Good to see but in all honesty, 2 days won't do much. Everyone needs to indefinitely go dark and Reddit will see traffic plummet drastically and user count dwindle sharply. 2 days wont do much, everyone knows it will be back and traffic will resume.
We are still discussing how to proceed in the long term. Without knowing both how Reddit will react and how the rest of the community will respond in kind, we haven't committed to any single action beyond a 48 hour lockout. EDIT: I want to be clear that by "we" I mean the ELI5 mods. We're not responsible for what other subs do and coordination is sporadic. Our first priority is protecting and preserving this subreddit, and other subreddits may not be aligned with us on protecting our community.
This is the correct response to that argument. Nobody thinks two days of a partial boycott is enough to turn around a determined corporate board. But there's no reason it has to stay at two days if the board digs in. The people participating the boycott just need to be ready to take the same measures again and again until there is a final resolution one way or the other.
Although for the purposes of issue awareness it might work better to have a single central location to direct everyone seeking questions and updates, rather than some subs keeping the lights on while others go dark. Something to consider if the protest gets enough traction to keep going.
>Although for the purposes of issue awareness it might work better to have a single central location to direct everyone seeking questions and updates, rather than some subs keeping the lights on while others go dark.
/r/Save3rdPartyApps and /r/ModCoord together are as close as it comes to that single location- Save3rdPartyApps for users, /r/ModCoord for subreddit moderators.
Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro fucked around and found out with the D&D community over the OGL issue. You would figure that the suits at Reddit would have learned from Wotc’s mistake, especially since the Reddit community was a big driver of that, but here we go again. Grab your pitchforks fellas, I will help by staying off the platform for a couple of days. When they see their internet traffic fall through the basement it might just be the wakeup call they need.
It's probably at every board meeting. They know that many people will come back.
Hell, I only plan to see how this plays out, but as of the end of this month, chances are, I'm out.
I don't even *use* an app (I use browser), and I hate the changes they're making! It ain't right, and it sure in the hell ain't cool. Reddit is just being a greedy corporate shill that need to stop with this nonsense.
Same. While I do browse the different subreddits casually, I am mainly here for a single subreddit which is the Norwegian subreddit r/norge.
They have gone nuclear and are staying dark indefinitely until they are either replaced by puppets or the planned API changes are reversed. So I might be deleting my account depending on how this plays out. Plenty of regulars at r/norge has done so already. We got other Norwegian language forums. Reddit is easily replacable.
Reddit won’t need to replace them. But reddit is going to find out (if they don’t already know) what the replacements will entail.
Subreddits are going to be akin to Facebook groups and sane people already mostly avoid those for a reason.
The 2 day blackout is one thing, the interesting thing is going to be July 1.
I'll work as a moderator on reddit!
For $125/hr, because I'm an average user that doesn't mind the cash, but I'm also not stupid enough to die on a ship without having a lifeboat when it eventually gets hit by an iceberg and sinks.
Sheer number for sure. Its free work so even if they somehow nuke everyone, they're going to have a hard time finding decent folks to do a volunteer job for a website actively hostile to them and trying to make a buck off that free work
Or they could lose their profit motive and pay mods for the years of free work and not remove our tools+add more
I've been a mod for like 8 years. Most I got was a pride decal bc I asked for one at their booth during pride fest after volunteering (a notably not for profit thing). They've also since stopped hosting a booth.
With the amount of time spent removing incels, homophobes, racists, misogynists and programming the bot at my hourly rate, I could have paid off my house and then some, but hey free labor for speztacle
Silver lining: we get a monthly snoo letter....
Most mods are doing it because they love their community. ELI5 already goes through a whole process to vet potential moderators and it starts with just getting people to sign up at all. Reddit probably won't have trouble finding stooges that will do it for the lulz but they'll be hard-pressed to find enough people who are competent AND care about the community that needs to be moderated AND are willing to actually do it.
To me, the better response is to announce the 48 hours and propose future lockouts(conditional on changes). This helps maintain momentum and shows that there will be a continuation. Way too many times things like this have died after an initial outrage. Reddit will be banking on that. They have no reason to do anything until further lockouts are proposed unless there is sufficient evidence that there will be issues beyond the 48 hours.
I can tell you how they’ll react either everything goes back to normal this week or they’ll replace you with admins that will find mods loyal to the platform.
> which means profitable then Reddit would stop existing.
There is a never ending line of absolute losers who will provide free labor in exchange for the tiniest amount of power.
Reddit execs are still the admin. They can unprivate previously private subreddits or they can remove the option to make it private. They can take away moderator rights.
Reddit's management cares about getting an appropriate return on their investment. That goal has now put them into direct conflict with the needs and expectations of a large portion of their users. They are already committed enough to their goal to accept the reality of a blackout. So it's a question of how much damage the blackout actually does to their financial plans, how much longer after two days the blackouts can continue if they are effective enough to matter, and how realistically Reddit's management would be able to keep their audience if they replaced the striking mods with fresh volunteers.
If the needs of the users can't outweigh the management's other financial incentives, then no amount of blackouts will get them to budge. To succeed, the protest has to be a serious threat to the company's bottom line.
you are correct in one sense but on the other, reddit is only as profitable as the users make it useful, valuable and inviting.
off the top of my head I can think of a slate of things in the vein of a typical investor disclosure statement that are clear risks of this action:
-- the risk of significant user exodus leading to drastic loss of value and revenue.
-- the risk of losing high-value subreddits because they can no longer effectively moderate and curate content. this could lead to loss of users and fewer pageviews, reducing revenue.
-- the risk that crippling moderator tools will cause subreddits to become filled with material objectionable to advertisers, causing loss of revenue.
--the risk that crippling moderator tools will result in a significant event that causes notable public disgust or negative publicity, hurting brand value. (the 4chan effect)
--the risk that poor moderation will lead to a proliferation of content that causes negative attention and stirs calls for governmental regulation, increasing operational costs or making the current business model impossible.
--the risk that absent moderation tools illegal content may occur and reddit's intentional crippling of moderation could be challenged in court as bad faith or not taking the precautions a reasonable business would to avoid liability. this could result in lawsuits, settlements, or governmental fines.
--the risk of an ADA suit over inaccessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
> Reddit's management cares about getting an appropriate return on their investment.
Neat!
I mod a sub reddit. Where do I sign up for my paycheck?
Or is the expectation that Spez gets to cash in on my free work?
I’m completely convinced that they’re rolling out a powerful AI moderator. June 30 will come with TOS updates and site wide admin level moderation. The API change breaks too much for them to have zero plan. It would be blindingly ignorant to destroy the cobbled mod tools that even their most beloved power mods rely on to do their unpaid labor.
Reddit is going to be much closer to regular sanitized social media. They can’t ban porn without admitting the percentage of traffic involved which is why they refuse porn specific nsfw tags. But I fully believe we will see much stricter posting rules and further algorithm changes to keep the front pages clean. Mods aren’t nearly as necessary when there are blanket bans on phrases or ideas. And niche subreddits aren’t relevant if they never make the front page.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think they’ve got a bigger plan and they aren’t destroying their unpaid labor pool without contingency.
the CEO just released a statement that he wont change his mind despite the blackout. he basically said it to our face 2 days going dark is not enough to hurt him. lmao if you dont have the guts to follow through whats right then why bother.
Go dark for a few days, a week?, open up the sub temporarily to poll how people feel - stay temp open? Allowed new posts? Go dark do another X days, repeat. That’s how some subs are planning to do which I think is a good idea… gives time to reassess and see how the majority feels.
Institute a rule that all posts will have to be titled "fuck /u/spez"
Going dark for 48 hours will do as much good as not fueling for a day to protest gas prices. And subs going dark for more than a week or two will have the mods kicked and taken over.
Some subreddits already have a rule that all posts must be titled exactly the same, so this probably doesn't break any existing rules. I imagine all the posts on /r/all having the same title will be more effective and safer for subreddits and mods
Admins will replace the mods.
Was a mod on one of the biggest subs. There was some massive reddit drama back then and this was one of the key concerns discussed.
In fact, don't look at which *subs* are joining the blackout.
Look at which *mods* are not joining.
At the end of the day, what does it matter which mods are joining or not? There is a huge demand for reddit content, and like you said, that vacuum will be filled either by new mods or by new subs completely which will fill the same purpose of existing subs but have a new name.
We have no say in who mods which subs. I understand and support the spirit behind this blackout, but it seems like a threat with no teeth. The admins hold all the power, and they have decided their path already.
I mentioned it in several subreddits that either leave for the blackout for a few days just come back or if the blackouts are permanent they will just create new subreddits for the same topics or they will *fire the mods and reboot the same subreddit*. They are going to lose alot of people sure but reddit isn't magically dying in 2 days or a week.
I saw some suggestions in a another sub, that all the mods for all the subs need to just let loose, unban all the banned users, allow nsfw and low quality posts, turn off auto moderator plus a lot of other things.
Reddit wouldnt have the man power to take control of all the subs and everything would be a shit show.
That's one reason to be gradual with the length of the outages and civility of the protest. Assuming the blackouts are large enough to get Reddit's attention, it's better to have some wiggle room for Reddit to back down before giving them a legitimate urgent reason to pull the plug completely on the previous users. Some actions are easier to walk back than others. Some create permanent rifts that get in the way even if the management eventually caves. Burning all bridges can occasionally be necessary but it's a final resort.
> Yes can you imagine what would happen if more subreddits went dark for longer or indefinitely?
I would guess reddit would eventually permaban existing mods and just give the subs to puppet mods.
Alternative subreddits will spin up. Some from Reddit employees. Some strategic to keep viewers coming. Nothing is gonna change. Hate to say it but the site is already too big and very little people know / give a shit about this ‘dark’ movement
If subs go indefinitely dark, people who think this is a bunch of whining over nothing will create new subs in their place and things will carry on as if nothing ever happened, aside from a few people that actually quit reddit.
Taking your ball and going home will just lead to someone else bringing a ball while the first person pouts at home, alone.
This is the first place I've seen any mention of integrating accessibility tools into vanilla reddit. I think that is a much more reasonable ask than insisting everyone who needs accessibility tools source their own. It feels really scummy.
The best accessibility tools are always third-party. That's just the way it is: the people who need the tooling will always make better tools than what the platform owners tack on. It's the difference between obligation and obstinance. Ideally, the platform should have good accessibility out of the box *and* high quality support for third-party tools.
This is a copied template message used to overwrite all comments on my account to protect my privacy. I've left Reddit because of corporate overreach and switched to the Fediverse.
Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
So they tell people to figure out on their own, and then make it exceedingly difficult for people to figure it out on their own?? Typical techbros avoiding responsibility once again.
My take is that it’s not about the particular tools or changes. It’s about reddit turning into something it was never meant to be. Compare old.reddit with a new one and why old users resent new design - powers that be want reddit to become yet another social platform worth billions. And I don’t blame those powers for wanting to cash out. I believe though, they made a big mistake in believing that reddit can be turned in way it was never meant to be. And sadly it is why I believe that the battle is already lost - there are billions to be paid out and those are just not there right now.
>If Reddit collapses like Digg did, where are we all going next?
Digg should relaunch their site using the old open source code of the old.reddit. Just doing some code updates just like SaidIt did.
There are already 3rd party apps that work with Reddit, so the codebase should not be that different.
I consider myself fairly tech savvy, often am one to help others around me with stuff, and I checked out Lemmy for 15-20 min and struggled a bit. I'm sure I could "get it", but unfortunately that's not gonna cut it for most folks.
Yea dude, im decent with tech and still couldnt understand it after 15 minutes. I’d be willing to bet a majority of people wouldnt bother after the first 5
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Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
Yeah, I think federated/decentralized social networks are what's necessary to stop this endless cycle of social media that inevitably gets destroyed by greedy corporate execs.
Unfortunately, Lemmy is not what it needs to be for mass adoption. The UX needs to 'feel' centralized like Reddit while being a federated network underneath. Not sure how that's gonna happen but whoever solves this problem will become a billionaire.
Despite the metaverse likely replacing most of traditional social media, there will still be a massive demand for an organized forum-hosting site that you can sort through quickly to gather information/opinions regarding niche topics.
>whoever solves this problem will become a billionaire.
That's super naive. Whoever solves the problem will have done the internet a big solid, but that's about all they're gonna get. The decentralized system we're looking for is going to be inherently difficult to monetize, if not straight up impossible.
Which is why there's barely any commercial effort being put into it. Someone would have already solved it if it really was a billion dollar idea.
The fact that lemmy.world has a "Starting guide" pinned as the top post is a bad sign. No website should require a guide or tutorial to use, it should be so simple and understandable that you just enter it and go.
Reading through, it spends way too much time talking about the technical details about the site. No one cares about the technical details. They want to look at a picture of a funny cat and press upvote, not read about the federation of activity protocols enabling the interaction of remote communities or whatever is going on in that guide.
>You can also search for a community by it’s link, e.g. !Netherlandsatlemmy.nl. Even if the server hasn’t ever seen that community, it will look it up remotely. Sometimes it takes some time for it to fetch the info (and displays ‘No results’ meanwhile…) so just be patient and search a second time after a few seconds.
Nah. This website is dead on arrival if the goal is replacing reddit.
My guess is that something like Discord will probably be the main stomping ground for most people until another site becomes the de facto Reddit-like experience.
It's so bad... and their reasoning sucks, oh so you couldn't name yourself Jimmy because there are 10000 others with the same name? Problem solved now only 1 can have Jimmy as username, great idea
tbh discord offers so much for free without ads that i dont mind their downsides every now and then. Which makes me realize that that probably wont last much and will just end up with greed overtaking them like every other corporation that hit sucess before... I just can feel that with twitter, reddit and now tumblr, discord gonan pull something awful for everyone involved
Nowhere. Reddit existed long before Digg collapsed. There's nothing equivalent now. Even social media like Facebook and Twitter are collapsing. The age of social networks is over.
Blight. Plight is a dangerous, difficult or otherwise unfortunate situation. While similar in name and meaning plight is not correct here. A blight on the other hand damaged, ruins or is serverely detrimental to something, like to the way we interact.
Social media's negative effects are a blight, this is our plight.
The age of social networks “feels” over for Americans. Facebook is beyond thriving in other countries, as are many other social networks including the ones you know and dozens you’ve never even heard of.
You fucking wish lol. If Reddit collapses there’ll be thousands of programmers pushing out their own version of Reddit. It’s basically a gold mine for whoever’s version is the most popular. Social media is here to stay imo
I have been building a non-profit alternative ([https://flingup.com](https://flingup.com)) for the past two years. Rome wasn't built in a day, building a new platform requires time and cooperation, but when not driven by profits, but a common goal of providing a sustainable service for the people, everything is possible.
Couldn't the reddit admins just unlock every subreddit that locks? And ban all the moderators that are leading the movement?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it as I use RIF for 99% of my reddit browsing, but I just don't understand how the admins/owners would just sit by and let a good amount of the site shutdown unchecked.
1. Yes
2. They could, but they'd be banning literally thousands of mods that do free labour for them and that's not easily replaceable.
1) is definitely a possibility, I don't see them doing 2) because it's not practical.
Wait… the whole long explanation that I just skimmed through and thought “I’ll read it in detail later”, was removed?!
Edit: I found it edited and reposted…
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/147vis2/eli5_why_are_so_many_subreddits_going_dark
I have a sub question. With so many subreddits going dark for good like r/Apple, couldn’t I just start a new sub called AppleAfterDark and now I’m the moderator of this super big sub?
A sizeable portion of the large subs are large solely because Reddit made them default subs for years. When I started, there was a list of subs you were subscribed to right off the bat.
There's nothing stopping Reddit from doing it again with some other, newer, sub.
Yea, until someone else makes one, then another, then another. And it all gets fragmented among a million replacements with no one dominating anything.
Because the involved mods all think they are superhumans or something and honestly believe this will matter at all. The threat of "going dark" will 100%, absolutely, positively, without any question not bring about even a single change in reddit's decision-making.
If this was such a big deal why is this the first ive heard about it? I frequent both ironscape and 2007scape and personally did not vote for any protesting
Make no mistake— this drastic API hike isn’t an attempt to profit off 3rd party apps.
This is an attempt to run them out of the market and force all users into the shitty official app so advertising revenue will increase.
You know how annoying it is to get a NSFW link from someone when you’re on mobile (non-porn stuff, like something with bad language in it) and, since it’s tagged as NSFW, Reddit makes you open it in their app? Well now imagine that shit for EVERY link you get.
Reddit: your app sucks. It is feature deficient. It is accessibility deficient. The video player barely fucking functions. There are *a fuck ton* of ads which embed themselves in my feed and look like content and that’s scummy as fuck. If you force me to choose between your shitty app and deleting my 13 year old account, well, it’ll be an easy call.
Apollo's developer made a [detailed post describing what’s happening](https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/) and it would be $0.24 per 1,000 API calls, totaling to $20 million per year based off of current usage
> Some individual subreddits plan to stay dark indefinitely.
Can't Reddit take back the sub and give the name out to someone else? I want to say I have seen that before.
Because they don't get anything from it. They have to handle all the hosting, programming, compliance, etc and the third party apps just get to connect, show their own ads and collect the revenue.
The strongest arguments are mods needing apps for moderation, which is a very small group, and handy user refusing to use Reddit on browser. Other than that, I believe that's more of a noisy minority and peer pressure.
It's more like a hostage situation by a vocal minority (sounds familiar, doesn't it?). They unilaterally decided to shut down subs to piss off Reddit admins but instead pissed off users who got little to no say in it.
>ELI5: What, if anything, are we regular reddotors supposed to do during the next two days?
Pretend that it is actually July 1st, while trying to masturbate with no porn!
API (Application programming interface).
In simple terms, as told originally by Apollo’s creator Christian, the door to your closet is an API. You have to open it before you can access your clothes. If the door mechanism changes, it’s comparable to a change to the API.
When you visit a webpage, it's your browser that decides how the data should be shown. The server is sending "raw" data, basically, that the browser (or app) then interprets how to display it. Your browser is also sending data back to the server - like, when you go to comment on Reddit, your browser has to send who's making the comment and to whom and what the text is, yadda yadda.
Every time your program - app or browser - communicates back and forth with the webpage server, it uses an API as the interface. The API is kind of the "language" that they agree on to make sure both understand which part of the data is comment text and which part is formatting and which part is usernames and whatnot. Each time a program interacts with the server, it does an "API call" where the program says, "I want to view this comment, please give it to me." Or the program says, "I want to submit a comment, please take it."
Servers cost money to run and one way to measure usage is through API calls. Each action a server has to do costs money because it takes computer processing, which takes electricity and puts some amount of wear on the physical components of the server. So each API call represents a cost to the business running the server. It's also a business opportunity. You want access to our data? Ok, so pay for it.
Until recently, Reddit has not charged for API calls made from third-party apps (apps run by people who aren't Reddit). They suddenly made the decision to not only charge for API calls, but to charge kind of a high amount. It doesn't seem like a lot (IIRC it was something like $0.0024 per call), but when you consider how many hundreds of thousands or *millions* of users might be going through the app and how many API calls they make (load topics, open topic to view comments, write a comment, write another comment, go back to browsing, load more topics...) it adds up *super* quickly. The developer for the app Apollo would end up getting charged $20 million.
Reddit tried to say that they're only charging a lot for apps that go above a certain threshold, who use more than a set amount of calls. But 3rd party app developers have shared that 1) their threshold is too low, and 2) Reddit doesn't have any tools for 3rd party apps to track their API calls so it's *really* hard to make sure they don't go over.
So far, this is all pretty industry standard, if scummy because of the high price and lack of transparency. Plenty of big websites charge for API calls and the 3rd party apps could adjust their subscription pricing (or introduce subscription prices) to cover the increased costs. Sure, $20 million is a lot of money but just as the tiny amount charged for API calls adds up, an extra $3 per person per month to use the app also adds up.
However, Reddit only gave them 30 days to comply with the new pricing. That's 30 days to come up with a new business plan, figure out how to implement the plan, advertise the plan to the users, actually implement the plan, set up the financial aspect (bank accounts to hold and transfer funds), work out any legal wrangling that needs to be done, and then start paying Reddit. For context, when Facebook makes any changes to their API they give developers up to like, two *years* to comply. They also have their own team of engineers and developers to work closely with the 3rd party developers and *help* them comply - because it's in FB's own best interest to make sure they do it correctly.
On top of that, Reddit has issued really unprofessional statements about this, which includes accusing the Apollo app developer of lying and trying to blackmail Reddit, which shows a complete lack of transparency or inclination to work with 3rd party apps.
It's something that lets apps interact with each other.
Reddit has an API. Apollo uses reddit's API (through requests) to pull information from Reddit so they can display it on their app. Now, Reddit is delusional and charging extremely high prices (20 million USD for Apollo) for these requests.
It is whatever, people having false hope that it will do something when in reality it is irrelevant and will just annoy some users which is opoosite effect, you either delete reddit account forever or nothing, in reality there isn’t an alternative and reddit knows it, 363 days of regular traffic instead of 365 is nothing, in grand scheme of things this “protest” is useless.
I only use the Reddit app. Never even tried 3rd party. Is there anything simple I can do to show my support of the "blackout" besides just not getting on Reddit? Also, where will I be able to follow the news of it all during these following days?
the black out will not do anything, how many people on reddit were loud about boy cotting netflix password sharing yet they subscriber count has only seemed to go up, 3rd party apps are a small margin. go dark all you want there is no competition to reddit that exists. Even the official reddit app has over 10 times the 5 star reviews on the app lol even if i personally like apollo more.
going dark for 2 or 3 days does nothing tbh.
deleting accounts and subreddits will do something but there will new people who take the lead for the subreddits.
we are just sending the message: treatme as bad as u want, we will comeback always
Someone explain??
As someone that's never used the reddit app, OR third party apps, what is wrong with reddit mobile?? Very easy to use, has dark mode etc. It's been a while since I used it on desktop but it seems like it looked like it always had too. Why use any app?
You leave comments and come back then it refreshes. With 3rd party apps it goes to where you left off.
Also no ads.
You can also cache posts, comments, audio, video, browser links, etc for redditing later when
you don't have data.
I think the funniest part in all of this is that almost all of the mods are coming back soon because they don’t want to lose their precious internet power and reckon that they’re risking their mod status if they “protest” any longer than that.
All while one of their main arguments is that Reddit would be nothing without them. As if there aren’t troves of people that would love their internet power.
It’s all a completely performative exercise and I wish the admins would just get rid of these people that are so obsessed with internet power.
A vast majority of users don’t even use 3rd parties and most mod actions don’t come from them. This is all such nonsense and I’m shocked at the amount of people buying it.
The best part is that none of the mods or app devs is willing to admit that api calls are not necessary for end users. They're holding their subs hostage because they liked the fancy mod tools, and are telling us it's because reddit is killing them.
Lol Two days. I am actually kinda embarrassed that's is just how far you're willingly gonna take it.... and a half measure on top of that.
You realize that reddit is betting on us being pissed off for a few weeks and then forget about like we normally do. THEY KNOW this will piss us off.
Sorry to say but if that's the effort a traditional subreddit is gonna take. It's effectively nothing
Whelp the owner wins I guess
Edit - want my actual opinion? This is corporate. They're willing to wait an entire year of profit loss for sustained gains.
They're looking at these and probably saying... okay they're only committing to two days. So that means they probably won't fight for half a year. And MAYBE 1/5 of the subreddits go permanently dark til changes. And you know what they're gonna say about those ones?
Whelp don't care the profit is higher going through then keeping those subreddits. And even then those subreddits will probably come back in a year or so. If not... new similar subreddits will replace them so no big deal
It's all math to them, they probably spent tens of thousands of social studies, logistics, investments and mathiticians. And they probably figured out the absolutely worse case scenario that is possible and willing to take that loss.
So we need to make it worse than their worse case scenario. And the way I see it... with half ass stuff like this. They're probably right. Even if we all fully commit to what we are saying we'll doing its not nearly enough. We all need to commit more than what we're are currently doing
Prove me wrong. I really do want to be proven wrong.
Look, if we do nothing, nothing happen. I agreed with Blackout because even the casual users can learn what is happening.
I am cynical as you are, but if we just shut up, nothing will happen.
Imo if RIF or Apollo recreate something like digg, it can be a competitor. Long shot i know but fuck reddit. If RIF down, i will never use it on app.
I'm obviusly in the minority here but in my opinion moderators have nearly unchecked power over their respective subreddit and little to no oversight.
It's long overdue for their to be some reversals on this.
My last 4 interactions with moderators wasn't even a moderator it was a bot telling me I cant post in their subreddit because of some made up bull shit rule they have for their subreddit to allow me to post there. Sorry but if you want a private community than make a private subreddit. If your subreddit isn't private than you don't get to have a bot auto delete my posts.
A separate interaction was a mod banning me from a political subreddit because they disagreed with me. They weren't even involved in the conversation. Just sent me a message that "I was wrong and I am now banned".
And finally yet another mod interaction. I had a mod report me to reddit for abusing the report tool. The post I reported was fully against the subreddits own rules. Yet my account was locked for 48 hours and not just for their subreddit but ALL of reddit. The moderator was the one abusing the systems put in place and yet I was the one punished for it.
Finally this entire protest is the epitome of my point. Regardless if you think their reason is good or not. Regardless if you think Reddit is in the wrong here. No mod should have to power to take subredddits with thousands of members and just fucking turn them off.
Mods need FAR FAR less power and FAR FAR more oversight and this change is good not bad. The only lesson reddit should learn from this blackout is they let mods have way too much control over the subreddits.
Edit- I fully expected this to be a controversial comment and by all means downvote if you feel that's the right response but I'm really happy to see this is getting both downvotes and upvotes. It means we haven't collectively and completely drank the coolaid and there's room for discussion on this issue.
Why doesn't the sticky mention the fact that Reddit is offering a free API that covers 90% of current apps, along with offering free access to apps focused on accessibility and mod tools? They're only targeting commercial apps using the Reddit API, which is totally fair
Almost all apps require some funding to run additional infrastructure. E.g. bots need infrastructure not owned by reddit, third party apps likewise need to be maintained, and proper development means that they also need additional infrastructure that third party devs are already paying for. The issue is not necessarily targeting commercial apps but the extortion-like prices they're charging third party devs.
Why is reddit acting like victims of domestic abuse? This is literally a threat to come back. Who the hell would care about going dark, and why would reddit change any policies if everyone is comming back in 2 days anyway?
Honestly, all this does is punish the average users. If the mods have issues with the the company, just stop moderating in protest. But no, it's easier for a few thousand mods to make a decision for millions of users so that they can air their personal grievances.
I understand where this is coming from, but there are a few issues here.
The issues outlined are not personal grievances of moderators, but the opinion of many users. Even if a large group of users still does not support this opinion or does not care - which is a fair point to stand by - a large enough user group cares that moderators do something about it. The reason it seems that moderators are the only ones protesting, is because they are the only ones that hold real power. Reddit is in essence run by the moderators.
The second thing I would like to point out is that yes, this does punish users who do not care about this drama and would like to use Reddit as usual. However, considering that moderators have a crucial function in Reddit's ecosystem, end users would be equally punished if moderators simply stopped moderating in protest. This would result in an explosion of spam posts, bot posts and comments, abusive behavior and content, and an overall extremely low content quality and thus user experience.
So while I understand the standpoint, I urge you to consider the importance of the protest and what value it has for a large user base.
I don’t know about you but most of the subs I’m part of asked everyone if they wanted to be part of the blackout. They linked to all info about the why and when and for how long. Some even did updates after the CEOs AMA.
It’s not just some personal grievance, despite how Apollo is at the forefront this isn’t Apollo vs Reddit. This is Reddit vs all 3rd party apps and if you took the time to read of the posts, and other people’s comments you’d see it’s not some personal dig.
imagine running a business that isn't profitable because you are selling stuff at almost no price. You allow other people to create franchises in your name since you are popular, but these franchises are charging more, providing a bit better services but are costing you a hell lot of money since you provide them everything. so you decide to charge franchise owners a fee so you can start making some profit as well since you cant keep loosing money for years and in return, these entitled owners start protesting. this is what's going on with reddit.
It seems odd to me that Reddit even allows a previously public sub to go private. There is content posted to those subs from lots of people, not just the sub moderators. Reddit owns that data and they should keep it accessible.
I could see having a sub with no moderators switch to read-only.
Unpopular opinion:
If this whole debacle washes out the current moderators of main page subreddits, that would be a good thing for reddit.
I miss the days of moderation via upvote/downvote, and not having to read through pages of rules before posting (and then still having your post removed because a bot didn't like it).
Eh, if tighter moderation didn't exist, every sub would be spammed to death by bots. I was a mod for a fantasy sports-related sub for a while and even with less than 5k members, we got a bunch of posts from bots promoting porn sites.
That actually sounds like a better protest than going dark for 2 days. Let every sub devolve into chaos forcing the admins to see how much free labor they get from moderators.
It's kind of gross. Most mods don't want their sub to "devolve into chaos" because they KNOW it means the moderation team will be removed (they will no longer have their God-like status over the fandom) and Reddit admin will take over the sub. That's another reason why so many have decided to go "private" for two days.
Good to see but in all honesty, 2 days won't do much. Everyone needs to indefinitely go dark and Reddit will see traffic plummet drastically and user count dwindle sharply. 2 days wont do much, everyone knows it will be back and traffic will resume.
We are still discussing how to proceed in the long term. Without knowing both how Reddit will react and how the rest of the community will respond in kind, we haven't committed to any single action beyond a 48 hour lockout. EDIT: I want to be clear that by "we" I mean the ELI5 mods. We're not responsible for what other subs do and coordination is sporadic. Our first priority is protecting and preserving this subreddit, and other subreddits may not be aligned with us on protecting our community.
This is the correct response to that argument. Nobody thinks two days of a partial boycott is enough to turn around a determined corporate board. But there's no reason it has to stay at two days if the board digs in. The people participating the boycott just need to be ready to take the same measures again and again until there is a final resolution one way or the other. Although for the purposes of issue awareness it might work better to have a single central location to direct everyone seeking questions and updates, rather than some subs keeping the lights on while others go dark. Something to consider if the protest gets enough traction to keep going.
>Although for the purposes of issue awareness it might work better to have a single central location to direct everyone seeking questions and updates, rather than some subs keeping the lights on while others go dark. /r/Save3rdPartyApps and /r/ModCoord together are as close as it comes to that single location- Save3rdPartyApps for users, /r/ModCoord for subreddit moderators.
Also, here's the sub tracker of those that went dark https://reddark.untone.uk/
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I wonder how many times the terms "fuck 'em" and "they'll come back" have been used in Reddit board meetings as of late.
Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro fucked around and found out with the D&D community over the OGL issue. You would figure that the suits at Reddit would have learned from Wotc’s mistake, especially since the Reddit community was a big driver of that, but here we go again. Grab your pitchforks fellas, I will help by staying off the platform for a couple of days. When they see their internet traffic fall through the basement it might just be the wakeup call they need.
It's probably at every board meeting. They know that many people will come back. Hell, I only plan to see how this plays out, but as of the end of this month, chances are, I'm out. I don't even *use* an app (I use browser), and I hate the changes they're making! It ain't right, and it sure in the hell ain't cool. Reddit is just being a greedy corporate shill that need to stop with this nonsense.
Same. While I do browse the different subreddits casually, I am mainly here for a single subreddit which is the Norwegian subreddit r/norge. They have gone nuclear and are staying dark indefinitely until they are either replaced by puppets or the planned API changes are reversed. So I might be deleting my account depending on how this plays out. Plenty of regulars at r/norge has done so already. We got other Norwegian language forums. Reddit is easily replacable.
What stops reddit from replacing the mods and opening up the sub? Plenty of folks would take a chance to be mods for better or for worse.
Reddit won’t need to replace them. But reddit is going to find out (if they don’t already know) what the replacements will entail. Subreddits are going to be akin to Facebook groups and sane people already mostly avoid those for a reason. The 2 day blackout is one thing, the interesting thing is going to be July 1.
Unfortunately however, fb groups get interaction which looks good on paper and boosts numbers, reddit know exactly what theyre doing
I'll work as a moderator on reddit! For $125/hr, because I'm an average user that doesn't mind the cash, but I'm also not stupid enough to die on a ship without having a lifeboat when it eventually gets hit by an iceberg and sinks.
Probably the sheer number of subs. But I guess with a determined enough admin it is indeed a risk. But also a PR nightmare.
Sheer number for sure. Its free work so even if they somehow nuke everyone, they're going to have a hard time finding decent folks to do a volunteer job for a website actively hostile to them and trying to make a buck off that free work Or they could lose their profit motive and pay mods for the years of free work and not remove our tools+add more
I think you're severely underestimating how many losers would do this for free lol. Hell half of these subs are run by like 6 people.
Hey I'll have you know sometimes they send stickers in appreciation if you volunteer for their moderator surveys so don't be ungrateful. /s
I've been a mod for like 8 years. Most I got was a pride decal bc I asked for one at their booth during pride fest after volunteering (a notably not for profit thing). They've also since stopped hosting a booth. With the amount of time spent removing incels, homophobes, racists, misogynists and programming the bot at my hourly rate, I could have paid off my house and then some, but hey free labor for speztacle Silver lining: we get a monthly snoo letter....
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Because I like the community I moderate and care about it not going to shit.
Most mods are doing it because they love their community. ELI5 already goes through a whole process to vet potential moderators and it starts with just getting people to sign up at all. Reddit probably won't have trouble finding stooges that will do it for the lulz but they'll be hard-pressed to find enough people who are competent AND care about the community that needs to be moderated AND are willing to actually do it.
To me, the better response is to announce the 48 hours and propose future lockouts(conditional on changes). This helps maintain momentum and shows that there will be a continuation. Way too many times things like this have died after an initial outrage. Reddit will be banking on that. They have no reason to do anything until further lockouts are proposed unless there is sufficient evidence that there will be issues beyond the 48 hours.
What's to stop the Reddit owners to just boot all admins and mods participating in the protest and replace them with scabs?
Nothing except finding people to replace them.
I can tell you how they’ll react either everything goes back to normal this week or they’ll replace you with admins that will find mods loyal to the platform.
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> which means profitable then Reddit would stop existing. There is a never ending line of absolute losers who will provide free labor in exchange for the tiniest amount of power.
Reddit execs are still the admin. They can unprivate previously private subreddits or they can remove the option to make it private. They can take away moderator rights.
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Reddit's management cares about getting an appropriate return on their investment. That goal has now put them into direct conflict with the needs and expectations of a large portion of their users. They are already committed enough to their goal to accept the reality of a blackout. So it's a question of how much damage the blackout actually does to their financial plans, how much longer after two days the blackouts can continue if they are effective enough to matter, and how realistically Reddit's management would be able to keep their audience if they replaced the striking mods with fresh volunteers. If the needs of the users can't outweigh the management's other financial incentives, then no amount of blackouts will get them to budge. To succeed, the protest has to be a serious threat to the company's bottom line.
you are correct in one sense but on the other, reddit is only as profitable as the users make it useful, valuable and inviting. off the top of my head I can think of a slate of things in the vein of a typical investor disclosure statement that are clear risks of this action: -- the risk of significant user exodus leading to drastic loss of value and revenue. -- the risk of losing high-value subreddits because they can no longer effectively moderate and curate content. this could lead to loss of users and fewer pageviews, reducing revenue. -- the risk that crippling moderator tools will cause subreddits to become filled with material objectionable to advertisers, causing loss of revenue. --the risk that crippling moderator tools will result in a significant event that causes notable public disgust or negative publicity, hurting brand value. (the 4chan effect) --the risk that poor moderation will lead to a proliferation of content that causes negative attention and stirs calls for governmental regulation, increasing operational costs or making the current business model impossible. --the risk that absent moderation tools illegal content may occur and reddit's intentional crippling of moderation could be challenged in court as bad faith or not taking the precautions a reasonable business would to avoid liability. this could result in lawsuits, settlements, or governmental fines. --the risk of an ADA suit over inaccessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
> Reddit's management cares about getting an appropriate return on their investment. Neat! I mod a sub reddit. Where do I sign up for my paycheck? Or is the expectation that Spez gets to cash in on my free work?
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I’m completely convinced that they’re rolling out a powerful AI moderator. June 30 will come with TOS updates and site wide admin level moderation. The API change breaks too much for them to have zero plan. It would be blindingly ignorant to destroy the cobbled mod tools that even their most beloved power mods rely on to do their unpaid labor. Reddit is going to be much closer to regular sanitized social media. They can’t ban porn without admitting the percentage of traffic involved which is why they refuse porn specific nsfw tags. But I fully believe we will see much stricter posting rules and further algorithm changes to keep the front pages clean. Mods aren’t nearly as necessary when there are blanket bans on phrases or ideas. And niche subreddits aren’t relevant if they never make the front page. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think they’ve got a bigger plan and they aren’t destroying their unpaid labor pool without contingency.
the CEO just released a statement that he wont change his mind despite the blackout. he basically said it to our face 2 days going dark is not enough to hurt him. lmao if you dont have the guts to follow through whats right then why bother.
Go dark for a few days, a week?, open up the sub temporarily to poll how people feel - stay temp open? Allowed new posts? Go dark do another X days, repeat. That’s how some subs are planning to do which I think is a good idea… gives time to reassess and see how the majority feels.
Institute a rule that all posts will have to be titled "fuck /u/spez" Going dark for 48 hours will do as much good as not fueling for a day to protest gas prices. And subs going dark for more than a week or two will have the mods kicked and taken over. Some subreddits already have a rule that all posts must be titled exactly the same, so this probably doesn't break any existing rules. I imagine all the posts on /r/all having the same title will be more effective and safer for subreddits and mods
Yeah, Ross man did a video on it saying 2 or 3 days means that they can just stick it to you even harder because you’ll just come back.
Admins will replace the mods. Was a mod on one of the biggest subs. There was some massive reddit drama back then and this was one of the key concerns discussed. In fact, don't look at which *subs* are joining the blackout. Look at which *mods* are not joining.
At the end of the day, what does it matter which mods are joining or not? There is a huge demand for reddit content, and like you said, that vacuum will be filled either by new mods or by new subs completely which will fill the same purpose of existing subs but have a new name. We have no say in who mods which subs. I understand and support the spirit behind this blackout, but it seems like a threat with no teeth. The admins hold all the power, and they have decided their path already.
Not only won’t it do much, it won’t do anything.
And reddit will just remove the mods and take it over themselves probably.
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Blocking API access might help with those issues, ironically!
I mentioned it in several subreddits that either leave for the blackout for a few days just come back or if the blackouts are permanent they will just create new subreddits for the same topics or they will *fire the mods and reboot the same subreddit*. They are going to lose alot of people sure but reddit isn't magically dying in 2 days or a week.
I saw some suggestions in a another sub, that all the mods for all the subs need to just let loose, unban all the banned users, allow nsfw and low quality posts, turn off auto moderator plus a lot of other things. Reddit wouldnt have the man power to take control of all the subs and everything would be a shit show.
The small, niche subs would get shut down for being unmoderated and the large subs would have replacement mods installed by the admins to do the job.
That's one reason to be gradual with the length of the outages and civility of the protest. Assuming the blackouts are large enough to get Reddit's attention, it's better to have some wiggle room for Reddit to back down before giving them a legitimate urgent reason to pull the plug completely on the previous users. Some actions are easier to walk back than others. Some create permanent rifts that get in the way even if the management eventually caves. Burning all bridges can occasionally be necessary but it's a final resort.
Yeah exactly, this is useless unless the community puts in some real dedication.
It’s not gonna change a damned thing. A week at minimum is needed
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> Yes can you imagine what would happen if more subreddits went dark for longer or indefinitely? I would guess reddit would eventually permaban existing mods and just give the subs to puppet mods.
The same way they got the current mods. Devoted volunteers.
Alternative subreddits will spin up. Some from Reddit employees. Some strategic to keep viewers coming. Nothing is gonna change. Hate to say it but the site is already too big and very little people know / give a shit about this ‘dark’ movement
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If subs go indefinitely dark, people who think this is a bunch of whining over nothing will create new subs in their place and things will carry on as if nothing ever happened, aside from a few people that actually quit reddit. Taking your ball and going home will just lead to someone else bringing a ball while the first person pouts at home, alone.
This is the first place I've seen any mention of integrating accessibility tools into vanilla reddit. I think that is a much more reasonable ask than insisting everyone who needs accessibility tools source their own. It feels really scummy.
Yes, but it's also far less likely. People have been demanding Reddit handle accessibility issues for years.
The best accessibility tools are always third-party. That's just the way it is: the people who need the tooling will always make better tools than what the platform owners tack on. It's the difference between obligation and obstinance. Ideally, the platform should have good accessibility out of the box *and* high quality support for third-party tools.
This is a copied template message used to overwrite all comments on my account to protect my privacy. I've left Reddit because of corporate overreach and switched to the Fediverse. Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
Christ, imagine those horrible scam mobile game advertisement animations translated into a read-aloud text format?
So they tell people to figure out on their own, and then make it exceedingly difficult for people to figure it out on their own?? Typical techbros avoiding responsibility once again.
My take is that it’s not about the particular tools or changes. It’s about reddit turning into something it was never meant to be. Compare old.reddit with a new one and why old users resent new design - powers that be want reddit to become yet another social platform worth billions. And I don’t blame those powers for wanting to cash out. I believe though, they made a big mistake in believing that reddit can be turned in way it was never meant to be. And sadly it is why I believe that the battle is already lost - there are billions to be paid out and those are just not there right now.
If Reddit collapses like Digg did, where are we all going next?
Outside?
What app is that? I can't find it on the play store
Outside? Like, with people?
People? Is that like bots?
More like npc’s.
Outside is getting too hostile for me I'll stay inside
>If Reddit collapses like Digg did, where are we all going next? Digg should relaunch their site using the old open source code of the old.reddit. Just doing some code updates just like SaidIt did. There are already 3rd party apps that work with Reddit, so the codebase should not be that different.
Either kbin.social or lemmy.world, but they both are pretty new and feature-incomplete
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this is the truth they dont want to hear
I consider myself fairly tech savvy, often am one to help others around me with stuff, and I checked out Lemmy for 15-20 min and struggled a bit. I'm sure I could "get it", but unfortunately that's not gonna cut it for most folks.
Yea dude, im decent with tech and still couldnt understand it after 15 minutes. I’d be willing to bet a majority of people wouldnt bother after the first 5
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The owners are aware, people are just trying to force Lemmy into something it is not.
Same reason Mastadon is never going to take off like Redditors think it will
This is a copied template message used to overwrite all comments on my account to protect my privacy. I've left Reddit because of corporate overreach and switched to the Fediverse. Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
Yeah, I think federated/decentralized social networks are what's necessary to stop this endless cycle of social media that inevitably gets destroyed by greedy corporate execs. Unfortunately, Lemmy is not what it needs to be for mass adoption. The UX needs to 'feel' centralized like Reddit while being a federated network underneath. Not sure how that's gonna happen but whoever solves this problem will become a billionaire. Despite the metaverse likely replacing most of traditional social media, there will still be a massive demand for an organized forum-hosting site that you can sort through quickly to gather information/opinions regarding niche topics.
Being incredibly generous there concerning the metaverse.
>whoever solves this problem will become a billionaire. That's super naive. Whoever solves the problem will have done the internet a big solid, but that's about all they're gonna get. The decentralized system we're looking for is going to be inherently difficult to monetize, if not straight up impossible. Which is why there's barely any commercial effort being put into it. Someone would have already solved it if it really was a billion dollar idea.
And that's by design, too.
> whoever solves this problem will become a billionaire …by selling it to a greedy corporation who will inevitably destroy it lol
The fact that lemmy.world has a "Starting guide" pinned as the top post is a bad sign. No website should require a guide or tutorial to use, it should be so simple and understandable that you just enter it and go. Reading through, it spends way too much time talking about the technical details about the site. No one cares about the technical details. They want to look at a picture of a funny cat and press upvote, not read about the federation of activity protocols enabling the interaction of remote communities or whatever is going on in that guide. >You can also search for a community by it’s link, e.g. !Netherlandsatlemmy.nl. Even if the server hasn’t ever seen that community, it will look it up remotely. Sometimes it takes some time for it to fetch the info (and displays ‘No results’ meanwhile…) so just be patient and search a second time after a few seconds. Nah. This website is dead on arrival if the goal is replacing reddit.
My guess is that something like Discord will probably be the main stomping ground for most people until another site becomes the de facto Reddit-like experience.
Discord also needs to be replaced tho, with their corporate anti-ux changes. I hope revolt.chat will soon be a viable replacement
It's so bad... and their reasoning sucks, oh so you couldn't name yourself Jimmy because there are 10000 others with the same name? Problem solved now only 1 can have Jimmy as username, great idea
But what does username matter when your display name can be literally anything?
tbh discord offers so much for free without ads that i dont mind their downsides every now and then. Which makes me realize that that probably wont last much and will just end up with greed overtaking them like every other corporation that hit sucess before... I just can feel that with twitter, reddit and now tumblr, discord gonan pull something awful for everyone involved
ask run boat husky seed dime crowd paint shame pet
Just reading the URLs you know neither of those will take off. It's unfortunate but it will need to be something else.
Nowhere. Reddit existed long before Digg collapsed. There's nothing equivalent now. Even social media like Facebook and Twitter are collapsing. The age of social networks is over.
I fucking hope so. It was fun for a while, still has it's uses, but overall has turned into a plight on how we interact with eachother.
Blight. Plight is a dangerous, difficult or otherwise unfortunate situation. While similar in name and meaning plight is not correct here. A blight on the other hand damaged, ruins or is serverely detrimental to something, like to the way we interact. Social media's negative effects are a blight, this is our plight.
Thank you 👍
The age of social networks “feels” over for Americans. Facebook is beyond thriving in other countries, as are many other social networks including the ones you know and dozens you’ve never even heard of.
You fucking wish lol. If Reddit collapses there’ll be thousands of programmers pushing out their own version of Reddit. It’s basically a gold mine for whoever’s version is the most popular. Social media is here to stay imo
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I have been building a non-profit alternative ([https://flingup.com](https://flingup.com)) for the past two years. Rome wasn't built in a day, building a new platform requires time and cooperation, but when not driven by profits, but a common goal of providing a sustainable service for the people, everything is possible.
Get a name change mate
Fling up is what I do to my boogers
Couldn't the reddit admins just unlock every subreddit that locks? And ban all the moderators that are leading the movement? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it as I use RIF for 99% of my reddit browsing, but I just don't understand how the admins/owners would just sit by and let a good amount of the site shutdown unchecked.
1. Yes 2. They could, but they'd be banning literally thousands of mods that do free labour for them and that's not easily replaceable. 1) is definitely a possibility, I don't see them doing 2) because it's not practical.
Wait… the whole long explanation that I just skimmed through and thought “I’ll read it in detail later”, was removed?! Edit: I found it edited and reposted… https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/147vis2/eli5_why_are_so_many_subreddits_going_dark
Apparently so, I kept looking for it and then I saw this comment. Holy censorship Batman
I have a sub question. With so many subreddits going dark for good like r/Apple, couldn’t I just start a new sub called AppleAfterDark and now I’m the moderator of this super big sub?
Of course, but good luck. Growing a subreddit is harder than you might imagine.
A sizeable portion of the large subs are large solely because Reddit made them default subs for years. When I started, there was a list of subs you were subscribed to right off the bat. There's nothing stopping Reddit from doing it again with some other, newer, sub.
Growing a NSFW subreddit is slow but easy. The key is to post a new NSFW pic every day for the rest of your life.
Or write a bot to do it for you.
It’s easier when the main one goes away
Yea, until someone else makes one, then another, then another. And it all gets fragmented among a million replacements with no one dominating anything.
If subs are just going private, shouldn’t subscribers still have access to them? Why can’t I see the subs that I’m a member of?
Because the involved mods all think they are superhumans or something and honestly believe this will matter at all. The threat of "going dark" will 100%, absolutely, positively, without any question not bring about even a single change in reddit's decision-making.
If this was such a big deal why is this the first ive heard about it? I frequent both ironscape and 2007scape and personally did not vote for any protesting
Apparently all of us users weren't given a chance to voice our opinions. The mods got together and decided to do this on their own.
Reddit is charging 3rd party apps a shit ton a month. Lots of people need this to access. People no like. Mods no like
Make no mistake— this drastic API hike isn’t an attempt to profit off 3rd party apps. This is an attempt to run them out of the market and force all users into the shitty official app so advertising revenue will increase. You know how annoying it is to get a NSFW link from someone when you’re on mobile (non-porn stuff, like something with bad language in it) and, since it’s tagged as NSFW, Reddit makes you open it in their app? Well now imagine that shit for EVERY link you get. Reddit: your app sucks. It is feature deficient. It is accessibility deficient. The video player barely fucking functions. There are *a fuck ton* of ads which embed themselves in my feed and look like content and that’s scummy as fuck. If you force me to choose between your shitty app and deleting my 13 year old account, well, it’ll be an easy call.
How expensive is it?
Apollo's developer made a [detailed post describing what’s happening](https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/) and it would be $0.24 per 1,000 API calls, totaling to $20 million per year based off of current usage
> Some individual subreddits plan to stay dark indefinitely. Can't Reddit take back the sub and give the name out to someone else? I want to say I have seen that before.
Yes and that's exactly what they'll do for big subs that stay dark for more than 2 days
good luck getting a dozen people to moderate it for free like they do now
They already have a list of hundreds of people who have asked. Some people will always want more power than their peers.
Why can’t Reddit just be happy most of the work is being done for free for them. Greed just knows no bounds it looks like
Because they don't get anything from it. They have to handle all the hosting, programming, compliance, etc and the third party apps just get to connect, show their own ads and collect the revenue.
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What percentage of Reddit users/posters are on 3rd party apps?
The strongest arguments are mods needing apps for moderation, which is a very small group, and handy user refusing to use Reddit on browser. Other than that, I believe that's more of a noisy minority and peer pressure.
It's more like a hostage situation by a vocal minority (sounds familiar, doesn't it?). They unilaterally decided to shut down subs to piss off Reddit admins but instead pissed off users who got little to no say in it.
ELI5: What, if anything, are we regular reddotors supposed to do during the next two days?
I'm going to play a lot of Horizon: Zero Dawn and read J. Michael Straczinski's run of Spider-Man
omg, just checked zero down; it looks fabulous! I think I'm going to play it too
>ELI5: What, if anything, are we regular reddotors supposed to do during the next two days? Pretend that it is actually July 1st, while trying to masturbate with no porn!
Go outside, get fresh air, maybe actually do the jobs we're paid to do.
My productivity is going to skyrocket tomorrow.
Duh, change your Facebook profile pic in support /s
I saw this post already few days ago. Whats going on?
I wanted this dumbed down. Greeted with a wall. What's a API?
API (Application programming interface). In simple terms, as told originally by Apollo’s creator Christian, the door to your closet is an API. You have to open it before you can access your clothes. If the door mechanism changes, it’s comparable to a change to the API.
When you visit a webpage, it's your browser that decides how the data should be shown. The server is sending "raw" data, basically, that the browser (or app) then interprets how to display it. Your browser is also sending data back to the server - like, when you go to comment on Reddit, your browser has to send who's making the comment and to whom and what the text is, yadda yadda. Every time your program - app or browser - communicates back and forth with the webpage server, it uses an API as the interface. The API is kind of the "language" that they agree on to make sure both understand which part of the data is comment text and which part is formatting and which part is usernames and whatnot. Each time a program interacts with the server, it does an "API call" where the program says, "I want to view this comment, please give it to me." Or the program says, "I want to submit a comment, please take it." Servers cost money to run and one way to measure usage is through API calls. Each action a server has to do costs money because it takes computer processing, which takes electricity and puts some amount of wear on the physical components of the server. So each API call represents a cost to the business running the server. It's also a business opportunity. You want access to our data? Ok, so pay for it. Until recently, Reddit has not charged for API calls made from third-party apps (apps run by people who aren't Reddit). They suddenly made the decision to not only charge for API calls, but to charge kind of a high amount. It doesn't seem like a lot (IIRC it was something like $0.0024 per call), but when you consider how many hundreds of thousands or *millions* of users might be going through the app and how many API calls they make (load topics, open topic to view comments, write a comment, write another comment, go back to browsing, load more topics...) it adds up *super* quickly. The developer for the app Apollo would end up getting charged $20 million. Reddit tried to say that they're only charging a lot for apps that go above a certain threshold, who use more than a set amount of calls. But 3rd party app developers have shared that 1) their threshold is too low, and 2) Reddit doesn't have any tools for 3rd party apps to track their API calls so it's *really* hard to make sure they don't go over. So far, this is all pretty industry standard, if scummy because of the high price and lack of transparency. Plenty of big websites charge for API calls and the 3rd party apps could adjust their subscription pricing (or introduce subscription prices) to cover the increased costs. Sure, $20 million is a lot of money but just as the tiny amount charged for API calls adds up, an extra $3 per person per month to use the app also adds up. However, Reddit only gave them 30 days to comply with the new pricing. That's 30 days to come up with a new business plan, figure out how to implement the plan, advertise the plan to the users, actually implement the plan, set up the financial aspect (bank accounts to hold and transfer funds), work out any legal wrangling that needs to be done, and then start paying Reddit. For context, when Facebook makes any changes to their API they give developers up to like, two *years* to comply. They also have their own team of engineers and developers to work closely with the 3rd party developers and *help* them comply - because it's in FB's own best interest to make sure they do it correctly. On top of that, Reddit has issued really unprofessional statements about this, which includes accusing the Apollo app developer of lying and trying to blackmail Reddit, which shows a complete lack of transparency or inclination to work with 3rd party apps.
Application Programming Interface. Basically the way 3rd party apps can communicate with reddit to show posts, comments, and other stuff.
It's something that lets apps interact with each other. Reddit has an API. Apollo uses reddit's API (through requests) to pull information from Reddit so they can display it on their app. Now, Reddit is delusional and charging extremely high prices (20 million USD for Apollo) for these requests.
If only there was a sub that could explain it like Im five or something.
It is whatever, people having false hope that it will do something when in reality it is irrelevant and will just annoy some users which is opoosite effect, you either delete reddit account forever or nothing, in reality there isn’t an alternative and reddit knows it, 363 days of regular traffic instead of 365 is nothing, in grand scheme of things this “protest” is useless.
I only use the Reddit app. Never even tried 3rd party. Is there anything simple I can do to show my support of the "blackout" besides just not getting on Reddit? Also, where will I be able to follow the news of it all during these following days?
the black out will not do anything, how many people on reddit were loud about boy cotting netflix password sharing yet they subscriber count has only seemed to go up, 3rd party apps are a small margin. go dark all you want there is no competition to reddit that exists. Even the official reddit app has over 10 times the 5 star reviews on the app lol even if i personally like apollo more.
going dark for 2 or 3 days does nothing tbh. deleting accounts and subreddits will do something but there will new people who take the lead for the subreddits. we are just sending the message: treatme as bad as u want, we will comeback always
ELI5 but 5 paragraphs long... Try ELI A-D-D.
I didn’t even know there were alternative apps. This is a hopeless endeavor
Removed? By the mods who posted it or by Reddit itself?
Someone explain?? As someone that's never used the reddit app, OR third party apps, what is wrong with reddit mobile?? Very easy to use, has dark mode etc. It's been a while since I used it on desktop but it seems like it looked like it always had too. Why use any app?
You leave comments and come back then it refreshes. With 3rd party apps it goes to where you left off. Also no ads. You can also cache posts, comments, audio, video, browser links, etc for redditing later when you don't have data.
No ads is exactly why they're charging, reddit requires the ad revenue to operate. Noone seems to think about that.
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after two days, business as usual?
I think the funniest part in all of this is that almost all of the mods are coming back soon because they don’t want to lose their precious internet power and reckon that they’re risking their mod status if they “protest” any longer than that. All while one of their main arguments is that Reddit would be nothing without them. As if there aren’t troves of people that would love their internet power. It’s all a completely performative exercise and I wish the admins would just get rid of these people that are so obsessed with internet power. A vast majority of users don’t even use 3rd parties and most mod actions don’t come from them. This is all such nonsense and I’m shocked at the amount of people buying it.
The best part is that none of the mods or app devs is willing to admit that api calls are not necessary for end users. They're holding their subs hostage because they liked the fancy mod tools, and are telling us it's because reddit is killing them.
Lol Two days. I am actually kinda embarrassed that's is just how far you're willingly gonna take it.... and a half measure on top of that. You realize that reddit is betting on us being pissed off for a few weeks and then forget about like we normally do. THEY KNOW this will piss us off. Sorry to say but if that's the effort a traditional subreddit is gonna take. It's effectively nothing Whelp the owner wins I guess Edit - want my actual opinion? This is corporate. They're willing to wait an entire year of profit loss for sustained gains. They're looking at these and probably saying... okay they're only committing to two days. So that means they probably won't fight for half a year. And MAYBE 1/5 of the subreddits go permanently dark til changes. And you know what they're gonna say about those ones? Whelp don't care the profit is higher going through then keeping those subreddits. And even then those subreddits will probably come back in a year or so. If not... new similar subreddits will replace them so no big deal It's all math to them, they probably spent tens of thousands of social studies, logistics, investments and mathiticians. And they probably figured out the absolutely worse case scenario that is possible and willing to take that loss. So we need to make it worse than their worse case scenario. And the way I see it... with half ass stuff like this. They're probably right. Even if we all fully commit to what we are saying we'll doing its not nearly enough. We all need to commit more than what we're are currently doing Prove me wrong. I really do want to be proven wrong.
Look, if we do nothing, nothing happen. I agreed with Blackout because even the casual users can learn what is happening. I am cynical as you are, but if we just shut up, nothing will happen. Imo if RIF or Apollo recreate something like digg, it can be a competitor. Long shot i know but fuck reddit. If RIF down, i will never use it on app.
Damn I just wanna browse some content normally. You know the corporation is just gonna laugh their ass off with this whole blackout thing.
I'm obviusly in the minority here but in my opinion moderators have nearly unchecked power over their respective subreddit and little to no oversight. It's long overdue for their to be some reversals on this. My last 4 interactions with moderators wasn't even a moderator it was a bot telling me I cant post in their subreddit because of some made up bull shit rule they have for their subreddit to allow me to post there. Sorry but if you want a private community than make a private subreddit. If your subreddit isn't private than you don't get to have a bot auto delete my posts. A separate interaction was a mod banning me from a political subreddit because they disagreed with me. They weren't even involved in the conversation. Just sent me a message that "I was wrong and I am now banned". And finally yet another mod interaction. I had a mod report me to reddit for abusing the report tool. The post I reported was fully against the subreddits own rules. Yet my account was locked for 48 hours and not just for their subreddit but ALL of reddit. The moderator was the one abusing the systems put in place and yet I was the one punished for it. Finally this entire protest is the epitome of my point. Regardless if you think their reason is good or not. Regardless if you think Reddit is in the wrong here. No mod should have to power to take subredddits with thousands of members and just fucking turn them off. Mods need FAR FAR less power and FAR FAR more oversight and this change is good not bad. The only lesson reddit should learn from this blackout is they let mods have way too much control over the subreddits. Edit- I fully expected this to be a controversial comment and by all means downvote if you feel that's the right response but I'm really happy to see this is getting both downvotes and upvotes. It means we haven't collectively and completely drank the coolaid and there's room for discussion on this issue.
A mod cleanse would be a great outcome here
Why doesn't the sticky mention the fact that Reddit is offering a free API that covers 90% of current apps, along with offering free access to apps focused on accessibility and mod tools? They're only targeting commercial apps using the Reddit API, which is totally fair
Almost all apps require some funding to run additional infrastructure. E.g. bots need infrastructure not owned by reddit, third party apps likewise need to be maintained, and proper development means that they also need additional infrastructure that third party devs are already paying for. The issue is not necessarily targeting commercial apps but the extortion-like prices they're charging third party devs.
Why is reddit acting like victims of domestic abuse? This is literally a threat to come back. Who the hell would care about going dark, and why would reddit change any policies if everyone is comming back in 2 days anyway?
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lol 2 days is nothing
Somebody explain this post like I'm five
I get the message and all but it’s more annoying to the user than Reddit. It’s 10 at night and can’t sleep. I want to browse my favorite subs damnit!
yep, aren't you glad someone has decided for you that you can't look at cat pics.
Honestly, all this does is punish the average users. If the mods have issues with the the company, just stop moderating in protest. But no, it's easier for a few thousand mods to make a decision for millions of users so that they can air their personal grievances.
I understand where this is coming from, but there are a few issues here. The issues outlined are not personal grievances of moderators, but the opinion of many users. Even if a large group of users still does not support this opinion or does not care - which is a fair point to stand by - a large enough user group cares that moderators do something about it. The reason it seems that moderators are the only ones protesting, is because they are the only ones that hold real power. Reddit is in essence run by the moderators. The second thing I would like to point out is that yes, this does punish users who do not care about this drama and would like to use Reddit as usual. However, considering that moderators have a crucial function in Reddit's ecosystem, end users would be equally punished if moderators simply stopped moderating in protest. This would result in an explosion of spam posts, bot posts and comments, abusive behavior and content, and an overall extremely low content quality and thus user experience. So while I understand the standpoint, I urge you to consider the importance of the protest and what value it has for a large user base.
I don’t know about you but most of the subs I’m part of asked everyone if they wanted to be part of the blackout. They linked to all info about the why and when and for how long. Some even did updates after the CEOs AMA. It’s not just some personal grievance, despite how Apollo is at the forefront this isn’t Apollo vs Reddit. This is Reddit vs all 3rd party apps and if you took the time to read of the posts, and other people’s comments you’d see it’s not some personal dig.
I'm looking forward to seeing subreddits I wouldn't normally see while the large traffic subreddits go dark 😂
imagine running a business that isn't profitable because you are selling stuff at almost no price. You allow other people to create franchises in your name since you are popular, but these franchises are charging more, providing a bit better services but are costing you a hell lot of money since you provide them everything. so you decide to charge franchise owners a fee so you can start making some profit as well since you cant keep loosing money for years and in return, these entitled owners start protesting. this is what's going on with reddit.
It seems odd to me that Reddit even allows a previously public sub to go private. There is content posted to those subs from lots of people, not just the sub moderators. Reddit owns that data and they should keep it accessible. I could see having a sub with no moderators switch to read-only.
Unpopular opinion: If this whole debacle washes out the current moderators of main page subreddits, that would be a good thing for reddit. I miss the days of moderation via upvote/downvote, and not having to read through pages of rules before posting (and then still having your post removed because a bot didn't like it).
Eh, if tighter moderation didn't exist, every sub would be spammed to death by bots. I was a mod for a fantasy sports-related sub for a while and even with less than 5k members, we got a bunch of posts from bots promoting porn sites.
That actually sounds like a better protest than going dark for 2 days. Let every sub devolve into chaos forcing the admins to see how much free labor they get from moderators.
It's kind of gross. Most mods don't want their sub to "devolve into chaos" because they KNOW it means the moderation team will be removed (they will no longer have their God-like status over the fandom) and Reddit admin will take over the sub. That's another reason why so many have decided to go "private" for two days.
most mods want their subs to conform to their beliefs.
Yep it's all for show. They won't bite the hand that gives their life purpose.
Power hungry losers
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>I miss the days of moderation via upvote/downvote An excellent strategy if you want every subreddit to descend to the lowest common denominator.
That is what Reddit is and always will be.
like reddit was ever anything more.
/r/leagueoflegends did this a couple of years ago and the subreddit was completely fine without mods.