I haven’t touched reddit since the APIcalyspe. I’m planning to delete my account but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I was a heavy Apollo user on iOS but never subscribed to it for its push notification service, instead I kept the official reddit app installed and the only thing I used it for were its notifications. I still have both apps installed.

Anyway, I was surprised to see one pop up yesterday, especially since it wasn’t connected to my user activity (a new private message or reply to an old comment of mine or something). The notification was just an ad. More specifically, it was promoting some trending post on the site that had “>12,000 upvotes.” In many many years of having the app installed I’ve never seen that before. Is it new?

Reddit’s had a mildly antagonist relationship with its users for ages, but it feels like they are REALLY intensifying things now. I’m glad I got off the train when I did. And sorry for making yet another post about reddit, I think we’re all getting tired of harping on it here.

Hey Reddit enthusiasts! Revanced has recently extended its support to some of the most popular Reddit apps out there. The list of supported apps now includes Boost, Infinity, rif is fun, Relay, and Sync.

For those who are new to Revanced, this means you can patch these existing apps with your own oauth-client-id, allowing you to continue enjoying them seamlessly.

Quick tutorial:

1. Go to https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps in your web browser.
2. Create a new app by giving it a name of your choice.
3. Tick the "Installed App" option and fill in the redirect URI field. The specific URI depends on the app you're using. For example, for rif, the URI would be redditisfun://auth. You can find the required redirect URI in the app's corresponding section on GitHub.
4. Copy the client ID string that appears for the app you just created.
5. Create a text document named "reddit_client_id_revanced.txt" and place it in the root directory of your phone's storage (e.g., /storage/emulated/0/<file here>). Paste the client ID into this document.
6. Install the latest version of ReVanced Manager on your device.
7. Open the Patcher tab in ReVanced Manager and select your app.
8. In the Patches section, enable the "Change OAuth Client ID" patch.
9. Apply the patch and install the modified app (Note: If you already have the app installed, you may need to delete it first and then click Install once ReVanced finishes creating the new APK.)

Following these steps will help you navigate through the process of obtaining a private client ID and applying the necessary patches to enjoy Reddit using ReVanced.

Guides with screenshots:

1. https://gist.github.com/decipher3114/4423a2671dc3ce4401025b737d5c89f4

2. https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLksPN0KpOnJWniT6PbZSrI (Thanks to @kobew50 on Discord)

If you encounter any difficulties during the process,head over to ReVanced Discord server to seek assistance.

Reddit applications that have available patches or modified versions.

➡️ Platform: Android 🤖

➡️ Platform: iOS 🍎

*Shout-out to WefWef - a Lemmy client not only inspired by Apollo, but which is aiming for feature parity. (GitHub)

I thought I'd share my own patterns as a writing prompt to hear yours.

• Tildes -- This keyboard-to-keyboard connection we have here is why I loved Reddit years ago. It's slow-brain (vs. fast-brain), considerate, insightful, enjoyable, and yet doesn't waste my time.
• Lemmy -- This has my hopes up that it could be a way to find niche communities (one of the strengths of Reddit) in the federated lemmyverse, but instances large and small seem overwhelmed by users who, like me, are still figuring it out. I joined https://lemmy.one/ but I have a feeling that https://lemmy.ml/ is slightly more my style. I might jump or not, but no big difference since the federated communities that I like are available in both places. This may just be me being nitpicky over instance quirks (such as an instance that does not have downvotes or currently allow community creation).
• Mastadon -- Too Twitter for me. I never got (understood) Twitter or its appeal, and I don't understand the appeal of Mastadon, either. I deleted one account that I created and may leave it altogether. If you like/liked Twitter, you'll likely like Mastadon.
• Reddit -- niche interests and citywide subreddits are still valuable to me, but even these were and are dropping in quality due to terse Reddit mobile users and meme-culture and my interest in them is dropping in correlation. I nearly exclusively only read /r/loseit (I'm maintaining -125 pounds lost for 8 years so far) and a multireddit of local subreddits in my local area. Since the Rexxit, I don't look at much else on Reddit.
• Facebook -- like the local and niche subreddits, I read Facebook on and off (mostly off) for these as well. The Facebook Marketplace is the way I find second-hand items locally.

I'm beginning to understand why I'm not practicing my music (Barbershop Harmony) as much as I should recently!

I tried finding other alternatives to reddit, which is what got me here. I still love the content of the subs that I followed and am not wanting to really step away. I'd like to as a matter of my own principles... but I still want it. So much knowledge has been amassed on that platform.

Do you guys still mess with reddit regularly? If not, how?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/reddit-mods-fear-spam-overload-as-botdefense-leaves-antagonistic-reddit/

the Reddit community is still reckoning with the consequences of the platform's API price hike. The changes have led to the shuttering of numerous third-party Reddit apps and have pushed several important communities, like the Ask Me Anything (AMAs) organizers, to reduce or end their presence on the site.

The latest group to announce its departure is BotDefense. BotDefense, which helps removes rogue submission and comment bots from Reddit and which is maintained by volunteer moderators, is said to help moderate 3,650 subreddits. BotDefense's creator told Ars Technica that the team is now quitting over Reddit's "antagonistic actions" toward moderators and developers, with concerning implications for spam moderation on some large subreddits like r/space.

BotDefense started in 2019 as a volunteer project and has been run by volunteer mods, known as "dequeued" and "abrownn" on Reddit. Since then, it claims to have populated its ban list with 144,926 accounts, and it helps moderate subreddits with huge followings, like r/gaming (37.4 million members), /r/aww (34.2 million), r/music (32.4 million), r/Jokes (26.2 million), r/space (23.5 million), and /r/LifeProTips (22.2 million). Dequeued told Ars that other large subreddits BotDefense helps moderates include /r/food, /r/EarthPorn, /r/DIY, and /r/mildlyinteresting.

On Wednesday, dequeued announced that BotDefense is ceasing operations. BotDefense has already stopped accepting bot account submissions and will disable future action on bots. BotDefense "will continue to review appeals and process unbans for a minimum of 90 days or until Reddit breaks the code running BotDefense," the announcement said. The announcement also advised "keeping BotDefense as a moderator through October 3rd so any future unbans can be processed."

I've heard much about the great Digg migration but I found Reddit through different means.

Any of you hear of mfisn? It was my Reddit before Reddit. A bare bones link sharing community where a number of registered users could share links. Unregistered users could suggest links that I guess a registered user could approve? I remember sharing links to movie trailers there. I found Reddit years later after googling it and finding a Reddit post asking about it. And that's how I fell into Reddit.

I discovered mfisn through cookiethievery, a yourethemannowdog-esque page that had a rotation of repeating animations set to a short music loop. And I vaguely recall finding that through an AIM buddy's profile...? Either that or albinoblacksheep.

Any of you have a traceable lineage of Internet communities you've passed through? What were your pre-Reddit internet go-to sites? Are they still around?

Mixed feelings about it all.

I think Reddit suffers from the same ‘1 discussion keeps you coming back for ten years in hope of a repeat’ that most if not all social media struggles with. It also has excellent dogs in hilarious situations and because of the amount of users, a constant refresh of what should be a tired genre but which just dosnt seem to die.

I have enough respect for r/pics for the John Oliver death march, that I cant go back.

A lot of people want to talk about Reddit and that will likely continue. This is a place to post minor news updates, so that Reddit topics don't fill up the front page of ~tech.

(Up to you what counts as "minor.")

Edit:

This might be a caching issue - Tildes mods have edited this post's title accordingly.

Anyway, this issue is concerning, as many people deleted their comments and accounts. Now the accounts are gone but the comments are back. Intentional or not, Reddit should fix this asap and communicate. This isn't acceptable.

Edit 2, 16 days after the original post:

For the 4th or 5th time, comments are popping back. Most of them in their original form, very few (2 out of 25) still edited as "[deleted]"

Original post:

(I know, more reddit stuff, sorry)

On June 16, four days after the beginning of the current Reddit protests, some users were reporting that their deleted comments were getting restored:

• https://mstdn.games/@chris/110553477682106144
• https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112/Heads-up-Reddit-is-quietly-restoring-deleted-AND-overwritten-posts-and

There were doubts if this was intentional or a bug caused by the blackout, or some rollbacks. Hanlon's razor, etc.

I then personally mass-edited my comments to "[removed]" two days ago, and lo & behold, they're getting edited back. And from what I've seen, there's definitely a pattern:

• All restored comments are at least 8-12 months old, so several pages deep in the comments history
• 90% of them are about programming, a few of them on my country's subreddit.
  • (More than half of my comments are on gaming subreddits, they're still edited as "[removed]")
• The vast majority of them have responses
  • (Though most of my comments also have responses)
• They're edited back in "small waves". 15-20 this morning, 4 this evening (so far).

I'm now editing them back twice, hoping that Reddit only keeps the previous version of a comment.

I find Reddit's behavior to be absolutely shameful. I've been on internet forums for nearly 25 years, and I've never seen a site unilaterally and silently decide to un-delete or (un-)edit comments. Never.

It feels like a golden rule of internet has been broken, and I'm surprised to not see more talks about it.

https://lifehacker.com/the-four-best-reddit-alternatives-1850562547

Tildes scores a mention:

Tildes

Tildes is another website trying to be the new Reddit. It’s still in an invite-only alpha stage, so you’ll need to ask somebody for an invite.

Tildes is not federated, so there’s only one place to sign up. And it has yet another name for its communities: They are, of course, tildes. (A tilde is the “~” character, and in the old old Internet, a lot of personal web pages had a tilde at the start of their names, a continuation of an even earlier tradition.) On Tildes.net, each tilde can have tags, so there is ~health and it contains the tag “fitness.”

How to sign up for Tildes: Find someone who has a tildes account, and ask for an invite.

I am really struggling without r/selfhosted. I truly believe it is, by far, the best community for self-hosters that I have come across. What I am missing most of all is, whenever I search for questions to self-hosting problems - especially for smaller projects - the answers are nearly always found within posts on that sub.

At least with things like programming, there is stackoverflow and a bunch of other small communities.

I'm going to end up going to Discord to find my solutions, which is the next big community. But it means having to go on there and ask the question (that has probably been asked hundreds of times before), rather than just searching the issue.

I just saw this post in the /r/ModCoord subreddit, which lists multiple instances of Reddit admins contacting moderator teams of closed subreddits with this message:

Hi everyone,

We are aware that you have chosen to close your community at this time. We are reaching out to find out if any moderators currently on the mod team would be willing to take steps to reopen the community. Subreddits exist for the benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Your users rely on your community for information, support, entertainment, and finding connection with others who have similar interests. The ability to find and make these connections is incredibly important to many people and ensuring that active communities are able to remain stable and active (and open) is very important.

Our goal here is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is usable for the community which makes its home here. If you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community please let us know.

Shit is getting real. The admins are looking for scabs who are willing to cross the picket-line and do the work the strikers are refusing to do.

It's not like this wasn't predictable. We all knew this was coming. It's still surprising to see it actually happen.

In this article from The Verge posted today "While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that"

Ironically mere minutes before this article went live, Reddit admins posted this to /r/modsupport.

"Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team."

This statement not only completely contradicts what was "pledged" by Spez, but is also a very clear threat to subreddit moderators telling them to fall in line or get replaced by someone who will.

More articles that came out today about this subject:

Kotaku: Reddit's CEO Is Just Making Everything Worse

NBC: Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, saying he'll change rules that favor ‘landed gentry’

MacRumors: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators From Subreddits Continuing Apollo-Related Blackouts

ARS Technica: As the Reddit war rages on, community trust is the casualty

NPR: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: 'It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company'

The full Verge interview Reddit CEO Steve Huffman isn’t backing down: our full interview

Akin to this: https://tildes.net/~tech/1670/redditors_of_tildes_which_subreddits_are_you_missing_the_most_during_the_blackout

What can we leave behind?
What should we leave behind?

For me, the one BIG thing is the stupid puns.
Threads full and full and full of puns, one after the other.

Case in point:
https://tildes.net/~movies/16bf/chasing_horse_faces_sex_assault_charges

I can so live without that side of reddit.

edit: Yeah, that "thread" is two comments long, but I just got reddit flashbacks just seeing those.