- cross-posted to:
- snoocalypse@lemmy.ml
- snoocalypse@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- snoocalypse@lemmy.ml
- snoocalypse@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
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I hate that the main issue reported is third party apps are dying. That’s a side effect, not the main issue.
The main issue is the access of the reddit’s data. We all built that. The volunteers who gave all of those hours to supervise that content is the real MVPs of reddit. Not the useless execs. The real founder of reddit has been gone for a while now (he was a true freedom fighter of access to knowledge).
The execs of reddit realize two main things. The first is the known idea that third party apps have the option to change how reddit looks to the user (including blocking ads). The other is that academic types and AI builders could use the content that we cultivated together in order to build datasets to train AI. The reddit execs know groups like these would be willing to pay extra for our data.
R.I.P. Aaron Swartz. It’s been 10 years and these are the issues you warned about and fought against.
For me its just the third party apps that I care about
I hope this whole ordeal, no matter how it goes down, ends up being a landmark for “social media as a monopoly”. I think there’s been a lot of talk about this in past years, with little real interest, because people are more interested in their next dopamine fix no matter how much they say they care about their data being sold. I hope this is the push we need to start considering these things for real. Most of us are uncomfortable with personal information being sold to 3rd parties, or knowing that users of these sites are technically the product being sold. It’s more weird and uncomfortable knowing the CEO and other execs are throwing a tantrum because user data and user submissions AREN’T being generated for them to sell to earn money to buy some yachts and golf courses.
Should social media be a public commodity, same way a community center or library is? Something paid for by taxes and regulated by government. I think it’s interesting in concept but odd to consider once you get into government censorship and surveillance aspects. Not a good idea either.
I think the older core of reddit has always viewed itself as a bottom-up community, rather than a social media platform. Reddit won’t die for now, but this is a sobering wakeup call from that idea.
Reddit is no freehaven, it’s now just another company, and slowly everyone on it will get squeezed into the businessmold…
I certainly never viewed it as a social media site. I joined it as a link aggregator and a way to find information on topics I thought were interesting, not make friends. It always seems odd to me when people refer to it as a social media site.
Everything that I liked about reddit was the fact that it was NOT social media. Everything they’ve done in the last decade (avatars and all that), I’ve religiously ignored.
Lol, I told my friend to join Lemmy and he immediately asked how to friend me. Pls no
Indeed. Reddit is knowb as the site where you talk with strangers on things you care about - whereas Facebook is talking with people you know about things you don’t care about.
Reddit *still is * a bottom-up community, that’s why all their monetization efforts never worked and there’s so much backlash against the API changes. All of the content and value on the site is created by the users and mods. Reddit the company doesn’t own that, and redditors take offense at management’s attempts to take advantage of the users’ free efforts for their own gain.
What Huffman and Reddit should have done was think long term and set up a Wikipedia-like entity that could have ensured the health and growth of the site while only taking a modest cut. Instead they tried to pump up the value and cash out with an IPO, and when that likely fails, they’ll end up with nothing.
Hmmm. Maybe it’s intentional. A purge. Flush out the old crowd with their adblockers and their nonsense ideas about “free speech,” and whoever stays – out of ignorance or compliance – is left with the ad-ridden hellscape that is the new interface and the official app.
I didnt know about lemmy or any of these federated alternatives and couldnt help but go back a few times. old habbits…i did already delete my account, so im just looking at top of popular and its all shit subs posting shit nobody cares about.
Mir offers another business metaphor for the tension on Reddit: “If you have a really good music venue, but you break relations with every notable artist, you’re not going to be a very successful venue. You need to really prioritize the needs of the folks providing the value on your platform.”
Honestly this sums it up pretty well
Additionally, it’s not even that good of a venue.
I was talking to my friend about this and asked if he could point out a single improvement that reddit has made in the last decade that hadn’t been about monetization, since I exclusively use old.reddit.com and third party apps, I certainly couldn’t. We couldn’t come up with anything…
There’s nothing. It’s been slowly getting more and more shitty for years. It’s just been happening so slowly that there wasn’t a breaking point where most of us left until now.
I’ve been casually looking for an alternative for years, because the content has gotten so low effort. There just hasn’t been any good alternatives. I tried Voat, but that got over run with racists and Trumpers almost from the jump.
Lemmy is the first thing I’ve found that seems half decent and it needs to triple ot quadruple it’s engaged user base to really have a shot. Too many posts with no comments or very few. What made reddit special was the comments and interactions. I have hope lemmy can get there, it just needs way more users to do so.
What made reddit special was the comments and interactions.
And in the past few months, I found several instances of karma farmers copying a good comment that was low in the thread and pasting it as a reply to one of the top comments to get visibility and upvotes. Idk if it was bots or people with no life, but I bet shit like that was happening much more than we realized, vastly padding engagement. Personally, I’d rather have a smaller and more authentic community here than disingenuous reposts, shitposts, botposts, trollposts, and general farming like what many subreddits became. I like that this platform seems to have much more thoughtful engagement between users who feel more like people than some cardboard cutout. I think we all can learn and grow as people by sincerely engaging in real discourse in the serious communities, and have interesting OC in less serious ones that are just about memes or storytelling or whatever.
I agree that interactions are special, and I agree that Lemmy needs more users, but I’m wary of bloating the userbase and packing garbage into here. I’d like to see a little growth, and give lurkers a reason to engage in an inviting community that isn’t hostile.
Reddit is inauthentic. Nothing but censorship everywhere. Nobody can say anything if you’re a real person and not a bot. I made a comment comparing new and old Star Trek in a Star Trek community, and my comments got deleted and I got a punishment ban for…some reason. I asked a question about others’ experiences with gay businesses under /AskGayBros and my question along with the thread was deleted, and I was banned for 3 days…for conducting illegal transactions. Those are just two examples, but there are plenty more. I pretty much know that if I post something on Reddit - no matter where and no matter what I say, it will get deleted and I will get banned for 3 days. No matter what. Nobody can say anything over there. I don’t think there are any real people posting, just bots. Because you have to watch what you say and even then, you will likely get deleted.
If I post ever my account is instantly permanently banned and I still don’t know why. AITA mods are incels
I agree. Lemmy is really promising but not quite at the critical mass yet. I’ve been trying to post more myself but we need consistentand sustained activity.
I think we’re gonna get there fairly soon. Lemmy.world only started on June 1. I joined a week ago when there were 1-2k users. Now there’s almost 30k.
I bet reddit corporate is shitting bricks over chatgpt. They want to get their IPO and be able to sell their shares before AI upends online discussion. AI Bots are going to be a big deal, not in a good way.
Its a better analogy that Reddit pissed off the roadies, ushers, ticket takers, and other crew because they wanted 300% of the concession stand’s gross take.
Why did everyone migrate here if we’re just going to talk about reddit all day? Getting sick of every other post being about the other website.
It’s a big, relevant, ongoing event which affects the fediverse directly. There’s a huge influx of new users who were recently burned by it who would normally go to “the other website” to discuss, but no longer do.
Would you prefer they go back, or is there a place here for those displaced?
Yet another article that (knowingly or not) frames it as “people don’t want to pay for the API”:
Reddit charging for access to its API is also about more than just third-party clients, Bruckman says. A move like this has angered so many people on Reddit because it feels like a betrayal of the community’s trust.
No mention that several third-party app creators are fine with paying for API access, as long as they can build a business model around the pricing.
The more this drags on, the less people think this is about money, and more about controlling the platform.
A real business person finds a common ground, sets terms everyone can at least pay forward. Because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if I have $100 lemonade, if no one is able to buy it.
I really don’t understand why reddit doesn’t just charge end uses for API access. Heck chuck it in with premium or something. They can generate an API that you use in whatever client you wanted.
I’d happily pay Reddit for a key to then use in Apollo, but bizarrely this isn’t an option. It’s not like Reddit lacks the ability to charge end users, they already have premium after all.
Because they don’t want 3rd party apps to exist at all.
Anyone who has been online long enough has learned to deal with the fact that sites and communities they love almost never stay the same over enough time. Even here on the Fediverse we already have situations like Beehaw defederating.
I still think that’s one of the most damaging events to the success of the fediverse over the past week
People, including admins, have a right to make dumb decisions. They can be unfortunate, but it’s better to allow dumb decisions than to have a singular, benevolent ruler like Spez pre-2023.
Actions have consequences.
Reddit has been a terrible site since I joined it. They’re insane outages and comments just failing. Lemmy even with its bugs it much better. The future is bright.
No, Spez is breaking Reddit. The blackout is a symptom, not a cause.
I love how WIRED, being part of the commercialized, centralized internet itself, cannot bring themselves to mention actual Reddit alternatives like Lemmy or kbin, and end this write-up of Reddit’s folly with basically “uh so people might go back to tumblr, I dunno, maybe someone should like, give someone startup money for a like new Reddit and we can live the cycle of the good ol days again”. Yeah don’t worry guys, you’ll get us next time.
What a wet fart.
conde naste was reddit and wired’s parent company and I believe still a major shareholder so probably why
FTA:
(Disclosure: WIRED is a publication of Conde Nast, whose parent company, Advance Publications, has an ownership stake in Reddit.)
cast yourself into the kiln, and ignite the age of fire once again
They mentioned “federated alternatives”
Reddit won’t really die. It will filter out users that (I believe) are providing value to community. Reddit will keep corporate marketers, bots and fake discussion.
How are none of these news organizations reporting that is not about the API becoming a payed service, but rather about the amount of money they are charging for it… It’s quite infuriating.
The rich control the narrative.
The faster reddit dies the better for the internet as a whole.
I think it’s sad. There is so much good information stored in the side bars, like for example /r/buildapc or /r/fitness, that I hope gets salvaged by the fediverse.
Plus our spaces here need indexing so we can find answers to obscure questions again.
I’ll likely to exist for a while. Myspace still does. So plenty of time to migrate over a lot of that useful information.
Indexing is happening already, so just a matter of time.
at this point, even if reddit backpedals on their decision it will be just for damage control not because they care about the community.
If reddit backpedals, even just for damage control, it will cement just how much power the users and mods have over that site. As it should.
I think that’s precisely why spez is going to do everything he can not to backpedal.
