just so this doesn’t overwhelm our front page too much, i think now’s a good time to start consolidating discussions. existing threads will be kept up, but unless a big update comes let’s try to keep what’s happening in this thread instead of across 10.

developments to this point:

The Verge is on it as usual, also–here’s their latest coverage (h/t @dirtmayor@beehaw.org):

other media coverage:

  • @Luvs2Spuj@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    992 years ago

    Reddit just feels dirty to me now, not in a good dirty way… Just dirty, I want nothing to do with it. I see no coming back from this even if the backlash leads to Reddit reversing the decisions. Kind of new the IPO would do something like this. Looking forward to seeing this place bloom.

    • V ‎ ‎
      link
      fedilink
      English
      432 years ago

      I predict that as the blackout goes into full swing, Reddit is going to start taking over major subreddits from their mods to keep the site going. Things are going to become ugly very fast.

      • CleoTheWizard
        link
        fedilink
        English
        212 years ago

        Iirc one of the mods said that the blackout was designed to prevent that. If it’s 2 days, they likely won’t bother taking them over. But an indefinite lock down they probably will. Even then though, that disruption in content will likely be too large to handle for most users

        • V ‎ ‎
          link
          fedilink
          English
          182 years ago

          If it’s only temporary then I as an admin would just wait it out, then go about my comically evil business. Reddit staff can’t realistically moderate the entire site, so the best way to get the message across is to stop moderating and let things burn until the bean counters can’t take the heat. Just my opinion, not that I want that to happen.

          • PhillyCodeHound
            link
            fedilink
            English
            72 years ago

            I just say screw it and leave. But that’s coming from more of a lurker on Reddit.

            • V ‎ ‎
              link
              fedilink
              English
              22 years ago

              Oh I have, I only put off deleting my account so I could tell spez to 🖕himself at the AMA.

    • Scrubbles
      link
      fedilink
      English
      322 years ago

      We’ve all said for years that we’ve seen a slow decline but never knew when it was time to leave. Now all of a sudden here we have the giant sign saying “We’ve gone full corporate and don’t care about the users anymore”

      • Austin-Philp
        link
        fedilink
        182 years ago

        yeah this isn’t such a huge thing on it’s own (tough it is shitty), it’s this combined with the years of other steady decline in a thousand small ways. Most people on reddit have agreed for some time now that the site has gone to shit, but there haven’t really been viable alternatives or enough of a reason to pick up stakes and leave. Now there is, and hopefully enough people leave for good to Lemmy, Kbin, or others so that the change can stick

    • @HrBingR@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      132 years ago

      I kinda feel the same way. I’ve used the official Reddit app before, and I might’ve considered using a modded version of the official client, but I just feel gross even having a Reddit account after what they’ve done. Despite the fact that I use old.reddit as well, once Apollo is gone I reckon I’ll delete my account.

    • @setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      112 years ago

      A lot of mucky feeling about it has been partitioned by Apollo for me. I specifically didn’t want to interact with online politics so I set up tons of keyword filters and blocked honestly a few thousand subreddits. I turned off awards and things. I could actually browse r/all and see cool and unique content. It felt really close to classic Reddit and it insulated me from a lot of the passing drama.

      Drama around the thing I used to make that space for myself was inescapable. The entire saga, from the evasiveness on details in the initial post, to the insane pricing, to the blackmail accusations make it impossible not to see how rotten the leadership is at the very top. Even if all the API stuff gets reset (it won’t) I can’t feel good about Reddit anymore.

  • @tango_octogono@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    782 years ago

    In my opinion, we’re reaching a moment where people are realizing that having lots of users doesn’t matter that much if you can’t monetize them. We took a lot of services for granted that maybe don’t make any financial sense, which probably only survived because both the company and investors hoped that as long you could attract users, you could monetize them later.

    I think that “later” is now.

    Today I noticed that youtube has a new feature that unlocks more bitrate, but only for premium users (there’s two 1080p options, one normal and another with more bitrate). I’m expecting that these social medias and other tech companies will try to monetize us further

    • @rimlogger@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      372 years ago

      Yeah exactly. I think what we need is decentralization and a move back to smaller hobbyist message boards - the costs of running such communities is more sustainable for individual owners and they are not so big that their owners would look to sell them out.

      • Pete Hahnloser
        link
        fedilink
        English
        202 years ago

        That’s certainly my hope for the federated model. Scope and scale have been issues since the advent of social media, which encouraged users to centralize all of their interactions in one spot. One hundred people shooting the shit on a specific interest will always be a better experience than orders of magnitude more people who know nothing of the context spouting off to feel good about themselves.

        I found the quality of my Reddit interactions had gone so far downhill that I took a month off to start the year. I’d gotten sucked into the belief that upvotes == quality of what I was writing, which creates perverse motivations completely unrelated to being more informed about the world.

        • @rimlogger@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          12
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          I mean upvotes are related to how a post is.

          Anyways I don’t expect places like Lemmy to fix the ills of social media - eventually running something like this will cost their owners too much money and something will have to give. Also moderation has always been an issue, even with the message boards of old.

          • Pete Hahnloser
            link
            fedilink
            English
            12
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Agreed on the last point. That’s part of what I was alluding to in terms of scope and scale. The smaller communities from early internet days (my experience overlaps with the time of BBSs but never included them) were pretty light on moderation. If you were a dick on IRC, you got booted. If you spouted off about politics in places that weren’t about politics on phpBB, you were ignored then booted. These days, that sort of dynamic has moved to Discord, with people expecting that they should be able to say whatever they want, wherever they want everywhere else.

            But I feel you’re begging the question on funding. The ownership and profit model is the problem. User subscriptions can solve that funding issue in a vacuum; reality tends to be a bit messier, but I’m hoping we’ll find that it works.

            • @rimlogger@beehaw.org
              link
              fedilink
              English
              92 years ago

              Well on the Lemmy subreddit, some people are already complaining about moderation issues here, and how you can’t block federated servers you don’t want to see individually - that is up to the federated server itself. Honestly, while Lemmy seems cool, I can see issues arising as it scales, especially with regards to moderation.

              Beehaw seems to be fine, but some users have explained that they take issue with Lemmy.ml’s moderation - chiefly from the main developer who created this platform to begin with. And that’s troubling too. For example, on Lemmy.ml, any talk about Russia or China (or anything similar) is banned. You can’t safely talk about the war in Ukraine here without getting banned from the main federated server.

              • Yozul
                link
                fedilink
                English
                142 years ago

                As Lemmy gets bigger there will be more and larger communities that aren’t on Lemmy.ml, and if you’re worried about the software itself, aside from being open source, there’s also already a fediverse alternative called kbin. You can even used it to follow Lemmy communities if you want.

                The whole point of the fediverse is that it can’t reaaly get screwed up by a small number of people.

              • Pete Hahnloser
                link
                fedilink
                English
                62 years ago

                I’m versed in ActivityPub to the extent the Twitter imbroglio landed Mastodon on Ars and Techdirt, so … not very well. But wouldn’t someone who really wants control over which instances they see be able to spin up one of their own and then just not let people join?

                • @rimlogger@beehaw.org
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  32 years ago

                  I guess. I’m kind of new to whole idea of federation myself, never jumped on Mastodon, for example. But we will see as Lemmy and its federated instances scale up.

      • Pēteris Krišjānis
        link
        fedilink
        82 years ago

        @rimlogger @tango_octogono there is good argument to be made that these “unified services” were created to monetize them in first place.
        Said that, federation as a concept of new era of social networking is good foundation. Hope it sticks and we work out quirks and people learn how to use it.

      • @cafuneandchill@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        42 years ago

        That’s what I’ve been thinking, as well – if a message board (or any other service) doesn’t reach that critical user mass where it’s no longer sustainable, then there’s less chances of it selling out

    • @uthredii@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      92 years ago

      It’s because of market conditions. Low interest -> Companies spend money and chase growth High interest -> Companies try to monetize users

        • Chris Ely
          link
          fedilink
          1
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          I use YouTube almost exclusively on mobile and TV devices, but I also filter my DNS requests to block things that I don’t like.

  • @myk@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    782 years ago

    I think this reply by spez has been badly overlooked:

    “the LLM explosion put all Reddit data use at the forefront”.

    What he means here is that earlier this year the board realised they were sitting on a massive gold mine, and their single focus right now is to exploit that as ruthlessly as possible. Jacking up the prices to access Reddit data to eye-watering levels is intended to fleece desperate AI bros, and this may well be the only revenue stream Reddit cares about in the future.

    The fact that they have put no thought or care into managing the damage that this does to third party apps and to their own reputation with the Reddit user base tells me something else too. Why bother being a good custodian of a community website that has never made a profit, when you could live off selling access to one of the largest bodies of good quality human-generated text-based content out there?

    Do they even care if Reddit goes to shit in the future? Maybe not, especially now we are beginning to realise how easy it is for careful bots to poison the conversations with AI-generated replies.

    • Mortuum
      link
      fedilink
      English
      272 years ago

      It’s going to become a barren wasteland of bots communicating with each other.

    • James Dreben :mw:
      link
      fedilink
      142 years ago

      @myk @alyaza “Why bother being a good custodian of a community website that has never made a profit, when you could live off selling access to one of the largest bodies of good quality human-generated text-based content out there?”

      Goes to show how important it is we use FOSS and decentralized tools for real community communications.

    • Ulu-Mulu-no-die
      link
      fedilink
      English
      32 years ago

      fleece desperate AI bros, and this may well be the only revenue stream Reddit cares about in the future.

      Isn’t it a bit late for that?

      I mean, GPT is on its fourth iteration, they’ve been working on it for years, I don’t know about Bing Chat but MS surely didn’t start develop it only yesterday.

      How can Reddit be so sure “AI bros” haven’t already got the data they needed to train their models?

      • @myk@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        3
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        There’s going to be lots of other challengers out there. im sure every ML postgrad with any nous has spent the last couple of months contacting every funder they can track down to explain how their model is going to knock the socks off the old fashioned models used by these lumbering corporations. And even the established models have been shown to contain content obtained in violation of user licences and copyright laws, leaving them open to all sorts of legal and political challenges. They will all be scrambling now to demonstrate that they’ve got clean hands in future models.

        It will be like the NFT gold rush all over again—the only sure way to get rich is to sell the shovels.

    • DarbyDear
      link
      fedilink
      English
      282 years ago

      This was the moment that cemented my choice to move away from Reddit. My plan initially was to see how the blackouts would play out, but this showed even more clearly than the initial thread about Apollo’s woes with Reddit just how garbage the decision-making at Reddit is.

    • maegul (he/they)
      link
      fedilink
      English
      192 years ago

      Wait what! Things have gotten this bad!? Like, this actually happened? I’m guessing there was no follow up question.

      I mean, it’s either a dumb corporate strategy to discredit or psychopathic behaviour, or, sadly, both.

      • @tango_octogono@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        232 years ago

        Yup it did

        Also something weird, when I saw this combo, iamthatis was the first reply. Now it’s way down there, despite the upvotes and gilds.

        I really don’t like putting on the tin foil hat, but since spez admitted in the past that he changed other users comments, I’m calling it, this guy is still messing around with things behind the scenes

          • @cactusupyourbutt@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            72 years ago

            doesnt that require monetary losses?

            sure, he lost out revenue from the spp, but that is due to the api changes and not due to the libel. might be difficult to argue otherwise, but Im also not a lawyer

            • @semibreve42@lemmy.dupper.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              92 years ago

              In the US, with slander and libel, there are two standards.

              If someone is a public figure, they need to show actual damages in order to be successful, this is the scenario you’re describing.

              If you are not a public figure, then you can sue for slander or libel without needing to show actual damages, just harm to your reputation or similar.

              So the answer on that turns on whether Christian Selig is a public figure or not - I do not know the answer to that question.

              • Petri
                link
                fedilink
                English
                5
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                IANAL but even though their statements are “in public” but I doubt either of them would qualify as public figures - that is reserved for politicians and such.

                That being said, spez here seems to have actually slandered iamthatis. This occurred when when spez claimed that iamthatis was “blackmailing” reddit for 10M$, which incidentally lead iamthatis to post audio recordings proving that spez was lying.

                Maybe I’ve got some of those details wrong, so correct me if I am.

              • @PoopyMcDickles@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                22 years ago

                Christian is Canadian so the laws might be a bit different. I know a few people in Reddit mentioned that the laws would be more favorable to Christian since he’s Canadian, but I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know how accurate that is.

    • MoodyCat
      link
      fedilink
      72 years ago

      Christian also responded to another comment made my Spez

  • @doctorzeromd@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    632 years ago

    I’ve been getting used to lemmy for the last couple days, going back and forth between here and reddit and following what’s going on, and I think I just realized something that I hadn’t been able to put into words.

    The lemmy community feels responsive and fun to talk to, and I think that’s because the people who are coming here from reddit are the people who are motivated to communicate, and are people who care about the topics in each community. That’s pretty cool.

    • @chillybones@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      202 years ago

      I’ve been feeling weird about leaving Reddit; mainly because it’s been my main source of entertainment, news, and community for over 10 years but this is a really good point about any ‘social’ network. Even the link aggregator sites like Reddit. Over the past couple of years, I feel like my engagement has dropped significantly because it hasn’t been FUN to engage with the communities I was a part of the same way it was when I first joined. I’m hoping to recapture that a bit here specifically on Lemmy and in the fediverse at large.

      • @hi_im_catherine@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        102 years ago

        There is an energy here that I haven’t really felt from reddit as a whole in years

        Certain (smaller) subs could still get that same feeling sometimes, but so far I am very much enjoying lemmy. Yeah there’s a bit of a learning curve to figuring things out but I think people will catch on fast!

      • @misguidedfunk@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        22 years ago

        I think you hit the nail on the head for me. I’m excited to see what comes from this community far more than Reddit.

    • @chaoticPuppies@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      82 years ago

      Yes!

      I can post and comment here without getting yelled at or worthless, and off topic, replies. I hope they keeps the trolls to a minimum and encourage meaningful contributions.

    • KNova
      link
      fedilink
      English
      52 years ago

      Great point. There will be a big wave i’m sure (it happened w/ Mastodon/microblogging fediverse platforms) and after a few months, some of the people tried it and left. The people who remained are such an engaging and fun group to talk to.

  • @Luvs2Spuj@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    54
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    There was a response on the AMA where u/spez said “Reddit would always be profit driven and currently does not make a profit. Unlike TP apps”

    You can no longer see this on the Reddit app, it is obscured in someway. Perhaps because of the potential impact for the IPO?

    • pizzaboi
      link
      fedilink
      English
      342 years ago

      He is essentially saying, “we are unable to make a profit, so our plan is to use someone else’s profit to make money.”

      What I think he’s going for is sympathy points, but he did not read that back lol

    • @bouncing@partizle.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      202 years ago

      I would not be surprised if a lawyer jumped in and said that revealing even profitability vs not is something they should do through official channels.

      • @sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        272 years ago

        He just admitted, just as they’re trying to IPO, that they’re still not profitable. If these third party apps that make up a fraction of their users – their most engaged, active users, by the way – are the difference between profit and loss, they need a better model.

        • BlackCoffee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          22
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          If it is true than he literally shot himself in the foot.

          Just like you said if it is true that the “1-3%” of the users that use 3rd party apps (by spez his word) can actually provide a profit for the 3rd party apps and the 90+% that uses official reddit channels still cannot… then they have a very big problem.

          I wouldn’t even be surprised though. His whole demeanor reeks of jealousy and contempt.

          The fact that a 3rd party app was actually featured on the Apple event multiple times and name dropped multiple times as “the” way to use reddit, has to absolutely sting as hell.

          Edit; experiencing some lag ;)

    • @setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      20
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Hilarious I can still see it on Apollo. I did notice while refreshing on spez’s comments that on that particular comment his name changed from red (normal admin color) to black, and then a few minutes later red again. I don’t know what it means, but it smells.

      I also noticed the time posted got fuckity on that comment. I’m looking at comments sorted newest on top but the time of that comment is out of order

      • Mortuum
        link
        fedilink
        English
        22 years ago

        The AMA doesn’t even show up on spez’s profile. Lmfao.

  • @chrislenz@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    532 years ago

    Wow. Spez is doubling down on attacking the Apollo dev. You’d think spez was new to reddit with the way he’s commenting.

        • @Thrashy@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          222 years ago

          Not sure what his responses are going to do for investors’ confidence, given that they mostly show a complete lack of understanding of his userbase, and the reaction to them implies that he’s trying to sell them damaged goods.

          • @Stormyfemme@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            12
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Again anything public facing is a lie. The rich investment firms know that it’s designed just to try and placate an unruly userbase. Now if something comes of it? Then they’ll care. If the blackout happens I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s wholesale usurpation of the mod teams to reopen the big ones.

            e: typo

            • @Thrashy@beehaw.org
              link
              fedilink
              English
              102 years ago

              I fully expect that subs with major frontpage presences are going to get taken over by the mothership and reopened almost immediately. They may even be able to find some poor saps to mod them, at least for a couple weeks until they realize that’s a full-time job. But the smaller subs are what long-time and power users end up diffusing to and what keeps them engaged with the site over time, and those are likely going to be dead or zombies shortly. Any investor putting money into Reddit for any reason other than short-term trading or hoping to be at the front of the line to pick over the corpse in a few years has failed to do their due diligence.

          • DJDarren
            link
            fedilink
            English
            82 years ago

            I think the way I see it is that the vast majority of Reddit users have no idea that any of this is going on, and wouldn’t care if they did.

            So from Corporate’s perspective, all they have to do is deal with a few weeks of whining and teeth gnashing, before everything calms down again and they can get on with whoring Reddit out.

            Ultimately they’ll end up back in the black again, and making enough money from the IPO to not give the tiniest rats ass about any of this. They’ll sail off into the sunset on a fleet of expensive yachts, and never give Reddit another thought.

            • @UpperBroccoli@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              32 years ago

              The people who don’t notice are probably not the people bringing the content or moderating the subs though.

      • @Stormyfemme@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        102 years ago

        It’s all corpspeak. It means nothing except to lie and gaslight users into staying so he can cash out.

    • wickerlark
      link
      fedilink
      English
      162 years ago

      Yeah that was completely disgusting. Steve dun goofed yet again. And here I thought nothing could get worse than the whole Ellen Pao incident lol

      • @Radicalized@lemmy.one
        link
        fedilink
        English
        112 years ago

        Pao was used by design to piss people off. They made her CEO and had her implement on the changes they knew would be unpopular with the community, then “fired” her, complete with her own golden parachute.

    • @makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      162 years ago

      It’s bizarre to read his comment on that. It’s either psychopath behaviour, or… I just don’t know. I’m not a psychologist. It is worrying though, to see a human in charge of a social company act like that. He should probably be removed by some legal means just for that comment alone.

      • crank
        link
        fedilink
        English
        132 years ago

        I do not know much details about the internal power structures of a company like reddit, but it seems like this guy seems to be a real liability at the moment. I wonder why he is being allowed to go around doing this.

        Maybe they are giving him enough rope to hang himself so he can be removed from his position in a few days. Firing a disliked manager is a common union busting tactic. If he can be made into the centre of gravity for all the ire, canning him and making some small backtrack could have a lot of people reconsidering leaving reddit.

        Or maybe there truly is no plan…

  • @monsterlynn@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    502 years ago

    I just don’t get how a site based on freely produced content thst employs volunteer mods can actually monetise.

    That part just gets me. The site has nothing without the users and the users have nothing without the mods.

  • shep
    link
    fedilink
    English
    492 years ago

    Lol. This sounds like a dig at spez.

  • @makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    442 years ago

    I love how the AMA has 0 points. You down vote it and it comes back to 0. No manipulation there reddit. Just that alone shows what a disgrace that company is.