Reddit Communities Go Private in Protest Over Policy Adjustments

[R-T-B]

maybe its my bias, but i know personally (on the internet, not in person) 2 that make money/nice perks of it. And i only know 2 subreddit owners.

Well, not saying it never happens of course, just that many make nothing and most are lucky to get above minimum wage at the end of the day vs the effort.

 

[Selaya]

If Reddit's own app wasn't such a hot steaming pile of dog shit, I wouldn't really mind third-party apps like Apollo going dark but it is. Reddit's own app is a hot steaming pile of dog shit that more often than not barely even works. And with the size of Reddit's own mobile app development team, you'd think that they'd be able to put something together that actually works. Meanwhile, you have one guy who's behind Apollo and it's one of the best Reddit apps ever made and has won multiple awards and has been showcased on the front page of Apple's Appstore multiple times. Talk about putting Reddit's own mobile app development team to absolute shame.


The bad part is that with the size of Reddit's development team, you'd think that they'd be able to put together a suite of tools that moderators need to properly moderate their respective communities, but they haven't. Apollo and other apps like it came to be because of a need that wasn't being fulfilled by Reddit themselves.

Again, we're going back to the fact that Reddit's own app is a hot steaming pile of dog shit.

Does anyone remember Alien Blue? Reddit bought it and took what was one of the best Reddit apps at the time and threw it into the woodchipper. What came out is what the Reddit app is today. A hot steaming pile of... well, you get it.

many cooks do spoil the broth ... as by-the-book as it'll get

 

[human_error]

Is a sub going private really all that representative of how the community of even that subreddit feels about this issue? At least my understanding is that the power for a subreddit to go dark lies solely with the head moderator.

A very large number of subreddits ran votes with the community on if they should go private. The votes I saw were all over 98% in support from the communities.

The third party apps that are being killed are not just for moderators - they have millions and millions of daily users. Those users aren't bots either - it is a realistic count on the people that are being forced out (as the reddit app is big, uses a lot of phone resources, harvests a ton of user data, and has the awful modern reddit ui, and people just wont accept it).

If you use the reddit app and the new reddit ui you likely won't see the issue. It is the older user base who have been there for 5-10 years who use the third party apps and the old.reddit ui. Those are the people who are feeling the pain, in addition to all moderators.

Reddit wants to kill third party apps so they can get more data to sell, and serve more ads. That's all. If they genuinely wanted to cover the API usage cost they could charge 200x less than the proposed pricing.

 

[chrcoluk]

do they! Most didn't even went dark, and the ones that did will do so for 2 days.

Subreddits are also a business for the ones managing them, if the people are there, they will be there. If the subreddits are there people will be there. It's the chicken and the egg thing
And there is even the google thing, so many searches end there.

If any do migrate to discord thats a bad thing in my opinion, discords cant be searched from search engines so thats basically a loss of researchable content, and they focused on live discussions rather than archived long lived discussions.

Something like discourse or xenforo would be better, but of course reddit is a prebuilt hosting platform which makes it a lazy to set up a community, hence my discord concern as thats the same lazy approach from the technical side. Even a move to these platforms I assume all old archived content would go *poof* on reddit once subreddit closed, so hopefully all this gets resolved.

 

[R-T-B]

If any do migrate to discord thats a bad thing in my opinion, discords cant be searched from search engines so thats basically a loss of researchable content, and they focused on live discussions rather than archived long lived discussions.

Most of the chatter I've seen has been looking at services like Lemmy/Tildes, not Discord.

 

[sethmatrix7]

And you're ignoring Reddit's POV.

Lol. Reddit's POV is that they refuse to make an app that isn't dogshit yet they want everyone on that app.

What a great POV!

I mean it’s just API access. Mods still have controls on the sub reddits and this doesn’t affect normal users other than.

- random communities shutting down in protest
- people can’t use third party apps

I really tried to be on people’s side but this just isn’t a big deal to me, or the average user.

To me it really just seems like the third party app developers that already steal your data pouting because they have to buy it now.

You could've just said you don't know what you're talking about.

It's API access for 3rd party apps that are superior to the reddit app, and moderation functions that are apparently so much better than those available on reddit locally that it isn't worth moderating without them in some cases.

If you think this doesn't affect the average user... you just don't realize how many people use 3rd party apps because the reddit app is dogshit.

 

[trparky]

The main problem with the Reddit app is that much of the user interface uses custom controls and otherwise doesn't look and feel like what an app should on iOS. Meanwhile, Apollo adheres as much as it can to Apple's own UX design schemes and uses as many native iOS elements as possible. In doing so, it feels like a native iOS app. There's no glitching, hitching, and it scrolls smoothly like a proper iOS app should. It's an example of what a fully optimized iOS app should look and operate like. Reddit's own app is nothing like that, it's... dog shit.

Even Reddit's app on Android is, as some people have said, feels like you stepped back to Android version 2.3 Gingerbread because of just how damned laggy it is.

If Reddit's own app had even half the quality that many third-party apps had, we wouldn't be having this issue at all. But no, Reddit's app is half-ass attempt at shoving out an app.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Its not just the app that's terrible, its also the moderation tools.

A large number of subreddits use the Reddit API as a moderation tool, because its better at searching / listing posts than the official apps. By increasing prices of the Reddit API, they've not only made 3rd party apps unusable, they're also about to make these 3rd party moderation tools unusable and unaffordable.

Reddit was Reddit because, despite all of the crap with the official app and tools, with enough grit and work, you can make your own tools, your own interfaces, your own CSS for your own Subreddit. All of that extra effort is being thrown away with these changes, and now we're all going to be stuck with the awful experience that is vanilla Reddit.

 

[chrcoluk]

Most of the chatter I've seen has been looking at services like Lemmy/Tildes, not Discord.

Not heard of either.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Most of the chatter I've seen has been looking at services like Lemmy/Tildes, not Discord.

A lot of communities are "emergency escaping" to Discord as a temporary measure. Everyone knows that a chat / IRC-lookalike clone can never replace Reddit, but it should be a good temporary measure while the world figures out the next step forward.

The chatter I've heard most is Lemmy personally. This is the first time I've heard of Tildes.

 

[R-T-B]

The chatter I've heard most is Lemmy personally. This is the first time I've heard of Tildes.

Lemmy is by far the front runner.

 

[chrcoluk]

I actually think its in some way irresponsible to just close up communities like that, at worst as a moderator I would be restricting posts but not cutting of the archives to people, and of course if they move those archives will probably be lost. I do think its irresponsible community management. But of course many subreddits only care about new content driving up their rankings.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Lemmy is by far the front runner.

I gave Tildes a look: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes

Honestly, this seems more sustainable than most of the other front-runners. I'm kind of bearish on ActivityPub in general. The website needs an identity and a leader. Tildes is approaching this with the correct slant, describing the site's philosophy and its donation model first and foremost.

There's no reason for these social media sites to grow to the point of exhaustion. I think most of us are just looking for a community where we can talk and share news on a variety of topics.

 

[Athena]

I actually think its in some way irresponsible to just close up communities like that, at worst as a moderator I would be restricting posts but not cutting of the archives to people, and of course if they move those archives will probably be lost. I do think its irresponsible community management. But of course many subreddits only care about new content driving up their rankings.

True, if the mods don't want to mod, then let someone else do it, and let people see what a difference there is, since they were mostly all volunteers

Of course, they won't do that unless they are forced to step down, and rather tell people how bad it will be, the whole "trust us!" thing

The sub-reddits participating in this are basically censoring all content, and in the end, I imagine that new sub-reddits will pop up replacing those that stay "closed"

 

[R-T-B]

I gave Tildes a look: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes

Honestly, this seems more sustainable than most of the other front-runners. I'm kind of bearish on ActivityPub in general. The website needs an identity and a leader. Tildes is approaching this with the correct slant, describing the site's philosophy and its donation model first and foremost.

There's no reason for these social media sites to grow to the point of exhaustion. I think most of us are just looking for a community where we can talk and share news on a variety of topics.

It's why I mentioned it honestly. It's not the front-runner by any means but it seems like a good one to look at.

Of course, they won't do that unless they are forced to step down, and rather tell people how bad it will be, the whole "trust us!" thing

Most communities were polled. It wasn't a "trust us" scenario.

 

[arandomguy]

A very large number of subreddits ran votes with the community on if they should go private. The votes I saw were all over 98% in support from the communities.

The third party apps that are being killed are not just for moderators - they have millions and millions of daily users. Those users aren't bots either - it is a realistic count on the people that are being forced out (as the reddit app is big, uses a lot of phone resources, harvests a ton of user data, and has the awful modern reddit ui, and people just wont accept it).

If you use the reddit app and the new reddit ui you likely won't see the issue. It is the older user base who have been there for 5-10 years who use the third party apps and the old.reddit ui. Those are the people who are feeling the pain, in addition to all moderators.

Reddit wants to kill third party apps so they can get more data to sell, and serve more ads. That's all. If they genuinely wanted to cover the API usage cost they could charge 200x less than the proposed pricing.

Proper votes or just a fly by poll? One subreddit I watched for example was at least honest in that they did run poll 3 days in advance but admitted the response rate was less than 0.1% relative to the number of subscribers and that the heaviest content contributors never even voted. Let's be honest here if you used that metric for any real referendum of substance it would laughed at in terms of representation. Then there is the issue that the people running the vote were inherently biased and being the mods could control the discourse. With some of the subreddits that have now opened up the response from the user base from what I've seen has been less supportive (and with a higher engagement rate).

I use the old.reddit ui without any third party apps fine. My guess is the vast majority of users do not use third party apps, were even aware of the, much less care. While there might be high nominal amount of users who do use third party apps they are almost certainly minority relative to the overall userbase. More users are going to be inconvenienced by the minority pushing their protest than Reddit's actions.

If profiting is the issue than would you agree if Reddit carves out better terms if not exceptions for non profit open source third party apps that would be a fine compromise? After all if profiting is a negative that should apply to all parties, if not even more so third parties.

 

[dragontamer5788]

It's why I mentioned it honestly. It's not the front-runner by any means but it seems like a good one to look at.

Tildes has the benefit of being a tightly run community.

Beehaw (Lemmy Instance) is trying to be somewhere in between Tildes and a full Lemmy. They just defederated from Lemmy.world, cutting off access to one of the biggest servers so that they have more control over the users of their liking.

Lemmy.world seems to be close to Reddit in terms of overall philosophy so far, and might be the best starting place for anyone trying to experiment with this new system.

Lemmy.ml is the official Lemmy for... lemmy development. Probably a bad idea to register there because programmers usually don't want to be full time admins or moderators.

-------------

There's a bunch of boutique servers in the Fediverse. Apparently there's a server just for leftist views from the MidWest, for example. So I guess you can run a server with whatever recruitment rules you want.

 

[R-T-B]

Proper votes or just a fly by poll?

I have no idea honestly.

 

[Assimilator]

Proper votes or just a fly by poll? One subreddit I watched for example was at least honest in that they did run poll 3 days in advance but admitted the response rate was less than 0.1% relative to the number of subscribers and that the heaviest content contributors never even voted. Let's be honest here if you used that metric for any real referendum of substance it would laughed at in terms of representation.

If you don't vote, you don't get to complain about the result of said vote.