this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Reddit

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It can go one of a few ways.

  1. Apart from the few subs that remain offline, it'll basically be back to normal. Those that do remain offline indefinitely just get forcibly reopened or recreated by admins, especially huge subreddits like /r/videos. Smaller ones just get redicted to /r/topicnew or some other creative name.

  2. A lot of subreddits and more importantly moderators and users leave the site permanently. In order for this to happen however, there'd have to be a consensus alternative, which there isn't ATM. Otherwise, these communities are pretty much lost forever unless the mods put a message to go to X alternative service in the "subreddit is private" banner. Tbh, I don't think people are gonna stomach losing years of their lives in an instant so they'll just re create subreddits unless the mods provide an alternative.

No matter what though, they're not backing down on the effective removal of the API (still leaving the sneaky clause "you can pay us if you want but it'll be a king's ransom" for AI, even though they can just trawl the web manually lol). They'll probably announce some crappy customization features to hoodwink those who don't know what an API is and lie to them and say it's "API v2" or whatever.

I just honestly don't know how it's going to shake out and I'm scared im going to lose these communities. I don't give a single solitary fuck about Reddit the company anymore, and I never did really. I just hope all of the subreddits find a new home and don't just shrug their shoulders and say "welp, guess that's it guys".

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (3 children)

you cant really return to normalcy from this, but i dont think most users care. whenever i get into a casual convo about the fediverse online, the general consensus from people is 'yeah reddit isnt going to die, i'll stay on reddit for my communities'. so if the majority think reddit isn't going to die and continue using the site, it probably wont die! it'll just go back to normal with a few million less users (which actually isnt that much for a big site) unless spez hilariously fucks up

really the fediverse is just a lot of people who like tech at the end of the day, not the average web user

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

I agree, we're getting an insane amount of hate on our sub for remaining restricted indefinitely. The general users do not seem to care about 3rd party apps or that Reddit can just bend us over at any time.

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[–] jcb2016 15 points 2 years ago

I mode 3 subs on reddit. my biggest is 75k but i only get like 4 post a day from my biggest sub. It's a big sub to me. we went dark on the 12th I checked reddit yesterday quickly and looked like in mod-mail I had a join request. I can only hope that Reddit takes notice of us and changes it's tune. Lemmy is awesome and I hope it gets better and surpasses Reddit

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Reddit was never going to just shut down overnight, but it's more or less done for me (barring some sudden change with the API stuff, but even then I'd make an effort to use it less). I'll keep my account around and might occasionally go to it to look up specific things or visit more niche communities that don't have much of a presence here or on other alternatives yet, but I'm done with just generally browsing reddit or providing any content for them. I'm enjoying it here and hope the boost in activity allows for continued growth and filling out of communities for more specific topics.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago

Meanwhile, as the subs are down there are people attempting to replicate them here.

So if you like Dadjokes, hop over to DadJokes

[–] haelusnovak 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

How do I think this ends? I think it won't matter to their bottom line. Although I am happy with the participation thusfar, Reddit benefits not only from the current use, but the redirection from every Google search toward Reddit. Unless moderators deleted the content before they leave (idk if even possible), the impact is but a blink in a profit report. And the CEO will use their stability as a personal reinforcement.

That said, good riddance, I don't want those willing to stay to be a part of communities I'm in anyway. So far the new life here on Lemmy seems to be very cooperative and positive-- I hope this is maintained.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

How do I think this ends? I think it won’t matter to their bottom line

I'm curious how Digg's bottom-line ended up. Reddit thinks they're too big to fail, and maybe that's true. But Twitter's too big to fail, and just keeps "succeeding with less money".

With Digg, it was all about APIs as well. People don't remember that. There's a reason the big fights are over APIs. And it's not just about money (I'd pay for gold to use a third party client with no ads, maybe even more). Reddit's not just looking to monetize third-party-app users, they're trying to change the entire face of reddit to be more vendor-focused and less redditor-focused. It might not look dramatically different on 7/1 (or it might; Digg changed pretty quick). Reddit keeps talking about how much AI uses the APIs, but I think they really mean "how much we want to sell the APIs for AI". Maybe that's better than Digg because maybe we (the product) don't feel it as obviously.

But let's be honest, the next step regardless of whether reddit becomes a Copilot source feed, is that the same AI is hooked up to the APIs to create content and monetize reddit even more for companies.

It's not about the third party tools being killed by this, it's about all the clients they think they can get to pay these new prices.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

We run ads on Reddit to get a few suckers to use our apps. Our ad campaigns the past 2 days have sucked, so much that we started using Google AdWords again. That's permanent damage to Reddit's income, since a portion of our advertising budget has been redirected.

You're right, this will change anything major, but it's nice to know there will be a small ripple.

(And yes, Google isn't "better than Reddit", but an exitory ripple is the main point)

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I think you're going to know by one metric. Quality of content over the next ~3 - 6 months. Whether subs stay or go is one thing, that's been part of Reddit for the 12 years I used it. What would get folks to leave is when the communities they are interested in aren't supplying content.

So if you lose some lurkers, that's not gonna matter because they didn't post anyways. If you start losing power users, who regularly feed your community content, what's going to drive you to stick around? If you ask me, I think the fact we are even having this conversation means Reddit is losing in this equation.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think no matter what Reddit won’t be exactly the same. The smaller the community the bigger the impact.

I’ve just resigned myself to needing to make a big change.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Same. I'm done just being a content/ad zombie for them

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I can actually see plenty of people and communities permanently migrating over to Lemmy instances. Some are actually creating their very own federated Lemmy instances.

So now, for those who created their own instances, there will be no more censoring and imposing from a higher organization.

I don't see why to not use Fediverse, Mastodon apps are great already, and Lemmy apps are getting updated and improved as we speak.

Yes, the web front-end still needs work, and yes, Lemmy still lacks in some features, but that is being worked on as we speak, and I believe that some of the users migrating over, are devs, that will actually help to improve Lemmy, which is Open Source. So, if there's a feature you'd like Lemmy to have, just open a Pull Request!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

The communities you love are made of people, and people will go to someplace better. When googleplus ended, it was a mess in the initial migration. But soon people agreed to stick to better places, and the communities survived. Reddit is just a venue that used to be nice to hang out with friends and now is turning into a shopping center. It's annoying to change venues, but real friends will stick togheter.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I don't think that Reddit is going down, but i have seen users that post regularly on Reddit closing down their accounts and joining Lemmy, this will snowball into more joining Lemmy because the quality of post will eventually go down on Reddit and go up on Lemmy, this is just speculations and have a really lose base.

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[–] amcjv12 8 points 2 years ago

I unfortunately think 1 is the most likely, at least for now. A one-time disruption won't be enough to sink Reddit. What could permanently change things is the sustained build-up of viable alternatives over time. So I guess you can look at the blackout stuff not as the end for Reddit, but maybe the canary in the coal mine for a gradual descent.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago
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