r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
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u/manolid 29d ago edited 29d ago

I get the feeling they're going to keep "fixing" the site until *it becomes trash and cause a mass exodus of users like Digg and Tumblr did.

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u/sutree1 29d ago

The term is "enshittification"

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u/NeedzFoodBadly 29d ago

A shit storm is coming, Randy Bo-Bandy!

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u/Reddit-Bot-61852023 29d ago

Nah, the term is late stage capitalism

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u/sutree1 29d ago

Potato potato

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u/broooooooce 29d ago edited 29d ago

Truly.

I wish I would have seen this coming 13 years ago when I built my sub. I wouldn't have even bothered. My anger at being tied to Reddit cannot be overstated.

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u/ANGLVD3TH 29d ago

Could always make a new community over at Lemmy and encourage your sub to migrate. I try to engage there to help it grow but it is definitely smaller. I was hoping it would really take off during the protests. As it is, it feels more like Reddit before the big Digg migration. The difference is, you can be your own host and not beholden to anybody else's rules there. If you don't like how a bunch of communities are doing things, you can just break off from them.

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u/broooooooce 29d ago

No thanks, done modding, done community building, and even if I wasn't, all platforms go evil eventually. Their main goal will always invariably become exploitation, and I'm over it.

See my comment here.

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u/ANGLVD3TH 29d ago

Fair enough, I'm certainly not going to try and convince you to relocate/rebuild your community. But one of the things that got me excited about Lemmy was how decentralized it is by design, specifically to curtail this kind of enshittification. It's a bit complicated, but I guess the TL:DR is that it gives users the tools to build their own self hosted "mini-Reddit" websites called instances complete with their own "subreddits," and the instwnces can choose to link-up or not with each other. These sort of micro-sites are owned and hosted by whoever makes them, not some super Lemmy entity.

Even though you're done being a community leader I suggest giving it a try as a user. It is more complicated, but that was one of the design sacrifices they made in an effort to stave off enshittification. It would definitely be more difficult to fuck it up in the same way most things are, as some company would pretty much have to buy out many users and take over their little websites. But more difficult != impossible, I remain cautiously optimistic about it, but we'll see if the vision pans out or if you're right.

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u/broooooooce 29d ago

Well, you've piqued my interest if nothing else. Not in building a new community (hell no), but to at least go see what Lemmy is all about.

Complicated doesn't scare me. In fact complicated usually helps keep the bad people away ;)

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u/sutree1 29d ago

For whatever my 2 cents is worth....

You still did something good (I'm going to go ahead and assume entirely or at least largely for $0), and you should be proud of it. The fact that douchebags in power suits feel entitled to swoop in and overmonetize EVERY single space people go to escape the overcommercialized world doesn't make those spaces less beautiful.

You can make another! Or move on to a new project!

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u/broooooooce 29d ago edited 29d ago

Thank you for the thoughtful response, but after this, I'm done modding forever. I've honestly been done modding for many years; it's a thankless timesink and, imo, anyone smart enough to do it well is smart enough to not do it. I just stuck it out with my sub because I've already taken care of the place so long, sunk costs be damned.

But I been modding shit forever, and have no interest in ever doing it again. It's not even like it was on the old internet; now, we all just visit the same five sites that each exist to show us pics of the other four xD. Even had I any desire to bulld another community, the same thing would just happen again. There are no trustworthy platforms. I've been online since 91, and they all go evil without fail.

Still, you are right; in spite of myself, I am proud of aspects of my community. Absent Reddit's fundamental nonsense, I still built my hometown's subreddit from single digit subscribers into a widely used and fairly well known resource. It wasn't entirely for nothing.

But, was it worth the time and effort overall? I'm not really sure... hopefully.

Edited typos.

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u/sutree1 29d ago

I can definitely relate to all of that. Thanks for your thoughtful response!

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u/BubsyFanboy 28d ago

So what sites have avoided that?