As much as Louis is on our side in this, I feel like he alone was responsible for the MOST damage to the protest efforts. After his video about how a 2-day blackout wasn’t enough, dialogue from the anti-protest side started to shift heavily toward “this isn’t even going to do anything,” and his video was cited as often to support “we need to do more” as it was to support “you guys are stupid if you think you’re doing anything.” So I hope he finds some room to be pissed off at himself while he’s pissed off about the “failed” reddit protest.
And, spoiler alert: it takes time for momentum to shift, and it’s very much shifting - it’s just not happening as fast as this guy wants it to.
Yeah it’s very interesting that most scabs on Reddit sound very similar to him and his video. Even though his intention was to help the protest, ironically he’s done the most damage to the protest and given the scabs and anti-protestets plenty of ammunition to use against protesting efforts.
I’m sure he’s not even willing to admit where he’s wrong or at fault here, he doesn’t seem like the kind of person to own up, in any meaningful way at least.
I don’t really get how reddit is “winning” if I am no longer using it. Lemmy and kbin have more than filled the gap from reddit. Even if users at large don’t switch immediately, that is fine.
Dont care, just quit Reddit and they can’t win. I saw a lot of sub-reddit who said “Well, blackout was great but here we are! Online now!” so… just leave.
Not sure if I agree with him (or rather, pretty sure I disagree). The protest was very successful for me - it got me off the site, and I have no plans of going back, even if it fully opens and goes back to “normal”. In my case, reddit is not winning, it completely lost. I see more people like me around here every day and it makes me happy. Can’t remember lat time reddit made me happy, so I’m enjoying the change, even if it comes with a fair bit of jank.
I think his comments are directed at the moderators who have caved, not necessarily to every viewer of the video
His broader point is that he thinks mods should have stuck to their guns and kept subs private which would include their historic posts. By even reopening, they’re allowing traffic to return to the site even if a few large communities are memeing hard. For the most part, subs that have reopened are going to return to business as usual. All because the mods of those communities didn’t want to sacrifice their control. Spez called their bluff.
While thousands of users have been driven away, there are still more than enough who will remain and continue to engage with the site. The only lesson Reddit will have learned is that they can just wait it out no matter how unpopular of a decision they make.
I’m very curious to see if there will be any meaningful drop in traffic at this time next month.
Reddit was never going to just go away as a result of this. Even if every blacked-out subreddit remained private forever and everyone who was aware of this protest walked away, there’s plenty of oblivious users and remaining subreddits to continue operating.
The “win” condition for the protesters is some or all of the following:
- Give Reddit bad publicity in the mainstream press
- Cause a drop in ad revenue. Money is life as far as Reddit is concerend.
- Harm Reddit’s valuation in its IPO. Money is life.
- Help Reddit replacements get established, restoring competition that Reddit thought had long ago vanished. (You are here).
Nothing was going to stop Reddit from going ahead with their API change, all we could hope for was to make it hurt for Reddit. And in that regard I do believe we’ve scored a solid win. The Fediverse is now competition for Reddit, and as they squeeze and squeeze their users for money over the years to come there’s now an escape valve that users can flow out of under that pressure.
@doctortofu Ditto, fellow traveler.
The majority didn’t move away from twitter either. Some people moved to mastodon, but most either stayed or just straight quit twitter
That said, I Am so much happier here on the fediverse
My first account was 14 years ago. Every year or so, I switch to a new account. I nuked every single account I had: nuked the comments, nuked the submissions, just over-wrote then deleted everything. I privated the tiny handful of small communities I modded, turned over the keys in a couple of them, and de-modded myself. I unsubscribed from every single subreddit I was part of.
I found some worthy comments and spent all the reddit coins I’d accumulated from when other people gave me gold. I went through every saved comment and saved it (in context) offline. I PM’d a handful of people my email address, wrapped up a couple of "oh, I’ll get that to you later"s, and … just walked away.
14 years, 17 accounts. My “smallest” account had about 140k karma; my largest over 440k. Probably a couple million between all of them.
I’m done with reddit, I’m gone. I’m not going to fool myself that I’ll be missed there but, given my accumulated karma, I think the loss of some of my contributions (I mostly hung out in news and science subs) will make the site a little less useful to the people still there. Enshittification, indeed.
Obligatory fuck spez inserted.
Every comment and submission deleted is just a tiny bit of value taken away from the site. I did my part, too!
I really like Rossman, he fights a good fight. It also seems like his personality/brand is to be upset about most things.