Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

I was really skeptical of lemmy [1] when I first heard about it during the blackout. I joined yesterday and it completely changed my mind. Yes, it is going to face some growing pains (see the total user growth in the past few days) [2] in the coming weeks and months but it really has the potential to replace Reddit with a federated system of communities. One that won&#x27;t be damaged by investors or executives attempting to pivot over to the latest social media trend.<p>As many people have recently noted, Reddit quietly became an extremely important repository of text-based knowledge. Distinct from Wikipedia and Archive.org, but no less important, Reddit is full of valuable procedural (how-to) and consumer (product-related) knowledge. Reddit has countless small communities built around hobbies and other niche interests, which places it in the same role once fulfilled by Usenet and later independent web-based forums.<p>While those technologies still exist, they face enormous challenges with discovery (try to find a new forum on Google recently?), single-sign-on, and moderation. These were all solved by Reddit and I believe lemmy solves them too. The fediverse [3] truly has the potential to liberate small internet communities from the vagaries of Big Social Media, of which Reddit is only the latest example.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;join-lemmy.org" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;join-lemmy.org</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;the-federation.info&#x2F;platform&#x2F;73" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;the-federation.info&#x2F;platform&#x2F;73</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fediverse" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fediverse</a>

It seems to me like this is turning into a subreddit migration in slow motion. A lot people still want to post content and a lot of people still want to read content, so what&#x27;s happening is people are posting it to the less popular &#x27;alternative&#x27; versions of the popular subreddits and those posts make the frontpage instead. It seems like there is a noticeable decline in quality but i&#x27;m still seeing quite a bit of posting. Not sure if it&#x27;s having the intended impact or not. I think the missing thing here is a viable, popular alternative. Digg died because reddit existed. If there was a consensus on the next reddit I would think reddit should be much more worried.

IMHO, Reddit&#x27;s charging such a high price for API access that it&#x27;s as good as unattainable is more of a last straw then anything else. Reddit has been clear that they view the data as their sole property, when you think it through, why be a moderator for a for-profit company if you aren&#x27;t being paid?<p>I don&#x27;t know why it took this long for moderators to quit.

The biggest Reddit communities are in open rebellion. Twitter is, charitably, a mess. Twitch started taking a full 50% of the revenue of their top creators, who are furious.<p>What&#x27;s going on? What&#x27;s the bigger trend that&#x27;s causing all these platforms to go so user-hostile?

Perhaps you should link to the actual article, as opposed to the reddit thread about the article...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;tech&#x2F;reddit-blackout-date-end-protest-b2357235.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;tech&#x2F;reddit-blackout-date-end-...</a>

Reddit has become pretty popular in India and this new population is okay with new site and policy changes because they simply are not aware of what Reddit use to be. Reddit blackout has almost 0 effect on Indian subreddits. Reddit still has numbers to show even if most subreddit are down.<p>Just check r&#x2F;India r&#x2F;Mumbai r&#x2F;Banglore r&#x2F;Delhi r&#x2F;Pune and other India subreddits and you will see.

@mods can we update this link to the real article and not just going to reddit? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;tech&#x2F;reddit-blackout-date-end-protest-b2357235.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;tech&#x2F;reddit-blackout-date-end-...</a>

Now that the initial 48 hours have passed, I would expect Reddit to override this at any moment now.<p>Any subreddits which had not been private previously will revert back to public and the ability to change from public to private will be temporarily disabled.<p>It&#x27;s one thing for management to wait out 48h (doable), it&#x27;s another thing to wait out something &quot;indefinite&quot;.

I am curious how this will all settle out in the end. I think the majority of users don’t really care about the API or subreddits going private as they primarily just lurk.<p>However, the people that do care are the ones that moderate and contribute the vast majority of the content that the larger group enjoys.<p>I am pessimistic that the minority here will win out in the end, but the majority may begin to lose interest if the quality of new content drops.<p>At least for myself, the blackout gave me enough space away from the site to consider if my time on Reddit was valuable&#x2F;enjoyable and basically I concluded it is not worth the time. I’ve uninstalled the app and I haven’t really missed a thing.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. This is a huge opportunity for Facebook. They sort of tried to do Reddit in the past and ended up with shitty Facebook groups.<p>If I were them, I would rush to add some reddit features to Facebook group (reddit-like threads, upvotes&#x2F;downvotes) or try to launch something new that’s more like reddit on top of the facebook&#x2F;insta social graph.<p>Just call it “Groups”

I supports the blackout.<p>Yet, addicted me still occasionally opens reddit. And all the content I see is from communities that did not black out, or returned, so all the content is from communities that at least a part of my says I shouldn&#x27;t want to see.<p>Kinda kills the fun.

The last 3 days I starred way to many times at the &quot;this subreddit is private&quot; page on reddit.<p>Not because I actively were using reddit but because all my search queries (not all of them with &quot;reddit&quot;) went to one or another reddit post with the information not available anymore.<p>Even if reddit decides to comply, we have to change this for a better internet in the future.<p>Go lemmy guys.

I&#x27;m beginning to think that these kinds of &quot;public utility&quot; websites should be run by non-profits. Why is Wikipedia the only success story here?

&quot;Let&#x27;s use Reddit to promote boycotting Reddit!&quot;

I&#x27;ve put together a comparison of Reddit alternatives if anybody is interested:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;hanniabu&#x2F;6f96c6e820d58d8736f3c15d4c0e8ae6#raw-comparison" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;hanniabu&#x2F;6f96c6e820d58d8736f3c15d4c0...</a><p>There&#x27;s also some notes above the linked table

I&#x27;m starting to enjoy federation conversations here just as much as crypto conversations.<p>I&#x27;m so sick of the smug ones, the people saying the protest is useless, the completely missing-the-point statement that most users don&#x27;t care, and the near gleeful self abuse of people mocking others that don&#x27;t want to keep using a proprietary platform being sold to china by a liar.<p>I&#x27;m done with Reddit threads on HN. I recommend folks interested in federated networks move these conversations there and let the rest enjoy reddit as it turns into digg.

major subreddits keeping reddit alive basically:<p>r&#x2F;politics<p>r&#x2F;worldnews<p>r&#x2F;movies<p>r&#x2F;tech<p>r&#x2F;television<p>r&#x2F;news<p>r&#x2F;technology<p>r&#x2F;gadgets<p>r&#x2F;sports<p>minor ones i&#x27;ve noticed:<p>r&#x2F;indieheads<p>r&#x2F;boxing<p>It&#x27;s a pretty serious blackout, but it&#x27;d be even more serious if those went dark too (and stayed dark).

On the topic of alternatives:<p>The current options suck.<p>A proposal to address the failures of extant options:<p>Users hold their own data in the account they use for SSO<p>Every comment post etc is in your own account, with sites putting a request in the page from your SSO host<p>The front page is defined by your choice of site or SSO provider.<p>Eg I have a site and users can login with Google or make an account with my SSO provider, when they post a reference pointer is stored and the content is &quot;reported&quot; to the SSO provider by both the client and server with only those items reported by both being &quot;validated&quot; and stored. When site serves page with that content it puts in a js snippet that pulls the content item from the appropriate server.<p>This means users have full control over their content, sites don&#x27;t have to host as much content, SSO services have better monetization options (Subs or Sales of Data Analysis) while sites don&#x27;t lose thiers, etc<p>Subforums would just be different servers&#x2F;sites, with your chosen frontend aggregating them all like a new age interactive RSS

People are treating this as if this is the Reddit of 2011. If you really think this protest is going to stop the momentum of a Reddit IPO payout you are sorely mistaken.

The main problem with the protest is that there’s no viable Reddit replacement. Back during the Digg fiasco, it was easy for everyone to jump ship to Reddit.

This whole thing is for sure an outraged mob that the internet sees plenty of times.<p>Just look at this poll for r&#x2F;indiedev: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;IndieDev&#x2F;comments&#x2F;149uqfc&#x2F;rindiedev_follow_up_vote_about_the_protest_like_a&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;IndieDev&#x2F;comments&#x2F;149uqfc&#x2F;rindiedev...</a><p>Majority of votes want it closed down, and basically all comments want to keep it open.<p>You don&#x27;t have to be a community member to vote, so this can mean only 1 thing: users from outside of r&#x2F;indiedev are voting to close it.<p>edit: if you downvote, please solve the mystery of the disconnect between votes and comments.

A tool that will automagically scrape a subreddit and convert it for transferral to mastodon or whatever.<p>We could really use that right now.

It&#x27;s already ended for several subreddits. Several are in limbo of deciding what they want to do next, so it&#x27;s not well coordinated.<p>I&#x27;ll say it again, this is the equivalent of a change.org petition.<p>Unless all of say the top 10 (maybe more) subreddits completely, indefinitely went private - this will do nothing. There&#x27;s not enough weight to it.<p>And even then, Reddit could just wait it out. People who really want X subreddit will just make a new one with a similar name. That happens regardless on almost a daily basis. Most of the major subreddits have a half-dozen alts.<p>As for alternatives to Reddit as a site, that&#x27;s not going anywhere fast. What makes Reddit Reddit is not the tech, it&#x27;s the content. Alternatives can exist that seem nearly as good on paper, but unless a sizable number of users go there, it means nothing.<p>And most users <i>do not care</i> about this API situation. It&#x27;s a very vocal, very small minority.

This may be an unresolvable problem. Or rather, more specifically: a problem solvable via load-shedding, which is what Reddit is now (tacitly) encouraging.<p>Reading between the lines: Reddit is charging money for 3rd-party integration. The Reddit community has interpreted this as greedy (or, more specifically: the mods community has interpreted this as &quot;We will have to start paying money to use services that are necessary for us to mod our subreddits&quot;). But Reddit has not backed down. What if they can&#x27;t? What if the problem is that the cost to provide the bulk-data API accesses is starting to add up for Reddit itself?<p>If so, then the problem is hosting Reddit has become too expensive and one solution is, indeed, to make it cheaper by having fewer high-traffic subreddits.

Original article link is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;tech&#x2F;reddit-blackout-date-end-protest-b2357235.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;tech&#x2F;reddit-blackout-date-end-...</a>

Just at first glance, and maybe there&#x27;s a better way to get this data (I guess not anymore with the API changes!), but if you just look at upvotes on popular posts it seems like nothing has changed in terms of how many people are engaged with the site. At a glance, I doubt the blackouts have had any impact on their DAU or concurrency. New subreddits will likely form to replace the permanently blacked out ones, but just like Twitter, all these addicts aren&#x27;t going to leave, they&#x27;ll just have a worse experience but carry on. After all, the good fight against the evil Reddit corporation... is taking place almost entirely on Reddit.

Would it be possible to create a read-only instance that was federated with every single other instance? Possibly there is already one or it&#x27;s been tried and didn&#x27;t work but the way I envision it is this -<p>You sign up to the read-only instance and can see the entire fediverse&#x27;s contents and posts and when&#x2F;if you wanted to comment, the app would let you know that you had to sign up to the instance the comment came from to post your own comment and take you that instance&#x27;s sign-up page.<p>One of the biggest turn-offs for me was finding which ones to join and&#x2F;or had content I was or might be interested in.

When do replacement subreddits start forming? &#x2F;r&#x2F;picsnew or something.

Why not just stop moderating and let the subs go to shit and naturally let people move? Why take away valuable information from everyone? Most of us don&#x27;t care about your fight with Reddit.

The biggest issue is that it doesn&#x27;t seem like these subreddits are doing anything beyond closing down.<p>Point people to an alternative. Not just in the vague direction of The Lemmiverse or Squabbles or whatever; if your sub is going dark, you should have somewhere to receive all your refugees.<p>Even better if the mods coordinate so that all subs are pointing to the same place(s).<p>Even a shared Discord would have been a big step up imo.<p>This protest was just gone about the wrong way.

Interestingly Twitter post-Musk has been great for me. Reddit not so much these days (even before the &quot;blackout&quot;).

This might be an ignorant question but why can&#x27;t Reddit &quot;force&quot; the blackouts the end? Is it because they risk losing a moderation team to manage the content? Because even if that&#x27;s true, it seems far less consequential to replace the moderators than the potential of another competitor usurping their position.

They have already started removing mods of popular subs and giving the mod powers to less disruptive users.

Can&#x27;t Reddit just un-private all the popular subreddits? Why haven&#x27;t they done this yet?

Poor move. The major subreddits will just be replaced.<p>The correct thing to do was to do a weekly blackout or similar. This would have affected the bottom line and hurt the experience of the website.<p>Instead, you are asking people to change their routines permanently. They will adjust.

1. Reddit is a private company and if you don&#x27;t like their practices then maybe you want to stop using their services. 2. There is nothing stopping people who don&#x27;t care about this to create new and similar subreddit.

New people will take over or create new subreddits as most users don&#x27;t care. Same thing with Twitter - some people leave and new people get ore engagements and fill the gap.<p>Truth is, 99% of the user base doesn&#x27;t care and hates the mods anyhow.

as a selfish, passive consumer of reddit content without partaking in even voting, i just want to enjoy the threads already out there.<p>i see the arguments and i wonder why the way to protest is not to just stop participating, rather than taking down the subreddit. if moderation is hard without the third-party apps, stop doing it?<p>to my understanding, the mods want to preserve their powers and the subreddits&#x27; integrity. so prolonging the blackout does not seem much more effective to me than the initial publicity in tech media. especially if people running the site understand the above point.

This is like the mirror opposite of how VCs burn money to create new behaviors. Eventually the protest (wasteful burning) creates new behaviors that shape the world into one&#x27;s desired image.

I’m not sure how this protest accomplished anything?<p>If people blackout subreddits and Reddit continues to chug along nicely with ad revenue isn’t it just proving that Reddit doesn’t need the users who are upset?

I think if this were really a threat to Reddit’s bottom line they wouldn’t allow subreddits to exist entirely for the purpose of coordinating the protest.

Good, it should continue until spez admits he needs to step down permanently.<p>By the way, which Lemmy instance is the HN crowd gravitating towards? Programming.dev?

Anyone else tired of all of these reddit stories? There&#x27;s like 2-3 a day at the top of HN with minimal new information, pretty annoying

Social media is one of those bizarre parts of the internet. If one social media site becomes unpopular, literally everyone will just leave and go to another one. Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, all abandoned once something &quot;cooler&quot; came around, and nobody wants to sit around on a platform none of their friends are on.<p>That said, I could really give a crap if any of these sites goes away. I&#x27;m only here for the articles, and these sites aren&#x27;t generating them, they&#x27;re just linking them.

All reddit has to do is remove the ability for subreddits to be private. Or put the ability to make subreddits private behind a paywall. Much like how Github treated private repos.<p>End of the day, reddit is going to have to figure out how many <i>users</i> are willing to boycott. Moderators are one thing. They are a minority. But if they remove the ability for &#x2F;r&#x2F;funny to be private, would users honor the protest?<p>The subs that have ended their blackouts are going on like nothing happened.

I haven&#x27;t seen people mention it really, but isn&#x27;t this all in response to ChatGPT deriving a lot of it&#x27;s content from Reddit?<p>I know that Google search has gotten so bad in the last couple years that I normally have to add &quot;reddit&quot; to the search terms to get a good result.

Virtually all the useful information about Notion is in the reddit group, which is now inaccessible. I sent a message to the group&#x27;s moderators today &quot;come on guys, this is dumb&quot; and they reported me for harassment<p>Reddit really needs to stop this.

And reddit.com is down again

I can’t take the protesters seriously. Of course they’re not a homogeneous group, but among the protesters, I’m seeing way too many pro-capitalists who are actually just middle class and who are protesting against exactly what a good capitalist would do.

I hope the admins of reddit will start taking control of the closed subs and opening them up. The content of each one of those subs has been written by the users and it makes no sense that a handful of mods are taking the content and holding it hostage by keeping the subs private. If I were a contributor to one of those subs (for example by posting answers to programming questions) I would be fuming.