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I hate that the main issue reported is third party apps are dying. That’s a side effect, not the main issue.
The main issue is the access of the reddit’s data. We all built that. The volunteers who gave all of those hours to supervise that content is the real MVPs of reddit. Not the useless execs. The real founder of reddit has been gone for a while now (he was a true freedom fighter of access to knowledge).
The execs of reddit realize two main things. The first is the known idea that third party apps have the option to change how reddit looks to the user (including blocking ads). The other is that academic types and AI builders could use the content that we cultivated together in order to build datasets to train AI. The reddit execs know groups like these would be willing to pay extra for our data.
R.I.P. Aaron Swartz. It’s been 10 years and these are the issues you warned about and fought against.
For me its just the third party apps that I care about
I hope this whole ordeal, no matter how it goes down, ends up being a landmark for “social media as a monopoly”. I think there’s been a lot of talk about this in past years, with little real interest, because people are more interested in their next dopamine fix no matter how much they say they care about their data being sold. I hope this is the push we need to start considering these things for real. Most of us are uncomfortable with personal information being sold to 3rd parties, or knowing that users of these sites are technically the product being sold. It’s more weird and uncomfortable knowing the CEO and other execs are throwing a tantrum because user data and user submissions AREN’T being generated for them to sell to earn money to buy some yachts and golf courses.
Should social media be a public commodity, same way a community center or library is? Something paid for by taxes and regulated by government. I think it’s interesting in concept but odd to consider once you get into government censorship and surveillance aspects. Not a good idea either.
I think the older core of reddit has always viewed itself as a bottom-up community, rather than a social media platform. Reddit won’t die for now, but this is a sobering wakeup call from that idea.
Reddit is no freehaven, it’s now just another company, and slowly everyone on it will get squeezed into the businessmold…
I certainly never viewed it as a social media site. I joined it as a link aggregator and a way to find information on topics I thought were interesting, not make friends. It always seems odd to me when people refer to it as a social media site.
Everything that I liked about reddit was the fact that it was NOT social media. Everything they’ve done in the last decade (avatars and all that), I’ve religiously ignored.
Lol, I told my friend to join Lemmy and he immediately asked how to friend me. Pls no
Indeed. Reddit is knowb as the site where you talk with strangers on things you care about - whereas Facebook is talking with people you know about things you don’t care about.
Hmmm. Maybe it’s intentional. A purge. Flush out the old crowd with their adblockers and their nonsense ideas about “free speech,” and whoever stays – out of ignorance or compliance – is left with the ad-ridden hellscape that is the new interface and the official app.
Reddit *still is * a bottom-up community, that’s why all their monetization efforts never worked and there’s so much backlash against the API changes. All of the content and value on the site is created by the users and mods. Reddit the company doesn’t own that, and redditors take offense at management’s attempts to take advantage of the users’ free efforts for their own gain.
What Huffman and Reddit should have done was think long term and set up a Wikipedia-like entity that could have ensured the health and growth of the site while only taking a modest cut. Instead they tried to pump up the value and cash out with an IPO, and when that likely fails, they’ll end up with nothing.
I didnt know about lemmy or any of these federated alternatives and couldnt help but go back a few times. old habbits…i did already delete my account, so im just looking at top of popular and its all shit subs posting shit nobody cares about.
Mir offers another business metaphor for the tension on Reddit: “If you have a really good music venue, but you break relations with every notable artist, you’re not going to be a very successful venue. You need to really prioritize the needs of the folks providing the value on your platform.”
Honestly this sums it up pretty well
Additionally, it’s not even that good of a venue.
I was talking to my friend about this and asked if he could point out a single improvement that reddit has made in the last decade that hadn’t been about monetization, since I exclusively use old.reddit.com and third party apps, I certainly couldn’t. We couldn’t come up with anything…
There’s nothing. It’s been slowly getting more and more shitty for years. It’s just been happening so slowly that there wasn’t a breaking point where most of us left until now.
I’ve been casually looking for an alternative for years, because the content has gotten so low effort. There just hasn’t been any good alternatives. I tried Voat, but that got over run with racists and Trumpers almost from the jump.
Lemmy is the first thing I’ve found that seems half decent and it needs to triple ot quadruple it’s engaged user base to really have a shot. Too many posts with no comments or very few. What made reddit special was the comments and interactions. I have hope lemmy can get there, it just needs way more users to do so.
I agree. Lemmy is really promising but not quite at the critical mass yet. I’ve been trying to post more myself but we need consistentand sustained activity.
I think we’re gonna get there fairly soon. Lemmy.world only started on June 1. I joined a week ago when there were 1-2k users. Now there’s almost 30k.
I really hope so, but it will taper off at some point.
I think it depends on the user experience. If it’s good, then people will use it. That depends on people saying that it’s good to each other.
What made reddit special was the comments and interactions.
And in the past few months, I found several instances of karma farmers copying a good comment that was low in the thread and pasting it as a reply to one of the top comments to get visibility and upvotes. Idk if it was bots or people with no life, but I bet shit like that was happening much more than we realized, vastly padding engagement. Personally, I’d rather have a smaller and more authentic community here than disingenuous reposts, shitposts, botposts, trollposts, and general farming like what many subreddits became. I like that this platform seems to have much more thoughtful engagement between users who feel more like people than some cardboard cutout. I think we all can learn and grow as people by sincerely engaging in real discourse in the serious communities, and have interesting OC in less serious ones that are just about memes or storytelling or whatever.
I agree that interactions are special, and I agree that Lemmy needs more users, but I’m wary of bloating the userbase and packing garbage into here. I’d like to see a little growth, and give lurkers a reason to engage in an inviting community that isn’t hostile.
Reddit is inauthentic. Nothing but censorship everywhere. Nobody can say anything if you’re a real person and not a bot. I made a comment comparing new and old Star Trek in a Star Trek community, and my comments got deleted and I got a punishment ban for…some reason. I asked a question about others’ experiences with gay businesses under /AskGayBros and my question along with the thread was deleted, and I was banned for 3 days…for conducting illegal transactions. Those are just two examples, but there are plenty more. I pretty much know that if I post something on Reddit - no matter where and no matter what I say, it will get deleted and I will get banned for 3 days. No matter what. Nobody can say anything over there. I don’t think there are any real people posting, just bots. Because you have to watch what you say and even then, you will likely get deleted.
If I post ever my account is instantly permanently banned and I still don’t know why. AITA mods are incels
I bet reddit corporate is shitting bricks over chatgpt. They want to get their IPO and be able to sell their shares before AI upends online discussion. AI Bots are going to be a big deal, not in a good way.
Its a better analogy that Reddit pissed off the roadies, ushers, ticket takers, and other crew because they wanted 300% of the concession stand’s gross take.
I love how WIRED, being part of the commercialized, centralized internet itself, cannot bring themselves to mention actual Reddit alternatives like Lemmy or kbin, and end this write-up of Reddit’s folly with basically “uh so people might go back to tumblr, I dunno, maybe someone should like, give someone startup money for a like new Reddit and we can live the cycle of the good ol days again”. Yeah don’t worry guys, you’ll get us next time.
What a wet fart.
FTA:
(Disclosure: WIRED is a publication of Conde Nast, whose parent company, Advance Publications, has an ownership stake in Reddit.)
conde naste was reddit and wired’s parent company and I believe still a major shareholder so probably why
They mentioned “federated alternatives”
cast yourself into the kiln, and ignite the age of fire once again
Reddit won’t really die. It will filter out users that (I believe) are providing value to community. Reddit will keep corporate marketers, bots and fake discussion.
Anyone who has been online long enough has learned to deal with the fact that sites and communities they love almost never stay the same over enough time. Even here on the Fediverse we already have situations like Beehaw defederating.
I still think that’s one of the most damaging events to the success of the fediverse over the past week
People, including admins, have a right to make dumb decisions. They can be unfortunate, but it’s better to allow dumb decisions than to have a singular, benevolent ruler like Spez pre-2023.
How are none of these news organizations reporting that is not about the API becoming a payed service, but rather about the amount of money they are charging for it… It’s quite infuriating.
The rich control the narrative.
The faster reddit dies the better for the internet as a whole.
I think it’s sad. There is so much good information stored in the side bars, like for example /r/buildapc or /r/fitness, that I hope gets salvaged by the fediverse.
Plus our spaces here need indexing so we can find answers to obscure questions again.
I’ll likely to exist for a while. Myspace still does. So plenty of time to migrate over a lot of that useful information.
Indexing is happening already, so just a matter of time.
Yet another article that (knowingly or not) frames it as “people don’t want to pay for the API”:
Reddit charging for access to its API is also about more than just third-party clients, Bruckman says. A move like this has angered so many people on Reddit because it feels like a betrayal of the community’s trust.
No mention that several third-party app creators are fine with paying for API access, as long as they can build a business model around the pricing.
The more this drags on, the less people think this is about money, and more about controlling the platform.
A real business person finds a common ground, sets terms everyone can at least pay forward. Because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if I have $100 lemonade, if no one is able to buy it.
I really don’t understand why reddit doesn’t just charge end uses for API access. Heck chuck it in with premium or something. They can generate an API that you use in whatever client you wanted.
I’d happily pay Reddit for a key to then use in Apollo, but bizarrely this isn’t an option. It’s not like Reddit lacks the ability to charge end users, they already have premium after all.
Because they don’t want 3rd party apps to exist at all.
at this point, even if reddit backpedals on their decision it will be just for damage control not because they care about the community.
If reddit backpedals, even just for damage control, it will cement just how much power the users and mods have over that site. As it should.
I think that’s precisely why spez is going to do everything he can not to backpedal.
Actions have consequences.
I love how WIRED, being part of the commercialized, centralized internet itself, cannot bring themselves to mention actual Reddit alternatives like Lemmy or kbin, and end this write-up of Reddit’s folly with basically “uh so people might go back to tumblr, I dunno, maybe someone should like, give someone startup money for a like new Reddit and we can live the cycle of the good ol days again”. Yeah don’t worry guys, you’ll get us next time.
What a wet fart.
Reddit has been a terrible site since I joined it. They’re insane outages and comments just failing. Lemmy even with its bugs it much better. The future is bright.
Convenient how Wired (who is owned by Conde Nast who is owned by Advance Publications who has a stake of ownership in Reddit) mentions that “Like with Twitter, no clear alternative has emerged as a replacement.” and fails to mentioned the fediverse or forums.
Not to whitewash the take, but it’s a bigger issue.
The idea of success and being big meaning nearly the same as being relevant are the true villains of the story here. Every business wants to go big, every businessperson wants to make more, every platform wants to aggregate more and more content, etc. The people making the most impactful decisions in companies are plagued with these ideas and lead their businesses in the opposite direction, while staying blind to the alternatives, no matter how small, because they believe that the fact that their users are fleeing to smaller places is a joke, a temporary inconvenience, or a failure.
But it’s not, truly.
Kbin and Lemmy and Mastodon and Calckey are, indeed, smaller platforms than Reddit and Twitter are, with less content and fewer people, but the fact of the matter is that is a considerable amount of people that fled both Reddit and Twitter for good in favor of smaller, to some “less relevant” platforms. The effect is the same - less traffic for Reddit and Twitter, less influence from these two, less ad revenue.
I don’t want to sound like I truly believe that CEOs and other exec-level people are stupid and make decisions based on ego and simple solutions (like looking at numbers and judging nothing but the numbers), but hell, it does feel like humanity, as a whole, is not perfectly capable of properly functioning at the scale we’re trying to function at right now. Smaller companies are more sensible and have higher net profit margin, smaller communities are often safer and more welcoming (on top of being more manageable, too), smaller projects are easier to keep track of and deliver with more satisfying results, etc. Execs don’t seem like the type of people to even consider these simple facts, instead opting for being the bigger fish with the bigger wallet and market share.
Maybe that’s just me feeling increasingly less comfortable about anything that is sized to unmanageable degrees, thus just seeing things… but then again, that’s the tendencies we’ve seen time and time again in this late stage capitalism, with synergy becoming the same good ol’ monopoly, while the common folk begrudge another “mall”, its policies, and their results.
Damn I really feel this. I own a game dev studio and the pressure to make the biggest, best selling game is real from all sides (publishers, staff, gamers). However the people who fund games (publishers, platforms, etc.) are starting to understand AAA is too expensive and takes too long to make. There’s some silver lining in that more ‘medium’ experiences are getting a chance and I want to stay at this scale because I know infinite growth is just a recipe for eventual collapse. I may never own a mega yacht but I will happily work with my friends and take care of my family by being content with what risk and reward is available at this scale.
While you have absolutely made some good points here, particularly psychologically, there is a good reason these larger corporations and entities came in to existence and then became so effective.
As much as we are typically tribal animals rather than herd, we can’t ignore the simple facts of economies of scale and de-duplication of effort. The Fediverse will need to use more hardware than reddit would to support the same number of users as they spread across instances, and the admins of the various instances are all having to do the same kinds of setup, troubleshooting, scaling tasks as their communities grow, that reddit only had to do once.
You’re right that it’s a bigger issue, but it’s also a little more complex than your comment presents, I think.
Are you surprised? The status quo does not want a new competitor. Unfortunately for us, the easiest way to keep the fediverse down is to not even acknowledge it as an option.
it’s going to be a pain to find something amid the sea of federated upstarts that all claim to be the next best thingThey kinda bring it up but nothing is named directly.
That’s also pretty dismissive. Who’s claiming to be the “next big thing”? And also, if they’re federating with each other, does it actually matter?
Like I know BlueSky isn’t federating with ActivityPub sites, but once their protocol is released, there’s a very good chance that it gets integrated into at least some Fediverse projects.
