The Verge posted the actual memo that was released, you can find that below and the article here
Hi Snoos,
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.
To me, this looks like it was absolutely destined for a public release/intended leak. The victimisation says it all with them crying that their employees are going to get attacked. This is a simply absurd statement.
Any indicated statement from a CEO of a community forum that insinuates that their users, who are currently undergoing a completely peaceful protest, are in fact, volatile enough to attack employees simply doing their job has completely lost the plot. Their position as CEO is completely untenable.
Thanks Reddit for throwing extra wood on the fire. I was getting concerned that it wasn’t raging enough.
Think I may just leave the subs I moderate down for longer, then.
Might as well leave them down indefinitely. I’m gonna block reddit at the DNS level, I’m done.
I blocked them at the DNS level too. Helps break the habit and avoids me accidently clicking on a reddit link.
This comment may also help.
Thanks for posting! This is wild. Internals are probably a disaster, to say the least.
like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well’
I hate this part so much. Corporate overlords be gone!
He’s saying “we don’t need to listen to the community, they’ll get over it”. Again, completely tone deaf.
This is just blatant “fuck your concerns it will blow over anyway”.
We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far
That’s what it’s all about.
Yeah. This is literally a warning. Not that many users have actually stopped using reddit, it’s such a force of habit.
But once their favorite apps, that all their muscle memory has become trained to use, stops working?
They’ll be gone.
Oh boy, I hope this statement pisses off a lot of people and motivates them to extend the blackout. My only criticism of the blackout was that there was an end date, Reddit only has to wait it out temporarily in that case, but idk this statement is kinda ridiculous. I hope people take it as the spit in the face it is, who tf is getting violent over subreddits going private? no one, extend the blackout!
Does the man not realize the absolute exodus the users are trying to warn him about? Blow over? Reddit will die overnight once people can’t use their favorite third party apps anymore, or browse their porn subs.
I know the 80/20 rule, and that a big chunk of that 20 uses apps, but I’m not convinced. I thought the same thing about twitter when they killed off third party apps, and I ended up being the only one in my circle who moved to mastodon.
Twitter’s first party app was never as hated as reddit’s, was it?
On twitter you follow people, on reddit, you follow subjects. The latter you can move to another platform, even with just partial user migration. The former, not so much.
When you are held by your connection to other users, you’re a lot more stuck to a platform. Reddit doesn’t have that nearly to the same extent. I feel that’s one of the critical mistakes the guy at the top is making.
Imagine wearing Reddit merch in public space 💀
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.
Uh yeah, if you have to tell your staff not to wear their otherwise innocuously branded clothing for fear of getting the shit kicked out of them … you might just be the problem here.
Blow this, reddit
It blew me right over here to Lemmy
Go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all this to blow over!
I can’t wait to see how this all pans out. Will we see a “we listened” grovelling non-apology once they realise their core users are gone?
He used rhetoric that any terrible leader would use. The threat of violence is to separate them from us. We see it play out with all our favorite narcissists that run business and our country. Glad I blocked them.
Cool. I was going to hold out hope that something might change. But I’ve just deleted my account of 12+ years.
You know what, even if it does and everyone goes back. I will be continuing to hang out here I like this community and it’s worth keeping this going regardless!
I mean to be honest there’s a good chance he’s not wrong. I really hope it won’t and they will reconsider their decisions but knowing the majority of people this will last for about a week, there is still a decent amount of people who do use the official app and there are a lot of subs that, even if they’re part of this black out now, will go up again because a big part their community did not take this situation seriously at all and felt like it’s just outrage culture thing or just a temp solidarity thing. Even if it will blow over reddit will never be the same for sure, but it still might be profitable enough to keep it running the way it is. Hope that im wrong though.
He’s using the kind of language that abusers do.
Sadly, I don’t think he’s wrong. It’s quite easy to see how:
- A lot of people currently on Lemmy still have a pretty big addiction to reddit - I’ve seen a lot of threads about how they instinctually pull up reddit
- This is still a vocal minority. There were some statistics (I unfortunately can’t pull up the numbers - I think I saw them on a subreddit that has gone private), where the number of people using third party applications was an extremely small number that probably won’t move the needle for them revenue-wise.
That being said, I personally have been enjoying the discussions being had on Lemmy. It seems to prompt for better discussion, since it appears that most people here are more tech-adept and willing to go through growing pains. I’ll likely stick around, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of active users here drops once this blackout ends. Still hoping for a change.
Eh. I did open reddit by accident a two times today myself, idly tapping the Relay icon and swiping it away on the loading screen.
But… I’ve also nuked my post history on all of my alts. My main account was a contributor on some tech subs where, while I abhor reddit making money off my freely given contributions, I also abhor the wanton destruction of freely exchanged information at a cultural level.
I’m considering how I could spare those posts and nuke the rest while I figure how to rehost that content elsewhere. Then again, I got that same info from somewhere else, and those sites still work so maybe the argument is academic.
Even I don’t know what I’m about to do yet. Interesting times, indeed.
Fediverse will still take years to get up, but this was a massive boost forward for it, the momentum has shifted.
I feel with reddit there’s a bigger chance for it happening than for Twitter since the network effect is smaller
A shame that mastodon seems to be soo much more “ripe” with more aps and better infrastructure than lemmy - if there where 3-4 apps to choose from already instead of just the one chances would be pretty good for lemmy establishing itself for real
Right now it just is a “too rough” experience for most people
Yep, I’m here to stay. Daily on Reddit I’d browse and leave feeling angry and anxious. I haven’t felt like that at all on Lemmy. The internet feels fun again!
For sure dude I honestly have been in IT and networking for 20yrs and never heard or knew about any of this. I think it’s great!
I hope he’s wrong, but I’m pretty sure he’s right. 2 days isn’t going to change anything, elpecially if he’s willing to lie about everything.
I don’t care if all the subreddits come back. I’ve already deleted my account and will not be going back.
So we’re going to do a forever protest on June 30 right?
I’m already there
Dude’s unironically saying “you’ll be back” lmao. Well, it sucks that the intimidation tactic of demonstrating our numbers and solidarity with a short strike didn’t work as I originally feared. I said a couple times in the lead up to the strike that only striking for two days instead of indefinitely was ultimately going to be a performative move because it would give them assurance that it would be temporary and so ultimately the scene as a temporary inconvenience at most by Reddit management. That to really make them hurt and to make them scared a sizeable portion of subreddits would have to go dark indefinitely.
Someone pointed out to me that the performativity was kind of the point, because it was just a demonstration of concern and solidarity, and I had hoped that would work as a sort of forewarning of a more serious strike if they didn’t listen, but that didn’t pan out I guess.
There is still the end of the month API deadline, Reddit is expecting everyone to return and forget the whole thing, which could work like the other “blowups” if the issue actually was over by then, but it isn’t. If and when the 3rd party apps go dark it’s going to kick off another wave of protest, and this time it’s not going to end until 3rd party apps are available again. What is left to be seen is how many users, moderators and subs are actually willing to participate, and how many just throw in the towel and give up.
Realistically, it will. What’s left behind depends on the mods and users. Reddit isn’t going away that easily. Time will show impact
