this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Technology

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A video about the effectiveness of the Reddit protest

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Powerless to change Reddit. You can always do what I did and use lemmy instead.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (5 children)

This is the way.

It's been so much nicer tbh, at least on Beehaw. I don't have any reason to go back with Lemmy and RSS feeds

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If this reddit change did not occurred, I probably never had tried Lemmy (even if I'm in OSS world for 20+ years now). First thought is that I don't think communities going black or mods leaving reddit will do anything to reddit, it's so big and alternative are somehow a niche for geek that they will not loose most of their user base. For mods they'll find out some way ... On the other hand, I don't care, I'm happy here on the fediverse, I participated more discussion here in 1 month than in years on reddit. I had bad experience on my first posts on reddit (probably not interesting enough for some and then downvoted a lot), and I think that I just always thought if my post will be appreciated or not and so and finally just didn't post. I don't have this feeling here.

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

I haven't gone back since the blackout, I get my content here and some other bookmarks I'd forgotten about.

Turns out a whole bunch of us were sick of reddit anyway and were eagerly awaiting a new place to go. I'd have never heard of the Fediverse if reddit hadn't been dicks about API pricing. I knew as soon as I came here and started exploring that this was the way to go; reddit is old news, it's been around for 18 years, that's forever in internet time. It's time to move onto the next thing and the idea of hundreds (thousands!) of federated servers talking and sharing content across platforms is very exciting to me.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Walking away and not looking back is actually very powerful.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Yep, vote with your feet is all that we’ve got, and shouldn’t be underestimated.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Yup, I am happier on the fediverse now.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Leaving Reddit is the only protest that works. The site looks basically the same as it did before that 2 day black out.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

At first glance, a lot of subs have gotten a lot more toxic in comments, and I think the mods have mostly greatly reduced moderating work.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Powerless to change Reddit, yes, but not powerless to find a new community!

To everyone hanging in the fediverse, I just want to say, I am proud of all of you!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

NGL I’ve found the communities on here to be much more genuine. It feels like things are less manipulated, like there are less bots and less advertising companies trying to do guerrilla marketing.

Might just be that these communities are small enough that such things are not worth the time of those who would do such things.

At this point I think I’ll always just migrate to smaller communities as time goes on.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How is Reddit real? You can just walk away from the screen. Close your eyes!

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

The people who see the protest as a failure were many of the users who used the official app, default settings, and seldom if ever contributed to the site. They were never going to leave anyway.

Look how many people came here, and there is a noticeable decrease in the number of bots and trolls. I see this as a huge win for us users.

Edit: Just realized this is ambiguous. There's noticeably fewer bots and trolls here on Lemmy than there were on reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I don't know, my brother has been a Redditor for as long as I was (15 years) and he became angry and hostile when I told him about Lemmy. We're both in our 50s.

He's been using the official Reddit app for years and claims it "works perfectly for him". He seems utterly blind to Reddit's enshittificaton. He's always been kind of an asshole- he behaved the same when I quit Facebook, though he eventually did the same- and he also fears new tech (he didn't have a smartphone until 2020). I wonder if people like him- of which I'm sure there are plenty- will ever wake up.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds like Morpheus was right about not freeing minds once they reach a certain age.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

He's two years older than I am, and I'm here on Lemmy with a deleted 15 year old Reddit account. He's always been like this, age has nothing to do with it.

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

We'll see how it plays out. I have a feeling reddit may currently be putting in artificial upvotes and comments to save things. They've done it when reddit got their start, and as someone who works in tech, I know nothing's stopping them to create a fake 10 year old account with thousands of karma and fake old replies to do some social engineering to make it appear that nothing has changed. This might work out, or it might not.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I used Shreddit to delete all my posts at Reddit, cancelled my premium sub there, and deleted my account. I was there for over 8 years - paying the entire time, as I believed in trying to support the space.

Walking away did not make me feel "powerless" but rather glad to take my time, support, and interests somewhere else that is (hopefully...) healthier. I know of at least 15 people who have done the same, so if you multiply my story by many others I am pretty sure that such walkouts will be felt eventually - especially from those of us who were paying monthly.

When I left, I landed on Kbin first, something I now am kind of not too sure I will continue for reasons I won't get into....

but thankfully, I discovered Beehaw here is just more my speed, which makes me happy 🐝☺️

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

Sorry for the question, maybe it's not appropriate so don't answer if you don't want to but, what was the problem with Kbin? I saw many people telling it's really good so I would like to hear about the opposite.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hi. No worries, it's nice to be asked. 🙂

I mean, I have only been singed up there a week so I am not an expert on what is happening; I don't have anything against Kbin per say? but I just get this sense that maybe the real goal of the space is a little too much leaning towards a recreation of Reddit practices and features. I also noticed some threads encouraging people to move on to other instances already, which seemed sort of odd to me since again, they are just getting going.

Meanwhile here, things feel more relaxed. I really appreciate the transparency with the vision for Beehaw, and feel that it is well reflected in practice by the mods/admins posts and their interactions, not just posted on the sidebar. The posts from community members also seem way more friendly and positive, so it just seems a much better fit for my comfort zone.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (10 children)

"powerless" just use Lemmy it's not like there's really anything meaningful to hold you on Reddit, afaik people don't really make friends on Reddit or anything

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

This is what made the decision for me. All the enshittification aside- in 15 years on Reddit, I did not make one lasting relationship with another human being there, even though I tried very hard at times (via everything ranging from Secret Santa to local meetup subs, to niche interest subs, and more). I have friends online that I have only known online since the 1990s, so it's not that I'm "un-befriendable". Reddit allows people to form mobs, not true communities, which almost always have many subsets of friends and acquaintances, rather than a bunch of strangers who actually don't care at all if one of their members disappears.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Did anyone else actually watch the video? It's inaccurate in places and is biased towards Reddit (e.g. claims that Apollo had no backend costs). Also, it misspelled the CEO's name as "Steve Hoffman."

Overall, this is the first post I've seen that makes me wish Beehaw had a downvote button.

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

As of this moment, the post has:

  • 87 points on beehaw.org
  • 55/38 on kbin.social
  • 61 points on midwest.social
  • 62 points on programming.dev

The real question is if downvotes on other instances federate back to Beehaw (i.e. did they only hide the button, or did they truly block them?)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As far as I am aware, downvotes do not federate to us. Don't quote me on this tho

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right, I am powerless to stop Reddit. I'm not so powerless that I won't say bye to Reddit. Now I'm here and I'm liking it more.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It feels like realizing that WhatsApp is a terrible Meta privacy nightmare, but you can't wake up because you can't convince your whole family to use Signal.

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

Many people advise to just quit it anyways and if your family actually cares about you, they'll switch. Works as a great relatives filter too.

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

I've tried, but Signal is just too cumbersome to use. I sorely miss a web client and my family members sorely miss an Android tablet client. This makes it hard to recommend.

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

Yeah, Facebook just started out as a social media company. Amazon just did book deliveries. Google was just a search engine. Then kept expanding into services that people couldn't really quit, but are privacy nightmares.

This focus on the social media aspect of reddit has felt kind of short sided, since it's not really considering the threat of what they could become. People think it's just about online clubs right now, but might be wishing later more people had made an effort to quit.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, if i didn’t learn about lemmy, i would be back on reddit at this point. It just kills the boredom in a way nothing else does.

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

I would have probably landed somewhere besides reddit. I considered and tried 3 different options, (Lemmy being the third) and stayed here because I was very pleased by the beehaw community. And it's very similar to reddit, which made the transition easier.

I'm doing my best to ditch reddit, and haven't used it since they announced the API pricing

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

Telling people they need to quit Reddit is not realistic. People are more likely to respond if we give them easy and realistic advice.

The most realistic course for most people is to join a few alternative communities that match your values. Join a Lemmy instance, join a Mastodon instance, etc.

  1. Sign up for a new community; a Lemmy instance for example.
  2. Take a few minutes to sign into the new community on all your device, you want it to be as easy as possible to start using the new community.
  3. Prefer to use the new community whenever possible. When you're bored and going through the usual websites (you know what they are), visit the new community first, move Reddit to the bottom of the list. Avoid using Reddit, but don't stress too much if you end up there occasionally, just give preference to everything else.

This advice is not too intimidating, anyone can act on it, and even if only a few people act on it, it's still effective for those few people. This plan has everything it needs to be effective and spread.

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

You're right that telling people to quit Reddit could come off as hostile.

Beehaw seems to be easy on sign up from my experience, so it's here when July 1st rolls around when Reddit terminates API for third party apps. I think significant amount of users of Reddit use the app regularly, so they might leave Reddit once the app no longer works and I imagine that some of them would be unaware of the 'old' reddit UI so they would likely get a really negative impression of the current 'new' Reddit Ui that they would likely be deterred from using Reddit going forward.

+1 on your advice!

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No user of Reddit is powerless. Every single user of Reddit has the power to fuck with Reddit in whatever legal way they want, and they also they have the power to quit using Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Reddit is a lot of peoples only form of community, especially if it's obscure interests. Without it your more or less trapped in your local area.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Powerless... Lol. Maybe if you have shit for brains and keep using reddit.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Go easy on people. It's hard to change, and something like lemmy can be intimidating for people to get on board with. That's ignoring the fact that even if they move they can't force their communities to come with them.

I'm personally happy to see the back of Reddit, and am convincing anyone I can to switch too, but I can understand the challenge for the average user to switch. Hell, even Reddit is a technical step-up for a lotta people. The tech world has forced a paradigm that traps the average user, using the fact it all appears free as the bait. Be angry at big tech, not the ones they swindled.

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

Wow. That video is terrible. At first, I thought it might be a useful perspective because it took reddit’s views into account. At the end, though, he didn’t even mention reddit’s insulting, adversarial attitude, or the fact that reddit is threatening to replace mods who continue to protest.

I learn a lot from opposing viewpoints, but I can’t trust something that’s presented as a documentary style “deep dive” and turns out to be so biased. If someone is relying on deception and lies of omission, yet presenting themselves as neutral, I can only wonder what else they’re lying about.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My growing concern for this community surviving is that it develops its own identity. My fear is that it's becoming a dumping ground for Reddit infighting and not much else. Obviously, it's early days still, but I don't quite remember this when migrating over from Digg years ago. I feel like the community mostly just made fun of Digg and went on to post new and engaging content. This feels different, and not in a good way.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't have numbers but I think reddit is much bigger than digg ever was. I agree though that Lemmy/Kbin servers need their own identity beyond just grumbling about reddit. That's why I don't upvote this kind of post. It's better to just move on and create new communities here.

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

Can we please keep the Reddit spam in the specific Reddit-centered communities? I'm trying to stop paying attention to Reddit.

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

powerless? Reddit has like 0% of my daily Mindshare and I have here now which doesn't really feel meaningfully different in any negative way, only positive ones! I like to think I had the power to change my life for the better in this aspect, and I did

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

/me waves from powerlessness.

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

They are not powerless. They have their own choice. Stop going there!

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

Powerless how? I left lol. I am not generating content for that website anymore which means I have taken something away from them.

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