Following Reddit announcing its new API costs for developers that are killing third-party apps like Apollo, one of the most...
  • Xandolas@beehaw.org
    78·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • nhgeek@beehaw.org
      18·
      2 years 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.

    • cstine@lemmy.uncomfortable.business
      18·
      2 years ago

      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.

    • uthredii@beehaw.org
      14·
      2 years 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.

    • woodenskewer@beehaw.org
      12·
      2 years ago

      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. Not specific to iphone but in general.

    • exhuma@beehaw.org
      12·
      2 years 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.

      • herzberd@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 years ago

        But for smaller ones that feels much more difficult.

        I guess that’s kind of the beauty of federation here. If somebody is brought in for other stuff, they’ll likely see when their hobby/niche/etc community becomes a thing because surely somebody else will subscribe to something on that server

    • gorogorochan@lemmy.world
      10·
      2 years ago

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

      • exhuma@beehaw.org
        6·
        2 years ago

        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.

        • SterlingVapor@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 years ago

          Well, not only did this very nearly happen (a comparable size emission missed us by something like 12 hours), we have a pretty good idea what would happen.

          Fires. Fires everywhere. Very little of our infrastructure is shielded, so basically everything would go offline… But that almost pales in comparison to the sheer number of fires started simultaneously

          We do have hardened installations and a system to give a short warning to places in a position to unplug and protect certain equipment, but that doesn’t matter much in the short term because everything is on fire, and the air is filled with the toxic petrochemical gases we’ve been convinced to build everything out of.

          Whoever survives the early days would theoretically be in a position to rebuild thanks to organizations like the US military - the knowledge of how is protected and there are plans to restore order. Most basic military hardware would be usable with maintenance (unlike most vehicles which rely on a bunch of microchips that don’t appreciate EMPs, and also fire)

      • pbjamm@beehaw.org
        2·
        2 years ago

        Physical media can suffer the same fate, but not usually at the hands of a single entity.

    • jimmyjoners@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 years ago

      My hope is that things like Chat GPT can now become that source. I can only assume all those historical posts were used as training data.

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
        22·
        2 years ago

        ChatGPT doesn’t understand the things it says. It shouldn’t be treated as a source of truth. It can be tripped up by nuance, or by statements which require an understanding of the concept of syntax. For example, if you ask it what is the longest 5-letter word, it will confidently give you an answer.

        • femboy_link.mp4@beehaw.org
          10·
          2 years ago

          I wish more people understood this. So many people out there are taking what ChatGPT spits out as gospel when it’s actually very susceptible to manipulation and misinformation.

        • Eheran@lemmy.fmhy.ml
          2·
          2 years ago

          Here is what GPT 4 says: Me: What is the longest 5-letter word? ChatGPT:

          The concept of the “longest” 5-letter word can be interpreted in two ways:

          1. If “longest” refers to the physical length of the word (how it is pronounced), then it can vary based on different accents and languages. However, in English, five-letter words with a large number of syllables such as “queue” or “eerie” might be considered.

          2. If “longest” refers to the word with the most definitions or uses, it’s hard to definitively state which 5-letter word that would be, but “round” and “sound” are examples of five-letter words with a large number of definitions and uses.

          It’s also important to note that in English, all 5-letter words contain the same number of letters and would, therefore, have the same length if written in the same font and size.

        • ddh@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Agreed. However, often when trying to fix something you have run out of options and just want new ideas. In my experience, LLMs are very good for that.

      • gdbjr@beehaw.org
        3·
        2 years ago

        I made sure to delete all my Reddit data before deleting my account. Not getting anything from me.

    • milkytoast@beehaw.org
      2·
      2 years ago

      yep. this is why i might still occasionally use reddit after this. r/askmechanics was so incredibly useful

    • bit0fun@beehaw.org
      36·
      2 years ago

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

      • Riyria@lemmy.ml
        23·
        2 years ago

        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@lemmy.nz
          12·
          2 years 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.

    • LlamaSutra@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      2 years ago

      I’ve been promoting Lemmy for the past few days and have gotten my comments removed and downvoted by people claiming that Lemmy was a far left recruiting ground for domestic terrorism lmao

      • Cliffjumper@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 years ago

        I know, right?

        I’m an INTERNATIONAL terrorist, thank you very much.

        I’m not about to destroy my OWN country… my government at least does THAT for me!

        😄

  • worfamerryman@beehaw.org
    37·
    2 years ago

    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
      11·
      2 years ago

      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.

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        2 years ago

        People are usually more willing to spend some money on community projects such as an instance they like. This could be a financially viable way to fund online platforms like Lemmy.

        • sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org
          3·
          2 years ago

          Donations are not consistent, that’s the big trouble. Especially after a big exodus, people may move, and they may donate for a while, but those donations will typically drop off eventually, even if they keep using it.

          You’re right that people are usually more willing to spend on community projects, and that’s largely true - but watching open-source software as long as I have, I know that donations rarely cover things in the long-term, and most of the projects that are funded well enough to have a team behind them are actually funded by corporations. Heck, even getting one person able to run an instance as a full time gig is going to be difficult without it turning corporate.

          • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
            0·
            2 years ago

            Yeah, consistency is a problem. Perhaps we should implement some sort of Lemmy Coin solution that would allow people to show their appreciation to quality posts and support the instance at the same time.

            • sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org
              1·
              2 years ago

              Federation frustrates that, as well – for cross-instance posts, what’s the split? 50/50? What if one instance is charging $1 per coin, but another is $0.50 per coin, what price becomes paid? How will you even ensure that the split can occur reliably? Heck, how will you handle trying to do that transfer internationally?

              I know I’m probably coming across as a downer, but without answering these questions, we don’t have a solution, we just have a patchwork of ideas that people worked on and implemented without every providing anything useful. I want this to succeed, desperately. I’m tired of corporate interests ruining everything – but we can’t succeed at this without figuring out these long-term issues.

              • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
                1·
                2 years ago

                Hmm… Those are valid points.

                I can’t come up with anything brilliant, so I’ll just give you my mediocre idea instead. Let’s say there’s an “award foundation“ where you can buy “Lemmy gold” and other awards for a fixed piece. When you find a post worthy of the award, the value is spread among everyone involved. One third to your instance, one third to the instance of the recipient of the award and one third to the instance where the conversion was had.

      • mrchuckles@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 years ago

        would it be a good idea to have comment/post rewards like gold/silver etc. where the proceeds go to help fund instances?

        • sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org
          5·
          2 years ago

          So… it could work. But that’s not going to be consistent, and the federated nature of things like Lemmy makes for some weird structures. Can you give rewards across instances? What if one instance has “gold” at $1, but another has it at $0.50?

            • sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org
              3·
              2 years ago

              That starts running into a few issues. It’s high friction (“You mean I have to enter card details every time I want to do this on someone from a new instance?”) and it has some serious risk of disproportionate impacts.

      • JoeKrogan@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        They could add the sites as brave creators and get some revenue from that.Its depends on the number of users but anything helps

        • sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org
          5·
          2 years ago

          Unfortunately, the way federation works means that a 100 user instance that never grows past that can still see cost increases from the ecosystem growing. The number of network effects involved in all of this makes planning for meaningful sustainability a lot more difficult.

    • djidane535@kbin.social
      28·
      2 years ago

      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
        21·
        2 years ago

        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
          7·
          2 years ago

          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.

          • ShutYourPieHole@sh.itjust.works
            5·
            2 years ago

            Even if a community exists for the content you seek, how do you determine the one that is going to grow? There could be a different version of that community on every server, which is the area I’m struggling to find content. Join every alternative is an option.

            Unless there is something I’m missing. Quite possible as the federated approach is all new to me.

            • BetaAssimilation@beehaw.org
              5·
              2 years ago

              I don’t expect the duplication to be too much more of an issue here than Reddit. The only big difference is that duplicate forums can have the same name here. I mean, how many meme subreddits were there? At least for me on beehaw, when I search for communities it shows how many subscribers there are. In this period of rapid growth, it’s certainly a bit of a crapshoot and you may need to regularly search communities to see if any take off, but I expect in the next month or so, some communities will become large and their duplicates will pretty clearly die, just like with Reddit.

              • ShutYourPieHole@sh.itjust.works
                2·
                2 years ago

                That was my thought as well, or assumption. I’m new here so it will take a bit to figure out the duplication model and what floats to the top, but I’m in for the adventure. =)

                • BetaAssimilation@beehaw.org
                  3·
                  2 years ago

                  Yep! I’m honestly loving the chaos. It’s been really interesting to see all of the organic growth happening at such a visible rate.

          • nhgeek@beehaw.org
            2·
            2 years ago

            I agree, this is a big value of reddit. It’s only solved with mass migration, about which I am skeptical. We also need more niche communities as folks arrive.

        • jteb22@lemmy.world
          6·
          2 years ago

          What is stopping you from creating lems for things that you’re passionate about? We have an opportunity here to create a true alternative to reddit, and the more cozy we make it for r/efugees, the better the transition can eventually go!

      • mobyduck648@beehaw.org
        17·
        2 years 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
        3·
        2 years ago

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

  • ivlarac@beehaw.org
    32·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • boonhet@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      Subreddits doing this will have a much bigger impact than end users, because large masses of people will never do anything inconvenient on their own. This is the reason why capitalism doesn’t self-regulate for better environmental standards, for an example. The whole personal carbon footprint thing was invented by an oil company to shame individuals so we can blame eachother for our consumption instead of regulating energy companies. Nothing changes if we rely on everyone to do the right thing without any external motivations (be it environmental regulations or closing subreddits).

    • NotSteve_@kbin.social
      16·
      2 years ago

      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

    • minode
      2·
      2 years ago

      There have been some privacy concerns regarding Lenny’s implementation (deleted posts and whatnot). Which has kept some users second-guessing the change. I have tried aether before coming here, but sadly, there are not enough people there.

      I just hope that the community from Reddit doesn’t spread itself out too much :(

      • Helix@beehaw.orgEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        I just hope that the community from Reddit doesn’t spread itself out too much :(

        Why? Decentralisation is a good thing.

        • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          2 years ago

          Decentralisation is a good thing.

          Only if the community and information don’t get fragmented into smaller and smaller hard to find places.

          • Helix@beehaw.orgEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            You mean, like Discord? There’s decentralisation which works (Fediverse) and decentralisation which doesn’t (gated/closed off communities like Discord).

        • minodeEnglish
          2·
          2 years ago

          It’s important for resiliency, but I’m afraid that many communities will loose a lot of value when they don’t agree on a place to go

          • Helix@beehaw.orgEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            what’s the value about? Maybe they can form multiple communities? Not everything has to be connected. It’s also OK to be disconnected or spread out as a community from time to time.

    • setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org
      1·
      2 years ago

      It’s more complicated than signing up for Reddit, but really just by 1 degree.

      I’m lurking Reddit a bit on Apollo still and see so many posts that have “Grandma trying to figure out a smartphone” energy making it seem like some insurmountable task, or complaining about the questionnaire without stopping to realize what a tidal wave of signups is happening.

      Perhaps it’s for the best. If people can’t be bothered for something so simple, they might not be good fits anyways.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    27·
    2 years ago

    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!

  • noodlejetski@kbin.social
    27·
    2 years ago

    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
      15·
      2 years ago

      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
        14·
        2 years ago

        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.

      • Jarmer@kbin.social
        4·
        2 years ago

        Also what happens when a ton of users delete their content, as I just did yesterday. I participated in quite a bit of tech support chat on reddit, and now all of that is gone.

    • Enfield [he/him]@beehaw.org
      4·
      2 years ago

      Not that I think it would happen, but I wonder if Discord could theoretically make publicly discoverable servers directly visible and indexable online?

      Discord already has and maintains a web accessed variant of the platform. It’d require some UI for users not logged in and users not registered with a particular publicly visible server, but I’d wager it’s possible. Probably a nightmare to revamp the back-end to make it possible, but possible. It’d kinda feel like how Twitter is indexed and publicly searchable, but platform registration is required to participate, with Discord having the extra layer of server membership on top of a platform account.

      It’d probably do nothing about servers that fall in a sort of visibility limbo, though, like servers that are significantly populated but invisible to Discord’s server discovery. Still, I like to daydream that kind of thing would put a dent on the platform’s information visibility issues 🤔.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
        8·
        2 years ago

        I’ve seen that a lot of mods are holding power. They want users to migrate to discord because they are mods over there too. Each time I’ve posted one of my communities here I get shadow banned or posts removed. Gets really annoying

    • myk@beehaw.orgEnglish
      33·
      2 years ago

      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.oneEnglish
        20·
        2 years 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·
        2 years ago

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

        • Jitterydork@lemmy.world
          7·
          2 years ago

          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
            9·
            2 years 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.

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
          5·
          2 years ago

          Replacing them with who? Reddit, Inc doesn’t have anywhere near enough personnel, and replacing them with random subreddit subscribers will probably be disastrous.

    • tomdenhagen@kbin.social
      15·
      2 years ago

      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·
        2 years 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.

    • brandonmarkb@beehaw.org
      5·
      2 years ago

      Agree. I ended up deleting my 11+ year old account. I was holding out that they’d reverse course but I felt like they also need to see some users leaving as well.

  • Provenscroll@sh.itjust.works
    8·
    2 years 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.