by users. It's run by total control freaks. Hard pass on them.

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

#596

Post by vxNsr » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:34 PM UTC

entropie wrote: post #575

The last 3 days I starred way to many times at the "this subreddit is private" page on reddit. Not because I actively were using reddit but because all my search queries (not all of them with "reddit") went to one or another reddit post with the information not available anymore. Even if reddit decides to comply, we have to change this for a better internet in the future. Go lemmy guys.

Lemmy could end in a worse situation: some hobby guy hosts his lemmy instance with w/e unique subs, one day he decides it’s too much work and take it offline. Boom it’s all gone and there’s no recourse.

Here at least there’s a chance Reddit will unblock the subs if this goes on too long.

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

#597

Post by fnovd » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:34 PM UTC

candiddevmike wrote: post #227

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…

Or folks could learn how to do this stuff. Centralization due to "ease of use" is what got us into this mess, and keeps getting us into more walled gardens. At some point folks need to take some responsibility and learn how to setup and maintain their own shit.

They never will and popular tools will never expect them to. Some people will, but never most.

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

#598

Post by marcosdumay » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:35 PM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #169

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…

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…

> I did manage to find a community by clicking "join," and arbitrarily picking one of the communities on the page (which were presented in random order on every page load). I was disoriented and didn't know what this community was

Well, to be honest, that part does sound exactly like reddit.

But people fall on reddit by links to a public page somewhere, avoiding the empty page problem. After a short time on their site, I still don't know if I can link to a comment in Lemmy or if I can browse a community.

And edit: yes, each one of those servers has a web interface at their root that you can browse and link to. The link being name "join" doesn't make it obvious.

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

#599

Post by nearbuy » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #519

goatlover wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Continuing to operate at a loss isn't a good option either though. Eventually they'd shut down and the community would lose all of Reddit.

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

#600

Post by bsder » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

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…

> If there was a consensus on the next reddit I would think reddit should be much more worried.

I think Reddit should be very worried. Federation works fine for a "forum-like" replacement that doesn't need to be super timely.

Yes, the federated replacement is currently half-baked. You're not going to pick up the unwashed masses this round.

However, more than a few technical sub-Reddits that have simply shut down and are not coming back. The technical users didn't care much for Reddit to begin with and don't mind putting in some elbow grease to permanently kick Reddit to the curb. Lots of technical people now suddenly know about Lemmy who didn't have any clue before.

I have no doubt that Reddit will win this round, but it's a Pyrrhic victory. A nice chunk of software development talent is now mobilized to build the thing to wipe them out.

To be fair, I don't think the CEO is actually wrong. The AI companies are absolutely free-riding on everybody and that needs to stop. However, the way it was done with the API was not kosher--I suspect had he just grandfathered everybody using the API prior to date , everything would have been fine.