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.orgEnglish
    99·
    2 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 ‎ ‎ @beehaw.orgEnglish
      42·
      2 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@beehaw.orgEnglish
        20·
        2 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 ‎ ‎ @beehaw.orgEnglish
          18·
          2 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.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
      32·
      2 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@kbin.social
        18·
        2 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.orgEnglish
      13·
      2 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.orgEnglish
      11·
      2 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.

      At least the Internet Historian video about this will be absolutely lit.

  • tango_octogono@beehaw.orgEnglish
    76·
    2 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.orgEnglish
      37·
      2 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@beehaw.orgEnglish
        21·
        2 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.orgEnglish
          12·
          2 years ago

          I mean upvotes are related to how old 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@beehaw.orgEnglish
            12·
            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.orgEnglish
              9·
              2 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@beehaw.orgEnglish
                14·
                2 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@beehaw.orgEnglish
                6·
                2 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.orgEnglish
                  3·
                  2 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@toot.lv
        7·
        2 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.orgEnglish
        4·
        2 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.orgEnglish
      9·
      2 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@fosstodon.org
          1·
          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.

    • veroxii@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27·
      2 years ago

      I’ve been tangentially involved in this. I think if any of the bigger instance operators were to contact derivator to see what can be done to host a gateway, that would really help.

      Since it’s a proxy you’d want a reliable entity to host it, who you trust with your credentials. And the only entities who currently make sense would be the lemmy instance owners themselves. Eg. if I’m already connecting to beehaw.org or lemmy.world, I would be okay to point apollo or baconreader to redditapi.beehaw.org.

      See here for a list of how people can help: https://github.com/derivator/tafkars/tree/main/tafkars-lemmy

      • Parsnip8904@beehaw.orgEnglish
        10·
        2 years ago

        That is awesome :) Thank you for chipping in. I wasn’t aware it was this far along already!

  • myk@beehaw.orgEnglish
    70·
    2 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.

  • doctorzeromd@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    70·
    2 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.

    • Aiden@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      49·
      2 years ago

      Reddit isn’t going back. Even if they did I’m sure they just convinced multiple users to not go back. I hope the blackout and tons of users moving will have a big enough impact to devalue Reddit even if somewhat.

      • goat@beehaw.orgEnglish
        18·
        2 years ago

        I predict Reddit backing out, lowering the API price to something realistic, and then everyone forgets what happened, like every other time something like this has happened.

        • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          13·
          2 years ago

          If they choose to lower the API price after all the 3rd party apps have already been disconnected for a day or two, it’s already too late. At that point the damage is done and there’s no going back

          • goat@beehaw.orgEnglish
            10·
            2 years ago

            yeah but people are addicted and will forget. most users here will eventually return to reddit, that’s just how it works.

            • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              1·
              2 years ago

              It depends on how much people care about UX.

              Some people don’t care at all. They’re probably very casual users, and the default app is good enough for them.

              Some people care a bit, and they will be slightly bothered by the significant drop in UX and the quality of all subs. These people will probably spend less time, since Reddit is unable to provide what it used to.

              Some people care a great deal and they will be gone by the end of the month. Actually some have already deleted their account.

        • pcouy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          12·
          2 years ago

          I predict that Reddit has already lost a lot of users for good. Only reason I’m going back is to promote lemmy over there

        • spicyjimmy87762@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          2 years ago

          I really hope not. Switching to a new platform has made me realize how much I wasn’t being social on a social media site. Because of all the toxicity I was only going to a few subreddits. I’ve already created my first community here in Lemmy and I’m commenting and engaging again.

      • isdfoa@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        2 years ago

        if there can be a coordinated migration to the fediverse during blackout, that’d be the dream.

      • jursed@beehaw.orgEnglish
        6·
        2 years ago

        wouldn’t it be amazing when all of spez’s attempts to make reddit look pretty for shareholders completely fail so they ruined their community for absolutely nothing

      • hi_im_catherine@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        Yeah I think this is going to be the event that finally causes a critical mass exodus. I mean, digg tried to keep going after the migration to reddit, but it was never the same again. Reddit is dead, it’s only a matter of time until it’s a called.

    • Kissaki@feddit.deEnglish
      20·
      2 years ago

      Question:

      How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement?

      Answer:

      We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.

      This is where I lost all hope.

      There’d be all kinds of better ways to go about making profit / becoming financially sustainable. This is blatant ignorance and mismanagement, without hearing or seeing anything. Complete mismanagement.

    • BigUwU@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      I’m doubtful because I feel like the business goons did the math, found the expected profit of killing 3rd party apps and taking the backlash was higher than keeping the status quo, and have committed to the more profitable option.

  • Luvs2Spuj@beehaw.orgEnglish
    54·
    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@lemm.eeEnglish
      33·
      2 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

    • setsneedtofeed@beehaw.orgEnglish
      20·
      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

    • bouncing@partizle.comEnglish
      20·
      2 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.orgEnglish
        27·
        2 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@beehaw.orgEnglish
          23·
          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 ;)

  • monsterlynn@beehaw.orgEnglish
    49·
    2 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.

  • chrislenz@beehaw.orgEnglish
    49·
    2 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.

      • Stormyfemme@beehaw.orgEnglish
        12·
        2 years ago

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

        • Thrashy@beehaw.orgEnglish
          21·
          2 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.orgEnglish
            9·
            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.orgEnglish
              9·
              2 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@beehaw.orgEnglish
            8·
            2 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.deEnglish
              3·
              2 years ago

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

    • wickerlark@beehaw.orgEnglish
      17·
      2 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.oneEnglish
        11·
        2 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.mlEnglish
      16·
      2 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@beehaw.orgEnglish
        12·
        2 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…

    • aedyr@beehaw.orgEnglish
      10·
      2 years ago

      Yeah I think it was too much to hope there would actually be good-faith engagement at this point. It was just more corporate messaging.

  • myk@beehaw.orgEnglish
    47·
    2 years ago

    The active mod team of r/videos has agreed that their shutdown will now be permanent. https://reddit.com/r/videos/comments/145vns0/the_future_of_rvideos/

    In a tildes post (I’m riding a lot of horses right now) one of the mods said:

    I know this is likely a symbolic gesture because I’m fairly confident reddit will just kick us out and bring the subreddit back up, but after being on the mod team for over a decade its going to be interesting to see how things even function if they decide to take that route.

    • makingStuffForFun@lemmy.mlEnglish
      53·
      2 years ago

      The way that guy gaslit the Appolo dev, and doubles down that the Appolo dev is the bad guy. Even though the recording is clear that the reddit ceo is straight up lying. Imaging working with, or having to interact with someone who so easily lies like that. Shameless

      • DJDarren@beehaw.orgEnglish
        38·
        2 years ago

        It’s hilarious really. Christian has the fucking receipts. Spez can say what he wants, but it’s meaningless drivel.

          • AbelianGrape@beehaw.orgEnglish
            21·
            2 years ago

            To their credit, there were other admins too!

            Collectively, they answered responded to a whopping additional 5 comments!

            I may miss the community, but I definitely won’t miss reddit.

    • Parsnip8904@beehaw.orgEnglish
      17·
      2 years ago

      It is hilarious to see this happening. Option A, he could have just shut up, released a press statement and waited till this blew over, he didn’t do that. Option B would have been to do an AMA, engage with people and say nice but meaningless things to placate people and do whatever he wants in private, he didn’t do that either.

      Instead he choses to host an AMA, copy pastes canned responses, edits his comment when someone caught it, ditches the canned response when a question is asked about the Apollo thing and doubles down, and finally leaves after answering 14 questions.

      You really can’t make this shit up 🤣

    • charlytune@mander.xyzEnglish
      6·
      2 years ago

      Did they ever publish the starting time, or did it just start? It seemed to have happened while I was asleep. Not that I’d have stayed up for it ha.