What happen next is we move on to this better platform
Absolutely, even without all the reddit drama a decentralised version clearly seems to be the smartest way to go. Reddit is it's community and I think the ceo lost sight of that.
This is not the end of reddit. It is just a hiccup for them as they go public. But the protests was a good opportunity for folks to learn about alternatives. I certainly didn't know alternatives existed. I'm glad to have found fediverse. I fully support the idea and want to see it grow.
It may not “end” Reddit but I do think this will end Reddit as we know it. It will just be a shell of itself just like Facebook is no longer a place for college friends to connect and share photos.
It's ironic how I heard from a Facebook employee that the staff members of Facebook have their own internal Facebook network, and it functions a lot more closely like how Facebook was originally supposed to be designed—versus the public model's cesspool of marketing, ads, privacy violations, and manipulation that is the only one we now all know.
This is what I'm expecting. A year from now someone will mention "reddit" to me and I'll be like "that's still around?" and I'll check it out and it's just turned into TikTok challenges.
I'm making my transition a somewhat gradual one. I'll still be on Reddit, in the more esoteric subs, though I feel dirty every time I go there. As all the cool kids migrate over, I'll spend less time there and more time here.
During the last site-wide protest in 2015 I set up a VOAT account with all the similar subreddits that I had at the time. When people first started suggesting abandoning ship, I thought "Well, at least I still have Voat". Checks Voat. Turned into a alt-rght haven and then shut down in 2020. Dho!
Many subs are already opening up again sadly.
It still looks pretty bad (in a good way): https://reddark.untone.uk/
Almost 7,000 subs private, including many of the biggest ones. This is by no means letting up.
It will be interesting to see where things stand in a few days and whether it’s causing ongoing pain to Reddit. I doubt they will comment until and if there’s a risk of ongoing, widespread blackouts.
True but I see the number of closed subreddits getting lower each time I look at that page.
I think a lot of them are either going to be support subs (like stopdrinking), or they will be subs asking their users what they should do.
The modcoord subreddit is full of support for continued protest
Yep, we opened up, polled the users, got told to keep it closed, and down went the shutters.
The subs going dark should have only been half of the protest. Users should have also stayed away from the site but I don't think that was really coordinated.
The number of new posts didn't drop much, the comments dropped a bit more but only by like 20%, which isn't a lot given the amount of subs that went dark. Reddit doesn't care about subs, they care about users and it seems engagement was still pretty high.
The next protest should be to all users to stop using the site. Drop the users and they'll start to listen.
Before asking people to leave, subs creator should create similar communities on Lemmy
The real sub closings and mass exodus from Reddit will most likely begin after the end of the month, when significant and popular 3rd party apps like Sync and Apollo will be shut down.
I deleted RIF on Monday and went to Reddit today via mobile and it was such a pain in the ass as soon as I shut it off I instinctively hit the Jerboa icon (I intentionally put it where RIF was on my homescreen).
Also the Jerboa app is getting better almost daily.
I remember back at Digg and MySpace. Same vibe.
"This will blow over."
It always blows over until it doesn't. Only take once.
I think back to this article quite a bit, lately. The basic idea is that social media sites seem, by the numbers, to be doing fine, and then they abruptly collapse. The trick is that when the people who create high engagement - people who make posts that make people super happy or angry or whatever, as long as they are feeling something and therefor getting engaged - when those people start to post less because they're spending some of their energy on some other new site, the old one gets kinda hollowed out. It's not obvious it's dying until it's dead.
I don't know if reddit is done for, but I can say that lemmy and mastodon are feeling a lot more fleshed out, lately, compared to past waves of people coming from twitter. It feels like turning a corner, or crossing a critical mass threshold; it's getting easier to stay engaged and not feel the need to check the old giant sites.
It’s funny how these social companies get huge and think they are irreplaceable… when all of them started as a replacement for something else.
Once you think you’re too big to fail? That’s when ya trip.
Add a month to the blackout each time Spez refers to Reddit's employees as "Snoos"
I know it’s the name of the little alien, and it’s cute and all, but I’ll never be able to read that name and not think of bone-crushing Amazonian snoo-snoo from Futurama.
Honestly, there won’t be a mass exodus and Reddit will live on. I’m sure a bunch of users will flock to other platforms but in the long run Reddit only care about people that are already using their new UI and their new app. And those users won’t be leaving.
Regardless whether Reddit survives or not I am glad I found this space and excited for the future of Lemmy/Fediverse.
The 90-9-1 rule of internet communities applies though. If you're unfamiliar:
90% of people lurk, 9% interact, and 1% create content. Reddit has an additional 0.1% snuck in there of people who moderate.
If you're in that smaller echelon of users who interact or submit/create content, you're more than likely a user who these api changes affect. So the 90% doesn't really matter in the long run if you have no content, and the content that does come in is poorly moderated or not modded at all.
This kills the reddit.
I'm almost always a lurker but I have abandoned Reddit on principal and come here. I've replaced the infinity app on my homescreen with Beehaw and It gives me my reddit fix. I'm more likely to comment here too, since It doesn't feel pointless due to the size of most subreddits.
Yeah, I definitely agree with that rule.
I have several friends that work at Reddit and from what I gather they ran all the numbers and determined that most mods use old.reddit and not 3P apps. So Reddit did their calculations and they have determined they will make more money in the long run by steering people to their new app. They know Reddit drama always seems bigger than it is and will blow over in a month. They know they will lose some users but they think the majority will stay, including mods and content creators.
I definitely understand why they made all these decisions from a business perspective but holy shit was this poorly handled by Spez. I think they could've given developers a longer shutdown period and they could've handled PR way better + the whole Christian (Apollo) debacle also didn't help.
Yeah, I think reddit is going to die (if only due to the process of enshittification and the consequences of going public) but the idea of a mass exodus is a bit of a dream. Anyone who has had a conversation going on in one channel, and then have a mod tell them to move it to a more appropriate channel should know this. The conversation doesn't move, it just stops 9/10 times.
But we shouldn't be preoccupied with reddit as a community. Give what you can to Lemmy and enjoy it for what it is, not wishing it to be reddit.
I don't want to nitpick, but I used the default reddit app and have switched Lemmy based on principal. I don't think most or even many people are like me, but there are a few of us out there that just don't like supporting companies that clearly don't have users interests in mind, and this has been the wakeup call needed to get us off the platform.
Huffman says the blackout hasn’t had “significant revenue impact”
So two-day revenue change is his preferred metric? If I were a Reddit investor, I wouldn't want this guy as a CEO...
Two days ago they were, as of his words "not profiting", and suddenly a blackout doesn't affect them? What a clown.
Man, it's sad to see comments about how this isn't the end of Reddit. I want one of two things: Either to see Reddit straight up die because the communities stayed down, or for them to be forced to relax their API fees. For me personally, Reddit is straight up dead if I cant use old.reddit or Reddit via Apollo / Relay Pro. I need these third party apps. The Reddit app is HORRIBLE in every way, from the layout to the ads.
Reddit isn't special- it's just where everyone is at atm. And why are they at reddit to begin with? It's because of what it was - community focused, and community driven. Now it's profit driven, and the community is pissed.
If you're mad now, just wait till they are publicly traded, and are legally obligated to milk every last dime from their user base to satisfy investors.
I'm reserving all my opinions until after the 30th when all the 3rd party clients die. A lot of people dont even know their client is about to reach end of life because they dont check reddit every day or follow the news close enough.
Usage statistics saw a 15-25% hit in traffic during the protest. It's still around 8% lower than it was pre protest.
My personal opinion though is that reddit doesnt have to die. It just has to lose it's status as the front page of the internet. That happens when there is an alternative to reddit that has a critical mass of users to be a rival. I think we are close to that right now with lemmy.
I may be missing something, but the article completely loses the thread when it starts grousing over "why won't the 3Ps pay up? " Because even if they pay, NSFW content is still not available for users. Reddit is attempting to force third party devs to charge for an inferior product, which is obviously untenable for all parties.
I agree, the Verge’s coverage has been much better on this subject. It isn’t about not paying for use, it’s about a reasonable price that isn’t so exorbitant to essentially bankrupt them and make them go away. Christian has addressed this point several times already.
Regardless of whether or not anything serious happens to Reddit, it’s just not the same for me anymore and I won’t be going back. I can see the vibe and audience further shifting ala Twitter. It’s too big to just fail, Digg, MySpace and other older sites still exist, they’re just shadows of themselves now.
I think the real test will be when these API rules go into effect at the end of the month. Will all these people who showed solidarity the last two days leave the site then, or will they just quietly download the official app and continue on?
Unfortunately Reddit is almost too big at this point to fail. The fact that official communities exist over there is enough to keep them afloat. But Reddit as we all knew it is dead. I was always worried about Reddit going public effecting it’s quality, and the staff have only confirmed my fears. Luckily Reddit offers nothing anyone else can do, and jumping ship to a competitor had never been easier.
Long live the Fediverse.
I posted this on a Reddit thread this morning about the effectiveness of the blackouts and what happens next:
Some people have just shut down and will never look back. Some just don't care and need their Reddit fix. A LOT of comments on these types of threads are Reddit bots/employees trying to run a propaganda campaign to stop the shutdown. Most of the users though (IMO), are probably like me and opened up a Lemmy, Mastodon and Kbin account and are using all of them. Lemmy and Mastodon will continue to grow (2x-3x in the past week) and users will continue to migrate over and spend more time there than here until Reddit feels some pain. Reddit will eventually make some grand gesture like replace the CEO or "compromise" on API pricing, but it will be too late and the glory days of Reddit will officially be over.
The issue is that the momentum to go to other platforms has started. Reddit had their chance to stop it and stay the dominant platform, but the CEO is inexperienced and didn't know how to handle it. Until a few weeks ago Reddit had no real competition, but Spez fucked up big time and now the blood is in the water. The Fediverse is a great idea and takes social media out of the hands of corporations and puts it back in the hands of the users (does anyone remember IRC?). It didn't really have a lot of momentum until now, but its got a LOT of press because of Reddit's fuck up and now it's going to be a slow juggernaut sweeping not only Reddit's market, but Twitter (Elon is just as big a fuckup as Spez), and Facebook.
I would bet $20 that this time next year Reddit will be 50% or less of their market, and several other alternatives will be growing faster than we've ever seen platforms grow. Alternative platforms already have the formula for a successful project. Reddit did all the experimentation, now the alts just need to copy the look/feel and features to knock Reddit down to the Digg dungeon.
Billionaires seek to control the media and the narrative, but Fediverse is harder to simply buy and control. Profit seeking corporations will always put profit first, and we've seen time and time again that it's the "product people" that make a company great, and the "business people" who kill it. The capitalists will continue to kill long term growth for short term profits, but Fediverse can't be killed that way. We've just seen the beginning of the new internet revolution.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. But people forget that it also didn’t collapse in a day.
Reddit higher ups have shown their hand. Will this end reddit? Not in the short term I think, but I believe whatever reddit will be in a year or two will be very different from what reddit was up until now
I'm getting used it here and Kbin and that's all it took for me to leave Digg back in the day.
I'd love to turn the subreddit into a mere front to funnle new people onto lemmy or another community forum but I doubt the average user would enjoy that very much 😅 I think we will put it up to a vote, we also did one to determin if we should join the protest in the first place
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1048
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113
I think once these two issues are solved, the average user really isn't going to have any problem with lemmy.
This site has a graph that shows how many subs are private: https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/
I find it a good way to see how the situation is evolving as a whole.
No mention of alternatives in the article :(
I replaced all my comments with garbage and deleted my account
Maybe I'm pessimistic but nothing will come from these protests. Most subs did a half-assed useless two day blackout. The subs that have gone indefinitely dark are good, but it's the users that make a difference. Reddit most likely won't see a significant drop in users or traffic.
I don't think Reddit will immediately reverse course, but I think the protest has been an absolute win simply by giving the alternative communities far more growth than they would have otherwise.
Reddit needs competition to feel threatened.
Great article and summary but man, whatever happened to editorial review? There are three or four major grammatical errors in that short piece. It's unfortunate because it's extremely well written otherwise, and does a great job of reporting objectively which is very rare these days.
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I dont think reddit survive this and I sure as sheet dont think they'll allow subs like wsb to persist.
The end coming through with a bang.
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