So I’ve seen a few posts regarding news outlets calling the protests a failure, and I don’t really think that’s the case. The protests have clearly made an impact, especially if the Reddit CEO is willing to oust MODS to reopen subreddits. I truly believe that something has been jump started here on Lemmy, Kbin, and all of the fediverse. What happened on Reddit has simply pushed those already on the fence, or looking for other social media platforms to jump ship. I truly believe the impact is greater than what the media and Reddit in general want us to believe. Something has started here on the fediverse that simply cannot be stopped, all we can do is inform others and show why it’s the future of aggregated news boards and social media.
I think it was a success no matter how mainstream news outlets or Reddit want to spin it.
The mods of subreddits very cleverly pointed out that the direction Reddit is heading in stinks and even all the masses who don’t care about it still got the message though being inconvenienced by not having access to their favorite echo chamber for a few days. Just look at all the comments on “should we open up” posts from pissed off mouth breathers basically demanding they return things to normal.
At the end of the day, of cause Reddit was going to force mods to open up their subs or remove them. The mods never really had any power in the situation anyway and the precedent of Reddit just taking over subs was already well established. If Lemmy or Kbin was another 5+ years in development with a couple of much larger communities already well established then the exodus might have approached Digg levels again, but the lack of easy mainstream alternatives means that Reddit was always going to get its way eventually.
It didn’t fail, r/all is a shit show right now. Or, it’s a porn show. Porn is all over r/all, r/popular is getting hit by it. F-u/spez made front page porn popular again. A lot of the porn pages have switched to other things; only fans being only fans, literally. Etc. you get the idea. I cannot imagine the board is happy.
It obviously had an impact because reddit wouldn’t have taken such draconian action in response. Reddit admins have been forced to show their ass to the public, and many people who previously had positive or neutral opinions of Steve Huffman & co. have now seen what a manipulative, dishonest group they are. They are looking to harvest more user data at a point when no reasonable person would entrust them with this data. They are looking to expand advertising at a point when a significant number of users have either jumped ship or are remaining behind only to actively sabotage the site. More and more people have come to understand that migrating to the fediverse is no big hurdle.
Of course reddit will pay certain outlets to report that the protest has been a failure, but to me it looks like it has been a great success. We knew reddit wouldn’t reverse its decision, and we knew it wouldn’t just disappear (Digg is still around ffs), but a lot of people have seen that … reddit the web site never really meant that much to us.
I’m a normal user and just want a place to browse comments and read comments I don’t care if it’s Reddit or something else.
Reddit admins have been forced to show their ass to the public, and many people who previously had positive or neutral opinions of Steve Huffman & co. have now seen what a manipulative, dishonest group they are
There’s a long tail here that will get spez in the ass later, and that’s been the Verge, NYT, Forbes, and so many mainstream outlets that were previous incurious about spez having to talk to him and report on his AMA. He could very quickly end up characterized as a Musk-like buffoon if that’s how people who need to make their money from ink start to see him, especially if he doesn’t manage to find a new personality before he opens his mouth again. Like the average Redditor, spez doesn’t think he’s transparent when he’s being smug or snarky, and that is particularly visible to journalists who have degrees in snark.
Turning mods and power users off Reddit, even casual users who are getting tired of the disarray in their subscribed subreddits are unsubscribing - I definitely think it’s having an impact.
I have always appreciated the work of the moderators because I prefer lively content without nastiness. A busy, well moderated forum can be a delight. When the mods in my favorite subreddits told us how hard their jobs would become, I knew what I had to do. I’m happy to find such a worthwhile (if yet young) place to land. By the end of the month I will have put Reddit behind me. They can succeed or fail without me. I suspect it will be somewhere in between. Actually, what I think is that it will become much nastier in many subreddits, and overall less worthwhile. I think individual subreddit rules will give way to mere reddit rules, where for instance a woman who posts pics in a sewing subreddit of herself in the dress she made may find herself subjected to sexual comments which would previously be subject to moderation.
IMHO, it’s still a success. Reddit’s behavior has provided clear proof of the need for an alternative. Plenty have taken notice. The winds of change are blowing…and it is likely not in Reddit’s favor in the long term.
I would like to point out that the Digg migration didn’t happen overnight. It happened over the course of weeks and months, even though ten years later it feels like it happened overnight. There were plenty of people saying “fuck off, Digg is fine” after v4 launched.
Whether or not it’s was a failure depends on what you expected from it. Reddit was not going to change its mind. The investors demand more money and will continue to squeeze Reddit for ever dime the can. It wasn’t going to die overnight either.
What did happen is a non-trivial amount of users left and found the Fediverse. Apps are currently being developed to make it more accessible to your average user. The Fediverse will no longer be some obscure thing for a niche group. I think it was a huge success and will have long term repercussions for Reddit.
Oh, I think it’s hurt Reddit more than it seems on the surface. Of course they will say “it’s not working” but reading between the lines of this Engadget article [1], the number of ad impressions would be down rather significantly. Note the difference between time spent on site (seeing ads) and “visits” – many of which were likely people checking on the site rather than participating in the site. I think this is taking a toll, and am hopeful this situation will serve as an example of poor leadership for the next generation (Digg being a previous example).
Reddit was not going to change its mind.
Honestly, I thought they might. Not to cancel the API fees entirely like some wanted, but to reach a compromise with developers that would increase Reddit’s revenue and let the apps stay in business.
But it’s become clear since then that killing the third party apps isn’t an accident or side effect, but the explicit intention of the API changes. Now I can’t see Reddit compromising as long as spez is in charge.
I still have a dim hope it could happen. The protests aren’t over and Reddit is feeling it.
I still lurk. I expected the slow decline and change in character that others here have predicted.
What I have seen in the last 8 days floored me. Continues to floor me. Reddit is already a zombie platform. Front page is week-old posts. Bot generated reposts from 2 weeks ago.
And astroturf posts trying to spin the whole thing as a “what was that blip?” Or “glad those whiners are gone”It happened so much faster than I expected.
Personally, I’d never even heard of Lemmy, Kbin etc until recent events and thought it was limited to only Mastodon which never really interested me.
The amount of software development recent events have inspired around the Fediverse seems to be just the kick it needed to have a bright future too.
The news, despite our perception, has largely never been about speaking truth to the injustices around us. Both historically and now, its used largely as a veiled mouthpiece of the powerful around us who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The examples that we think of when groundbreaking journalism comes to mind are almost always the exception and often end poorly for the brave who bring them to light.
Over the past 5 years this has become even more salient to me. I’ve been to protests and the coverage will produce an entirely different picture that gets presented to those not in attendance. There were protests in my city during the party primary debates and the footage was edited to make crowds look smaller and in the case of our DSA chapter, they cut to a different camera anytime they were about to be in frame.
Trying not be be tin foil hatty there, but was at the marches and then watched all the different feeds. Calling something so obviously curated “news” feels like the information dystopia has been here much longer than we give it credit.
Reddit admins made it perfectly clear they’re not interested in feedback or compromises, they’ve quadrupled down on that point.
The way they handled this situation clearly shows their contempt for their user base, they want you to create as much content as possible and farm engagement so it looks good for their IPO.
The best thing people can do is either quit entirely and migrate to sites like this one or at the very minimum only use Reddit for lurking, don’t post, don’t upvote / downvote, simply cost them resources as that’s how they see their user base, a bunch of parasites
Maybe it’s the news outlets I frequent, but I haven’t read anything describing the protests as a failure. Anyone want to provide a source or two?
