I read The Verge’s latest interview with Steve Huffman here and it seems as though the Reddit blackout is having little to no effect. It also seems as though the communities at large don’t really care and will probably just use the official app or don’t really know there are 3rd party ones. So it seems this will pass and be mostly forgotten about.
What are your thoughts?
They sure are trying really hard to put a stop to the blackout they say is having no effect.
It may be true that the disturbance has minimal effect on overall site traffic and advertising revenue, but it’s caught the attention of the media which could have much larger effects.
But the blackout isn’t really what’s catching most of the attention anymore, it’s the mishandling of the situation that’s ending up in the news most of the time now. Spez is bringing most of this on himself.This will end exactly the same way the Twitter -> Mastodon thing ended.
Reddit will continue. A slightly worse Reddit, with more bots, more low-effort content, and less quality OC.
Moderation will degrade slightly as the admins replace protesting moderators with more obedient ones, and/or communities lose interest and use the new “voting” (lol) systems to pick admins which will give them the reliable dopamine hits.
A small percentage of Redditors, especially the power users, will move on. A small percentage in Reddit terms is a tidal wave for any other platform. Some percentage of that number of Redditors leaving will come here.
Lemmy & Kbin will experience growing pains. Issues caused by scaling up infrastructure, instance to instance friction, etc. These will get resolved with time. When things settle, we will have a fraction of reddit’s userbase, but neither will we need more. We’ll have enough to have stable, engaging communities which will slowly grow.
In other words, a mirror reflection of the Mastodon story.
Twitter relies on celebrities, athletes, and journalists. All of them want to be where the eyeballs are so until Mastodon grows more, they’ll stay on Twitter.
Lemmy just needs to continue to grow and improve. Maybe it never gets as big as reddit but the content has the potential to be just as good.
I mean, if that’s how they treat the mods, who would want to mod for reddit? It is unpaid work, the only reasons they are doing it would either be to feel empowered or to foster a community. What spez did is to tell mods they are powerless and to show them the community doesn’t matter. Without good mods, people won’t be sticking around.
I’d guess there’s impact if they’re forcing subs to reopen via threats and generally acting like tyrants with the self control of a toddler.
Considering the volume of bots spreading venom about it, I have to say it’s doing something
The majority of people will keep using the site like they always have, but I think the reputation and mindshare has taken a pretty big impact. Reddit is following Twitter’s trajectory, and while people are still using Twitter it’s sort of becoming a joke. Also Spez just can’t stop talking about the protests and every time he does he says more and more stupid shit, which again, is completely following in Musk’s footsteps.
I think both platforms are in a death spiral, even if they’re maintaining a large userbase for now. I think almost everyone using Twitter, and now Reddit, are just waiting for a tipping point to occur elsewhere. Maybe if a few high profile users/musicians/news outlets jump ship, others will follow. I personally think the Fediverse is the next big thing, but it has work to do to get to where both Reddit and Twitter are now. Which is fine. It took both of those platforms many years to grow into what they are.
The louder they protest it’s not doing anything, the more you can be certain that it is.
If there is no effect, then why is he losing his ever loving mind over it? Why are they going to potentially change rules that have stayed the same since Reddit’s inception as a result?
I certainly don’t think Reddit is going to die out from this; its far too big. But I do think that Spez has managed to irrevocably change the culture of the site forever (particularly by forcing out the long time users). I personally have no intention of going back despite having been active on the site almost daily since 2010
I believe there was a report saying that they’re changing policy to allow moderators to be voted out. If true, to me if they are announcing something so drastic, which can be manipulated by bots, then there is an impact of some kind.
I don’t really care. I’m here now, deleted my 12 year old account in the process. People thinking Reddit will die are delusional. The Reddit as us old people know it has died years ago, it just became unbearable now.
