It’s not even June 12 for me, yet I suspect many subreddits went dark based on UTC.

I moved to Reddit during the Digg migration. Thus, I got the default subscriptions from back in the day. Over the years, I’ve unsubscribed to things I felt were crap, and I’ve added a number of subreddits.

Already, many have gone dark. My old.Reddit.com homepage already looks much different than normal, and I know that a few subreddits that do show have announced they’ll go dark. I assume they are US based and timing that locally.

I’ve spent more time in the Lemmy fediverse than on Reddit since joining, but I’ve spent time on both.

I’ll admit to cynical skepticism of the impact of the darkening. I still don’t think it will make a difference in Reddit policy, but I now believe it will have a larger impact on Reddit traffic than I imagined.

I still expect it to have no change in Reddit attitude or really in Reddit users.

    • hyperlink2236@feddit.itEnglish
      13·
      2 years ago

      It’s astounding how consensus can be achieved on certain topics. Our planet is burning, yet we struggle to come together and agree on the urgent need to take action. However, when it comes to a change in Reddit’s API plan, we suddenly find ourselves capable of mobilizing en masse for a common cause. Humans are truly peculiar beings.

      • DarbyDear@beehaw.orgEnglish
        8·
        2 years ago

        It’s unfortunate, but I think it’s because in this specific instance, there is a clear and immediate impact on people’s lives. Meanwhile, climate change is a gradual change over a longer period of time and a much larger area. Climate change also requires action beyond stopping visiting a website and actual cooperation among the entire human race. It’s short-sighted, but it’s also an example of how hard it is to get people to care about things that don’t clearly and immediately affect them (see also: people who are militant homophobes until someone close to them comes out).

        • Mantis@beehaw.orgEnglish
          3·
          2 years ago

          Yup. Climate change is too big, and the changes we would need to make to save ourselves from it are too drastic, and the consequences are “too distant”. (Though we’re already experiencing the consequences and have been for decades, they have come upon us gradually. We are boiling frogs.)

          On top of that, there are plenty of people who justify their inaction by either assuming that humanity is going to spin up some last-minute miracle solution (these are the “technology will always prevail!” folks), or that they will personally devise some last-minute solution for themselves (“I will escape to a climate-controlled New Zealand bunker!”)

          Climate change is such a big problem precisely because of the way it is enabled by our short-sighted, self-serving nature.

          …anyway.

    • setsneedtofeed@beehaw.orgEnglish
      6·
      2 years ago

      I believe that counter also only shows subs that have gone private, as well. Subs that decided to do restricted only posting like r/pics are still counted as “public” by the counting software.

    • Manticore@beehaw.orgEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      It’s probably even more than that. reddark is only measuring which subs are marked as private; subs like r/ELI5 have instead blocked posting and made sticky posts about the blackout. reddark will show them as public because, for those announcements to be visible, they have to be.