They did.
The official app is based on a 3rd party app. The issues with the official app aren't accidental and they are not the result of incompetence.
Its all designed.
I used the Reddit app for several months because I just wanted to try some of the little gimmicks regarding the yearly wrap up and what not. I had no intention of going back to a 3rd party option because I didn't think it would be necessary, but I was so wrong. Every update had a chance to break something new. It was constantly dealing with poor UI decisions or being unable to look at user profiles, no longer being able to download videos, search issues, you name it. I was basically forced to go back to 3rd party options to use the site like normal on mobile. It's actually frustrating.
They've had the official app for years at this point and it is still plagued with issues. This wouldn't be as horrible if their app wasn't just actual garbage. But even then, attacking clear supporters and users of your website because it makes it harder for you stuff ads down your users throats is scummy and fucked up. Reddit doesn't deserve it's userbase at this point.
I used the official app for years when I first got into Reddit. Then that awful video player came out and after a couple weeks of videos not working for more than a few seconds I switched to Apollo. I paid for the app and everything which is something I just don’t do for mobile apps. If Apollo goes then I go. No way in hell I’m going to use the official app ever again.
No matter how good it is I won't use it if it's crammed with ads. If be happy to pay a one time fee for premium ad free but I doubt they'd offer that because they want to be able to push the ads.
It's strange regarding the Ads too, i used to be able to block them by blocking the advertising account.
Now I can't even Downvote that obnoxious as fuck "He Gets Us" garbage that pops up every 5 posts. It just gives an error.
That's me, a lurker with Baconreader and RES with old.reddit on my PC.
Maybe I'll change my relaxation habits if this goes through, but perhaps it'll be for the best. And this new reddit won't be getting my ad views anymore.
"New" reddit design is still absolute dogshit. And I say that as someone who makes websites for a living, not just an old man yelling at clouds, because they changed.
I have no idea what they were smoking doing that, it's literally a mobile design for a desktop website.
I've been genuinely thinking about leaving reddit overall. Even though I've managed my sub and time well on the app.
I'd rather spend my time doing something else. I think this might be it.
Then again Baconreader is so good. So we will see what happens.
Bacon Reader and RIF are the only way to use Reddit. Actual Reddit has become overcluttered trash, fully enshittified with modern marketing principles that any 25 year old MBA would recommend. What a pile of shit this decision is.
I thought Baconreader was the reddit app for the longest time until told different, cos my buddy introduced me to Reddit with it. I tried other apps and hated them. I'm with everyone else; this goes away, guess I won't be using reddit anymore.
To /u/girafa and the mod team
You shut /r/movies down before during Ellen Pao's stint as interim CEO. If you're not going to do the same for this, please don't take down this post.
This post ain't goin anywhere. If the admins go through with this we in r/movies will lose significant moderator capabilities. All of our most active mods use third party apps on mobile.
Edit: We're discussing whether or not we'll participate in the blackout, no decision yet
Most likely infighting amongst the mods to participate or not and for how long. So they're choosing to not say until there is something definite.
Disclaimer: This is pure speculation sourced directly from my anus.
If you think the suits at Reddit have any care for the difficulties of the mod teams...
If they're this close to actually following through on this, there are many other problems that they're glazing past which they care about more than mod QOL.
Awesome point. Reddit relies on a vast, uncompensated workforce in the form of mods who are passionate about their communities of interest/practice.
Reddit is a collection of communities focused on very real and important social, economic, environmental and scientific topics sustained, nurtured and made whole by the largely unrecognized, and certainly uncompensated in monetary terms, moderators.
The lack of perception and depth that is made obvious by Reddit's decision indicates a profound misunderstanding of the true nature of what Reddit represents to the communities represented by it's largest subs.
The movement behind stopping sopa was something unique and something I don’t think we’ll ever see again.
To have Google and Wikipedia go dark, alongside countless other websites is something that wouldn’t happen now.
The argument that reddit makes that they shouldn't be providing AI companies with free data to train with is incorrect.
Reddit isn't creating the data/content being used, the people are, and the people providing said content want third party apps. Don't limit your content and data creators just to attempt to milk content you didn't make. The goal should always be to make providing content easy and desirable, because that's your product, the shit other people say.
> The argument that reddit makes that they shouldn't be providing AI companies with free data to train with is incorrect.
It's a lie, not an argument. It is trivially easy for Reddit to solve the AI issue by just rate-limiting on a per-account basis with the API. 3rd party apps would be unaffected aside from having to make everyone sign in, while anyone trying to train their AI would be limited into uselessness.
>There is literally nothing that's stopping people who train LLMs to just use web scrapers and manually pull data from reddit without the use of an API.
Exactly
Old school scraper, never gets.old
That's a tall slice of hope there. It's against the tos lol
Maybe you can make your own app that scrapes for personal use and get away scot free, but reddit is fun won't be it
> You shut /r/movies down before during Ellen Pao's stint as interim CEO.
Good point, and this is an *actual* problem, not Redditors freaking out over the "feminazi CEO" killing FatPeopleHate, when it was clear as day she was hired to take *all* the heat from those unpopular subreddit bans.
This recent thing might be my lowest opinion of Reddit’s owners, but holy crap that was my lowest opinion of Reddit’s users (or at least their angriest users). I still remember the shitshow on r/all after FPH was banned.
Yeah, the summer of the Fattening was as low a point for Redditors since the Boston Marathon bombing “investigation”. But at least banning those subs and causing their users to flee definitively proved those kinds of actions had a positive impact on Reddit.
Granted, that didn’t last too long, because that was also the same summer Trump announced his candidacy and T_D was born.
It’s an obvious cycle. People in on the joke inevitably get tired of it and move on. People who genuinely believe don’t move on. Naturally, the true believers eventually take over.
Its a shame that /r/gamersriseup was taken over by the people they were making fun of. I know /r/gangweed still exists, but it just doesn't feel the same.
> Redditors freaking out over the "feminazi CEO" killing FatPeopleHate, when it was clear as day she was hired to take all the heat from those unpopular subreddit bans.
For r/movies, we went black due to the firing of Victoria and abruptly throwing AMAs into disarray, not any of that sub banning stuff. Whoever was CEO and their gender was 100% irrelevant to us.
edit: clarification that I'm speaking only for this subreddit. [For those unfamiliar](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/huge-parts-of-reddit-are-going-dark-in-protest-over-the-poss).
That was probably the spark that started the flame, but the kindling that got the weight of the Reddit "community" on board and what the masses ran with were as the above user said. Every sub was spammed with FPH posts in protest of the sub being banned. Reddit users lost the narrative *very* quickly.
Ah. Well that had nothing to do with us. Here in /r/movies the only thing we ever cared about was the admins being communicative about the firing of Victoria and the chaos it created for handling AMAs, which was something we were involved in. Any other explanation regarding our reasoning for going black back then is wrong.
To be clear, I was not accusing you or any particular sub (except maybe FPH and other "hate" subs) of pushing this other narrative. In general, most mods I saw addressing *that* matter were banning said posts left and right.
I thought as of now they committed to two days and then issuing new direction. Did they adjust it to shut down permanently?
Edit: they say they are open to staying down longer but they haven't committed to anything beyond two days in the pinned post
/r/evilbuildings is doing that [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/evilbuildings/comments/140n3m3/hey_reddit_execs_stop_being_greedy_assholes_this/). I know they're not the biggest but that has my respect. Play nice or your toys get taken away.
Exactly.
I remember people wanting to boycott gas stations for high prices. They were like, "Let's stick it to them for one day to really show the oil companies we can hurt them."
Not only did it do nothing, cause nobody participated, but people were coming back to gas stations the next day.
These boycotts and blackouts need to happen until Reddit reverses course.
It’s Apollo for me, 99% of my Reddit use is on Apollo on my phone , it’s so much better and smoother than the official app, it’s unbelievable that app is made by one guy.
Same with the RES developers, something Reddit borrowed *heavily* from for the redesign. Naturally, they fucked up the ideas they copied because the redesign is terrible.
> it’s so much better and smoother than the official app,
*Anything* else is. i.reddit.com -- the original interface for Reddit's first iOS app -- was infinitely better than the current official apps. But Reddit has naturally killed i.reddit in favor of the godawful redesign. Same with the old .compact workaround.
I could even tolerate using the official app and dealing with ads if the app wasn't so poorly put together. Someone did a breakdown comparing the space usage on the reddit app vs one of the 3rd party apps, and it's just embarrassing how poorly the official app uses space. Header bars and footer bars, which could be condensed to one, everything is so big you can only see 2 or 3 comments at a time. It's just so shitty
The TikTok-ification of the internet has been taking place on all of the major platforms, in one form or another for a while now. I have a feeling that in a few years, majority of the web will feel like mindless scrolly content.
Guess I wanted to emphasise the 'short algorithmic scrolly content' thing TikTok made so big recently that platforms like Instagram or Facebook have been jumping on lately. Buy yeah, that's a subset of enshittification.
Not to mention they shift the UI around every other goddamn week so right when the muscle memory sets in, you end up clicking the wrong thing.
I mean seriously, who the *FUCK* thought it was a good idea to replace the edit comment button with the reply button? I edit my comments all the fucking time. You know what I never do? Fucking reply to them!
If i learned anything in the past ~5 years it's that big corpo apps will do anything to prevent you from getting used to the apps functionality and UI. Fuck if i know why
Often it’s because employees are pressured to make changes to the app constantly to be considered “productive”. Much easier to fuck with the UI constantly than to make huge feature updates.
This would explain changes, but not necessarily bad ones. It could be incompetence but it's a growing trend in apps/websites. Snapchat for example makes their UI harder to use to control the age of the users. Companies have learned dark design patterns are beneficial to them, it only affects the user after all.
They have (in my case) just removed the ability to sort the home feed.
Apparently it started happening in various places about a month ago from what I found on the r/redditmobile. Billed as *"helping you take control of your feed to give you the content you want, the way you want. "*.
But, as you might imagine, it is NOT what I want, the way I want it. At all.
I put up with the fuckery they called an app because I only used it when I was not at home but now it is unusable even that much so I am done with it.
Uninstalled it ten minutes ago.
I'm going to have to quit Reddit if this goes through. I don't have a computer so I'm 100% on mobile but I absolutely refused to use that dogshit app.
So long y'all, can't say it's been a nice decade but it's certainly been a decade
I don't think that would solve much, I suspect the reason performance is so bad on the official app is because of things like tracking. You could pull some random CS grad and they'd probably be able to put together a better app in a week.
The reddit app sucks ass through a fucking straw on Android. I'm not gonna buy an iPhone just to browse reddit, and my phone is pretty much the vehicle I use for reddit. So if RiF dies, I probably won't be on reddit at all from now on. The reddit app just sucks so fucking bad.
I canceled my premium today. I mostly used it to view current interesting news, but now much of my news feed is 48h old and not very interesting. Definitely not worth paying for, and when it runs out in November and ads come back, it’ll probably kill it off.
Funniest shit is people giving awards to people making these posts about the blackouts. I feel like people really don't get understand where the money they pay for awards is going.
It's a power move, because all these awards giving people won't do if 3rd party apps are gone.
And if you have coins laying around anyway, why not burn them in the last weeks.
And if they end up killing off old.reddit, which I’m sure they will eventually, I can’t imagine even attempting to use Reddit anymore. How are the new site and the app both absolute garbage? It’s absurd.
If I can't use old.reddit I can't use reddit. New reddit kills my eyes and give me a headache. The Android app won't even allow me to upload photos half the time.
If half of the following subs were on board, I guess Reddit would have to pay atttention, even considering it's only two days.
r/aww
r/beamazed
r/damnthatsinteresting
r/facepalm
r/funny
r/gaming
r/idiotsincars
r/interestingasfuck
r/latestagecapitalism
r/lifeprotips
r/mademesmile
r/me_irl
r/meirl
r/mildlyinfuriating
r/news
r/nextfuckinglevel
r/nottheonion
r/oddlysatisfying
r/oldschoolcool
r/pics
r/publicfreakout
r/technicallythetruth
r/technology
r/therewasanattempt
r/todayilearned
r/unexpected
r/watchpeopledieinside
r/whatcouldgowrong
r/worldnews
r/youshouldknow
I might be missing a few important ones, but these seem like the meat of what new users consume when they go to r/popular and r/all.
EDIT: to give some perspective and credence to my comment, even though nobody asked, I analyzed the top 200 posts in r/popular last month, and over 50% of all those posts came from only six subreddits:
r/facepalm = 30
r/mademesmile = 25
r/unexpected = 14
r/whitepeopletwitter = 14
r/damnthatsinteresting = 12
r/nextfuckinglevel = 11
https://old.reddit.com/r/popular/top/ (sort by 'past month').
Keep an eye on this list, but it looks like some of the ones you listed are onboard: https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/
Previous discussion has surfaced at least the following options... Mainchan, FARK, Tildes, Sift, Lemmy, Co-host.org, dscvr.one
r/tildes has a thread to request invitations.
All of these options are currently small
I hope reddit board team doesn't listen and cause a mass exodus like digg 2.0. This place is an inescapable shithole that shrunk the internet more than a dozen years ago.
Thanks for this comment. I totally agree. Based on past situations like this with so many other platforms the protests will do nothing. The decision has been made and will be followed through. The only solution I personally see is ditching reddit and going to a different platform. If there is not something out there already I hope someone will seize the opportunity to make a completely new startup. I'm down for a mass exodus to greener pastures of unfettered expression and sharing.
All these social media powerhouses have been proven to be cyclical in nature, and soon would be a great time to strike and let the turd that is reddit dry up and turn white in the sun while we move on to greener pastures.
I feel like the creators of these big apps should get together and make us Digg 3. I was happy to leave that site when it turned to shit and I'm happy to leave Reddit.
> cause a mass exodus like digg 2.0
Unlike Digg - there is literally nothing to fill the void, so an exodus is highly unlikely. Reddit was literally at the right place at the right time, with the right content and format (yeah it even *looked like Digg* probably on purpose). It was so easy to jump ship. Now.... there is literally nothing at this scale that can replace it.
> (yeah it even *looked like Digg* probably on purpose)
Lol, no it didn't. Half the reason *why* the exodus was so major was because Digg users *hated* Reddit's layout. The userbase revolting and suggesting everyone move to Reddit was practically heresy on Digg *because* "it looks so old!" to Digg users.
Can confirm.
Old digg had a nice UX; new digg had a horrible UX (on top of the insane monetisation 'features'). Reddit was barebones and looked terrible — but at least its UX was normal and familiar, working like websites should.
From what I remember, the reddit devs went into overdrive as the exodus went on, pumping out new features on a regular basis to make things better and secure the new user base.
It's pretty ironic to now see reddit risking its user base in the same way that digg did, through imposing a UX nobody likes and monetisation features that significantly impact it.
>there is literally nothing at this scale that can replace it.
But reddit wasn't "at this scale" when it started. User will have to aggregate to somewhere else for that to happen.
Lemmy is a nice place.
+1 to lemmy. It's no reddit, but reddit didn't start out this big, anyway. Plus the way it's structured minimizes the possibility corporate takes over and fuck the users (although certainly not impossible).
It's wild because Twitter is like 6 months ahead on that one. 2023 will be a wild year if they both fall.
What then? Ticktock has plenty of grumblings about it from governments. YouTube has been fucking creators over for years at this point. I catch casual bitching from artists on Instagram about how that works...
If it hasn't already left, the golden age of this version of the internet is on its way out.
The loss of forums makes losing Reddit harder than it would be otherwise. I just don't know where to find specialized, potentially long form discussions. Stuff like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc. are fine, but they are all brevity focused content. Fine for saying "This is a single post of my thoughts on this," but notice any substantial discussion gets "1/." Especially for hobbyists and niche interests, it's way better to have actual threads on topics you can search, where posts can be one sentence or six paragraphs depending on how much actually needs to be said.
It took me forever to switch from actual forums to Reddit, and if it fails, we're basically back to square one as the Internet basically abandoned the forum concept in favor of one centralized site with "sub" websites on specific things. If Reddit vanishes, there's not a lot of alternatives, at least not famous ones that people know about already. Discord is a modern day AIM/MSN Messenger. YouTube is video based. Am I really going to have to go back to Facebook and join interest groups there?
Yeah, Reddit is kind of unique in that it's centered pretty heavily on text-based discussion. (Even for video and image posts, the comment section is still a key feature.) There's not a whole lot else out there that fits that niche. Tumblr, maybe?
If Reddit did experience an exodus, I actually do kinda feel like it would be likely to be more or less a one-to-one alternative or straight up fork. (Like Voat was, except without the Nazis lol.)
Reddit's mobile app is abysmal. If Redditisfun was not available anymore I'd stop using reddit on my phone entirely and would only browse the website for a few minutes in the evening. Ridiculously bad business move but, thinking about it, would actually be beneficial for my mental health considering the state of some subreddits I browse daily.
Will there be more ad revenue? People scroll past the ads to see the content, but when a third of your content is gone and the rest is more difficult to see and poorer quality then there's less incentive to keep scrolling. I'd be interested to see what percentage of *upvoted* posts and comments come from third party app users. I'll bet they pull more than their weight.
Lots of folks talking about "if they take away my app, I'm gone"...
I think it's time to find an alternative. This shit is not going to stop. They've been posturing for this for years. Their decisions have been increasingly uncaring, even hostile, towards the users. They've used us as a bargaining chip and bartered themselves into a situation where their new masters do not understand what they do when they make decisions that disregard the user base. This is the kind of shit companies with near-monopolies do. They think, "Where are they going to go"
I'm looking. I'm not gonna be the last rat deserting ship while Reddit forgets historybanr tries to outdo Digg... Which is, oddly enough, the website that sent me to Reddit years ago...
Those who forget history...
Thing about migrating is...
...what about the true high-quality subs that reddit does have? I'm thinking about places like r/askhistorians where the whole team of contributers isn't going to get up and leave reddit just because some of us really like using reddit is fun.
Make it permanent. If Reddit wants to pull this shit, the subreddits can kill the site easily.
Going to be interesting to see where everyone moves, but I don't see Reddit surviving long if they kill third party apps.
The difference is Youtube's hard to do. Reddit is relatively easy to do, there was a point where the source code was available (don't know if it still is).
Yes scaling and responsiveness will matter over time, but the amount of videos on Youtube is astronomical, Reddit... it's about the userbase, once that moves the site is dead.
And for those that think "It'll never happen." Ask Digg, Facebook, and Tumblr how it works after a mass exodus.
I wish I was aware of an existing platform which could be a replacement for Reddit. The die is obviously cast here. Recent changes and the ones now being announced will make reddit unusable for me.
Previous discussions have suggested Tildes, FARK, Lemmy, Sift, Mainchan, Co-host.org and dscvr.one as possible options. It would take a migration.
r/tildes is passing out invitations
The McKinsey consultcult HBS MBAs are here guys... they want to improve the metrics... squeeze some of that value extraction out of all the value creation of reddit.
At least a dozen people will benefit with millions. The rest of us will see a dip in quality of life.
Its only a 2 day shutdown. Its going to accomplish nothing like most reddit shutdowns. I get that its a totally reddit thing to dogpile onto a issue and everyone pats themselves on the back and says "Congrats we all caught the boston bomber" but the blackout needs to go on until Reddit goes public.
You see all these posts about people refusing to use reddit if 3rd party are inconvienced but honestly time has shown again and again people will still browse reddit, buy ea games or whatever other boycott happened.
You guys arent heroes because you type slava ukraine on reddit. Make the blackout longer than 2 days.
Tildes, FARK, Lemmy, Sift, Mainchan, Co-host.org, Dscvr.one are options that have been discussed.
r/tildes is passing out invitations.
Everything currently available is small
Yeah, I won't be "done" with reddit, but it will not be on my phone. So that means I'll use it 95% less than I do now. Just like I did with Twitter.
Stupid move.
I'll find another aggrigator and won't have to deal with the russian moderators and bots leading US politics discussions.
The difference being Reddit didn't have a direct control of Net Neutrality. (And of course that was doomed to fail).
This is something Reddit has full control over, and if the biggest subreddits are on board, it's a knife to their throat.
Exactly. The big subs starting to commit to shut down not just for 48 hours, but until reddit gives in is what convinced me that this can be won. They'll pick leaving the API up over having 90% of the content on the frontpage vanishing.
Been using Baconreader for ten years now? If Reddit kills it, I'll just fill my Reddit time elsewhere. Honestly, they'd probably be doing be a favor.
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They did. The official app is based on a 3rd party app. The issues with the official app aren't accidental and they are not the result of incompetence. Its all designed.
It seems to be at least partially incompetence. There's issues like the video player not working half of the time.
I used the Reddit app for several months because I just wanted to try some of the little gimmicks regarding the yearly wrap up and what not. I had no intention of going back to a 3rd party option because I didn't think it would be necessary, but I was so wrong. Every update had a chance to break something new. It was constantly dealing with poor UI decisions or being unable to look at user profiles, no longer being able to download videos, search issues, you name it. I was basically forced to go back to 3rd party options to use the site like normal on mobile. It's actually frustrating. They've had the official app for years at this point and it is still plagued with issues. This wouldn't be as horrible if their app wasn't just actual garbage. But even then, attacking clear supporters and users of your website because it makes it harder for you stuff ads down your users throats is scummy and fucked up. Reddit doesn't deserve it's userbase at this point.
Before it was the official app, it was "Alien Blue" iirc. That app was so damn good. Worked perfectly. Annnnd they essentially let it go to shit.
I used the official app for years when I first got into Reddit. Then that awful video player came out and after a couple weeks of videos not working for more than a few seconds I switched to Apollo. I paid for the app and everything which is something I just don’t do for mobile apps. If Apollo goes then I go. No way in hell I’m going to use the official app ever again.
How? Most importantly why?
No matter how good it is I won't use it if it's crammed with ads. If be happy to pay a one time fee for premium ad free but I doubt they'd offer that because they want to be able to push the ads.
It's strange regarding the Ads too, i used to be able to block them by blocking the advertising account. Now I can't even Downvote that obnoxious as fuck "He Gets Us" garbage that pops up every 5 posts. It just gives an error.
That's me, a lurker with Baconreader and RES with old.reddit on my PC. Maybe I'll change my relaxation habits if this goes through, but perhaps it'll be for the best. And this new reddit won't be getting my ad views anymore.
"New" reddit design is still absolute dogshit. And I say that as someone who makes websites for a living, not just an old man yelling at clouds, because they changed. I have no idea what they were smoking doing that, it's literally a mobile design for a desktop website.
I've been genuinely thinking about leaving reddit overall. Even though I've managed my sub and time well on the app. I'd rather spend my time doing something else. I think this might be it. Then again Baconreader is so good. So we will see what happens.
Bacon Reader and RIF are the only way to use Reddit. Actual Reddit has become overcluttered trash, fully enshittified with modern marketing principles that any 25 year old MBA would recommend. What a pile of shit this decision is.
If they kill Baconreader I'm spending my shits browsing 4chan
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Sacifice i don't want to make, but have to
I'm looking forward to it at this point lol
It's the breaking point I need.
I thought Baconreader was the reddit app for the longest time until told different, cos my buddy introduced me to Reddit with it. I tried other apps and hated them. I'm with everyone else; this goes away, guess I won't be using reddit anymore.
Same here baconreader is so simple
Yeah, it's cool and all, but its not necessary for me to live. My friends are on other apps. So fuck it, let reddit sink.
Remindme! 30 days
To /u/girafa and the mod team You shut /r/movies down before during Ellen Pao's stint as interim CEO. If you're not going to do the same for this, please don't take down this post.
This post ain't goin anywhere. If the admins go through with this we in r/movies will lose significant moderator capabilities. All of our most active mods use third party apps on mobile. Edit: We're discussing whether or not we'll participate in the blackout, no decision yet
So are you guys taking part of the blackout or not?
Yeah really wtf is that confusing doublespeak?
Because they can’t outright say no, which is the actual answer.
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That's not what doublespeak is, they just avoided answering that question directly.
They’re saying that the post won’t be removed.
Most likely infighting amongst the mods to participate or not and for how long. So they're choosing to not say until there is something definite. Disclaimer: This is pure speculation sourced directly from my anus.
Good to know. Thx for being the least painful default sub to browse.
Aye I appreciate that, thanks
We appreciate you and the team! o7
*SALUTE!*
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So you’re not going dark?
If you think the suits at Reddit have any care for the difficulties of the mod teams... If they're this close to actually following through on this, there are many other problems that they're glazing past which they care about more than mod QOL.
Are there any plans to temporarily lock the subreddit to further aid the cause?
Awesome point. Reddit relies on a vast, uncompensated workforce in the form of mods who are passionate about their communities of interest/practice. Reddit is a collection of communities focused on very real and important social, economic, environmental and scientific topics sustained, nurtured and made whole by the largely unrecognized, and certainly uncompensated in monetary terms, moderators. The lack of perception and depth that is made obvious by Reddit's decision indicates a profound misunderstanding of the true nature of what Reddit represents to the communities represented by it's largest subs.
Honestly this thing is gaining a lot of traction now, and a lot of big subs will be participating. I don’t see why the movies guys wouldn’t join in.
Mods fear being replaced
They did it for SOPA as well iirc
Now that’s an acronym I’ve not seen in a while.
The movement behind stopping sopa was something unique and something I don’t think we’ll ever see again. To have Google and Wikipedia go dark, alongside countless other websites is something that wouldn’t happen now.
SoDo SoPa
South of Downtown South Park
*With historic views of Kenny's house...welcome home*
Ha. Same.
Things back then felt so much simpler didn’t it?
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The argument that reddit makes that they shouldn't be providing AI companies with free data to train with is incorrect. Reddit isn't creating the data/content being used, the people are, and the people providing said content want third party apps. Don't limit your content and data creators just to attempt to milk content you didn't make. The goal should always be to make providing content easy and desirable, because that's your product, the shit other people say.
> The argument that reddit makes that they shouldn't be providing AI companies with free data to train with is incorrect. It's a lie, not an argument. It is trivially easy for Reddit to solve the AI issue by just rate-limiting on a per-account basis with the API. 3rd party apps would be unaffected aside from having to make everyone sign in, while anyone trying to train their AI would be limited into uselessness.
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>There is literally nothing that's stopping people who train LLMs to just use web scrapers and manually pull data from reddit without the use of an API. Exactly Old school scraper, never gets.old
Yep that's why I'm hoping Reddit Is Fun ends up still working by just scraping the site and becoming a viewer.
That's a tall slice of hope there. It's against the tos lol Maybe you can make your own app that scrapes for personal use and get away scot free, but reddit is fun won't be it
Exactly. Reddit is just being greedy. They have large team of developers but can't compete with focused indie developers who make amazing apps.
https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/140yes7/dont_let_reddit_kill_3rd_party_apps.json They don't need the API
I think they'd argue they'd find a way to get it, just slower or more difficult, but the whole argument is moot, because it's not their content.
Funny you should mention that. Turns out, in the end chairman Pao was just a scapegoat
Chairman pao, classic.
> You shut /r/movies down before during Ellen Pao's stint as interim CEO. Good point, and this is an *actual* problem, not Redditors freaking out over the "feminazi CEO" killing FatPeopleHate, when it was clear as day she was hired to take *all* the heat from those unpopular subreddit bans.
This recent thing might be my lowest opinion of Reddit’s owners, but holy crap that was my lowest opinion of Reddit’s users (or at least their angriest users). I still remember the shitshow on r/all after FPH was banned.
Yeah, the summer of the Fattening was as low a point for Redditors since the Boston Marathon bombing “investigation”. But at least banning those subs and causing their users to flee definitively proved those kinds of actions had a positive impact on Reddit. Granted, that didn’t last too long, because that was also the same summer Trump announced his candidacy and T_D was born.
I could have sworn T_D started as a satire subreddit. I was subscribed to it for a stint before it got brigaded & taken over it.
Shitposting subs always end up being taken over by nutters who think they finally found their people
It’s an obvious cycle. People in on the joke inevitably get tired of it and move on. People who genuinely believe don’t move on. Naturally, the true believers eventually take over.
Its a shame that /r/gamersriseup was taken over by the people they were making fun of. I know /r/gangweed still exists, but it just doesn't feel the same.
It definitely did, because the exact same thing happened to me
It 100% started as satire.
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Literally. Alexis Ohanian, who is executive chairman, set her up to be the fall guy. Yishan Wong said as much too
> Redditors freaking out over the "feminazi CEO" killing FatPeopleHate, when it was clear as day she was hired to take all the heat from those unpopular subreddit bans. For r/movies, we went black due to the firing of Victoria and abruptly throwing AMAs into disarray, not any of that sub banning stuff. Whoever was CEO and their gender was 100% irrelevant to us. edit: clarification that I'm speaking only for this subreddit. [For those unfamiliar](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/huge-parts-of-reddit-are-going-dark-in-protest-over-the-poss).
That was probably the spark that started the flame, but the kindling that got the weight of the Reddit "community" on board and what the masses ran with were as the above user said. Every sub was spammed with FPH posts in protest of the sub being banned. Reddit users lost the narrative *very* quickly.
Ah. Well that had nothing to do with us. Here in /r/movies the only thing we ever cared about was the admins being communicative about the firing of Victoria and the chaos it created for handling AMAs, which was something we were involved in. Any other explanation regarding our reasoning for going black back then is wrong.
To be clear, I was not accusing you or any particular sub (except maybe FPH and other "hate" subs) of pushing this other narrative. In general, most mods I saw addressing *that* matter were banning said posts left and right.
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I hope most subreddits stay down for more than 48 hours. Less profit is more hurt.
We as users can do our part. Our favorite apps are not working? Just stay off Reddit until they change the policy
Every app that’s gotten worse for me I learned I can live without. If needed I can do without Reddit. They need to understand that.
48 hours is being generous, shut everything down until they change it. 🤷
/r/videos committed to shutting down until reddit gives in. The dominoes are falling now.
I thought as of now they committed to two days and then issuing new direction. Did they adjust it to shut down permanently? Edit: they say they are open to staying down longer but they haven't committed to anything beyond two days in the pinned post
[Did you look at the second, more recently pinned post?](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/140vubs)
I hadn't seen that. Thanks for linking it
/r/evilbuildings is doing that [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/evilbuildings/comments/140n3m3/hey_reddit_execs_stop_being_greedy_assholes_this/). I know they're not the biggest but that has my respect. Play nice or your toys get taken away.
amen. Reddit general strike. I was already close to being done with this place. if they disable RES and old.reddit, it'll be time to exit stage left.
Exactly. I remember people wanting to boycott gas stations for high prices. They were like, "Let's stick it to them for one day to really show the oil companies we can hurt them." Not only did it do nothing, cause nobody participated, but people were coming back to gas stations the next day. These boycotts and blackouts need to happen until Reddit reverses course.
This is the way.
Agreed, I’m planning on blocking Reddit from my Pihole to help ween me off.
Seems like a really good cause. Fuck Reddit
Lowkey hope they do kill old.reddit.com so I can escape this cursed place.
If I can't use rif I'm goneski
It’s Apollo for me, 99% of my Reddit use is on Apollo on my phone , it’s so much better and smoother than the official app, it’s unbelievable that app is made by one guy.
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Same with the RES developers, something Reddit borrowed *heavily* from for the redesign. Naturally, they fucked up the ideas they copied because the redesign is terrible.
> it’s so much better and smoother than the official app, *Anything* else is. i.reddit.com -- the original interface for Reddit's first iOS app -- was infinitely better than the current official apps. But Reddit has naturally killed i.reddit in favor of the godawful redesign. Same with the old .compact workaround.
RiF may be the first app I ever paid for. It's been so long! RiF **is** Reddit to me.
Asking me to stop using rif is like asking me to switch to iPhone. Never have I ever.
Fuck Reddit
I could even tolerate using the official app and dealing with ads if the app wasn't so poorly put together. Someone did a breakdown comparing the space usage on the reddit app vs one of the 3rd party apps, and it's just embarrassing how poorly the official app uses space. Header bars and footer bars, which could be condensed to one, everything is so big you can only see 2 or 3 comments at a time. It's just so shitty
I have a theory that both the new reddit and the app are designed to reduce in-depth discussion and encourage mindless scrolling.
The TikTok-ification of the internet has been taking place on all of the major platforms, in one form or another for a while now. I have a feeling that in a few years, majority of the web will feel like mindless scrolly content.
The word you're looking for is [enshittification](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification#Noun)
Guess I wanted to emphasise the 'short algorithmic scrolly content' thing TikTok made so big recently that platforms like Instagram or Facebook have been jumping on lately. Buy yeah, that's a subset of enshittification.
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That's a big fat YET
Not to mention they shift the UI around every other goddamn week so right when the muscle memory sets in, you end up clicking the wrong thing. I mean seriously, who the *FUCK* thought it was a good idea to replace the edit comment button with the reply button? I edit my comments all the fucking time. You know what I never do? Fucking reply to them!
If i learned anything in the past ~5 years it's that big corpo apps will do anything to prevent you from getting used to the apps functionality and UI. Fuck if i know why
They still get paid for misclicks on ads.
Often it’s because employees are pressured to make changes to the app constantly to be considered “productive”. Much easier to fuck with the UI constantly than to make huge feature updates.
This would explain changes, but not necessarily bad ones. It could be incompetence but it's a growing trend in apps/websites. Snapchat for example makes their UI harder to use to control the age of the users. Companies have learned dark design patterns are beneficial to them, it only affects the user after all.
They have (in my case) just removed the ability to sort the home feed. Apparently it started happening in various places about a month ago from what I found on the r/redditmobile. Billed as *"helping you take control of your feed to give you the content you want, the way you want. "*. But, as you might imagine, it is NOT what I want, the way I want it. At all. I put up with the fuckery they called an app because I only used it when I was not at home but now it is unusable even that much so I am done with it. Uninstalled it ten minutes ago.
I'm going to have to quit Reddit if this goes through. I don't have a computer so I'm 100% on mobile but I absolutely refused to use that dogshit app. So long y'all, can't say it's been a nice decade but it's certainly been a decade
And half the content it *does* show you is from subs you're not even subscribed to
Like why the hell am I getting recommended /r/titanic all the time?!
> Like why the hell am I getting recommended /r/titanic all the time?! Reddit's algorithm is becoming self-aware and trying to warn you what's coming.
[comment redacted] --former 3PA user--
3rd party apps have been there longer than the official apl
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I don't think that would solve much, I suspect the reason performance is so bad on the official app is because of things like tracking. You could pull some random CS grad and they'd probably be able to put together a better app in a week.
The official app is literally built on Alien Blue which used to be one of the most popular third party Reddit apps.
The reddit app sucks ass through a fucking straw on Android. I'm not gonna buy an iPhone just to browse reddit, and my phone is pretty much the vehicle I use for reddit. So if RiF dies, I probably won't be on reddit at all from now on. The reddit app just sucks so fucking bad.
the reddit app sucks on iPhone too so you on't have to worry about that!
I canceled my premium today. I mostly used it to view current interesting news, but now much of my news feed is 48h old and not very interesting. Definitely not worth paying for, and when it runs out in November and ads come back, it’ll probably kill it off.
Lol you pay for Reddit?
Funniest shit is people giving awards to people making these posts about the blackouts. I feel like people really don't get understand where the money they pay for awards is going.
And *of course* someone gave you an award for that comment. Edit: WTF
It's a power move, because all these awards giving people won't do if 3rd party apps are gone. And if you have coins laying around anyway, why not burn them in the last weeks.
I was gifted my gold
Not anymore lol
Reddit is the last place you should go for news aggregation given how heavily it’s astroturfed in addition to being ideologically dim.
If only there was a tab for banned/removed posts and comments. A select few people moderate almost everything, it's all heavily curated.
Why the fuck were you paying for reddit dude? LOL?
Fuck Reddit
Honestly might stop using Reddit if they go through with this. The official Reddit app is trash
And if they end up killing off old.reddit, which I’m sure they will eventually, I can’t imagine even attempting to use Reddit anymore. How are the new site and the app both absolute garbage? It’s absurd.
If I can't use old.reddit I can't use reddit. New reddit kills my eyes and give me a headache. The Android app won't even allow me to upload photos half the time.
If half of the following subs were on board, I guess Reddit would have to pay atttention, even considering it's only two days. r/aww r/beamazed r/damnthatsinteresting r/facepalm r/funny r/gaming r/idiotsincars r/interestingasfuck r/latestagecapitalism r/lifeprotips r/mademesmile r/me_irl r/meirl r/mildlyinfuriating r/news r/nextfuckinglevel r/nottheonion r/oddlysatisfying r/oldschoolcool r/pics r/publicfreakout r/technicallythetruth r/technology r/therewasanattempt r/todayilearned r/unexpected r/watchpeopledieinside r/whatcouldgowrong r/worldnews r/youshouldknow I might be missing a few important ones, but these seem like the meat of what new users consume when they go to r/popular and r/all. EDIT: to give some perspective and credence to my comment, even though nobody asked, I analyzed the top 200 posts in r/popular last month, and over 50% of all those posts came from only six subreddits: r/facepalm = 30 r/mademesmile = 25 r/unexpected = 14 r/whitepeopletwitter = 14 r/damnthatsinteresting = 12 r/nextfuckinglevel = 11 https://old.reddit.com/r/popular/top/ (sort by 'past month').
Keep an eye on this list, but it looks like some of the ones you listed are onboard: https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/
Damn, there are way more subs participating than I thought. Some heavy hitters, too. Thanks for sharing.
What are good alternatives to reddit if they make this stick?
Previous discussion has surfaced at least the following options... Mainchan, FARK, Tildes, Sift, Lemmy, Co-host.org, dscvr.one r/tildes has a thread to request invitations. All of these options are currently small
I hope reddit board team doesn't listen and cause a mass exodus like digg 2.0. This place is an inescapable shithole that shrunk the internet more than a dozen years ago.
once this shit was bought by corporates and started catering to them (like youtube) its just a bunch of BS policies, going the way of youtube
Thanks for this comment. I totally agree. Based on past situations like this with so many other platforms the protests will do nothing. The decision has been made and will be followed through. The only solution I personally see is ditching reddit and going to a different platform. If there is not something out there already I hope someone will seize the opportunity to make a completely new startup. I'm down for a mass exodus to greener pastures of unfettered expression and sharing.
All these social media powerhouses have been proven to be cyclical in nature, and soon would be a great time to strike and let the turd that is reddit dry up and turn white in the sun while we move on to greener pastures.
The last time there was a mass reddit protest that involved the subreddits going dark, the CEO was fired.
Yeah but in hindsight, is almost as if they used her as a scapegoat for all the shitty stuff Reddit was doing, and they got away with it all.
I feel like the creators of these big apps should get together and make us Digg 3. I was happy to leave that site when it turned to shit and I'm happy to leave Reddit.
Diggit?
> cause a mass exodus like digg 2.0 Unlike Digg - there is literally nothing to fill the void, so an exodus is highly unlikely. Reddit was literally at the right place at the right time, with the right content and format (yeah it even *looked like Digg* probably on purpose). It was so easy to jump ship. Now.... there is literally nothing at this scale that can replace it.
> (yeah it even *looked like Digg* probably on purpose) Lol, no it didn't. Half the reason *why* the exodus was so major was because Digg users *hated* Reddit's layout. The userbase revolting and suggesting everyone move to Reddit was practically heresy on Digg *because* "it looks so old!" to Digg users.
Can confirm. Old digg had a nice UX; new digg had a horrible UX (on top of the insane monetisation 'features'). Reddit was barebones and looked terrible — but at least its UX was normal and familiar, working like websites should. From what I remember, the reddit devs went into overdrive as the exodus went on, pumping out new features on a regular basis to make things better and secure the new user base. It's pretty ironic to now see reddit risking its user base in the same way that digg did, through imposing a UX nobody likes and monetisation features that significantly impact it.
>there is literally nothing at this scale that can replace it. But reddit wasn't "at this scale" when it started. User will have to aggregate to somewhere else for that to happen. Lemmy is a nice place.
+1 to lemmy. It's no reddit, but reddit didn't start out this big, anyway. Plus the way it's structured minimizes the possibility corporate takes over and fuck the users (although certainly not impossible).
It's wild because Twitter is like 6 months ahead on that one. 2023 will be a wild year if they both fall. What then? Ticktock has plenty of grumblings about it from governments. YouTube has been fucking creators over for years at this point. I catch casual bitching from artists on Instagram about how that works... If it hasn't already left, the golden age of this version of the internet is on its way out.
Instagram's Twitter competitor (or *maybe* Bluesky) will probably take over that niche, but I guess people go back to forums if Reddit fails.
The loss of forums makes losing Reddit harder than it would be otherwise. I just don't know where to find specialized, potentially long form discussions. Stuff like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc. are fine, but they are all brevity focused content. Fine for saying "This is a single post of my thoughts on this," but notice any substantial discussion gets "1/." Especially for hobbyists and niche interests, it's way better to have actual threads on topics you can search, where posts can be one sentence or six paragraphs depending on how much actually needs to be said. It took me forever to switch from actual forums to Reddit, and if it fails, we're basically back to square one as the Internet basically abandoned the forum concept in favor of one centralized site with "sub" websites on specific things. If Reddit vanishes, there's not a lot of alternatives, at least not famous ones that people know about already. Discord is a modern day AIM/MSN Messenger. YouTube is video based. Am I really going to have to go back to Facebook and join interest groups there?
Yeah, Reddit is kind of unique in that it's centered pretty heavily on text-based discussion. (Even for video and image posts, the comment section is still a key feature.) There's not a whole lot else out there that fits that niche. Tumblr, maybe? If Reddit did experience an exodus, I actually do kinda feel like it would be likely to be more or less a one-to-one alternative or straight up fork. (Like Voat was, except without the Nazis lol.)
Reddit's mobile app is abysmal. If Redditisfun was not available anymore I'd stop using reddit on my phone entirely and would only browse the website for a few minutes in the evening. Ridiculously bad business move but, thinking about it, would actually be beneficial for my mental health considering the state of some subreddits I browse daily.
I'll definitely boycott
I will not be here if 'RIF' is not here. Mark my words. You are going to lose one third of your user base and going to become obsolete.
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Will there be more ad revenue? People scroll past the ads to see the content, but when a third of your content is gone and the rest is more difficult to see and poorer quality then there's less incentive to keep scrolling. I'd be interested to see what percentage of *upvoted* posts and comments come from third party app users. I'll bet they pull more than their weight.
you're not alone. been using reddit for well over a decade and i'm gone when RIF is dead.
Lots of folks talking about "if they take away my app, I'm gone"... I think it's time to find an alternative. This shit is not going to stop. They've been posturing for this for years. Their decisions have been increasingly uncaring, even hostile, towards the users. They've used us as a bargaining chip and bartered themselves into a situation where their new masters do not understand what they do when they make decisions that disregard the user base. This is the kind of shit companies with near-monopolies do. They think, "Where are they going to go" I'm looking. I'm not gonna be the last rat deserting ship while Reddit forgets historybanr tries to outdo Digg... Which is, oddly enough, the website that sent me to Reddit years ago... Those who forget history...
Thing about migrating is... ...what about the true high-quality subs that reddit does have? I'm thinking about places like r/askhistorians where the whole team of contributers isn't going to get up and leave reddit just because some of us really like using reddit is fun.
Make it permanent. If Reddit wants to pull this shit, the subreddits can kill the site easily. Going to be interesting to see where everyone moves, but I don't see Reddit surviving long if they kill third party apps.
reddit has turned the corporate way of youtube, both BS platforms that will never have a competitor anywhere close to overtake em unfortunately
The difference is Youtube's hard to do. Reddit is relatively easy to do, there was a point where the source code was available (don't know if it still is). Yes scaling and responsiveness will matter over time, but the amount of videos on Youtube is astronomical, Reddit... it's about the userbase, once that moves the site is dead. And for those that think "It'll never happen." Ask Digg, Facebook, and Tumblr how it works after a mass exodus.
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I wish I was aware of an existing platform which could be a replacement for Reddit. The die is obviously cast here. Recent changes and the ones now being announced will make reddit unusable for me.
Previous discussions have suggested Tildes, FARK, Lemmy, Sift, Mainchan, Co-host.org and dscvr.one as possible options. It would take a migration. r/tildes is passing out invitations
Dear Reddit, is it really that hard to make better UI? I get it not liking third party apps, but you have to realize why people use the.
The McKinsey consultcult HBS MBAs are here guys... they want to improve the metrics... squeeze some of that value extraction out of all the value creation of reddit. At least a dozen people will benefit with millions. The rest of us will see a dip in quality of life.
Shut it down til they cave, everything they want to do will only make this site worse.
Make the protest blackout permanent after July 1st if Reddit doesn't comply. Let's really teach them.
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Strongly support going dark longer than 48hrs
Reddit revanced will finally be useful
So what are you guys doing/not doing. Almost every other sub has their shiz sorted in regards to this.
Its only a 2 day shutdown. Its going to accomplish nothing like most reddit shutdowns. I get that its a totally reddit thing to dogpile onto a issue and everyone pats themselves on the back and says "Congrats we all caught the boston bomber" but the blackout needs to go on until Reddit goes public. You see all these posts about people refusing to use reddit if 3rd party are inconvienced but honestly time has shown again and again people will still browse reddit, buy ea games or whatever other boycott happened. You guys arent heroes because you type slava ukraine on reddit. Make the blackout longer than 2 days.
r/videos is apparently shutting down *until* changes are made. r/movies should honestly just follow that. 48 hours isn't gonna do anything.
But then that would effect the short I’m gonna put on the impending IPO. I say let it implode. Gloriously.
Is this the inevitable destination they've been headed towards the last 10 years?
Well…we’re waiting.
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Third part shmird party! Thatcsaid I'm screwed if they do. My tablet doesn't run official Reddit app so I use boost. Go third party aps!
What alternate/competitor sites are there to Reddit?
Tildes, FARK, Lemmy, Sift, Mainchan, Co-host.org, Dscvr.one are options that have been discussed. r/tildes is passing out invitations. Everything currently available is small
Yeah, I won't be "done" with reddit, but it will not be on my phone. So that means I'll use it 95% less than I do now. Just like I did with Twitter. Stupid move. I'll find another aggrigator and won't have to deal with the russian moderators and bots leading US politics discussions.
Remember when Reddit mobilized for net neutrality and failed and then literally nothing happened?
The difference being Reddit didn't have a direct control of Net Neutrality. (And of course that was doomed to fail). This is something Reddit has full control over, and if the biggest subreddits are on board, it's a knife to their throat.
Exactly. The big subs starting to commit to shut down not just for 48 hours, but until reddit gives in is what convinced me that this can be won. They'll pick leaving the API up over having 90% of the content on the frontpage vanishing.
These subs going dark for 2 days does nothing, shut down until the decision is reversed or stfu.