this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who are continuing to stick with it + be supportive. I didn't expect anything beyond the planned end of the blackout, although I didn't expect thousands of subreddits to participate in that either. Either way I've basically cut Reddit out entirely. I used to scroll 2-3hrs a day and I'm down to maybe 10 minutes once or twice a week when I'm trying to find an answer to something. Attempting to fill my newfound free time has been.. fun

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Weirdly enough it got me more engaged with social media. In the sense that now I'm posting and talking with people on lemmy and mastodon more than I ever did on reddit. Weird how a place can get so popular it stops being a real community after a while

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know that it has me engaging more but it feels more fun and meaningful now. Reddit had turned into man yells into the void for me. Now I feel like I'm talking to real people again on Lemmy. It's such a relief honestly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It helps not opening a post to find 10k plus comments and the top comment with 4k upvotes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

True, same experience here. It's nice to not see 1k+ comment threads filled with karmahoarders voted to the top.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I think the strange part is feeling obligated to interact more. I'll upvote more than I did on Reddit. I post more than I did on Reddit. The goal seems clear, to make this place feel inhabited. The more bustling it feels, the bustling it will become.

The other aspect is moderating communities. I'm not a mod, or at least I wasn't. But Lemmy lacks the breadth of oddly specific comms, and if I intend to eventually doom scroll again, modding a niche comm is a good start.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Even if reddit changes course at this point... I've found Lemmy. And it's just... better. And beyond that, it would take reddit years to recoup the goodwill they've lost with this.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

It is sad that we are going to loose a bunch of community knowledge that is on reddit if they go under but fuck spez and reddit

Though I wish there was a backup of reddit so we can keep the community knowledge gathered throughout the years

Edit: typo

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

R/Datahoarder has been on this since it started. We aren’t losing shit.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They won't go under. They'll just become a shell. If they truly approached bankruptcy, someone would buy them just for the brand.

I get why people are doing it, but truthfully the folks deleting all their comments are the ones truly destroying the data. Even if we all moved on, that data would have still been there for us to google, just like all those mostly dead forums.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

It'll technically all still be there on reddit, right? We can treat it as an archive without actually being active users. Heck, you could even form a volunteer group to collate all the most important threads and key points into some posts here, or some google docs, etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are some people, who in the light of the protest and moving to Lemmy, have deleted their accounts. Of these people there are also those who have purged their data, as in removed all their comments/posts.

If the purgers were content creators or support geeks, then the communities they interacted with might become a little "moth eaten".

Luckily, r/datahoarder has been looking into archiving reddit before the chaos.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's annoying that so much of my search results rely on community discussions from reddit. I've pretty much ditched the site entirely and am getting pretty comfy here, but a lot of historical discussions on reddit simply can't be replaced and likely never will be.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s what I’ve been doing here instead, lol.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

shhh let me pretend my attempt at self-improvement has been successful

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Don’t go back. Even if Reddit makes concessions, the CEO has shown that he will do whatever he wants and doesn’t give a crap about the users of Reddit, you know, the people who actually make him money. Any site controlled by a CEO is at risk of this happening.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Not just shit controlled by a CEO, literally anything for-profit. For-profit software does not care about your experience. It cares about gouging as much money as it can from you. Open source software, the antithesis, is made for and by the people. It's there to be as useful and enjoyable as possible. Open source software has nothing to gain from forcing you to jump through hoops, unlike for-profit software. They put the hoops in place, then force you to pay them to fix the problem they deliberately caused.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If all the third party apps die, I couldn't go back even if I wanted to.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Honestly? I've ripped off the bandaid and moved operations over here. It feel weird and treacherous just going back to check for zombie comments.

Y'alll are more my speed anyway. Prost! 🍻

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It feel weird and treacherous just going back to check for zombie comments.

Well, replace "reddit.com" in the url with "teddit.net" and you can view content on Reddit without going to Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I did go on reddit the other day (didn't login) and seeing all of the deleted comments the admins have removed for talking about THE ISSUE is kind of hilarious.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It just feels more alive and real here... If that makes any sense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There's no way they can IPO with under the current circumstances. They'll not be able to strong-arm the volunteers into submission. I'm thinking there's a deadline, they'll drop spez and sell the company off to some place that gives a crap.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

They'll sell the company off to some place that will give less of a crap and will need to monetize even more to recoup their investment. It will become Deaddit.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Reddit is now further away from a public offering than it was last year, Mr. Huffman said.

https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/85610/Spez-talks-to-NY-Times

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Wouldn’t it be enjoyable to watch receive news of that here on Lemmy 🤭

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I'm glad people aren't backing down, whether you left Reddit entirely for Lemmy like I have or keep trying to start fires over there, it all hurts Reddit's IPO.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I don't really get what protesters wants to achieve now but only a moron would go back even if they announced that there won't be any API changes, knowing what shit CEO of that shit company thinks about them. Stockholm syndrome is strong in these people.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It took many years for reddit to take off to become a huge player on the internet. Digg, Twitter, and myspace where the big players in 2005 to 2010. Then people started to move to Facebook, Snapchat, and Reddit as they became more popular. It only a matter of time until Mastodon, Lemmy and other federated platforms take over. Especially if the community keeps growing and spreading the word.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Yes, it'll take time but this was a good kick in the pants.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah does it seems like decentralized (federated or otherwise) systems will be the future of social media. There's lemmy (only four years old, the most popular I'd say), bluesky (another federated system), and plebbit (peer to peer, uses ipfs) to highlight a few. So there seemsto be a lot of exploration in this space.

I think reddit will be around for quite some time, but it'll never be the same, and die a slow death.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This won't go anywhere as long as users aren't willing to leave reddit. Mods can be replaced, users can't.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I left...reddit honestly seems clunky now...I go back to watch it burn but it's not burning enough :( maybe instead of John Oliver they should be posting dragons or something jeez

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I left. dl'd, and then erased all my content. This confirms the importance of Open Source.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Given that reddit is making it difficult for users to delete posts and comments [1]. I wonder if it will make it more difficult for them if instead of deleting the comments and posts, but we flood the posts and comments with garbage edits.

Something like this could be easily scripted out. Could use browser automation if you don't want to use the reddit api.

If they truly have the ability to roll back deleted AND edits on a post and comment level, then flooding the change history log with garbage edits will cause them to hemorrhage money in terms of cold storage (ie, Amazon S3) and database size.

They can't be infinitely storing all of the edit history. So at some point they have to purge the oldest commits at which point makes it equivalent to deletion of original post, except now they are keeping garbage and paying to keep that garbage stored. Have fun running your LLM on that junk.

Something like this:

  • original comment: "Some thoughtful comment here"
  • 1st edit: <edited to hit max comment length with garbage content, maybe "lorem ipsom" placeholder stuff>
  • 2nd edit:
  • 3rd edit:
  • nth edit: ...

Again, this assumes they are even keeping the edit history. Would be nice if we can get insider information from a reddit backend engineer to confirm.

[1] https://lemmy.world/post/647059

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

The longer this goes on, the more convinced I am that this will actually damage Reddit significantly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, since we are here on Lemmy, it feels like that good damage is already done on Reddit side.

If the injury is a fatal one, only time and the engagement on the alternatives will tell.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Third week? Damn, i sweared i joined only two weeks ago

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit is a full trashcan nobody bothered to empty for 10 years. Lemmy it up!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm going to predict that at the 11th hour they walk back the pricing to a reasonable number, as it attempt to 1) save face and 2) to be able to point to their investors and the media that they tried negotiating.

It's too late.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, I think that's a possible way that this goes down. I also think that if they did that it'd be a mistake. I think Apollo, RIF, and the other 3rd party apps are gone. Even if reddit announced yesterday that they were going to keep the API free, let alone negotiate a middle ground, I think 3rd party apps are gone and not coming back. On the 3rd party level I don't even really think it's the cash grab that's the problem, it's the lack of communication and trust. Even if reddit were to bend over backwards to try to keep them, I don't think there's anything they can do to make up for the lack of trust this has created in reddit's leadership. Same thing goes for the mods. The mods are arguably reddits most important users. They make the site usable for everyone else and if reddit was ever to become profitable I think the people spez would have to thank for that would be the mods who made the spaces that people wanted to come be a part of. They can't trust reddits leadership either. It doesn't matter what shiny new toys reddit may try to roll out to make their job easier, it doesn't matter what exceptions they try to carve into their new API policy. Common thread here is noone wants to sink their time into something that might change as fast as reddit has shown it can. Being a 3rd party dev or a mod takes a lot of time out of your day. Faced with the choice of leaving or laboring for a company that clearly doesn't respect the value you add to their service I think that most would choose to flee the sinking ship.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

I don’t see why anyone would be still trying, other than perhaps mods of major communities who want to hold on to their power or prominence. For typical users, who cares. It’s like knocking and knocking on the door of an ex-friend who kicked you out of their house. Just go somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it's more nuanced than that. Personally, there are a couple of reasons for me. Though, I have already purged my account and deleted it. First, I spent a long time on Reddit. It was a part of my daily habits for more than 12 years. Though, I think getting a way from it is not a bad thing in the case of the reason. The second reason that is more difficult to change with anything other than time is the communities. There are a lot of smaller niche communities on Reddit that really only have a home there. It's this one that bothers me the most out of the whole situation.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

https://lemm.ee/post/314486

And now people are doing GDPR requests. Literally takes 3 seconds. Might as well!

Will edit with the direct link in a second. It's also a comment in the above thread.

Edit: direct link for GDPR is here: https://lemm.ee/comment/402687

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