Reddit protest updates: news on the apps shutting down and Reddit’s fights with mods - The Verge
Reddit protest updates: news on the apps shutting down and Reddit’s fights with mods
I think it's all had a bigger impact on Lemmy than it has had on Reddit. The lasting impact might be that Reddit now has viable competition for the first time since Digg, which is a good thing.
Yeah. They do not realize that despite “their traffic being back to normal” they destroyed their monopoly status. It’s a slow rot. But a rot that will kill their value eventually. And I am here for it.
Yeah. I don't expect Reddit to necessarily collapse immediately, or Lemmy to replace Reddit for all Reddit users. I'm just happy if Lemmy becomes at least a medium-sized social network. That means that it would have moved from a niche platform into a large enough ecosystem to sustain itself, and become a viable alternative to Reddit, like you said.
With a huge platform like Reddit, the impact of the current events might not be instantly obvious. But with everything going on recently with Twitter, Reddit, Mastodon, Lemmy, and even Threads, I think it's clear that there's some kind of transformation of the social media landscape going on. But how long it will take, and what the end result will look like, is anybody's guess. Maybe it's the fall of the old giants and a rise of new, more democratic platforms. Maybe the giants keep standing, but significantly weakened, with a bunch of new, smaller, more open platforms becoming real alternatives. Or maybe it's something else.
Be it as it may, I'm glad that the status quo is being shaken up a bit.
I'd be happy if Lemmy becomes like what Reddit was when it started and never grew beyond that. I don't need tons of clickbait outrage trash to doomscroll though every day.
What really helps is the power users and moderators moved over too this time. Hopefully with this type of userbase Lemmy will be able to self-moderate and won't end up like Voat.
I hate to see the content we created help fund the pockets of spez and his fellow crooks, but at the same time I'd also hate to see tonnes of possibly the most valuable information on the internet going down the drain. I'll be happier to see Lemmy get to the point where people can say "there's a community for everything" more than seeing the collapse of Reddit.
*pre-2010 Digg
Digg after that was no longer competition. It was an ad-riddled trash-fire which drove a massive number of its users away to places like reddit... including myself... who just kinda did something similar with reddit.
It did indeed, I knew nothing about the fediverse before the reddit protest began, didn't even know lemmy existed, now I happily migrated here, like me many other people.
Same, joined last week after my app of choice was killed. Already spending more time here than i was at the end of my time on reddit.
Was getting so sick of the rage-bait, low quality comments and general snarky behavior, i might have quit anyway. So much better here.
While I see many comments regarding the Reddit changes, unfortunately I am not seeing much discussion in any other posts yet.
Dropped Reddit a month ago after 12 years of daily use and while it was tough in the initial days Lemmy/Kbin activity has really picked up and is beginning to absolutely fill the gap. Just need the apps and a bit more stability and think it's going to be a proper successor.
When the protest started I poked around the Fediverse and it was a ghost town and was a little concerned that Reddit might not have any competition. But since the end of June posts and content have been going way up, and the quality of the posts is way better than Reddit, even before spez fucked things up.
Yeah I think a lot of people were skeptical if Reddit would actually follow through initially... I know I was. I thought they would back pedal, but realized shortly after Spez's disastrous AMA that wasn't gonna happen. Someone else mentioned Lemmy in a different thread and that's how I first heard of it. After some research to learn about the fediverse and ActivityPub, badda-bing, badda-boom, I'm here and haven't looked back.
Same here.
There are a few (very few) communities I am still waiting to become active and useful here but Reddit has been moved to page 4 or my social media folder and I rarely ever scroll to it.
Good riddance too. The move to Lemmy/Kbin also pushed me back onto Mastodon and I could not be happier.
I think a big help will be creating a streamlined sign-up process in the apps themselves. Menus to pick a server and create an account. Maybe tell the user which servers are biggest/ask if they wanna browse servers by specific content leanings. That way it’s not intimidating. I’m a tech guy and even I was a bit perplexed in the beginning and that will keep anyone with a non-technical background away: we tech nerds forget that things not “just working” isn’t a feature in the eyes of a majority of people. (For better or for worse.)
I have been using Kbin exclusively while waiting for the Artemis app to be released but I decided to Memmy for Lemmy to see what the hype was all about. Well I’m loving Memmy, it does exactly what you discussed. The app makes it super easy choose an instance and create an account. Does the app need some work? Yes but it’s leaps and bounds better than browsing through a mobile web browser.
Yeah I spent 2 weeks on Jerboa unable to post, comment, subscribed etc because the instance I joined was not yet a login option on the app. Still have that issue with every other app.
You can tell the devs are working hard on these apps though. It's a race to get a polished app released before people lose interest in leaving reddit.
Liftoff has been pretty good for me. Might be worth exploring.
Indeed. I've seen the rate of app updates pick up recently, and I feel it's noticeably smoother than a couple weeks ago. Great effort is being done and I'm grateful towards the devs for that.
I look forward to talking about my first few weeks on Lemmy in years to come: "Back then I had to use an app that was in alpha and wait ten minutes to load a page full of bean memes! And then we got hacked!"
Just in case you don't already know: On most apps you can type in your instance instead of selecting one from the drop down menu. Im on a small instance too and it took me a week or so to figure it out last month lol
Same, a little bit of added qol to Memmy as well as some content on some of the more niche communities I used to frequent and Reddit will be solely used for searching obscure problems in the future if even that.
I cut ties today. I had been a mod in a sub of over 3 million users for years. All reasonable folk on the mod team were gone and a huge fight broke out because I suggested that we "Try to be decent to each other" as if it was the most offensive statement they had ever heard. I have zero regrets leaving that kind of toxicity behind.
This is the real result. Yeah subs will open back up, but the mods who are left are just weird keyboard warriors who think being a mod is like being a cop (I mean obviously this is a generalization, but it's mostly true) The quality of individual subs is going to suffer and therefore the overall user experience will suffer.
R/ videos got clever, I love it. Thier new rule is
Only text posts describing videos are permitted, and must describe a video in detail. Video links are permitted in the comments only.
That must be interesting haha
When a subreddit accidentally does more to help blind redditors than Spez does.
As someone who primarily used reddit with accessibility apps (RedReader) this would have been awesome.
Sadly, reddit doesn't find me valuable enough to even let me try to use the site in a way that is comfortable for me
Just gave your comment a vote. In case your assistance software doesn't register the vote.
How's lemmy going for you? I feel like now is the perfect time to let app devs know about quality of life features.
Didn't they actually doubled down and accessibility apps are exempt from the API pricing and can be used for free?
Although, if I was developing such app, I'd probably just stop doing it for free after how they're treating the rest of the userbase, so there's that...
Also each post MUST include profanity. Well done, r/videos.
I genuinely don't care. Lemmy has completely replaced reddit for me. I was a hardcore RIF user for over ten years. Connect is amazing and content had been like 90% there but with half the bullshit filler that reddit had. I honestly love it. Fuck protesting, just drop them hoes.
I only care in so far as I want to hear every little detail about it falling apart because seeing greedy people losing everything due to their hubris is peak fucking comedy.
It's good for the soul
Yep, between Reddit and Twitter, I might need to buy some more popcorn.
Mobile apps are in a development frenzy so we'll keep getting more and they'll move fast to make them better. We'll get more growth as new apps release and mature. But yeah, just give them the punt. I did when the blackouts happened and haven't missed them one bit. I actually post a lot more here than I ever did.
just drop them hoes.
😂😂😂
Same, loving Lemmy. Only thing I’m conflicted on is when I’m trying to get that super specific search result and can’t find it anywhere else. Can’t wait until Lemmy develops that same degree of information.
Yeah I've been using Sync for 12 years and Lemmy has already replaced 90% of what I actually liked about reddit.
The only thing I'm missing is team-specific pro sports communities. I think those will come as userbase increases though.
Shout out to Sync, I think my OG play store receipt for pro was in 2012.
I don't know where to ask this, but I've tried several lemmy apps and I always run into a weird "not logged in" glitch where the app thinks I'm logged in but I'm actually not. My subscriptions show up, but I can't comment, etc. If I find a way to log out then in again it's broken again, then refresh, then it's fine. Am I the only one with this bug? I also seem to get booted out on lemmy.world in a browser every so often too.
I've gotten the same thing. Chalking it up to growing pains.
Same boat here, I just miss having a button on parent comments to skip to the next parent comment in the list.
That was nice, but the developer has been really responsive so far and I expect it'll continue improving.
God I miss that. Jerboa has something similar so I'm using that for now
Have barely been on there since it started besides to visit subs that havent even attempted to move yet, from what I have heard Reddit is definitely worse now with how many people have left, is that everyone elses perspective as well.
I was under the impression not much had changed because a small minority used 3rd party apps tbh.
Vocal minority though, surely?
I’ve visited a few times on Desktop (old.reddit) since the shutdown and the rate of new content seems to have slowed down quite drastically.
Twitter metrics used to point to 90% of the content coming from 10% of the users.
If Reddit is similar, it makes sense to assume that many of the very active users were on 3rd party apps (to improve the basic experience, moderation etc.) so those being unavailable could put them off entirely (I know I’m using Reddit a fraction of what I once was).
Traffic impacts will be clearer in coming months. But in my view, the amount of noise is higher.
Looking at the popular posts and even my front page, the quality has subjectively gone down. Small subs are virtually the same, but that's not where Reddit wants to make their money.
It's not just how many left, it's who left.
some subs are still lively. To be expected, however Lemmy has proven a viable alternative with enough activity to keep me sated, and it's clearly still growing. Every day a new community pops up that reflects a counterpart on Reddit and the remaining niches are quickly being filled right here.
I think the giant default subs are the same but I’ve definitely noticed less activity on my smaller niche interest subs (the whole point of reddit for me) since the apps shut down.
That's right. There's been a downward trend with the quality of content, especially on the tech front. What's seemingly unaffected are location-based subs.
Without Apollo on my iPhone and Sync on my android, I'm not using Reddit. Lemmy filled that void. The only thing missing are niche communities. That will come with time.
I've stopped using Reddit almost completely. I'm checking on the one subreddit I built from the ground up about once a week (1K to 50K, a lot of CSS and automod work, etc), and I'm trying to pass off my other subreddits to other people. At least one is just going to go totally unmoderated, and the one I'm keeping is going to be a lot more restrictive.
Dropped Reddit due the API changes and dumsterfire after that with the CEO. I get they need to make money, but this was simply aimed at taking down third party apps and services.
I really hope this place will grow.
The worst thing about it is that they could have accomplished all their goals if they didn't shove it on people with a months notice and then Spaz going on a media tour shitting on mods and users
This is what gets me. Christian Selig pointed out in a number of interviews that Reddit could have easily made this work without alienating a huge segment of their user base. I get this vague feeling lately like CEOs are intentionally trying to tank their products, because no one so well paid could actually act so dumb.
Exactly this. Most people would have caved if they had given a 1yr update period and spez had kept his mouth shut. This move screams of a knee jerk reaction to try bd suddenly raise the profit margins, and spez had no idea how the users would revolt.
I think they really expected the 1 month timeline to blow over too
If they just made third party apps a premium feature, they would have seen a much smaller revolt and a significant increase in the number of premium subscribers. Seems like that would have been the obvious approach.
I really like Lemmy better than new reddit because scrolling the front page reminds me of 2010-2016 Reddit. I hated when they added ADS and removed the NSFW subs from the front page. Everything about NEW Reddit sucked.
Lemmy fixed new reddit and I ain't going back.
That's what the 3rd party apps did best: didn't show ads, let me filter posts with keywords in their titles, and let me use /r/frontpage as my default (NSFW posts show in that feed)
Ribbit
You can still delete manually. I sorted my comments by top and edited them to gibberish.
I should check mine. I deleted everything (that I had patience and time for) that had a lot of upvotes.
I wish I had left some of the helpful stuff that I deleted because I still find myself getting led to Reddit when searching for phone related fixes.
I think Lemmy will, just give it time.
I was an Apollo user when I had an iPhone, then moved to Android and was a Boost user to finally move to Sync, now all of these 3 are dead, do you really think I'd want to keep being active on that "community"?
These devs deserved better, luckily both Android devs moved here, and they will receive the support of their followers, and Apollo already has numerous spiritual successors, Wefwef/Voyager being an awesome PWA and some iOS apps like Memmy and Artemis!
Sync for lemmy should be up in a few weeks time. I'm pretty stoked about it.
Mostly excited for Boost for lemmy myself, having a big dev putting that up will be of great help.
Same
I really want Infinity for Lemmy
Have you tried Infinity for Everything?
I like wefwef/Voyager. I tried Memmy, but can't upvote comments, only posts so went back to Voyager.
The decisions that Reddit made allowed Lemmy and Kbin to grow faster.
I've been wanting to cut down on social media/Reddit for ages. Reddit making it a huge inconvenience to look at the site on mobile has been great for me honestly
I'm more than happy they have decided to accelerate their progression towards insignificance.
I visit it for a couple of subs that are not active on here. For the most part it feels the same. I never really cared for the karma system, gold, etc. So switching to Lemmy for me was more about just trying to find a place not being bombarded by ads, bots, and corporate policies.
I think reddit will survive the Exodus of users simply because Twitter is so badly managed that reddit may actually supplant it for a while. However, the drive to monetize all aspects of our lives is actually getting some push back from users so Lemmy may continue to grow in the next few years.
The biggest issues facing Lemmy isn't content though. It's ease of adoption.
God yes the ads, I just hate how every corner of our existence is being filled with ads. And if it's not an official ad or "sponsored post" it's someone trying to sell stickers on their Etsy or a t shirt bot spamming all and every subreddit. I just really hope those sort of things don't invade here.
If you have been using an adblocker for years and turn it off for a moment, you really see how fucking bad it has become. It's almost like a dystopian movie.
Yeah this is what has amazed me since joining Lemmy is the non existence of ADS. It feels weird that I'm not seeing constant ads disguised as posts here.
I have been bouncing between here and the Reddit official app and holy hell the Reddit app is so shockingly bad with ads that I can only manage a few mins on it.
But is ease of adoption a problem, though?
Lemmy as it is now is great. Sure it could have more users, but I wouldn't want the "average user" here because then it will be Reddit BS all over again.
Yeah as bad as it may sound, I kind of like that it's not as easy to get into as reddit's official app or tiktok or whatever. A barrier to entry can help quality. It doesn't stop all the toxic assholes but it helps slow down the onslaught of braindead echo chambers and circlejerks that reddit has turned.
I'm not saying I want or support that. I actually found it very easy to adopt. I am saying it is a hurdle in regards to adoption in regards to platform growth which is often discussed when comparing it to other social platforms.
Yes, it's a huge problem. New users are confused when they first get introduced. Ive been here for weeks and I still don't understand everything. The explanations and infographics that have been made are a mess. It's why there's a certain kind of user that makes up the bulk of the site right now.
Doesn't help that the first attempts to explain it were basically denial that there was a problem and insulting people for not understanding.
Ribbit
Is that right? I was under the impression majority opened back up.
Tbh I don't really care either way, I haven't been on reddit for 3 weeks now.
These kinds of posts remind me exactly of my first few days on reddit post Digg Great Migration. There was a great multipage webcomic made then too.
So you have lived two apocalypses? I bet this is a good story for your descendants!
God damn us internet vets have seen the rise and fall of many a digital empire. Refugees moving from 1 shell to the next,
IRC/AIM->Skype/vent/mumble->discord/signal/telegram,
netscape->IE->Firefox/Chrome/Chromium,
message boards/use groups->digg/reddit->Lemmy,
Search engines like ask jeeves->Google/yahoo->google.
Napster->kazaa/limewire->torrents/magnet links->Sonarr/Streaming Sites
I could go on but yeah it was insane.
Something I'd like to share:
I've been periodically checking reddit in my Browser to see what's going on. I commented last week about noticing a sharp decrease in posts on "my" front page. Since then I've observed a few more interesting things.
56.3k, front page: "A brain tumour changed her life Her nerves are badly damaged! But today she opened a car door.....walked.....opened a gym door.....walked and sat down ..BY HERSELF what a lady"
[Quotation marks, format, and ellipses are original]
40.5k, front page: The trapped dog doesn't wait a bit to hug the rescuer after being freed..
Same weird ellipses, and the way it's phrased is like a "correct the mistakes" worksheet for 2nd graders.
I think Reddit is in the "find out" stage of their fucking around, even if it's a quiet or subtle change to the casual observer.
I also tried going to ModCoord [I'm not a mod it just felt like a good place to find updates] and, on my end, it looks like almost everything has been deleted. The same day I took screenshots, /r/PICS posted a public response to reddit's threats, which weren't even acknowledged on modcoord. The most recent post I could see was something from GallowBoob? It was really odd.
Is the website being glitchy? Probably. That is, after all, part of the root of this problem. But if anything, I'd say it's pretty clear that the content has decreased in both quality and depth in the last 10 days. Even if a lot of users are still signing in, I don't think they're posting, commenting, or voting as much as they used to. That may be a reflection of the quality of posts, or of users displeasure at the situation, but regardless of where it came from, at least it's something.
One sub I'm quite a lurker on has 6 million subscribers, and top posts for the day had like 1.5k upvotes, and there was a massive shortage of new/interesting posts.
The change in reddit over the last few weeks has been dramatic.
Yeah, BORU is back to showing only 2-4 posts when sorted by top:day AND top:week.
It's really weird and makes reddit feel very hollow.
New here, I miss using RIF but Connect seems pretty good.
Connect is the most usable of the bunch, well, I might need to check Liftoff further, but I am not a fan of its interface.
I would also like to bring attention to Thunder if you haven't tried it yet.
Making reddit go back to their own ways is not victory. We need to get redditors onto Lemmy. It is up to us to use Lemmy and spread its awareness to redditors.
I'll do my part to welcome anyone who joins here, but there are plenty of knuckleheads on reddit who will give you shit for having any kind of principles that take a long term view or make life anything other than blissfully convenient. I have no motivation to try to convince those people.
Oh, it would be a victory. But only until they try it again. And again, and again...
Not to worry, we will be still flying half a social network
Making reddit go back only shows they have the motive, means, and now another opportunity to try again.
Kill it. Leave their corpse at the gates so others know not to alienate all the cattle.
They took my reddit is fun away! Actually disgusting imo.
I was using reddit less and less, but when the furry subreddits made their way into /r/popular and /r/all that was it for toilet browsing/squat'n'surfing... Seeing a sign for 'werewolf breeding zone' was enough for me.
I now have the mental image of Spez frantically struggling to explain to advertisers why their posts were appearing besides werewolf breeding zone memes. So thanks for that.
I'm enjoying Lemmy more and more each day. From the moment I loaded Wefwef, I knew I had a new home. It's not perfect, but it was reminiscent enough of Apollo for me to know that Lemmy is a contender. I still mainly use desktop access, but having a mobile app I can pull up and scroll made me feel much better about leaving Reddit.
Haven't been on since I created my Kbin account a few weeks ago. I really just miss my smaller subs like interior and home decorating, houseporn, and the plant subs. at least the houseplant and gardening communities on here are getting some steam. Oh well, I'll live without for now 🤷♀️.
The nice thing about smaller communities is that it’s more like going to the pub than speed-dating; there’s an increasingly familiar regular crowd that feels like community, rather than a focus on quick content, hoping for a spark of interest.
We are gardeners, we go where the sun is, and we shall plant our seeds!
squabbles.io/s/cozyplaces squabbles.io/s/houseplants l've found lemmy/kbin combined with squabbles has covered lot of things. Lemmy has been better for nerdy stuff, and squabbles for more casual memes, gifs, and pics. There's random stuff like squabbles.io/s/castiron
Edit : squabbles.io/s/gardening for more plant stuff.
I've liked squabbles.io/s/dim-lit-aesthetics
I like squabbles because it tends to be simpler, less technical than here. They need more users but the combination of the two sites is scratching the Reddit itch.
I'll give squabbles another look, I didn't really like it when I was looking for a new place but that was like a month ago, might be a place where I browse a couple places. Thanks for the tip!
There one sub I still frequent is r/SFFPC since it doesn’t seem like they’ve really made the switch. For all else I’ve been kicking it here on Lemmy.
I’ll tell you what, the quality & diversity of memes here is so much better than Reddit I’m getting my friends actually asking me where I’m getting the S-tier memes lmao. I’ll never tell mwuhahahaha
Trying to switch fully over to Lemmy, but missing some subs yet and still logging in there to Reddit sometimes :( but Im not producing any content there and will never come back to do so.
What a dumpster fire for an article on mobile. Why the hell there nonsense tweets chopping the article up every paragraph lol?
Also once some of the larger subs get made here and actual content creators start coming this way, it'll be nice.
Comics, dataisbeautiful, and anime were my jam.
The fediverse memes are so lame right now too lol. We also need way more spammable quippy advice animals for those quick scroll smiles.
I tried other Reddit apps after Apollo shut down but they all kinda suck. I got Memmy and it’s amazing. The interface is very similar.
Boost still works fine for me. Not sure why but I'm content for now
Everyone will be over here eventually, including Reddit. Meta/Tumblr joining the fediverse will have a domino effect and will make it very hard for island networks to continue to exist.
