Took a peek on Reddit, it really boggles my mind how oblivious and obedient people are.
I decided to take a peek at Reddit to see what kind of activity is happening, a good handful of the subreddits I am subscribed to are still super active with posts and commenters.
There's quite a few news articles on the front page regarding Spez and the blackouts, I am surprised those articles are even still up for people to see.
The comment section is filled with people saying how they should just kick the mods out of the dark Reddit's and take over, ofcourse these posts are heavily upvoted...
Perhaps there is some AI activity going on, I mean it's kind of easy to do in this day and age. You just prompt an army of AI bots to defend Reddit, and try to keep users engaged.
I am so happy I found Lemmy, and I am so happy that there is a comfortable level of activity. Sure it's only a small fraction of what Reddit is activity wise, but it's so much more hearty and welcoming.
Reddit has just turned into one big toxic mess. Lemmy reminds me of what Reddit used to be 10 years ago.
Thing is, all the people in favor of the protest left Reddit. So now pro-Reddit content is being upvoted.
Except the mods. Now they're getting abuse from those that didn't care about the protests.
I'm sorry but the protest was a complete failure that accomplished nothing. The real successful protest would be making a sub on here and redirecting their uses to it.
Lemmy went from a few thousand users with very little activity to 100k+ with constant activity. It was a massive success.
We don't know yet. If it's sticky then I would wholeheartedly agree. But if activity drops to pre protest levels in a month then eh...
Yeah, we don't know yet. On the one hand, it's still the early days of (some) people leaving Reddit - and who knows if they won't go back.
On the other hand, the API payment structure and the shutdown of 3PAs hasn't even happened yet. Even people who are completely oblivious to the situation but who are using a 3PA will have to decide if they'll be able to deal with the shitty official app, if they'll just stop browsing Reddit on mobile, or if they're willing to take a look at alternatives.
I guess we will see.
For a website with over 800 million monthly users, 100k is nothing, barely even a rounding error. You can say it was a success for lemmy, but as far as the actual goal of the protest it achieved basically nothing.
As Lemmy grows reddit will shrink. Reddit might always be around, but that's the same crowd that uses Facebook. Stragglers be damned, many users found a new home and that's a big win in my books. The rest were shown how shitty and incompetent the management is at Reddit, and it'll only get worse until they lose more and more users.
And when Lemmy becomes compatible with the wider activitypub network, we'll gain another 9M users. (Its also closer to 200k now I believe.)
Over 800 million monthly users, really? :D
Different sources have different numbers. One says 800 million, one says 400 million, the point is that lemmy poaching a couple hundred thousand users is nothing to reddit. If lemmy has 200k users that left reddit, even if we assume the smaller value of 400 million reddit users then that's only 0.05% of reddit users that left.
What percentage of Reddit users are actually contributing versus just showing up to consume? I'd suspect it's a very small percentage of that total. If that smaller group migrates away in more significant number, then that's the real impact. The consumers will show up wherever the content goes.
I'm willing to bet even if that were true a good portion of those are fake or a person with multiple accounts.
I wouldn't say it accomplished nothing. I clearly motivated a bunch of people to start investing in other platforms. Platforms like Kbin and Lemmy now have a lot more mods and developers contributing. It gave alternatives MUCH needed attention. Mos of us had never even heard about these platforms a few weeks ago.
We will get a second influx on July 1st as well, so we need to work had at maintaining activity and community growth in the meantime.
What we have now is already fairly good.
And that's something that's easy to forget once you've made the change. Uprooting something you use daily, to move to a new platform which feels new and different, takes quite a bit of mental effort and requires you to accept some anxiety, as you wean yourself off your habits. But when the power users go, and the new place becomes more familiar and understood, the rest will follow eventually as every step becomes easier to accept.
I deleted my reddit account years ago and lurked only because trying to interact there was a cesspool. Learning about the alternatives and seeing how well behaved it is over here on lemmy is a breath of fresh air. Sure there isn't as much content yet but it'll come. Reddit wasn't an overnight success either.
I feel after the 3rd party apps get killed off we'll start seeing a slow trickle of users after the initial flood once the ones that stuck around start realizing the content that's left in reddit has become low effort bot posts and spam.
Why spoil a good thing? The protest was basically the best they could do, got tons of attention and media.
Obviously time will tell if this actually is the downturn for Reddit, but belittling their efforts just because they didn't redirect to Lemmy seems a bit entitled.
I actually found Lemmy from a post doing exactly what you said: subreddit went dark, with a stickied post directing people where to go. And here I am! Rock me like a hurricane.
This is just how people act in general. It doesn't affect them so it isn't their problem.
Humans suck, don't we?
Yes. The only thing we can do is strive to be better ourselves.
I was just thinking how nice it would be in an environment where people don't just dismiss things that don't affect them... and circled back to your comment upon the realisation that humans charge an arm and a leg to people for the privillege to be in a nice environment.
We're paying for the lack of meaningful human interaction in our own lives. We're slowly realizing it was there along with no need for pretext. Lemmy has been super thought provoking for me tbh. I've always been a thinker, but I numbed myself to get by. The whole idea of paying for hapiness doesnt sit right with me at all. I'm here now. We need to keep pushing to get better as people. 💪
I think we are all really smart, here. And look ma! No hands! I'm gonna be a real boy!
This may just an old interwebz man talking, but I'd say "Don't worry."
It's not a 1:1, but this is similar to what happened with Digg in the mid 2000s. I was there. I migrated from there to Reddit - specifically because Digg had decided to ignore its vocal user base and fundamentally change what the site was.
It ultimately resulted in this :
Worth noting that the main migration happened in 2007 and start of 2008, but look how it managed to drag on for another 4 years before really dying.
I think the same will happen here - like there'll be a lot of users on Reddit still, but it'll be heavily corporate controlled and moderated, and most comments will be on the level of "Putin small pp" etc.
I suspect that some of the main subreddits - funny, aww, and pics, for example - could be populated entirely by bots and a lot of people would still browse through them. If you're just idling through looking for a little dopamine, then r/aww and r/pics are kind of like instagram or tiktok. From Reddit's perspective, those are the important subs, where the smaller ones where you can find good discussion and insightful answers don't get enough views to serve enough ads to affect their bottom line.
Those subs could just be replaced with random bot reposts from the last decade. Actually, I think that’s most of the content already. Tho r/pics going full Sexy John Oliver today was hilarious. I even broke my personal embargo to go and vote for the SJO format (and to do a daily re-delete of any of my comments which might have been restored).
Wow, I didn’t realize the Reddit to Digg migration was so drawn out. Do we know how big the initial migration to Reddit actually was in terms of user count? It seems like Lemmy/Kbin are seeded with a few tens of thousands of users, and I wonder how it compares.
The main migration was actually in 2010 after the v4 redesign. Digg wasn't dying in 2007-2009, it was one of the hottest websites on the internet.
Hmm something happened in 2008-2009 though, as it was when I migrated and I remember loads of people were doing it at the same time.
It might have just been Reddit having a cleaner, more direct interface, and a better community.
The site started to go downhill around that period because of power users and some started to move to reddit, but it was still pretty niche.
I stayed on digg until v4, then I moved with the masses over to reddit. They lost over 30% of their users that month!
The scale is so much larger now. Reddit could lose 1m users and its a blip.
Reddit's actual daily users only equates to about half that number. While an interesting metric, Google search rates don't equate to users. Heck, my searching for that information contributed to that and I didn't click through to Reddit once.
Not if the redditors that leave are the ones that do the majority of the moderating and quality posting. If the quality goes way down, people will look elsewhere. Also, I have a feeling we'll see a much bigger migration once the third party apps all die on the 30th.
Thats true. I am continuing to keep using reddit to spread awareness of Lemmy so that people know it exists.
Iam not to use. Before I left reddit. Most of it was just reposted tiktoks and just general low quality posts on the big subreddits already
Well, "unfortunately" some of them will stay up since they are classified as open-source and non-profit by reddit. So, while I'm glad that these projects live on, it will certainly soften the blow for Reddit on 30th.
I have noticed a huge quality decline on reddit. I hope people get fed up and search for other options.
I'm new as well. Made my account a few days ago. First time participating in the fediverse and I am loving it so far. I love the vibe and building new communities. I wish I better knew how to spread the word because up until last week I never knew any of this existed.
There's been so many threads I've read on lemmy where pretty much everyone was able to voice disagreement in some way, but the discourse refrained from being toxic. That seemed so very rare on Reddit. I wonder if this is due to the lack of the total karma metric or something.
I think that it's because the bad users aren't here yet.
Well it's going to be dominated by the people that are ok with the changes since the people that weren't left the site.
a lot of them are chatgpt accounts approved by Reddit. Same Reason r/programming went down since many people took notice of it
https://web.archive.org/web/20230611210834/https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/146wn9s/meta_who_is_astroturfing_rprogramming_and_why/
Funny yet sad that it's come to reddit botting their own platform to try and shore up support for themselves.
I'm sure advertisers are lining up to market to entirely scripted customers!
https://browsermedia.agency/blog/new-reddit-ads-products-launched/
actually, you couldn't be more right. That's fucking right you thought it was a fucking comment but it was actually ad by reddit
Actually now that you've brought up the idea, how would advertiser's even know that they're hitting real people when they're looking to pay money for exposure?
I don't think they can really know. Even if reddit provides proof that they are not doing stuff server-side they could still use regular bots with accounts. Also they need a good moderation quality to minimize third party bots.
This can harm their reputation heavily and it is almost impossible to rebuild that.
I've posted a comment, I think on another instance that highlights something similar
They've been botting their own platform since DAY ONE.
They can't admit they're addicted. I was a daily Reddit user. Stopped going there once the blackout hits. And now, the subs I care about are still private. Good.
And somehow, I turned out fine.
It took a bit of work to subscribe to enough active communities from different instances to replace Reddit, along with other settings tweaks, but now I'm content with how many threads and comments I am getting.
I had only planned on skipping Reddit for 2 days, but now I'm disgusted enough with the backstabbing that I have a grotty feeling using Reddit. 12 years of daily participation and all of a sudden it's not the same.
Yeah for me it really just puts a sour taste in my mouth and I just can't be bothered
Yeah i deleted all comments and my account yesterday. I think I've been on reddit for 9 years, but fuck them. I will probably still use it in the browser when I am looking for specific info, but i am done with doomscrolling every few minutes.
Same here. Yesterday, I had a moment of clarity, logged off, deleted RIF, and came here. That quickly, this is my thing, now.
I had to move the app from where it usally was and replaced it with jerboa so I can redirect the muscle memory
Jerboa now lives where my Relay app was
Same. I'm desperately hoping the Sync for reddit developer goes through with an app for federated, I think he mentioned lemmy.
Same. It's like a moment of clarity from detoxification. I don't miss Reddit as much as I thought I would. I just read subs like news and worldnews through an RSS app now.
I actually comment a lot, at least one a day. Presumably these are lurkers who think they are owed content.
Surprisingly I don't miss it. I have Discord and Kbin. I'll probably cease browsing Reddit on mobile once RiF dies.
Interesting how a lot of people are going back to RSS in lieu of reddit, myself included
We have come full circle
Addicted to reading comments, I can't say I'm any better lol
But I do my best to contribute in a positive manner, share bits and pieces of my journey or what I observe in others that I find funny or imagine would inspire good 👍
I caught my husband on reddit yesterday. Went into full attack mode, explained the blackout, and offered to help him switch to Lemmy. Showed him that some if his subs have lems and even tried to sway him with lemmy porn. He didn't care...at all!!! Now, if i want to read anything on reddit i have to go outside or to the bathroom so he doesn't see me.
Look people have different motivations for different things, like it or not, not everyone is going to take the API issue and greed of a for profit company as a deal breaker, and I personally dont think we should lash out at those people. At the end of the day essentially all they are doing is choseing a different social media service.
Also may I ask why you "went into attack mode" when you still go onto reddit?
Use of the word 'attack' was supposed to be humorous. I was just harassingg him for being on during the 'blackout ' days and trying to get him to try lemmy. I'm shifting...still look to see if favorite subs have been active, share lemmy links if there is one, screenshot some old stuff, ...
Now that's what I call funny lol 🤣
wait, where's the Lemmy porn?
Lemmynsfw.com
That's the CP-allowing community. Don't spread that cancer around...
Looking up on that sub and all the current talk, sounds like there was some issue where pedos thought it was okay to post CP there, but it seems under control now.
Probably not them allowing CP in the first place, so much as them struggling to moderate fast enough at first. Make sense for communities exploding this rapidly, and nsfw communities have always and will continue to need to constantly be tightly moderating to get any illegal shit out of there ASAP.
I don't know what cp is, but whenever i set to ALL / NEW and scroll, every few posts theres a blurred out one.
cp = "child porn" but likely not in the way you're imagining. A certain subset of people think that "child porn" is any drawing of a girl, or any photograph of a real woman under the age of 35.
Edit: Oh, look. Angry downvotes and not a single attempt to refute me. Guess I was right.
so I remember seeing there are tools for mass deletion of your reddit comments, I wonder if theres a tool to go and edit them all to say things
Yeah, there's also tools that will create a local backup of your comments before deleting them
Yes, I did that like many others before me. Here you go: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
Some reported that edited/deleted posts/comments reverted back 'by themselves'. I'm not sure wether that's reddit restoring "their content", or wether it's because some content was locked in blackout subreddits at the time of editing/deleting. Either way, it's probably good to check again after a few days and repeat the process.
My comments are partially edited, partially original. Will plow them again tomorrow.
The users that believed in/supported the protests and are most against the changes are still not there. So you're left with the echo chamber of doom scroll monkeys that need their fix. Quite appropriate for reddit, honestly.
This tracks for me, Ive been on reddit for over 10 years and haven't been back since I found Lemmy and kbin on the 11th.
I noticed earlier today that all the top posts were reposts of previous top posts on each main sub.
Like they literally just reposted all the top posts of all time.
That's the kind of thing that is possible when they own it all.
Lots and lots of gold too. Has anyone ever bought it? I have my doubts.
As much as I feel that Reddit was pretty underhanded, I doubt that they're using AI to fake content to keep people on the site 'cause (a) people would catch on pretty fast by looking at the history of the account and (b) running LLMs probably cost more than the earned advertising revenue.
What's more likely is that people/bots have always been reposting for karma a while
I don't think they've used AI to do anything or even create fake content. They just reposted things that are already known to be popular, so that new users will experience good content.
Or maybe if Reddit didn't do it, then it's just karmabots taking the front-page, because there is no good OC to beat them.
Personally I think Spez and his staff are currently glued to the screen and handing out votes and gold for whatever isn't about the protest.
This happened long ago. Bots would repost frontpage content that'd past the year-long wait to avoid repost detection. Gif subs would be very quiet without that kind of content being recycled
I wish people would just drop it. Do not visit Reddit. The blackouts are meh, to actually be effective, do not visit. No clicks, no views, no content.
They gotta do a coordinated Leave Reddit Day like how they did with Digg
That was what the blackout was supposed to be- no clicks, no content. It had some effect but perhaps not the overwhelming effect that was desired. A lot of Reddit traffic now is just idiots scrolling in the app who probably never even notice the blackout let alone care.
That said- I think the effects of the last few weeks are going to take a longer time (many weeks or a few months or more) to truly play out. For me at least, the biggest effect is now I'm diversifying- while my social media time WAS almost 100% Reddit, now I'm trying to do as much Lemmy as I can. The bubble of trust is popped. Unless Spez gets fired and the Reddit board or his successor publicly walks this back and makes commitments to openness, I don't see myself putting any trust at all in them going forward. Too bad really :(
Occam's razor tells me this ain't no AI. Just people who DGAF and want their fun website back.
There are a lot of people who don't hate the mobile app or only use the website and they probably see this blackout as a huge waste of time.
Personally I've moved on. It's time for the Fediverse to take over social media and forums. It really is the future and I'm here for it.
I would believe that too but at the risk of sounding paranoid, I've seen some of these subs open up in real time and it's always accompanied by some really weird posting/voting patterns. I've also seen negative or questioning comments deleted in seconds.
I've spent enough time dabbling with AI to conclude that anyone with enough money, can generate enough AI content to drive product forward.
Reddit is now a product, if people are leaving Reddit in droves through the standpoint of a CEO I would think of all kinds of ways to keep the product interesting which means putting on an AI puppet show.
If you go shopping on amazon, often shitty products are reviewed positively by bots to try and drive sales.
Reddit is no different. The money is there, the technology is there, and above it all the greed is there.
It's no longer paranoia, its more than plausible.
It's their responses that made me decide to nuke my reddit comments instead of leaving it.
Same here, I've deleted 5 years worth of content. Really digging the smaller community of people here who actually care.
I used Power Delete Suite and it was fun watching it go through all the comments and overwriting and deleting everything. And smaller community seems like I'm not talking into the void anymore.
Same. My intent was to avoid reddit during the blackout and then continue using RIF until the day it shutdown. Their response to this has been appalling, so I deleted my 13+ years of comments and have not really used Reddit at all since the blackout started, other than checking 1 small, specific sub once a day.
Yeah, right now there's only two subreddits I check now which I do through an rss app for Android called Feeder.
The two rss I set up being
http://teddit.net/r/buildapcsales/?api&type=rss http://teddit.net/r/gamedeals/?api&type=rss
Feel bad about even relying on reddit, but tried to at least lessen any benefit I might have to them by using a reddit front end to get feeds.
I had also planned to enjoy rif and Boost until the end, but I don't feel like consuming reddit content to that extent.
What kind of firewall blocks lemmy but not reddit?
Millions of users are about to stop using the platform overnight when they nuke the third party apps. The culture is going to change dramatically no matter what.
Yeah, probably. I'm afraid they're going to keep a few 3P apps up, though (they already have started this process) long enough for people to migrate to their official app (because of NSFW content no longer being accessible through the API). So this may take a few years.
People have been saying it but were being ignored for weeks: this blackout thing will not work. And we were correct. It was a useless attempt to try and win over the majority.
Plenty of people use the main app and are the majority of users, and it is what it is. The ones who care about the Reddit API fiasco should move away. That’s the only valid move.
I’ve done it, and everyone else who care should. Leave the ones who are fine with Reddit on Reddit.
I don't think it's particular the main stream of Reddit that is protesting, it is indeed a small percentage. However, I think the discussion in the recent Waveform Podcast hits the nail on the head:
That small percentage that left Reddit are the people that care most about Reddit. Those are the powerusers. The users that generally contribute most to the platform, be that in the form of content, informative comments, moderation, writing tools or other stuff. It's the people that are most valueble to the website. When those people leave there might others might not notice it instantly, but after a while the overall experience will deteriate somehow.
It is somewhat comparable to if when many of the big youtubers were to leave Youtube after bad management. They might be only 1% of the people uaing Youtube, but they are also the people that are important to the website for the experience of the other 99%.
Thing is though, only those power users are likely to care about the decline in content quality.
The people who just use it for memes and funny videos won't even notice
I completely agree. However, my point is that the people that are leaving are a lot of the people that make Reddit Reddit. They play an important role in how well it's moderated and what content is on Reddit. So when many of those people leave while the others stay, the overall experience could get worse. People might not know why the platform starts to feel worse, but it does.
Maybe the impact won't be big at all, but I can definitely see it happening.
I see the blackout as a nudge to overcome addiction. A few days or weeks without content, and people start looking around. The the network effect (downward) will make the rest.
I want to specify that I have no interest in all the userbase of reddit moving to Lemmy, but just an initial influx of people who care will help making it reach a critical mass. After that, reddit can even reopen fully, at that point it won't matter.
Except those people went to twitter, Instagram, and tiktok for their memes, news, and funny moments. All the major subs that I subscribed to are back on and people are back as usual there. The blackout was useless and another lazy version of internet activism, and it made people hate the mods instead of Reddit for “power tripping.” Literally made people side with Reddit because of that lol.
I had a different experience, to be honest. The sub I am more active in, /r/Italy is open, but it has still a ridiculous activity, and most of the active users wanted an indefinite blackout. A sibling sub, italyinformatica is even more desert (yesterday last post was 4 days ago). I think that in principle the blackout is a very effective way to protest, it worked like a charm to keep me off the site, at least, but I agree that saying "we do it for 2 days" undermines the whole thing.
I think this is partially resulting from the bias of people here, who more than likely care about the community involvement aspect of online forums/platforms. If the forum I used to live on 15 years ago was still well trafficked, I likely wouldn't be exploring these spaces the same way.
The reality is that reddit today ISN'T what it was 10 years ago when it killed a lot of forums. It is now a platform, like facebook, that has mass appeal and is going to therefore operate to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Maybe a lot of "redditors" support the strikes, but I'd believe that a majority of people who use reddit don't.
People want their feeds. They want their dopamine. They want their predictable comments and hot gossip. That's what people are in larger groups. That's who reddit is now designed to appeal to.
I think about this kbin/fedithing as a chance to reboot online conversation in an environment that is different than what reddit has become, but I don't expect reddit to change in any way other than to continue to become boring and ad-data driven.
I think reddit may become what facebook has become. I still use fb for marketplace and niche hobby and local groups. I can see reddit going the same way. I wonder what tech they're going to throw all of their money at...
Yeah I can see this happening, the one reddit sub I still check in on my local city sub.
i would agree with this, but at the same time after a couple of days of floundering i joined lemmy.world, subscribed to a few communities and am finding a better experience than reddit in its heyday because people are actually talking to me here lol
most people dont care, they just want to click on their memes
To be frank, it’s not that people are oblivious, they just don’t give a shit. Who cares, let them not give a shit. Internet communities are only ruined by too many people, this one can continue to exist autonomously and not have to be “new Reddit”
The majority of Reddit's 57m users do not use 3rd party apps. In fact I'd argue most don't (or didn't) even know you could use a 3rd party app or understand why you'd want to. To them Reddit is just the app. So yeah, of course they're not participating in the protest.
I don't expect Reddit to go away or to be adversely impacted by this movement. But I'm not going to worry about what goes on there, similar to how I don't have a FB account and I don't worry about what the 1B other users are doing. I left Reddit for myself, if other people continue to use it then so be it.
I've been on Reddit 14 years. One account. Never used an app. Still used old.reddit til the last.
Deleted all my comments and then my account yesterday.
You're right on the FB thing tho. Did the same thing in 2012. Took a few years for the popularity of "delete your facebook" to catch on, but now the idea that facebook is bad for you is super mainstream compared to 2012.
I use a 3rd party app maybe 1/4th of my time on reddit, so I could've technically gone without it. But I think anyone keeping up with the current situation can see old.reddit.com is on the chopping block soon, if not next. When reddit's admin team said half a year ago that the APIs aren't going anywhere for at least the next couple of years, and now have to deal with being called out on their deception, and even adding new lies onto the pile like the whole Apollo debacle, you know they can't be trusted in any capacity to keep promises.
If keeping an API accessible that does the exact same thing as their own app is too much of an expense to keep open, imagine how much maintaining a completely separate front end for their entire website must 'cost'. And that's in part why I've made this switch now and not when old.reddit.com gets killed eventually.
There are many articles and videos on the subject of bot accounts, it's incredibly easy to hire companies that specialize in organic looking posts and comments meant to sway public opinion.
In the case of Reddit they don't even need them for their own platform, they can just run a script to generate all the comments.
In the Philippines, Japan, the UK, Nigeria and Russia there are these organic shitposting armies that the government of the day will hire for content creation and in some cases phishing...
Whether this actually means your economy is good or bad is anyone's guess, but the one thing you can say is that your government at least has enough money to pay people to make memes lol
I'll leave the rest to your imagination...
Please crosspost to c/[email protected] or c/[email protected] or c/[email protected] instead of here. This is
Also mod @[email protected] can you change the name of this community to Lemmy.world - Server or something?
“How can people keep doing what they’ve habitually done because it’s what they’re used to?” ask all the folks who are posting in a community that’s clearly described as not being the place for those discussions but people are doing it anyway.
People are generally the weak link in any system.
Lemmy world meta?
My feed is literally filled with
[email protected]posts because of this (not that I have a problem with that though lol).These nice discussions really should be in their dedicated communities as you suggest
Search for communities that interest you, subscribe to them, instead of Local feed, look at Subscribed, maybe even All, then sort by New or Hot. Because it's still growing, New actually comes up with some good stuff without going by too quickly.
Can't expect the millions of people who don't even understand what an API is to care about the API changes. Hell, I didn't use a 3rd party app or really care about the API changes but I've wanted to get into the fediverse and disliked reddit for a long time, so it's as good an excuse as anything.
I'm shocked by the content I've seen over there. I know quite a few reddit users IRL and none of them support what spez is doing. I think you are right about AI being involved in some if the posts.
Nah. All the pro-blackout folks left. So now only assholes remain.
Well, I hope they have fun playing with each other.
Same here. I’ve never seen this on Reddit, the historically most pro-protest site you’ve ever heard of.
I don’t know if this is legitimate users or not, but it made me delete my account in disgust. If the user base has changed that much then I’m truly a frog in boiling water.
It's hard to believe people actually support corporate kicking mods out for protesting lol
Yeah pretty sure there's some AI activity going on with that shit, either that or people from the company are making posts and using their powers to add a bunch of upvotes. It's feels like the twilight zone
When all the A+ student's leave (moderators doing the work, people writing good comments), the class goes on, but in a diminished form. It'll be a slow decline.
kbin.social feels lively. Reddit just feels like a mine field of trolls/bots/conspiracies.
Great analogy. We watched Digg slowly die over 5 years while Reddit keep steadily growing. Users were saying all the same things back then as well.
Totally correct. It'll take a while, but the quality will absolutely drop. And even though 3rd party apps represent a small percentage of Reddit users, I'd bet that people who are engaged and participate enough to get a third party app for their phone (many of which required payment to block ads) are the same people providing a lot of the quality content that makes Reddit successful. When the people who produce the good content leave, then it's only a matter of time before everyone else follows.
My favourite conspiracy is that "the mossad" are behind the protests, because the API changes means they can't use their bots to sway opinion. Just pure, uncut antisemitism.
Can't say I'll miss it.
Which gives me an idea for the opposite conspiracy theory: Reddit didn't raise API pricing that much to kill 3rd parties, they lifted it because the admins realized how instrumental they are in spreading disinformation from unfriendly governments, and could actually get them to pay.
Thats exactly what I'm thinking, and also that Reddit is expecting there to be moderators of the subreddits based upon the financial resources of the subreddits' subject. And not just from ambitious governments, but commercial enterprises also.
So perhaps Microsoft employs a mod, and so does Apple, probably game devs and sports leagues and so on so that those moderators will be able to be controlled via the financial arrangements between Reddit and the NFL, or Reddit and Apple, and none of the messy business of courting consumers' real opinions has to come into play.
"Too big to fail" commercial subreddits could become overtly supported by Reddit.
Agreed
Haaretz news journalists would like to speak to you, please text back
😉
It's digg all over again, for those of us pioneers old enough to remember our first migration.
I mean, is it out of the realm of possibility that bootlicking comments are those made by Reddit themselves? Comment sections can quickly become echo chambers, I'm sure reddit knows this and uses that to their advantage.
Not to say that there aren't plenty of addicts and general idiots all over reddit.
It's funny reading posts that say something along the lines of "I've always used the reddit app and it's fine, I didn't even know there were third-party apps". I get this might be astroturfing or bots but if not, congrats on not having a clue, I guess.
It's probably not purely bots. My girlfriend is one of those people lol
She isn't tech literate and doesn't get things like FOSS or 3rd party. To her, the Official Reddit™ App is a mark of trust and safety. She doesn't use an adblocker (despite my protests) and just avoids services like Youtube where ads are unavoidable.
I haven't used an app for reddit since Alien Blue. I was just on the mobile website. I can still understand the problem with what they're doing. I don't know why so many people can't understand a problem unless it affects them personally.
I hope these people stay there, I like the community that moved to Lemmy/kbin as they are friendly and chill.
From what I've seen with these mass exodus to the fediverse events, this is how it goes. A whole load of people leave $corporate_website, and then get impatient with the fedi-replacement being slow from the sudden spike in traffic. The impatient toxic people go back to $corporate_website, and the friendly chill people stay here.
It's great to see the fediverse growing, but I don't think we actually want to see it become twitter/reddit levels of popular.
I have (maybe naive) hope that the logistics of federation might help stave off enshittification longer than other places before, since the “platform” no longer controls the content.
I'm assuming this is about the possible enshittification of Lemmy? I'm not too sure if such a thing is possible - right now at least
There's no ads, devs are supported by OSS funding (NLNet) and a Patreon, and many of the instances accept donations in one way or another to keep the servers running. It's also defederated so you could just host your own Lemmy and interact with everyone else that way
Ohh I just noticed you're on Kbin - not too familiar with the funding for that but it looks like the developer was provided a grant from NLNet as well.
I personally know I don't want any server by itself to become deddit or twatter popular but I hope the fediverse at least attracts similar numbers of good people.
I believe there's a substantial number of people who found large platforms banal and toxic, so they might have been refraining from participating.
I know I was avoiding Instagram but now I'm interested in trying out pixelfed for example.
Outside of lemmy.ml migrating to a new server under load and Beehaw decederating, everything seems to work smoothly for me.
True, browsing here has made me realize just how toxic and low quality reddit threads were. The users here feel a lot more mature and disagreements can lead to discussions, while on reddit some 12 year old would just reply with "L take" and downvote you :D
Oh yeah, Back on reddit I never checked the notifications on my comments. I liked giving the advice but got terrible anxiety when someone answered because I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance of someone flying off the handle. Making it even harder, english ain't my native language and from time to time if Im tired I mess up.
In here people have been so nice, even as Im learning and messing up how to work this platform.
This pretty much led me to prefer lurking on Reddit rather than interacting lol
I miss my niche chill subs that I don’t think I’ll ever see come here, as they were already small on Reddit so I don’t imagine enough people will be “here” to make it a viable community. But I don’t miss browsing popular subs and all the top comments being the same jokes, often literally just the same joke? I know all of Reddit isn’t the same group but it’s kind of funny Reddit as a whole mocked things like “the narwhal bacons at midnight” but then would be ok with other, newer, repeat gags just because they effectively said “hey we’re a part of the same thing and I/we show that by all proving we ‘get’ the joke”.
Hear hear!
The lack of societal solidarity for the betterment of everyone is sad.
But that's ok, reddit was never going to die after this protest.
I think what took place was a successful test of what alternatives exist out in the wild.
Now it's up to those of us who migrated to post through the highs and lows of early adoption in order to encourage others to come and stick around when the next shitty move by Spez takes place.
For example, I migrated to Mastodon in late 2018 during an initial surge. And over the years tried to keep posting content so that when the next migration took place when Elon took the reigns, people were able to possibly feel more at home.
This shit takes time. A lot of time. But the internet is a big place and there's plenty of opportunity for things to be better. We just can expect things to rush themselves
what made the switch easier for me, was installing an RSS feed widget to my desktop and adding lemmy instances to it. gradually, i start to notice topics that interest me more and more which are viewable straight from the rss widget itself and i am able to comment on it, thus i have interacted more on here in the last few days than reddit. though it is still hard not to add :"reddit" to my searches online.
That is a great idea. Sorry friend, I'll have to steal it!
The more on here the merrier! I don't mind at all. :p
Reddit populated itself with fake accounts early on in its life, so they could be very well doing the same thing again here.
Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-fake-accounts--2
ps. This is my first comment, does hyperlinking work here?
Hyperlink worked just fine.
I'm not entirely convinced that it isn't all mostly bot activity.
Don't worry too much about it. There's still going to be people using Reddit. You're never going to convince everybody about everything. My parents still use Facebook.
Facebook has turned to adbook.
I still do as well. :D
Of course that site is like that now.
Everyone who cares left...
The Hail Corporate crowd will stay.
It would appear it's mostly bots, probably paid for by reddit (or interested groups) to muddle the waters.
I have seen countless posts trying to discredit the fediverse, how it won't work because it isn't financially backed (completely ignoring that email is still a thing), or how Mastodon apparently failed. On top of that, there are tons of comments in the threads for subs that went dark where the commenter argues "all this does is hurt the sub". but when you look into the commenter, they have no previous history of being active in these subs at all.
But, i've seen this kind of activity all over reddit for the past 2 years. Especially when something unpopular is happening. There is a lot of the same type of crap you see during the presidential elections of the US. A lot of fake comments, posts, and statistics, and other things to try steer the public opinion in an engineered direction.
Saw this on my Mastodon home feed:
12,484,940 accounts
+2,493 in the last hour
+66,136 in the last day
+273,430 in the last week
Four time-based charts
Upper blue area: Number of Mastodon users
Upper cyan area: Hourly increases of number of users
Lower orange area: Number of active instances
Lower yellow area: Thousand toots per hour
For current figures please read the text of this post https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110554252061792575
Almost 300,000 new users in a week is a “fail” most other sites can only dream of.
The idea that anything that doesn't reach Twitter scale is a failure is annoying as hell
lmao the claim that telegram is failing, and i'll admit right here that i don't use it and am not interested in doing so, but it's going stronger than ever now that the loudmouthed chuds that made it popular have gotten bored and the hardcore nerds are all who are left. telegram ain't dying any time soon, i'll say that much.
Telegram should die. Why would anybody use it when matrix or signal exist?
Its such a weird complaint that these people are having right now. They're demanding that unpaid people come back and labor for them for free and/or give away the tools they've created for free.
It's like they have no idea how reddit works. People whining that the NFL sub is closed and demanding it to be reopened for instance. They can go make their own sub and moderate it themselves, but they dont. The entitlement to just demand that people do free labor for you is insane.
whats really funny/sad to me is how mods get no real respect right now or maybe ever
like are some mods lame, sure, but its a super thankless job that i dont think gets enough cred and thats the part that i think has disappointed me the most. mods are super needed online, and its a shame some people cannot see that
It's pretty simple. Most people won't do anything unless it directly impacts them.
This has been true time and time again throughout history as well. People only revolt or start an uprising when things get so bad that it directly influences them. Even then most won't do anything unless they aren't able to ignore it anymore.
Don't worry, it will become an even more toxic cesspool soon....
This is the truth, when I heard they were trying to kick out the mods who were pushing the blackout, I knew that whoever is left after all of this is not going to be worth reading. Reddit massively underestimates the value the power users and mods give to the site for everyone else to use. Without them, the site is just a bunch of software trying to push ads on whoever stumbles on it.
Even a few conversations I have on reddit in the last week (after many already migrated)-
Its obvious, lots more trolls. Lots more shittalk. Just- not pleasant.
They don't care. People are happy in their bubbles.
I can assure you it's not AI, most people there aren't even aware of what's going on or just don't care about the new reddit changes
I'm suspecting phantom upvotes. Neutral or pro-Reddit comments get highly upvoted suspiciously quickly after a sub comes back on line, drowning out anything else.
I would be highly unsurprised. Spez has shown in the past he isn't above screwing with things in the background.
He's said he plans to change things so subreddit users can vote mods out - specifically aimed at the mods who are keeping subreddits dark. Certainly there's no room for anything to go wrong with the voting system that he has direct control over which also happens to have no external oversight or means of 3rd party verification.
My friend started using reddit about 3 years ago. He doesn't care about the blackout at all and told me I was being mad about a free service trying to make money. He'll just keep using it until he can't then lurk elsewhere. I told him to stop being an ass, but that's unlikely. His stupid attitude is shared by a vast swath of reddit and will ultimately lead to the site's total decay.
I think his attitude isn't stupid. He enjoys what he does and moves on once he doesn't or has to.
mindless consumption until the literal collapse of something is stupid.
I disagree. His attitude is understandable. That does not make it correct or good in any way. His attitude is destructive and is one of the main reasons our world is in such a mess these days as it's shared by too many.
That's not how you convince someone. You should explain to him how this is going to heavily impact his reddit experience in the near future. When all the mods and power users are successfully alienated, reddit is going down the drain. It's them who carry the platform, not the lurkers.
He's my best friend and calling him an ass is something I do every day. Anything less would have been met with suspicion!
I've explained the negative outcomes to him and he doesn't care. He'll float over to this community and bring his apathy with him. He's just old and jaded like me, just more so.
Look mate, I get you, but I also get your friend, I used reddit pretty much the same as your friend, just lurked, didn't used any third party apps, but I saw things go to shit and decided I want none of that, and let's be real, the site offed itself a while ago, the people that moved to lemmy and kbin realized that, and where techie enough to adapt to the new environment. Some people on reddit will realize that sometime, some won't, and that's perfectly fine, they will either adapt to the fediverse, move back to where they were before or stay on the decaying site, but whatever they, and your friend do, there's no reason for hostility, especially between you and your friend, the deed had been done, and now we get to rebuild our communities in such a great way that we couldn't ever imagined over reddit.
True, this 3rd party app business is really the straw that broke the camel's back with me. Reddit is not what it was and I'm not super fond of what it is at the moment. It was time to move on. Honestly, this experience has been the closest to what Reddit one was for me. I like it!
Oh, and he's my best friend. I call him an ass and worse daily. He'd expect no less. Still love the dumb bastard like a brother!
They gonna stay there until they feel the real consequences. Most people just don't get what's the real problem. I'm happy in the fediverse, feels like I make better use of my time, instead of scrolling like an idiot.
sometimes I'm upset at how apathetic people on reddit are
I've been on reddit for almost a decade and a half. Never have I seen so many users gilding pro corporate reddit/pro spez comments. It is almost always the former. It's very unusual and makes me a tad suspicious. I'm not sure if reddit has evolved into a platform overflowing with users that I truly don't synchronize with, or perhaps reddit is virtually augmenting these posts/comments, increasing bot posts to augment activity, etc. I accept either or and for that and many other reasons I have contently moved on from the platform. It's just not for me anymore and has been fracturing into an environment that lost its luster. Too many common folk have saturated the platform, too many bots, too much corporate shenanigans, too many miserable users, too little civility, too much ignorance and a lack of analytical literacy. The fediverse has given a breath of fresh air and something of nostalgia from the early days of reddit. I do think this is the way forward with time and I'm here for it.
I curbed my use of Reddit about a month ago. I started getting low quality right-wing posts in my feed. Maybe it was an algorithm trying to egg me on, but it had the opposite effect and I left.
Scary thing is, if AI can take over Reddit, AI can also take over Lemmy.
I can litterally copy and paste this post, and then you comment, as well as other people's comments and instruct ChatGPT to reply in accordance. Then, if I feel like the comment seems obviously AI written, I can tell it to write it in the style of a redditor with a few spelling mistakes and it I'll do just that.
Now uses some script, and the prompt, and let the algorithm do all the work for you.
Yeah unfortunately with today's attention span no protest really works
It's not about attention span, it's about media control. People stop hearing about a protest, and then it... Goes away for them.
In this particular case, though, these are a combination of people who were not seriously impacted by the blackouts, and who have been but choose to resent the people who are speaking up or acting because they're "rocking the boat".
Yeah that's true, and unfortunately most everything is controlled by someone with an agenda
I'll be happy if the vast majority of people stay on Reddit, smaller communities are usually the most friendly.
That's true and they manage to have better information.
I feel this particular protest worked very well!
reddirt made concessions, like exempting mod tools, and maybe even something for visually impaired people? But mostly it gave the fediverse a nice boost. Many people moved.
I wish climate protests had so much result in so little time with so little effort.
It blows my mind that r/Apple decided to cave after all of that.
r/Technology have been the biggest bootlickers in the comments so it doesn't surprise me. For a sub that has a hard on for hating Google they seem perfectly fine with carrying water for Reddit.
Who cares lol
While yes I'm gone from Reddit, it's still sad for me to see communities I once cared about to have ended up as they have.
From the fediverse side of things, good. The bootlickers can stay there until the whole thing gets shutter, people with sense can come here.
personally i'm loving the fact that they're laughing at us in the mistaken belief that this can't work and we'll be back there before the end of the month, yet after a bit of lag and a couple memory overruns combined with some utterly HILARIOUS glitches they still don't realise that the system survived its' stress test and is in the process of being upgraded and expanded so that it can take the rest of the load (i'v heard that 20% of traffic has moved over, which is enormous) by the end of next week, we're very easily capable of funding it entirely ourselves, and we know it
right now i'm having difficulty sitting still, waiting in eager anticipation for the horror to cross their faces when they realise that they have nobody left except for unironic trump voters. rekon it might even be the very last piece of entertainment i might get from the website
Its hilarious how over the span of like 15 hours it went from "lul 48 hours is so stupid this wont do anything to" "uh oh....this is doing something....WE DEMAND YOU OPEN OUR SUBS NOW THIS ISNT DEMOCRACY REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
I'm surprised there is strong support to the protest. But obviously there will always be people who lick boots.
spez: third party apps are making money off our platform using our data for free!
Mods: .............. Yup.
It's pretty crazy how u/spez seems to focus on some random third party app developers making money off of Reddit.
He tries to couch this in language about AI and the cost of maintaining an API and that the API was never meant to support 3PAs, but then loops back to what sounds like insane hatred and envy of third party developers.
And then, in the same interview, he points out how unpaid moderators who do all the work and make Reddit all the money have too much power.
It's lunacy.
It's peek, not peak.
This is not reddit... Lol
I realized that after I posted it. I was able to fix it in the title even! This is so much better than Reddit.
You know what, reddit was filled with people who got upset when others tried to help them improve. Let's not take that with us here.
I, for one, am grateful when others point out a mistake because it helps me to become better. That's the mentality we should encourage here.
I agree with you, I was mainly just making a joke. It's when people point out a spelling mistake, without actually commenting on what's being said as well. But at the same time feedback is feedback, it's great building material.
It's great that you can edit titles here.
S/he might've taken a 🗻...
The same thing will happen with Reddit users that has happened for decades now in the digital world.
The ones that start to care about their freedom, privacy, ecological/sociological impact, and consumer rights will most likely move off of those closed and controlled platforms either completely, or replace them with better platforms.
The majority of folks either don't care, or aren't willing to give up the conveniences/benefits give up the toxic corpo platforms.
We need to focus on making our platforms better all the time, raising awareness for things like FOSS and consumer rights, and making sure we are as helpful and welcoming as we can be.
Some reddit mods have turned their unpaid volunteer janitor gig on Reddit into a business without redditors realizing. For ex. Onlyfans was started by mods in NSFW subreddits who used reddit up votes to decide which models to recruit models who in turn would bring horny traffic over.
WSB and other trading subs also come to mind. I wonder how much actual market manipulation happens there.
I think it's mostly a power trip like you said, or just a straight up passion project for those who want to have a community around their niche. As for the larger mainstream subs, yeah they're just doing unpaid labor.
Your username is way too cool
I've been thinking about changing my username. it's the same one I've been using since 4th grade
. Minecraft fan at the time?
Yeaaaah . . . Still am tbh lol
Orrrr... get this; some people don't think like you. Or give enough of a shit. Which is not a bad thing. Your elitist attitude on the other hand is shit.
I didnt get an elitist vibe at all from this post. just that he thinks lemmy is a better place for themselves than reddit is and explains why. their allowed to have an opinion.
I don't get why people who are still happy with reddit go out of their way to make accounts here to complain at people over leaving reddit. If it's really great over there, redditors shouldn't give a flying fadoodle about how many left.
They're also just creating more user activity here lmao. I'm not going to see an angry person commenting and think "Oh yes, I want more of that." and go back to reddit. I'm going to think "Nope." and keep my distance.
That behaviour is a great way to make sure more people stay away from reddit.
Damn the bots made it here too?
Why you having a go at the guy lol, he was just having a jab at you
no u
"This statement is false"
Hahahahaha gotteeem