I read The Verge’s latest interview with Steve Huffman here and it seems as though the Reddit blackout is having little to no effect. It also seems as though the communities at large don’t really care and will probably just use the official app or don’t really know there are 3rd party ones. So it seems this will pass and be mostly forgotten about.
What are your thoughts?
I mean, if that’s how they treat the mods, who would want to mod for reddit? It is unpaid work, the only reasons they are doing it would either be to feel empowered or to foster a community. What spez did is to tell mods they are powerless and to show them the community doesn’t matter. Without good mods, people won’t be sticking around.
I’d guess there’s impact if they’re forcing subs to reopen via threats and generally acting like tyrants with the self control of a toddler.
Considering the volume of bots spreading venom about it, I have to say it’s doing something
This will end exactly the same way the Twitter -> Mastodon thing ended.
Reddit will continue. A slightly worse Reddit, with more bots, more low-effort content, and less quality OC.
Moderation will degrade slightly as the admins replace protesting moderators with more obedient ones, and/or communities lose interest and use the new “voting” (lol) systems to pick admins which will give them the reliable dopamine hits.
A small percentage of Redditors, especially the power users, will move on. A small percentage in Reddit terms is a tidal wave for any other platform. Some percentage of that number of Redditors leaving will come here.
Lemmy & Kbin will experience growing pains. Issues caused by scaling up infrastructure, instance to instance friction, etc. These will get resolved with time. When things settle, we will have a fraction of reddit’s userbase, but neither will we need more. We’ll have enough to have stable, engaging communities which will slowly grow.
In other words, a mirror reflection of the Mastodon story.
Twitter relies on celebrities, athletes, and journalists. All of them want to be where the eyeballs are so until Mastodon grows more, they’ll stay on Twitter.
Lemmy just needs to continue to grow and improve. Maybe it never gets as big as reddit but the content has the potential to be just as good.
It reminds me of old reddit when it was primarily tech-heavy content filled with passionate developers constantly building on top of the platform. I doubt Lemmy or kbin ever see a fraction of reddit’s traffic but that’s ok with me as the content is better suited to me and the conversation taking place is just as valuable
In the three or so days I’ve been using it it’s expanded noticeably, and I’d say it’s on the verge of being big enough already. Once it rounds that tipping point it has a decent chance of becoming sustainable on its own.
Don’t forget Reddit making a few more incredibly dumb and tone-deaf moves to give the ‘threadiverse’ a few more influxes of users while the bugs & issues with Lemmy and Kbin are worked out! :)
And Reddit will probably do something else before long to drive even more people away and hopefully the Fediverse will be better prepared and ready for the influx with a better user experience.
They sure are trying really hard to put a stop to the blackout they say is having no effect.
It may be true that the disturbance has minimal effect on overall site traffic and advertising revenue, but it’s caught the attention of the media which could have much larger effects.
But the blackout isn’t really what’s catching most of the attention anymore, it’s the mishandling of the situation that’s ending up in the news most of the time now. Spez is bringing most of this on himself.Unfortunately, articles I’ve seen about this on the front pages of major, classic, news outlets primarily report spez’s position and don’t mention any of the nonsense stuff that’s gone on.
If there is no effect, then why is he losing his ever loving mind over it? Why are they going to potentially change rules that have stayed the same since Reddit’s inception as a result?
Zero impact on Reddit.
Reddit has 52 million daily active users and approximately 430 million users who use it once a month. In comparison, Lemmy has a mere 143k users and kbin has about 33k users. Reddit hasn’t noticed that anyone left, and it never will.
Reddit will consolidate its platform and fully implement its ad business. 99.9% of users will stick around because they don’t care that much about 3rd party apps. Reddit will then have a big revenue stream from ads, allowing it to achieve profitability and do an IPO, which will bring in another boatload of money. At that point Reddit has plenty of cash to invest in improving its in-house app, mod tools, spam filters, etc.
Yep, this is the most realistic take. They did give lemmy/kbin a boost that will be home to a bunch of users, but it’s not winner take all. Both will now exist. People won’t leave reddit until they are personally affected. Most people didn’t care about 3rd party apps, and once the blackout is over, regular users won’t care unless reddit attacks them directly.
Of course he is going to say there is none. With the latest news how they are undeleting peoples comments and are going to replace mods; it is absolutely affecting the bottom line
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I think Huffman knows 2 things:
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The redditors complaining right now are from the older community, alot of them are probably mods and a lot of them use 3rd party apps.
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These people are also a tiny minority of reddit users, and plenty are addicted to reddit.
He knows that mods can be replaced, if they don’t just come back groveling, looking for their next fix. Reddit will suffer in the shortterm, but there are simply too many normie users who will continue using reddit and bringing in revenue for it to really matter.
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I certainly don’t think Reddit is going to die out from this; its far too big. But I do think that Spez has managed to irrevocably change the culture of the site forever (particularly by forcing out the long time users). I personally have no intention of going back despite having been active on the site almost daily since 2010
I’m gone, that’s for sure. And it’s so much better. My blood pressure is lower.
I’ve decided to devote the time I spent there on learning programming. Much more useful. And roam around here some still of course.
Personally I don’t care if the protest is having an effect or not because it’s been already said that it will not change reddit’s policies. Reddit is over for me, I’m just waiting for the API changes so that i can’t use my mobile client of choice anymore. In contrast, I’m finding interesting and vibrant discussions and comments on here, which is looking like the early Reddit days, and I’m very glad for this.
That’s probably what will happen, but it’s also likely this is the first of a long series of fuck-ups (well, not the first technically, bit the first of these proportions) that will slowly kill the site.
Either way, I don’t care that much. I discovered the fediverse and as long as there’s content here I’m happy with it. Of course reddit will still be a good source of information, just not a place to spend time in. I mean, if I need specific info on a subject reddit is still the place to look at, but I won’t scroll it or post in it anymore.
A different internet is possible, but all we can do is use the alternatives we already have
Since you touched on a subject I’ve been torn on, so you will continue using reddit as a source to look up information - what if you have a follow-up question or anything that would be easier to continue discussion on reddit, in order to solve problems? Or will you strictly use reddit to look up information across threads, read comments, and that’s the most they’ll get?
Eventually, I hope that the fediverse/kbin will have so much more content that I can switch to that instead
There are just sooooo many niche questions and answers that I can find on reddit, and not just 1 person’s opinion, but like 10. Literally anything from questions about tinting your cars windows, to birthday ideas for an engineer who loves cars, to christmas ideas for people who have everything already, to how to get yubikey working with oneplus8t, to real study tips for certifications, to that very very specific issue that’s crashing your PC but can’t figure it out. I want to continue finding information given from people who are genuinely interested in sharing and teaching, not making profits
That’s my only gripe bc google sucks ass. Curious to see how you’re handling it
I… don’t know. As of now, I’m actively fighting the impulse to write anything on Reddit, but I stopped scrolling through it completely and I’m only opening it when I need some info (I have “site:reddit.com” pinned in my phone’s clipboard for Google searches, that’s how much I rely on reddit for finding answers).
I think my relationship with Reddit will be similar to the one I have with the pharmacy near my hours: they’re assholes that treat their clients like garbage and try to screw them in every possible way and I avoid them as much as possible, but it’s a 5 minutes walk from my house, opposed to 30 minutes for every pharmacy owned by nice people (5/10 if you’re willing to drive and then look for parking for 20 more minutes), and I will go buy something from them from time to time because I’d rather not shit my pants on my way to the pharmacy if I ate something weird.
For everything else I hope Lemmy will be enough.
I don’t really care. I’m here now, deleted my 12 year old account in the process. People thinking Reddit will die are delusional. The Reddit as us old people know it has died years ago, it just became unbearable now.
Agreed, couldn’t care less about Reddit, the protest was a damp squib in most respects, Spez knew it would be business as usual Wednesday so just waited until it all blew over. Some are carrying on, they say mods may be forced out, if people had any sense they’d walk away from the place. We were slowly but surely being turned into product.
