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

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

#691

Post by HWR_14 » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #675

HWR_14 wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most mods (who oversee the generation of new content) use the API because third-party apps offer superior mod tools. Instead of thinking about "shutting down third party apps" think about it as "asking your volunteer labor to do the job on hard mode". You can see why those people might get pissed off.

Do you have a citation for the claim that most mods use third party apps?

Ironically, the only citations I recall are on reddit, and I believe from blacked out subreddits.

And I should have added some cutoff there. It's mods of large enough subreddits.

But why else would the mods be so up in arms?

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

#692

Post by redundantly » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

nullityrofl wrote: post #689

redundantly wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think people are cattle and I think that is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent my position. I'm not attempting to misrepresent you, that's just how you're coming across. You're effectively saying that people are either too lazy or not competent enough to use services that aren't packaged up and served directly to them. Hence the analogy. > something like Reddit will always exist, regardless of the central…

> You're claiming that decentralised services won't see wide spread adoption because it doesn't conform to how things work on Reddit. That is explicitly not what I said. What I said was: > What I think is that people have become accustomed to having a wide array of information on a wide array of topics easily indexed and accessible. What I think is that people value that accessibility of information. A replacement do…

> That is explicitly not what I said

The following are your words, not mine, although the emphasis is:

> > 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'd take a wager that we'll see Digg 3.0/Reddit 2.0 before we'll see widespread adoption of the Fediverse.

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

#693

Post by joemi » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

COGlory wrote: post #613

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

This is a feature. Besides, everyone knows how on reddit, joining one sub can result in auto-bans from other subs. How is this any different?

I didn't know that. And I've been on reddit for at least a decade. What are you talking about?

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

#694

Post by Applejinx » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

perlgeek wrote: post #474

I supports the blackout. Yet, addicted me still occasionally opens reddit. And all the content I see is from communities that did not black out, or returned, so all the content is from communities that at least a part of my says I shouldn't want to see. Kinda kills the fun.

That's my experience as well. Certain subs didn't black out, disappointing me (just about everything I used did, though). I can take a peek and what I see is a smaller number that returned, and in some cases I have sympathy (certain kinds of support forum) and in some cases it permanently affected my take on the sub.

It's made me wonder why I've spent time shoveling engagement and words into the maw of a machine that didn't turn out to be the people I thought I was hanging out with. I spent a YEAR of my life traveling great distances to pursue a long-distance relationship I literally found on Reddit. That relationship turned out to not be as healthy as I wanted to believe it was…

…same with Reddit. More's the pity.

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

#695

Post by nullityrofl » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

redundantly wrote: post #692

nullityrofl wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're claiming that decentralised services won't see wide spread adoption because it doesn't conform to how things work on Reddit. That is explicitly not what I said. What I said was: > What I think is that people have become accustomed to having a wide array of information on a wide array of topics easily indexed and accessible. What I think is that people value that accessibility of information. A replacement do…

> That is explicitly not what I said The following are your words, not mine, although the emphasis is: > > 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'd take a wager tha…

Those two points are not contrary. The quote you pasted does not dispute my point at all. Your emphasis is my point that the fact that the service is decentralized does not allow it to make up for the fact that it does not meet the needs of the users.

It does for some people -- some people value the fact that it's decentralized over other needs -- but my point is the vast majority of people don't care as long as the information they need is there and accessible. The fact that it's decentralized is, in itself, not enough.

EDIT: And to be clear: I think the fact that it's decentralized doesn't preclude it from having those other properties that users value just that the developers of Fediverse applications don't seem to realize that they need to do something more than make it decentralized. That's the entire essence of my post.

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

#696

Post by davelondon » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

Virtually all the useful information about Notion is in the reddit group, which is now inaccessible. I sent a message to the group's moderators today "come on guys, this is dumb" and they reported me for harassment

Reddit really needs to stop this.

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

#697

Post by joemi » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

jtode wrote: post #511

EatingWithForks wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

You seem to be assuming that everyone who doesn't want to jump through hoops at signup is a low-quality user. This seems like a very flawed (or pretentious?) view. "Low-quality users" are a subset of "users who don't want to jump through hoops at signup", but the subset is small in comparison to the superset.

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

#698

Post by DropInIn » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

vruiz wrote: post #602

DropInIn wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... Sounds like you want what I keep thinking about: Front end that works with feeds from multiple sources, like RSS, and permits comments, posts etc using SSO, with all interactions logged centrally in the SSO account (for later edits deletes etc). Sound about right? Because you me it seems like every provider in that list should be able to make a profit off the data and interactions... With users who want increas…

Yes although me being primarily a lurker I need even less. More than post or comment, if I have an account it would be to block some things and prfioritize other things more closely. What you describe would make sense for more extended functionality, but there is silent majority of lazy lurkers like myself that could be served very easily.

So my model would be one where you pick a site as your front end, most of which would have default curation and subscription to various subs, providing an experience like /all by default.

Though it would look like /all what it would really be is more like an RSS reader aggregating multiple sources according to your preferences.

A Reddit alternative would naturally form in this ecosystem, with smaller alternative front ends abounding, and take dominance just as Reddit did, but unlike Reddit it would not be able to screw over sub mods etc.

Subs would be truly independent of the front end site, even if they are themselves also front end providers.

It's Distributed Reddit in a sense.... Though in my view it'd be best to make it content agnostic, so it can be adapted to other uses, specifically for a YouTube clone and such.

Really, there's a model where for most it's essentially a Facebook alternative that integrates into thousands of third party forums seemlessly...

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

#699

Post by lozenge » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #463

lozenge wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have written this comment about tape decks, CD ripping or Napster. In the end, what's technically possible always wins. As long as adblockers are technically feasible they will continue.

Napster didn't win though? It got crushed by giant media conglomerates. They were able to stifle easy piracy. With legal warfare, and actual decent products, they pretty effectively funneled people into legally consuming digital content, limiting piracy, and replaced physical ownership (CDs) with ephemeral subscriptions.

Napster the company didn't win, but file sharing and distributed sharing is the reason Spotify doesn't cost $1,000/month and we are no longer buying tracks for $1 on the iTunes store.

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

#700

Post by marcod » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:02 PM UTC

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…

> These federated things need to be set up so that there's "no wrong door"

I would argue they are. Any of the servers will work fine. There needs to be a paradigm shift that only things that are centrally managed and have a profit motive are good.