The CEO is a total scumbag and Apollo closing down.
Just got the death message from BaconReader today. Sad panda, but also good riddance.
Spez
When I first learned that Reddit would be pricing out third-party apps I was angry and upset, but I still entertained the notion of maybe continuing to use old.reddit on the desktop (until they inevitably killed that). I like many of the communities there and didn’t want to give them up.
But then came the AMA and the leaked memo and the crushing of the protests with threats and strongarm tactics. Everything spez wrote dripped with contempt for the community and the moderators that had made the site what it was through their unpaid labor. The message became clear: “Let the little users cry it out. They’ll have their little tantrum and then they’ll settle down and accept that the reality is that we can do anything we want to them and they have to just accept it. Their communities, their conversations, their culture, it all belongs to us, not to them. We have everything and they have nothing”.
I’m not going back to that.
Yeah, I completely agree. The main app I use didn’t even shut down (Relay) but the AMA convinced me to leave anyway. Spez and the rest of the admins came across as simply vile.
Literally. Reddit users are both content producers and consumers. They are also (unpaid) moderators and developers who made the website usable on Android and iOS devices. In short, Reddit is (was) its users, and spez and Ellen Pao contributed nothing. He deserves to watch his baby (which wasn’t even his idea in the first place) de a fiery death.
Give it a few months of reddit users seeking an alternative and Reddit will follow in Twitter’s footsteps: 50% of the content will just be robots talking to each other.
It left such a bad taste in my mouth realizing that they were absolutely just going to let people get their rage out, and then rely on the good ole human nature of just going with the flow. I mean realistically, once you have the momentum of a site like Reddit, you can do some pretty shitty stuff, and not get canned for it. I’m fairly certain they’re just going to rely on that, and then make money on what’s left after that.
I’ll probably still keep using old.reddit.com, but making an account on Lemmy has like 0 opportunity cost, so why not right?
Put simply, I’m tired of being the product, and it’s obvious that Reddit wanted to implement more data harvesting and more advertising to their platform. Couple that with the outrageous cost to use their API, and it’s bye, bye Reddit.
I choose this reason also ^ It’s close enough to my own.
Obligatory Fuck Spez.
Because apparently Lemmy was blowing up. I really support FOSS, but the only reason I don’t migrate right away is the lack of activity. And then Reddit just became unbearable all of a sudden, then there’s the surge of new Lemmy users. I’m finally happy to join.-
Losing Apollo was the main reason.
However this whole saga unveiled other disturbing things such as how Reddit is leveraging its communities for advertising in this post: https://lemmy.world/post/837198
Rif is getting shut down. And most of the sensible people seems to be moving to kbin+lemmy. I just followed suit.
Honestly, mostly solidarity.
Sure, the fact that my preferred Reddit app was going the way of the dodo and the fact that they weren’t even trying to negotiate in good faith were reasons, yeah, but at the end of the day, I was just gonna grit my teeth, patch the Reddit app with Revanced, and have that be my personal and insignificant F you.
Then I realized a bigger F you was to deprive them of content, future or present, (mine, specifically. As insignificant as it was) so I did.
And here I am
Loved this comment. Thank you. I wish more people were like you.
Honestly same! There’s no particular reason for me other than solidarity
Like, sure, some communities were getting better or worse, but that’s wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, and honestly due to Reddit’s age it was bound to lose it’s spark. Change is inevitable, so I jumped shit early
Reddit, like Digg before it, was a gathering place, where people could post or consume content, and interact with other users. It was much like a town square, where people can set up their soapbox and bark, or where a person could go and listen, interact, and enjoy.
Reddit is now like the Home Owners Association for that particular town square, and are actively trying to control the entire experience, by acting like they own the soapboxes, and as though the barkers are now obligated to ensure that content is HOA approved.
That kind of neighborhood holds no appeal for me.
That one article that coined the term ‘enshittification’ and made me realise centralised, for-profit social media will always turn garbage after awhile. I’m tired of changing sites every few years. Time to use something that’ll stay good this time.
I was a mod on Reddit so I was personally aware that for years Reddit’s mod tools have been totally inadequate for the job, that Reddit has been promising to give us something better, and that Reddit has failed to deliver. Honestly, it was even worse than just not delivering: we’d get new tools that didn’t solve the main problems, were only available on the iOS app, coming to Android eventually, and coming to the websites never. Third party API tools were the only thing that made modding vaguely functional, even on a small sub.
I’m also a supporter of accessibility in apps, which is also something Reddit has been promising for years and Reddit has failed to deliver. Again, third party API tools are the only thing that makes Reddit vaguely accessible right now.
Reddit’s API changes are not realistic to implement in a single month. This was made clear early on and Reddit has refused to budge. So at this point Reddit is knowingly upending an ecosystem that makes their site usable by groups of users with no first-party replacements ready. And given their history of failing to deliver these very tools, I have no confidence that they will ever do so.
And THEN the Spez AMA happened. I was hoping he’d listen to the community, engage with our concerns, or at the very least actually do an AMA. Instead he got caught lying, he got caught astroturfing, and he inadvertently made it clear that the real issue was that he was butthurt over these third party apps being better at business than Reddit was. Oh, and later we found out the Reddit CEO really admired Elon Musk’s handling of Twitter, a platform I left for all the reasons Spez seems to like it.
Even if none of these issues affected me personally (which they do), Reddit has made it clear that I just can’t trust them to run a fair and functional platform. They do not take their obligations to their users, mods, and business partners seriously. If they don’t like the way the game is going, they’ll change the rules without warning. They will promise features they will not deliver even when those features are essential to their site working for the users who keep it alive.
I don’t want to help Reddit build what Reddit wants to make anymore.
Greedy little pigs fuck u/spez what an enormous piece of shit
I left when Reddit started effectively taking over subreddits by forcing them to open or change their content to what Reddit thought it should be. I was planning on paying for Reddit premium so I could keep using it ad-free. I am sympathetic to Reddit’s desire to make a profit. But when they started effectively taking over subreddits it stopped being the Reddit I like and I’ll never return.
I can’t say I definitely won’t go back…I like Lemmy’s community better than Reddit’s but I’m not sure it’ll ever be as popular or as reliable as a source of info as Reddit. I think the Fediverse runs into similar problems to Linux, where it’s definitely superior in most ways to the nonfree competition, but that superiority goes hand in hand with inaccessibility to non-nerds. I like Tumblr’s community less than Reddit (and Lemmy, Reddit, and Tumblr are the only three social media sites I even find the community tolerable, though I don’t have Mastodon because I don’t have anyone I want to follow there) and Tumblr has never been useful for searching info.
But let me tell you, Spez’s conduct and praise of Elon Musk is what has me considering not going back. It’s just…he tried to act on the pulse of the userbase and failed spectacularly. Also hearing that Reddit is a noticably higher percentage assholes after the protests started.
Reddit has gone down-hill significantly. Over the last week most people have been gone while I was hesitant to leave reddit, and I’ve seen maybe one or two higher quality post. It’s gone to absolute shit.
Best part is, reddits solution? Ban moderators and close the subreddit.
I don’t want them making money out of the content I voluntarily and freely created. I was contributing in subs like C_programming to help newcomers. I have been thinking that all these posts I made will help the next AI - and Reddit (not me) will get paid for it.
So I mass edited each post and comment I made. They won’t get away with my data. My data belongs to me, not them.
