hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout today, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! Thanks!
I just posted this in response to a frenetic YouTube video that claimed that the Reddit protest “failed”:
Get serious. It was NEVER going to stop the IPO. But it has accomplished something even more important: it has decapitated Reddit. A lot of the most passionate and involved users are gone, and more of them have at least tried Fediverse alternatives like Lemmy and kbin. Have you checked those sites out? They’re FLOODED with Reddit refugees, and the communities there are booming! They’re active and vibrant, with great discussions and content.
What’s more, they have hope. The members there aren’t subject to some psychotic money-grubbing corporation; if any one server goes authoritarian, there’s nothing stopping the users there from just moving to another. They’ll have the same access and functionality. And frankly, the odds of a Fediverse server going corporate and having an IPO are infinitesimal. It simply wouldn’t be worth it, particularly since there’s no way they could stop other instances from defederating with them.
So the outcome of the blackout has been twofold: First, Reddit has lost some of it’s best. The quality of content there is diminished, and will continue to diminish as poor quality drives users away. And second, the Fediverse alternatives have been given a huge boost. Almost all users of Reddit are now aware of the ugly truths that underlie that service, and that there are alternatives out there.
That’s not failure. That’s the seeds of success.
And by the way, I think that’s one thing we can all do to help bring down Reddit: mention the great alternatives out there as much as possible to spread the word. The more Redditors who learn that they don’t have to be a product to be sold by the pound for the stockholder class, the quicker Reddit will fall!
I also bet there are people who haven’t already left that will abandon ship once the TPAs stop working. It’s not going to be fun getting stuck with their mediocre app, particularly since they seem to be testing the end of the mobile site.
This. For a lot of people Reddit isn’t reddit.com, it’s Apollo or Relay or Sync or Reddit Is Fun.
After the apps stop working, they won’t be able to keep using the thing they’re used to. They can’t just go back, they’ll have to switch to something different.
I stopped using Twitter when they pulled this API crap, and as a Boost user, I won’t use reddit when I can no longer use Boost.
Currently using Jerboa for beehaw and I’m liking it so far, and the dev seems really responsive to user requests. Excited for the communities to get some traction moving forward!
I imagine there’s a meaningful amount of users that only exist in the context of the third party apps, that will disappear after the apps lose support. I’m sure most of them are lurkers, but that’s still something.
I mostly lurk with a few comments a day on Reddit. My oldest account is like 6 years old and has 60k comment karma, so I’ll at least be bringing that here and away from there.
But, I am going to use it a bit more before the end of the month since I’m not paying for it and I’m not getting a new app, this is my reddit swan song I guess. I’ll also be nuking the old comments of course ;)
