How social media's biggest user protest rocked Reddit
How social media's biggest user protest rocked Reddit
A mass user protest six months ago over technical tweaks had big downstream effects, and now the ‘front page of the internet’ is changed for ever
Year-end recap from The Guardian.
In response to such critiques [concerning the decline of quality], Reddit spokesperson Rathschmidt said he did not “know of an industry benchmark for scoring content quality”.
My sides went into orbit. It's a Reddit spokesperson acting like the worst of the Reddit userbase: being passive aggressive and using appeal to ignorance, at the same time.
industry benchmark for scoring content quality
As if they can be judges in their own case.
I left Reddit forever because they were going out of their way to actively make the site worse for literally no other reason than corporate greed. Then they were unbelievably smug about it and insisted it was actually a good thing somehow. Then they tried to gloss over the whole thing by letting everyone play graffiti artist on a virtual wall for a few days, after which they pretended everything was normal again.
Fuck Reddit.
Went back recently and found that the "back" functionality was broken. Literally, going back out of a post didn't take me to the main feed, it brought me back to the new tab screen.
How does a site as big as reddit screw up basic navigation?
On the Reddit app you can’t even sort by most popular on your newsfeed, you’re stuck with just one sort for all your subs.
And how do they still not have something as basic as a preview button for posting comments? We have that here.
I haven’t been back to Reddit since June. Am I missing anything?
Yeah. You're missing bots regurgitating old posts into new ones, and ai bots responding to that. You're missing the thousands of samesies "What [movie/video game/song] do you like but everyone hates" You're missing obvious troll posts like "AITA for defending my 6yo from nearly being a rape victim?"
I have been back occasionally when searching for some specific thing, and sometimes I checked r/all and my former favorite subs. My overall observation:
- Top subs already sucked before the API changes, still looking bad. I don’t have too much comparison, as I wasn’t following them anyway, but I would be surprised if they improved
- My former favorite niche subs went downhill, with lower frequency and quality of content. I assume this is due to some mods and powerusers leaving
Overall, reddit is still useful as an occasional information source for checking public opinion/sentiment on specific things, but for me, it’s appeal as a general “time-waster” social media, where I keep scrolling for an hour and leave comments is gone.
No.
Lots of bots. Lots of reposts. Subs still on lockdown…
Reposts, outrage bait, horny bait (98% of OldSchoolCool) and whOleSomE bait
Fuck no
I still use a modded client to lurk on niche subs, but I completely avoid "all"
I feel like it’s unfortunate they didn’t highlight the open source options where the customer is not the product as their article closer, but rather of a quote about how Reddit could be such a better place. Seems to entirely miss the point.
No surprise there; it's the same mainstream media that rarely acknowledges the existence of Linux or third-party political candidates.
They did do a beginner's guide to Mastodon after Musk infested Twitter, but it does seem like they don't consider Lemmy or Mastodon to be "serious"
They also quote one user multiple times throughout the article. Well, two if you count the deleted comment.
Zero mention of how ads are now every other post. And zero mention of why everyone hates the official app. "Navigation"? What
Well I'm here now so that's what matters.
...and how six months later, it all amounted to jack squat and Reddit is back to business as usual. Exactly how Reddit correctly figured outraged internet warriors would get all worked up for a while and then lose interest.
get all worked up for a while and then lose interest
...most likely the byproduct of ever-shortening attention and memory spans.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In June, thousands of Reddit communities plunged into darkness – making their pages inaccessible to the public in a mass protest of corporate policy changes.
With rumors of an imminent IPO swirling, the company is under pressure to make money – and CEO Huffman has acknowledged as much, stating at the time of the change: “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”
Stevie Chancellor, an assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Minnesota who has studied Reddit for years, echoed these sentiments.
“It bothers me that social media companies are increasingly restricting our abilities as researchers who care deeply about these sites and who believe they can provide many benefits for people,” Chancellor said.
Reddit’s corporate overlords were ultimately unmoved by the massive blackout, and most of the thousands of dark subreddits went back to normal after a few weeks.
Users who have long been dedicated to the site, some of whom have spent countless unpaid hours working to make it better, are exhausted and resentful – and many have simply left.
The original article contains 1,685 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 88%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Wait they all said it was doing nothing when it was happening... The dream doubters... The regs... The worthless.
I feel it mostly affected long timers. The younger crowd doesn't seem to care. I have a feeling that old.reddit.com will be going away very soon.
The API change made me stop using Reddit on Mobile (I never installed their client, I also think I'm maybe on 3-4 subreddits now) and once they remove old, it will kill my use of their desktop and therefore Reddit completely.