Reddit Gone Dark

Sandman · June 19, 2023

2 hours ago, Auto Driller said:

I’m sure prospective IPO investors are thrilled to find that the site’s largest communities can be shut down or turned NSFW

Who doesn't like surprise titties and ass on the internet???? Good looking ones, I mean.

cactusflinthead · June 21, 2023

Asked if Reddit could confirm the reinstatement, Rathschmidt declined, saying, “I’m not going to set a precedent of confirming with The Verge every action we do or don’t take to ensure users can access their communities.” He didn’t elaborate on how removing a subreddit’s entire moderation team with no communication ensures users can access their communities, particularly since they were never entirely inaccessible beyond the limitations imposed by Reddit itself.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/20/23767848/reddit-blackout-api-protest-moderators-suspended-nsfw

NoName · June 21, 2023

25 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Asked if Reddit could confirm the reinstatement, Rathschmidt declined, saying, “I’m not going to set a precedent of confirming with The Verge every action we do or don’t take to ensure users can access their communities.” He didn’t elaborate on how removing a subreddit’s entire moderation team with no communication ensures users can access their communities, particularly since they were never entirely inaccessible beyond the limitations imposed by Reddit itself.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/20/23767848/reddit-blackout-api-protest-moderators-suspended-nsfw

sounds like things are going well over at Reddit. from comments on that article:

Quote

They're trying to distract from the fact that an admin account (/u/ModCodeofConduct) screwed up royally by forcibly changing subreddits that had gone NSFW as a protest back to SFW without their knowledge, exposing advertisers and children to any adult content that had been posted there in the interim. This move also opens the site up to significant legal liability -- up until now, admins just enforce sitewide rules and leave specific moderation decisions to subreddit mods. By purging mods for their actions (which were fully justified under the content policy) and making direct editorial decisions about what subreddits can and can't be about, they're taking responsibility for what subreddits allow and potentially losing their Section 230 liability shield. The administrators are in panic mode and making rash decisions to quash the protest that could potentially destroy the company, even apart from the damage they're already doing to community morale.

Edited June 21, 2023 by NoName

Fudge Nuggets · June 22, 2023

So is this dork jihad still going on or what?

Rimbo · December 27, 2023

34 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

Just read an interview with reddit CEO. Sounds like they've successfully weathered this storm and are full steam ahead to IPO in 2024:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90997770/reddit-steve-huffman-interview-ai-ipo-2024

And Reddit is a shitty shadow of its former self. Not shitty enough to spawn an alternative, but no longer good.

bolverk · December 27, 2023

13 minutes ago, Rimbo said:

And Reddit is a shitty shadow of its former self. Not shitty enough to spawn an alternative, but no longer good.

It's still good for Ukraine updates in the 3-4 related subs, polandball, mapporn, and, well, porn.

chainsaw · December 28, 2023

It's like 20 percent as useful as it used to be. The enshittification will be Twitter-like as soon as the IPO happens.

Fudge Nuggets · December 28, 2023

I never much cared for Reddit. The few times I checked it out each thread was thousands of posts long and trying to get to the good stuff was a nightmare. Also seems to have a heavy UK influence, no one gives a shit what they think.

bschoolprof · December 28, 2023

In all my years of internetting, I still have not figured out a/the way to read reddit. Threads are impossible to follow linearly.

NoName · December 28, 2023

2 hours ago, bschoolprof said:

In all my years of internetting, I still have not figured out a/the way to read reddit. Threads are impossible to follow linearly.

the way to do it was third party apps because you could customize however you wanted to

BUT if you are trying to read reddit linearly idk what to tell you, that's not how it's made to be used?

third party apps made it easy to automatically minimize non parent posts, their current (first party) app doesn't AFAIK.

the way it's set up makes sense to my brain but you aren't the first one i know who has said it's hard to follow/read.

Jkwellborn · December 29, 2023

the way to do it was third party apps because you could customize however you wanted to
BUT if you are trying to read reddit linearly idk what to tell you, that's not how it's made to be used?
third party apps made it easy to automatically minimize non parent posts, their current (first party) app doesn't AFAIK.
the way it's set up makes sense to my brain but you aren't the first one i know who has said it's hard to follow/read.

See, that’s me. I don’t get the complaints about it on the app. It makes plenty of sense and flows pretty good to me.

52-80 · January 22

So, uh, fellas. what happened to all the nerdrage over there?

sounds a lot like the impotent freakout over net neutrality dont it.

Mother mopar · January 22

So, uh, fellas. what happened to all the nerdrage over there?

sounds a lot like the impotent freakout over net neutrality don't it.

I Reddit like a mofo and I'm curious to see how they try to leverage its data with AI... besides the obvious monetization of ads.

F250 · January 22

20 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

So, uh, fellas. what happened to all the nerdrage over there?

sounds a lot like the impotent freakout over net neutrality dont it.

Reddit took over some of the protesting subs and started replacing mods. Reddit always had the power to do so but had to violate the Reddit ethos to do so which in reality isn't a big deal.

bschoolprof · January 22

as long as r/trashyboners doesn't shut down, I'm good.

Hefeweizen · January 22

I haven’t logged in since narwhal shut down. Honestly don’t miss it. But I’m not the target demo.

immamac · January 22

reddit is trash.

Homercles · January 22

Best way to use Reddit is google

Rimbo · January 22

It's gotten a lot worse even since I last said it had gotten worse.

It's making me look for alternatives.

CooterBrown · January 22

12 hours ago, bschoolprof said:

as long as r/trashyboners doesn't shut down, I'm good.

Reddit is top shelf for porn. You'll discover kinks you didn't even know you had.

Unfortunately, the first thing to be banned with the IPO is going to be all the porn subreddits.

Gatorubet · January 22

14 hours ago, F250 said:

Reddit always had the power to do so but had to violate the Reddit ethos to do so which in reality isn't a big deal.

bschoolprof · January 22

23 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

Reddit is top shelf for porn. You'll discover kinks you didn't even know you had.

Unfortunately, the first thing to be banned with the IPO is going to be all the porn subreddits.

profits over people.

Captainant · January 22

15 hours ago, 52-80 said:

So, uh, fellas. what happened to all the nerdrage over there?

sounds a lot like the impotent freakout over net neutrality dont it.

A lot of their users moved on - that's what the last nerdrage was about.

Also, I really don't understand the contempt for net neutrality. You should be charged the same for data no matter it's origin. It's a utility.

Schulz2.0 · January 22

1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

Unfortunately, the first thing to be banned with the IPO is going to be all the porn subreddits.

SquishMitten · January 22

1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

Reddit is top shelf for porn. You'll discover kinks you didn't even know you had.

Unfortunately, the first thing to be banned with the IPO is going to be all the porn subreddits.

Will it though? I get why that seems logical at a glance, but that’s gotta be a massive portion of the overall usage. Can’t find any recent source, but as of a few years ago it was calculated that about 25% of the subreddits are NSFW. Doesn’t look like there’s any way for the public to determine how much traffic goes through those subreddits though. I’d guess it’s a significantly higher percentage, but I have no data to back that up. Either way, even if it’s only 25%, that would dramatically decrease shareholder value. I certainly wouldn’t want to be on the board of a company when it intentionally removed 25% of its value. Tumblr, Imgur, and probably others have shown this is a devastating decision.

HRSchenker · January 22

I only visit reddit when I'm at home on my desktop. Twitter has replaced the reddit usage I had on my mobile device.

NoName · January 22

58 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

Where did the nerds move on to and what community are they now? I ask because I have never used reddit and am not sufficiently smart/nerdy enough about any particular thing to need niche communities. Are there just like millions of independent discord channels out there now or twitch or what?

Nowhere specifically. It's like old Twitter fracturing. Lots of people moved to mastodon but quit posting there. Lots of people just quit entirely.

Re: reddit - Some moved to lemmy or other places. I'm sure some moved to discord. Some moved back to actual forums. One of the formerly best subreddits now points people to stackoverflow and is truly shit now. Lots of people just left.

Fuck Spez. I hope those guys lose their shirts.

immamac · January 22

56 minutes ago, NoName said:

Nowhere specifically. It's like old Twitter fracturing. Lots of people moved to mastodon but quit posting there. Lots of people just quit entirely.

Re: reddit - Some moved to lemmy or other places. I'm sure some moved to discord. Some moved back to actual forums. One of the formerly best subreddits now points people to stackoverflow and is truly shit now. Lots of people just left.

Fuck Spez. I hope those guys lose their shirts.

this is what's happening. The enshittification of the internet has people just logging off entirely. They may just read some news or something, but lots of people are just saying fuck it cuz the internet has become such a piece of shit.

Samson's Wig · January 22

The Internet was always a piece of shit. It just used to be more fun. Probably a good thing if people are actually spending less time on it.

Captainant · January 22

2 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

The Internet was always a piece of shit. It just used to be more fun. Probably a good thing if people are actually spending less time on it.

The toxic part of today's internet is the microtargetted algorithmic EVERYTHING. A big part of what made Google so useful back in the day was that everyone got the same GOOD utility out of it, and content was not written for the sole pursuit of getting clicks from Google for selling ads. Now the Internet is mostly just SEO optimized bullshit click farm pages that put alot of ads between you and the information you're looking for.

I think if we had a US GDPR that would go a long way to tamping down on the rampant microtargetting, but I'm not sure if the content ecosystem is recoverable - especially with the advent of generative AI

wildcat09 · January 22

3 hours ago, Captainant said:

A lot of their users moved on - that's what the last nerdrage was about.

Also, I really don't understand the contempt for net neutrality. You should be charged the same for data no matter it's origin. It's a utility.

It's a contempt for the people who were concerned about it. That's all.

NoName · January 23

20 hours ago, immamac said:

this is what's happening. The enshittification of the internet has people just logging off entirely. They may just read some news or something, but lots of people are just saying fuck it cuz the internet has become such a piece of shit.

agreed totally and completely on this front.

Fudge Nuggets · January 23

20 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

The Internet was always a piece of shit. It just used to be more fun. Probably a good thing if people are actually spending less time on it.

A lot of that is we are getting older. As you grow older, it takes truly remarkable stupid shit to be considered "fun"; not just your run of the mill stupid shit.

immamac · January 23

20 hours ago, Captainant said:

The toxic part of today's internet is the microtargetted algorithmic EVERYTHING. A big part of what made Google so useful back in the day was that everyone got the same GOOD utility out of it, and content was not written for the sole pursuit of getting clicks from Google for selling ads. Now the Internet is mostly just SEO optimized bullshit click farm pages that put alot of ads between you and the information you're looking for.

I think if we had a US GDPR that would go a long way to tamping down on the rampant microtargetting, but I'm not sure if the content ecosystem is recoverable - especially with the advent of generative AI

It’s what we are doing specifically at on Texas football. We are going anti bullshit SEO rich media overload and words for the sake of words with clickbait titles. Search be damned we want word of mouth and dedicated fans to find an approachable and digestible place for longhorns news and commentary.

We need to figure out how to get younger people to surly, but not change surly to a bunch of feed algorithm bullshit.

crash_davis · January 23

9 minutes ago, immamac said:

It’s what we are doing specifically at on Texas football. We are going anti bullshit SEO rich media overload and words for the sake of words with clickbait titles. Search be damned we want word of mouth and dedicated fans to find an approachable and digestible place for longhorns news and commentary.

We need to figure out how to get younger people to surly, but not change surly to a bunch of feed algorithm bullshit.

I tried turning on friends and some of my daughters male friends to Surly and other fan boards. They just don't like it. May be just my small circle of people.

Some people, most of the younger generation, do not have the patience to scroll through pages of posts to keep up with discussions. If you miss a day or two, then there's 2-10 pages, depending on the thread, of reading to get caught up. They want that shit in concise, 30 seconds readable summaries. Blame the internet for ADHD. The banter doesn't appeal to them.

Homercles · January 23

I mainly use Facebook to check our neighborhood page for news and post kid pics for friends/family to see…every time I do I’m amazed at just how much of it is ads or stupid ‘curated for you’ content like historical photo bullshit.

gurt · January 23

the glory days of the internet are dead and gone

Homercles · January 23

“The good old days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems” - Wayne Gretzky

The sheer utility of the internet has become astounding…recalling days when they were struggling to make any ad revenue and movie websites just had a phone number to call. Now I can plan entire vacations without having to talk to anyone which is just how I like it.

Like anything else, once the money gets huge things get fucky

immamac · January 23

58 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

I tried turning on friends and some of my daughters male friends to Surly and other fan boards. They just don't like it. May be just my small circle of people.

Some people, most of the younger generation, do not have the patience to scroll through pages of posts to keep up with discussions. If you miss a day or two, then there's 2-10 pages, depending on the thread, of reading to get caught up. They want that shit in concise, 30 seconds readable summaries. Blame the internet for ADHD. The banter doesn't appeal to them.

That’s what on Texas football is. Yin and yang.

Rimbo · January 23

23 hours ago, BeardIP said:

Where did the nerds move on to and what community are they now? I ask because I have never used reddit and am not sufficiently smart/nerdy enough about any particular thing to need niche communities. Are there just like millions of independent discord channels out there now or twitch or what?

haven't you noticed I've been posting HERE a lot more?

Captainant · January 29

They can value themselves at $5B but they're gonna take a hefty fuckin loss lol. Reddit doesn't really have a revenue model or any of the things that the business ghouls will need to make a public company successful

NoName · January 29

15 minutes ago, Captainant said:

They can value themselves at $5B but they're gonna take a hefty fuckin loss lol. Reddit doesn't really have a revenue model or any of the things that the business ghouls will need to make a public company successful

good, fuck em. they have had almost 20 years to find a way to be financially successful, haven't ever even come CLOSE, and that's without the fact that almost all moderation on the site is done for free by unpaid volunteers.

as a quick reminder, they had a fundraising round in 2021 at a $10b valuation. at one point they wanted to go public at at $15b valuation.

since then, i want to point out, they have the same CEO (Steve Huffman), same COO (Jen Wong) and same CTO (Christopher Slowe) - but their valuation has halved. i'm sure they will blame it all on the market changing, etc but a ton of the reason is the piss poor leadership that has tanked the company's valuation.

imagine having a site for nearly 20 years and never finding a way to make real money.

fuck spez.

Edited January 29 by NoName

Rimbo · February 22

5 hours ago, BeardIP said:

Sounds like they are trying to get some of their redditors to share in that hefty loss, if you think it's going to be that.

--

Reddit Inc., more so even than most social media companies, is a publisher that doesn’t pay its writers and editors. It runs a website that publishes huge amounts of content on various message boards; the boards are mostly moderated by volunteers and the content is written by users. From this, Reddit generates hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue from ads and data. For the most part, the users do not really share in that revenue.

This model works fine — It is in fact the case that the users happily post and moderate on Reddit without getting paid! There is no need to pay them! — but it is awkward, particularly when an initial public offering is set to value the company at more than $5 billion. “We created $5 billion of value and get none of it,” some redditors will probably complain. Letting them buy stock at the IPO price doesn’t really address that complaint — they still have to pay for it! — but it sort of symbolically responds to it. “We let our users share in our success, by paying full price for the stock"

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/reddit-stock-ipo-buyers-users-58744446

I dunno... getting the opportunity to buy at the IPO price seems like a nice gesture to me.

Here's the FAQ:

https://redditforcommunity.com/Directed-Share-Program

(Full disclosure: I qualify. For Group 1. Yes, I'm pathetic.)

F250 · February 23

5 hours ago, Rimbo said:

I dunno... getting the opportunity to buy at the IPO price seems like a nice gesture to me.

Here's the FAQ:

https://redditforcommunity.com/Directed-Share-Program

(Full disclosure: I qualify. For Group 1. Yes, I'm pathetic.)

Celery Man · February 23

NoName · February 23

19 hours ago, Rimbo said:

I dunno... getting the opportunity to buy at the IPO price seems like a nice gesture to me.

Here's the FAQ:

https://redditforcommunity.com/Directed-Share-Program

(Full disclosure: I qualify. For Group 1. Yes, I'm pathetic.)

if it makes you feel any better i'm just under the g1 tier break

Fudge Nuggets · February 23

23 hours ago, BeardIP said:

Also, this seems...good?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-ai-content-licensing-deal-with-google-sources-say-2024-02-22/

Based on the poor quality of a typical Reddit post, no; it doesn’t seem good. It seems likely to lead to more enshittification if anything.

Rimbo · February 23

2 hours ago, NoName said:

if it makes you feel any better i'm just under the g1 tier break

Hahaha not really. I'm well into Group 1.

It's interesting to me that top comments are generally shitposting, although there's some good stuff there, good career advice, etc. My best posts (IMHO) are in small subs that don't have a large audience.

Who knew that Fake Internet Points might actually one day have value, even if said value is dubious?

Edited February 23 by Rimbo

February 23

The deal between Reddit and Google is wild. Late last year, Google pushed an update that seemingly crowned Reddit the king of everything. There's now a "discussions and forums" area in SERP that almost ALWAYS includes two reddit posts and usually a Quora post. Plus, Reddit links are then included in the usual results.

I saw that Google was paying Reddit $60 million a year for access to build its AI database. The traffic that Google is now pushing to them is worth much, much more.

Article: https://detailed.com/forum-serps/

Also, how the hell does Reddit lose $90 million in a year? Traffic is all direct/organic, and you have millions of users creating content for free.

Fudge Nuggets · February 23

The typical Reddit poster wouldn’t make it a week here.

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