The protests worked, and so did moving/editing/deleting our old content. As one person complains,
I’m not here for Reddit, but for the aggregation of niche communities. I follow a lot of obscure manga that have relatively small followings and recently I got into an IT job which opened a lot of technological exploration for me. The worst part about this change isn’t even that we are losing 3rd party apps, but that only members of the communities I frequent are the ones who care enough to protest. Can’t tell you how many times now I’ve looked something up on Reddit and find an answer to the issue I have, only to realize that the community is closed or the post is deleted in protest. Now we are stuck in this limbo where protests seem to have lost their steam, niche communities are being overthrown and killed because of that greedy little pigboy. Seriously, fuck spez.
To some degree it’s hard to be sympathetic, because the people complaining about this are seriously lacking in sympathy themselves. They just wanted to see the content that those users produced for them, they didn’t care about the difficulties or preferences of the users themselves. So when those Spez-opposed users took their ball and went home the Spez-friendly people got angry at them for taking their comments away with them rather than at Spez for having driven them to that in the first place.
Exactly. My sympathies are with those creators & moderators who have received awful comments from reddit users that are too naive and impatient to understand the protest actions.
People love to blame the victim for defending themselves over the problematic person who is abusing them, because if they acknowledge that someone is being abusive that kind of morally obligates them to step in.
And they very much don’t want to do that.
And obviously the exploitation of users for their knowledge and content so that the owners of Reddit Inc. can gain wealth for sitting on their thumbs is different from the kind of abuse one’s mind might go to when the word is raised, but it’s the same dynamic.
Someone is claiming mistreatment, those around them are annoyed by the claims, not by the mistreatment, because the person standing up for themselves is putting onlookers in the dangerous position of examining their relationship to that mistreatment.
And they don’t wanna.
Vicious, but true. I’m still struggling with whether or not I’m going to astroturf my comment history and delete my account. I see a lot of folks saying their comments were restored and then they had no way to log back in to delete them again. For now, I’m just going to leave my Reddit account dormant. I suppose it isn’t super effective to leave my content there for Spez to benefit from, but I kinda feel like it does more harm to people just looking for answers than it ever will to Spez if I were to remove it. All around, this is just a ridiculously stupid situation we all find ourselves in over the whims of small minds chasing after big money. Again.
May I say that whatever you decide to do, you’ve already “won” this? First, giving a shit about people, and second, spending time grappling with those truthfully complex issues has enriched you, and all of us.
One suggestion is to edit them with wording like fuck spez, so that if he deletes your content it won’t be you that yanked it away from people.
But they could just revert that easily enough, rather than delete outright (although are they smart enough to do that…?). Another could be to insert an explanation at the top or bottom of all your (best/all) stuff that you do not condone Reddit’s actions but decided not to punish end-users for the actions of that powermod abuser.
And eventually you could migrate it elsewhere but yeah, that’s a bit hard to do atm when users would have trouble finding it. OR, you could combine these approaches: for each answer, make a post to kbin/lemmy about the issue, then edit the original to include solely a link to that new location. That would kill 2 birds with 1 stone by helping people realize where to go for high-quality content, while providing the direct answer (there’s no need to create an account or deal with fediverse issues, anyone at all can just read it). (The down-side is that spez could easily revert that back too, but if so then you could keep trying, like spell out the link to futz with its automated detection.)
But whatever you end up doing, I see that you are doing it because you care, and that’s already a win in my book. :-)
Personally, I’m leaving my comments intact because I doubt that Spez is really going to benefit much from them in the long run anyway.The technology behind AIs currently seems to be moving away from simply throwing vast amounts of data into the training to a more precisely fine-tuned high-quality training dataset, so there’s probably not going to be as much demand for Reddit’s trove as Spez thinks.
And besides, the old PushShift archives are still floating around. We don’t know how the legal or technical situation will shake out but maybe people will be able to use that for free training.
Same. I don’t begrudge the people who want to salt and burn their Reddit history, but I’m leaving my old posts up for anybody who might be helped by them (plus most of them are just shitposts anyways)
I’m still struggling with whether or not I’m going to astroturf my comment history
I kinda feel like it does more harm to people just looking for answers than it ever will to Spez if I were to remove it
Here’s what I recommend to have the best of both worlds, while still taking advantage of mass editing tools.
Create a magazine or two on kbin specifically just to hold your content.
Copy it over and paste it into your mags.
Mass edit your content on reddit with the usual message, but also include a link to your kbin profile. Folks who want to see the useful content can still find it that way.
I think if people aren’t getting answers from reddit they are more likely to look elsewhere. I do haven’t deleted my comments 🙃 yet…
i do not like what reddit is doing one bit, but please stop. what reddit is doing is not anywhere near equivalent to real actual abuse, and implying it is is a little offensive. have some perspective
I totally hear you that comments like this can feel insensitive of people who have been abused. I’m an abuse survivor so I get where you’re coming from and appreciate your intent.
What I disagree with is that we shouldn’t make this comparison at all. The same relational dynamics and structures that give rise to mental, emotional, physical, sexual, etc. abuse and exploitation give rise to this behaviour too.
It’s like the pyramid of rape culture (https://www.11thprincipleconsent.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Rape-Culture-v5.png). The stuff at the bottom isn’t one for one equal to what’s up the top. But the underlying structure and foundations are the same no matter how far up you go.
The same as any form of abuse, no matter how big or small, is underpinned by the same thought patterns, behaviours, power dynamics, culture, societal attitudes and practices, etc.
EDIT: removed preview of pyramid so no one gets smacked in the face with unpleasant descriptions scrolling down. Typos.
I’ve been abused. I suffer from ongoing complex PTSD from that abuse.
I have some fucking perspective, thank you very fucking much.
And that perspective is that the word is broadly defined, and that exploitation is fucking abuse. It’s not physical abuse, no, and I didn’t say that it was. I’m fact, I was very careful to avoid such comparisons. But exploiting people for their time and labour so that you can generate obscene amounts of wealth for yourself is exploitative, it involves lying to people, both implicitly and explicitly, and it involves engaging in emotional and psychological manipulation.
And that’s a type of fucking abuse. It’s the exact same type of abuse that narcissists inflict on their victims. It’s just being done in a way that the law and our culture sees as legitimate, because there’s a lot of money involved, and we all fall under the yolk of rich mother fuckers who think they deserve more from us, just because they already have money.
I make the comparisons not because I lack perspective, but because I have it.
Because corporate behaviour like this feels too fucking familiar, given that perspective.
Exactly.
Most of us on the fediverse can sympathize with the idea that “its really frustrating not being able to use Reddit as a reliable spurce for obscure knowledge.”
The difference is that we feel “its really frustrating that I can’t rely on Reddit, because even if the answer is there I can’t in good conscience support spez.” Instead of “all the answers are gone because of these stipid protests.”
Very much the truth. I cautiously suggested that people leave their content up simply as an archive of useful knowledge, but fbfw was downvoted to oblivion. I understand people wanting to depart and take their ball home with them because fuck you spez, but I still have a hard time with the destruction of the knowledge base.
Same here. I’ve left all my posts and comments up on Reddit. I’m sure it’s made it’s way in some form to Bard or ChatGPT. Just never know when some information would be helpful in a pinch, especially if it’s tech or programming related.
The loss of /r/homeautomation has set me back a week at least with respect to home maintenance. The loss of knowledge is crazy.
That’s why I’m advocating so hard that for people who delete their content, not to rely on PDS for this - see https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/71867/Poll-Power-Delete-Suite-users-are-you-saving-your-content - but to use tools that save their content - https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/65260/PSA-Here-s-exactly-what-to-do-if-you-hit-the . The knowledge base shouldn’t be destroyed - but neither should it be under the control of reddit.
yup. if they deally care, they would either join or make the content themselves, yet they do neither and make it about mods
Are kbin or Lemmy posts being indexed by search engines? If the content was created, would anyone be able to find it?
I posted a similar comment elsewhere but along the same line of thought: The sad thing is that the masses that are still on Reddit at this point dgaf and will likely stay on Reddit forever. There’s a real problem of Apathy in today’s culture when people are just jonesing for their fix of daily content/memes, or at the very least nothing that disrupts the status quo. They don’t give a fuck about “ideals” or what corporations do or farm from them so long as their instant gratification and daily intake of said content remains unchanged.
The most toxic users of Reddit want to stay there rather than come here? Oh boo-hoo, cry me a river:-). If they are happy with their childish toys, then let them be - that’s a win for them, and a win for us too?
Okay, so that’s glass-half-full thinking, and more realistically the situation is also half empty at the same time, but both are true at the same time, so we’ll see what happens I guess.
The sad thing is that the masses that are still on Reddit at this point dgaf and will likely stay on Reddit forever.
I actually consider this to be (mostly) a good thing. Within those that walk away from reddit, I expect the ratio of content creators vs. content consumers to be way above average. So if we get most of the people who used to make Reddit a great source of food for thought, and spez gets to keep the vast majority of cat video watchers, that’s not a bad deal at all.
Tbh - some of us, like me, did leave our most valuable comments to the tech community behind. Whether it helps reddit or not I still posted things to help others. I did delete much of anything outside of very tech related subreddits though. Also I promoted some software I wrote when applicable so it would only cut off my own nose to try and spite Spez too, so no I would rather not do that.
Reddit will die a slow death I am sure, but the heart of reddit is certainly gone.
Yeah I didnt delete anything either, but if people don’t go back that’s what will really affect reddit in the long run. They can sit on their precious marketable content but if it stagnates it won’t be worth squat after a while.
but if it stagnates it won’t be worth squat after a while.
That might be true (but some content remains valuable after long periods of time too, think of all the good stories and classics from the turn of the 19th century for example), but even so, for those who are able it might be better to move the content now and delay even that much to reddit. (Not everyone can do this, and even for those that do it’s extra effort, unfortunately.)
I’ve seen many toots on Mastodon where people argue it is ethical to mirror Reddit now because so many people are destroying their content, and that will make searching for answers more difficult. Sure, I get their stance but at the same time I think is being a selfish scab.
The content that is now lost, will bounce back on some other plattform. Hopefully a better and more democratic plattform.
I noticed this is in r/apple. It is now populated with hate filled spez apologists
So I haven’t been on Reddit since the blackout, so I don’t know what the sentiment there is. I used the official app, so you can’t accuse me of not being sympathetic for the cause.
But I have been creating content for years, many of which contained helpful solutions for IT problems in niche areas I took interest in. Now all this content is unhelpful because the sub is private or the original question context was deleted. This really bums me out that all this energy and effort has gone to waste.
The ‘npm left-pad incident’ is a case where a developer broke the internet by deleting a tiny piece of open source library which many other libraries were dependent on.
There is something to be said about abandoning and moving on without burning the bridges in the process, rendering not only your content as useless, but other people’s as well
Now all this content is unhelpful because the sub is private
You could try sending a modmail to see if the mod will give you access to the sub so you can see your own content, or send you a copy of a specific post or comment.
or the original question context was deleted.
One thing to note is that this happened all the time on reddit as folks either deleted their question and throwaway account as soon as they got their answer. Other times folks would ask with their main account but used something like shreddit once a month. So this isn’t exactly new to the protest.
When I move my content to its new home, I usually avoid naming the questioner and I briefly summarize their question/responses. This way the content has the added context to be understandable.
If the post is from Feb of this year or older and you forgot the context but want to save the content, you can search for the post in the pushshift torrents - if it was deleted as part of the protest then the pushshift torrent will have the original content in it and you can restore the context that way.
This really bums me out that all this energy and effort has gone to waste.
Additional effort is required to do what I do, but the result is that the effort has not gone to waste, instead folks who want it can view it on the fediverse.
There is something to be said about abandoning and moving on without burning the bridges in the process,
From my POV reddit burned those bridges.
rendering not only your content as useless,
It’s not useless, it now serves to move people away from reddit. Remember, with reddit you never know when you will be permabanned - it seems to happen entirely at random nowadays.
but other people’s as well
Mostly I’ve only seen three categories of this.
-
A throwaway or an account not logged into for a while. The owner if still alive probably doesn’t have the access to move it away anymore anyways.
-
Content that is still present under “[deleted]” - person got hit by a 1k limit or something and missed deleting that before deleting the account.
-
Content from a mod, who has’t moved off yet as they’re trying to hold onto the sub for the protest.
I figure I’m better off moving my content with context anyways, since that prevents the person in 1. or 3. from coming back and confusing the context.
The other thing I do when commenting is quoting extensively, that way the context is clear from my own comments.
I think we’re all mourning the loss of community and information found on reddit. Being angry that spez has forced protesters into the position to dismantle these communities is a legitimate and understandable reaction.
I don’t see in the above comment that this person is spez-friendly or getting angry at the protesters specifically, just acknowledging that the whole thing sucks for everyone.
I’ve already felt the sting of the protests when googling solutions to various issues. I used to be able to include “reddit” in the search and would almost always find relevant information quickly, but now as OP mentioned many posts and whole communities have gone dark.
It’s all been really eye opening about the potential negative consequences of having so many communities and information in the control of so few.
I do wonder if the Fediverse will ever be able to replace Reddit in terms of searchable terms for niche questions. I hate that a lot of niche communities that I’ve been apart of recently have been on discord or reddit. If those communities stay there then all that tech support will be lost; like tears in rain.
If Reddit remains the place for those kinds of niche questions that probably means spez will win in the long run. That’s what brought me to reddit, whenever I had a question reddit was always the best result.
I avoided Reddit like the plague because of how often it came up.
Quora and Yahoo Answers combined with the popularity of Facebook scared the hell out of me.
Then I dipped my toes in and found old pre-2015 Reddit, it was great for about 6 months and then The Decline started.
I remember when Reddit ran from selling gold, there was a little counter on the side saying how much they still needed.
All you got was no ads and access to the lounge IIRC.
This feels a lot like that.
Hell, we already have our own version of the poop knife, and new Star Wars movies are coming out too, we might get to revisit the Swamps of Dagobah while eating Jolly Ranchers.
If Reddit remains the place for those kinds of niche questions that probably means spez will win in the long run.
Is reddit making bank? From what I know, the answer is: No. Even currently reddit is not profitable.
So, unless reddit grows, spez loses. If reddit becomes “the place you go to for niche questions”, while bleeding on the front of hopeless and passionate addicts who make content for big subs, that is a problem. Because only big subs get big views, meaning big ad revenue.
Reddit needs to gain more people. And if not more people, then more engagement. And if not more engagement, then more high quality content from a passionate userbase, leading to more people and more engagement. With “being the place for niche questions”, you will not ever get that sweet and necessary growth. You will get a stable influx of users. But that is probably not enough. As soon as niche subs are the one attractive feature of reddit, its business model is probably dead. Because, unless reddit grows, it is already dead.
Google’s VP of searching has even mentioned that, which really is Google’s fault as it was an issue long before spez caused Reddit to crumble - Reddit was just propping up Google’s bad choices, then Musk bought Twitter and started running it into the ground, now Huffman sees both of those as examples to follow somehow… plus Stackoverflow is on strike, and the internet archive / wayback machine is facing legal troubles and may have to cease existing b/c of some decisions they made during the pandemic as well. So it’s not just Reddit: it’s enshittification of the entire internet.
I know what you mean, but also it’s kinda fun to solve my own problems lately, even if it takes 100x longer:-). Fortunately cached copies of many Reddit posts exist, although unfortunately those do not always include comments:-(.
In what way does the Fediverse prevent this kind of information destruction in the future? Will it be easier to preserve data?
My thinking is that because it is decentralized, even if sections of the fediverse decide to sell out to our corporate overlords, it wouldnt compromise the entire platform.
I wouldnt go so far as to say that the fediverse is completely immune to manipulation, but i do think the nature of it makes mass tampering\control more difficult.
We are not entitled to what other people made. They are free to delete their stuff, or to restrict access to it. We are also not entitled to have access to other peoples’ forums.
So of course the Fediverse doesn’t prevent this kind of “information destruction”. It does not. And it would be ethically questionable if it did.
The information destruction we are seeing right now is a protest against exactly this kind of stuff: Reddit is selling other people’s content for a ludicrous price by charging too much for their API use. And they are forcing communities to be managed a certain way, cracking down and forcing the replacement of moderators etc. in case of non compliance. This is the reason why this implosion is happening.
And the fediverse as a whole, as a much more decentralized system, is a lot more immune to what caused those protests.
People are only using the 3rd party app line because it’s the most relatable argument. It’s much more than that. A ton of moderation tools and useful bots are going dark tomorrow thanks to the API policy change. Even if we all go back to Reddit, there’s no bringing back those tools. Reddit communities are going to slowly go to shit as spammers all realize that moderators aren’t as effective as they used to be. This was going to happen regardless of how the protests turned out. There’s no scenario where things get better for Reddit.
Imo, more emphasis should have been made on how spez treated Christian, the Apolla dev. It’s honestly disgusting. And not even any kind of apology or direct reply. Spez just went on to smear Christian’s name more with disinformation he fed to the press via interviews.
To anyone that hasn’t seen the mythbusting thread it was pretty damn shocking: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yxqq9S14NxbCQBDfO0lq3xYL8IWrGLSeE47u7X1sUVo/pub
It’ll be interesting to hear from the odd user that kept their accounts how things change in the coming weeks and months. It’s cool that so many websites made articles about it but it still felt very clickbait and polarized on even those sights. Users will know the truth and hopefully update us on the shitshow to come.
only members of the communities I frequent are the ones who care enough to protest
That’s one of the most solipsistic “if it doesn’t affect me it doesn’t exist” comments I’ve seen in a good while.
To give the poster the benefit of the doubt, it’s probably just a very poorly worded frustration that /r/20flavorsofshitpost (with the mindless horde) is operational when /r/thethingiwant (with a passionate small community that adds a lot of value) is dead. It sure could have been communicated better, but I really don’t think it’s meant to claim the protest only affects the poster’s interests.
It’s harder to see the difference when 10% of a huge sub leaves than 80% of a tiny one.
People are way to shortsighted to see how it can affect them as well.
The amount of “I don’t use 3rd party apps so it doesn’t affect me” comments were very noticable.
These changes and the ones that Reddit will implement to rail the userbase even harder will affect the people one way or the other at some point.
First they come for the 3rd party Apps, then Old Reddit, then NSFW content and so on. The change just opened the box of Pandorra and showed how little spez cares about the community.
I did use the official shitty App and left because it is quite obvious that it will only get worse.
Yep, the whole thing had ordinary and third party app users pitted against each other, only because blaming the mods would’ve reopened the subs faster than going against reddit itself. And the fact that 90% of reddit don’t use third party app makes it that much worse. Goddammit spez you cunning mf.
It’s really that high? I’m surprised, I would have thought 3rd party app use was way more common.
Among higher than average users it seemingly was. Given that reddit was saying the third party apps were using above average amounts of API calls per user. They said it’s because of the 3PAs baing unoptimized but it was likely that more engaged users used 3PAs.
Wow so they’ve prioritised the casual users over the power users… You know, the ones who actually post the content… This should go well /s
Anecdotal, but I’ve been talking about this whole thing to my partner. She doesn’t really care though because, in her own words: “I tried to use Reddit a little while ago, but I didn’t like the app”
Had a good chuckle to myself over that
i think it’s cuz a lot of us were redditors who used it before they even had an official reddit app, and so it wasn’t pushed on us as the default option. the older, more dedicated reddit accounts disproportionately made up the active userbase
The interface for Sync, as an example, made it much easier and more efficient to use. I would argue that 3P users use more calls because using those apps allow you to browse and interact far more effectively without cutting through the swaths of “He Gets Us” ads that Sync users never even had to see. Ultimately, I suspect that tha was the true reason for the API changes. Lost ad revenue. Judging by what I saw just today being stuck briefly on the official Reddit app and the website taking care of last minute issues after Sync went down, it’s bad. Wall of ads.