this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Technology

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[–] dogma@lemmy.world 183 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Reddit protest is never over because I’m never going back. No matter what gizmodo has to say about it.

[–] PenguinJuice@kbin.social 72 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I bet reddit paid for that article.

[–] TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com 53 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They probably paid for the title but the article isn't actually that peachy, I'd say its assessment is accurate. The Reddit sub protest is over, and technically spez got his way, but the platform has been damaged and may recover or may begin to die out and be replaced.

[–] spider@lemmy.nz 12 points 1 year ago

but the article isn't actually that peachy

i.e., clickbait

[–] idle@158436977.xyz 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep, time will tell if the users that left were the quality users.

[–] GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh they were. Because they are us.

[–] KKriegGG@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago

Stop! You're making me blush 🤭

[–] fraydabson@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 year ago

100% Made the title and everything

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 8 points 1 year ago

I doubt it given the way the article ends- it suggests that while reddit's leadership got it's way, that the incident might still have damaged the platform's reputation and that in the long term reddit might not be successful in it's attempts to be profitable either. I'd imagine a paid article would have a more positive or confidence-inducing message than that.

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 year ago

I mean it's pretty damned true though. Reddit won their stupid fight. They were always going to. Yeah they lost a lot of users, but there still a ton of users left.

[–] Nurgle@lemmy.world 103 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Good for them, but the damage is already done. They seeded this place with a lot of users. Will it be enough? Who knows. But Lemmy is probably a looooot further along than if they didn’t shoot themselves in the foot.

This place obviously needs to continue with good content and active communities, but at moment I don’t really have the urge to open Reddit they way things are.

[–] anachronist@midwest.social 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lemmy is so much more fun than Reddit. It feels like the old school internet before corporations took over.

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[–] GoodNewsEveryone@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I lurked on reddit for years. I was lurking here for a couple weeks now but thought I should make an account to contribute. Reddit has gone down hill and I'll never go back.

[–] KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

I'd say that's good news, everyone!

[–] EnderWi99in@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never would have heard of Kbin and now it's all I use.

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[–] PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 74 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I won, because I found lemmy.

[–] Obi@sopuli.xyz 16 points 1 year ago

Exactly how I feel! I don't care at all what happens on the other site. This whole thing opened my eyes to what it has become, and it's not just the API, that place has become toxic af.

[–] e8d79@feddit.de 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Well it cured me from checking reddit all the time, so I count that as a win.

[–] Nepenthe@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yeahhh. Even if they reverted everything, brought back the apps, and released a scheduled weekly video of Spez crying as different mods whip him with a belt, I am not interested.

Reddit can do whatever. I found an adequate replacement due to the protests, and I took it in direct response to Spez's clockwork PR disasters, so the protests did not fail for me.

Interesting read that should have gone without saying to anyone trying to manage a company, what trust thermoclines are and how to avoid them.

Judging the worth of the protests depends on what your individual goal was. If it was getting reddit admins to back away from a pile of free money, lol, lmao, now you know better.

If it was reddit going down in flames, that's always a slow burn and seems nigh unavoidable for any company as the years stretch on and management grows complacent, but they visibly did damage themselves because you're reading this.

And it was enough damage that several hundreds of thousands don't really mind making their home at a competitor instead. It's only going to get worse, not because they don't already have millions, but because they have a solid reputation for never listening to those millions.

The protest was a death sentence because their proven problem solving method is to ignore the problems as they mount.

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[–] EnderWi99in@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Me too but now I check Kbin all the time.

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[–] Kaavi@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago

I agree it's over, I moved here and don't care about Reddit anymore. :)

[–] JayDee@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As I understand it, reddit has shattered its trust with its userbase and has hemmoraged users because of it. I can hardly view that as a 'win' for them.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The remaining users have proven they'll all willingly look at ads and suffer an inferior UX. It's a win for reddit. There's not much they can do to get rid of this core user group of... What, 90% of their users? That doesn't care if they make things worse.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those were not the people who engaged in discussions though. Most of them are the lurkers.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Still plenty of discussions happening. Does it matter that much of it is bots if people still read it and see the ads?

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[–] fourohfour@lemmy.fmhy.net 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We're in such a shitty timeline right now where these CEO's realize that they have so many mainstream users who just don't actually care about the platform and just want the content, that even with significant controversy if they just ignore it, they can almost certainly weather the storm. Sure, their platform will be worse off, they'll lose users to other platforms, but it's a far cry from the Digg v3 -> Reddit situation when there was a much smaller user base who was more passionate about the site and community and they abandoned the old site as a result of those shitty decisions.

[–] intrepid@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Big platforms like Facebook, Digg, Twitter and Reddit don't fail in a day. Their decline is rather gradual. If you noticed any decline on Reddit's quality after the API lockdown, then that's the beginning of a gradual slide. Just wait for a while before judging the results.

[–] PasswordIsTaco@infosec.pub 13 points 1 year ago

My wife didn’t really pay attention to the reddit controversy and frankly didn’t really care. She is about as casual ad you can get and even She has noticed a very steep decline in the quality of content shared on reddit. She barely uses it anymore. Now this is a person who doesn’t notice when her adblocker is on or not. If she noticed this, i can guarantee she is not alone.

[–] duncesplayed@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago

Digg, ... don’t fail in a day

It depends on precisely what you mean by "fail" and how strictly you take "day", but Digg did lose 50% of its traffic within 30 days (and it never recovered).

[–] XLRV@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 year ago

I won't really call that a win,

Reddit lost the trust of many users, a non insignificant part of contributors and moderators left, the enshittification of the platform is not going to stop but they lost a big part of what made Reddit great. They damaged their image and popularity.

It's like saying Elon won by trashing Twitter. Sure he does what he wants with it but making your platform less desirable sure isn't a win for the platform.

[–] mjhelto@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, those still on Reddit are either lurkers or never gave a shit about the "protests" to begin with. The real measure will be the IPO. With that said, one tech group stroking off another means very little, anymore. Gizmodo can write their fluff piece.

The capitalists are concerned about the plebs using social media to organize and call out lies, doing everything they can to break up or muddy the waters of social media platforms ahead of the 2024 US presidential elections. The goal is to disrupt the platforms and drive away dissenting users who would use these platforms to organize against them and debunk misinformation/lies.

Musk buys Twitter (for far more than it was worth, lol) and drives it into the ground. Zuckerberg starts Threads to give people another "slowly boiling pot" to catch some of those looking for Twitter-alternatives. Spez and company enact changes to the platform, to artificially inflate their ad revenue ahead of their final valuation, which can't happen if users are allowed to skirt their ads with better clients. I didn't talk about Facebook, but it hasn't been relevant since COVID showed us how bat-shit crazy our families and neighbors are. Facebook is basically Nextdoor, but world-wide. We can't forget about the TikTok users. The parent company can't be touched or bought so they're just trying to outright ban the platform here.

The ultra-wealthy are showing us how scared they are of the up-and-coming new demographic of voters, who grew up on social media, know how to use it better than them, in ways they couldn't predict, and don't give a fuck about TV news, printed media, or corporatized websites. The last two elections have slowly been reversing the progress these regressionists have made using the gullibility and entitlement of the Boomer generation, the ignorance of the Gen-X generation, and the brittle corpses of the millennials to push their agenda.

The Arab Spring showed these wealthy fuckers how dangerous the people can be when they are allowed to use social media to organize and they don't want it to happen again at a time when we're finally starting to wise up to the "two-sides-of-the-same-coin" world we live in, and a new voting season has so much on the line for them.

Fuck the wealthy, money's made up, and may ass cancer rid us all of their kind!

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[–] xantoxis@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They didn't win shit. What they did broke the site for everyone. It doesn't stop being broken because they seized control over the subs, something they could have done at any moment.

Reddit has detonated all its credibility, leaving a hole in the side just big enough for most of the site's users to escape as they decide reddit isn't worth it, or find good-enough alternatives. It won't happen all at once, but it'll happen.

[–] Bizarroland@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm sure reddit will limp along, Tumblr did, myspace is still technically running although I don't know anyone that would use it.

Maybe a younger crowd will get attracted to the site, maybe it will live again on fresh blood but I'm just not going to be a part of it. I'm not going to endorse their actions with my presence.

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[–] ram@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] nosteponpython@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

We're too busy over here winning

[–] BanditMcDougal@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Imo, nobody won here and the reddit user lost everything. The Fediverse wasnt ready for the influx of users and lost its chance to "win" for a long time. The sites couldn't support the load and there was a lack of polished mobile apps that felt familiar to people that wanted to browse and shit post.

Without content -- without interaction, a platform whithers; and my experience, so far, has been comment oasises while scrolling through pages of desert.

[–] Mane25@feddit.uk 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It works fine for me. There was little to lose from Reddit at that point anyway because the quality had already gone through the floor. This was the catalyst to make people wake up and leave.

there was a lack of polished mobile apps that felt familiar to people that wanted to browse and shit post.

I'd argue that's a good thing, I'd rather have posts that aren't shit.

Unfortunately that is starting to seep back in here now.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] JickleMithers@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hadn't heard of this, but I feel like this is the case with most big social media companies atm.

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[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago
[–] stefenauris@pawb.social 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But will reddit ever be the same as it was? I highly doubt it

[–] Drinvictus@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah. Twitter survived all the backlash but everyone is looking for a way out. That's why threads gained so much traction on day one. Unfortunately they were missing a lot of key features (like hashtags for example) for people to stick around.

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[–] XPost3000@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Don't care, Infinity is finally for Lemmy, there's nothing I miss anymore so I'm never going back to Reddit

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[–] jinarched@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Huuumm, I don't know. This whole thing gave birth to that garfield picture. Personally, I'd call that a win.

[–] Pringles@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

That garfield picture?

[–] Coeus@coeus.sbs 7 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure what's more disappointing. Spez and Reddit's actions or the people that are still hardcore defending them.

[–] dandroid@dandroid.app 7 points 1 year ago

Ragebait garbage.

[–] ReakDuck@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Well, I only allowed Open Source software on my phone. Because the reddit website is pretty unusable compared to lemmy, I can't use reddit anywhere excrpt PC and just switched to lemmy. But I also use Jerbora Open Source app.

[–] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 6 points 1 year ago

Reddit has managed to end the overt protests, it seems. Whether they "won" will be determined in the future. I suspect that, at the absolute best, it's a pyrrhic victory.

[–] PenguinJuice@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Lmao it was never about taking the site away from spez... it was about moving on. They are judging the score based on irrelevant metrics.

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