this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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243
The Reddit Blackout Is Breaking Reddit (www.wired.com)
submitted 1 year ago by sexy_peach@feddit.de to c/technology@beehaw.org
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“They’re shooting themselves in the foot,” Mir says. “The content of the users is what makes the platform worth visiting. These hosts kind of run into this confusion that their hosting is the reason people are going there, but it’s really for the other users on the medium.”

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[–] dan@lemm.ee 176 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

If it wasn't hurting them they wouldn't be doing damage control.

It's working, keep it up.

[–] heartlessevil@lemmy.one 47 points 1 year ago (7 children)

It's seriously hilarious that the "damage control" has been more damaging than the blackout itself

[–] darkmugglet@lemm.ee 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ironically, if Reddit has been up front and said they were killing third party apps, and kept their mouths shut they would have faired better. For a stupid play like this, speaking only makes it worse. This is going to be taught in business school on how to kill a business.

[–] TechyDad@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They could have even gotten third party apps to pay for API access. They just needed to set a fair rate and a workable timeline for the change.

Instead, they said "we're charging $20 million starting next month. Good luck trying to stay afloat with those sudden costs!"

Reddit could have increased their profits and kept users/moderators happy, but they chose Burn It All Down instead.

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[–] the_robomafia@readit.buzz 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Definitely I would have gone back if not for the complete and total disrespect spez has shown towards the community

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Honestly I think every time spez says something stupid it convinces another wave of Redditors to check out Lemmy

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 20 points 1 year ago

The exit didn't start with the API announcement, just gained steam. What's truly baffling is that Reddit seems to want data on where users' final straw is.

[–] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.fmhy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Who knew the best "celebrity" endorsement for the fediverse comes from the CEO of Reddit...

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[–] Alfredo_Boyardee@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

There’s a term for that. The Streisand Effect, I think.

[–] themadcodger@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

That's in the same vein as "it's not the crime it's the cover-up"

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[–] lunacybooth@readit.buzz 36 points 1 year ago

They wouldn't be lying about trying to work with devs

Its fascinating watching him keep digging. He bullshits, gets caught out, so he bullshits about a different dev. Rinse. Repeat.

[–] redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com 16 points 1 year ago

I haven't been to Reddit for a few days and they did these stuff already? Let's keep this up.

[–] CarolinaBlues@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] dan@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Thanks I've been trying to fill in those claims with links so this one is great :)

[–] Bobbinapples@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They wouldn't be posting propaganda notices on new reddit's homepage

I want to know more about this, i haven't heard of this yet.

[–] dan@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This appears at the top of the page until you dismiss it (at least for me): https://i.imgur.com/Uo3t2TI.jpg

Here’s what it links to: https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16693988535309

Yesterday they were linking to some much more blatant propaganda, here's the link: https://www.redditinc.com/blog/apifacts

[–] QHC@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

I like how it says their "updated" API rate limits but doesn't mention when those rules went into effect or how much warning they gave developers.

Spoiler: the answers are "very recently" and "not even a month".

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[–] density@kbin.social 59 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.”

Brilliant. Reddit looks out at a crowd of people at a packed show and says "ok we could lose 5%". But those are the ones who return another night as musicians. And you cant run a music venue long term with open mic 7 nights per week.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

Plus, you shut down the pipeline. No one's going to make the jump from the other 95% if the content sucks.

[–] storksforlegs@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Plus you dont want to pay bouncers so the number of assholes is going to keep creeping up

[–] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 58 points 1 year ago

funny how the article does not mention lemmy or kbin, but put in disclosure that their parent company have stakes in reddit. And the best the author can do is

If users have invested significant time in a community, it’s going to be a pain to find something amid the sea of federated upstarts that all claim to be the next best thing.

The mentioned article by Rory Mir actually mentioned lemmy and kbin, cause it's EFF. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/what-reddit-got-wrong

[–] holo_nexus@kbin.social 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What really did it for me was Huffman’s quote on how “Reddit users, communities, and discussions are one of the largest data sets that cannot be given away for free” (summarized quote).

The rumored IPO made an entire corporation do a 180 so ruthlessly and clumsily in a way that I have never seen. It’s destroying itself and rightfully so.

[–] dan@lemm.ee 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I honestly can't believe he's being so egotistical about it. Insults mods as "landed gentry" and users' concerns as "noise" - those are literally the people that have created this "valuable dataset" he's coveting so greedily.

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[–] Bowen@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fidelity dropping reddit's valuation by ~40% made me go "oh boy that's bad news" when I saw it at the start of the month.

Imagine thinking you're cashing out at 10 billion and now you're only getting 6. The horror.

[–] Nechesh@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Imagine you're an employee thinking you're going to have stock worth 100k, and suddenly it's worth 60k and falling.

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[–] techno156@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

Except that it already has been. They've already scraped it, and can refer back to either the archives, or just scrape Reddit like they do with other websites if they want to pull more information.

They didn't pay before, why would they bother paying now? Worst case is that they just exclude Reddit (like they did Twitter), and train from other sites instead. It's no great loss.

[–] arcticpiecitylights@beehaw.org 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Corrected headline: The Reddit API Cash Grab is Breaking Reddit

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[–] Johnnypneumoniac@lemmy.one 34 points 1 year ago (11 children)

I want it to hurt them. I want it to fail. But I fear they're doing this now because they've run the numbers and are pretty sure the vocal minority that will leave permanently won't be noticed in a month.

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.de 55 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Look, I am happy as long as there are enough people on lemmy and kbin to have a fun website here. I can go and visit reddit now and then to see what kind of stuff they're upvoting, that's not a problem. But I want the potentially better alternatives to grow.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's the spirit. We don't need to complete obliterate reddit to make it the better alternatives viable. We just need to get a minimal mass of people here to keep momentum growing.

I keep thinking of Taleb's essay where he talks about how effective a intolerant minority can be on affecting change in general behavior.

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[–] holo_nexus@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly. Reddit itself should be a case study. Lemmy and Kbin offer an opportunity to build something great and learn from what made current Reddit (the good and the terrible) what it is and some things to avoid.

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[–] heartlessevil@lemmy.one 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Well, two things about that. In their interviews, Huffman says this decision making is based on Elon Musk at Twitter. I think this implies that Huffman is not basing this on numbers but on ideology and an example set by Musk. It's simply "If I'm a rich tech bro and a richer tech bro does x, I can become a richer tech bro by copying them!"

Secondly, they can crunch the numbers, it doesn't mean they are right, or that they are not subject to change in unexpected ways. Digg V4 was also a calculated decision, but they greviously miscalculated.

[–] asclepias@beehaw.org 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I doubt anyone on the Reddit payroll tells spez the unvarnished truth right now. Musk's employees infamously curate their interactions with him. I read somewhere about one (I want to say working in info-sec for Tesla) who kept an extra monitor with a Matrix style scroll of bullshit because it matched Musk's perception of what a busy person in that field should have up.

[–] Banzai51@midwest.social 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It also came out that Musk's businesses have a Musk disaster mitigation team that reverses his bad decisions, and "guide" him. But Twitter didn't have that, so that is why his reign has been so disastrous.

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[–] mim@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, there was a viable and easy to use alternative (Reddit). And the community was largely tech savvy.

Today there are more computer users, so the average tech literacy is higher, but the tech literacy of the average computer user is lower. People want slick, easy to use, centralised solutions.

I'm not too concerned about this thought. I think realistically the fediverse could achieve a critical mass to keep it going, but won't be too large that it becomes just a bunch of noise (like Reddit).

[–] Lowbird@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There are fewer computer users, when you look at it by proportion of the population, since most people who aren't into PC gaming, programming, video editing and similar have switched to just using phones and tablets.

That said, there are still plenty enough people to keep the fediverse going, and frankly I don't think it needs to be nearly as unintuitive to the average user as it is. That's a design problem.

Granted, I've thought the same of Linux for ages. It could be as intuitive and user friendly as windows... Except the people who create it are largely nerds who cater to themselves and fellow nerds, and who even take pride in using a relatively inaccessible system, which results in both the absence of basic features (like no color blind mode! In 2023! C'mon) and forums that are mean and condescending to anyone who asks a question (not everyone is like this, of course - there are people who genuinely try to help others get into Linux - but there are enough other people doing the opposite that it's very unpleasant to deal with as a newbie.)

All of which is to say, whether the fediverse can become mainstream or not depends on whether it can overcome its own nerd culture and prioritize ease of use. I hope it will, but Linux hasn't yet, even after all these years (although it is a little better, arguably, at least). We'll see I guess.

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[–] Fu3go@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Regular users don't care about the mod drama. The real backlash will start on July 1st when all the apps stop working.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 13 points 1 year ago

I hope the real thing is more just stop doing their volunteer work. I hope spam and bots run amok, NSFW gets posted everywhere, reports to unanswered and people devolve into screaming matches.

[–] Shhalahr@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When the "vocal minority" are the ones providing quality content and weeding out the crap (i.e. power users and mods), it will take its toll. That minority is critical for making the whole thing work.

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[–] ElysiumXII@beehaw.org 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hope Redditors don't cave and cease protesting, clearly it's working if Reddit has to force subs to reopen.

[–] Smellmop@beehaw.org 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I haven't been on since the 10th and I was on it near constantly before that. If reddit sync isn't going to be around 10 days from now then I have no plans to use the site anything like I used to. I literally have no desire to learn their crappy app and lose the curated experience I had set up for myself. The only redditing I plan for the future is googling for specific questions in niche communities.

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[–] kazarnowicz@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Same here. I'm trying to find other ways to support the protests. The community I'm moderating there will migrate over to here (yay!) but I don't expect more than a couple hundred to move. I will keep moderating the community over there (because we're a gay community and a safe space for trans men which is sorely lacking on Reddit), but I've deleted the app from my phone and only use old.reddit.com with uBlock origin to make sure I'm not contributing to Reddit's bottom line.

[–] Linnce@beehaw.org 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“Any plan that involves endless and continuous growth is bound to run into scale issues, which is where I think Reddit and Twitter are running into problems,” Mir says. “You can’t inflate the balloon forever. It will pop at some point.”

I'm looking at you too, Netflix.

[–] HeavyCream@beehaw.org 26 points 1 year ago

stares at capitalism

[–] coupland@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It boggles my mind that I read this sentence near the end of the article:

"Force everyone to interact on one app, and it’s easier to fill their feeds with whatever advertising you want."

This isn't a quote from an expert, these are the actual words of the author of the article. "fill their needs.... with advertising."

Nobody has "advertising needs." It shows how fucked-up the internet has become when a journalist writes something like this unironically, without even attempting to explain themselves. They just assume everyone believes they have advertising needs. Unreal.

[–] SleepingInTraffic@feddit.uk 9 points 1 year ago

This isn’t a quote from an expert, these are the actual words of the author of the article. “fill their needs… with advertising.”

Feeds not needs. You even wrote that when you quoted the author.

[–] Hexarei@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago

That says fill their feeds, no? Not needs?

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[–] runarskoll@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not trying to sound like La Palice but in all the articles and posts about this issue, they seem to miss the core of what is making users mad (the mods fight is different, although in the same direction, but solvable).

The thing to the user who's generating content and not only swiping their finger is: they don't want to experience Reddit as other users experience Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or Twitter. They follow issues, not people. If you get in the middle of this relationship between the anonymous user and their discussion on an issue, with your tricks to track them, to show them your promoted content, etc. you'll be told to fuck off.

There's nothing to improve in the Reddit Official App. Everybody hates the principles it's created on, much ahead of the poor design choices and lack of features. That's what's being taken from us, by hijacking third-party apps: the possibility to focus strictly on what's being discussed.

[–] slartibartfast42@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago

Reddit’s plans—driven by an urge to make the company more profitable as it inches toward going public

Correction: Reddit's plan is driven by an urge to make the company profitable.

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