Reddit Gone Dark

[Celery Man 20,950]

I haven’t followed this super closely and am not a huge Reddit user but it seems like a big enough event to have some discussion. Reddit is changing their API fee structure, which is going to kill many (most?) third party apps, which has infuriated the community. Power users (such as community mods) typically use third party apps (which have more powerful features than the Reddit app). Reddit of course is highly community driven. There has been much discussion over the past several weeks of “going dark” to protest, and as of this morning seemingly most communities have turned off posting and commenting. 
 

That is the story as I understand it. I’m curious if it will amount to anything. I do some Reddit scrolling and frequently google site:Reddit.com when trying to find information, so I’m curious what changes will occur as a result of this - if Reddit will cave, in the more likely scenario that they do not will the site change meaningfully/will something new emerge. Will Digg make their long awaited return. Probably not.

[Hefeweizen 5,322]

I quit using Reddit, the website sucks and third party apps are the only way to make it usable.  It joined Twitter in being deleted from my phone which frees up more time that I used to waste.

[HonkeyVape 107]

We briefly touched on this in the Elon thread, and this guy had a pretty good summary which was copied and pasted from The Hustle: 

https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/topic/3382-elon-musk-visionary-or-fraud/?do=findComment&comment=5291808

What interests me most is this article below and how it seems that it's a play to take advantage of the AI gold rush ahead of their IPO:

“Reddit will also cash in on AI companies that scrape its posts for data and recoup the ad revenue it loses when people use apps to bypass ads.”

 https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/18/23688463/reddit-developer-api-terms-change-monetization-ai

Edited June 12, 2023 by HonkeyVape

[HonkeyVape 107]

Also read an interesting FAQ of Apollo (third party reddit software, not the giant PE firm) where he outlines his complaints and injuries. I'll try to find it and post it for those who care.

[52-80 19,159]

 

[MonkeyDoughnut 10,236]

I used to used Reddit daily but hardly go to it anymore. Place went down hill during pandemic

[HonkeyVape 107]

23 minutes ago, HonkeyVape said:

Also read an interesting FAQ of Apollo (third party reddit software, not the giant PE firm) where he outlines his complaints and injuries. I'll try to find it and post it for those who care.

The FAQ is pretty informative, found embedded in this Tech Crunch link: https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/08/popular-third-party-reddit-app-apollo-is-shutting-down-as-a-result-of-reddits-new-api-pricing/

[F250 28,776]

I doubt if this temporary protest makes a difference even if Reddit's metrics take a massive dive, it's only for 48 hours.

What will be interesting to see is that some are calling for a Shaggy type of ship scuttling of Reddit later next month. The idea is that users mass delete their own content than flood the place with NSFW content.

We have seen this work on a smaller scale but even then the scat site floated around like a ghost ship full of shit porn for years.

[Your Mom 4,806]

Unless their financial livelihood is based on it, people who become infuriated over the actions of message boards and social media apps should re-evaluate the path their life has taken.   That shit is it really not as important as it’s made out to be.  

[Brisketexan 105,142]

5 minutes ago, F250 said:

The idea is that users mass delete their own content than flood the place with NSFW content.

Wait....Reddit has a purpose OTHER than being a repository for NSFW content?  Huh.  Interesting.

[immamac 42,850]

Went to reddit this morning to see what it was like. It's basically just the same on the front page. All the outrage subreddits stayed open so that's basically all reddit was anyway. 

[F250 28,776]

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Wait....Reddit has a purpose OTHER than being a repository for NSFW content?  Huh.  Interesting.

Yes, but I understand why you would prefer to mainly hangout in r/stinkyfeetpics.

[crash_davis 23,113]

Reddit has everything you need.

NSFW - has that and then some

Jokes/LOL material/Cringe shit - it has it ALL

Scientific/Political discussions - this is where it shines. Most people use reddit for the above 2 stuff but one could learn a fuck load if you know where to look.

Hobbies - there are subs for whatever your hobbies are. Tons of information stuff.

 

Yes it's full of shit and idiocy which you have to wade through but it's no different than the recruiting and football boards on Surly. Nuggets of wisdom in a sea of stupidity.

[hornbri 1,398]

I don’t even think Reddit pissed off their most of their users. But they sure pissed off their moderator group who apparently uses a lot of 3rd party apps. 

CEO has handled this horribly from a communications perspective, that is going to really hurt their IPO. I bet he gets replaced. 

[GabrielsHorn 2,183]

Honestly, Reddit dying would be a good thing. The upvote/downvote system and the rankings of the comments by then turns everything into a binary of right / wrong and can promote misinformation so easily. 
 

The message board system like Surly is a lot better for discussion. 

[ConferenceRoom 6,141]

Apollo is shuttering on 6/30 and as soon as old.reddit gets shitcanned, I'm out. 

[MonkeyDoughnut 10,236]

3 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Scientific/Political discussions - this is where it shines used to shine. Most people use reddit for the above 2 stuff but one could learn a fuck load if you know where to look.

FIFY... it used to contains actual discussions, then the mass population found out about Reddit and it became like every other scientific/political forums out there

[Homercles 10,205]

Well generative models are proving to have unexpected impacts, Reddit is certainly allowed to not provide that content for free to them or 3rd party apps, but the users have a right to voice their displeasure with the native app apparently being trash / shutting out 3rd party interfaces.  Just like this place / Twitter, the value is in the user base and content they provide.  

Curious to see how it all pans out.  Reddit does trend towards a younger audience, who love to mix naïveté and outrage in curious fashion…strongly political but don’t vote, validly criticize obscene corporate profits but don’t offer proposed solutions, etc.  

I’m not dismissive of their complaints, by any stretch, but this feels a little like facebook alternatives…Reddit has massive momentum in content and market penetration, competitors are small and fragmented, and many probably feel like me in that I have no interest in ‘starting over’ again (Fark, Digg, etc) for another source of that kind of info.  

[Celery Man 20,950]

7 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Reddit has everything you need.

NSFW - has that and then some

Jokes/LOL material/Cringe shit - it has it ALL

Scientific/Political discussions - this is where it shines. Most people use reddit for the above 2 stuff but one could learn a fuck load if you know where to look.

Hobbies - there are subs for whatever your hobbies are. Tons of information stuff.

 

Yes it's full of shit and idiocy which you have to wade through but it's no different than the recruiting and football boards on Surly. Nuggets of wisdom in a sea of stupidity.

[Homercles 10,205]

3 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

FIFY... it used to contains actual discussions, then the mass population found out about Reddit and it became like every other scientific/political forums out there

There’s plenty of subreddit echo chambers for whatever subject you want to feed your confirmation bias with.  

[MissingInAction 25,078]

[CooterBrown 18,012]

So, it boils down to users not wanting to see ads which is main/only source of income for reddit?

[immamac 42,850]

13 minutes ago, GabrielsHorn said:

Honestly, Reddit dying would be a good thing. The upvote/downvote system and the rankings of the comments by then turns everything into a binary of right / wrong and can promote misinformation so easily. 
 

The message board system like Surly is a lot better for discussion. 

Message boards have their own barriers to entry. Surly doesn't really have a growth engine because it's primarily a sports focus for a single school, albeit a very large school with lots of interest. The primary driver for growth is "being good at football" when Texas is good at football more rival teams posters come and join the conversation and then find the other parts of the board which are awesome and stick around. 

Believe it or not surly has grown in a period of fairly significant decay due to being absolute dogshit at football, covid, and a few other things that are having people shift away from message boards and onto media rich content platforms to turn off their brains and consume instead of read and interact. 

Reddit has the best of both worlds, but is entirely user generated content, they decided to piss off all their users and apparently didn't read the history of 4chan, digg, slsshdot and many other sites that were essentially reddit before reddit. They bleed money because they don't have a real business model and don't understand their tech, users, or growth engine. They just exist as a place on the internet that grows because it's big already. It's ripe for collapse and maybe we will see that. 

[gurt 748]

I'm not really sure what people expect.  The only way social media sites make money is via ad spend, and if a huge swath of your users aren't being served ads, then it is never going to be profitable.  That it should be expected that 3rd party apps be allowed to pull data for free that Reddit pays to store indefinitely is kind of ludicrous.

On the other hand, their API pricing model is steep for its use case, since an app is having to make a call for every single post/comment.  

Edited June 12, 2023 by gurt

[immamac 42,850]

Just now, CooterBrown said:

So, it boils down to users not wanting to see ads which is main/only source of income for reddit?

No it really is more about the user experience at a fundamental level. They don't care about the ads as much as they hate the new reddit interface. 

The apps all emulate old.reddit.com which is what people want. 

[Blotto 23,512]

11 minutes ago, hornbri said:

I don’t even think Reddit pissed off their most of their users. But they sure pissed off their moderator group who apparently uses a lot of 3rd party apps. 

CEO has handled this horribly from a communications perspective, that is going to really hurt their IPO. I bet he gets replaced. 

Agreed. This is all driven by the upcoming IPO. The last round of funding was completed at ~$10B valuation, so presumably those investors will want a profitable exit, which would be tough based on their current revenue estimates $450M (primarily from advertising). So rather than accept that they might have to IPO at a suboptimal valuation, they hatched this plan to juice revenues.

If I was asking questions on their IPO roadshow, I would ask the CEO how it is that Reddit now employs close to 3000 people and their UI and content management tools suck so bad that power users prefer to use 3rd party front ends like Apollo, which are created by one or a handful of people. This is a "problem" of their own creation. Imo, they should figure out how to maximize the value of their content as a data source for AI engine training perspective, and get that money from the AI companies that stand to make bank (Google, ChatGPT, etc...). 

I'm probably on reddit daily and while not a power user, find it one of the more interesting sites online. If it goes tits up tomorrow, I'll just migrate to whatever replaces it, and something else always does. 

[immamac 42,850]

Just now, gurt said:

I'm not really sure what people expect.  The only way social media sites make money is via ad spend, and if a huge swath of your users aren't being served ads, then it is never going to be profitable.  That it should be expected that 3rd party apps be allowed to pull data that Reddit pays to store indefinitely is kind of ludicrous.

On the other hand, their API pricing model is steep for its use case, since an app is having to make a call for every single post/comment.  

I'm actually trying to figure out how to get rid of traditional display ads entirely and monetize surly. It's much harder and the value has to be there for the spnsor/partner but I do think there is a way to do it at scale without display ads. (banners, siderails, etc) 

[Brisketexan 105,142]

19 minutes ago, F250 said:

Yes, but I understand why you would prefer to mainly hangout in r/stinkyfeetpics.

[gurt 748]

3 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Agreed. This is all driven by the upcoming IPO. The last round of funding was completed at ~$10B valuation, so presumably those investors will want a profitable exit, which would be tough based on their current revenue estimates $450M (primarily from advertising). So rather than accept that they might have to IPO at a suboptimal valuation, they hatched this plan to juice revenues.

If I was asking questions on their IPO roadshow, I would ask the CEO how it is that Reddit now employs close to 3000 people and their UI and content management tools suck so bad that power users prefer to use 3rd party front ends like Apollo, which are created by one or a handful of people. This is a "problem" of their own creation. Imo, they should figure out how to maximize the value of their content as a data source for AI engine training perspective, and get that money from the AI companies that stand to make bank (Google, ChatGPT, etc...). 

I'm probably on reddit daily and while not a power user, find it one of the more interesting sites online. If it goes tits up tomorrow, I'll just migrate to whatever replaces it, and something else always does. 

I also agree with all of this.  Reddit as a company has always been an unserious, poorly managed mess (much like Twitter in all its iterations.  Elon is destroying it but it was never going to survive with Jack at the helm either).  It grew in spite of its founders and subsequent leadership.  

Edited June 12, 2023 by gurt

[HonkeyVape 107]

The Verge:

Quote   The version of Reddit we’ll see over the next few days may be a shell of itself. More than 100 subreddits have already gone dark, and thousands more plan to follow in protest of Reddit’s coming API changes, according to the website Reddark, which is tracking the protests. The protests are happening over API changes that will force many third-party apps, like Apollo and rif is fun for Reddit, to shut down. Frustration was already brewing in the community as developers began reacting to the changes this week, but Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s responses in recent days have only escalated the community’s pushback. In a Reddit AMA on Friday, Huffman was met with seemingly universal anger… Most of the subreddits have pledged to go private — preventing outside access — for 48 hours, though some, like the 26 million-member community r/videos, have said they’ll remain private indefinitely. According to this post on r/ModCoord, protests will end when Reddit addresses issues with the API, improves accessibility for blind people, and creates “parity in access to NSFW content.”   How can one improve access for blind people on an internet website?

[Patricio Swayze 17,058]

Many of the subs I visit went black last night. This morning more. Then about 30 minutes ago the server isn’t responding. Tried the app and browser and nothing.

[HonkeyVape 107]

8 minutes ago, gurt said:

I'm not really sure what people expect.  The only way social media sites make money is via ad spend, and if a huge swath of your users aren't being served ads, then it is never going to be profitable.  That it should be expected that 3rd party apps be allowed to pull data that Reddit pays to store indefinitely is kind of ludicrous.

On the other hand, their API pricing model is steep for its use case, since an app is having to make a call for every single post/comment.  

[Blotto 23,512]

4 minutes ago, immamac said:

I'm actually trying to figure out how to get rid of traditional display ads entirely and monetize surly. It's much harder and the value has to be there for the spnsor/partner but I do think there is a way to do it at scale without display ads. (banners, siderails, etc) 

 

1.) Collect all of your  sub money for a couple of months and deposit into a sports book.

2.) Write a script that searches for Greenspoint or Helobious comments predicting the final outcome of a game, and then immediately bet the opposite in-game at sports book.

3.) Profit. 

You need to monetize this site's greatest asset, our collective stupidity. 

[HonkeyVape 107]

4 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Many of the subs I visit went black last night. This morning more. Then about 30 minutes ago the server isn’t responding. Tried the app and browser and nothing.

This is an interesting thought re: unpaid mods and just going over their heads (it's behind a paywall email I can't link):

Quote

That noted, Reddit can, of course, break the boycott if they wish: the company could simply open up all of the locked down subreddits. That would, of course, be a massive usurpation of moderator power, which could be to Reddit’s detriment, given the fact the company has gotten away without having to hire a massive moderation staff of its own. Then again, the tension between having a mass market ad-supported site powered by unpaid volunteers was always unsustainable, which is to say Reddit may have decided to pull off one bandaid this week in terms of third party apps, only to be faced with the challenge of pulling off the bandaid of unpaid labor as well. The adventure that is the end of free money continues!

 

[immamac 42,850]

7 minutes ago, Blotto said:

 

1.) Collect all of your  sub money for a couple of months and deposit into a sports book.

2.) Write a script that searches for Greenspoint or Helobious comments predicting the final outcome of a game, and then immediately bet the opposite in-game at sports book.

3.) Profit. 

You need to monetize this site's greatest asset, our collective stupidity. 

Id rather just get modelo, pluckers, HEB and other brands that we like to toss us some bones and make the site ad free. HEB alone could spend 5k a month on surly and make it completely ad free and I bet it would be easily good value for them. 

[Homercles 10,205]

Yep it’d be a great way for them to reach a wider audience on their limited hours of operation, shit they make and dick jokes 

[Brisketexan 105,142]

1 minute ago, immamac said:

Id rather just get modelo, pluckers, HEB and other brands that we like to toss us some bones and make the site ad free. HEB alone could spend 5k a month on surly and make it completely ad free and I bet it would be easily good value for them. 

.....if they were ever open.

[Js1 85,338]

16 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Many of the subs I visit went black last night. This morning more. Then about 30 minutes ago the server isn’t responding. Tried the app and browser and nothing.

I DONT WANT TO DO WORK TODAY DAMNIT 

[Guest]

I joined reddit years ago in and used to post there somewhat regularly.  The site has gotten worse over the years, along with the rest of the internet, but it was never that great to begin with.  They used to have truly terrible subreddits that were extremely popular.  

This blackout will accomplish nothing.  Admins can just replace mods whenever they want, and there is an endless supply of folks who will do the job.  The internet is controlled by corporations and PR firms.  This is why there is virtually no original content any more, and whatever you read is almost certainly talking points designed to get you to buy products or vote a certain way.   

Edited June 12, 2023 by axiom of foundation

[Evil Bill Obrien 3,284]

5 minutes ago, Js1 said:

I DONT WANT TO DO WORK TODAY DAMNIT 

Absolutely understood the assignment to make this blackout start on a Monday, the day I want to be fucking around on Reddit the most and working the least...

[Brisketexan 105,142]

3 minutes ago, axiom of foundation said:

This is why there is virtually no original content any more, and whatever you read is almost certainly talking points designed to get you to buy products or vote a certain way. 

[Brisketexan, brow furrowed, trying to figure out what r/stinkyfeet posts are trying to get me to vote for....]

[Patricio Swayze 17,058]

Looks like it’s back up.

[Rimbo 25,936]

Welp. It was fun while it lasted.

Been a RIF Is Fun Golden [sic] Platinum user for the past decade or so. Been on Reddit since the great Digg exodus before then.

Reddit remained fun if you stayed away from the default subs. Some of the subs were truly great; r/AskHistorians was great for "here's academia quality answers to literally any and every question." r/JustRolledIntoTheShop had consistently the most hilarious comments section. And r/Metal introduced me to some of my current favorite bands... both by the posts, and by looking into the blacklist. And I always thought the way r/CFB handled the Baylor rape case news was a model for all other subs.

If your site, based on quality user-generated content, suddenly loses its best content generators and moderation teams, it can't be good for the final product.

 

[Rimbo 25,936]

1 minute ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Looks like it’s back up.

For some value of "up." Most of the subs I like went dark.

[G650 14,257]

39 minutes ago, immamac said:

The apps all emulate old.reddit.com which is what people want. 

You can still use old reddit though. That's all I do.

[ConferenceRoom 6,141]

Just now, G650 said:

You can still use old reddit though. That's all I do.

Not for long.

[G650 14,257]

2 minutes ago, ConferenceRoom said:

Not for long.

[atomheartbevo 89,672]

36 minutes ago, HonkeyVape said:

How can one improve access for blind people on an internet website?

It's not hard at all.  Be careful what you load on a page, make sure all of your images are properly tagged/described. 

I worked at a large tech company over a decade ago that had a group of blind employees that worked on accessibility stuff, and they were using JAWS (https://www.freedomscientific.com/products/software/jaws/)  to read websites and emails.  Annoying if you worked in the next office over, as you'd hear everything they were looking at, and a lot of them seemed to prefer their text to be sped up.  Hilarious when they got porn spam though.

[Patricio Swayze 17,058]

For some value of "up." Most of the subs I like went dark.

Well yeah. The two I spend the most time in are still protesting.

[atomheartbevo 89,672]

46 minutes ago, immamac said:

I'm actually trying to figure out how to get rid of traditional display ads entirely and monetize surly. It's much harder and the value has to be there for the spnsor/partner but I do think there is a way to do it at scale without display ads. (banners, siderails, etc) 

I've ditched all but affiliate ads at this point on my sites, and I don't load the default advertising javascript, I'm loading some small images with HTML. I also do a few sponsorships from some companies.

I've also started in heavily on SubStack with a paid newsletter (thanks Elon, for pushing me to get off twitter and find better social media/newsletters).

Much better web experience.

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by atomheartbevo