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The Reddit Blackout Is Breaking Reddit
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this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I want it to hurt them. I want it to fail. But I fear they're doing this now because they've run the numbers and are pretty sure the vocal minority that will leave permanently won't be noticed in a month.
Look, I am happy as long as there are enough people on lemmy and kbin to have a fun website here. I can go and visit reddit now and then to see what kind of stuff they're upvoting, that's not a problem. But I want the potentially better alternatives to grow.
That's the spirit. We don't need to complete obliterate reddit to make it the better alternatives viable. We just need to get a minimal mass of people here to keep momentum growing.
I keep thinking of Taleb's essay where he talks about how effective a intolerant minority can be on affecting change in general behavior.
Brilliant. Thank you for posting that.
I just downloaded the whole book; I'm not really interested in the markets, so I've been avoiding Taleb, but that essay has made me rethink that.
Exactly. Reddit itself should be a case study. Lemmy and Kbin offer an opportunity to build something great and learn from what made current Reddit (the good and the terrible) what it is and some things to avoid.
The only real problem with Reddit is Reddit Inc.
You're right, Lemmy/etc represent a great opportunity for the users and mods to regain control over the communities they build.
Well, two things about that. In their interviews, Huffman says this decision making is based on Elon Musk at Twitter. I think this implies that Huffman is not basing this on numbers but on ideology and an example set by Musk. It's simply "If I'm a rich tech bro and a richer tech bro does x, I can become a richer tech bro by copying them!"
Secondly, they can crunch the numbers, it doesn't mean they are right, or that they are not subject to change in unexpected ways. Digg V4 was also a calculated decision, but they greviously miscalculated.
I doubt anyone on the Reddit payroll tells spez the unvarnished truth right now. Musk's employees infamously curate their interactions with him. I read somewhere about one (I want to say working in info-sec for Tesla) who kept an extra monitor with a Matrix style scroll of bullshit because it matched Musk's perception of what a busy person in that field should have up.
It also came out that Musk's businesses have a Musk disaster mitigation team that reverses his bad decisions, and "guide" him. But Twitter didn't have that, so that is why his reign has been so disastrous.
Yeah that's why things are so bad at Twitter. Musk's other companies have that team in place and a culture that can onboard new people in how to work in managing Elon. Twitter didn't have any of that social infrastructure in place, so it wasn't able to withstand his onslaught.
To be fair, there was a viable and easy to use alternative (Reddit). And the community was largely tech savvy.
Today there are more computer users, so the average tech literacy is higher, but the tech literacy of the average computer user is lower. People want slick, easy to use, centralised solutions.
I'm not too concerned about this though. I think realistically the fediverse could achieve a critical mass to keep it going, but won't be too large that it becomes just a bunch of noise (like Reddit).
There are fewer computer users, when you look at it by proportion of the population, since most people who aren't into PC gaming, programming, video editing and similar have switched to just using phones and tablets.
That said, there are still plenty enough people to keep the fediverse going, and frankly I don't think it needs to be nearly as unintuitive to the average user as it is. That's a design problem.
Granted, I've thought the same of Linux for ages. It could be as intuitive and user friendly as windows... Except the people who create it are largely nerds who cater to themselves and fellow nerds, and who even take pride in using a relatively inaccessible system, which results in both the absence of basic features (like no color blind mode! In 2023! C'mon) and forums that are mean and condescending to anyone who asks a question (not everyone is like this, of course - there are people who genuinely try to help others get into Linux - but there are enough other people doing the opposite that it's very unpleasant to deal with as a newbie.)
All of which is to say, whether the fediverse can become mainstream or not depends on whether it can overcome its own nerd culture and prioritize ease of use. I hope it will, but Linux hasn't yet, even after all these years (although it is a little better, arguably, at least). We'll see I guess.
I switched to Linux this year for three reasons: I hit my limit on sales-pitch notifications from Microsoft, I learned about Proton in Steam, and I finally accepted that I don't really use Creative Suite anymore. At this point, it's faster and easier to install Ubuntu than Windows assuming drivers aren't an issue, which you learn at the beginning of the process with live media.
I agree it needs to be more intuitive, however, I would argue that Linux is far more intuitive than it used to be. Still, people didn't switch.
Another driving force is that people don't like change, and people use whatever others use. TikTok bought another company just to get their userbase, it's that important.
The fediverse is fighting an uphill battle. You'd have to provide a platform that is far more intuitive and engaging than the competition, while relying on volunteer labour.
People switch behavior patterns for a reason. It doesn't matter how good or bad either option is, most people won't even be aware that switching to something else is an option until whatever they are currently doing fails to meet their needs in some way.
We just saw this play out with Kbin and Lemmy. It wasn't something inherent about them that suddenly increased the userbase. It was an external event. The Fediverse just happened to exist already, but if Huffman hadn't gone on an ego trip then they probably would have stayed very small things for the forseeable future no matter how good the experience was.
I agree.
However, we are the users that didn't get bothered by Lemmy's the interface, but were bothered by Huffman enough to leave.
Most people won't leave their comfort zone unless the external event is much larger than this. If all the mods suddenly left and reddit just became a spam-filled dumspter fire. That would affect reddit's usability enough that would make Lemmy's UX shortcomings enough for the average person to bear.
I agree, I think Lemmy needs to be more easy to use and accessible if we want it to go mainstream. Us tech nerds tend to grossly overestimate what the average computer user's tech skills are. Here's an interesting study showing that most adults in the world barely know how to use a computer at all: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ Of course, people who are on Reddit already have a certain degree of tech-savviness, but Lemmy still has a more confusing UI than Reddit.
Twitter is responding to official inquiries from authorities with poop emojis. The people running numbers have been fired.
Regular users don't care about the mod drama. The real backlash will start on July 1st when all the apps stop working.
I hope the real thing is more just stop doing their volunteer work. I hope spam and bots run amok, NSFW gets posted everywhere, reports to unanswered and people devolve into screaming matches.
When the "vocal minority" are the ones providing quality content and weeding out the crap (i.e. power users and mods), it will take its toll. That minority is critical for making the whole thing work.
Power users maybe, but the last days have shown how little spine some mods have. The moment Reddit threatens to kick them as a mod they tuck their tail and say "We we're all in until they threatened to take out mod positions. This sub now goes back to normal because there's no world where we get removed as mods."
On the one hand, this does seem to be a case of spinelessness. On the other hand, having mods who are aware of the protest and also in on it is better than having them replaced. All the subs going the way of malicious compliance (ie wellthatsucks turning into a vaccum cleaner subreddit) will need mods who are in on the protest.
I think that is true that most people will not leave reddit. I’m in a subreddit called redditalternatives, and lately not many people are posting in it anymore. It definitely feels like a niche thing, but I think it’s okay. Reddit won’t last forever, and in the meantime, we can be seeing if fediverse is the way forward. This isn’t the first time reddit screwed up and it won’t be the last.
They’re also I think trying to become like tiktok and give lots of forever scrollable content, but I think tiktok/youtube shorts already fill that niche
I imagine that's because they all jumped ship already.
honestly, part of the reason I made a lemmy account at all is because it feels a little like reddit when I first started using it -- pretty niche, and less toxic and low-quality because of it.
reddit in the last few years has become very toxic. The smaller communities are still okay, but on all of the main subs it's just page after page of the same snarky jokes and tired memes.
so while more growth would be nice, I'm fine if most of reddit stays on reddit in the short-term. the fediverse can be its own thing.
The Lemmy and Lemmymigration subs have like 2k users, which also didn't really change over the last few days. If that is anything to go by I don't expect a digg like exodus anytime soon.
Where you on reddit when Digg collapsed? Because it wasn't just a solitary wave. Like human migration around Earth in prehistory, it was multiple waves, each motivated by different reasons.
The important thing is that this wave may have been enough to jumpstart something that can survive on its own. Just need to be ready for the next wave.
That’s been my attitude to this since it started to ramp up.
The top brass at Reddit know that ultimately all of this will die down, and while they might lose some value in the short term, the long term will see them bounce back enough to make some coin on the IPO. Then they’ll sail off into the sunset aboard expensive mega yachts, and never think about Reddit again.
I think it's fine. If Reddits All page is anything to go by, I won't miss it.