‘Front page of the internet’: how social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit::A mass user protest six months ago over technical tweaks had big downstream effects, and now the ‘front page of the internet’ is changed for ever
ironically, reddit banned me, which stopped me from using it pretty much entirely, which coincided with the “happening” if anyone is curious it was “violence” even though specific targeted satirical threats seem to be perfectly acceptable, generic statements of violence are not things that reddit seems to put thought into. Anyway little fun fact though, they don’t delete your acc, and they dont stop you from using it, they just stop your posts/comments from showing up, to mine engagement i suppose.
for anybody looking for a bit of laugh, look at the ban appeal forum, i promise you there is a couple of days worth of amusement on it. (unless they changed it)
for me personally, the sheer unusability of reddit is why i dont use it. On desktop it leaks ram so bad it’s worse than a java MC server, on mobile it’s literally unusable, i just can’t use it, that’s how bad it is. It’s bad enough to the point im starting to think that reddit is a programming based money laundering front, with some of the functionality that exists in it. I’ve pasted text into reddit before only for it to completely disintegrate. It’s actually laughable how badly it’s put together.
Though i dont think i’ll miss reddit at all, these federated communities are much more my speed anyway.
if anyone is curious it was “violence” even though specific targeted satirical threats seem to be perfectly acceptable
I was banned for “violence” as well. Specifically referring to child molesters. I saw people saying the same type of shit about other types of people (capitalists, bad drivers, etc.) and nothing happened to those posts but make 1 comment suggesting an actual child molester deserves to suffer and you’re not welcome there. Makes you wonder why the admins are so concerned about protecting them… Anyway fuck that website.
Completely quit Reddit. It’s a shame that the article fails to mention the fediverse as a new rising alternative in response to enshittification.
2024 will have mentions of ActivityPub and Fediverse.
Removed by mod
Just block Hexbear and Lemmygrad. The rest is only has a minor left pull, and there are even conservative communities popping up.
19.0 allows users to block instances. I mostly just block Yiffit, but you do you.
Removed by mod
im only on reddit for 1 single subreddit that is a very small community
Reddit is just like Digg to me now.
I left Reddit to call their bluff. I stay away from Reddit because I want to help grow the fediverse. It’s already better than when I joined. And I believe, perhaps naively, that it will continue to get better. I’d rather be the part of the beginning of something great than lingure around as a great thing rots.
I requested my data (because your regular comments page only goes up to 1k comments) and replaced all my data with something semi-negative (generated by ChatGPT, because I’m lazy like that).
I really should just delete my account, but I somewhat still like the programming subreddit - about the last bastion that hasn’t completely gone to shit over the years.
I miss /SuspensionPorn
Be the change you want to suspend.
I deleted all my posts and stopped using the place almost entirely. I go back, like, once a month because I moderate a niche subreddit that I haven’t been able to find a home for on Lemmy.
I personally had no problem with them charging for API access, the rate was my bigger issue. I suspect they were basing it off of the money and hype behind the large language models that were previously training using their data for free rather than the relatively few 3rd party app users. I don’t get how there weren’t more people using them considering how bad the official Android app is, but there’s no way it was substantially impacting their bottom line.
Charging comparable rates or even 2-3x what they would get from users of the official app seeing ads also wouldn’t be an issue to me, paying to support software is generally good as it aligns user and developer interests. But with 20x higher rates than they’d get from the user using the official app that couldn’t genuinely be the case.
They have wanted to kill third party apps for a long time. Reddit’s issue is that it badly wants to market “through the API” by charging for bespoke viral marketing campaigns. Simple stuff like just giving shill accounts free gold and elevated thread positions and stuff. Or on the upper end, engineering whole features like the Thanos Snap thing. That’s why they spend so much time doing the cheesy little April fools games - these are tech demonstrators for their ad engineering team. The problem is that nobody is paying for this kind of marketing without telemetry to show that it’s working, and third party apps really threw a wrench into that equation (in addition to the more traditional ad model).
That’s a big part of where they are getting their ridiculous valuation from - their ad impression value is probably super low because their users are pseudonymous, and because the API breaks ad tracking. I suspect their equation is simply “this would be our revenue if we got Facebook rates for ad impressions.”
Reddit had a good run for over a decade, but as always with the internet, now a better thing will take its place.
As always with the internet… a better thing takes it’s place?
Friend. That isn’t usually the standard.
I still mourn Portal of Evil. It was my reddit before reddit.
I’ve cut down on my Reddit use by a lot since the protests. I only occasionally browse the site, and I don’t comment on any subreddits save one niche one that hasn’t moved over to any other site.
Not one mention of where said moderators who left went to…
A lot of which were good mods too. I’ve noticed a lot more racism and otherwise right wing posting being left alone/unmoderated since the protest, in the subs I used to browse actively - nowadays I just check in with them every now and then without an account and the intentional or not lack of moderation is making me want to stop doing even that.
Probably depends on your subs. Most of mine have went far, far left and have become a tiresome dog pile of virtue signaling from behind keyboards and screens.
And I’m a leftist. There seems to be a huge difference these days in being a leftist and being a “this is now my only personality trait” leftist through which all views must be fundamentally filtered. Even non-political/non-social. It has made some subs unreadable for me, specifically my state and city subs.
Edit: I guess where I am going with it is that the extremes are becoming more extreme and seeking out new frontiers now that moderation is light.
I started an entire instance - https://lemdro.id - to provide a home to Reddit subreddits such as r/Android and r/Google Pixel (and other technical stuff)
“We respect when you and your communities take action to highlight the things you need, including, at times, going private,” he said.
They respect it so much they forcibly remove mods to make them public again. That’s so respectful.
“We will teach them our respectful ways. By force.”
Come on now, give him some credit. He waited whole few days before completely going back on his words.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In June, thousands of Reddit communities plunged into darkness – making their pages inaccessible to the public in a mass protest of corporate policy changes.
With rumors of an imminent IPO swirling, the company is under pressure to make money – and CEO Huffman has acknowledged as much, stating at the time of the change: “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”
Stevie Chancellor, an assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Minnesota who has studied Reddit for years, echoed these sentiments.
“It bothers me that social media companies are increasingly restricting our abilities as researchers who care deeply about these sites and who believe they can provide many benefits for people,” Chancellor said.
Reddit’s corporate overlords were ultimately unmoved by the massive blackout, and most of the thousands of dark subreddits went back to normal after a few weeks.
Users who have long been dedicated to the site, some of whom have spent countless unpaid hours working to make it better, are exhausted and resentful – and many have simply left.
The original article contains 1,685 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 88%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
