- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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Probably because I just deleted my account over there and deleted all posts and comments I ever made
🍿 let it burn 🔥
All this has me wondering. Lemmy and other fediverse sites should be resistant to enshittification. But how could American corporations screw that up? Could they start their own servers and instances, and somehow make them dominant? Or would that not be worth it to them?
It seems to me that capitalism has pretty much been trying to take over everything, with a lot of success. So I find myself wondering if it could happen here.
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Apple’s iChat (precursor to Messages.app) used to do XMPP, too. I don’t think it federated, or if it did it was very short-lived, but all the big tech companies with chat services got their start with XMPP. It’s almost like it’s a great set of tools for communicating, which, sadly and ironically, open source tech seems to have moved on from. To be fair, I far prefer Matrix’s JSON to XMPP’s XML, but it’s a little disappointing that everyone forgets about XMPP.
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Many of the things that XMPP listed as extensions really should have been part of the core protocol, in my opinion.
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We’re kind of already seeing it with Mastodon. The official app strongly pushes people toward mastodon.social which is a radioactive dumpster fire. And this isn’t even corporate America, it’s just the folks who own the name.
Why is mastodon.social so bad?
The biggest issue is that they don’t really moderate, so hate speech and bigotry have a greater presence there. I specifically remember a situation where multiple people were reporting things and it took them days (maybe a week or more? I can’t remember, but certainly several days) to take it down. And this happens pretty regularly.
I was thinking about experimenting mastodon too. What server so you recommend?
I am not at all qualified to make a recommendation for an instance for you to join, I’m sorry! The server list on the Join Mastodon site has some good servers, some bad.
Thank you
Here is hoping lemmy is easier to moderate and doesnt end up like that.
There are several good mastodon instances, just not mastodon.social. Moderating is hard and you have to actually do it and not be afraid it’s censorship. Oh, and not being a fascist helps. I’m beginning to wonder about the mastodon.social admins.
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Your points are valid and you’re not wrong, but it’s exacerbated by the poor / lack of moderation as I commented elsethread. You can have a large number of users and still have a tolerable, even useful and pleasant, experience–r/askhistorians is my favorite example of internet moderation.
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Theoretically some large company could use the “embrace, extend, extinguish” model to take over “open” standards. Microsoft was famous back then for using this strategy. It would look something like this:
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Embrace: large company creates a really stable and well moderated instance that federates with almost everything to attract users
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Extend: large company adds custom features to the instance that are incompatible with other instances
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Extinguish: people stop using other instances as incompatibilities start impacting user experience. Big instance might also stop federating with other instances, so users are forced to use their instance to see content. After this, big company starts making the platform shittier to make more money.
They should officially add a fourth “E” to that model - Enshittification.
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Could go the same way as Gmail. A lot of people just use Gmail. Gmail has a lot of control in the email space because of that. Even though “Email” is an open standard/protocol Gmail has control through the spam filter. Its really hard to setup your own email server without getting a lot of spam so it isn’t that open anymore. These are some challenges for open standards as well.
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Perhaps a cartel of high traffic servers that block others.
It feels weird to want history to repeat itself, but I’m really hoping Reddit has to deal with the ironic situation of users migrating from the platform en masse due to awful management decisions.
I’ve said it (with a different wording) on some post on reddit, I’m saying it again here: I want history to repeat itself. Not because I have a sadistic need to see reddit fail, but because this will ultimately be better for the users.
All of these protests are a nice sentiment, but I can’t help but think the take I’ve read from some people is right: this is all a “door in the face” technique from Reddit to get people to accept a more reasonable compromise on pricing that they were going for all along, but without taking as much of a PR hit. So people will be relatively happy, and meanwhile reddit will have squeezed redditors just a little more, as they have been doing little by little in the last years. It’s a boiling frog scenario.
So this protest may well “reverse” this specific situation, but it won’t reverse the general trend on governance on Reddit that has been slowly going on for a few years already, mostly around the time that Victoria got canned.
So, to that end, I really want to stop using reddit regardless of the outcome of this debacle. Lemmy seems promising, although it does have its own set of problems. But it’s still on its infancy, I’m sure it’ll grow and at least some of these problems will be fixed.
I don’t want to sound like an elitist, but I guess I will regardless: the most important number of people simply don’t care.
I think it’s safe to say that the people who will be affected by the new API pricing and other decisions, as well as the people who want to protest at least some of it at least somehow (be it boycotting for a few days or migrating to fediverse in any capacity) are simply not the demographic that the Reddit board really cares about. Not necessarily because they’re evil, anti-privacy, Machiavellian moneybags (they still are), but because Reddit is a business, a big one, and big businesses care about money more than anything else.
I’m not really optimistic about the boycott and any other aftermath. I think the best we’ll see is influx of users on lemmy and other instances, which is good, but that’s about it, and I’m fine with it.
Oh, I agree with you. Whatever happens here, it won’t mean an exodus en masse from Reddit to Lemmy ( or to any other platform for that matter) on the immediate future. Reddit will bleed users, only in a long timescale.
I’m not as sure as you are about how things will play out exactly, so for now I’m just watching the situation with curiosity. But I’ll say this: while the majority of users don’t care, those who DO care I (want to) believe are also the ones that generally tend to generate higher-quality content, while those who don’t care (again, I want to believe) tend to be either lurkers or generate lower quality content, although the split here might be closer to 50/50 - we don’t know. But in that case, one likely scenario is that in one or a few years Reddit will have so much low-effort and low-quality content that it will just naturally lose any appeal, and people will move on to something else.
3rd Party mobile apps will make people think a bit. once moderation goes to crap and everything gets worse, that will make a dent, but a slower one.
I think the minute they get rid of old.reddit.com they will see a giant loss of people.
Then all thats left are the people who like reddit looking like facebook
Part of me thinks that while a majority of folks will remain on reddit, the most active, engaged members will leave. …the mods, the people posting original content, the people posting the most replies.
Over time, the content on reddit could become even more stale, repetitive, and low quality.
agree here. it will be like bots talking to bots.
Kinda feels that way already, honestly.
Right? I felt like all the top comments were always the same on all the subs, usually lame jokes that have been done to death on the rest of the site.
What would they be migrating to? Neither Lemmy nor Tildes seems to want to take on a mass exodus. Both have said they are not Reddit replacements and they don’t want to be either. I’ve been trying to figure out where people are actually headed to. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, outside?
Hard to say. I used “hoping” because I still have an irking feeling that this won’t ultimately result in much change. I think a small amount of reddit’s base will be upset and may migrate to a different platform (like lemmy, beehaw, kbin, etc.), but the vast majority of reddit’s base won’t actually understand or care about these changes. The group of users that does decide the leave the platform will have multiple options though and I don’t suspect the number of users to truely be unmanageable for any of these places. This is just my opinion though.
Really looking very “investor focused” 🤢
Alexis Ohanian, founder of rival site Reddit, said in an open letter to Rose (of Digg):
this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It’s cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to “give the power back to the people.”
Time really is a flat circle.
Also I only made that top comment to test Lemmy/Mastodon interaction. Hi from Mastodon! The fediverse is cool!
How are you commenting on a thread from mastodon?
@luna just paste a lemmy URL into the search bar of a Mastodon client! They all run on the same backend basically. That’s the magic of the Fediverse/ActivityPub
That is so, so cool, thank you!
Rest in peace, Digg. We dug that shit.
Totally a sign of an ultra-successful IPO!
The fucked up thing is that it kind of is…layoffs of this kind almost always have a positive impact on stock prices, which is why they do them. Gotta love capitalism!
Yeah, upon reflection you are right… this looks to be Reddit saying “notice me, potential shareholders, I’m so efficient!”
I’m hopeful that lemmy reaches critical mass because of Reddit’s absurd policies.
It’s getting there… The Reddit wave should be enough to get us there if the servers hold up semidecently
If I could figure out how to participate from my existing fediverse account…that would be the true magic.
Even if the servers don’t. I’d rather deal with downtime (aka forced detox😅) than the ads, the negative trolls, the dumb UI that constantly pushes their app, and so on. Reddit only works because it has so much fresh content. If that breaks down than so will it.
Oh no! Anyway…
Unfortunately the responsible for the shitshow aren’t in the 5% who will have their lives upended.
Sympathies to them, yes.
Some people have been saying a 2-day blackout isn’t going to do much. But if they’re struggling financially it will most likely really hurt them.
Hopefully if the 2-day blackout is unsuccessful they’ll extend it or plan more blackouts.
I’d imagine so… it makes sense to me to start with 2 days, and then go from there, rather than starting with the “nuclear” option.
I saw somewhere (can’t remember if it was here or not) that they think Reddit might not be too worried about the 3rd party apps because it makes up such a small user base. So it could potentially be a vocal minority who are actually being affected. Then again what do I know about running a website with millions of daily users, so it could be way off.
If that’s true, it’s even more asinine. A small number of users make numerous API calls from third-party apps, and in doing so, create all the content that the majority of users are perusing with ads? The quest for short-term gains so often harms long-term viability in corporate America, and I truly just don’t understand how we keep hiring C-level people that keep making the same mistakes over and over
Because C-Level people are more about “how can this company make money” and less about “how can this company treat its workers/customers well” (unless the latter leads to the former).
They are told that increasing value for the investors is the thing that matters. If you have to make “tough choices” that abuse the workers or destroy the brand, oh well. It’s worth it if that revenue number keeps going up. To them, it’s an acceptable loss to keep the board happy.
Every company that has VC, investors, or stock is going to be like this at one point or another. It’s just getting more blatant and obvious now. Disney, WB, Netflix, Twitter, Reddit…it’s a list that just keeps growing.
Absolutely agree. Also this was just a comment I saw so who knows if it’s actually true or not but it’s something I could see happening unfortunately.
For sure it’s unconfirmed. The only things we really know for sure are:
- Reddit wants money for API calls
- Their monetization structure is unreasonable
- The only possible outcome of their monetization structure is the death of third party apps
- Reddit is an American company and conducts itself with the same grace and farsightedness as most of them
Which leads be to the conclusion that the thing you’ve said is quite possible
I’m not American, but isn’t it mandated by law over there to do stuff like this, to create the maximum profit for shareholders?
Forgive my ignorance of US laws!
Does Reddit have the power to un-blackout the subreddits? I.e. Overrule the mods and open things up? I feel like, as in most cases, there are a modest sized group of high caring individuals that will reject/boycott/cancel reddit, but the majority of users, casual and the ones that make reddit their life, will just continue on, only slightly inconvenienced.
Yes Reddit could do that… but mods are extremely valuable, and a lot of subs would stop working without them. Reddit has already been moving to big subs being moderated by Reddit employees, and it generally kills the sub.
Reddit is big enough that it probably won’t die quickly (e.g. like Digg did), but my guess is that this kind of policy shows that the best days of Reddit are in the past.
Reddit is big enough that it probably won’t die quickly (e.g. like Digg did), but my guess is that this kind of policy shows that the best days of Reddit are in the past.
i think twitter is a good model for how we might expect this to go: a slow but undeniable decay into a worse, less functional, generally more miserable site to be on. when the decay will end? who knows. but there’ll likely be an obvious before and after, and an equally obvious point where the site goes from a vanguard of influence online to a social media backwater.
Agree, although it could happen even slower than Twitter. Musk taking over has been a huge shock to the community, and killing off third party apps is only one of the many changes he’s made in a few months. Even if Reddit sticks of their guns on API charges (which they might not), I doubt they’ll do anything as drastic again for a while.
True, they likely have smarter people at the helm than musk
The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok (not just about TikTok)
Part of Cory Doctorow’s point is that this pattern emerges with all kinds of companies, especially ones where investors are demanding an outrageous return on a hasty speculation.
Boy, things are going GREAT over there huh
Ahh here it comes. Expect more - IPO layoffs (from personal experience) are definitely a thing
May I ask what the whole “IPO” thing is?
Initial Public Offer. Basically, the company going public on the stock market. They tend to try and look “shiny” before going public to make them attractive to buyers who want to make money from investing into the company.
In my experience (from working a place that has done this) they will do some waves of layoffs and make some operational budget cuts, as well as sometimes freeze some capex spending so the books look juicier. This includes things that may cause long-term harm, for short ish (under a year) gain.
Script is pretty similar with most companies that do this in tech, with predictable results.
The only thing I ask myself right now is: Do they get rid of porn subs before IPO or shortly after?
Firstly I want to really thank you for taking time to write up this response.
Anyways it definitely makes sense what reddit it doing, although it’s no excuse for being such a little bitch. So in other words, let them burn lol
Agreed. I think the post-IPO layoffs will be aggressive in Reddit’s case.
It’s not clear to me how reddit could possibly “grow”. They’ve hit peek influence, and ad-revenues haven’t really been a growth factor that has excited investors. They’re not really a technology powerhouse like Facebook or Google - all they have is their central product. So, when the IPO drops, all I can see for reddit is a future of aggressive layoffs and strong enshittification of Reddit as they seek capitalistic eternal increasing growth.
Yeah Reddit would make an excellent private company with the right owner and likely some re-structuring, but as a public company ooh boy.
Outside some niche subs I’m not on there more than once a day just to see if my lemmy subs missed something, and it’s my last form of social media outside discord/matrix, so if lemmy does take off enough I’ll probably only be there for the odd technical search, which I suspect lemmy will take care of in time.
