Prior to the protest reddit was in full support of the protest. Most polls on subs supported a shutdown. Now, seemingly every community cant understand why the protest was needed and they’re calling it a mod power trip. There is a 3rd possibility. This is an unfounded conspiracy but reddit themselves could be manipulating scores.
See the NFL thread if you don’t mind sending traffic
https://reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/14b11kh/were_just_here_so_we_dont_get_fined/
I mean the truth is 95% of redditors didn’t use apps and don’t care about this at all.
It’s like if your local street had a protest for sheep shearing, preventing you from going to the park or movies. It’s irrelevant to you and the large majority would want it over.
No it’s not like that.
It’s like the people keeping your city clean can no longer use tools and have to use their bare hands unless they pay a bunch of money. That’s what it’s like. Sure for a while it will be ok, but the shit will build up, it will get worse and worse, and the city you once loved will be a shit hole of trash. The workers are literally protesting to have better tools and access to keep your city clean, and you’re saying it doesn’t matter. OH BY THE WAY THE WORKERS DON’T GET PAID.
Yes this is a good analogy. Rome was neither built in a day nor destroyed Ina day.
We are thinking Reddit will turn out to be like MySpace or digg but it will be more like Facebook. It will exist but filled with clueless people consuming garbage.
Until there is a shortage of sweaters due to no wool being produced any more (akin to content creators and moderators who use reddit API)
I would have thought most people would be using an app. Most people access the Internet through their phone.
As a moderator of a small subreddit, when I checked roughly 75% of our traffic was from mobile. It doesn’t distinguish beyond that but the mobile browser experience is so shockingly bad I think it’s safe to say that is almost entirely app usage. Since there is only official app & Apollo on iOS, that means it’s one of those two… but the way Huffman tells it, Apollo has less than 5% of the install base of the official app on iOS. If that’s the case I don’t really understand his argument that they’re bleeding Reddit dry. But that’s a separate issue.
But, based on the responses we had before the blackout and the responses we got in the last few days “after” in the discussions around opening back up, I can say he appears to be right. Most people just want to use the main app, don’t want to learn anything about third party apps, don’t care why they exist, just want everyone to shut up and move on.
I did find the total 180 very odd. Vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the protest beforehand. Overwhelmingly in favor of going back to normal after. But it was different people. And it wasn’t just random one-week-old accounts that had never posted on the sub before, it was regulars, old accounts, or both, both times.
I’m proud of the properly big subs for continuing their protests. Our community was not strong enough.
Yeah, I’m not buying Reddit’s statistics. 90%+ of mod actions on desktop web and official app? I can see plenty of use for old Reddit, but they have locked quite a few mod actions behind the new interface recently. Likewise the more and more spez feels the need to mention that there was no real consequence from the blackout makes me question the validity of that statement. We’re all aware what a lying jackass he is.
I’m sure that the majority of people will continue to use Reddit regardless. I’m just not sure that the majority is as major as they are presenting it to be.
Honestly, I mostly used desktop and the official app sometimes (mostly while I was watching TV, like right now). I don’t think I’d realized there were third party apps, otherwise I would have been using one before all this mess.
I discovered reddit on desktop, switched over to RIF and one day I created a burner account on desk top (2021 ish) and was shocked at what I saw.
The actual content was in like 10 point font with ads and an instant messenger function taking up a quarter of the screen.
If people only ever used the desk top or official app, they have no idea the experience other people were getting. Essentially only the all page had ads, they were the same size as posts, they were more clearly delineated as ads, there was less of them.
I’ve heard people bitching about the “He Gets Us” ad campaign, but as a RES and RIF user, I never really experienced that. Knowing the hell they’re going through though, I know it would do nothing but piss me off. So why take the risk. Just leave Reddit.
So I didn’t know what those were until recently, when I clicked over to Reddit in a browser a few times to see things like r/gaming’s “sorry” message and to see that r/funny had opened back up.
Every single time I opened Reddit in my browser, there would be a single post at the top, followed by an advertisement for Jesus right there under the top post. The ads were designed to look like posts, too, so they weren’t even obviously identifiable as ads on first glance.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an advertisement for Jesus on any other social media site. But in Reddit, apparently it’s very, very common. Does no one else want to buy ad space from them, or do they just put no work into curating which ads users see? Did Jesus pay more to be the top spot every time someone opens their browser?
Out of curiosity, I went over to Reddit and looked at r/Jewish and sure enough, there was an ad for Jesus. Great job, Reddit ad department.
install ublock origin
I meant it to be more of a comment on their questionable ad sales decision, to be fair.
While I moved over to the fediverse on the principle of it all, I’ve never used an app myself. Only old.reddit on both PC and mobile. Just got too used to it before any app came up.
I think a lot of mods probably use RES on desktop, which will still be functional after this. But yeah, statistics say that 3PA are only used by about 5-10% of users
Agreed. they also know RES only works as long as old.reddit.com works, and once that’s done, desktop is shit.
Once they kill third party they will go for old reddit. Definitely
I would agree but many sub reddits had polls before locking and the majority were always in favor.
One thing to keep in mind is that there is an active minority of users who are content generators who are much more likely to vote on stuff like that. Then there are a ton of mostly silent read-only users (most of whom don’t even have accounts). If you inconvenience the mostly silent users who are just there for cat pics on their lunch break, some of them will suddenly put in the effort to complain. But they’ll never build a community, you need the active users for that.
I.e the 90-9-1 rule of internet culture.
Yeah, good luck to the read-onlys when the content creators are gone.