1y ago

The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.

gizmodo.com The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.

The last major holdouts in the protest against Reddit’s API pricing relented, abandoning the so-called “John Oliver rules” which only allowed posts featuring the TV host. It's the official end of the battle. The Reddit protest is over, and Reddit won.

The last major holdouts in the protest against Reddit’s API pricing relented, abandoning the so-called “John Oliver rules” which only allowed posts featuring the TV host. The article describes it as "the official end of the battle," which seems an overstatement to me, but it's the certainly the end of the initial phase.

Did Reddit win? Time will tell!

Reddit @lemmy.world

The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.

gizmodo.com /reddit-news-blackout-protest-is-finally-over-reddit-won-1850707509

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40 comments

the conversation should never be about reddit losing, it's about the users winning. And I personally feel like I won. I showed my support for Christian and 3rd party apps, I abondoned ship quickly and I've found a new home on the fediverse.
I also stopped using facebook and instagram 18 months ago. They both still exist, but I won. I'm happier now without it. Job done.
- This is the mindset people should be having. Reddit is gonna be fine regardless of all this, and time will only tell if the Fediverse becomes big enough to be a competitor as a social media platform.
  Truthfully, I was on the fence of leaving Reddit because of how much I didn’t like the hivemind there on the majority of subs. I still go on there for my niche and specific communities that aren’t on the Fediverse, but I pretty much just lurk there once every so often instead of actively participate - I instead actively participate on the Fediverse because the community is genuinely waaaaaay better than Reddit’s community ever was, even with the FOSS app gatekeepers here.
- the conversation should never be about reddit losing, it's about the users winning.
  if only. Lotta people really thought they could make reddit worried and that if they rebelled enough they could fix reddit. If it wasn't going to work after that 2-3 day blackout, it wasn't going to work. The mod in that article said it best:
  “More than a month has passed, and as things on the internet go, the passion for the protest has waned and people’s attention has shifted to other things,” an r/aww moderator wrote in a post about the rule change.
  And yeah, attention span on the internet is low. If you can't fix, it's best to start rebuilding what you want elsewhere. The best time for a backup community was 5 years ago; the second best time is now, so we don't have this problem of "where do we go from Reddit?" in another 5 years. If more people had the courage to leave, it may have ended in a better protest than these attempts to ruin the IPO or whatever.
  Better to play the long game for now. This won't be the last drama, and it's simply better to make sure any jank is fixed for the next time people get frustrated and seek greener pastures. That slow burn is how we create a proper platform.
- Well put
- This

If by won you mean cause controversy, drive away some users, and allienate most of those staying than Mission Accomplished. Nothing positive happened for Reddit out of this.
- Really? Reddit retained about 98% of its users and gained full control of the app market. I'd call that a success for them. They got exactly what they wanted.
  
  They solidified the establishment of competing services (kbin, Lemmy). Many of us would've never even considered using them otherwise. It may not have hurt them a ton in the short term, but they've helped set up their competition.
  
  The users aren't the value in reddit, it's the content creators and savvy community members that respond to questions and leave useful content in their own right. Reddit lost a number of those, and those users are forming the nucleus of their demise.
  
  I'd also say the brand reputation has taken a pretty decent hit with their awful handling of the situation. With an upcoming IPO you think they would have handled it carefully but they just seemingly YOLO'd it

I don't believe it's really over.
Reddark is still reporting 1839 subs are dark.
At least one 1+ million sub is still private, and at least one 10+ million sub is still restricted.
I'm surprised though - I've heard arguments that John Oliver was okay with reddit admins, so why the pushback now to drop it?

I used to spend hours per day on Reddit. Now I visit once or twice a month, read-only. My subscription is canceled and all my posts/comments deleted. My "front page of the Internet" is now here.
- Same here.
  I’m also using forums again more broadly.

I think Reddit likely lost a lot of users who were exclusively Reddit users and didn’t use other social media. That might not amount to that many people total, but it does mean advertisers lose one of the more important demographics Reddit had to offer (since they can target the others more efficiently on other platforms anyway). Hope it still hurts their bottom line.
- I quit using it, but I was using a third party app that didn't have ads. However, I still insist that there is a way for someone to buy accounts, votes, and even entire subreddits directly from Reddit. The way reddit and other websites turn a blind eye to how many fake accounts they have just doesn't make sense to me.
  
  The way reddit and other websites turn a blind eye to how many fake accounts they have just doesn’t make sense to me.
  Traffic numbers by bot accounts boost "user engagement" metrics. If they cracked down on bots the line would go down and the line must go up.

Funny thing is that those of who left aren't there anymore to comment that we did leave... So anyone who is still there is probably looking at the others who stayed and saying "See?! The protest didn't work because we are still here!"

I'm no big city doctor, but it seems like the people who were strong enough to decide to pack up and leave won.
- Exactly, I'd say we won! Until reddit sat on it's own nuts I hadn't even heard of Lemmy and now I'm a happy daily user!

Tbh, reddit did win. They’re set to become a highly commercialized social media platform, focused on maximizing engagement through generic content.
They may lose dedicated eccentrics looking for a welcoming place to geek out over shit in their niche community. They’ll also lose users who value long in-depth discussions with complete internet strangers.
But, Reddit doesn’t want our need those people. As long as they have the generic subs (like r/funny, r/pics) and the outrage groups (like r/aita, r/publicfreakout), they’ll keep getting views and sweet sweet ad money. And that’s all Reddit cares about.
- Everything you described in the second paragraph is exactly why appending site:reddit.com is a thing, it's a source of genuine discussion of products and expertise. That is what gives Reddit its SEO power in search engines and if those communities go, Reddit doesn't have much to fall back on. Meme level fluff can be replicated anywhere.

Is it over? I mean, reddit definitely got what they wanted. Bootlicking power mods got control of more subreddits, bots are running rampant and pumping up the numbers, and the API change went through with a couple people willing to pay the exorbitant cost.
But the quality of content has dropped dramatically and I've seen a lot of people take notice. It's constant reposts, one popular post will hit like 5-10 subs at the same time. And it's mostly rate me shit and fake aita type posts. Reddit being boring will kill permanently, no protest needed.

Reddit was always going to rebound eventually, it's got a massive userbase and can pull through a fair number of people leaving. I'm pretty happy with the amount of free time I've won back since I've stopped doom scrolling Reddit.
Pretty keen to see how the fediverse improves over time.
- I'll still likely get answers to questions by including "Reddit" in my search engine searches, but for general community posting consumption I've been really pleased with Lemmy. I haven't missed Reddit and avoiding ads is 100% worth it for me. It feels like using Gimp instead of Photoshop.

I tend to agree with the sentiment here that we are all the winners for having discovered and are still using kbin, a platform that most wouldn't have even known about before Reddit's shenanigans. Though, I want to point out that total user activity on kbin is down 7,000 people since about 10 days ago...
It seems people are either going back, or are abandoning for Lemmy because of their abundance of mobile apps. Artemis is a decent kbin app, and is almost ready to release for public beta now that the API is complete (just waiting on integration) - though I fear it needs to happen sooner than later if we are to retain the userbase.
- I looked at Kbin initially but the lack of any mobile apps sent me straight to Lemmy.
  
  Yeah. that is probably true for many since we all came looking for an alternative due to the loss of our mobile app... Lemmy is a little more mature since it's been around a lot longer, so it already had an API to build on. @Rideranton has been working on an API and has several pending pull requests to implement one. I truly believe kbin is a better software so I'm hoping that the API sparks more dev interest.
  
  Artemis is now available (Play Store link), but I completely agree that the lack of maturity in apps make Kbin a less compelling offer. It's still my usualy way to browse from my desktop though.

Reddit has being a dead man walking for a while now. Full of zombie bot reposters and zombie scrollers.
It's a win for me now that there are good alternatives in lemmy and kbin

I came over on the great digg migration and never returned after rexit. Never will. The name is tainted.

This is why your boycotts don't have an end date...

i won i don't go there anymore. you can win just like me

From my point reddit was already ruined for years and it was becoming even worse. I often had to scroll quite a bit to get past the obnoxious US politics posts, not to mention the endless stream of low effort pictures. Just because something is popular doesn't make it good.
- I often had to scroll quite a bit to get past the obnoxious US politics posts
  And the posts that had nothing to do with the US or politics would usually descend into a US centric shit fight anyway.
  Any post involving firearms anywhere in the world...flooded with US 2A nut jobs.
  etc
  etc

@jdp23 Reddit lost me.

You can't fight a fire from inside the house.

The media has declared reddit the winner multiple times since the protest started.
Fuck the media. There are still 1800+ restricted subreddits.
https://reddark.untone.uk
Who won? Anybody who realized that reddit was commodifying your posts, comments, and contributions and left that shitshack.

It was a good idea at first. Not enough subreddits participated or not a long enough time to make a difference.

"Winning"
lol

Creating a viable competitor is never a victory from a business perspective.

40 comments