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alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

Megathread for Reddit Blackouts and News - Rest of the Week(?)

hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout, its aftermath, and what's happening going forward, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! thanks! we'll see if we need to cycle the thread again before the end of this week, but i don't know that we'll need to

176 comments

  • I stopped using reddit, don't want to participate in this crime. There's high possibility that reddit will not change direction, it's better give a chance to alternatives and learn something new.

    • The people who refuse to learn something new and stay on reddit, like the people who jumped ship from Twitter to BlueSky instead of Mastodon, are exactly the kind of dim-bulbs the corporate suite want. They're more concerned with usability than freedom from corporate influence. They're more than happy to lose general autonomy and have corporations dictating how they interact with the world because, and let me emphasize this, they are too fucking lazy and pathetic to learn to do anything on their own. They are god damned babies looking for someone to hold their hand through life.

      Boo Boo Bear speaking truth to power.

      I do believe corporations rob us of our dignity and independence.

      • One could say that the people supporting mastodon with rhetoric like yours are too fucking lazy and pathetic to bother building a system with good UX. The choice is not in fact, "freedom" or "usability." It's very easy to have both, but mastodon supporters don't seem to care. You are not owed anything, and no most people will not bother with some janky software.

        If you want to change the world on a lager scale, do better, don't blame others.

      • Yup, that's honestly the history of the world — people giving their autonomy and independence and concern for what's really going on in the world away to authorities in exchange for ease, comfort, convenience and habit, then being surprised when those authorities turn around and begin taking advantage of them. It's the eternal struggle against apathy.

      • Well said. Bravo! I could not have said that better myself. I'm sorry to say you just described my mom. She's a google addict who always tells me that she'd rather have usability over privacy. She actually told me once that "she doesn't need privacy because she's got nothing to hide."

        She signs up to hundreds of services with the same gmail and decades old password, I try to get her to use Tutanota or Proton or any number of password managers out there but she's technologically illiterate and says it's too complicated. I looked her up on Have I Been Pwned? and she had 17 data breaches on her account and 23 on an old one.

        It's so frustrating, she was willing to put her entire digital identity into the hands of corporations that time after time abuse and sell that data or in her case leak info in data breaches all because she's to lazy to learn to randomize handles and use a password manager. I understand what you're talking about man because I live with one and it frustrates me.

    • lol same. kbin has a better community anyways, and support subs are more useful

  • If they want their subs back so badly, let them take them. They can deal with moderation (or finding any decent mods at all) on their own.

    Good luck with that, Reddit admins. lol.

  • Reddit users continue their blackout protest against the platform's new pricing plan, which will force several popular third-party apps to shut down or pay up starting July 1. While some subreddits have reopened, moderators of r/aww, r/videos, and r/music have kept their forums closed, holding out for more movement from Reddit's executives.

    Over 300 other subreddits are still private, and moderators are polling their users to gauge interest before joining the indefinite shutdowns. CEO Steve Huffman's leaked memo, which warned employees not to sport a Reddit logo in public, has been criticized for "trivializing" the concerns of moderators and volunteers who maintain much of the platform.

    source: tldrdaily.news

  • German it magazine iX has an interview with the mods of r/de. I don't know if this was mentioned here before...

    Interview (German)

    Short summary: the mods of the large German communities see a huge issue with reddit not recognizing content creators and mods work and there seems to be growing support for an ongoing blackout or so they say.

  • This article is absolutely scathing, great read.

    https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/reddit-ceo-steve-huffmans-third-party-api-debacle-is-making-elon-musk-look-like-a-strategic-genius.html

    • Maybe Reddit won't die but I think it will die for who read this article.

    • Anyone willing to copy it here for those with privacy browsers?

      • Here ya go...

        The basic idea of most websites is to create content, attract an audience, and then sell advertising that targets your audience. If your website attracts a large enough audience, you can make a good business out of selling advertising.

        Of course, if you build a website where your audience volunteers to create the content for free, and you still get to show them ads, that sounds like a really good business. That's basically all social media websites, though some of them (Facebook) are much better than others (Twitter).

        Reddit is an interesting case because not only do the people who use the website create all of the content, but they also do almost all of the heavy lifting of managing and moderating the site. That sounds like a really good gig, except Reddit hasn't ever really managed to make money. Yes, it gets all the content for free and sells ads, but not nearly to an extent that makes a profit.

        There's another problem, which is that if you give people a lot of control over your website, you'll build a thriving community--which seems like a good thing--but if you want to make changes that affect your community, they might get upset. They might even decide to protest. Considering the amount of control you gave them over your website, it doesn't seem ideal to have them angry or protesting.

        That's Reddit.

        On Monday, more than 7,000 Subreddits, the name for individual communities within the site, went private, effectively taking those parts of the website down. At some point, Reddit--in its entirety--went down.

        The protest comes in response to Reddit's decision to start charging for its API access. That API is used for things like scooping up Reddit's content to train large language models (LLMs) used by A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT. It's also used for creating third-party apps like Apollo, whose developer, Christian Selig, said last week that it should be shutting down because of the fact Reddit's API fees would cost him more than $20 million a year. For context, Selig says Apollo makes about $500,000 a year.

        Ostensibly, that's exactly what Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, wants. During an AMA last week, Huffman didn't hide his disdain for third-party apps that make a profit, even while Reddit does not. The thing is, if that's the case, he should have just said, "Hey, we're cutting off third-party access to our API for creating client apps since we don't make any money off of them."

        Instead, Huffman said he's happy to work with third-party apps, but it's obvious that's just a thing you say when you know none of them have the money to keep going. Reddit is under pressure to become profitable as it reportedly prepares for an IPO, and as investors have stopped putting in new money.

        This brings me to Elon Musk and Twitter. Earlier this year, Twitter pulled the plug on third-party developers. The difference is that the company was pretty clear that it just no longer wanted them to exist. If you're going to use Twitter, the company wants you to use its website or its own app. Again, the reason isn't hard to understand--Twitter doesn't make any money from anyone using a third-party app because they don't see Twitter's ads.

        If you're going to kill off your partners--who do bring value to your platform, even if you can't see it on the bottom line--you should just be honest about it. You should just say, "Hey, it's been a nice ride, but we're doing this differently from now on." That isn't to say that it isn't going to ruin some small businesses, but if that's your goal, you should own it.

        Sure, Musk took heat for killing off popular apps like Twitterific and Tweetbot. I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with this decision. It's not like Musk's Twitter hasn't been one chaotic move after another. At least, in this case, no one was pretending it was about anything other than getting everyone on the official platforms.

        On the other hand, Huffman wants to pretend this is all about LLMs or something else. This is purely about trying to find any way to increase revenue per user (which, again, is zero if you're using a third-party app) ahead of going public.

        Huffman even doubled down in a note to employees that was first reported by The Verge: 

         undefined
                There's a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we've seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward.

        Calling your users "noise" is maybe not the best way to win over your most important stakeholders. Instead, you just end up alienating the people you're going to need to make your business successful.

        That's the worst thing you can do in any business, but especially when if you built it on the goodwill of your users and partners. Alienating them is bad enough--not being honest about it is even worse.

        Edit: formatting

  • https://www.platformer.news/p/reddit-doubles-down

    According to Casey Newton, "It seems also notable that Reddit is moving to centralize control of its ecosystem at the precise time that the rest of industry has begun to explore more federated models. When even Meta is preparing to launch a decentralized social network, it’s fair to ask whether Reddit has misread the moment."

    My take: Reddit's API/IPO debacle puts them on the wrong side of history, as they double down on an outdated and unpopular social media model. Times are changing. What do you think?

  • I think a lot is riding on Reddit's promised rollout of new mod tools. If the new mod tools aren't available before the 1st, or if they're woefully inadequate compared to those of third party apps, a lot of mods are going to be upset. Particularly those moderating large subs.

176 comments