In the last 3 days I’ve been paying attention to r/all, expecting several posts about it and…

Yeah

Wasn’t expecting the website to literally shut down nor to monopolize r/all, because 3rd party users are the minority, but I hoped for more than whatever this was.

At least there’s a silver lining, I discovered new alternatives that have healthier communities

  • Arystique@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Reddit crashed, spez came out of hibernation, 5k subs are still down according to Reddark when initially there were only 2.5k that agreed to the blackout, we also hugged kbin and Lemmy to death 4 times to my count so its not too underwhelming although I get the sentiment though as these sort of things are a slow death particularly this one as moderators use old.reddit and third party apps the absence of moderators wont be felt immediately

  • whygohomie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    For me it’s been pretty great. Lemmy and the fediverse kinda remind me of reddit circa 2007 or 2008 before the eternal September. I’m going to enjoy this for as long as it lasts.

      • ShadyGrove@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Same, I could never really get into mastodon as I never liked Twitter much, so I’m pretty happy I found out about Lemmy. I know everyone on this site has been saying this, but it feels fresh, and the fact that it’s all open source and community owned is great.

    • LemmyAtem@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      This is what I’ve been saying! Lemmy feels like what the old Reddit experience felt like and can become what reddit was supposed to be all along.

      • Cake@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Its a reference to Usenet back in 1993, its essentially when an online community has to deal with a never ending influx of new users. So think of this as Reddit before it got big/mainstream.

        • mrmanager@lemmy.today
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          1 year ago

          I was using usenet a bit back then. I actually found myself debating stuff on usenet by going to Google groups and searching for my name. Have to say, I was expecting to be embarrassed to read it all again, but it wasn’t too bad. What I wrote still makes sense to me now 30 years later. I didn’t expect that.

  • Slashzero@hakbox.social
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    1 year ago

    But on the other hand, look at how much the lemmy and kbin user base has grown. The blackouts had a significant impact in increasing lemmy adoption and usage.

    Prior to the announced blackouts, I had no idea Lemmy even existed. Now here I am running my own instance.

    Also, advertisers Reddit sells to have halted their campaigns until “next week.”

    I think while on the surface it might feel underwhelming, it had more impact than you think. And now mods are discussing extending the blackout too.

    • TheTrueLinuxDev@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      What comes after the blackout is the exodus. So in time, Reddit will decline and people would hear more about Lemmy as the network effect grows, Lemmy can come out pretty strong.

      • yesTHEalex@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Exactly. Just like Digg is still around, Reddit will be too. But it won’t ever be the same

  • RedditReject@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I didn’t go and check things out. But I gotta say, before I was an only Reddit user. Now I don’t expect to totally forgo Reddit forever, but I now know there are alternatives and it is a nicer community so far here.

    At least here I’m not getting spammed with bots and “Satan Gets Us” ads.

    • thumbtack@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      satan gets us ads?? i’ve been using apollo for years and don’t know what you’re talking about AT ALL hahahaha those sound crazy

    • Homo_Stupidus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same. I won’t let go of Reddit completely until more of the people in my favorite subs migrate and rebuild their communities here, if they do so at all. But Lemmy and Mastodon will become my new main social hubs either way.

  • VulcanSphere@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Incoming demise of third-party apps and (potential) IPO blackout should increase more interest towards fediverse link aggregator and discussion platforms…

    Fediverse is neat and waiting to be discovered.

  • DannySpud@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I’m not sure what you were expecting to see? /r/all was never going to look obviously different, there’s just too many people on Reddit. 99.99% of Redditors could leave and the remaining 0.01% would still be enough to churn out a passable couple of pages of content on /r/all.

    Plus the people who care about the situation are exactly the people who aren’t currently participating on Reddit, so it’s hardly surprising that no-one is really taking about it there.

  • dustedhands@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There are several points to be made:

    The Old Reddit, whatever it means, is long gone forever. Aaron is gone. Spez does not care. No apologies or retracting will be made and that’s it.

    Reddit must have calculated that there are enough ‘casual’ crowd (not a long timer, does not use or care about 3rd party apps or the old interface, comes for the quick laughs and watches ads) so they could withstand whatever pressure the ‘hard-core’ crowd (long timer, uses and cares about old UI and API changes, does not generate ad views in general, spends long hours in site) generates.

    Reddit must have also considered the possibility of the second crowd simply going away. I suspect Spez or the investors simply does not give a damn about it. Ad revenues are everything and there’s a loud minority that threatens to leave? Why should they care, after all? All they see is a potential for “more” growth.

    What they do and must care is the eventual entrance of a sizeable competition that eats into their revenues - less visitors mean less ad revenues. Lemmy and Fediverse, as much as I love it and will keep using it, is not that threat - yet.

    What will probably happen is that the wider internet will label the riot (as of now) a massive failure, laugh at the “bravery” of slacktivism or whatever the latest meme can be slapped at.

    Despite that, it should mark the emerging of a sustainable group of Reddit-like communities that could, in one day, become the competition Digg never thought they would face.

    No, I don’t think Lemmy is perfect. I do have an issue with the dev’s political stance. But as long as they don’t become the Spez of what was supposed to be the Federation, and the software and the protocol and the community can sustain and rule themselves, things might be alright.

    Reddit will eventually die, like many other internet websites. Perhaps not now. They won’t go out in a spectacular way the Digg v4 happened, but simply wither away like Facebook. But we have another home, and it’s all that matters.

    • LemmyAtem@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      The other truth a lot of us don’t want to face is that, in all likelihood, reddit wants the old heads to leave. We are not their demo anymore. Users with accounts in the 10-15 year range are in their thirties and forties generally. We’re not their target demo, and they think our complaining about the good ol’ days is probably keeping away some of their gullible you get demo that don’t care that their data is being mined, don’t realize when they’re talking to bots, and are used to being assaulted by ads because they don’t know any better.

  • tallwookie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    there’s room on the internet for more than one link aggregator - even if reddit returns and is bigger and badder than ever, I still wont use it. that platform is dead to me now

  • tal@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I think that it depends a great deal on what subreddits you use. I mean, I normally use only a small number, and they are all presently private or restricted, so it has an impact.

    And if you specifically want information on something coming from Google and are trying to read old posts with information about, say, how to work around some bug, then that is disruptive.

    But if you just hit Reddit looking for something interesting to look at or read, which is a legit use and how many people are going to use the thing, then I think that the impact is probably limited.

  • flatbield@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Actually been dramatic for Lemmy. Users went from a little under 50K to a little over 125K total users. I do not know how that is not dramatic. It is not about Reddit really, it is about how many of these users will stay here.

  • CorrodedCranium@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Have you ever added the word Reddit to a web search so you could find an answer online without a lot of digging?

    Stuff like that I imagine got hit hard. There will always be core communities that either stay up or are easy replicate but I imagine they’ll be losing a lot of smaller communities.

    • colin@lemmy.uninsane.org
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      1 year ago

      yes! i landed on reddit twice during the last couple days that way.

      • the NixOS sub wasn’t dark, but users were asking about that and some were dropping the lemmy link.
      • the selfhosted sub (or one adjacent to it, don’t remember) was dark, and for this query i actually could not find the info i needed written anywhere else. that was a wakeup call.
    • Espi@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      This is why subreddits shouldn’t close permanently. I wonder if its possible to leave subreddits in read-only mode? to allow anyone to find all the incredibly valuable information.

      • spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        More importantly this is why we never should have allowed private companies to monopolize our access to our own freely shared information.

  • GhostMagician@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Saying you are going on a hunger strike but then announcing you’ll only go on it for two days made it a long shot that other subs would push for longer.

    Any idea how only a 48 hour black out even got started instead of longer? Who proposed only 48 hours to make it catch on as that short of a protest.

    • Hexorg@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t put it past a Reddit admin to impersonate a mod to encourage something like that

  • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I never expected the site to just shut down and be in flames from a 2 day partial shut down. I’m pretty happy with the communities that have popped up and discussion about alternative sites.

    There’s been a heap of discussion on alternatives and without the blackout I wouldn’t of even found great sites like kbin.

    I expect that come the 1st July when third party apps stop working, we’ll get another wave of annoyance and hopefully can use that to help people flee

    I know that come the 1st if nothing has changed I’ll be purging all my old comments and deleting my accounts.

  • BlackCoffee@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The black out is still happening right now.

    There are subs who are blacking out indefinitely still.

    But I don’t know what people expected to happen after 48 hours?

    The subreddits who participated already told that it was a “warning shot” and new actions were to be taken accordingly after.

    And r/all is not Reddit.

    r/all is the tumor of Reddit itself. It is the instagram and facebook equivalant of the “feed page”. It doesn’t define what makes Reddit…Reddit.

    Again something that RIF did for me, it made r/all bearable to scroll through.

    It are the communities underneath who provide advice, information and a sense of comradery who define Reddit.

    When those communities leave, then you can fasten your seatbelts.

    Reddit and it’s userbase are not gonna survive of what is happening on r/all.

    It will be a marathon and we should probably see in a year or maybe 2 if what is happening was effective.

    • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I disagree a little. I get your point that /all is not the best of Reddit, it’s everything at once. But that’s sort of what is missing at the moment in other places, a mass aggregate of things to pick from. Also missing is a default collection of the “best” of /all, the home or popular lists, because when you start out at one of the fediverse places you have to build your own from scratch/almost scratch. Perhaps that’s better in the long run, but it is a bit overwhelming and I’ve seen posts already asking where to find lists of communities to join.

      • Redhotkurt@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I’ve seen posts already asking where to find lists of communities to join

        I have seen a lot of that, too, but I view that as a plus. I mean, you have all these people wandering around here, asking for directions to the equivalents of all their old digital gathering places, but they are engaging. Like, actually having conversations and building camaraderie and all that jazz that happens when you build a community, and that’s just awesome to see, man. Where we all come from wasn’t like that at all; smaller subreddits aside, it was like shouting into the crowd at a frickin Kid Rock concert, y’know? The atmosphere wasn’t exactly conducive to conversation. Not to say good conversation was impossible in big threads; it happened all the time. But it was always just so frickin loud and obnoxious in there, ya know?

        And now we have this new space, and its newness is forcing people to talk, and…ah fuck, I forgot where I was going with this. Um… Reddit bad! Me like Kbin! Or something. Have fun with settling in, and I mean that sincerely.

        • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Yes, I tended to stay in the niche places I had found, only going out to the big ones during major events or news because of the same reasons. Smaller crowds feels like a discussion, big ones is a shouting match with only a few hearing you. I come from the days of BBSes, and this right now is exactly the same feel, only not just local people. Now we just have to figure out how it works, and how it can be improved.

          • Redhotkurt@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Ah, ye old Bee Bee Esses. Sadly, I missed the boat on that…I was definitely old enough and technically capable, but I didn’t know they existed. I hear you though, my first real exposure to the internet was Gopher! You could find all sorts of stuff out there, like in people’s shared directories, but more importantly, MUDs! Damn near flunked out of college because of them. Fun times, though! The internet was so much smaller back then.

      • BlackCoffee@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I see your point but I think you misunderstand me a bit.

        r/all is somewhat of a “front”, it can show that the place is vibrant and that there is something to do and something to scroll through.

        But for example I never saw anything from r/mealprepsunday on my r/all and when I had reddit it actually was an subreddit that I was subscribed to and used frequently.

        If the subreddit above gives me a reason to stay on reddit and it would dissapear then an vibrant r/all isn’t an incentive for me to stay.

        Can you see where I am coming from?

        a page like r/all has it’s use. It can reel people in and give direction but it will not be the reason people will stay.

        • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I get it. The reason will be community and common bonds, it’s just finding each other that is the struggle right now, and how to bets build things anew and to last. Lots of development and growing pains to come, but it’s a nice change I think, even if it takes a bit to get mature and pull more people.