The Impact of Corporate Trolls on Reddit: A Growing Problem
SNOOcalypse is closing down. If you wish to talk about Reddit, check out !reddit@lemm.ee, !reddit@lemmy.world and !RedditMigration@kbin.social.
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml Deciding the fate of c/snoocalypse - tell me what you think!
I wish to stop being a moderator in lemmy.ml. However, I don't know what to do with this community; the last time I asked for new mods nobody showed interest. So I'd like the help of other members of the community to decide it.
Here are a few options:
- Migrate this community. Frankly I don't care about Reddit nowadays, but I'm still willing to mod a comm about it in another instance. So if users tell me "migrate SNOOcalypse to [instance]!", I'll seriously consider it.
- Recruiting new mods. If you wish to be a mod, please tell me so in this thread. I'll check if you'd be a good mod, recruit you, step down myself, and you're free to moderate it as you wish.
- Closing down this comm. There are a few other comms about Reddit across the Lemmy/Kbinverse, so we'd use those instead. If neither of the alternatives above is viable/feasible, this is likely what's going to happen.
- Something else. Then please do tell me. As long as it doesn't boil down to "negligently leave this comm
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion
medium.com New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public…If you're paywalled, check this archive link.
What the article calls "corporate trolls" is simply astroturfing. It became rampant in Reddit; as the walled garden was unwalled, more of the organic grass has been replaced.
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml Reddit might once again be flirting with an IPO
techcrunch.com Reddit might once again be flirting with an IPO | TechCrunchThe San Francisco-based company, co-founded by Steve Huffman, Aaron Swartz and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, could go public as early as Q1.
IPO = Initial Public Offering, where shareholders offer to sell their shares to the public, shifting a company from a "private company" (it belongs to me, you, and that guy) to a "public company" (it belongs to anyone who pays enough for the shares).
The userbase has been always touchy when it comes to IPO, and rightfully so; they know that the new owners will only care about squeezing the platform dry. As such, I predict a new flood of Redditfugees to Lemmy and Kbin.
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml Reddit mods dumped tokens hours before blockchain program termination
Summary: Reddit warns mods that it's ending its crypto program, before it warns the other users. What could go wrong? /s
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml Reddit Activity Plummeted After The Protests
www.garbageday.email We're all living on r/MadeMeSmile's Internet NowRead to the end for some scrumbling
Excerpt:
Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml arstechnica.com Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod PurgeConcerns of Redditor safety, jeopardized research amid new mods and API rules.
The outcome was predicted by plenty users in this community, but now the news are noticing it.
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml Relay for Reddit now charges based on how much you use it
www.theverge.com One surviving Reddit app plans to charge based on how much you use itRelay for Reddit could cost between $1 and $5 per month.
Relay was (yup) one of the third party apps that survived the API-calypse. But this sort of model is unsustainable in the long run, given that the competitor (the broken native app) is free and unlimited.
The obvious future monopoly of the broken native app is bad for the platform in the long run, given that Reddit always sucked off ideas from third party apps; and now there's no incentive whatsoever to make it better, after Reddit Inc. killed the better competitors.
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.
gizmodo.com The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.Reddit corporate claims victory over its disgruntled mods as r/aww, r/pics, and r/videos abandon the "John Oliver rule."
The title is a bit clickbaity but the article is worth a read. To keep it short:
- large subreddits stopped protesting
- 1.8k subreddits are still in the dark, but those are rather small
- [from the article] "Though the Reddit team likely caused permanent damage to the platform and its relationship with users, Spez got his way. But that victory might not mean much."
IMO it was a Pyrrhic victory. Sure, the protests ended, and most users are still stuck in that shithole... but the reputation damage won't be reversed, Reddit managed to seed its competitors (as this one) with the necessary userbase to make them functional, and odds are that Reddit will keep going in its death spiral. And that doesn't even take into account the amount of bad press that it generated, that will hurt IPO numbers for sure.
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml Reddit is testing “official” labels for profiles and making parts of its app compatible with screen readers
www.theverge.com Reddit is testing “official” labels for profiles and making parts of its app compatible with screen readersThe “Official” label is a small test to start.
I'm sharing this here mostly due to the "official" labels. Excerpt from the text:
“Starting today, we’re beginning early testing of placing a visual indicator on certain profiles to provide proof of authenticity, reduce impersonation, and increase transparency across the platform,” a Reddit admin (employee) wrote in a post. “This is currently only available to a very small (double-digit) number of profiles belonging to organizations with whom we already have existing relationships, and who are interested in engaging with redditors and communities on our platform.”
At least for me this looks like a really poor attempt to attract content creators into the platform, while shifting its focus from the content created and shared by the users to the users themselves, as in more typical social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok). It's bound to fail - what made Reddit desirable for the users was the content that they shared among themselves, unlike in Twitter where a
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml Recruiting new mods for c/snoocalypse
This community grew far more than I expected. That's great, but a single mod for such an active comm is a liability, plus I want to nurture a few other comms. As such, I'm recruiting new mods.
Does anyone volunteer? Potential new mods should:
- be already active members of this community;
- have spare time to browse, comment, and post in this community fairly often;
- have decent reading comprehension;
- be able to dialogue with other members of the community, in a respectful and cooperative way;
- not be moderators of a large number of other communities.
::: spoiler Further details and guidelines, on what you're expected to do:
- This community does not "belong" to you or me, it belongs to the people who participate in it. Always keep this in mind.
- If there's a report, you must read it and address it to the best of your capabilities. Sometimes you do nothing, sometimes you just talk with the user.
- Folks here are well-behaved, so milder interventions are preferable over ha
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit. @lemmy.ml Lvxferre @lemmy.ml Reddit is a dead site running
dbzer0.com Reddit is a dead site runningYesterday I read the excellent article by Cory Doctorow: Let the Platforms Burn and this particular anecdote The thing is, network effects are a double-edged sword. People join a service to be with the people they care about. But when the people they care about start to leave, everyone rushes for th...
The link contains db0's views on the ongoing state of Reddit, and I think that it's worth sharing here - both to document a piece of opinion, and as food for thought. The main points are:
- a comparison between the current state of Reddit vs. Myspace near collapse;
- the illusion that everything is fine based on "raw" numbers like engagement;
- that Reddit was never a "good" site, but it had two positive points (open API and hands-off approach to communities), destroyed by the current events;
- the ongoing progression of the Fediverse as alternative to Reddit;
- the change in quality in both the content and the behaviour of the people still there.
The text mentions an article from Cory Doctorow. I've copied it to a pastebin, in case someone can't access it.
EDIT: I hope that the author doesn't mind, but I'll copy the contents of the article inside the spoilers below. Hopefully for mobile users it'll be a bit more acces