I’ve remained off reddit since the protest. I understand that it won’t affect them, but I feel my Reddit addiction was affecting me and the way they handled that situation was completely...
I’ve remained off reddit since the protest. I understand that it won’t affect them, but I feel my Reddit addiction was affecting me and the way they handled that situation was completely inexcusable. I still miss it from time to time, but I try to find better uses for my time.
I was the same initially but it's still a valuable knowledge base when looking for opinions on specific topics. I just don't contribute any value to it by using an ad blocker and refusing to...
I was the same initially but it's still a valuable knowledge base when looking for opinions on specific topics. I just don't contribute any value to it by using an ad blocker and refusing to comment and vote, except to send invites to Tildes.
Yeah it says something about the sad state of affairs the internet finds itself in if you still need to append "reddit" to your search query for some subjects. Though I have found that over the...
I was the same initially but it's still a valuable knowledge base when looking for opinions on specific topics.
Yeah it says something about the sad state of affairs the internet finds itself in if you still need to append "reddit" to your search query for some subjects.
Though I have found that over the past months that also has gotten to be less reliable for subjects where information is more dynamic. People might say that reddit still has the same amount of users, but the amount of current useful information seems to be steadily declining. At least, from my anecdotal perspective, that seems to be the case.
I do realize that as long as there are search engines there will be some form of SEO, it is just truly saddening that SEO seems to have won the battle so far.
People have been trying to game search engines since search engines have existed, yet we were doing just fine. You overestimate how much this is an SEO problem. The issue isn't that search engines...
People have been trying to game search engines since search engines have existed, yet we were doing just fine. You overestimate how much this is an SEO problem.
The issue isn't that search engines are dying, it's that the web itself is dying. Or at least the old web.
Back in the day if you needed info on a topic, there'd be plenty of personal/hobby websites discussing it, a lot of forum discussions, a whole bunch of websites.. and everything was easily indexable.
Nowadays people post their stuff in few centralized places, most of which are deliberately impossible to index (facebook, instagram, discord, etc), or at least hard to index (video content on YT, tiktok, etc). Reddit is one of the few remaining websites that are very active, public and easily indexable, which is why it still yields good results.
Sorry, I don't buy that.. Because I still come across these smaller places and resources on a regular basis. I consider Tildes to be one and a lot of the things people link to on here also fall...
Sorry, I don't buy that.. Because I still come across these smaller places and resources on a regular basis.
I consider Tildes to be one and a lot of the things people link to on here also fall under the same category.
These places though rarely show up in search queries when I am looking for specific information. Even though I know they are out there and in some cases previously did encounter them covering a subject I am now searching for.
im torn beacuse i know for a fact there is good content out there. i found some cosy and silly internet radio stations that have a nice little community around them, tildes, and a bunch of niche...
im torn beacuse i know for a fact there is good content out there. i found some cosy and silly internet radio stations that have a nice little community around them, tildes, and a bunch of niche projects like that one to reverse engineer the old MSN mesenger servers.
the problem i have is with discoverability. it absolutely sucks that youtube has all these billions of hours of content, but the search is godaweful. i cannot search for categories, even im p sure they label everything on the backend for algo purposes. i cannot easily find videos within certain timeframes (so good luck trying to find that old video with a common word in the title). i cannot easily even correct the algo when it decides that i totally want 400 jerma stream highlights beacuse i clicked on a link a friend sent me.
the best strat for finding new channels on youtube is to make a new account/ingocnito or something - make your way to the channel you wanna find relateds for, watch a few videos in the background, and then wait for the suggestions to go from populating with trending things, to populating with trending lego experiments channels, or niche essays about what the best counting system is
i probably do blame SEO more than i should, but i think thats just what me and a lot of other people have just glommed onto as the reason - instead of just discoverability/availaibility. it has become basically impossible to "browse the web" and instead you just browse the curated website of your choosing. the internet might not be dying but its definitely not healthy. sometimes it feels like living somewhere with bad public transport outside of the cities. if you're into whats trending, great, but if not then it really does feel like its kinda dead sometimes.
i used to love going on youtube and seeing what was getting uploaded in 'gaming' or whatever, but now the only categories you can actively browse are the auto generated suggestions at the top of your home page. and yeah, they do have cool ones sometimes but its infinitely frustrating to return to the page tomorrow and find that the good tags have gone from "godot (game engine)" "esp32" "defcon" to "live" "mixes" "stragegy-videogames". it is so close to being a workable system if not for the obfuscation
I would say it's a mixture of both, with the addition of everyone becoming greedy and trying to monetize everything and this obsession with "muh view counts." I miss the old web. I know there are...
I would say it's a mixture of both, with the addition of everyone becoming greedy and trying to monetize everything and this obsession with "muh view counts."
I miss the old web. I know there are sites that still exist according to those principles but it's so hard to wade through so much dogshit to find it.
I go back to it now mostly if I'm on my computer but it really has lost its shine. The article is right that it really feels like the content has gone downhill a lot. Tildes more and more feels...
I go back to it now mostly if I'm on my computer but it really has lost its shine. The article is right that it really feels like the content has gone downhill a lot.
Tildes more and more feels like reddit used to except it still isn't big enough to find lots of info on more niche stuff, especially finding info on small games that otherwise would mostly get ignored by most people.
In retrospect, the real disappointment isn't that Reddit had an inevitable decline, but that it ever became as large as it did in the first place. Reddit usurped community forums, fan sites and...
In retrospect, the real disappointment isn't that Reddit had an inevitable decline, but that it ever became as large as it did in the first place. Reddit usurped community forums, fan sites and other activity. It slowly made the web less vibrant and more centralized and corporate, piece by piece. And it normalized that state of things, to the point that people who want to leave Reddit can only think in terms of "Reddit replacements" instead of the web returning to its natural form.
Reddit is the Walmart of social media. It moved in, and was great at first so it killed off all the niche forums. Then, once it had market control, it turned itself in the shit that it's users...
Reddit is the Walmart of social media. It moved in, and was great at first so it killed off all the niche forums. Then, once it had market control, it turned itself in the shit that it's users hates about the other social media sites. Reddit was always, always about the content and the conversation (once it added comments). You could get good content from anyone, that was the point. Then, it added followers, courted "influencers" and became a worse Instagram for OnlyFans models.
I used old reddit with adblockers, and didn't realize how much the site changed until one day I got logged out randomly and legit thought I went to the wrong website. The new site is definitely...
I used old reddit with adblockers, and didn't realize how much the site changed until one day I got logged out randomly and legit thought I went to the wrong website. The new site is definitely not my cup of tea.
But yeah, for me it's the mobile app. After RIF went down, I just wanted to see how the official app was, and the same 5 subs were on my front page. It was either that or allow r/all, I was annoyed I wasn't able to see content from all of the subs I followed like when I was able to use RIF. It was then I realized why people hated the official app. It overall sucks. I trusted everyone when they said it sucked, but I finally learned first hand why lol. It feels like it's trying too hard to be like a mainstream social media app
I'm about the same - I use it mostly as an archive to find information, but I don't contribute much anymore. The quality went downhill sharply, to the extent that before, there would always be...
I'm about the same - I use it mostly as an archive to find information, but I don't contribute much anymore. The quality went downhill sharply, to the extent that before, there would always be something interesting to read on my (heavily curated) list of subreddits, and now there just ... isn't. I was sad about it for a long while but then I accepted that maybe it's time to be offline more.
I stayed on reddit for a few months after the protest, but my engagement went to near zero. I quit all of the subreddits I was mod of and basically used it as a marketplace to sell pokemon cards...
I stayed on reddit for a few months after the protest, but my engagement went to near zero. I quit all of the subreddits I was mod of and basically used it as a marketplace to sell pokemon cards and gun accessories.
Then, one of the racist douchebags that I banned from my state subreddit mass reported all of my gun sale posts. Reddit deemed some of my merchandise as "prohibited items" but never replied to any of the messages or ban appeals I sent in. They talk about how terrible mods are, then go against their own moderator code of conduct when it comes to ban appeals.
Oh well I used an alt that I had for years to sell pokemon stuff using cracked RiF client. Then I was banned from /r/news for arguing with someone who said Americans never did genocide against Natives.. They muted me and I just avoided the subreddit for a while.
Then, I used an alt to comment on news and both my accounts were sitewide banned for 7 days for Ban Evasion. Okay, fine, I'll accept that, I broke the rules.
Then 2 days later, they sitewide banned my main account for another 7 days even though I didn't use reddit at all in that time. Then the next day they perm banned it. All for "ban Evasion" even though I didn't use the site at all.
I'm done with reddit now. I'll check /r/news occasionally just to see if there's anything I've missed, but the reddit I loved has died a slow death over the last 3 or so years. I'm enjoying my time on Threads and Tildes now.
I'm only on reddit as a "leech" basis now, only reading, never contributing, no upvotes, etc. Only sending those precious API requests they declared so expensive.
I'm only on reddit as a "leech" basis now, only reading, never contributing, no upvotes, etc. Only sending those precious API requests they declared so expensive.
To be honest, the other side handled it as badly as Reddit did. There was initially a talk of just doing a "black day" protest like it had always been i.e. taking the sub offline (private) for...
To be honest, the other side handled it as badly as Reddit did. There was initially a talk of just doing a "black day" protest like it had always been i.e. taking the sub offline (private) for just one day.
But then they started "hijacking" the subs by refusing to make them public again. That was when they lost all public sympathy and the whole movement sort of failed. Had it been just a one day protest, maybe the outcome would have been different?
A protest with a defined end date has no teeth, though. What incentive would Reddit have to actually put in the work required to make any substantive changes, when they could just sit tight for a...
A protest with a defined end date has no teeth, though. What incentive would Reddit have to actually put in the work required to make any substantive changes, when they could just sit tight for a day and wait for everything to blow over?
Well that's a fair point, but the flip side of that is that showing your "teeth" is a sign of aggression, which in this case provoked a response. The indefinite protest eventually just led to...
Well that's a fair point, but the flip side of that is that showing your "teeth" is a sign of aggression, which in this case provoked a response.
The indefinite protest eventually just led to Reddit deciding it would replace the mods who were keeping the subreddits closed. A lot of mods caved because they didn't want to lose their positions, and public sentiment was more split because users didn't necessarily like being locked out of the subs they came to reddit for.
A shorter or periodic protest could have been seen as more of a "win", and could have over time still led to people being convinced to move to discord like a lot of mods suggested. As it played out it ended with more of a whimper than a bang.
I find this an interesting example of how the internet has such short term memory in regards to these things. This was tried in the past as doing a blackout as a form of protest isn't something...
A shorter or periodic protest could have been seen as more of a "win", and could have over time still led to people being convinced to move to discord like a lot of mods suggested. As it played out it ended with more of a whimper than a bang.
I find this an interesting example of how the internet has such short term memory in regards to these things. This was tried in the past as doing a blackout as a form of protest isn't something new. One of the lessons learned from those is that the "win" is only short term as reddit promised to improve on the raised issues but on the longer term didn't really follow through.
So, for a lot of those involved it was pretty clear from the start that a short blackout would not mean much. Which was actually echoed by a leaked memo from Steve Huffman to reddit staff basically saying to sit it out just like previous blackouts.
The most the dedicated could have done—especially after Reddit announced they were removing the uncooperative—was let their subreddits become spam-filled cesspits (or keep out the spam but welcome...
for those involved, it was was clear from the start that … it would not mean much
The most the dedicated could have done—especially after Reddit announced they were removing the uncooperative—was let their subreddits become spam-filled cesspits (or keep out the spam but welcome the R34). Shit up the place and ruin the community so there’s nothing of value for Reddit to keep. In some aspects, this almost sounds like the digital analogy to a suicide bombing.
It sounds like you are trying to say that they shouldn’t have done this. But what alternative do they have when the opposition has all of the power? Do you believe they should have just submitted...
It sounds like you are trying to say that they shouldn’t have done this. But what alternative do they have when the opposition has all of the power? Do you believe they should have just submitted idly? If it was going to be ineffective either way, why does it make a difference?
I guess I would say it makes a difference to the active users that were locked out of subs. I dont really follow the bigger subreddits, but there are a few specialty subs for games that I was a...
I guess I would say it makes a difference to the active users that were locked out of subs. I dont really follow the bigger subreddits, but there are a few specialty subs for games that I was a fan of in my childhood, and there's not really other places I have to discuss a niche 20 year old game.
So it makes a difference whether the sub is put into indefinite no submission mode or not. To me, as an individual, at least. There was a lot of fan art and theory crafting on the sub that I would have been disappointed to lose access to. And the decision to continue the protest indefinitely went against a community vote.
The alternative I would say is just what ended up happening afterward. Mods who didn't approve of Reddit anymore moved over to Discord where they would have more freedom to run things the way they wanted.
That doesn't really answer the asked question though. Yes, it was not a great experience for you as a user. But as a rule of thumb, protests will often (almost always) inconvenience other people....
That doesn't really answer the asked question though. Yes, it was not a great experience for you as a user. But as a rule of thumb, protests will often (almost always) inconvenience other people. That sort of is the nature of protests to begin with.
Your approach also ignores a lot of basics of what made those subreddits such a great experience for you to visit. Communities don't grow in a vacuum, certainly not communities that exist for a prolonged period of time. They very much depend on a small group of people spending considerably more time and effort on making the community grow and welcoming to new joiners and old timers alike. These are the people that have cared for these communities for a long time, are invested in them more than you as consumer and these often also end up being moderators.
Which makes this statement
The alternative I would say is just what ended up happening afterward. Mods who didn't approve of Reddit anymore moved over to Discord where they would have more freedom to run things the way they wanted.
Leave. You're right, the admins held all the cards. Your only bet is to walk away. Plan an exit strategy, accept that your next community will be smaller and need to start over in some regards,...
But what alternative do they have when the opposition has all of the power?
Leave. You're right, the admins held all the cards. Your only bet is to walk away. Plan an exit strategy, accept that your next community will be smaller and need to start over in some regards, and choose a new community out of the dozens, hundreds of sites out there. Even better if you coordinate with other mods so you can possibly create a network effect.
The specific site didn't matter. Just that there was some alternative in mind. But people seemed more interested in trying to "save" reddit instead of creating a new competitor (the only thing that can really pressure them).
If it were a one-day blackout, Reddit would have let the mods have their fun, then continued their plans as usual. Sadly, I think the mod teams that held out until they got forcibly replaced were...
If it were a one-day blackout, Reddit would have let the mods have their fun, then continued their plans as usual. Sadly, I think the mod teams that held out until they got forcibly replaced were the ones who did as much as they could to hurt Reddit, specifically by taking hostages. Drive off the power users and the flow of attractive content that brings in the ad-viewing cohort slowly dries up.
Perhaps I’m wrong: they may have enough repost momentum that the injection of new material is no longer measurable on their metrics and the site could subsist indefinitely on reposts and AI spam.
Why should they have been particularly concerned with public sympathy? The point was to make reddit shitty(er) so that people will leave if reddit didn't make changes. That means they have to make...
Why should they have been particularly concerned with public sympathy? The point was to make reddit shitty(er) so that people will leave if reddit didn't make changes. That means they have to make the product bad. Appeasing the users who don't care is the opposite of making the site unusable.
Who is "they" here? You are sort of vaguely gesturing here to an undefined group here. There isn't even a single group to point at as various affected groups of users and subreddits took different...
But then they started
Who is "they" here? You are sort of vaguely gesturing here to an undefined group here. There isn't even a single group to point at as various affected groups of users and subreddits took different approaches to the protest and their involvement.
There was initially a talk of just doing a "black day" protest like it had always been i.e. taking the sub offline (private) for just one day.
I feel like you are just talking about your experience with one specific subreddit. Many of them actually made it very clear that it could be more and did involve their users in various steps of the process.
I view it the same way I view protests that block roads. The point is to purposely make it painful and not ignoreable. In the face of the other side holding all the power, I think that's a valid...
I view it the same way I view protests that block roads. The point is to purposely make it painful and not ignoreable. In the face of the other side holding all the power, I think that's a valid approach.
But I will not deny that it strategically can lose you public sympathy and momentum, but I'm not sure I know the answer. A "weak" piss-in-the-wind protest that is gone in a day is far easier for them to ignore. But I come from a maybe rare/extreme standpoint that I'd rather see Reddit completely capitulate or otherwise just shut down.
The sad thing is that not garnering public sympathy just means the Reddit "public" was more interested in selfish whining about not being able to access their content than they were effecting change. A common problem with any "public" that should be more active (myself included). Comfort and self-interest are always easier. So, in a way- F public sympathy, tbh. At least philosophically, if not strategically.
But Reddit holding all the power means they ultimately can end the protests themselves because of replacing mods/etc. Very difficult to make any dent when you're powerless and even lose your ability to protest.
Perhaps, but this is why that method of protesting is a bad idea if you are actually looking for support for your cause. If you're just looking to cause a ruckus and get attention, I guess it's...
Perhaps, but this is why that method of protesting is a bad idea if you are actually looking for support for your cause. If you're just looking to cause a ruckus and get attention, I guess it's effective. But few people are going to be sympathetic to your cause if you're blocking the road they're trying to travel on, even if they agree with your cause fundamentally. You may even push people to the other side if they're on the fence, and associate the issue with the annoying disruption, wasted time, and potentially even things like lost wages that they experienced.
I support legal protesting, but I'm also in support of removing people with appropriate force who are illegally blocking public highways and causing safety issues for themselves and the public.
-MLK, Letter from Birmingham City Jail The entire civil rights movement was based on inconveniencing people and forcing them to pay attention. The marches on highways and between cities? Those...
Exemplary
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice [...]
-MLK, Letter from Birmingham City Jail
The entire civil rights movement was based on inconveniencing people and forcing them to pay attention. The marches on highways and between cities? Those were illegal, unpermitted, and blocked traffic. The sit-ins at lunch counters demanding the right to be served? Violations of both trespassing and segregation laws. Refusing to give up bus seats? Same thing.
The entire civil rights movement was based on civil disobedience, not just feel-good protests. The core tactic was to do something that was illegal, but objectively harmless, to then force southern authorities to ridiculously overreact. People all over the country then saw video of very respectable people, old ladies, university students, preachers, etc., being brutalized by the police for doing obviously harmless things.
The problem with staying within the law is that you're usually holding these protests BECAUSE the law itself is unjust. And when oppressors never just write one law. They don't just write racist or bigoted laws; they also pass laws slashing democratic accountability and criminalizing effective forms of protest. Non-violent civil disobedience was the path chosen in the civil rights movement because the South wasn't a democracy. They could no more easily simply vote-out the segregationists than the Founding Fathers could have just voted King George out office. Electoral politics only work if you have a functioning democracy, and the South wasn't a democracy until the 1960s or 1970s.
I just finished reading Never Split the Difference by Chris Vos an experienced FBI negotiator with kidnappers, hostage takers and terrorists. He lists three useful tactics for leverage, positive...
I just finished reading Never Split the Difference by Chris Vos an experienced FBI negotiator with kidnappers, hostage takers and terrorists. He lists three useful tactics for leverage, positive leverage, negative leverage and normative leverage. Normative leverage is based on making the other party look like a hypocrite based on their own beliefs and standards. MLK and the Civil Rights movement played to a national audience to demonstrate that the leadership of the southern states were acting in ways that the national audience considered unamerican. It wouldn't have worked with Ghengiz Khan or Hitler.
I'm not 100 percent convicted that Vos has identified all the important tactics but he named one significant one.
The Civil rights protesters broke the laws they wanted ended. Likewise, people against clear cutting redwoods wood go sit in the trees. The audience saw a relationship between the problem and the protests. When I see a blocked highway I see ambulances carrying patients who die because of the protests
That last point helped me nail down what I’ve been trying to articulate for awhile. I also think MLK, in the later years of the movement, could implicitly draw a contrast with more radical...
That last point helped me nail down what I’ve been trying to articulate for awhile. I also think MLK, in the later years of the movement, could implicitly draw a contrast with more radical factions under Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, and with a potentially violent uprising that could occur if Southern governments cracked down too much.
The militarization of police forces in the US has progressed significantly since MLK's day. I think that significantly angels the equation for non-violent, illegal protest.
The militarization of police forces in the US has progressed significantly since MLK's day. I think that significantly angels the equation for non-violent, illegal protest.
Someone who says they support your cause but switches sides at the first inconvenience was never a true supporter. You gain nothing by having that sort of person on your side.
Someone who says they support your cause but switches sides at the first inconvenience was never a true supporter. You gain nothing by having that sort of person on your side.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from the past 20 years of election strategy, it’s that lukewarm and apathetic voters decide elections. That’s why get out the vote campaigns are such a central...
If there’s anything I’ve learned from the past 20 years of election strategy, it’s that lukewarm and apathetic voters decide elections. That’s why get out the vote campaigns are such a central feature of election years.
People who quit that easily will never be part of the activist circle, but they are necessary at the polls.
People don't need education, they need inspiration. People aren't racists simply because they've never been handed the right type of book. Forcing information onto people is usually...
People don't need education, they need inspiration. People aren't racists simply because they've never been handed the right type of book. Forcing information onto people is usually counterproductive, as it just causes them to dismiss what you tell them and dig their heels in harder. A racist was not led to their beliefs through rational argument, and rational argument will not lead them out.
Tell me, how are they supposed to protest if all they do is black out one day? You really think Reddit gave a shit if they took the subreddits down for one day. A real protest has to make things...
Tell me, how are they supposed to protest if all they do is black out one day? You really think Reddit gave a shit if they took the subreddits down for one day. A real protest has to make things inconvenient for the group they are targetting. Which unfortunately for users meant making it hard to use reddit without them.
If you actually cared about what the people protesting cared about, you'd understand and deal with it, not yell at them for doing the only thing in their power to try to get Reddit to at least compromise. Otherwise, you just really didn't care and just wanted thme to suck up whatever Reddit wanted them to do so you didn't get inconvenienced.
Completely disagree, one day was far from enough, a permanent blackout until an open dialogue is established is an actual protest. One day is just pointless slacktivism. And then spez sent in the...
Completely disagree, one day was far from enough, a permanent blackout until an open dialogue is established is an actual protest.
One day is just pointless slacktivism.
And then spez sent in the pinkertons to remove the protestors and install their own unwanted moderators.
Doubt it. It was too big to fail at that time and the worst part was that the mods themself also didn't want to leave. Reddit held all the bandwidth and emotoinal leverage. If the mods had a...
Doubt it. It was too big to fail at that time and the worst part was that the mods themself also didn't want to leave. Reddit held all the bandwidth and emotoinal leverage.
If the mods had a coordinated plan to properly move (hopefully without creating another Voat in the process) that would have been so much more effective in the long run than trying fix reddit and keep their old audience. But everyone was too focused on trying to make an uncompromised, exact replica of Reddit (including the community size and featureset) and were arguing amongst one another over the downsides of alternatives (which all lacked the size except for Discord).
Real shame, but I was also like that years ago. I can't blame them for wanting to hold on.
Up until two days ago I was a moderator for a fairly large subreddit but I ultimately left because of the events of June. For a long time I was fine providing my time (and money hosting bots) to...
Exemplary
Up until two days ago I was a moderator for a fairly large subreddit but I ultimately left because of the events of June. For a long time I was fine providing my time (and money hosting bots) to shape a community I wanted to be part of but Reddit's proven repeatedly that it doesn't care about community, it just needs the bare minimum to keep users on the site.
I think that for some subreddits the lasting effect will be more subtle and not as directly attributable to Reddit's actions then with a large amount of institutional knowledge and leadership behind the scenes that's being lost. Three of the most active and engaged moderators on the team left by the start of July, while I handed off what responsibilities I could to the rest of the team over the ensuring months to minimize disruption before I quit as well.
There's a technical gap that I'm leaving behind though that no one currently on the team can fill and when we've tried recruiting new moderators no one's shown as much interest there. One of the primary draws of the subreddit now is for discussions of new shows, and episode threads are posted by a bot that occasionally malfunctions and requires a human mod to manually make a thread instead. Back in May I had a roadmap for improving the bot, expanding its capabilities, making it both more resilient and easier to manually create threads if necessary. I never got around to implementing any of that because of what Reddit did, but the next time a thread's two hours late the average user's not going to know it could have been avoided by now.
That's probably the most visible impact for the average member of that subreddit, but it's far from the only one. Maybe other people will step up and eventually make things better, but it will still be behind the trajectory of where things could have been.
Yup, I had a mod of a subreddit I left at the beginning of last year hit me up and ask me about some of my automod code. He's a good guy and he did a great job taking over the subreddit when I...
Yup, I had a mod of a subreddit I left at the beginning of last year hit me up and ask me about some of my automod code. He's a good guy and he did a great job taking over the subreddit when I left, and he's honestly the reason I chose to step down because I knew the sub would be in capable hands, but he still had no idea how to do any of the automod stuff I had taught myself over the years. I think there's lots of subreddits that experienced a "brain drain" so to speak. Decades of knowledge about code, CSS, rules, wikis, and bots was wiped away over the summer.
I took over a meme subreddit that was being squated on by an inactive mod. I built that subreddit from 20 subscribers to over 5 thousand in the course of about 2 months. A year later it's at 35,000. I put hundreds of hours into recruiting mods, users, and making memes that would draw people in. It was a community I truly loved being a part of. And it pisses me off that reddit believes they own all of that for simply hosting the data.
I used to use the example starting a Rec soccer league. You wanted to start a Rec league for fun. You recruited teams, designed jerseys, made schedules, moderated disagreements, removed problem players/coaches/fans for years. But you didn't have fields of your own, so you had to play in the public park, that's fine, everyone was happy and the park managers didn't mind. You did this for years, storing some of your materials at the park so you didn't have to lug it around, you didn't make any money off of it, you just did it for the love of the game.
Then, one season, the park decides that you have to start charging you exorbitant fees to use the fields, way more then they should, and way more than it would actually cost to rent the fields. You say "okay, I'm just going to shut down the league" and they say no, you're not allowed to do that. Everything you built now belongs to them, because they're the ones who have all the balls, goals, fields, rosters, schedules, jersey designs, etc and they're going to make money off of it now. All of your hard work through out the years is now theirs, and they're going to continue going with or without you, and they're going to make money off of it.
For those of you curious about the longer-term impacts of the 2023 summer Reddit protests. TL;DR: other than a slight dip over the summer, Reddit traffic has remained consistent, despite "dozens"...
For those of you curious about the longer-term impacts of the 2023 summer Reddit protests.
TL;DR: other than a slight dip over the summer, Reddit traffic has remained consistent, despite "dozens" of Redditors promising to leave the site if their favorite 3rd party apps had to close shop. The article quotes a couple people who state that the quality of the content has declined. A Reddit spokesman's response is that there's no metric by which to measure content quality.
The article lists some positive changes that Reddit made in response to the protests. Reddit has been working on improving mod tools within the official app and on accessibility issues. According to a Reddit spokesman, they are on track to comply with WWW consortium's accessibility guidelines by the end of 2024.
Personal note: it would be nice to have a metric by which to measure content quality. I peek in there every now and then, and the content in the big subreddits is definitely worse than I remember.
Content quality has been getting worse, but this is also because of a fundamental problem - the masses want fast-food style gratification. I suspect getting more popular makes a platform devolve...
Content quality has been getting worse, but this is also because of a fundamental problem - the masses want fast-food style gratification. I suspect getting more popular makes a platform devolve like that, but reddit may also be adjusting the dials to be more profitable. They won’t make money with 5 minute reads. They need more 2 second views and more scrolling past ads.
The "quick gratification" issue has always been a problem with Reddit, hasn't it? It's a problem baked into their positive-feedback algorithm: posts that quickly gain upvotes within the first few...
The "quick gratification" issue has always been a problem with Reddit, hasn't it? It's a problem baked into their positive-feedback algorithm: posts that quickly gain upvotes within the first few minutes of posting get pushed to the front page. Reddit could be tweaking the algorithm to make it worse, but my guess is that the "dozens" who left included some of the best posters/mods.
People would pad their posts to make them longer instead of getting to the point, just the way people add unnecessary heartwarming stories to the beginning of their recipe pages to give them an...
People would pad their posts to make them longer instead of getting to the point, just the way people add unnecessary heartwarming stories to the beginning of their recipe pages to give them an SEO boost on Google.
That, and tons of ML-generated fluff. Wouldn’t be surprised if people would go as far as to develop browser extensions that roll ChatGPT into the Reddit post text box.
That, and tons of ML-generated fluff. Wouldn’t be surprised if people would go as far as to develop browser extensions that roll ChatGPT into the Reddit post text box.
Goodhearts law. The metric can't be that simple. I don't think it's come into effect but I remember some theory crafting of such ways to fight Eternal September back when Tildes was new. There was...
Goodhearts law. The metric can't be that simple.
I don't think it's come into effect but I remember some theory crafting of such ways to fight Eternal September back when Tildes was new. There was an idea to have regulars have a huge multiplier on their vote count, based on a variety of factors. Karma (and lack of negative karma. Which would be lack of Noise/Joke/Malice here), manual quality evaluation of posts and comments, kinds of content voted upon, and account age were a few factors. So that user's votes would count for something up to 10x the amount of other votes to combat any influx of new people who vote on low quality submissions . And ofc it can be taken away quickly if abused.
It'd never be something Reddit would want to not feasibly accomplish, but I do want to see how the next moderate to large community handles such issues.
That would be interesting. Most users still wouldn't read the articles, of course; voting and commenting purely based on the headline. But they would be not reading super long articles that would...
That would be interesting. Most users still wouldn't read the articles, of course; voting and commenting purely based on the headline. But they would be not reading super long articles that would benefit from such a multiplier.
Readup has such a multiplier, but it pairs it with tracking your reading to make sure you actually finished the article before it lets you vote and comment. It works very well, in my experience.
Popularity definitely seems to be the main issue. I think that the quality of discussion on reddit has been getting considerably worse for at least a decade, and the two main triggers were firstly...
the masses want fast-food style gratification. I suspect getting more popular makes a platform devolve like that,
Popularity definitely seems to be the main issue. I think that the quality of discussion on reddit has been getting considerably worse for at least a decade, and the two main triggers were firstly effectively becoming mainstream (as opposed to a slightly nerdy tech-oriented platform) and secondly the beginning of culture wars, around the rise of online feminism. The decline has been steady with some faster dips, this summer protest just seems to be one of them.
Anecdotally, the only online spaces I know of that are still relatively smart use some sort of relatively strong "organic" gatekeeping - not moderation, but ideally being uninteresting to dumb/bad faith people, or in some cases just being very unfriendly or even aggressive towards people posting lazy content. Reddit, apart from being too big, is almost the opposite of that approach - open, welcoming to lazy content and relying on lots of moderation because there are no strong communities that independently exist with a bit of self-moderation.
but reddit may also be adjusting the dials to be more profitable.
There have been people observing (several threads at /r/theoryofreddit etc.) that at some point relatively recently (last year?) Reddit started pushing controversial high engagement subreddits like Am I The Asshole etc. much more than before on the frontpage, and in general using its own version of "The Algorithm" that doesn't entirely respect which subreddits the user follows.
One metric for quality I would suggest is whether users are clicking through to Read The 'Forementioned Article. If noone RTFAs, and everyone is just scrolling past or spending two seconds to post...
One metric for quality I would suggest is whether users are clicking through to Read The 'Forementioned Article. If noone RTFAs, and everyone is just scrolling past or spending two seconds to post "first!", that's not quality engagement. Second is if people read other comments before responding to add their own two cents. Subreddits and posts where it's one person asking for advice doesn't need 500x of the same two word answers, but more well rounded and more thought about responses.
All those subtracted by the number of verbatim low effort responses that are repeats of what's been said, adjusted by downvotes.
I always thought Mr Randall Munroe's chat filter was brilliant:
And then I had an idea — what if you were only allowed to say sentences that had never been said before, ever? A bot with access to the full channel logs could kick you out when you repeated something that had already been said. There would be no “all your base are belong to us”, no “lol”, no “asl”, no “there are no girls on the internet”. No “I know rite”, no “hi everyone”, no “morning sucks.” Just thoughtful, full sentences.
(It's been 15 years since that post and the bot went live. I haven't followed up on its continued use since then.)
But these suggestions, I think, goes counter to scrolling as many ads, and quick skim as many advertiser keywords, and being addicted and retuning to the site to doom scroll as much as possible.
There would be no “all your base are belong to us”, no “lol”, no “asl”, no “there are no girls on the internet”. No “I know rite”, no “hi everyone”, no “morning sucks.” Just thoughtful, full sentences.
*Laughs out loud I've never been there before but it's interesting to see uniquely terrible edgelord hottakes :) at least the dumb-posts have to be somewhat creative. I was also encouraged to see...
*Laughs out loud
I've never been there before but it's interesting to see uniquely terrible edgelord hottakes :) at least the dumb-posts have to be somewhat creative.
I was also encouraged to see correct usage of their/there/they're on one of the particularly offensive posts. :)
What can we say? Grammar Nazis take both parts seriously over there. 4Chan has always been weird to me. I remember browsing it a few years after it opened (Remember when b was good? b was never...
What can we say? Grammar Nazis take both parts seriously over there.
4Chan has always been weird to me. I remember browsing it a few years after it opened (Remember when b was good? b was never good) and, yeah it was horrible in terms of content, but it wasn't... Well, it wasn't what it is today I guess. I've gone back on occasions to see what's what and I mean, yeah, still horrible but they've always been sticklers for certain things. They're not your army and such.
“Different flavor of horrible” is also an apt comparison of 2012 Reddit vs. today’s reddit. Even before the blackouts, it was massively downhill if 2012 terribleness was tolerable to you.
“Different flavor of horrible” is also an apt comparison of 2012 Reddit vs. today’s reddit. Even before the blackouts, it was massively downhill if 2012 terribleness was tolerable to you.
The thing about 2012 terribleness is that it was relatively homogenous. You learned what it was, learned to expect it and could learn to acknowledge its bias or to ignore it. What was left after...
The thing about 2012 terribleness is that it was relatively homogenous. You learned what it was, learned to expect it and could learn to acknowledge its bias or to ignore it. What was left after that was often tolerable and even somewhat smart and insightful.
As soon as drama between subreddits and proto-culture wars started, this advantage vanished because reddit was flooded with infinite different types of stupid.
2012 terribleness also was better behaved about being obvious when it spilled outside its containment zones. If the four /r/n_word users start shitting up a thread in /r/ponypics, it was blatant....
2012 terribleness also was better behaved about being obvious when it spilled outside its containment zones. If the four /r/n_word users start shitting up a thread in /r/ponypics, it was blatant. Now that everything is mostly coded to avoid bans and slur filters, the assumption of bad faith toward anyone who phrases things ever so slightly off is thicker than ever.
I did my own content quality check now - visited the homepage on a PC I never did before. I scrolled for a minute and tried to find something worthwhile and failed to do so. It was memes, old...
I did my own content quality check now - visited the homepage on a PC I never did before. I scrolled for a minute and tried to find something worthwhile and failed to do so. It was memes, old "news" and other useless stuff. And this all infused with promoted content (ads). So I assured myself I did the right thing in the summer of 2023 and closed the tab.
If Reddit (company) is pleased with how the website looks and works right now, that is good for them! I'm not pleased with either how the websites is right now or what company did in 2023, thus I'm not visiting Reddit anymore.
If restaurant served you spoiled food and told you everything is ok, you won't go there anymore, right?
According to this tracker, post traffic (which I reckon corresponds to power users/content creators than comment or browsing traffic) has dropped 15-20% since the protests started, and in an...
According to this tracker, post traffic (which I reckon corresponds to power users/content creators than comment or browsing traffic) has dropped 15-20% since the protests started, and in an organic way rather than an illusory overnight drop like some trackers affected by the API cutoff. And I'd bet a significant fraction of the rest is driven by repost bots.
I’m still on Reddit because there is a support group that I’m part of on there. In the few occasions I branch out to other subreddits and comment, the replies I get tend to be in bad faith. In one...
I’m still on Reddit because there is a support group that I’m part of on there. In the few occasions I branch out to other subreddits and comment, the replies I get tend to be in bad faith. In one occasion someone posted a short list of things that streaming TV boxes generally didn’t do, and when I responded that an AppleTV did all of those things they just did a long string of responses completely ignoring my statement and pretending they were right. Another time I had made a post about how it was foolish to rely on technology that didn’t yet exist as a way to stop the climate change being driven by the meat industry and was strawmaned as someone who rejected all technology.
There is one hypothesis that I can think of that explains both of these observations. Traffic is up and quality is down because reddit is overrun with AI-generated schlock at ever-accelerating...
other than a slight dip over the summer, Reddit traffic has remained consistent, despite "dozens" of Redditors promising to leave the site if their favorite 3rd party apps had to close shop. The article quotes a couple people who state that the quality of the content has declined. A Reddit spokesman's response is that there's no metric by which to measure content quality.
There is one hypothesis that I can think of that explains both of these observations. Traffic is up and quality is down because reddit is overrun with AI-generated schlock at ever-accelerating rates. The bots post generic piles of drivel that are just rehashes of old comments. The bots are facilitated by increasingly better technology and the decline in reddit moderation. Reddit is rapidly collapsing into a singularity of bots having arguments with other bots.
Its really an interesting phenomenon. Reddit pissed off the people who kept the spammers at bay. Those people shut down their bots that contained the shirt spammers, and reposters, and the account...
Its really an interesting phenomenon. Reddit pissed off the people who kept the spammers at bay. Those people shut down their bots that contained the shirt spammers, and reposters, and the account sellers using recycled comments to make it seem like they're a legit account. So of course we should expect traffic to be up, the door was left open as those mods walked out of the house so to speak.
Then, reddit launches a bot hosting service so mods can't take their bots and go home anymore. Reddit has really gone from the "we'll host your content and communities for you" to "these are our communities, these are our bots, and this is our content". Not that it's unexpected, but just very disappointing that reddit decided to go that direction.
Thinking about, I think a better metric would be through advertisers - have they maintained the same engagement? If traffic remains the same then their engagement should be the same
Thinking about, I think a better metric would be through advertisers - have they maintained the same engagement? If traffic remains the same then their engagement should be the same
well I can't have promised to leave since I deleted my account back in March. I still made one more account in September for a throwaway post, but that lasted a week. I can't say I'm truly "gone"...
Reddit traffic has remained consistent, despite "dozens" of Redditors promising to leave the site if their favorite 3rd party apps had to close shop.
well I can't have promised to leave since I deleted my account back in March. I still made one more account in September for a throwaway post, but that lasted a week. I can't say I'm truly "gone" as I'm contributing to the Monthly active User traffic, but my usage dropped like a rock as a daily browser over 2023.
But yeah, I figured not much would impact Reddit from what was attempted. The goal of the protests should not have been to "kill reddit", but instead to invigorate a serious competitor. But Reddit was so polarized as of late that I knew few would look at this opportunity in that lens. They were tailored by Reddit and other social media to see destruction, schadenfreude, topple the system, etc. and that's how they approached this.
And it sadly ended the same way. At least the fediverse got a modest boost in traffic for the next drama. Because there will be one.
A Reddit spokesman's response is that there's no metric by which to measure content quality.
Well of course, quality isn't a profitable metric to measure for a site that served ads, so I'm not surprised by the lack of metric. If reposts and AI-blogspam gets more traffic, that's all the customers (who are not the commenters) care about. Their job isn't to care about quality.
Content quality is definitely subjective, but I regularly see the front page completely covered in AI generated titles and low effort political farming. Not too different to how it was before,...
Content quality is definitely subjective, but I regularly see the front page completely covered in AI generated titles and low effort political farming. Not too different to how it was before, just more intense
I deleted years of posts, deleted all of my accounts, and refuse to "browse" the site ever again. No desire to- good riddance. The only thing I'm sad about is that it's still popular and has...
I deleted years of posts, deleted all of my accounts, and refuse to "browse" the site ever again. No desire to- good riddance. The only thing I'm sad about is that it's still popular and has plenty of traffic, I was hoping that their actions would put them out of business.
The only time I'll ever encounter or "use" reddit in any way is if it's the only way I can find some sort of troubleshooting / technical information that isn't available anywhere else, via an online search.
Regardless of any improvements they're making now, it was clear at the time that people involved in the decisions and directions of the company, particularly the CEO, were awful, tone-deaf, misleading/lying, user-hostile, and insulting, and I'm not willing to accept so soon that they've magically changed.
They've resurrected lots of comments and posts that I deleted over the summer, I'm sure I'm not the only one. They don't show up on my profile page (even though the account is not banned) but they...
They've resurrected lots of comments and posts that I deleted over the summer, I'm sure I'm not the only one. They don't show up on my profile page (even though the account is not banned) but they show up on Google, and I still occasionally get a notification that someone replied to it.
Fuck reddit, there really needs to be a "digital bill of rights" that protects user's rights to content. If I want my comments and posts to be deleted, they shouldn't be able to bring them back.
Absolutely. I had an account with years of history, moderated several large subreddits, and even had the alpha test badge. I deleted everything like you for the very same reasons. I, too, am sad...
Absolutely. I had an account with years of history, moderated several large subreddits, and even had the alpha test badge. I deleted everything like you for the very same reasons. I, too, am sad that there aren't clearer consequences for the "awful, tone-deaf, misleading/lying, user-hostile, and insulting" response.
I am not surprised at how this played out. While the company is sure to argue that there haven't been any major changes in engagement or traffic, I trust that a small percentage of people did the...
I am not surprised at how this played out. While the company is sure to argue that there haven't been any major changes in engagement or traffic, I trust that a small percentage of people did the same thing I've done, which was to migrate here for conversation, articles, and meaningful interaction. I did not delete my reddit account, but I no longer post or scroll. The only time I navigate to reddit is when a search engine directs me there, and I am glad that's still a thing because there is so much niche info stored within the comments on little things like gaming details, rc tech, music, food, even parenting that really just don't exist elsewhere online. Reddit was, for about a decade, like all the old forums in one place. I don't want that info to be lost, but I can't continue adding value to a company determined to kill the communities which made it awesome in the first place.
I loathe the contemporary social media experience, endless (mindless) short form content, and embedded advertising disguised as user content. That's where they wanna go, so I'm out. I'm super grateful for tildes, which seems like the perfect replacement for what I want out of a social internet experience.
Yep, you can see my activity drop off to near zero: https://www.reddit.com/user/oniony/. Do miss /r/boardgames, but I also waste less time. I now use Hacker News for tech and Tildes for general.
I miss a lot of the niche communities I used to frequent but in turn I looked for forums or other websites as well. Tamiyas Club has mostly replaced my /r/rccars browsing, RetroRGB and GBAtemp,...
I miss a lot of the niche communities I used to frequent but in turn I looked for forums or other websites as well. Tamiyas Club has mostly replaced my /r/rccars browsing, RetroRGB and GBAtemp, and Hacker News and more for other interests... I don't have the same level of random exposure to hobbies and information, which does suck, but I've still got a lot of the same groups and so on.
Most things just come from when I'm searching things. I found Tamiya Club when looking for information on a specific RC model. Found a link to the site, browsed around and eventually added the...
Most things just come from when I'm searching things. I found Tamiya Club when looking for information on a specific RC model. Found a link to the site, browsed around and eventually added the bookmark. Looking for roof racks for my vehicle led me to another enthusiast forum for my model and so on.
You can also enter generic keywords like "x discussion" or so on. Not a perfect system but might get you within 100 meters or so.
Search engines love content, and what better source of content is there than an internet forum? Just search for information on the details of the things that interest you and you are almost...
Search engines love content, and what better source of content is there than an internet forum? Just search for information on the details of the things that interest you and you are almost certain to find one.
It's a more old school experience, but the BoardGameGeek Forums can still be a valuable resource. I especially appreciate the number of game designers that actively participate in discussions!
It's a more old school experience, but the BoardGameGeek Forums can still be a valuable resource. I especially appreciate the number of game designers that actively participate in discussions!
The statements about how Reddit won seem so hollow to me. No, I won. I deleted all my posts and account, and finally broke that addiction. It opened up space to read books again, play some of my...
The statements about how Reddit won seem so hollow to me. No, I won. I deleted all my posts and account, and finally broke that addiction. It opened up space to read books again, play some of my backlog, return to old forums, catch up on my podcasts. I don't have to be part of that hive of negativity, nihilism and schadenfreude anymore.
Yeah, I replaced some of my Reddit time with Tildes, seperate forums etc., but much of the time I used to spend there has gone into learning Japanese, which is going pretty well.
Yeah, I replaced some of my Reddit time with Tildes, seperate forums etc., but much of the time I used to spend there has gone into learning Japanese, which is going pretty well.
Reddit has been going downhill since forever according to many, depending what they want out of it. I think you just have to aggressively curate it to make it what you want it. I used RES on...
Reddit has been going downhill since forever according to many, depending what they want out of it.
I think you just have to aggressively curate it to make it what you want it. I used RES on desktop and Sync for Reddit (RIP) on android. I subscribed to a small number of subreddits. I filtered the SHIT out of r/all, bumping past the limit of 100 excluded subs and using RES filters to knock out more. In subs I controlled, I used BotDefense (RIP) to ban useless reply bots and spam bots.
I abandoned (but did not delete) my account.
I recently learned there's a filter in uBlock Origin (the Annoyance ones that are not turned on by default) that kills the stupid "wanna use the official app?" (for when I land there from Google search results)
The quote from Huffman is bullshit. If they're ok with going private as protest they wouldn't have replaced the mods who did that. I would also be really surprised if they hit their 2024 accessibility target, or if that target is even real. I think the spokesman makes a legit point there's isn't really a benchmark for quality. It's gonna be subjective. People always complain about memes but hey I'll admit, some of them are funny, and a lot of super short funny comments brightened my day.
I forget if I've thanked you for r/magicthecirclejerking on here, but if not, thank you. I don't go on the sub anymore because I just don't browse reddit, but it kept me regularly interested in...
I forget if I've thanked you for r/magicthecirclejerking on here, but if not, thank you. I don't go on the sub anymore because I just don't browse reddit, but it kept me regularly interested in MTG when everything else didn't. Still think you and the rest of the mod team fostered the best MTG community.
Seconding Lapbunny - I'm a big fan of the way the mtcj sub was moderated, and I'm thankful for the way that the discord is moderated too. It's become a place i hang out daily, which is impressive...
Seconding Lapbunny - I'm a big fan of the way the mtcj sub was moderated, and I'm thankful for the way that the discord is moderated too. It's become a place i hang out daily, which is impressive for a public discord
I do wonder how much of the traffic is just bots. I remember a few years ago bots were starting to get a bit out of control and nothing was really done at a site level to combat it. Whenever it...
I do wonder how much of the traffic is just bots. I remember a few years ago bots were starting to get a bit out of control and nothing was really done at a site level to combat it. Whenever it was that they started doing their random username suggestion was the beginning of the end for me as bots turned from an annoyance to an infestation.
Reddit for me was like an old school forum but instead of focusing on one thing it was everything but now it's so far from that concept I don't even recognise what it actually is. When I deleted my account and scrubbed my comments it just got tossed on my big list of garbage social media sites I wont use. My only lingering thoughts about reddit is 'what a shame' because it was once and could still have been a great site but as usual greed destroyed it and there's nothing really left now except the shuffling undead remnants scraping along with bots shouting at each other reposting the same tired old crap.
It's almost amazing to see how it's become difficult to assume good faith on Reddit, and bots are a part of that. In some places you need to be careful what you say in fear of triggering bots, and...
It's almost amazing to see how it's become difficult to assume good faith on Reddit, and bots are a part of that. In some places you need to be careful what you say in fear of triggering bots, and the existance of some of them actively encourage people to spam the comments section ("RemindMe!", "Good bot", etc). One of the things that really bothered me is how people kept upvoting the bot that would post the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article if it were linked. It was always annoying; half of the time I put those links in there were because I wanted it to be a "learn more" thing and the summary just served to make sure that people didn't actually learn more than what they could have learned from context.
Those bots are harmless, imho -- the real problem are automated accounts that repost old popular posts and comments (or generate new ones with AI) in order to farm karma and eventually sell to...
Those bots are harmless, imho -- the real problem are automated accounts that repost old popular posts and comments (or generate new ones with AI) in order to farm karma and eventually sell to scammers and influence peddlers.
I've only noticed two differences A lot more users with Reddit-generated usernames The moderation on /r/politics being a LOT more lax. I guess they had some turnover. That is okay though as they...
I've only noticed two differences
A lot more users with Reddit-generated usernames
The moderation on /r/politics being a LOT more lax. I guess they had some turnover. That is okay though as they were obnoxiously strict before.
It's unfortunate but there's just so much on Reddit that don't exist anywhere else with enough volume to be worth it. Reddit is pretty much the only place where I can talk to thousands of people...
It's unfortunate but there's just so much on Reddit that don't exist anywhere else with enough volume to be worth it. Reddit is pretty much the only place where I can talk to thousands of people from my country, the other alternative would be Facebook which is just as evil if not more 🤷🏿♂️
I don't really care what happens to reddit the company. But what this protest did do was get me to essentially quit. I still have an account and append "reddit" to the occasional Google search,...
I don't really care what happens to reddit the company. But what this protest did do was get me to essentially quit. I still have an account and append "reddit" to the occasional Google search, but before this protest Reddit was my go-to toilet and boredom app. And that's gone. I've completely stopped browsing reddit. Whether that affects their bottom line or not, I've found the combination of Tildes and Tumblr to overall be a better way to use my bored time.
Any recommendations for good meme/humor blogs on Tumblr? I'm trying it out as a substitute for finding stupid stuff to chuckle at during short downtime. I don't really have a problem finding...
Any recommendations for good meme/humor blogs on Tumblr? I'm trying it out as a substitute for finding stupid stuff to chuckle at during short downtime. I don't really have a problem finding in-depth articles and discussion, it's the shitposting that I miss most.
ive been using instagram reels to fill that void reddit left, and its actually better. i dont have to read some made up bs sob story title along with my meme content now. i just keep all...
ive been using instagram reels to fill that void reddit left, and its actually better. i dont have to read some made up bs sob story title along with my meme content now. i just keep all notifications for the app blocked since facebook owned apps are horrible at sending spam/useless notis just for the purpose of creating habit.
Oh gosh it's gonna depend a lot on your preferences, of course, but I'll scroll through my dash and note down the names I see with good memes. Tumblr has a pretty diffuse social structure so it's...
Oh gosh it's gonna depend a lot on your preferences, of course, but I'll scroll through my dash and note down the names I see with good memes. Tumblr has a pretty diffuse social structure so it's hard to recommend many specific big names unless they have a gimmick of some kind.
Aside from that, though, my main recommendation is that whenever you do see something you like om your dash, check out both the original poster's blog as well as the blog it was reblogged from. You can scroll a little to get a sense of if you like what they post/reblog and then follow if you do. That's been my most effective way of rebuilding my dash after I returned to find most of the blogs I used to follow had died.
Of blogs I follow, I see decent lighthearted stuff often from erzvolnes and actuallymaglor. But ymmv when it comes to my taste in Tumblr posts lol! Most blogs I follow are people's personal blogs so they necessarily have a mix of lighthearted and serious stuff, so it's hard to recommend something super specific unfortunately. This is pretty normal on Tumblr tho.
I also highly recommend following tags for things you're particularly interested in as well -- obviously this is a big deal if you're in any fandoms but even if you aren't, topic-related tags can bring interesting stuff on your dash. For instance, I follow the linguistics tag and get some good posts from there sometimes. Tumblr users are usually pretty good at tagging their original posts.
I also follow a fair few blogs with cute cat content. Those are a very important part of keeping my tumblr browsing experience fun. Lmk if you want specific usernames there but they're not hard to find through tumblr search lol
I technically still use reddit, but only via Libreddit and even then I only pay attention to like 1.5 subs, one of which is just a tumblr repost curation sub. And if Libreddit doesn’t work (it had...
I technically still use reddit, but only via Libreddit and even then I only pay attention to like 1.5 subs, one of which is just a tumblr repost curation sub. And if Libreddit doesn’t work (it had trouble after the API changes but seems to be fine now) I just… don’t go. I don’t need reddit in my life.
I definitely had a problem with browsing Reddit so I am one of the people who actually deleted my account and the revolt helped me break my addiction. I post way more here than I ever did on...
I definitely had a problem with browsing Reddit so I am one of the people who actually deleted my account and the revolt helped me break my addiction. I post way more here than I ever did on Reddit with the exception of a few subs, which isn't very much in the grand scheme of things. My habits here are much healthier too.
I still give Reddit traffic at work when bored out of my mind during slow periods. I don't know if it is the work iPad I'm using but the default Reddit website constantly repeats posts when I'm scrolling. It's so weird but it gets me to close the website and do something else. That's the main issue I have noticed since June.
I'm still on reddit, but I definitely use it less since the events of June. I refuse to use their official app (if I MUST use it, I use a patched version via ReVanced) and I've found I actually...
I'm still on reddit, but I definitely use it less since the events of June. I refuse to use their official app (if I MUST use it, I use a patched version via ReVanced) and I've found I actually really like RedReader, one of the capital-F Free apps exempted from the API fees.
I mod several subs, one of which is a frontpage sub, but since there are no mod tools on RedReader, my modding activity has gone way down. Which is fine; I do what I can when I'm on a desktop and need to "take out the trash". I know I'm not the only one who has gone the RedReader path.
Moderating on the official app is a nightmare as well. I used RIF a lot to mod, and while it lacked some features, it worked great for me to mod a 300k sub.
Moderating on the official app is a nightmare as well. I used RIF a lot to mod, and while it lacked some features, it worked great for me to mod a 300k sub.
Yup, RiF was goated. I know that technically I could use the ReVanced patch for RiF, too, and that would work until it... doesn't, but as much as I miss RiF, I just don't see the point in delaying...
Yup, RiF was goated. I know that technically I could use the ReVanced patch for RiF, too, and that would work until it... doesn't, but as much as I miss RiF, I just don't see the point in delaying the inevitable. RedReader does a great job, and it has just enough "jank" (I say with love) that it makes it less of a dopamine factory than RiF, which is overall good for my reddit addiction lol.
For my part my usage of Reddit has basically been completely unchanged. I went there before for niche communities which only exist on Reddit now, and that’s also what I do now. This also means I’m...
For my part my usage of Reddit has basically been completely unchanged. I went there before for niche communities which only exist on Reddit now, and that’s also what I do now. This also means I’m generally insulated from the broader Reddit “discourse”. If the quality of /r/pics has gone down (heaven knows that’s a low bar), then I wouldn’t know it.
The only difference is basically I went from subscribing to Apollo to subscribing to Narwhal 2, for the same price even. And I like the Narwhal redesign a little better than Apollo, which was always a tad crowded UX wise and somewhat buggy, especially the top bar.
I’ve remained off reddit since the protest. I understand that it won’t affect them, but I feel my Reddit addiction was affecting me and the way they handled that situation was completely inexcusable. I still miss it from time to time, but I try to find better uses for my time.
I was the same initially but it's still a valuable knowledge base when looking for opinions on specific topics. I just don't contribute any value to it by using an ad blocker and refusing to comment and vote, except to send invites to Tildes.
Yeah it says something about the sad state of affairs the internet finds itself in if you still need to append "reddit" to your search query for some subjects.
Though I have found that over the past months that also has gotten to be less reliable for subjects where information is more dynamic. People might say that reddit still has the same amount of users, but the amount of current useful information seems to be steadily declining. At least, from my anecdotal perspective, that seems to be the case.
I do realize that as long as there are search engines there will be some form of SEO, it is just truly saddening that SEO seems to have won the battle so far.
People have been trying to game search engines since search engines have existed, yet we were doing just fine. You overestimate how much this is an SEO problem.
The issue isn't that search engines are dying, it's that the web itself is dying. Or at least the old web.
Back in the day if you needed info on a topic, there'd be plenty of personal/hobby websites discussing it, a lot of forum discussions, a whole bunch of websites.. and everything was easily indexable.
Nowadays people post their stuff in few centralized places, most of which are deliberately impossible to index (facebook, instagram, discord, etc), or at least hard to index (video content on YT, tiktok, etc). Reddit is one of the few remaining websites that are very active, public and easily indexable, which is why it still yields good results.
Sorry, I don't buy that.. Because I still come across these smaller places and resources on a regular basis.
I consider Tildes to be one and a lot of the things people link to on here also fall under the same category.
These places though rarely show up in search queries when I am looking for specific information. Even though I know they are out there and in some cases previously did encounter them covering a subject I am now searching for.
im torn beacuse i know for a fact there is good content out there. i found some cosy and silly internet radio stations that have a nice little community around them, tildes, and a bunch of niche projects like that one to reverse engineer the old MSN mesenger servers.
the problem i have is with discoverability. it absolutely sucks that youtube has all these billions of hours of content, but the search is godaweful. i cannot search for categories, even im p sure they label everything on the backend for algo purposes. i cannot easily find videos within certain timeframes (so good luck trying to find that old video with a common word in the title). i cannot easily even correct the algo when it decides that i totally want 400 jerma stream highlights beacuse i clicked on a link a friend sent me.
the best strat for finding new channels on youtube is to make a new account/ingocnito or something - make your way to the channel you wanna find relateds for, watch a few videos in the background, and then wait for the suggestions to go from populating with trending things, to populating with trending lego experiments channels, or niche essays about what the best counting system is
i probably do blame SEO more than i should, but i think thats just what me and a lot of other people have just glommed onto as the reason - instead of just discoverability/availaibility. it has become basically impossible to "browse the web" and instead you just browse the curated website of your choosing. the internet might not be dying but its definitely not healthy. sometimes it feels like living somewhere with bad public transport outside of the cities. if you're into whats trending, great, but if not then it really does feel like its kinda dead sometimes.
i used to love going on youtube and seeing what was getting uploaded in 'gaming' or whatever, but now the only categories you can actively browse are the auto generated suggestions at the top of your home page. and yeah, they do have cool ones sometimes but its infinitely frustrating to return to the page tomorrow and find that the good tags have gone from "godot (game engine)" "esp32" "defcon" to "live" "mixes" "stragegy-videogames". it is so close to being a workable system if not for the obfuscation
I would say it's a mixture of both, with the addition of everyone becoming greedy and trying to monetize everything and this obsession with "muh view counts."
I miss the old web. I know there are sites that still exist according to those principles but it's so hard to wade through so much dogshit to find it.
I go back to it now mostly if I'm on my computer but it really has lost its shine. The article is right that it really feels like the content has gone downhill a lot.
Tildes more and more feels like reddit used to except it still isn't big enough to find lots of info on more niche stuff, especially finding info on small games that otherwise would mostly get ignored by most people.
In retrospect, the real disappointment isn't that Reddit had an inevitable decline, but that it ever became as large as it did in the first place. Reddit usurped community forums, fan sites and other activity. It slowly made the web less vibrant and more centralized and corporate, piece by piece. And it normalized that state of things, to the point that people who want to leave Reddit can only think in terms of "Reddit replacements" instead of the web returning to its natural form.
Reddit is the Walmart of social media. It moved in, and was great at first so it killed off all the niche forums. Then, once it had market control, it turned itself in the shit that it's users hates about the other social media sites. Reddit was always, always about the content and the conversation (once it added comments). You could get good content from anyone, that was the point. Then, it added followers, courted "influencers" and became a worse Instagram for OnlyFans models.
I used old reddit with adblockers, and didn't realize how much the site changed until one day I got logged out randomly and legit thought I went to the wrong website. The new site is definitely not my cup of tea.
But yeah, for me it's the mobile app. After RIF went down, I just wanted to see how the official app was, and the same 5 subs were on my front page. It was either that or allow r/all, I was annoyed I wasn't able to see content from all of the subs I followed like when I was able to use RIF. It was then I realized why people hated the official app. It overall sucks. I trusted everyone when they said it sucked, but I finally learned first hand why lol. It feels like it's trying too hard to be like a mainstream social media app
I'm about the same - I use it mostly as an archive to find information, but I don't contribute much anymore. The quality went downhill sharply, to the extent that before, there would always be something interesting to read on my (heavily curated) list of subreddits, and now there just ... isn't. I was sad about it for a long while but then I accepted that maybe it's time to be offline more.
I stayed on reddit for a few months after the protest, but my engagement went to near zero. I quit all of the subreddits I was mod of and basically used it as a marketplace to sell pokemon cards and gun accessories.
Then, one of the racist douchebags that I banned from my state subreddit mass reported all of my gun sale posts. Reddit deemed some of my merchandise as "prohibited items" but never replied to any of the messages or ban appeals I sent in. They talk about how terrible mods are, then go against their own moderator code of conduct when it comes to ban appeals.
Oh well I used an alt that I had for years to sell pokemon stuff using cracked RiF client. Then I was banned from /r/news for arguing with someone who said Americans never did genocide against Natives.. They muted me and I just avoided the subreddit for a while.
Then, I used an alt to comment on news and both my accounts were sitewide banned for 7 days for Ban Evasion. Okay, fine, I'll accept that, I broke the rules.
Then 2 days later, they sitewide banned my main account for another 7 days even though I didn't use reddit at all in that time. Then the next day they perm banned it. All for "ban Evasion" even though I didn't use the site at all.
I'm done with reddit now. I'll check /r/news occasionally just to see if there's anything I've missed, but the reddit I loved has died a slow death over the last 3 or so years. I'm enjoying my time on Threads and Tildes now.
I'm only on reddit as a "leech" basis now, only reading, never contributing, no upvotes, etc. Only sending those precious API requests they declared so expensive.
To be honest, the other side handled it as badly as Reddit did. There was initially a talk of just doing a "black day" protest like it had always been i.e. taking the sub offline (private) for just one day.
But then they started "hijacking" the subs by refusing to make them public again. That was when they lost all public sympathy and the whole movement sort of failed. Had it been just a one day protest, maybe the outcome would have been different?
A protest with a defined end date has no teeth, though. What incentive would Reddit have to actually put in the work required to make any substantive changes, when they could just sit tight for a day and wait for everything to blow over?
Well that's a fair point, but the flip side of that is that showing your "teeth" is a sign of aggression, which in this case provoked a response.
The indefinite protest eventually just led to Reddit deciding it would replace the mods who were keeping the subreddits closed. A lot of mods caved because they didn't want to lose their positions, and public sentiment was more split because users didn't necessarily like being locked out of the subs they came to reddit for.
A shorter or periodic protest could have been seen as more of a "win", and could have over time still led to people being convinced to move to discord like a lot of mods suggested. As it played out it ended with more of a whimper than a bang.
I find this an interesting example of how the internet has such short term memory in regards to these things. This was tried in the past as doing a blackout as a form of protest isn't something new. One of the lessons learned from those is that the "win" is only short term as reddit promised to improve on the raised issues but on the longer term didn't really follow through.
So, for a lot of those involved it was pretty clear from the start that a short blackout would not mean much. Which was actually echoed by a leaked memo from Steve Huffman to reddit staff basically saying to sit it out just like previous blackouts.
The most the dedicated could have done—especially after Reddit announced they were removing the uncooperative—was let their subreddits become spam-filled cesspits (or keep out the spam but welcome the R34). Shit up the place and ruin the community so there’s nothing of value for Reddit to keep. In some aspects, this almost sounds like the digital analogy to a suicide bombing.
Some subreddits did, some of the largest of those subreddits were the first to have their mod teams nuked from orbit.
It sounds like you are trying to say that they shouldn’t have done this. But what alternative do they have when the opposition has all of the power? Do you believe they should have just submitted idly? If it was going to be ineffective either way, why does it make a difference?
I guess I would say it makes a difference to the active users that were locked out of subs. I dont really follow the bigger subreddits, but there are a few specialty subs for games that I was a fan of in my childhood, and there's not really other places I have to discuss a niche 20 year old game.
So it makes a difference whether the sub is put into indefinite no submission mode or not. To me, as an individual, at least. There was a lot of fan art and theory crafting on the sub that I would have been disappointed to lose access to. And the decision to continue the protest indefinitely went against a community vote.
The alternative I would say is just what ended up happening afterward. Mods who didn't approve of Reddit anymore moved over to Discord where they would have more freedom to run things the way they wanted.
That doesn't really answer the asked question though. Yes, it was not a great experience for you as a user. But as a rule of thumb, protests will often (almost always) inconvenience other people. That sort of is the nature of protests to begin with.
Your approach also ignores a lot of basics of what made those subreddits such a great experience for you to visit. Communities don't grow in a vacuum, certainly not communities that exist for a prolonged period of time. They very much depend on a small group of people spending considerably more time and effort on making the community grow and welcoming to new joiners and old timers alike. These are the people that have cared for these communities for a long time, are invested in them more than you as consumer and these often also end up being moderators.
Which makes this statement
In my opinion, a bit tone-deaf to the situation.
Leave. You're right, the admins held all the cards. Your only bet is to walk away. Plan an exit strategy, accept that your next community will be smaller and need to start over in some regards, and choose a new community out of the dozens, hundreds of sites out there. Even better if you coordinate with other mods so you can possibly create a network effect.
The specific site didn't matter. Just that there was some alternative in mind. But people seemed more interested in trying to "save" reddit instead of creating a new competitor (the only thing that can really pressure them).
If it were a one-day blackout, Reddit would have let the mods have their fun, then continued their plans as usual. Sadly, I think the mod teams that held out until they got forcibly replaced were the ones who did as much as they could to hurt Reddit, specifically by taking hostages. Drive off the power users and the flow of attractive content that brings in the ad-viewing cohort slowly dries up.
Perhaps I’m wrong: they may have enough repost momentum that the injection of new material is no longer measurable on their metrics and the site could subsist indefinitely on reposts and AI spam.
Why should they have been particularly concerned with public sympathy? The point was to make reddit shitty(er) so that people will leave if reddit didn't make changes. That means they have to make the product bad. Appeasing the users who don't care is the opposite of making the site unusable.
Who is "they" here? You are sort of vaguely gesturing here to an undefined group here. There isn't even a single group to point at as various affected groups of users and subreddits took different approaches to the protest and their involvement.
I feel like you are just talking about your experience with one specific subreddit. Many of them actually made it very clear that it could be more and did involve their users in various steps of the process.
I view it the same way I view protests that block roads. The point is to purposely make it painful and not ignoreable. In the face of the other side holding all the power, I think that's a valid approach.
But I will not deny that it strategically can lose you public sympathy and momentum, but I'm not sure I know the answer. A "weak" piss-in-the-wind protest that is gone in a day is far easier for them to ignore. But I come from a maybe rare/extreme standpoint that I'd rather see Reddit completely capitulate or otherwise just shut down.
The sad thing is that not garnering public sympathy just means the Reddit "public" was more interested in selfish whining about not being able to access their content than they were effecting change. A common problem with any "public" that should be more active (myself included). Comfort and self-interest are always easier. So, in a way- F public sympathy, tbh. At least philosophically, if not strategically.
But Reddit holding all the power means they ultimately can end the protests themselves because of replacing mods/etc. Very difficult to make any dent when you're powerless and even lose your ability to protest.
Perhaps, but this is why that method of protesting is a bad idea if you are actually looking for support for your cause. If you're just looking to cause a ruckus and get attention, I guess it's effective. But few people are going to be sympathetic to your cause if you're blocking the road they're trying to travel on, even if they agree with your cause fundamentally. You may even push people to the other side if they're on the fence, and associate the issue with the annoying disruption, wasted time, and potentially even things like lost wages that they experienced.
I support legal protesting, but I'm also in support of removing people with appropriate force who are illegally blocking public highways and causing safety issues for themselves and the public.
-MLK, Letter from Birmingham City Jail
The entire civil rights movement was based on inconveniencing people and forcing them to pay attention. The marches on highways and between cities? Those were illegal, unpermitted, and blocked traffic. The sit-ins at lunch counters demanding the right to be served? Violations of both trespassing and segregation laws. Refusing to give up bus seats? Same thing.
The entire civil rights movement was based on civil disobedience, not just feel-good protests. The core tactic was to do something that was illegal, but objectively harmless, to then force southern authorities to ridiculously overreact. People all over the country then saw video of very respectable people, old ladies, university students, preachers, etc., being brutalized by the police for doing obviously harmless things.
The problem with staying within the law is that you're usually holding these protests BECAUSE the law itself is unjust. And when oppressors never just write one law. They don't just write racist or bigoted laws; they also pass laws slashing democratic accountability and criminalizing effective forms of protest. Non-violent civil disobedience was the path chosen in the civil rights movement because the South wasn't a democracy. They could no more easily simply vote-out the segregationists than the Founding Fathers could have just voted King George out office. Electoral politics only work if you have a functioning democracy, and the South wasn't a democracy until the 1960s or 1970s.
I just finished reading Never Split the Difference by Chris Vos an experienced FBI negotiator with kidnappers, hostage takers and terrorists. He lists three useful tactics for leverage, positive leverage, negative leverage and normative leverage. Normative leverage is based on making the other party look like a hypocrite based on their own beliefs and standards. MLK and the Civil Rights movement played to a national audience to demonstrate that the leadership of the southern states were acting in ways that the national audience considered unamerican. It wouldn't have worked with Ghengiz Khan or Hitler.
I'm not 100 percent convicted that Vos has identified all the important tactics but he named one significant one.
The Civil rights protesters broke the laws they wanted ended. Likewise, people against clear cutting redwoods wood go sit in the trees. The audience saw a relationship between the problem and the protests. When I see a blocked highway I see ambulances carrying patients who die because of the protests
That last point helped me nail down what I’ve been trying to articulate for awhile. I also think MLK, in the later years of the movement, could implicitly draw a contrast with more radical factions under Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, and with a potentially violent uprising that could occur if Southern governments cracked down too much.
Perhaps that line could be, "if we can't walk or drive down the street without getting killed by police, no one should be able to use the streets."
The militarization of police forces in the US has progressed significantly since MLK's day. I think that significantly angels the equation for non-violent, illegal protest.
Someone who says they support your cause but switches sides at the first inconvenience was never a true supporter. You gain nothing by having that sort of person on your side.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from the past 20 years of election strategy, it’s that lukewarm and apathetic voters decide elections. That’s why get out the vote campaigns are such a central feature of election years.
People who quit that easily will never be part of the activist circle, but they are necessary at the polls.
I agree that they weren't, but you've now lost the ability to educate them and obtain their support.
People don't need education, they need inspiration. People aren't racists simply because they've never been handed the right type of book. Forcing information onto people is usually counterproductive, as it just causes them to dismiss what you tell them and dig their heels in harder. A racist was not led to their beliefs through rational argument, and rational argument will not lead them out.
You're not going to inspire them by blocking highways either. The vast, vast majority of people are against that nonsense.
Education isn't just books. And I would wager a lot of racism stems from people they never got to meet being demonized by another form of "education".
Example: The Just Stop Oil protestors
Tell me, how are they supposed to protest if all they do is black out one day? You really think Reddit gave a shit if they took the subreddits down for one day. A real protest has to make things inconvenient for the group they are targetting. Which unfortunately for users meant making it hard to use reddit without them.
If you actually cared about what the people protesting cared about, you'd understand and deal with it, not yell at them for doing the only thing in their power to try to get Reddit to at least compromise. Otherwise, you just really didn't care and just wanted thme to suck up whatever Reddit wanted them to do so you didn't get inconvenienced.
Completely disagree, one day was far from enough, a permanent blackout until an open dialogue is established is an actual protest.
One day is just pointless slacktivism.
And then spez sent in the pinkertons to remove the protestors and install their own unwanted moderators.
How do you lose sympathy for that?
Doubt it. It was too big to fail at that time and the worst part was that the mods themself also didn't want to leave. Reddit held all the bandwidth and emotoinal leverage.
If the mods had a coordinated plan to properly move (hopefully without creating another Voat in the process) that would have been so much more effective in the long run than trying fix reddit and keep their old audience. But everyone was too focused on trying to make an uncompromised, exact replica of Reddit (including the community size and featureset) and were arguing amongst one another over the downsides of alternatives (which all lacked the size except for Discord).
Real shame, but I was also like that years ago. I can't blame them for wanting to hold on.
Up until two days ago I was a moderator for a fairly large subreddit but I ultimately left because of the events of June. For a long time I was fine providing my time (and money hosting bots) to shape a community I wanted to be part of but Reddit's proven repeatedly that it doesn't care about community, it just needs the bare minimum to keep users on the site.
I think that for some subreddits the lasting effect will be more subtle and not as directly attributable to Reddit's actions then with a large amount of institutional knowledge and leadership behind the scenes that's being lost. Three of the most active and engaged moderators on the team left by the start of July, while I handed off what responsibilities I could to the rest of the team over the ensuring months to minimize disruption before I quit as well.
There's a technical gap that I'm leaving behind though that no one currently on the team can fill and when we've tried recruiting new moderators no one's shown as much interest there. One of the primary draws of the subreddit now is for discussions of new shows, and episode threads are posted by a bot that occasionally malfunctions and requires a human mod to manually make a thread instead. Back in May I had a roadmap for improving the bot, expanding its capabilities, making it both more resilient and easier to manually create threads if necessary. I never got around to implementing any of that because of what Reddit did, but the next time a thread's two hours late the average user's not going to know it could have been avoided by now.
That's probably the most visible impact for the average member of that subreddit, but it's far from the only one. Maybe other people will step up and eventually make things better, but it will still be behind the trajectory of where things could have been.
Yup, I had a mod of a subreddit I left at the beginning of last year hit me up and ask me about some of my automod code. He's a good guy and he did a great job taking over the subreddit when I left, and he's honestly the reason I chose to step down because I knew the sub would be in capable hands, but he still had no idea how to do any of the automod stuff I had taught myself over the years. I think there's lots of subreddits that experienced a "brain drain" so to speak. Decades of knowledge about code, CSS, rules, wikis, and bots was wiped away over the summer.
I took over a meme subreddit that was being squated on by an inactive mod. I built that subreddit from 20 subscribers to over 5 thousand in the course of about 2 months. A year later it's at 35,000. I put hundreds of hours into recruiting mods, users, and making memes that would draw people in. It was a community I truly loved being a part of. And it pisses me off that reddit believes they own all of that for simply hosting the data.
I used to use the example starting a Rec soccer league. You wanted to start a Rec league for fun. You recruited teams, designed jerseys, made schedules, moderated disagreements, removed problem players/coaches/fans for years. But you didn't have fields of your own, so you had to play in the public park, that's fine, everyone was happy and the park managers didn't mind. You did this for years, storing some of your materials at the park so you didn't have to lug it around, you didn't make any money off of it, you just did it for the love of the game.
Then, one season, the park decides that you have to start charging you exorbitant fees to use the fields, way more then they should, and way more than it would actually cost to rent the fields. You say "okay, I'm just going to shut down the league" and they say no, you're not allowed to do that. Everything you built now belongs to them, because they're the ones who have all the balls, goals, fields, rosters, schedules, jersey designs, etc and they're going to make money off of it now. All of your hard work through out the years is now theirs, and they're going to continue going with or without you, and they're going to make money off of it.
For those of you curious about the longer-term impacts of the 2023 summer Reddit protests.
TL;DR: other than a slight dip over the summer, Reddit traffic has remained consistent, despite "dozens" of Redditors promising to leave the site if their favorite 3rd party apps had to close shop. The article quotes a couple people who state that the quality of the content has declined. A Reddit spokesman's response is that there's no metric by which to measure content quality.
The article lists some positive changes that Reddit made in response to the protests. Reddit has been working on improving mod tools within the official app and on accessibility issues. According to a Reddit spokesman, they are on track to comply with WWW consortium's accessibility guidelines by the end of 2024.
Personal note: it would be nice to have a metric by which to measure content quality. I peek in there every now and then, and the content in the big subreddits is definitely worse than I remember.
Content quality has been getting worse, but this is also because of a fundamental problem - the masses want fast-food style gratification. I suspect getting more popular makes a platform devolve like that, but reddit may also be adjusting the dials to be more profitable. They won’t make money with 5 minute reads. They need more 2 second views and more scrolling past ads.
The "quick gratification" issue has always been a problem with Reddit, hasn't it? It's a problem baked into their positive-feedback algorithm: posts that quickly gain upvotes within the first few minutes of posting get pushed to the front page. Reddit could be tweaking the algorithm to make it worse, but my guess is that the "dozens" who left included some of the best posters/mods.
What would happen if the length of the article is a multiplier to upvote rise / upvote ?
People would pad their posts to make them longer instead of getting to the point, just the way people add unnecessary heartwarming stories to the beginning of their recipe pages to give them an SEO boost on Google.
Lorem ipsum for days :/
That, and tons of ML-generated fluff. Wouldn’t be surprised if people would go as far as to develop browser extensions that roll ChatGPT into the Reddit post text box.
Goodhearts law. The metric can't be that simple.
I don't think it's come into effect but I remember some theory crafting of such ways to fight Eternal September back when Tildes was new. There was an idea to have regulars have a huge multiplier on their vote count, based on a variety of factors. Karma (and lack of negative karma. Which would be lack of Noise/Joke/Malice here), manual quality evaluation of posts and comments, kinds of content voted upon, and account age were a few factors. So that user's votes would count for something up to 10x the amount of other votes to combat any influx of new people who vote on low quality submissions . And ofc it can be taken away quickly if abused.
It'd never be something Reddit would want to not feasibly accomplish, but I do want to see how the next moderate to large community handles such issues.
That would be interesting. Most users still wouldn't read the articles, of course; voting and commenting purely based on the headline. But they would be not reading super long articles that would benefit from such a multiplier.
Readup has such a multiplier, but it pairs it with tracking your reading to make sure you actually finished the article before it lets you vote and comment. It works very well, in my experience.
Popularity definitely seems to be the main issue. I think that the quality of discussion on reddit has been getting considerably worse for at least a decade, and the two main triggers were firstly effectively becoming mainstream (as opposed to a slightly nerdy tech-oriented platform) and secondly the beginning of culture wars, around the rise of online feminism. The decline has been steady with some faster dips, this summer protest just seems to be one of them.
Anecdotally, the only online spaces I know of that are still relatively smart use some sort of relatively strong "organic" gatekeeping - not moderation, but ideally being uninteresting to dumb/bad faith people, or in some cases just being very unfriendly or even aggressive towards people posting lazy content. Reddit, apart from being too big, is almost the opposite of that approach - open, welcoming to lazy content and relying on lots of moderation because there are no strong communities that independently exist with a bit of self-moderation.
There have been people observing (several threads at /r/theoryofreddit etc.) that at some point relatively recently (last year?) Reddit started pushing controversial high engagement subreddits like Am I The Asshole etc. much more than before on the frontpage, and in general using its own version of "The Algorithm" that doesn't entirely respect which subreddits the user follows.
One metric for quality I would suggest is whether users are clicking through to Read The 'Forementioned Article. If noone RTFAs, and everyone is just scrolling past or spending two seconds to post "first!", that's not quality engagement. Second is if people read other comments before responding to add their own two cents. Subreddits and posts where it's one person asking for advice doesn't need 500x of the same two word answers, but more well rounded and more thought about responses.
All those subtracted by the number of verbatim low effort responses that are repeats of what's been said, adjusted by downvotes.
I always thought Mr Randall Munroe's chat filter was brilliant:
(It's been 15 years since that post and the bot went live. I haven't followed up on its continued use since then.)
But these suggestions, I think, goes counter to scrolling as many ads, and quick skim as many advertiser keywords, and being addicted and retuning to the site to doom scroll as much as possible.
Þ3re are nº gįrrlllszørzs ønn ye 1n73rw3bz
Well, see for yourself how it has gone
https://boards.4chan.org/r9k/
*Laughs out loud
I've never been there before but it's interesting to see uniquely terrible edgelord hottakes :) at least the dumb-posts have to be somewhat creative.
I was also encouraged to see correct usage of their/there/they're on one of the particularly offensive posts. :)
What can we say? Grammar Nazis take both parts seriously over there.
4Chan has always been weird to me. I remember browsing it a few years after it opened (Remember when b was good? b was never good) and, yeah it was horrible in terms of content, but it wasn't... Well, it wasn't what it is today I guess. I've gone back on occasions to see what's what and I mean, yeah, still horrible but they've always been sticklers for certain things. They're not your army and such.
“Different flavor of horrible” is also an apt comparison of 2012 Reddit vs. today’s reddit. Even before the blackouts, it was massively downhill if 2012 terribleness was tolerable to you.
The thing about 2012 terribleness is that it was relatively homogenous. You learned what it was, learned to expect it and could learn to acknowledge its bias or to ignore it. What was left after that was often tolerable and even somewhat smart and insightful.
As soon as drama between subreddits and proto-culture wars started, this advantage vanished because reddit was flooded with infinite different types of stupid.
2012 terribleness also was better behaved about being obvious when it spilled outside its containment zones. If the four /r/n_word users start shitting up a thread in /r/ponypics, it was blatant. Now that everything is mostly coded to avoid bans and slur filters, the assumption of bad faith toward anyone who phrases things ever so slightly off is thicker than ever.
I did my own content quality check now - visited the homepage on a PC I never did before. I scrolled for a minute and tried to find something worthwhile and failed to do so. It was memes, old "news" and other useless stuff. And this all infused with promoted content (ads). So I assured myself I did the right thing in the summer of 2023 and closed the tab.
If Reddit (company) is pleased with how the website looks and works right now, that is good for them! I'm not pleased with either how the websites is right now or what company did in 2023, thus I'm not visiting Reddit anymore.
If restaurant served you spoiled food and told you everything is ok, you won't go there anymore, right?
Even the things that are not ads tend to be ads. There are so many posts about products that it makes you wonder if they aren’t actually ads.
The amount of questions about brands and products posted on r/askreddit the past couple of weeks has been insane.
According to this tracker, post traffic (which I reckon corresponds to power users/content creators than comment or browsing traffic) has dropped 15-20% since the protests started, and in an organic way rather than an illusory overnight drop like some trackers affected by the API cutoff. And I'd bet a significant fraction of the rest is driven by repost bots.
I’m still on Reddit because there is a support group that I’m part of on there. In the few occasions I branch out to other subreddits and comment, the replies I get tend to be in bad faith. In one occasion someone posted a short list of things that streaming TV boxes generally didn’t do, and when I responded that an AppleTV did all of those things they just did a long string of responses completely ignoring my statement and pretending they were right. Another time I had made a post about how it was foolish to rely on technology that didn’t yet exist as a way to stop the climate change being driven by the meat industry and was strawmaned as someone who rejected all technology.
Funny, we solved that problem here over five years ago. :P
There is one hypothesis that I can think of that explains both of these observations. Traffic is up and quality is down because reddit is overrun with AI-generated schlock at ever-accelerating rates. The bots post generic piles of drivel that are just rehashes of old comments. The bots are facilitated by increasingly better technology and the decline in reddit moderation. Reddit is rapidly collapsing into a singularity of bots having arguments with other bots.
Its really an interesting phenomenon. Reddit pissed off the people who kept the spammers at bay. Those people shut down their bots that contained the shirt spammers, and reposters, and the account sellers using recycled comments to make it seem like they're a legit account. So of course we should expect traffic to be up, the door was left open as those mods walked out of the house so to speak.
Then, reddit launches a bot hosting service so mods can't take their bots and go home anymore. Reddit has really gone from the "we'll host your content and communities for you" to "these are our communities, these are our bots, and this is our content". Not that it's unexpected, but just very disappointing that reddit decided to go that direction.
Thinking about, I think a better metric would be through advertisers - have they maintained the same engagement? If traffic remains the same then their engagement should be the same
Wasn't there a subreddit dedicated to bots answering each other?
Yep. /r/subredditsimulator
Which was made by the same person who created Tildes... and who also created Automoderator for reddit. :P
Wow, I did not know all that! Thanks.
well I can't have promised to leave since I deleted my account back in March. I still made one more account in September for a throwaway post, but that lasted a week. I can't say I'm truly "gone" as I'm contributing to the Monthly active User traffic, but my usage dropped like a rock as a daily browser over 2023.
But yeah, I figured not much would impact Reddit from what was attempted. The goal of the protests should not have been to "kill reddit", but instead to invigorate a serious competitor. But Reddit was so polarized as of late that I knew few would look at this opportunity in that lens. They were tailored by Reddit and other social media to see destruction, schadenfreude, topple the system, etc. and that's how they approached this.
And it sadly ended the same way. At least the fediverse got a modest boost in traffic for the next drama. Because there will be one.
Well of course, quality isn't a profitable metric to measure for a site that served ads, so I'm not surprised by the lack of metric. If reposts and AI-blogspam gets more traffic, that's all the customers (who are not the commenters) care about. Their job isn't to care about quality.
Content quality is definitely subjective, but I regularly see the front page completely covered in AI generated titles and low effort political farming. Not too different to how it was before, just more intense
I deleted years of posts, deleted all of my accounts, and refuse to "browse" the site ever again. No desire to- good riddance. The only thing I'm sad about is that it's still popular and has plenty of traffic, I was hoping that their actions would put them out of business.
The only time I'll ever encounter or "use" reddit in any way is if it's the only way I can find some sort of troubleshooting / technical information that isn't available anywhere else, via an online search.
Regardless of any improvements they're making now, it was clear at the time that people involved in the decisions and directions of the company, particularly the CEO, were awful, tone-deaf, misleading/lying, user-hostile, and insulting, and I'm not willing to accept so soon that they've magically changed.
They've resurrected lots of comments and posts that I deleted over the summer, I'm sure I'm not the only one. They don't show up on my profile page (even though the account is not banned) but they show up on Google, and I still occasionally get a notification that someone replied to it.
Fuck reddit, there really needs to be a "digital bill of rights" that protects user's rights to content. If I want my comments and posts to be deleted, they shouldn't be able to bring them back.
Wasn't there a route where you could make the request under EU law and they'd have to comply?
Yeah, I think that's Right to be Forgotten. Can also invoke GDPR since that involves being able to request and remove your information.
Absolutely. I had an account with years of history, moderated several large subreddits, and even had the alpha test badge. I deleted everything like you for the very same reasons. I, too, am sad that there aren't clearer consequences for the "awful, tone-deaf, misleading/lying, user-hostile, and insulting" response.
I am not surprised at how this played out. While the company is sure to argue that there haven't been any major changes in engagement or traffic, I trust that a small percentage of people did the same thing I've done, which was to migrate here for conversation, articles, and meaningful interaction. I did not delete my reddit account, but I no longer post or scroll. The only time I navigate to reddit is when a search engine directs me there, and I am glad that's still a thing because there is so much niche info stored within the comments on little things like gaming details, rc tech, music, food, even parenting that really just don't exist elsewhere online. Reddit was, for about a decade, like all the old forums in one place. I don't want that info to be lost, but I can't continue adding value to a company determined to kill the communities which made it awesome in the first place.
I loathe the contemporary social media experience, endless (mindless) short form content, and embedded advertising disguised as user content. That's where they wanna go, so I'm out. I'm super grateful for tildes, which seems like the perfect replacement for what I want out of a social internet experience.
Yep, you can see my activity drop off to near zero: https://www.reddit.com/user/oniony/.
Do miss /r/boardgames, but I also waste less time.
I now use Hacker News for tech and Tildes for general.
I miss a lot of the niche communities I used to frequent but in turn I looked for forums or other websites as well. Tamiyas Club has mostly replaced my /r/rccars browsing, RetroRGB and GBAtemp, and Hacker News and more for other interests... I don't have the same level of random exposure to hobbies and information, which does suck, but I've still got a lot of the same groups and so on.
Do you have advice for finding forums?
Most things just come from when I'm searching things. I found Tamiya Club when looking for information on a specific RC model. Found a link to the site, browsed around and eventually added the bookmark. Looking for roof racks for my vehicle led me to another enthusiast forum for my model and so on.
You can also enter generic keywords like "x discussion" or so on. Not a perfect system but might get you within 100 meters or so.
Search engines love content, and what better source of content is there than an internet forum? Just search for information on the details of the things that interest you and you are almost certain to find one.
It's a more old school experience, but the BoardGameGeek Forums can still be a valuable resource. I especially appreciate the number of game designers that actively participate in discussions!
I frequent BGG, but I've always found the forums really hard to navigate.
The statements about how Reddit won seem so hollow to me. No, I won. I deleted all my posts and account, and finally broke that addiction. It opened up space to read books again, play some of my backlog, return to old forums, catch up on my podcasts. I don't have to be part of that hive of negativity, nihilism and schadenfreude anymore.
Yeah, I replaced some of my Reddit time with Tildes, seperate forums etc., but much of the time I used to spend there has gone into learning Japanese, which is going pretty well.
Reddit has been going downhill since forever according to many, depending what they want out of it.
I think you just have to aggressively curate it to make it what you want it. I used RES on desktop and Sync for Reddit (RIP) on android. I subscribed to a small number of subreddits. I filtered the SHIT out of r/all, bumping past the limit of 100 excluded subs and using RES filters to knock out more. In subs I controlled, I used BotDefense (RIP) to ban useless reply bots and spam bots.
I abandoned (but did not delete) my account.
I recently learned there's a filter in uBlock Origin (the Annoyance ones that are not turned on by default) that kills the stupid "wanna use the official app?" (for when I land there from Google search results)
The quote from Huffman is bullshit. If they're ok with going private as protest they wouldn't have replaced the mods who did that. I would also be really surprised if they hit their 2024 accessibility target, or if that target is even real. I think the spokesman makes a legit point there's isn't really a benchmark for quality. It's gonna be subjective. People always complain about memes but hey I'll admit, some of them are funny, and a lot of super short funny comments brightened my day.
I forget if I've thanked you for r/magicthecirclejerking on here, but if not, thank you. I don't go on the sub anymore because I just don't browse reddit, but it kept me regularly interested in MTG when everything else didn't. Still think you and the rest of the mod team fostered the best MTG community.
It was my pleasure! Thanks for the thanks, mods famously don't get a lot of that.
Seconding Lapbunny - I'm a big fan of the way the mtcj sub was moderated, and I'm thankful for the way that the discord is moderated too. It's become a place i hang out daily, which is impressive for a public discord
Thanks. I haven't been involved too much with the discord but I'm glad to hear the mods there are doing a good job.
I do wonder how much of the traffic is just bots. I remember a few years ago bots were starting to get a bit out of control and nothing was really done at a site level to combat it. Whenever it was that they started doing their random username suggestion was the beginning of the end for me as bots turned from an annoyance to an infestation.
Reddit for me was like an old school forum but instead of focusing on one thing it was everything but now it's so far from that concept I don't even recognise what it actually is. When I deleted my account and scrubbed my comments it just got tossed on my big list of garbage social media sites I wont use. My only lingering thoughts about reddit is 'what a shame' because it was once and could still have been a great site but as usual greed destroyed it and there's nothing really left now except the shuffling undead remnants scraping along with bots shouting at each other reposting the same tired old crap.
It's almost amazing to see how it's become difficult to assume good faith on Reddit, and bots are a part of that. In some places you need to be careful what you say in fear of triggering bots, and the existance of some of them actively encourage people to spam the comments section ("RemindMe!", "Good bot", etc). One of the things that really bothered me is how people kept upvoting the bot that would post the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article if it were linked. It was always annoying; half of the time I put those links in there were because I wanted it to be a "learn more" thing and the summary just served to make sure that people didn't actually learn more than what they could have learned from context.
Those bots are harmless, imho -- the real problem are automated accounts that repost old popular posts and comments (or generate new ones with AI) in order to farm karma and eventually sell to scammers and influence peddlers.
I've only noticed two differences
I really disliked the feature of having Reddit auto generate names, I felt like it made bot activity on Reddit much easier.
Agreed.
It also seem lazy and maybe indicates a not so bright person who can't take a few moments of brain power to make up a new username.
I use it for hobbies. I sometimes meet people there who are dissatisfied and I invite them here
It's unfortunate but there's just so much on Reddit that don't exist anywhere else with enough volume to be worth it. Reddit is pretty much the only place where I can talk to thousands of people from my country, the other alternative would be Facebook which is just as evil if not more 🤷🏿♂️
I don't really care what happens to reddit the company. But what this protest did do was get me to essentially quit. I still have an account and append "reddit" to the occasional Google search, but before this protest Reddit was my go-to toilet and boredom app. And that's gone. I've completely stopped browsing reddit. Whether that affects their bottom line or not, I've found the combination of Tildes and Tumblr to overall be a better way to use my bored time.
Any recommendations for good meme/humor blogs on Tumblr? I'm trying it out as a substitute for finding stupid stuff to chuckle at during short downtime. I don't really have a problem finding in-depth articles and discussion, it's the shitposting that I miss most.
ive been using instagram reels to fill that void reddit left, and its actually better. i dont have to read some made up bs sob story title along with my meme content now. i just keep all notifications for the app blocked since facebook owned apps are horrible at sending spam/useless notis just for the purpose of creating habit.
also stay away from the comment section.
Oh gosh it's gonna depend a lot on your preferences, of course, but I'll scroll through my dash and note down the names I see with good memes. Tumblr has a pretty diffuse social structure so it's hard to recommend many specific big names unless they have a gimmick of some kind.
Aside from that, though, my main recommendation is that whenever you do see something you like om your dash, check out both the original poster's blog as well as the blog it was reblogged from. You can scroll a little to get a sense of if you like what they post/reblog and then follow if you do. That's been my most effective way of rebuilding my dash after I returned to find most of the blogs I used to follow had died.
Of blogs I follow, I see decent lighthearted stuff often from erzvolnes and actuallymaglor. But ymmv when it comes to my taste in Tumblr posts lol! Most blogs I follow are people's personal blogs so they necessarily have a mix of lighthearted and serious stuff, so it's hard to recommend something super specific unfortunately. This is pretty normal on Tumblr tho.
I also highly recommend following tags for things you're particularly interested in as well -- obviously this is a big deal if you're in any fandoms but even if you aren't, topic-related tags can bring interesting stuff on your dash. For instance, I follow the linguistics tag and get some good posts from there sometimes. Tumblr users are usually pretty good at tagging their original posts.
I also follow a fair few blogs with cute cat content. Those are a very important part of keeping my tumblr browsing experience fun. Lmk if you want specific usernames there but they're not hard to find through tumblr search lol
I technically still use reddit, but only via Libreddit and even then I only pay attention to like 1.5 subs, one of which is just a tumblr repost curation sub. And if Libreddit doesn’t work (it had trouble after the API changes but seems to be fine now) I just… don’t go. I don’t need reddit in my life.
I definitely had a problem with browsing Reddit so I am one of the people who actually deleted my account and the revolt helped me break my addiction. I post way more here than I ever did on Reddit with the exception of a few subs, which isn't very much in the grand scheme of things. My habits here are much healthier too.
I still give Reddit traffic at work when bored out of my mind during slow periods. I don't know if it is the work iPad I'm using but the default Reddit website constantly repeats posts when I'm scrolling. It's so weird but it gets me to close the website and do something else. That's the main issue I have noticed since June.
I'm still on reddit, but I definitely use it less since the events of June. I refuse to use their official app (if I MUST use it, I use a patched version via ReVanced) and I've found I actually really like RedReader, one of the capital-F Free apps exempted from the API fees.
I mod several subs, one of which is a frontpage sub, but since there are no mod tools on RedReader, my modding activity has gone way down. Which is fine; I do what I can when I'm on a desktop and need to "take out the trash". I know I'm not the only one who has gone the RedReader path.
Moderating on the official app is a nightmare as well. I used RIF a lot to mod, and while it lacked some features, it worked great for me to mod a 300k sub.
Yup, RiF was goated. I know that technically I could use the ReVanced patch for RiF, too, and that would work until it... doesn't, but as much as I miss RiF, I just don't see the point in delaying the inevitable. RedReader does a great job, and it has just enough "jank" (I say with love) that it makes it less of a dopamine factory than RiF, which is overall good for my reddit addiction lol.
For my part my usage of Reddit has basically been completely unchanged. I went there before for niche communities which only exist on Reddit now, and that’s also what I do now. This also means I’m generally insulated from the broader Reddit “discourse”. If the quality of /r/pics has gone down (heaven knows that’s a low bar), then I wouldn’t know it.
The only difference is basically I went from subscribing to Apollo to subscribing to Narwhal 2, for the same price even. And I like the Narwhal redesign a little better than Apollo, which was always a tad crowded UX wise and somewhat buggy, especially the top bar.