Hey! This post is not specifically related to the lemmy.world instance. From now on, posts such as these will be removed, in order for the community to stay on topic. However, as this is a highly upvoted post, I’ll just lock it for now.
The world is ready to fully transition away from that cancerous company.
It started out great at the times of Aaron Swartz, but just as with people, cancer sometimes hits. Anyway, it influenced projects like lemmy for which I’m thankful.
Yes I’m aware of the history. The only way to kill cancer is excise it. Lemmy realistically can’t take a full migration from Reddit but that needs to change. I too am super grateful. Part of me wonders if this platform could end the same way but given it’s decentralised nature, I highly doubt it. Reddit was open source once. I really want this to succeed. Seize the means of communication.
Open source and decentralized are two different things, as long as it’s just a bunch of independent server instances which are small enough each to handle the traffic load you can’t really buy that out.
The question is if it’ll take off, more or less.
The question is if it’ll take off, more or less.
It already has.
we’re here aren’t we (grin). Looking forward to seeing how this plays out for sure.
One thing that worries me is Lemmy’s dedication to non-advertisement funding. Lemmy will never be able to handle a ton of people without money for server space and bandwidth. I hate ads as much as anyone, but there are ways to do it that aren’t intrusive or toxic or damage your integrity.
There are ways to do advertising that works and is not annoying (or at least less annoying). Context advertising are ads that are directly related to the subject matter of interest. For example, ads from companies that are in the business of meeting the needs of the boatbuilding community would be welcome or at least tolerated in a boatbuilding community. Those same ads shown to a programming community would be less welcome, even if there happens to be significant shared membership.
For example, the paper magazine “Small Craft Advisor” recently transitioned to online only via Substack. It didn’t take long for subscribers to actually complain about the loss of advertising and SCA had to respond with self-promotion articles from former advertisers.
Context advertising requires no user profiling, no user tracking, and no data collection. “Oh, you sell epoxy (or sails or plans)? Well here is a community (as distinct from a user profile) that is likely looking for what you sell and probably already discussing products in your line of business.”
There is a site I am familiar with that was determined to not have intrusive ads and actually created a side business of creating ads for its advertisers that it would find acceptable on the site, which consisted of a still image of given dimensions, and a link.
When you say no data collection, you mean no personalized data collection, right? Obviously they would want to know how many times the ad was clicked.
That sounds like the kind of thing I envision.
Yes, no personalized data collection. Both sides of the ad transaction would need to track something if the placement had some kind of impressions or click-through payment system. It’s been a while since I’ve managed a website, but I think most of that can be handled with pretty basic logging that has existed since before micro-targeted advertising was even conceived.
For a simple placement contract like we have with what few newspapers remain, the ad supplier could assess the value of the placement for themselves using standard referrer logs. Not paying its way? Don’t renew the placement.
As more and more people host their own federated instances it won’t be as big of a problem as it was for web 2.0 legacy sites like reddit. The Fediverse really is the future.
The privacy movement can’t sell out to private entities or all bets are off again, I think no advertisements is wholly nessasary. I think taking out Reddit is much more achievable than many people think. Yes it will take some money and resources.
Yes, but where is that money going to come from?
The money is coming from the community, which is why progress is slow. People don’t have much money. It doesn’t mean we should sell the soul of the project for a quick buck. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Rome wasn’t built for free either, we need some sort of financial backup. Even if it isn’t advertising something needs to be in place.
yes, its origins were great, it’s finale is not so great. I suspect if Aaron were alive he’d be livid. I also think reddit’s demise might be the intended outcome, like BCG is at the helm or somesuch.
Unfortunately they aren’t since the ones who cared couldn’t be bothered for more than two days.
The death of Reddit will be a slow bleeding process. Expect waves. Not floods.
I think it will be more like the tide moving out slowly … no one will really notice and the CEO and owners will keep telling everyone everything will be fine even as their ship sits beached on a sandbar and the water will never return.
Here’s a thread where subreddit mods are announcing their subs going indefinitely dark: https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinite_blackout_next_steps_polling_your/
Say whatever you want about spez, he is the best thing that ever happened to Lemmy.
Funny how Reddit’s peak happened to be during the time their two “co-founders” had nothing to do with the site itself.
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!
Is anyone surprised? The “blackout” seems to have been a total flop most subs don’t give a shit.
The blackout helped me to leave.
It’s difficult to rewire a dopamine pathway you’ve been traveling for 14 years.
Knowing that other people care enough to abstain for two days is useful in that process.
I never expected Reddit to change their policy. I have been surprised at how petulant, dishonest and unprofessional they’ve been. I would have expected a bland corporate response.
Anyway, onward and upward.
onward, and onto the next dopamine pathway.
Same. Not sure I would have ever heard of Lemmy otherwise.
100% same.
I wouldn’t say it was a flop. A massive number of subs and users are participating at the moment (some forced due to the blackouts). But I do agree that reddit executives definitely don’t give a shit, and will eventually just start booting mods to bring the subs back if they don’t fall in line.
Not surprised, still disappointed. Will discuss with other mods the idea of nuking our community as a “fuck you” to Reddit.
Do it. For the lulz. For great justice. Move every zig.
I think it’s more important to bring the subs over here to convince people to migrate
It was never going to do more than get people talking, the number of subreddits isn’t as important as what the long term impact to users and quality will be. They have signaled their interests are not user centric, it wont be the last outrage I’m sure but they’ll keep getting away with it if there isn’t a clear alternative and people keep going back.
That’s true. The changes don’t really effect me in any immediate way, but the blackout gave me a reason to uninstall Reddit for a few days and try Lemmy.
Thanks Satan.
My Google searches are in SHAMBLES rn
Blocking mobile web access and ending old reddit is going to bring more people here over time.
7750/8300 subreddits are blacked out. Plus the server issues caused by the blackout yesterday. I’d be interested to see if an indefinite strike could be powerful enough to reverse this plan
Wow, that’s way higher than I expected. I hope just as many people transfer over to nee platforms so we can get those communities restarted.
Reddit has MANY more than 8300 subreddits. That 8300 is the number of subreddits who SAID they would shutdown.
How did the blackout cause an error?
I expected they would see less utilization, so the servers would be coasting compared to a regular day
Yeah if they were serious, they’d go dark for good
What absolutely bends my mind is there’s still confused people wandering into the blackout threads with absolutely no clue what’s going on. How is this info not reaching these people?
deleted by creator
Do you have any numbers?
8479/8838 subreddits are private as of this comment.
The number on the page is a bit misleading. If you comb through the website’s code on GitHub, you’ll see that the 8,838 is actually the number of subreddits that agreed to participate in the blackout.
Calling it a flop isn’t accurate either, though.
Sure, most subreddits don’t care, but the largest and most active subreddits are overwhelmingly in support of the blackout, but they are also much more affected by Reddit’s changes than smaller subreddits.
EDIT: Some words for clarity.
Reddit has more than 100k active subreddits lol. Also, this number doesn’t mean much because community sizes vary a LOT
I find it funny that a 3rd party app can be “profitable” but reddit cant be profitable without alienating a sizeable chunk of their userbase.
Reddit has increasingly become a cesspit of racism and bigotry anyways, and I find Im going there less and less.
I need to get used to how lemmy works and find my 3d printing people here.
Heres a community for you https://lemmy.world/c/3dprinting
and here’s a sh.itjust.works like to the same subreddit so you don’t have to jump through hoops to subscribe to it.
https://sh.itjust.works/c/3dprinting@lemmy.worldTheres a way to link “instance agnostic” but im unsure
I mean, there kind of is. just like in reddit you could just type/r/subreddit, here you can type/c/community, and if you want it to link to a community on another instance its the obvious/c/communitywhich is now agnostic no matter which instance you find the post from.edit: nvm, I thought that was how that worked, and looking at the lemmy issue tracker I thought that’s what was suggested, but upon trying it, it doesn’t seem to auto link like reddit does at all. so 🤷
but reddit cant be profitable without alienating a sizeable chunk of their userbase
Do those API prices make Reddit profitable? I highly doubt it.
I’d never repeat their claims as if they were true. It’s just bullshit reasoning. Mismanagement.
It’s not that you’re charging for API access; it’s that you’re charging US pharmaceutical industry pricing levels ($12,000 for something that should realistically be $200) and then only giving devs such a short time to implement changes. This was designed to kill 3PApps outright and everyone can see it. What an ass.
That part. No one is saying don’t charge but literally no one can afford to fork over that kind of money. Christian crunched the number to run Apollo for a year and it came out to approximately $20M. Twenty million freaking dollars. How is this reasonable?
I’m so tired of unchecked greed. It ruins everything. US Pharma is a great comparison.
Hey Lemmy gang. Just signed up after seeing this.
Cool beans. Thanks spez, for introducing me to lemmy.
Been for for 10 minutes. Really like it so far. Really gives me the vibe of the early 2000s internet (in a good way)
This right here.
What I don’t get is who they’re posturing for now.
They showed the developers that the game was fixed and there was no plan to negotiate in good faith.
They’ve shown the userbase they aren’t responsive to strongly held concerns.
They’ve shown a potential IPO audience that they’re capable of burning down the platform in record time and not even waiting until after they cashed out to do so.
They’ve shown everyone they don’t even have the most basic understanding of corporate bullshit speak. It’s not hard to put together “We hear your concerns and will assemble a committee of top minds who will proceed to ignore these concerns.”
I guess they just want to say they didn’t back down. That and $12.50 gets you a cup of coffee.
That and $12.50 gets you a cup of coffee.
I kinda wanna taste that coffee. And then try to never buy a $12.50 coffee again.
Well Steve, it’s not profitable for me to be a moderator for free either. Feel free to let me know how profitable you think you’ll be after hiring enough staff to replace all the mods that’ll be leaving.
Yeap. I’m also not working for free anymore.
They’re too cheap. I’m sure they’ll just replace you guys with less effective and active mods while the site just slowly smolders into a shadow of its former self.
Besides being too cheap, it’s honestly not even practical. There are about 21,000 active mods on any given day. Replacing even half of that number would increase their current staffing of ~700 by 15 fold which doesn’t seem likely given they just laid off 90 of them. That doesn’t even touch on the fact that those moderators would know nothing about the subs they’re now supposed to be taking care of.
Nah, you’re totally right, this is the beginning of the end. The blackout might not do anything short term but they’re certainly going to shed enough mods that quality will slip. Once that happens people will be looking for alternatives and Reddit will end up on the scrap heap of “used to be great” like so many that came before.
I stopped modding seriously long ago the moment I realized the community was getting too big and that the it is basically unpaid labour.
This means nothing to that lost CEO I started my sub over here but didn’t come closer to the numbers on Reddit. I really don’t know what to do now
You’ll have to wait. Reddit took a long time to get to where it is now. Lemmy can get there too, but it won’t be overnight.
Yea. I’m getting some good engagement right now in my community but. Yea we gotta wait!
What’s your community, illegallysmoldogs? I have two criminals myself. Subbed.
Thanks 😁
I subbed, too. Too cute! My first sub on Lemmy, lol.
Thanks. I open my sub tomorrow on reddit. but I think its way cooler over here. Another mod over there is going to open it plus its automated now so I will hardly interace with it. but yea I’m loving lemmy and might close the reddit sub don’t know still thinking about everything
Thanks
That fuck talks about the data as if he was responsible in creating any of it. It’s the users and users should seriously leave reddit and delete their data en masse.
Exactly what I did. I’ll find other sources as they pop up. Too much time wasted filtering the bickering away from the few reliables
He used to mod jailbait maybe he made some of that content
Probably still does and worse on a hard drive somewhere
The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.
Yeah okay
Kill other apps before yours is on par (will it ever happen) isn’t improving the product.
Yes, this made me to seriously work on switching to Lemmy.
This kind of protest is meaningless, going back online after 48 hours? It’s just a way for communities to feel good about themselves. The best way to protest is to delete the account / subreddit going offline indefinitely (although I doubt the effectiveness of this)
Agreed, but it’s 48 hours later, and it seems like more and more subreddits have decided to continue protesting indefinitely, which I’m really happy to see. I too have no clue how effective it’ll be, but it’s showing a much clearer message.
I think a blackout has a much higher impact than deleting accounts.
There are so many users nobody notices when a few disappear. But when a subreddit goes dark it’s most certainly noticeable.
It’s evident by now Reddit management doesn’t care. Two days raise awareness amongst users. Maybe the two days won’t be the last for many subreddits or people. And I’m sure more people became more aware, or thought more about the situation and alternatives than without a two day blackout.
The blackout is a way to engage in a way that makes things inconvenient for people not informed about the issue so that awareness is generated. Like picketting the mayor’s office or blocking a public intersection.
Yeah, at this point. All these big tech companies are succumbing to their greed.
Good that FOSS are being made to be the shelter for this wasteland that is big tech.
I really can’t wait to see what’s the fallout of Reddit going dark. Does the community really wield the power? Or does Reddit have another ace up its sleeve?
The real fallout will be seeing what the numbers look like after July 1st. When all the third party users are given the unavoidable choice to switch to the official app or not. If engagement goes down then and stay lower, it’s ogre for Reddit.
I’m going to try to ween myself off reddit. I added the Lemmy page to my Home Screen where Apollo used to be and deleted the reddit app. (Don’t feel like sideloading the Lemmy app). I’ll probably still be browsing with Apollo until I can’t any more. 🤷🏻♂️
Edit to add: the death of reddit will be slow. They’re going to stick to their guns, the people who actually make reddit good will move leaving only bots, scammers, and idiots. The idiots will realize they’re surrounded by idiots, while not realizing they’re idiots, and they won’t like that so they’ll try to move here. Depending on how easy it is to move to Lemmy by the time that happens will dictate how many idiots move here. I feel like the current level of difficulty sets a high enough bar to keep the idiots out… for now.
Yeah it’s gonna be quite an interesting event. Most of reddit’s newer userbase doesn’t seem to care, but then again the mods of major subreddits do.
Mods can be replaced. Remember r/TheDonald? Not that I have -any- sympathy at all for those trogs, but the admin dealt with them by deleting all the mods and appointing new ones that would toe the line. There’s nothing to stop them from using that playbook again. A lot of people will leave, but a lot of people will shrug and go back to posting cat pictures.
Mods can be replaced. I saw a post today – mods are being replaced.
Yeah, called it. But I was hardly alone in calling it.
“Money rules everything around me” -The CEO of Reddit
Too bad higher prices doesn’t necessarily mean more money.
Except according to him his website isnt even making any… after like 20 years online.
M.R.E.A.M. get the money!
