This sounds ridiculous even to me, but it’s a strange feeling to see the death of Reddit. It’s the only quasi-social network I’ve used for a decade, and there are many communities that I feel at home in.
It’s almost like grief, or feeling untethered somehow.
Honestly I'm taking this as an excuse to quit Reddit completely.
It eats around 60 to 90 minutes of my days, which realistically means I spend 10% of the time I'm awake on Reddit.
I've already eliminated all the other socials and that has been very good for me, my mental health, my productivity, now it's time to move from Reddit too.
Besides, the user experience on the website has been nothing but degrading for years, so they making this quite simple for me to do.
I think a large part of my grief of Reddit is the vast amount of knowledge and usefulness that's there. I use it as a hub of information far more than I use it as social media, and yes a lot of that may still be accessible (especially with archive) but the creation of that content dies today.
> This sounds ridiculous even to me, but it’s a strange feeling to see the death of Reddit.
The reports of Reddit's death are greatly exaggerated.
I imagine everything will go back to the status quo as soon as this protest is over. The mods have no real leverage, and a temporary outage like this isn't going to suddenly make a bunch of people switch to some other site.
Reddit is highly addicting but usually brings me little joy. Most of the time when I'm just browsing the front page I don't laugh or learn anything particularly useful.
But in a web full of bots and SEO blogspam, it's refreshing to have a place that is predominantly filled with content and comments by real people. Sure, it has tons of low effort posts and comments, but it's one of the few places on the Internet where you can ask a question about nearly any topic and get tons of answers from real people, and due to its voting system, in certain subreddits about specific enough topics, quality answers rise to the top.
As a tool, Reddit is indispensable due to how bad SEO spam has gotten. If I want an answer written by a human who probably has no financial incentive to lie, adding site:reddit.com to my searches is by far the quickest way to do so. For certain topics, it's not just the quickest, but the only way certain information can be found.
If Reddit dies or (more likely) becomes useless due to poor moderation, it's not hard to imagine us entering a new chapter of the Information Age. Many local newspapers no longer exist, and many magazines covering more niche topics have also shut down. People gladly share their experiences and discoveries on Reddit because they know many people will see it (easier to get motivated to write long posts if you know someone will read them.) Will people be willing to put that effort into writing on their own blogs? Many won't, as no one will even know it exists (before you could share your blog on Reddit!) Even if someone still goes through the effort of writing quality content on a blog or self-hosted site, again, it will be very difficult for anyone to find it due to SEO spam.
This is such a stupid situation they've put themselves in. I get that they want to show ads, but I don't think ads not being shown is why people use 3rd party apps. On desktop, I'd rather use old.reddit.com with ads than new Reddit without ads: new Reddit is buggier, slower and shows less content. And they trivially could have added the features mods wanted that are offered by the 3rd party apps. No one would use 3rd party apps if the official one wasn't so slow, buggy and lacking.
I understand the advantages of not having so much of the Internet's content all on one site, but I'm just not convinced the average user is going to switch to decentralized/federated/peer-to-peer social networks. People may stop using Twitter, but most of those former users aren't going to start using Mastodon. Likewise, people may stop using Reddit, but I don't think they're going to start using Lemmy or any of the other alternatives. As far as random forums go, discoverability is going to be an incredibly difficult, and in any case it's far easier for a user with little technical knowledge to start a subreddit vs starting and maintaining a forum.
I dread to think how much of my life I've wasted on Reddit. But for all its faults, I think it has added a lot of value, and I think the Internet would be a worse place without it.
I'm backing the effort by not even landing on reddit. And it's odd. I have found reddit to be helpful over the (now many) years.
I'm coming to the conclusion that capitalism destroys social media for me by causing the business to make it unpalatable to me. Oh well. I'm sure I'll survive without it.
I gave up on Reddit during the corona years when pleading with people to not create a QR-code underclass got me banned, permanently, from my national subreddit.
This isn't some major subreddit run by the same mod cabal either.
Reddit moderation is a poisoned chalice. It attracts the worst kind of people and pushes out the best.
It's really kind of crazy to see. I just checked some of my favorite subs and out of 22 subs I checked, 20 are currently private.
I've seen some people claim that it's just the "powermods" pushing for these blackouts, but that's not my experience at all. Several medium-size subs I frequent (none of them moderated by powermods) made polls and the result was always the same: an overwhelming majority (like 90%+) of users were in favor of shutting down the subreddit.
I really hope Reddit can be saved. It'd be a shame to lose it like this.
I am not going to to the site at all today, I mostly lurk in the sysadmin subreddit anyway and they have choosen not to go dark for reasons I disagree with
but regardless, I removing myself from the traffic of the site..
by the 30th I plan on archiving all my historical comments, and deleting my accounts
Far from a Powermod, I'm a mod of a single tiny subreddit with <1,000 subscribers and took it private this morning (0800 UTC). I didn't advertise it on this site, but we agreed it was best to join the efforts.
I have mostly for the last six years used Apollo to moderate the sub, but that will not work from July onwards, I will probably not un-private the sub.
I was watching the stream earlier. It was an exciting feeling to have 10,000 people viewing, and cheering on the chat whenever a new subreddit went dark.
I don't know if I should be excited or sad. Reddit is dying, but I'm seeing it live on Twitch with the community cheering on in a festive atmosphere.
The stupidest part of all of this is all Reddit's problems are self inflicted. Reddit the company produces almost nothing. Reddit the users make the site what it is. The users submit all the content, make all the comments, and moderate the site.
Reddit's executives however seem to think they are somehow critical to Reddit's existence and utility. If they all got replaced tomorrow with competent people no one would fucking notice. Everyone would notice if all of Reddit's users disappeared tomorrow.
Reddit is making the same stupid value estimation Digg made.
I remember a time when when people actually liked reddit. And would buy reddit gold with the intention of helping out host the site. Seems like Ellen Pao and the IAMA drama was the turning point that soured the users against the company.
I’ve never seen Reddit the company as valuable. People are valuable, and they just happen to gather on Reddit. If Reddit goes away they will gather somewhere else.
Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but if Reddit doesn't backtrack what's the endgame here? I've seen multiple subs indicate they intend to fully shutdown if the API changes continue, but for the popular ones what's to stop Reddit from just appointing new mods and starting the sub back up?
I feel like some of the "smaller" communities can't really have their mods replaced without some work. Programming subreddits need mods with the right programming background to make executive decisions like banning the next NFT-like scheme, for example, which a generic person going through posts and deciding if it's against the TOS couldn't do.
What tools will those new moderators use? The mods of any decent size subreddit have to use third party tools because the first party ones are apparently garbage.
I think a better question is what's Reddit's endgame? Mods of huge subreddits will just capitulate and use Reddit's crappy tools to do their unpaid work? Somehow those subreddits won't be flooded with spam and trolls? People will stick around to look at ads when every other post on /r/awwww is gore because the mods won't be able to keep up? Everyone will just download the complete shit that is the official Reddit app?
That surreal to me too, mostly because there there are no offered alternative such as forum or even clone. (i mean open reddark and just list)
I think from reddit perspective that could be considered as jackpot: 48 hours downtime it just 0.6% ( 100-((363/365)*100)) over year, if it is keep going - update TOS (something like - huge subreddits cannot be converted to private and etc.) and just replace mods...
As for endgame I think slowly users will start leaving, but it could take years.
Keep in mind this is 80% of the subreddits that announced would be participating in the event. There are over 3.5 million subreddits altogether, though of course most of them are dead or with a single user.
Not sure I would consider mods unilaterally shutting down their forums and hiding information that was contributed by millions of other people a triumph for the wider community. Speaking as somebody who only ever visits Reddit when a thread appears in a search result and occasionally replies if the mods didn't implement a policy of automatically deleting posts from outsiders, now the information I need is not there, and neither is the information I contributed. Great win for the community.
What I really wish people learned from all these issues with Twitter and Reddit is that the best way to avoid abuse of power is to not let power concentrate so much in any single centralized entity.
We don't need everyone with technical skills to make something completely decentralized. How about we take the (I don't know) 3-4% of the population who does have enough sills to buy a domain, manage a server (even if only through basic click-ops) and to offer these services for their closest friends and family?
Hah, conspiracy theory of the day I guess. The kagi folks are behind all of this, making google less useful to gain a competitive advantage. Case closed. :D
[+] [-] mathieuh|2 years ago|reply
It’s almost like grief, or feeling untethered somehow.
[+] [-] epolanski|2 years ago|reply
It eats around 60 to 90 minutes of my days, which realistically means I spend 10% of the time I'm awake on Reddit.
I've already eliminated all the other socials and that has been very good for me, my mental health, my productivity, now it's time to move from Reddit too.
Besides, the user experience on the website has been nothing but degrading for years, so they making this quite simple for me to do.
[+] [-] redundantly|2 years ago|reply
Will apathy help Reddit to succeed? Will users and communities end this protest and go back to business as usual?
Will Reddit buckle under pressure and go back on the API changes?
Is this the beginning of the end?
Or will Reddit drastically change because of this and it will be unrecognisable in the years to come?
It's an interesting time.
[+] [-] core-utility|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JeremyNT|2 years ago|reply
The reports of Reddit's death are greatly exaggerated.
I imagine everything will go back to the status quo as soon as this protest is over. The mods have no real leverage, and a temporary outage like this isn't going to suddenly make a bunch of people switch to some other site.
[+] [-] benjaminwootton|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnfernow|2 years ago|reply
But in a web full of bots and SEO blogspam, it's refreshing to have a place that is predominantly filled with content and comments by real people. Sure, it has tons of low effort posts and comments, but it's one of the few places on the Internet where you can ask a question about nearly any topic and get tons of answers from real people, and due to its voting system, in certain subreddits about specific enough topics, quality answers rise to the top.
As a tool, Reddit is indispensable due to how bad SEO spam has gotten. If I want an answer written by a human who probably has no financial incentive to lie, adding site:reddit.com to my searches is by far the quickest way to do so. For certain topics, it's not just the quickest, but the only way certain information can be found.
If Reddit dies or (more likely) becomes useless due to poor moderation, it's not hard to imagine us entering a new chapter of the Information Age. Many local newspapers no longer exist, and many magazines covering more niche topics have also shut down. People gladly share their experiences and discoveries on Reddit because they know many people will see it (easier to get motivated to write long posts if you know someone will read them.) Will people be willing to put that effort into writing on their own blogs? Many won't, as no one will even know it exists (before you could share your blog on Reddit!) Even if someone still goes through the effort of writing quality content on a blog or self-hosted site, again, it will be very difficult for anyone to find it due to SEO spam.
This is such a stupid situation they've put themselves in. I get that they want to show ads, but I don't think ads not being shown is why people use 3rd party apps. On desktop, I'd rather use old.reddit.com with ads than new Reddit without ads: new Reddit is buggier, slower and shows less content. And they trivially could have added the features mods wanted that are offered by the 3rd party apps. No one would use 3rd party apps if the official one wasn't so slow, buggy and lacking.
I understand the advantages of not having so much of the Internet's content all on one site, but I'm just not convinced the average user is going to switch to decentralized/federated/peer-to-peer social networks. People may stop using Twitter, but most of those former users aren't going to start using Mastodon. Likewise, people may stop using Reddit, but I don't think they're going to start using Lemmy or any of the other alternatives. As far as random forums go, discoverability is going to be an incredibly difficult, and in any case it's far easier for a user with little technical knowledge to start a subreddit vs starting and maintaining a forum.
I dread to think how much of my life I've wasted on Reddit. But for all its faults, I think it has added a lot of value, and I think the Internet would be a worse place without it.
[+] [-] LLcolD|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmsonger|2 years ago|reply
I'm backing the effort by not even landing on reddit. And it's odd. I have found reddit to be helpful over the (now many) years.
I'm coming to the conclusion that capitalism destroys social media for me by causing the business to make it unpalatable to me. Oh well. I'm sure I'll survive without it.
[+] [-] unconed|2 years ago|reply
This isn't some major subreddit run by the same mod cabal either.
Reddit moderation is a poisoned chalice. It attracts the worst kind of people and pushes out the best.
[+] [-] AegirLeet|2 years ago|reply
I've seen some people claim that it's just the "powermods" pushing for these blackouts, but that's not my experience at all. Several medium-size subs I frequent (none of them moderated by powermods) made polls and the result was always the same: an overwhelming majority (like 90%+) of users were in favor of shutting down the subreddit.
I really hope Reddit can be saved. It'd be a shame to lose it like this.
[+] [-] phpisthebest|2 years ago|reply
but regardless, I removing myself from the traffic of the site..
by the 30th I plan on archiving all my historical comments, and deleting my accounts
[+] [-] lawgimenez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yootyootr|2 years ago|reply
I have mostly for the last six years used Apollo to moderate the sub, but that will not work from July onwards, I will probably not un-private the sub.
[+] [-] bmarquez|2 years ago|reply
I don't know if I should be excited or sad. Reddit is dying, but I'm seeing it live on Twitch with the community cheering on in a festive atmosphere.
[+] [-] giantrobot|2 years ago|reply
Reddit's executives however seem to think they are somehow critical to Reddit's existence and utility. If they all got replaced tomorrow with competent people no one would fucking notice. Everyone would notice if all of Reddit's users disappeared tomorrow.
Reddit is making the same stupid value estimation Digg made.
[+] [-] Gigachad|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valine|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Exmoor|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway202351|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giantrobot|2 years ago|reply
I think a better question is what's Reddit's endgame? Mods of huge subreddits will just capitulate and use Reddit's crappy tools to do their unpaid work? Somehow those subreddits won't be flooded with spam and trolls? People will stick around to look at ads when every other post on /r/awwww is gore because the mods won't be able to keep up? Everyone will just download the complete shit that is the official Reddit app?
[+] [-] mrktf|2 years ago|reply
I think from reddit perspective that could be considered as jackpot: 48 hours downtime it just 0.6% ( 100-((363/365)*100)) over year, if it is keep going - update TOS (something like - huge subreddits cannot be converted to private and etc.) and just replace mods...
As for endgame I think slowly users will start leaving, but it could take years.
[+] [-] scrollop|2 years ago|reply
https://reddark.untone.uk/
[+] [-] fho|2 years ago|reply
With all of the big subreddits going "dark" my feed is dominated by all those small community subreddits that I actively subscribed to.
Honestly it's somewhat refreshing to open reddit and nothing has changed on my frontpage.
[+] [-] aunty_helen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alisonatwork|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallinghawks|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobAley|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robotguy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alifatisk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rglullis|2 years ago|reply
What I really wish people learned from all these issues with Twitter and Reddit is that the best way to avoid abuse of power is to not let power concentrate so much in any single centralized entity.
We don't need everyone with technical skills to make something completely decentralized. How about we take the (I don't know) 3-4% of the population who does have enough sills to buy a domain, manage a server (even if only through basic click-ops) and to offer these services for their closest friends and family?
[+] [-] tjpnz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Firebrand|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattkevan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capableweb|2 years ago|reply
If you use Brave, I think there even is a built in redirect to Wayback if the page loaded is failing.
[+] [-] black_puppydog|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hospitalJail|2 years ago|reply
Devils advocate of course, I love my third party apps.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] janfrode|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denvrede|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] activiation|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chakintosh|2 years ago|reply