Reddit protests

[Ready]

Is anyone here impacted by the recent protests and sub shutdowns on Reddit? I participate in one in particular that has decided to shut down indefinitely. It seems the mods feel the new fee structure will make their job too difficult if they want to use third party mod tools.

Also curious if there are there any Reddit mods in this sub?

 

[JoeWras]

Not a mod. I am a daily user, mostly for fun, although I learn some stuff. But you know what? If Reddit went away, I'd live.

The protest to me is another example of cancel culture. There is no more middle ground. It is immediate war. And you can say the same about Reddit on their fee structure.

 

[grayv]

no impact. seldom go there, and use a browser when I do.

 

[COcheesehead]

I have an account there, never have posted and find the general quality of the participants to be rather pedestrian at best. So if it shut down, no impact on me at all.

 

[big-papa]

I have an account there, never have posted and find the general quality of the participants to be rather pedestrian at best. So if it shut down, no impact on me at all.

Same here - despite having moderators it reminds me of the old Usenet, for those of us who are old enough to remember that. Kinda wild-west....

Cheers,
Big-Papa

 

[Dd852]

I suddenly have more free time! The protest helped me realize how much time I spent/wasted scrolling discussions that were all somewhat interesting but ultimately unimportant.

 

[Bryan Barnfellow]

I am a regular on reddit in diverse subs. I haven't been affected much. It's clearly a battle of wills, but with only about 4,000 subs now holding out, it doesn't look good for the protest.

You can't blame the CEO for wanting to improve the value of reddit prior to the upcoming IPO; but I feel for the volunteer mods and active users who want to keep unfettered access to the trove of data for 3rd party apps that widen access. That said, the numerous new AI apps will be making a profit from that reddit data without paying for it. It's a bit thorny; however I think the protest will fail in the end.

-BB

 

[dixonge]

It seems the mods feel the new fee structure will make their job too difficult if they want to use third party mod tools.

Seems like Reddit is being fairly accommodating in that regard. According to Reddit CEO:

"Mod Tools
We know many communities rely on tools like RES, ContextMod, Toolbox, etc., and these tools will continue to have free access to the Data API.
We’re working together with Pushshift to restore access for verified moderators.

Mod Bots
If you’re creating free bots that help moderators and users (e.g. haikubot, setlistbot, etc), please continue to do so. You can contact us here if you have a bot that requires access to the Data API above the free limits.
Developer Platform is a new platform designed to let users and developers expand the Reddit experience by providing powerful features for building moderation tools, creative tools, games, and more. We are currently in a closed beta with hundreds of developers (sign up here). For those of you who have been around a while, it is the spiritual successor to both the API and Custom CSS."

And on mobile:

"About 3% of mod actions come from third-party apps, and we’ve reached out to communities who moderate almost exclusively using these apps to ensure we address their needs."

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/

 

[MRG]

I spend too much time doomstrolling reddit. It's a lot less interesting now.

My career was in technology, and I have mixed opinions. I remember when imaging was new and IBM was changing an arm and a leg for their APIs. I spent a couple of months reverse engineering them, and they didn't get any money from Megacorp or their customers anymore. Another business partner decided their APIs were worth a cool million to those who used them. Their customers quit.

The John Oliver photos are getting out of hand.

 

[jim584672]

Who cares? I don't understand the "protest". Maybe we get lucky and Reddit goes away forever.

 

[Ready]

I don’t really have a strong opinion on the protests but I participate in one niche special interest sub that has shut down because of the decision of one moderator and has prevented over 60,000 people all over the world from communicating with each other.

We could start another sub i suppose but it just seems odd to me that one person could have so much impact on a community.

 

[Errollyn]

Reddit was built on the backs of third party apps. It owes its popularity and the data it "owns" to third party apps. It didn't have its own app for a long time, and finally "created" one by buying a third party app and rebranding it to Reddit. Now the company is effectively killing the apps that made it relevant, in the name of padding numbers ahead of an IPO. It's wreaks of "greed is good" corporate culture to me. I've been a pretty heavy user for years, but haven't been on the site for the last week and am still on the fence about whether I go back.

 

[Ready]

Reddit was built on the backs of third party apps. It owes its popularity and the data it "owns" to third party apps. It didn't have its own app for a long time, and finally "created" one by buying a third party app and rebranding it to Reddit. Now the company is effectively killing the apps that made it relevant, in the name of padding numbers ahead of an IPO. It's wreaks of "greed is good" corporate culture to me. I've been a pretty heavy user for years, but haven't been on the site for the last week and am still on the fence about whether I go back.

If I were to attempt to move a sub community away from Reddit, is there another platform that would be a logical place to move to? I don’t want to go to Facebook but I’m not familiar with any other platforms.

 

[Errollyn]

If I were to attempt to move a sub community away from Reddit, is there another platform that would be a logical place to move to? I don’t want to go to Facebook but I’m not familiar with any other platforms.

I'm going to try Lemmy, which is like Reddit but for the "fediverse." Unfortunately (or furtunately?), Lemmy has seen a huge surge in users over the last few days and the Sign Up page isn't working right now. I will say I haven't been a big fan of fediverse apps (Mastadon in particular), and I think the complexity of decentralized communities may keep them from gaining widespread adoption. But browsing the Lemmy front page makes it look promising, so I'm going make an account and give it a try at least.

 

[COcheesehead]

If I were to attempt to move a sub community away from Reddit, is there another platform that would be a logical place to move to? I don’t want to go to Facebook but I’m not familiar with any other platforms.

I would see if there is a stand alone forum already dedicated to the subject. For example I use https://www.wineberserkers.com/ to discuss wine topics. There are also a bunch of forums at https://www.city-data.com/ too.

 

[ER Eddie]

I lost respect for Reddit years ago, when they cancelled a number of subforums that went against the grain of popular narratives and thereby upset people who enjoy spending their life controlling other people's speech. I heard Reddit mods justifications. It disgusted me.

I also dislike Reddit's upvote/downvote system. I understand the supposed rationale, but what happens is you create group-think. The popular opinions get the most traction, and people with divergent points of view get downvoted to oblivion. If you want an echo chamber, then Reddit is a good place to look. That's true of any forum that uses the upvote/downvote system.

I suppose Reddit is useful for non-controversial, impersonal topics -- a hobby, let's say. I wouldn't use it for anything else.

 

[Amethyst]

I decided I spend enough time online as it is, and don't have time for Reddit. As others have mentioned, the commenters are awfully typical and ho-hum. Real solutions to problems are scarce. And the "karma" system mystifies me.

 

[sparky08]

Sometimes, when I google something, I'll stumble across Reddit. The last time is when I was trying to figure out how to change a ChromeOS setting. But I don't have an account.

If there was a particular thing I was passionate about I'd probably be a contributer.

Oh, and sometime I check out r/AntiWork for laughs.

 

[JoeWras]

Sometimes it just seems people want to be mad and take everyone with them.

 

[Ready]

Sometimes it just seems people want to be mad and take everyone with them.

Yes, that’s my impression too. I find it perplexing that a few individual mods can shut down a community with millions of subscribers because they don’t like a policy change.

 

[scrabbler1]

I browse a bunch of subreddits. Some are down, others remain up. I rarely post there, but the ones I have posted to the most are the ones which are down. No big deal.

 

[JoeWras]

Some of the mods have reopened their sub, but with restricted rules. For instance, only posts about one comedian are allowed or only posts about vacuum cleaners. Basically make it unusable.

This reminds me of the petty BS kids do.

 

[Time2]

A couple of reddit sites I'm interested in, r/electronics and r/askelectronics are not allowing posts. And I have electronic questions!

888K users and 676k users respectively.

 

[mh]

If I were to attempt to move a sub community away from Reddit, is there another platform that would be a logical place to move to? I don’t want to go to Facebook but I’m not familiar with any other platforms.

Discord might be a way to go

 

[athena53]

Not a user but I swear half the "news" items on msn.com are rehashes of Reddit posts. ("My grandparents left all their money to me and now my cousins want me to share it with them.") What will they do for content without all the family and money drama on Reddit?

DS, who is NOT a heavy social media user, does frequent Reddit forums on actuarial exams and I think it's been good for him- discussions on specific study areas as well as general commiseration and sympathy.

Check out Proboards if you want to start something outside of Reddit. I've been on a Proboard forum for years an the advertising in the free version isn't too invasive.