this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Lemmy.World Announcements

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Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

There's a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we've seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.

While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don't want you to be the object of their frustrations.

Again, we'll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.

Edit to include source: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/13/reddit-ceo-blackouts-no-revenue-impact/

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hey! I'm keeping this as it's sharing knowledge with new users from Reddit. However, in future please find another community to post this on, because it is not related to the lemmy.world instance specifically.

[–] [email protected] 345 points 1 year ago (37 children)

I'm sure many will go back to Reddit but some wont. I for one will be staying on Lemmy as I've found it a breath of fresh air.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Same! The mood here reminds me of the good old days when everyone on Reddit wasn't a cynical asshole.

Jerboa is already a better app than Reddit's official app, so I'm quite happy to give the Lemmy and Jerboa devs time to iron out the kinks.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Wowzers. No offense at all to the Jerboa devs but this really contextualizes for me just how bad the official app must be.

I want baconreader for Lemmy!

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

Yup I'm staying here too. It's already feeling like home.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah, I'm sold on Lemmy too.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I’m fully committed regardless of how good the replacement is. I paid for Reddit premium every month since 2016 to try and support the thing I loved. I gave out 65+ gold before premium to also support a thing a loved.

I cancelled premium after the AMA and deleted Apollo. No going back period.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Same here. This morning I've removed my ten years worth of content from Reddit as I don't want them to even generate the slightest bit of revenue from it, removed my account and do not feel bad about it in the slightest.

I'm done with the way Reddit handles the community feedback and done with the "don't you dare to have a differing opinion or we'll downvote to oblivion" mentality that prevailed in a number of subreddits.

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[–] [email protected] 248 points 1 year ago (20 children)

My notes:

  • As expected, a blackout with a set end date is seen as toothless by Reddit leadership
  • I hate when companies refer to their employees with some "cute" nickname, like "Snoos"
  • He expects some Reddit users to actually resort to physical violence, painting them as the irrational bad guys in this whole situation?
[–] [email protected] 119 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He expects some Reddit users to actually resort to physical violence, painting them as the irrational bad guys in this whole situation?

Spez has played the victim the entire time, why change tack now?

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago

People are upset, is it me that's out of touch? No, it's the redditors who are wrong.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (8 children)
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oh wow, reading it summarized in your three points instantly reminded me of the behaviour of an emotional abuser. The last one specially hits hard, classic bully telling it's actually the bullied one.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

Tbf, those irrational people do definitely exist. Not that they represent the majority or anything, but even one isolated attack would be a big problem (obviously), so I agree it's best to be on the safe side there.

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah this is why I think the 48 hour time limit is unfortunate. I don't think it's going to have much long term effect, and the only real difference is going dark indefinitely until demands are met or just migrating elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 80 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Thing is, ultimately people do have a choice as to whether they want to continue using Reddit without third-party apps.
I agree that regardless of any blackouts, Reddit will be fine in the end - most people simply don't mind using a Facebook-ified version of Reddit, and that's fine.

My hope isn't that Reddit will fall, it's that alternatives (like Lemmy) will rise, for those of us that do care about these issues.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

There is a list of 300+ subs that are staying dark indefinitely. Some have tens of millions of subs. I expect that list will grow as more of this stuff comes out.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That little quip at the end implying that they could be targeted in public over this, with the intention to have journalists write as if we are flying off the handle.

This isn't Rick & Morty's szechuan sauce crowd, these are the moderators and content creators of the website. We are peacefully protesting his poor conduct.

The worst that's happened is that he's had some memes made about him and himself alone.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I suspect that the fact that he had to call out that they are not seeing any significant revenue impact probably means that they actually are seeing an impact.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, there's no way they aren't seeing an impact of our actions between people canceling Premium and reduced ad impressions because of the private subs.

He's projecting confidence because he wants us to think we're not having any effect on them and come back.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"be mindful of wearing Reddit gear"??? this doesn't feel like this was said in good faith at ALL.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago (8 children)

When I moved to Mastodon, I stopped caring about the Twitter dumpster fire. It was great.

I am trying to do the same with Lemmy, to forget about Reddit. It's gone. We are here now.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Am I the only one bothered by him referring to people as "Snoos"? It's so cringy.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Looking at this thread in r/technology, it sure looks like most of the newer Redditors were just pissed by the blackout and don’t care about Reddit’s changes. That suggests to me that Reddit is beyond saving.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago

I'm glad the statement is quite arrogant. They will feel it and it will hurt. This is the first wave of the great Rexxodus.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (5 children)

A lot of this just feels like CEO talk. Obviously they do not want to back down but if enough big subs stay off then they might have to change course. I'm worried about the people who are addicted to reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (6 children)

No matter what this guy says or does, millions have switched to Lemmy not only is it like reddit, its better, its what reddit used to be.

Now, all will calm down for reddit but the boat started to leak and many will not go back. Just like many didn't go back to twitter. We will see a slow and steady increase of fediverse activity.

This is truly the web3 we all deserved.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Not to put a damper on, but it's more like 50k who started posting on lemmy in the past week for a total of 110k. We basically doubled the user count, but still are an order of magnitude away from 1 million.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (5 children)

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far

As long as this is true zero fucks will be given.

This pains me as someone who worked in a customer-facing role at a software company. You're at work getting your ass kicked and leadership just shrugs and says it's ok because we're still making money.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Saddens me that while the community could muster a great effort, the short 2 day time limit of the blackout wasn't enough.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don’t know if I’d take his word at face value. This reads like he’s talking to potential investors, not Reddit’s user base. Of course he’d want to assure them that everything is okay and they should still give him money.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's an internal message to employees of Reddit. As someone who's been in the corporate world for a long time, I've seen some variation of this message many times. Economic downturn, bad press, low sales, losing expected incoming cash... there are a lot of catalysts for this style of message.

Most messages we're seeing are from users, who want Reddit to crash and burn or just do what the masses want, or whatever. But, on the other side is a bunch of people who may be worried about how this whole thing will affect their livelihood. Even if Reddit stays up another 20 years and not everyone loses their job, what scale will it be? Will Reddit fire some amount of their workforce to make up for lost income? Will I be someone who gets fired?

These are the thoughts that this message is intended to address.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (3 children)

"be mindful of wearing reddit gear in public."

Things I would never do regardless for 500, Alex.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago

Well they say that:

"As of Wednesday morning, more than 6,000 subreddits remained inaccessible and in private mode after what began as a two-day voluntary shutdown. The blackout includes popular forums such as r/aww, r/videos and r/music, each of which claims more than 25 million subscribers on the platform. "

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/14/tech/reddit-blackout/index.html

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

this too shall pass

I believe there's going to be a moderator exodus. The flippancy with which Steve has handled this, and how he responded here, is going to stick in the craws of their enormous unpaid workforce. These are the people who have been there a decade plus, have seen the ebbs and flows, and are probably no longer willing to be unpaid servants to their clearly demonstrated monetary interests (at the expense of its users [product]). This was a turning point. They have way bigger problems to address than a 48 hour boycott.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Between this and the fact that r/AdviceAnimals is apparently back with Reddit moderators, I think Reddit will go on. They own everything and can re-open every subreddit whenever they want. Many of the more technical/informed Reddit users will remain absent from the site but the bulk of casual users will likely remain. Whether the content that's left will satisfy them remains to be seen.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"We absolutely must ship what we said we would."

Oh wow he's actually scared

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago

Why is this motherfucker acting like a victim?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would love to watch reddit crash and burn, and for smeg-spez to get fired. But I'm mentally prepared for them to linger on for years and maybe even be profitable as they hang on to the countless dumb-dumbs who just don't know anything more than mindlessly scrolling through endless ads.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can still move on and enjoy what we're building to replace reddit in our daily routine, even if we can't make reddit itself go away like it should.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Unfortunately from what I've seen on big gaming subs is that enough users simply don't care. Take a look at /r/rocketleague for example. Mods made a post saying they can't permanently black out the sub due to it being owned by psyonix and the top comment on that thread has hundreds of up votes and comments saying they don't care about the API changes. It's really that mentality of "I don't care unless I'm personally affected" is why we're in this mess to begin with!

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago

There's reads really passive aggressive. It clearly wasn't intended to actually say anything meaningful to staff but rather something for 1. media that pickup on (won't anyone think of the poor people attacked for wearing Reddit gear in public!), 2. appeasement of potential investors ahead of the IPO (our bottom line is rock solid folks, thousands of subs gone and no impact on profits!) and 3. an unsubtle dig at and gaslighting of people participating in the blackout (fools! This won't last, you'll all come crawling back and this doesn't affect many subs anyway!).

Spez just keeps doubling down on the Streisand Effect. Challenge accepted arsehole.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This makes me irrationally angry... especially the "snoos" part. WTF...

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

I notice he says about a thousand when the article cites closer to 8,000 subs going dark. This is probably the closest they’ll get to admitting the protest did anything at all to Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

A lot of sudreddits are vowing to go dark indefinitely in response to this it looks like. Many were already, but the official position on /r/ModCoord is an indefinite blackout for all but critically important subs.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wherever Aaron is, I hope he can't see this.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

I hope this response further pisses off the subs who decided to do a fixed time blackout. The user base cannot be taken for granted. Reddit is only good as the content and the creators along with the mods.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

Lol, what an asshole.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Honestly, whatever Reddit does at this point doesn't matter. Lemmy works decently and for all else, why not try using something different? The internet is a bigger place than it seems. I prefer touching grass to wasting any more time thinking about Reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

I sure hope some subreddits to go private indefinitely this 30th, just to shut up this imbecile.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here's the source article from The Verge

"In an internal memo sent Monday afternoon to Reddit staff, CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback directed at the company, telling employees to block out the β€œnoise” and that the ongoing blackout of thousands of subreddits will eventually pass.

The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, is in response to popular subreddits going dark this week in protest of the company’s increased API pricing for third-party apps. Some of the most popular Reddit clients say the bill for keeping their apps up and running could cost them millions of dollars a year. More than 8,000 Reddit communities have gone dark in protest, and while many plan to open up again on Wednesday, some have said they’ll stay private indefinitely until Reddit makes changes..."

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