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

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

#701

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

_8j50 wrote: post #620

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…

No SSO, because you're lurking without logging in

SSO only applies to those engaging, with those lurking being presented the default selection of subs for that front end site.

Essentially, Reddit Appollo and all the others are the front ends, with the subreddits being independent back ends (which would certainly also have their own front ends, even if restricted to their own sub).

Thus, the most popular front end would almost certainly just be a clone of old.reddit with the /all and /popular being made of the aggregate communities that front end has selected for default inclusion (with the most inclusive front end almost certainly "winning").

Tldr - SSO only matters for commenting/posting, lurkers would/could get literally the exact same experience as Reddit...

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

#702

Post by marcod » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:04 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…

> Digg died because reddit existed.

Sorry, but digg died because they told their community in unmistakable terms (aka v4) that they don't matter. Reddit happened to be there to take the refugees.

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

#703

Post by isaacremuant » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:11 PM UTC

jtode wrote: post #485

isaacremuant wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually. The average internet user would think himself pretty smart repeating low effort strawmen like yours while repeating heavily propagandized mantras such as "It's safe and effective" and "It's just 2 weeks! Can't you just stay put for 2 weeks?"

You're cute.

0 retort to a true statement. Better than yikes.

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

#704

Post by redundantly » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:20 PM UTC

nullityrofl wrote: post #695

redundantly wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> And to be clear: I think the fact that it's decentralized doesn't preclude it from having those other properties that users value

And yet:

> > Federated services will never become mainstream. This is just the reality that people need to come to accept

> > Centralization works. It's convenient. It doesn't require a user guide. It's approachable for laypersons. This is just the reality

> > 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.

And then there's this:

> > 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 username@somecommunity.infosec.somecommunity matters? Do I care if I use lemmy.world or do I have to find some server? Which server?

> > I see the value of the Fediverse. I see the intent. I understand it. It's not complex.

Which one is it? Complex or not? Do you need a user guide? No? Which one?

You're all over the place. Saying centralisation is required for mainstream adoption which means decentralisation isn't, but somehow decentralisation isn't the problem that the fediverse has?

One thing that I haven't pointed out in all of this is that signing up and using reddit might have been easy for you, but that isn't the case for every body. I'd wager for most visitors to reddit, whether or not they have registered an account, they simply consume the content there like they would a Facebook wall. Many users don't understand the concept of subreddits or fine tuning their account to their interests. They aren't getting the same value out of it that you place so highly on it.

Centralization does not necessarily make things user friendly. Nor does decentralisation make things less user friendly. You have implied both to be true and then contradicted yourself.

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

#705

Post by monktastic1 » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:22 PM UTC

yadingus wrote: post #610

monktastic1 wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is a fair point, but as a thought experiment, I can't really say. I just think the immediate assumption that you need those non-technical voices should be reconsidered.

It's not really a question of need. I appreciate interacting with a diverse crowd, and I think most others do, too.

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

#706

Post by nullityrofl » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:26 PM UTC

redundantly wrote: post #704

nullityrofl wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> And to be clear: I think the fact that it's decentralized doesn't preclude it from having those other properties that users value And yet: > > Federated services will never become mainstream. This is just the reality that people need to come to accept > > Centralization works. It's convenient. It doesn't require a user guide. It's approachable for laypersons. This is just the reality > > Lemmy is an alternative to…

I'm not all over the place. You're just exactly the frustrating personality type I'm talking about: one who is hyperfixated on the technology and the decentralized nature who can't see the forest for the trees and is more interested in arguing the minutia.

I'm content in my belief that we won't see a mass adopted Fediverse technology replace Reddit in my lifetime. I think theres a variety of reasons for this but the people involved in the development and advocacy of the products and their inability to listen to any feedback are the biggest one. They think they've got this _allllll_ figured out and it's just humanity that needs to evolve to meet them.

I'll come back here and apologise if I'm wrong. I don't see that happening, though.

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

#707

Post by bl4kers » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:30 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #596

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.

Users should consider who owns the server before investing time & energy on it. Having a nameless, headless Reddit employee control the fate of any/all communities is a far worse prospect

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

#708

Post by drdaeman » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:32 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #678

drdaeman wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a technical user, I've spent last 3 days trying to figure out what should I really do to make a setup that I wouldn't want to nuke in a month (or a year). I'm still at loss how to get this deployed the right way (and not a lazy "install this in 5 minutes, feel the pains forever" way, thanks, my Matrix Synapse server is bad enough). My current list of grievances: - No standards of any kind on sharing the same iden…

> thanks, my Matrix Synapse server is bad enough OT but what pains did you experience with matrix / what would you have done differently? this'd make a good blog post/HN article at this moment imo.

I would've explored alternative servers.

The issue with Synapse is the same as I currently have with Lemmy - lack of HA. One particular machine goes down and the system is 100% unavailable. And most of my machines are hardware I own, located at homes (mine, parents, etc) in different countries, so they're slightly more prone to random power or uplink outages than AWS' us-east-1. Hobbyist-grade geo-distributed cluster, hah :)

I've solved this for my email (two mailhosts on different continents, Dovecot dsync replication for mailboxes) and my storage (Minio works, and I'm slowly experimenting with Tahoe-LAFS), but I haven't solved it for Matrix.

Dendrite supports distributed deployments and reportedly works with CockroachDB (albeit not officially supported). Not sure what Conduit supports (last time I've checked it was all about embedded databases like sqlite, rocksdb, sled and persy), but it has pluggable database backend architecture so when I'll finally decide I want to fix my stuff, I'd certainly check it out as well.

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

#709

Post by ALittleLight » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

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

Imagine you could have $1 now or x 1 year from now. How big would x have to be in order for you to prefer it?

Well, if you were planning on buying a $1 savings bond at a 2% interest rate than x would have to be 1.02 or bigger. If the interest rate increased then x would need to increase as well. In other words, an increase in the interest rate is a decrease in the future value of money - it takes more future dollars to be worth the same amount of present dollars.

When interest rates are low, companies prefer earning money in the future. They prefer growth. When interest rates are high then companies shift their preference to present dollars. What we are seeing is companies choosing to pursue money now rather than money in the future because of what interest rates are doing.

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

#710

Post by Izkata » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 10:36 PM UTC

rf15 wrote: post #677

TylerE wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrents have magnet links, which don’t require servers at all.

That is untrue, you still need a server to facilitate discovery/passthrough. Peer-to-peer does not exist in the wider internet for most consumers.

Trackerless torrents are very old now, they use the DHT network to find peers. I believe it needs to be seeded when you first start a newly installed client, but that's completely transparent to the user.