The Reddit Blackout Is Breaking Reddit
The Reddit Blackout Is Breaking Reddit
When the user revolt ends—if it ever does—Reddit’s community won’t ever be the same.
![[WIRED] The Reddit Blackout Is Breaking Reddit](https://radiation.party/pictrs/image/df8777a3-aae4-4f08-aa70-993eae9e11ad.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=196)
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Mir offers another business metaphor for the tension on Reddit: “If you have a really good music venue, but you break relations with every notable artist, you’re not going to be a very successful venue. You need to really prioritize the needs of the folks providing the value on your platform.”
Honestly this sums it up pretty well
Additionally, it's not even that good of a venue.
I was talking to my friend about this and asked if he could point out a single improvement that reddit has made in the last decade that hadn't been about monetization, since I exclusively use old.reddit.com and third party apps, I certainly couldn't. We couldn't come up with anything...
There's nothing. It's been slowly getting more and more shitty for years. It's just been happening so slowly that there wasn't a breaking point where most of us left until now.
I've been casually looking for an alternative for years, because the content has gotten so low effort. There just hasn't been any good alternatives. I tried Voat, but that got over run with racists and Trumpers almost from the jump.
Lemmy is the first thing I've found that seems half decent and it needs to triple ot quadruple it's engaged user base to really have a shot. Too many posts with no comments or very few. What made reddit special was the comments and interactions. I have hope lemmy can get there, it just needs way more users to do so.
What made reddit special was the comments and interactions.
And in the past few months, I found several instances of karma farmers copying a good comment that was low in the thread and pasting it as a reply to one of the top comments to get visibility and upvotes. Idk if it was bots or people with no life, but I bet shit like that was happening much more than we realized, vastly padding engagement. Personally, I'd rather have a smaller and more authentic community here than disingenuous reposts, shitposts, botposts, trollposts, and general farming like what many subreddits became. I like that this platform seems to have much more thoughtful engagement between users who feel more like people than some cardboard cutout. I think we all can learn and grow as people by sincerely engaging in real discourse in the serious communities, and have interesting OC in less serious ones that are just about memes or storytelling or whatever.
I agree that interactions are special, and I agree that Lemmy needs more users, but I'm wary of bloating the userbase and packing garbage into here. I'd like to see a little growth, and give lurkers a reason to engage in an inviting community that isn't hostile.
Reddit is inauthentic. Nothing but censorship everywhere. Nobody can say anything if you're a real person and not a bot. I made a comment comparing new and old Star Trek in a Star Trek community, and my comments got deleted and I got a punishment ban for...some reason. I asked a question about others' experiences with gay businesses under /AskGayBros and my question along with the thread was deleted, and I was banned for 3 days...for conducting illegal transactions. Those are just two examples, but there are plenty more. I pretty much know that if I post something on Reddit - no matter where and no matter what I say, it will get deleted and I will get banned for 3 days. No matter what. Nobody can say anything over there. I don't think there are any real people posting, just bots. Because you have to watch what you say and even then, you will likely get deleted.
If I post ever my account is instantly permanently banned and I still don't know why. AITA mods are incels
I agree. Lemmy is really promising but not quite at the critical mass yet. I've been trying to post more myself but we need consistentand sustained activity.
I think we’re gonna get there fairly soon. Lemmy.world only started on June 1. I joined a week ago when there were 1-2k users. Now there’s almost 30k.
I really hope so, but it will taper off at some point.
I think it depends on the user experience. If it’s good, then people will use it. That depends on people saying that it’s good to each other.
I bet reddit corporate is shitting bricks over chatgpt. They want to get their IPO and be able to sell their shares before AI upends online discussion. AI Bots are going to be a big deal, not in a good way.
Fully agree. I used to slap "reddit" on Google searches because that seemed to be the only way to find human generated input. No longer.
Its a better analogy that Reddit pissed off the roadies, ushers, ticket takers, and other crew because they wanted 300% of the concession stand's gross take.
It's more that they just treat every artist with a lot of disrespect, but they know they're the only big venue and there's a basically endless supply of artists that wants to play there.
However, there's smaller venues that will host these artists and treat them with respect. If it gets too bad, these small venues will grow and gain fame. Ultimately becoming a viable competitor to the original venue.
The comparison doesn't hold exactly, because the nature of social media makes it so that the advantages of scale are exponential (the more users your platform has, the more attractive it becomes). However, federation breaks this. Which is why I believe this is the way to go. It's probably not a coincidence that the reddit-style Lemmy has seemingly the most potential. The appeal of joining is not really dependent on famous accounts (e.g. twitter) or having friends that already joined (e.g. Facebook or Instagram). People move regardless, build communities and grow the platform.