this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Technology

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[–] Xandolas@beehaw.org 80 points 1 year ago (15 children)

The loss of the forum like help threads will probably be the most impactful thing. We can build communities elsewhere, but the 8 years old post about a problem only you and the OP is having is super valuable.

[–] cstine@lemmy.uncomfortable.business 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'd like to add a comment here just to add some visibility:

If you have an uncapped/unlimited internet connection, you should seriously consider running the Archive Team Warrior

They're heavily involved in scraping and archiving data from all over the internet (and, recently, most/all of Reddit) so that it's preserved, regardless of what happens to the underlying platform.

I run it on my home server in docker, but they have a lot of options for doing so and it basically requires just running it, and then forgetting it exists.

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[–] uthredii@beehaw.org 18 points 1 year ago

There was talk of someone populating a Lemmy instance with reddit data.

There is a lot of reddit data on a torrent somewhere aparrently.

[–] exhuma@beehaw.org 17 points 1 year ago

Not only that. But if Reddit really suffers badly from this it might also have an impact on small communities. It's really simple to set up a community on any topic on there. And it's currently mainstream enough that you can get people on-boarded pretty quickly.

Larger communities may find a new home elsewhere. But for smaller ones that feels much more difficult.

Thanks to last week's fiasco I discovered the fediverse and hopefully others too. I just hope it's intuitive enough that people don't get scared away.

[–] nhgeek@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago

I feel that. I posted about a Plex problem 2 years ago and the subsequent solution I worked out. Every once in a while I still get someone replying to that and thanking me.

[–] gorogorochan@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's a problem with every non-physical storage of data/knowledge - it's ephemeral and can disappear anytime

[–] exhuma@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From time to time I do think about the Carrington Event and wonder what would happen if something like that happened in today's time. Because of exactly the reason of how reliant we are on electronical data.

How resilient is our infrastructure really? Especially satellites used for communication. I assume that most critical cold-storage is mostly fine. But all the small personal electronic devices will probably be toast.

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[–] woodenskewer@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's the thing that bothered me the most about deleting my account. I had multiple people say thanks for posting solutions and problems with solutions I had, even years later. Not specific to iphone but in general.

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[–] Browning@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It's a shame promoting Lemmy isn't part of the blackout

[–] bit0fun@beehaw.org 43 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It's been attempted in various spots, but either reddit itself removes the mentions or edits them out

[–] Riyria@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah the fact that they actually banned the kbinmigration subreddit is absolutely WILD to me. I made a comment on a post a couple of weeks ago now about how this wouldn't change anything, and a few people would leave like the last time they did something that made people upset, but most people would stay. After the ama and everything last week though I've completely changed my mind, I was wrong.

[–] Dave 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You weren't wrong. Reddit has over 400 million monthly users. A tiny percentage of that will move to Lemmy. Less than 1% this year is my guess.

That's a huge number to move to Lemmy, but to reddit it probably represents nothing much.

[–] Sinfaen@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is that really something that's been happening?

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[–] worfamerryman@beehaw.org 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I am so happy to see people coming together and moving away from commercial platforms. It feels silly to say it, but it seems like it is a step in the right direction. It is technological and social progress. Decentralization is a really fantastic tool and it seems to be a system that cannot be controlled internally or externally. Mastodon has been great, and I expect Lemmy to be even better.

To anyone reading, if you have any extra cash, look into making a small donation to your instance. The people running it are not just putting in time, they are likely paying hundreds a month to rent server space.

[–] sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Money is going to be the deciding factor in the long-term health of the entire Fediverse. More users on each instance means more costs -- and to some extent, even users not on that instance will contribute to cost. That money has to come from somewhere, and eventually, if the Fediverse is going to scale up to even a sizable portion of what we're moving away from, we need real, consistent money involved. It doesn't have to be full VC corpo junk, but eventually, some instances are going to need a team.

I want this stuff to work great, but expecting the people running it to pay the cost forever isn't sustainable.

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[–] meatysoup@sh.itjust.works 40 points 1 year ago

Good. I’m done with reddit forever.

[–] ivlarac@beehaw.org 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is great, many more subreddits should do something like this. But in the end, it’s us, the end users, who should do the actual protesting since it’s us who have the power to change things. I’ve decided not to give them any kind of traffic from now on. Me, by myself, won’t make much impact but if more of us did the same they’d be force to change their strategy.

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[–] confusedwiseman@beehaw.org 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I suppose many there are also affected by the Apollo debacle too. It just makes that pill even more bitter.

[–] djidane535@kbin.social 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think so. With the end of Apollo, I have no other way to access Reddit except their mobile website or their app. I have the feeling it’s too late now, Apollo is unlikely to come back, regardless of what Reddit does. Now, I just hope kbin / lemmy will grow enough to become a good alternative (still learning how everything works ^^).

[–] GioryJalino@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yes, Kbin/lemmy needs enough good and original content to flourish. What I currently miss is the niche subreddits on lemmy. For specific brands or particular products or hobbies it's easy to find a community on reddit, but there are only a few already available on lemmy.

[–] djidane535@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago (5 children)

You are absolutely right. Reddit was so big that it was possible find a community for everything. I don't expect kbin/lemmy to get there anytime soon unfortunately.

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[–] mobyduck648@beehaw.org 18 points 1 year ago

Even if they reversed the API changes, sacked Spez, reinstated i.reddit.com, ate an entire bucket of humble pie, and personally paid me £100 I'd still prefer the vibe here to be honest. It's way less angry and more authentic here.

[–] araquen@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

Reddit is already starting to shut down mobile browser access. They’re doing it in waves.

[–] abff08f4813c@kbin.social 32 points 1 year ago (7 children)

One thing Reddit did right was that it kept your content. Even if you were permanently suspended, you could go in and view your posts. This differs from, e.g., Google where you see people lose all their life's memories because they got locked out of their account.

I imagine that there are many people who don't even have a Reddit account, but casually browse it just because there's so much info in there.

But the users own that content, not Reddit. The best thing to do is to migrate by deleting your content from Reddit and moving it elsewhere. Once a critical mass of content is lost, Reddit's value drops tremendously.

Who would care when Reddit admins take over and forcibly reopen r/iPhone, if there are no posts left in the subreddit?

[–] eddythompson@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

the best thing to do is to migrate by deleting your content from Reddit and moving it elsewhere

That’s not really realistic for the type of content that is Reddit. It’s not like blogs or videos or photos that the majority of people have on Reddit. Most people’s “content” on Reddit are bookmarks/links or comments in a discussion threads.

It doesn’t make sense to just re-share a dump of all the links you once shared on Reddit even if you have a list of them.

It also doesn’t make sense to re-share comments out of their discussion context else where.

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[–] johnthedoe@kbin.social 28 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I hope there's enough information there for refugees to arrive here safely

[–] NotSteve_@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I own a subreddit that I'll admit that it isn't the largest but I'm going to be putting a link to the new corresponding Kbin magazine in the private message. I'm hoping other subreddits will as well

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[–] noodlejetski@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

the only thing that's worrying me about the subreddits closing indefinitely (even though I wholeheartedly support it), is that people are going to use even more closed off, unsearchable platforms as alternatives. /r/unixporn mods say their only "official" alternative is currently their Discord "server".

edit: the message on /r/iPhone also directs people to their Discord. sigh.

[–] heartburn@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I second this. For a while, adding "reddit" to every google search gives generally better results. Now all this information will become hidden in unsearchable places.

[–] BlackCoffee@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Which is a good case against the centralization of information.

I have been way to comfortable just using Reddit as my source of information with the usage of 3rd party applications.

What if Reddit puts the subreddits behind a paywall?

What if Reddit is gonna demand that every subreddit generates an x percentage revenue just to exist?

What Reddit has shown with their actions is that they are gonna put monetization of their userbase first and user experience somewhere in 10th.

The possibilities to screw the users in regards of the information they consume is...worrying.

It will end up the same as 9gag did. Some weird facebook/instagram/tik tok clone used for people who have an attention span of 60 seconds.

[–] zekiz@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

no it's not, because now you just can't really find this kind of information unless you know which discord server you have to join. STOP USING DISCORD AS A WIKI

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like the "indefinite" part. Let it stay dark forever and have people make iphone subs in the lemmyverse. The Reddit is dead, long live the Lemmy!

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[–] Silviecat44@vlemmy.net 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I hope that this protest does something

[–] myk@beehaw.org 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It will. It will make the mods and the power-users realise that Reddit don’t care and won’t change course. Then it’s up to them.

[–] CheshireSnake@lemmy.one 18 points 1 year ago

I completely agree. Reddit has shown no indication of backing down. They will just wait for it to finish if the lockdown is as short as ~48 hours. If a major/big sub goes on lockdown indefinitely, they'll open it and replace the mods. I'm pretty sure there are tons of people out there willing to mod a big subreddit like r/videos for one reason or another. The reddit of the digg migration era is gone. It's just corporate reddit now.

[–] Chog@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't give it much time until they start replacing the mods if the blackout drags on for long.

[–] Jitterydork@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes, I agree. It would be logical to assume they're confidentially seeking out new prospective moderators behind the scenes at this moment ready to take over.

[–] non_anomalous_penis@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It will be like having anti popes. if I were have to gone on a long vacation - like 5 or 6 weeks, I am guessing when I returned I might not even notice anything different for a while if I didnt use an app to access. I'm sure they will ban anyone who mentions the great schism.

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[–] tomdenhagen@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m sceptical. If most subs only protest for 2 days, then all Reddit has to do is weather the storm and then continue on. The only way I see it having any further impact is if many large subs black out indefinitely.

Reddit would either be forced to make concessions or escalate even further by removing the mods of the protesting subs and forcing it open again. That would be a further sign of bad faith and really piss off all these mods that spent up to a decade doing moderation for free.

[–] Kris@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

You make it sound like Reddit does not have the option to turn the subreddit on and replace the mods. However, the users who actually really do care about reddit will leave and will have to take their content with them.

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[–] StringTheory@beehaw.org 18 points 1 year ago (13 children)

!iphone@lemmy.ml is one offspring

[–] ghostalmedia@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m worried that all the new large communities are hosted at a single instance, lemmy.ml

[–] MadCybertist@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Really 3 big players right now.

https://browse.feddit.de/

Lemmy.ml Lemmy.world Beehaw

Those 3 servers are like currently 70% of Lemmy traffic.

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[–] Provenscroll@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago

I'm glad some subreddits are going dark for good, not only will this actually hurt reddit as a company but also it will lead to some people switching to alternatives like lemmy which is always a good thing.

[–] unfazedbeaver@lemmy.one 9 points 1 year ago

Good. Only way users and communities can be heard is to actively shutdown until further notice

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