I feel like this has had a bigger effect on Google than it has on Reddit. All of the useless, but popular "look at our cute animals" subreddits stayed up, but all of the actually useful tech-help subreddits went down. And if you type things into Google to try to find info on various tech issues, you will get almost nothing but reddit Questions/responses to the exact problem you have, but when you click on it, it says that the subreddit is private.
I had no idea about what was happening with Reddit until I spent 30 minutes googling something and couldn't find the answer because 3 pages were Reddit communities that are now private.
Worst is that you find an "article" with the response on another site and most of the page is talking about the history of the think you are searching rather then actually showing the thing you are searching Especially common with gaming guides if im searching how to get an specific item on zelda botw then i dont need to know that nintendo released the game in 2016 and that people cant find the damn thing im searching
@@diydylana3151 Yeah I don't see a lot of people talking about this, but google search actually sucks ass now. I genuinely get better results with bing for technical questions or obscure content
"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates." - Gaben Same with 3rd party aps or competition.
But that costs them money today, when there is apparently no tomorrow... This type of thinking is pervasive, I'd tell you a bit about how it's affected my own employment if I wasn't bound by an NDA and a sick mother...
In my opinion, the blackouts didn't last long enough to change the situation. Sadly, making it longer would force Redditors to go outside, and that simply wouldn't be tolerated.
Many people argued the protest would either stop half way ot won't exist after 48 hours because that's the max Reddit mods can stay without Reddit. I use reddit and I think the protest should continue. The lack of helpful posts is already hurting but I can use wayback machine.
Yeah, nope. Most of the redditors are planning to keep at it, probably got second wind after that taunt from spez. And if reddit falls, we got alternatives, we won't bother infesting everywhere else.
As much of a meme Reddit is. I can't deny that it has helped me the most out of any website. When my PC had problems, Reddit solved it. When my game had problems, reddit solved it. When I wanted to get some good toys for my cat, reddit helped me out and saved me some money as well. There are good redditors that I'm grateful for.
That’s the main reason why I still want Reddit to be a thing because for some reason 80% of the obscure questions you have have already been asked there. Especially when it comes to games and tech
Exactly. You look up any specific question and it's there. If it's not there, you post it and it's answered. That's why I like Reddit, it's very helpful.
Forums existed before reddit, all they did was make a hub for other forums to exist. Users make the content and answer the questions, not the portals themselves. Search engines will still bring you the answers you seek.
Though, if a reddit dies, it will suck to lose all the discussions that have happened on it, with all the helpful advice that will undoubtedly help people in the future as well. I guess that's where the internet archive needs to step in, if they can.
Did it keep me company while dealing with my abusive father? Yes. Did it also offer unrestricted access to videos of people dying and randomly show beheadings? Also yes 😩.
Honestly feel like the mods should've just left subs unmoderated until they change it, but these are reddit mods so you know they won't be willing to give any type of power up
That Reddit CEO looks to be the living personification of Mike Tyson's words about how social media has made people entirely too comfortable with disrepecting others.
Reddit has openly warned the mods of the privated communities that the mod team will be replaced by other willing mods and the subreddits will be forced to go public again. To a situation that's already on fire, Reddit has decided to pour gasoline straight into it.
Is that even allowed? What rule in the Terms of Service have they broken that gives Reddit the leave to just take their subreddits off of them. It seems like an empty threat.
Crazy how tech companies don’t want third party apps to steal from them by not showing ads. Seriously Reddit shouldn’t put the hammer down on that shit.
@@unholyfox7299 I don’t think it’s just tech companies, if any company founds out you got fired because you leaked emails, you’ve just committed career suicide in many fields. Unless you’re an established millionaire, than you have just screwed yourself over.
@@unholyfox7299 of course, but it always happens nevertheless. Probably because it’s usually with e-mails or meetings that involved the whole company, so the leak is difficult to trace.
My favourite part of 'social media fucks up so much, people leave' is when the site's refugees make their way to Tumblr. The difference between how welcoming it was to Reddit refugees compared to the rabid hatred of Twitter refugees was insane. It's so fun
As a visually impaired guy, his response about the accessibility apps is absolutely a PR bandage. They weren't even exempt initially. The reason they announced that was in direct response to the CEO getting caught in the AMA before the blackout, copy-pasting (He left the "A." at the start of the answer from his doc signifying Answer), the same blanket PR written response to several blind and visually impaired users, including using the same non-answer for things like like a 14-point question from a totally blind user.
I wanna remind people that the CEO of Reddit moderated a jailbait subreddit back in 2008. The dude was also caught changing and editing comments that didn’t agree with his own views.
I love how people are starting to fight back against these corrupt corporate companies, from Bud Light to Reddit. We have power, and this is proof! 😃 Edit: This. This is why I can't stand Charlie's fan base. I mention something that is going on, and people freak out. I can have and opinion on things. Get. Over. It.
Twitch sticking the fattest stick up their backside by introducing trash rules Reddit not giving a F about its community TH-cam removing dislikes Twitter has always been the most rotten place in hell OnlyFans doesn't want to UNBAN me
We've had a few major financial collapses this year. they have 2 options. make more money or cut down on resources. they cannot directly go "hey guys we're having issues paying our employees" if they actually reveal that they're struggling, the investors will back off. that's pretty much the truth. banks going down and countries in a cat fight made things expensive for corps.
I'm not an avid Reddit user, but a lot of the times when I have a random question about a game or something, someone on Reddit has asked/answered it before. For the past few days, every single subreddit I've tried to click on has been privated, I don't think this is something that'll just "blow over"
i agree, I use reddit a lot for info, met some people going 'lol I don't use reddit, who cares' but... jebus, it's going to suck so much to find niche things and quick answers easily now
I'm not a hardcore reddit user but i found a lot of solutions there, especially in programming game development. There's a lot of entertainment there too. It's going to be sad if reddit actually shuts down
Yep, reddit sometimes helps with programming. Also I bought a 3D printer 2 days ago, 90% of all advice and solutions to my problems are on subreddits I can't access 🥲
@@NessPKfreeze Also for a lot of video content, for example there's no single greater repository of football highlights, not even TH-cam where most highlights are being blocked.
For everyone that **still** doesn't understand: the 48 hours were chosen because you can't get 9000 subreddits to go dark indefinitely at once without a test run, it's much easier to do it for 2 days and go indefinite after that. Which many subreddits are doing right now.
@@ODSTWhiteout Yeah let's just go ahead and not even try at all. That's *your* mentality right now, if everyone ever just thought like that we'd not be where we are today.
@@ODSTWhiteout that would kill what little goodwill Reddit has left, and would alienate a bunch of the community, whether they care about the API thing or not.
@@ODSTWhiteoutbecause they don't have enough people to do that? That's 9000 subreddits with like 10 moderators each, no way Reddit has enough employees for that.
That’s exactly what he’s doing. He knows how unpopular this is. He simply doesn’t care. Like Charlie said, everyone is too addicted to the site to leave, and spez thinks that’s enough to keep the entire user base.
Really didn't surprise me, the two day time limit was like saying 'we care, but not too much'. I'm by no means a Redditor, but I'm sure he's right, too. It'll all blow over and be back to normal, before long. In this 'war where he is a general', or whatever, he is winning.
I do definitely think that people would get bullied for wearing reddit merch. But this thing has nothing to do with it, wearing reddit merch is just something you deserve to be made fun of for
the thing i fear most about this whole thing, is where the redditers will go now. and not having easy answers from a 9 year old reddit thread for my weird ass very specific questions
Reddit is seriously an amazing source of information in it's own right. Sometimes it's the only place I can find an answer to the questions I have on the most specific subjects
Sometimes what you need is anecdotal evidence from regular people, and if you try and look through Google most of what you can find are product reviews and things from corporate entities instead.
Yeah reddit is a huge nerd echo chamber, which means 90% of it is a dumpster fire of people trying to please their ego through imaginary points, but the remaining part is extremely analytical hobbyists/professionals who share their experiences in detail and give you actual good tips.
@@bobrianfo104 Unfortunatelly, that is the truth about all social media. People act as if youtube, twitter, instagram or any other shitty network is any better. The biggest thing I hate on the internet right now is how the masses normalized logins or creating online accounts. At least in the old times you could search foruns and other places while still being anonymous and being able to evade the social cringe show. Now more and more the only way to get something out of the internet is by selling your soul for some kilobytes of shit.
I just noticed how insanely dependant I am on Reddit for my everyday minor issues, as Charlie said in his previous videos, most articles have so much bloat.
Yeah, people didn’t ignore me on Reddit like they do in real life. People looked at me. People listened. Not many people do that in real life. My parents don’t respect me.
@@xXRealXx well, Reddit was how I was able to share my thoughts online. And now that it’s fallen, I’m now back where I started. Alone, not seen, not heard. It’s difficult adjusting. And lemmy isn’t available on iOS yet, so I can’t go there.
Yeah, only committing to 48 hours of being private is like saying to your parents "I'm not gonna eat that dinner you made... For twenty minutes!" Like it does nothing.
I'm not fan of that protesting. just because mods don't like reddit api change that doesn't mean they can erase community. I didn't visit reddit for mods. I visited it for infomations. and that infomations are made by a lot of annonymous people.
What's funniest to me about all of this is that since Reddit is currently a private company, Huffman is very much secure in his position as CEO, barring him getting arrested for actively lying about the revenue/valuation of Reddit. Going public at this point (which has been the very implicit goal this whole time) would almost certainly lead to Reddit's valuation cratering and Huffman getting forced out immediately, followed by the reversing of many of his "profit-chasing" changes. Replacing mods wouldn't really help at this point, since Reddit would have to replace so many in such a short amount of time that vetting the new mods would be practically impossible. And if they start letting spam take over the site, they'll have no chance of going public. Even relying solely on in-house AI mods wouldn't work all that well, as the collapse of Tumblr clearly showed. I think Huffman's plan at this point is to try and take Reddit public, make a boatload of cash off of stock sales (or short-selling his own company), and then bail on the entire thing. Alternatively, he could also be trying to artificially deflate Reddit's valuation to make it more appealing to potential buyers, which would also net him sizeable amounts of cash. In either case, none of the actions and statements he's made are those of someone who actually cares about the company he's supposed to be in charge of.
I agree. Cleaning up shit and making it look profitable before selling it and bailing. I honestly don't blame him... there are some good subs, but overall, it's become kind of a shit hole. As well, I'm center to right leaning, so I noticed that when Twitter was taken over, it seems like a f ton of leftists came over to Reddit to start spreading their socialist garbage.
This... actually makes sense to me. The actions Reddit have taken make no sense from a business perspective but if Huffman's only concern is the enlargement of his own personal wealth then he is still likely to profit from this sinking ship before he bails. Would be pretty based though if his plan was to destroy Reddit all along and this was just his 4D chess way of doing it.
This whole thing rides on the users. If everybody could manage their Reddit addiction this thing would probably be over already, but sadly too many people are too terminally online to do that. I personally do not think this will go anywhere, I think everyone will eventually start giving in.
You are a clown for supporting the 3rd party apps😂when apollo specifically ad blocks reddit and uses the infrastructure that reddit payed for and currently pays for with the shit load of api calls apollo uses and reddit pays for
I deleted my reddit app on the 12th. It was seriously unhealthy how much I was looking at my phone every day. Been so much happier and productive the last few days.
Yeah, I went on Reddit initially to join subreddits for my mental and physical health conditions. Having a sense of community was nice at first, but then talking about my issues and hearing everyone else's started to weigh me down. I also started to vent in and browse r/retailhell, and it made me irritable and cynical about people. I stopped going on Reddit almost a year ago now and it's been such a relief.
For me, Reddit has been an invaluable resource for language learning. Whole subreddits are dedicated to many different individual languages and have compiled large lists of resources and books to buy. Some of those have gone dark, and it's sad to see.
I really agree with this too. While the community and mods can be pretty terrible, it’s also the best place for sharing information for many different topics. I don’t support the company and their CEO but this blackout doesn’t hurt them at all, only the community. It’s worthless.
@@kingcodester1112 "It's worthless and needs to stop." Imagine so shamelessly bowing down to a company like this. holy hell man, turn your life around.
@@kingcodester1112 You literally are though by going after the blackout. The blackout should've gone on for LONGER to show that these API tools are invaluable to both moderator teams and users. Instead you're acting like the blackout is the thing hurting people. It never would've had to happen in the first place if this ridiculously greed driven change hadn't been announced
The Reddit CEO is a great example of what happens when a CEO crosses into cartoon villainy. Literally he’s acting like a literal cartoon villain, I have doubts that Reddit will survive this. I hope things change for the betterment of the users, but going off by how the Reddit CEO is acting… it’s unlikely. He’s probably going to kill the app and say it was the user’s fault, he already accused the developer of Apollo for blackmail(which was a false accusation). The man can’t take any responsibility for his shit decisions. I doubt a longer blackout would do much at this point.
Things are about to heat because most of the companies saw the writing on the wall and are trying to take as much money as possible before leaving. Mainly due to a combination of a recession, the wrath of the people regarding their practices, and basically people just tired of working for pennies.
Honestly the biggest Problem i find with this is all of the documents are pretty much gone now if they keep subs private forever. Just yesterday I googled how to do something like five times, clicked on Reddit links and nothing. Information just gone.
The only way the 2 days would work is if they also set a strike resume date. "We will all go offline 2 days every week until we are met at the table for talks". That would probably hurt the company in a long view.
@@quantumhawk806 one of that most feared things is "Reddit staff could be taking control over all the locked subs if the subs are shutting down for too long"
Unfortunately, there's a subreddit that I'm on where members pretty much said enough is enough. 2-days was enough and they want things opened again. Some even shared a link to a new sub in hopes it replaces the currently private one.
You have to put an end date on an initial strike this big or half of all the subs participating wouldn't even have joined in at all, and it's easier to convince someone to keep it going when they've already started it and even gotten negative feedback like in this case
It was also needed to see how Reddit will respond. Now many subs who can't afford to go private, will go private once a week due to the poor response. And yes, some subs genuinely can't afford to go private because they're the only tools on Reddit to help homeless people, people with cancer, etc.
That's not how it works. That's just how the corpo mindset works. If it has an end point then they will still sh't on the consumers. Hoffman needs to suck one, and Reddit mods have the ego and power to c_ck him
It's genuinely entertaining to see these social media fall apart out of protest. The fact that chronically online people have finally witnessed a situation where they can instill and establish justice on these greedy CEOs. It's its own drama. I wouldn't mind to see what would happen to Twitter!
From what I understand some of the subreddits are being forcibly turned public. As in reddit is removing the mods of those subreddits, replacing them with their own, and banning any mention of it. So its not doing good
In solidarity with protesting subs I decided to not open the site until this shit gets resolved. And I have crippling addiction as it turns out, because it's hard as fuck. But maybe this will be an opportunity for me to overcome this and transition fully to grass-touching productive person instead of a doomscrolling procrastinator I was.
You aren't going to overcome your crippling addiction to social media by posting about your crippling addiction to social media on social media. Good luck of your rehabilitation.
@@MrMakoto2 TH-cam is hardly a social media in that sense, I just put videos in the small window while working. I rarely comment something, only when topic is very relevant to me.
@@AlleonoriCat No didn't you hear? You aren't allowed to make compromises that fit your situation. We only do extremes here, no grey areas E V E R. /s Swear to god that sort of shit is among the most brain dead takes that someone could have...
I had a 25 book backlog on my Kindle. Just swapped the rif and Kindle icons on my phone and its been great, I'd forgotten what it was like to get totally engrossed in a book. If you like fantasy, I recommend the Malazan series instead of reading about u/spez's fantasy where resdit remains a viable platform after July 1st.
The entire thing has been so frustrating. I’m so tired of seeing these massive platforms completely reject the communities that made them popular. For those who use reddit, please avoid spending extra time scrolling for now until they reverse these horrible decisions.
I really wish old forums would come back that were based on smaller communities. Now everything is centralized and way less interesting. Hopefully all the problems with Twitter, twitch, and reddit will help boost smaller sites.
+@@rawrii1928 Exactly, and all the information is locked behind those apps. Can't search Twitter without giving it all your data. Can't search Facebook without giving it all your data. Can't search TikTok without giving it all your data. More recently, Instagram. And nobody is getting upset anymore because they're addicted to the apps, so they just grit their teeth, cope, and endure. The problem is, though, that if instead of coping, they boycotted, they'd be able to make changes sooo much easier. I do understand that people need something else to switch to (since they're addicted), and I do think individual forums (where NO one company has a monopoly) might be the saving grace. Maybe even implementing a voting system within search engines where users can vote on the accuracy of every single result so that people can win back their internet from SEO abusers again. There would have to be systems put in place to prevent brigading of course- I'm thinking the same system they use for Google Reviews, but I do think there sre very real solutions.
Do you guys remember when Digg was the bigger, better, more popular version of Reddit before they changed their website and ruined everything? Good times
Lol, this is the internet history no one knows. Digg was so much better and reddit looked like absolute dog poop. The funny thing is that the only reason I remember there was a giant migration to reddit was because the introduction of ads! It was a different time (2007ish?) and the bar was very low to piss off users. Reddit hit critical mass after that migration and became the defacto public internet forum.
As someone pointed out under your first video on this, it's not about the mods not liking the changes, but that they literally can't enforce their guidelines and stuff. If this policy change goes through they won't go dark indefinetely to hurt the Reddit CEO but because they can't operate anymore. This is not really a protest but much rather a taste of what is gonne happen if these go through.
@@LiveBenchmarks You say that now, but just wait until r/aww is filled with gore/vore/abuse videos because mods don't have tools to efficiently moderate
There has actually been a pretty huge influx of Reddit users coming over to Tumblr and unlike the Twitter infestation from a while back the new users have pretty much been welcomed with open arms. The tag 196 has been trending since shortly after the blackout started and it's pretty fun.
Oh hey that’s me! I’m trying to avoid Reddit, I completely uninstalled the shitty app. Not that tumblr is any better, it’s always been a hellsite. But at least some of my niche interests are there. That and it’s way easier for me to stop doomscrolling on tumblr than Reddit.
@@suruzu I believe it was one of the much larger subreddits that shifted to private, one where the main rule of the sub was "dont leave without posting" Tumblr loves it because the previous influx of tiktok and Twitter users led to a lot of users not making nor reblogging posts at all, only occasionally liking posts which effectively does nothing over there, so reddit users pouring in and actually interacting with posts is making the local tumblrinas very happy.
I usually rely on Reddit for finding solutions to most of my problems. I often add reddit to my search queries because, more often than not, I find answers there more easily compared to sifting through lengthy articles. In fact, I practically visit Reddit every day. However, it completely baffles me to hear Reddit explicitly stating that it wasn't designed with third-party apps in mind. When I first joined Reddit almost a decade ago, they used to recommend third-party apps for mobile devices. Eventually, they developed their own app, which turned out to be terrible and still is. I had to switch back to the previous apps, and I haven't changed since. While I do spend alot of time on Reddit, if the ways I use the platform are disregarded in favor of Reddit exerting more control and maximizing their profits from my usage, then I'm ready leave. I'm all for the indefinite blackout and when July 1st comes around I will be gone. Cant wait to see what alternatives are built because there will be one.
I visit reddit every day, and I still wish all subs would go dark indefinitely until Huff-and-puffman comes back down to Earth. He looks and acts like a spoiled brat. He's more like Mark Zuckerburg than Mark Zuckerburg at this point.
Saying it was going to be 48 hours, then 48 hours later extending it indefinitely was actually a pro gamer move, it gives the strike a chance to actually affect the company rather than letting them walk it back in two days time
Reddit helped me figure out what to put in the nameholder section when using a store-bought mastercard gift card online. I tried various names like my own, and "your name", and was gonna give up using it online completely. Then some random reddit comment said use "gift card" as the name, and it worked. I cried tears of joy. Reddit seriously has some super helpful, and super useless advice.
There was also the guy a week or two ago telling the story of how he got his dick smashed into a wall by the tine of a forklift, and after surgery it's now kind of a corkscrew and he's gotten laid a lot more because it's a unique sensation apparently, and then a bunch of people were asking for pictures. On a completely unrelated original post. For better or worse, there's nowhere else you get that kind of content.
Many of the subreddits going dark (and staying dark even now) has actually been a huge problem when it comes to my work. I often use Reddit to find solutions from other users or to post/dicuss problems that frequently come up while I'm for example editing video or using the Adobe suite, trying to fix a toilet (Charlie knows about this one). r/videoediting has gone dark as well as most of the subreddits revolving around editing/using adobe software. There isn't really another site that provides the same function as Reddit. We're all kind of screwed if some of these subreddits go permanently dark due to this change. There is such a wealth of information on these subreddits when it comes to the process of troubleshooting problems you encounter in everyday life/work.
I mean. You and everyone else. It’s easy to say “yeah, I’d like to see positive change as long as achieving it doesn’t affect me literally at all”. Protests don’t really work unless they are pretty significantly inconvenient. Sometimes you have to swallow a couple weeks of inconvenience for something that is really important.
@@LiterallyJustAnActualPotato Uhh, it has to be inconvenient to the person they are protested against, not the everyday person. A good way to blow up your protest and make everyone hate it is making the everyday person suffer. This isn't affecting reddit at all which is why the protest isn't working. They are still posting and still active and still pulling people to check on reddit. Every time i see the blackout posts they are upvoted like 40k times which is 40k accounts, 40k people, all online on reddit. See? Pulling in reddit traffic. The protest is killing itself lmao.
It won't. Some of the bigger subreddits have already had their top mods kicked and replaced by new ones who opened the sub's back up. I think r/AdviceAnimals was one.
Reddit instituting their own mods to take over and turn the subs back on while getting rid of the existing ones would be an absolutely hilarious win. One of the main reasons mods themselves are upset is because the API change is going to kill some of the apps that allow them to moderate properly. As much hate as mods get, they do a lot behind the scenes keeping bots under control. It'll be a stroke of karmic justice if the subreddits are forced back online only to be overrun with bots.
From what I have heard, some subreddits have already had this happen and it went very poorly. Drastic drop in moderation and stuff. Can’t confirm it, but that’s just some hearsay I’ve heard.
Agreed, it should’ve been longer and unannounced. I think if they wanted to go nuclear, if they were forced to unprivate, they could delete the subreddits.
Joined this protest and deleted the app. This made me realize how seriously addicted I was. Even if they back down I'm not going back. Hours a day wasted in that cesspool
From NPR: "In his first interview since the coordinated blackout began, CEO Steve Huffman tells NPR that giving away a service for free is not something Reddit would be able to do forever." Charge, if you must, but charging millions will empty Reddit quickly. Money-hungry developers are the bane of the planet.
The problem is, reddit is not profitable, just like most of these big websites. Things simply can't go back to how they were, I think people would be a lot more accepting if the reddit owners weren't acting so shady and disrespecting the users. The proper way to do this, in my opinion, would've been to first improve their app significantly, it's truly one of the worst things I've used on my phone, secondly they should've simply said that they are no longer giving out API access since they can't afford it, lastly, they should've been respectful to the community and sympathetic to the third party developers. They should've done all this instead of pretending that they are giving out APi access and then shit all over the third party devs with the "we don't actually want you to use the API but we're not gonna say it out loud" pricing.
Yeah, in the post by the Apollo dev, he said that he would be fine with paying as long as the prices were reasonable. But they arent, so here we are. All of this could have been so easily avoided...
@@denjidenji9162 the thing is there is probably no such thing as reasonable pricing for a platform like reddit. It will not be profitable unless they take drastic measures
they are not going to generate any revenue from the api. how many customers are going to pay 20 mill a year? this is to kill off 3rd party apps, not to generate money. in the end they will actually lose money when people leave reddit and there are less eyes and content to attract advertisers
A lot of individual users are also boycotting longer as well as subreddits. I figured going into this I was avoiding reddit at least till Friday. The thing is only a small percentage of people really post a lot and add to the community especially for smaller reddits. A lot of people are figuring they're at least going to be on reddit a lot less in the future because it's less convenient to do it on mobile. Some people are even moving elsewhere. The end date was necessary because Admins have been known to kick mods of subreddits out and appoint new mods to subs.
Same here. I’ve been avoiding Reddit. I personally don’t use third-party apps. However, I think it’s healthy for them to exist. It means Reddit has to effectively compete with itself, with keeps them honest. This API change is a scummy move on Reddit’s part.
As a 3rd party app user, I'm still boycotting and set my screen time timer for Relay to 1 minute. I only opened it once on Wednesday to see which subs were active again, but haven't opened it since. If third party apps go away, I will probably just move on. I've done it before when Twitter first killed the good apps, I kind of stopped using it for years and never went back to being a heavy user.
It's frustrating... because I don't use any 3rd party apps, not even the mobile app... and now I have to suffer thru this shit... not being able to access many useful subreddits where you can actually find help, information and answers you need... and of course all the "useless" subreddits are up
It's probably more like leadership making trash decisions and not funding things they should rather than general employees being incompetent as a whole. Employees can/should only do as much as they are paid to do.
@@BOBINDUN That site has become progressively worse especially from the aspects of interface and content. Professional accounts and bots are a large part of what makes it to the top.Without ad blocker, old reddit, and RES the UI is a nightmare.
Not sure if you're know, but there was also an Reddit AMA by the reddit CEO and it's essentially him consistently shooting himself in the foot. I'm unaware if the thread is open since reddit is dark, but highlights exist on twitter. The original decision to change the API was also decided due to wanting to monetize the data/traffic on Reddit for AI purposes. (from Verge+NYT article with the CEO). Thanks for the video.
@@geraltrivia9565 My question, is that why not just charge the AI companies only? (Beyond the obvious fact the CEO is clearly wanting to squeeze as much profit as he can.) One could argue that Apollo, RiF and the others have the benefit of actively improving the quality of life for users, whereas something like ChatGPT doesn't really do that, so it shouldn't be allowed to essentially mooch off Reddit. Honestly I agree with the idea that AI devs shouldn't be allowed to mooch off others, and should compensate people/companies whom they gather data from. Shame that the CEO is such a nitwit that he can't do this in such way that won't screw everyone else over.
I want to make it clear that Most of the Subreddits that have continued the shutdown actually voted to do so once the 48 hours ended. People have been spinning this strike as the Reddit mods being spoiled: but I don’t think that’s the case because the Subreddit members themselves have decided to continue this. For example from the Subs I follow, R/ Minecraft unanimously voted to shut down permanently, and people were sharing the 4chan and discord as the new platform for the Subs followers. Meanwhile R/StarWars is Doing another 48 hours then holding another vote. And R/rollercoasters did the opposite and voted to reopen (they actually reopened early and it’s clear they didn’t want to strike)
I noticed there's been a massive amount of "it's just spoiled Reddit mods" comments but only AFTER the blackout. I think it's people who didn't actually know the blackout was going ahead, then got annoyed when it happened so defaulted to the standard "mods are cringe" argument
In all fairness in most cases the 48hr blackout was a decision made solely by the mods without a vote from the rest of the users, in which case the users do have a right to complain. Mods already earned a reputation for being power hungry weirdos, things like this aren’t helping their case. Putting it up for vote is the way to go.
People with internet addictions are more likely to toss out their critical thinking skills for the sake of mouth-breathing at their desktop computer for hours on end. Pretty much everyone with a brain knows that accessibility is going down the shitter because of this new CEO. It's the incels who have nowhere else to be that are complaining about the strike tbh.
@@seniorspam2453They didn’t blackout cause they didn’t get a goodnight kiss. They literally did it for the good of the ENTIRE platform and EVERY single person who uses it…now and in the future. So anyone who is crying about “not being asked” for their permission for an entire Sub to blackout is the real spoiled baby.
as an IT guy, reddit is the wikipedia of random obscure tech issues with no clear fix, more than half the things I can't figure out on my own I solve using information from reddit. This will be felt by more than just the greedy CEO's
Also, I noticed a Reddit thread regarding the timeline issue, someone involved in organizing for protests strongly suggested that successful protests must gradually increase in scale over time. Regardless if the demands of protestors are met yet, it demonstrates that the user base does have the power to disrupt the service. Unless the protest makes people feel they have less power, it is likely amping up the willingness to double down on the cause.
The problem with this whole idea is that reddit can easily manually remove the mods for subs and put other users of those subs in their places. Ones that wont go private. Theres just no overall threat because Reddit holds the only nuke.
Yeah, as far as I know, r/AdviceAnimals was one of the subs that had their top mods replaced by reddit-appointed ones, was unprivated, and now it's an absolute shit show there
It's not an instant win button. Sure, they can do that... but you'll end up with random people not that used to being mods (and reddit killing third party mod tools that use the API certainly doesn't help) and a good chunk of the community probably quitting/boycotting it. The subs will survive sure but not unscathed.
Why are they even shocked? Did they really think a 48 hour black out they ANNOUNCED was gonna change anything? I can't believe it took a literal note from the CEO for reddit users to get that the company doesn't give a shit about them.
Whether the protest does work in the end or not, participating did make me realize how addicted to it I was to it. I hope it ends up being a success and the redditors win, but I’m most likely not going back.
I hope that we see some kind of success on the community side of this, but this whole scenario is also a good example of why boycotts and protests are very often not successful at all. It's hard to get people to genuinely commit to abstaining from things in a way that actually changes their lives in a noticable way. People don't like change, even when they have to change to prevent worse changes from happening. Catch 22
People do like change, but.. imagine this, if you will: You are a drug user, and your local shelter is organizing a drug protest to bring awareness to the dangers of substance abuse. In solidarity, you quit drugs, because you don't want to see a bunch of teens and homeless people fall into a bad addiction. A day goes by, and your withdrawals are so intense that you go back to using. The people who are addicted to Reddit are finding it very hard to quit using it. They know an indefinite protest will be for the better, but they're so terminally online that a week feels like a year to them. Granted, there are plenty who have quit using Reddit for good, but not everyone needs a reason to quit using it. I quit using social media years ago and I haven't gone back; never had a reason, I just quit. Protests and boycotts work. Addiction and armchair activism makes it hard.
I didn't expect them to comply to the protesters from day 1. Most of Reddit users are too addicted/dependent on the website itself and it would be hard to start somewhere else. As Charlie said, it would only really work if atleast 70-90% of subreddits went onto an indefinite strike, but as predicted this 2-3 day strike did pretty much nothing. People would like positive change as long as it doesn't affect them in anyway, unfortunately here it affects people quite a lot and the CEO knew this.
Large corps never comply day 1, because they are confident they can outlast the people due to having more resources. This is principally the same as a union strike IRL, except that usually involves jobs and livelihoods so it's even easier for corps to get away with it since people need money more than they need Reddit. If Redditors can't even hold out to keep their third party apps going I fear for humanity. And I already see the 'this is hurting us more than them' sentiment. It's worrisome.
The API change literally doesn't impact most of us. Most people use the actual reddit app. By a HUGE margin. The positive change is that we can finally get rid of some of the terrible mods.
@@stevendemayo3631 Yeah, let's purposely hinder the ability to moderate subs because you don't like one mod that did something you don't like that one time. It's not like a tidal wave of bots and shitty anon nazis would suddenly wash over the entire site or anything. It's as if people don't think about anything besides their immediate gratification. There will be consequences if we allow them to just do whatever they want.
I still don’t really know what all this API stuff means because I barely ever use reddit anymore, but just seeing how the CEO acts is enough to get me on board with the protest.
Api is basically a password that lets your code interact with Reddit. This allows you to have a computer read a subreddit instead of a human. This password used to be free allowing large communities to be moderated. But bow that the api cost money it puts more work on mods
@@Dice-Z Too bad we don't have ELI5 to offer simplified explanations to people who aren't in the loop. Can't have people watering down their explanation to make more sense to laymen, no sir
The saddest part is exactly like you mentioned so many gave an end date and arent really doing anything more, but there are many more niche subreddits I enjoy (and can talk about/share things I otherwise cant in normal life) and since they plan to hold out and are niche, I fear noone will care. I also plan to hold out and see what happens. I know one person won't make a difference but the more news this gets and the more people stay away Reddit will hurt. I hope they dont just try to replace mods with those that will tolerate this crap. Also, noone is wearing Reddit merch (I hope).
Man, every time a new contender makes his appearance in the "Burn your company to the ground with stupid changes" Cup I don't know who will win, First Netflix, then twitch doubled down and now Reddit is partecipating as well
Organised strikes usually give an end date for the sake of keeping order. It makes participation easier. But this strategy only works because they can, as an organisation, settle on a new strike as a collective. That’s the point: the power to strike is not dismissed by a set end date, and the other side is made aware of that fact. So the reddit community should have agreed on a new strike or an extention publicly and as a unified entity. The issue with undefined strikes is precisely the lack of organisation: they die down gradually, because individuals break under pressure as they have harder and harder time to see themselves as a collective. By regrouping, making a new collective decision and starting a new strike both the strikers and their opposition can see the end of the current strike, but only the strikers get to voice their opinion if the next one is warranted. For the opposition, counting on the collective not declaring a new strike is more of a gamble than their ranks slowly falling apart during an indeterminate strike. The striking coalition is no longer a formidable entity that can utilise its power as a collective, to ends they as an entity determine, but a set of individuals who each have their own goals and length of time they are willing to strike. But to act as an entity there needs to be an organisation, and the decisions need to be made through a process the members accept. Usually worker unions do this through election system and organising votes on important issues. For a community such as reddit users, forming such organisational structure is much harder. In such cases just declaring an end date for a strike doesn’t come with the threat that new decision can be reached. But for better or worse, redditors chose to try this more organised strategy.
This is an absolutely excellent explanation, more people need to see this since I see many people believe indefinite or nothing is the way to go. Strikes in reality so not last forever for a reason
I think the problem here frankly is that people aren’t getting paid. People participate in companies for money. On social media? It’s rank/karma no? You can get money from any job, but you can only get karma on Reddit.
@@zeo5009 On the other hand, pay is exactly the reason most strikers break under pressure. Because they need to be paid to live. Mods already do this for free, users browse for free, both they lose nothing of value by striking. Only the company suffers, as now they have to live with the uncertainty strikes can occur at any time (and need to tell shareholders yeah we fucked up so bad our mods basically unionised)
I went on Reddit the day the blackout started and I was mildly inconvenienced. Now I haven't thought about Reddit since you posted this video, and having been there eight years I remind myself that I really don't give a shit about it lmao
Reminds me of how I felt after I stopped going to a forum I used for nearly two decades. These sites are built on their communities, when they fall apart, what you liked about it has been lost so it's easy to move on.
It reminds me of back in highschool when two assholes you hate get into a fist fight. Only this time it’s a rich pompous asshole and a fat greasy weirdo
The fact Reddit's administration didn't head the warning shot tells me they have no clue what Reddit's community could do to their entire business at a moment's notice.
@adambonesaw3689 this is like saying "don't do a peaceful protest! Just jump straight to violence" the definite blackout is a *threat* not a fist shaking
@@sanrusdyne an indefinite blackout is not violence either. A protest must disrupt in order to have an effect. Disrupt a revenue stream even if it means disrupting regular users. Sucks they have to go find a geriatric forum for their tech support but that is the way of it.
The issue is that the users, not the mods who run the subs, are the ones who have to protest. Anyone can just make a similar subreddit to one that went dark and it would likely get a lot of the users from the dark one to come there.
“Let’s organize a boycott but let’s make sure that we specify a time limit to make it clear to Reddit that we don’t actually care and want to just virtue signal instead.”
Yeah. I knew that this stroke was pathetic from the beginning. Even if it was indefinite, they would not do anything about it, because they know damn well we *need* it. I feel ashamed to know that our generation is so apathetic that they'd rather submit to oppression than actually make a change. That's the epitome of laziness, and I am ashamed to be alive in this fucking timeline. I would like to end myself!
Like @thebenjipoo said, I couldn’t think of a “protest” that more perfectly captures the reddit mindset than that. As loud, emotional and visible as possible so that everyone can see them doing it, while also ensuring no actual sacrifices need to be made. I stopped using reddit a little over a year ago, haven’t regretted it for a second.
The 48 hour blackout was a joke. It should've been indefinite if they actually wanted results. But when you find out that many of the top subs on the site all share this one guys who probably works directly for reddit, it quickly becomes apparent that these were basically theatrics just to quell the users. Reddit is unfortunately not dead
Whats hilarious to me is how redditors thought anyone would actually care if the site was open or not. If reddit shut down tomorrow, nobody would care after a week.
As a community, we are simply too compliant to let big companies to make negative changes. I really hope the 'strikes' go on and grow until Reddit is forced to revert the change, especially on a platform like Reddit where the users have the most control.
As I understand basically those 3rd party apps just provide alternative front-end for the reddit (both for users and moderators) that offer objectively better UX than the original one. From what I can see reddit's back-end is not particularly complicated (even considering relative high load). And now we have a considerable amount of users dissatisfied with the company direction, to the point of boycott. Wouldn't it be a perfect moment to try and develop alternative using the experience of these 3rd party devs? Although should prolly do it fast xD
Reddit: we are charging for our api because of lost revenue from opportunity cost and we own the infrastructure The internet: Your infrastructure is ran by the community. The data you are trying to sell is created by the community. Reddit is only possible because of the community. This is the biggest push to decentralized platforms and I'm all for it
because of reddit i found this super cool SCP that made you fill out a bunch of questions (it wasn't the madlibs one, it was one that made you answer a question and move on to the next page and there were a LOT of questions and lots of pages) and i do not remember which one that was :(
Imagine reddit mods not going on a power trip against people who actually deserve it for once. I can't believe some of these subreddits actually opened up after two days when the CEO mocked them.
Imagine Reddit mods doing something useful. The blackout did nothing but harm the users. They should have just let anarchy take over and blame it on the lack of moderation ability with the loss of third-party API access. It would have accomplished way more and in a measurable way than a symbolic do-nothing protest.
@@alexcarter8807 I stopped using it, without 3rd party I wont ever use it. old reddit site is going after that and then there is absolutely 0 reason imo.
@101iq4 "actually opened up after two days" - some are contemplating closing again. But they care about their subscribers, too, so they're kinda stuck in the middle.
I used to use Reddit for most of my problems and Redditors always resolved things for me more than most websites out there. I haven't been on in a while though so thank you for the updates on what's new with Reddit.
yeah reddit can be a useful source of information so you can see multiple perspectives of a question or issue. of course sometimes it just devolves into a cespool.
Havent used reddit since the 12th and I actually feel how addicted I was. My life feels different but I am not planning on coming back if they are not taking back their decision.
Its funny how they call it a strike but they ended it at a certain time. You don't stop a strike unless you get what you want or someone higher up puts of forceful stop to it.
Strikes end regularly all the time. Last transport strike I saw lasted 1 day. Same with teachers strike. These people have more real power than reddit mods though, and are harder to replace. They also have unions that are using those timed strikes as part of a wider strategy.
@@JewTube001 the reddit strike was not something that should've ended so early. They need to keep pressing them until they come to an agreement Edit: it also depends on the company/industry. Since reddit is a giant company, it will take time to make a dent
I hope they persist. I worry that reddit execs will brush it off and implement a delay or something to prevent subreddits from easily going private in protest again.
I feel like this has had a bigger effect on Google than it has on Reddit. All of the useless, but popular "look at our cute animals" subreddits stayed up, but all of the actually useful tech-help subreddits went down. And if you type things into Google to try to find info on various tech issues, you will get almost nothing but reddit Questions/responses to the exact problem you have, but when you click on it, it says that the subreddit is private.
Turns out chatGPT is behind the new API changes
@@Cenentury0941 no way lmao, it would make sense tho iguess
yeahh, r/writing going away was definitely noticeable for me
I had no idea about what was happening with Reddit until I spent 30 minutes googling something and couldn't find the answer because 3 pages were Reddit communities that are now private.
@@Vipers992it’s suck a pain just trying to answer a question and I can’t even see the pages
the worst part is that we have to deal with the fact that one subreddit with the solution to a particular tech problem could go dark indefinitely
Wait, r/fixmyfleshlight is going away indefinitely? Say it ain’t so…
@@BelchingBeaver69NO it can't be, NOOOOOOOO
R/huion went private and now im going insane
Just when my notifications started going bad on my phone with no actual solution, r/iOS and r/iPhone went dark…
that's the point of a pfotest tho, if it doesn't affect anyone else, then it's not a protest
Adding reddit to anything you search for on the internet always helped to get real opinions on things rather than get a bunch of sponsored content
Yeah that's probably it's one good thing, lets hope a better platform replaces it, one less corrupt.
Worst is that you find an "article" with the response on another site and most of the page is talking about the history of the think you are searching rather then actually showing the thing you are searching
Especially common with gaming guides if im searching how to get an specific item on zelda botw then i dont need to know that nintendo released the game in 2016 and that people cant find the damn thing im searching
That’s exactly what I do, it’s weird that I can’t remember when I first started adding reddit to the end of each search, it just kinda happened.
@@diydylana3151 Yeah I don't see a lot of people talking about this, but google search actually sucks ass now. I genuinely get better results with bing for technical questions or obscure content
@@Jinfwjumpfr that just kinda happened and is the only way now to find a real answer because Google sucks ass
"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates." - Gaben
Same with 3rd party aps or competition.
But that costs them money today, when there is apparently no tomorrow...
This type of thinking is pervasive, I'd tell you a bit about how it's affected my own employment if I wasn't bound by an NDA and a sick mother...
Improving their service?
People don't even use new reddit on pc they use old reddit. That's how bad it is.
More company’s need to pay attention to Valve/Steam.
Considering how shit steam has gotten over the past few years, that's really ironic
"I will quote a famous dude because it is TOTALLY true in this context." - You, probably
Fitting that the CEO of reddit basically IS the ultimate redditor. No one is more reddit than this guy. All he needs is a fedora that never comes off.
Don't forget the chicken nuggets 😂
And won’t stop talking about atheism
or typing "r/woooosh" to random people who don't understand a joke
@@curepinkie1637 or typing "r/woooosh" to random people who actually _do_ understand a joke
it's like in matilda when she glues the fedora to danny devito's head
In my opinion, the blackouts didn't last long enough to change the situation. Sadly, making it longer would force Redditors to go outside, and that simply wouldn't be tolerated.
Releasing them into the wild at the same time would be disastrous
Leave your entries in the SubReddit 19 year olds, and I'll watch your submissions in the next episode of LWIAY
Many people argued the protest would either stop half way ot won't exist after 48 hours because that's the max Reddit mods can stay without Reddit.
I use reddit and I think the protest should continue. The lack of helpful posts is already hurting but I can use wayback machine.
Idk lots of the sub reddits I have tried to use today are still private
Yeah, nope. Most of the redditors are planning to keep at it, probably got second wind after that taunt from spez.
And if reddit falls, we got alternatives, we won't bother infesting everywhere else.
As much of a meme Reddit is. I can't deny that it has helped me the most out of any website. When my PC had problems, Reddit solved it. When my game had problems, reddit solved it. When I wanted to get some good toys for my cat, reddit helped me out and saved me some money as well. There are good redditors that I'm grateful for.
That’s the main reason why I still want Reddit to be a thing because for some reason 80% of the obscure questions you have have already been asked there. Especially when it comes to games and tech
Exactly. You look up any specific question and it's there. If it's not there, you post it and it's answered. That's why I like Reddit, it's very helpful.
What's better than this? Just kind strangers being kind.
Forums existed before reddit, all they did was make a hub for other forums to exist.
Users make the content and answer the questions, not the portals themselves.
Search engines will still bring you the answers you seek.
69th like
Though, if a reddit dies, it will suck to lose all the discussions that have happened on it, with all the helpful advice that will undoubtedly help people in the future as well.
I guess that's where the internet archive needs to step in, if they can.
They are trying to ban the internet archive too. Without the wayback machine a lot of things would be lost.
Don't use reddit, simple as that
@@wS21z. You didn't read what I wrote, the information is already there. It doesn't matter if I use it or not.
Oh noooo. Not all the valuable information on r/meth!?
@@SidCollier my name is walter white
Reddit is definitely something that will always be looked back upon with the most diverse mix of emotions connected to it
Did it keep me company while dealing with my abusive father? Yes. Did it also offer unrestricted access to videos of people dying and randomly show beheadings? Also yes 😩.
Bros still watching the vid
If you disagree with anything in the far left echo chamber you get reported and banned. Pathetic
Indeed. I have many things both good and bad to say about Reddit.
You can’t write a comment before watching the video otherwise its irrelevant like this
Telling Reddit how long the strike was gonna be was a mistake, they knew they could just wait it out
Truly an original thought
Exactly. All warfare is based on deception.
i better not catch you with your cheeks open or its gonna get wicked
Honestly feel like the mods should've just left subs unmoderated until they change it, but these are reddit mods so you know they won't be willing to give any type of power up
@gay4pay it's not "original" because it's common sense, yet it clearly still needs to be said. 🙄
That Reddit CEO looks to be the living personification of Mike Tyson's words about how social media has made people entirely too comfortable with disrepecting others.
@Ayu Akua What does that have to do with what OP said?
@@PeriwinklePigprobably a bot, youtube won’t fix it.
It’s big fucking Mickey in house
Yeah, in the old days, if you disrespected someone you risked your ear getting bitten off.
Mike Tyson is a convicted rapist
Reddit has openly warned the mods of the privated communities that the mod team will be replaced by other willing mods and the subreddits will be forced to go public again. To a situation that's already on fire, Reddit has decided to pour gasoline straight into it.
Is that even allowed? What rule in the Terms of Service have they broken that gives Reddit the leave to just take their subreddits off of them. It seems like an empty threat.
good. remmove the powertrippend mods and fine.
I hope they do this
@@ShaunM17 I see someone clearly doesn't know what a power trip is. But by all means, continue condoning blatant corporate greed
@@ShaunM17 reddit's mod team will be just as bad, if not worse
Crazy that tech company managements still don’t expect any internal communications to get leaked, it happens so much lol
Crazy how tech companies don’t want third party apps to steal from them by not showing ads. Seriously Reddit shouldn’t put the hammer down on that shit.
That's career suicide if you work in tech, if you get fired, next company would definitely not hire you if you leak emails etc
@@unholyfox7299 I don’t think it’s just tech companies, if any company founds out you got fired because you leaked emails, you’ve just committed career suicide in many fields. Unless you’re an established millionaire, than you have just screwed yourself over.
@@unholyfox7299 of course, but it always happens nevertheless. Probably because it’s usually with e-mails or meetings that involved the whole company, so the leak is difficult to trace.
The Reddit app is absolutely dogshit…we’re still blacked out ✊
My favourite part of 'social media fucks up so much, people leave' is when the site's refugees make their way to Tumblr. The difference between how welcoming it was to Reddit refugees compared to the rabid hatred of Twitter refugees was insane. It's so fun
The 3 cesspools should just combine together into an even bigger cesspool.
I’m sure most of us don’t really want to go to 4chan so tumblr seems safer again
3 of the worst apps in history
to be fair tumblr has kind of mellowed out after its worst users moved over to twitter so its expected for them to welome reddit refugees
@@idiot4177average youtube commenter pretending to be better:
As a visually impaired guy, his response about the accessibility apps is absolutely a PR bandage. They weren't even exempt initially. The reason they announced that was in direct response to the CEO getting caught in the AMA before the blackout, copy-pasting (He left the "A." at the start of the answer from his doc signifying Answer), the same blanket PR written response to several blind and visually impaired users, including using the same non-answer for things like like a 14-point question from a totally blind user.
You’re blind?
How well would you say the apps made to assist people with your condition work?
Are there ones you prefer or ones you dislike?
This is my whole motivation. Reddit fucking over disabled people. Fuck Reddit. I'm not sure I'm ever coming back.
@@acewmd.I’m also curious about that. Perhaps the site reads out posts?
@@acewmd.There are different degrees of blindness.
Visually impaired doesn't necessarily mean blind
Were living in a timeline where companies are trying to speedrun who can ruin their platform the fastest.
I hate this timeline. Where the fuck is a fatal accident when I need one?
@@Cubeytheawesome
>send money to ukraine
>putin is angry
>nuclear war
@@co_rusut look, I just want this drama to end. It’s been stressful on me, and i can’t switch to lemmy since I’m on iOS. It’s terrible and annoying.
first overwatch, now reddit 😔
I wanna remind people that the CEO of Reddit moderated a jailbait subreddit back in 2008. The dude was also caught changing and editing comments that didn’t agree with his own views.
There's been 100 reasons to stop using Reddit over the last few years and yet it's still wildly popular. This will be no different.
Says u
Link?
I love how people are starting to fight back against these corrupt corporate companies, from Bud Light to Reddit. We have power, and this is proof! 😃
Edit: This. This is why I can't stand Charlie's fan base. I mention something that is going on, and people freak out. I can have and opinion on things. Get. Over. It.
@@hyperv1016 Bud Light is corrupt how?
At this point basically every online community platform are competing to see who can destroy themselves the fastest
Twitch sticking the fattest stick up their backside by introducing trash rules
Reddit not giving a F about its community
TH-cam removing dislikes
Twitter has always been the most rotten place in hell
OnlyFans doesn't want to UNBAN me
that is honestly so true wtf is happening? Reddit, twitter, netflix, max, the list goes on...
I love how people are starting to fight back against these corrupt corporate companies, from Bud Light to Reddit. We have power, and this is proof! 😃
its because most of them have different ceos then when they started out, and often times the new ceos are... greedy
We've had a few major financial collapses this year. they have 2 options. make more money or cut down on resources. they cannot directly go "hey guys we're having issues paying our employees" if they actually reveal that they're struggling, the investors will back off. that's pretty much the truth. banks going down and countries in a cat fight made things expensive for corps.
I'm not an avid Reddit user, but a lot of the times when I have a random question about a game or something, someone on Reddit has asked/answered it before. For the past few days, every single subreddit I've tried to click on has been privated, I don't think this is something that'll just "blow over"
Nah, it’s already basically blown over. I’m pretty sure the blackout hasn’t accomplished anything due to the 48 hour timeframe
Unfortunately I think it already is blowing over because I did the same thing and almost all servers I went to were back online
i agree, I use reddit a lot for info, met some people going 'lol I don't use reddit, who cares' but... jebus, it's going to suck so much to find niche things and quick answers easily now
it already blown over....
You can just type cache: before the url and see the page , that's what I've been using.
I'm not a hardcore reddit user but i found a lot of solutions there, especially in programming game development. There's a lot of entertainment there too. It's going to be sad if reddit actually shuts down
Same. Its a great place to go for information for really anything. Academic help, video game information, movie recommendations and so on
There is a zero percent chance that reddit is shutting down.
Yep, reddit sometimes helps with programming. Also I bought a 3D printer 2 days ago, 90% of all advice and solutions to my problems are on subreddits I can't access 🥲
its back up
@@NessPKfreeze Also for a lot of video content, for example there's no single greater repository of football highlights, not even TH-cam where most highlights are being blocked.
For everyone that **still** doesn't understand: the 48 hours were chosen because you can't get 9000 subreddits to go dark indefinitely at once without a test run, it's much easier to do it for 2 days and go indefinite after that. Which many subreddits are doing right now.
Excatly, it was never about how long subreddits were down. It was about showing that it can and will be done if they keep pushing their shit.
Why would Reddit not just strip the mods and just reopen them
@@ODSTWhiteout Yeah let's just go ahead and not even try at all. That's *your* mentality right now, if everyone ever just thought like that we'd not be where we are today.
@@ODSTWhiteout that would kill what little goodwill Reddit has left, and would alienate a bunch of the community, whether they care about the API thing or not.
@@ODSTWhiteoutbecause they don't have enough people to do that? That's 9000 subreddits with like 10 moderators each, no way Reddit has enough employees for that.
Reddit CEO's response genuinely surprised me. It's like he was taunting his customers
He’s a villain
He wants us dead
That’s exactly what he’s doing. He knows how unpopular this is. He simply doesn’t care. Like Charlie said, everyone is too addicted to the site to leave, and spez thinks that’s enough to keep the entire user base.
He knows that the large majority of users don't care and just want things to go back to normal.
Really didn't surprise me, the two day time limit was like saying 'we care, but not too much'.
I'm by no means a Redditor, but I'm sure he's right, too. It'll all blow over and be back to normal, before long. In this 'war where he is a general', or whatever, he is winning.
I do definitely think that people would get bullied for wearing reddit merch. But this thing has nothing to do with it, wearing reddit merch is just something you deserve to be made fun of for
Based take
I didn't... Nobody batted an eye. Maybe some places, people just don't even care. There's worst shit going on. It's not a Maga hat
@@Teah8cbdude you're not wrong💀
@@RiverPhobia I think maybe the OP assumes this would only happen in schools, buy a reddit shirt when you go to the mall. Nobody gives a shit...
@@Teah8cbdudeI think itd be better to have a maga hat than a discord reddit or twitch hat, social media merch lol
If he doesn't address the email to replace the mods with "You Snoos, you lose" then what kinda monster is he really?
I don’t know what people expect from a CEO who was once the moderator for r/jailbait .
Reddit moment
what's that?
@@blackdynamite_5470It was a subrrddit that got in trouble for CP and revenge porn
wwhat... oh god
He what?
the thing i fear most about this whole thing, is where the redditers will go now.
and not having easy answers from a 9 year old reddit thread for my weird ass very specific questions
outside hopefully.
Lock your house.
Comment : copied
Bro shut up it was funny the first time but now you are just copying other people’s comments. Just stop
Twitter
Reddit is seriously an amazing source of information in it's own right. Sometimes it's the only place I can find an answer to the questions I have on the most specific subjects
Sometimes what you need is anecdotal evidence from regular people, and if you try and look through Google most of what you can find are product reviews and things from corporate entities instead.
Yeah reddit is a huge nerd echo chamber, which means 90% of it is a dumpster fire of people trying to please their ego through imaginary points, but the remaining part is extremely analytical hobbyists/professionals who share their experiences in detail and give you actual good tips.
@@bobrianfo104 Me when I get all of my information from memes
@@bobrianfo104 Unfortunatelly, that is the truth about all social media. People act as if youtube, twitter, instagram or any other shitty network is any better. The biggest thing I hate on the internet right now is how the masses normalized logins or creating online accounts.
At least in the old times you could search foruns and other places while still being anonymous and being able to evade the social cringe show. Now more and more the only way to get something out of the internet is by selling your soul for some kilobytes of shit.
@@bobrianfo104 best description I’ve ever seen of Reddit. The best for information, the worst for entertainment.
I just noticed how insanely dependant I am on Reddit for my everyday minor issues, as Charlie said in his previous videos, most articles have so much bloat.
Yeah, people didn’t ignore me on Reddit like they do in real life. People looked at me. People listened. Not many people do that in real life. My parents don’t respect me.
@user-ir4lc7om3d uh...you good, bro?
@@CubeytheawesomeLMAOOO
@@Cubeytheawesome to the comments to this guy: be empathetic challenge online (IMPOSSIBLE!!!)
@@xXRealXx well, Reddit was how I was able to share my thoughts online. And now that it’s fallen, I’m now back where I started. Alone, not seen, not heard. It’s difficult adjusting. And lemmy isn’t available on iOS yet, so I can’t go there.
Yeah, only committing to 48 hours of being private is like saying to your parents "I'm not gonna eat that dinner you made... For twenty minutes!" Like it does nothing.
real
but the dinner was too good to not eat :(
I'm not fan of that protesting. just because mods don't like reddit api change that doesn't mean they can erase community. I didn't visit reddit for mods. I visited it for infomations. and that infomations are made by a lot of annonymous people.
@@quas3728 You're either a child who doesn't understand the internet or so ignorant it hurts.
Easy to say you dont support the protest when you dont moderate anything, pay for anything or contribute any information.
We live in a time where both twitch and reddit might actually die this is wild
People said twitter would die too and look how that turned out
The internet is next.
@@Praxium
Twitter would absolutely have died if there was a good alternative, because it’s awful at the moment.
99 bottles of stuff on the wall... Take one down another 10 take it's place
@@joshallen128 Hail Hydra
What's funniest to me about all of this is that since Reddit is currently a private company, Huffman is very much secure in his position as CEO, barring him getting arrested for actively lying about the revenue/valuation of Reddit. Going public at this point (which has been the very implicit goal this whole time) would almost certainly lead to Reddit's valuation cratering and Huffman getting forced out immediately, followed by the reversing of many of his "profit-chasing" changes.
Replacing mods wouldn't really help at this point, since Reddit would have to replace so many in such a short amount of time that vetting the new mods would be practically impossible. And if they start letting spam take over the site, they'll have no chance of going public. Even relying solely on in-house AI mods wouldn't work all that well, as the collapse of Tumblr clearly showed.
I think Huffman's plan at this point is to try and take Reddit public, make a boatload of cash off of stock sales (or short-selling his own company), and then bail on the entire thing. Alternatively, he could also be trying to artificially deflate Reddit's valuation to make it more appealing to potential buyers, which would also net him sizeable amounts of cash. In either case, none of the actions and statements he's made are those of someone who actually cares about the company he's supposed to be in charge of.
I agree. Cleaning up shit and making it look profitable before selling it and bailing. I honestly don't blame him... there are some good subs, but overall, it's become kind of a shit hole. As well, I'm center to right leaning, so I noticed that when Twitter was taken over, it seems like a f ton of leftists came over to Reddit to start spreading their socialist garbage.
what about the narcissist reddit users who don't care for third party?
Sounds greedy enough for me to believe it
This... actually makes sense to me. The actions Reddit have taken make no sense from a business perspective but if Huffman's only concern is the enlargement of his own personal wealth then he is still likely to profit from this sinking ship before he bails.
Would be pretty based though if his plan was to destroy Reddit all along and this was just his 4D chess way of doing it.
Reddit is a private company they can do what they want 🤭
This whole thing rides on the users. If everybody could manage their Reddit addiction this thing would probably be over already, but sadly too many people are too terminally online to do that. I personally do not think this will go anywhere, I think everyone will eventually start giving in.
Spez is planning to execute order 66 on the mods currently keeping subreddits shutdown. He’ll just replace them.
You are a clown for supporting the 3rd party apps😂when apollo specifically ad blocks reddit and uses the infrastructure that reddit payed for and currently pays for with the shit load of api calls apollo uses and reddit pays for
yeah I don't care about this whole thing, I just wanna look up my videogame guides
did the CEO basically just tell a bunch or reddit moderators their efforts were futile?! oh my god, this is about to get crazy
Yup after those same mods spent who knows how much time and energy moderating subs.
Crazy? It’s mild sauce at best!
I deleted my reddit app on the 12th. It was seriously unhealthy how much I was looking at my phone every day. Been so much happier and productive the last few days.
I just deleted it thanks to this comment, ty brother
If you have a problem with how much you're looking at your phone, just use a laptop instead, duh.
you were addicted to reddit but not something like mindless tiktoks, yt shorts, or insta reels? thats interesting
@@leobuss7249 There was still some brainpower to be used on Reddit. Those other things you mentioned don't.
Yeah, I went on Reddit initially to join subreddits for my mental and physical health conditions. Having a sense of community was nice at first, but then talking about my issues and hearing everyone else's started to weigh me down. I also started to vent in and browse r/retailhell, and it made me irritable and cynical about people. I stopped going on Reddit almost a year ago now and it's been such a relief.
For me, Reddit has been an invaluable resource for language learning. Whole subreddits are dedicated to many different individual languages and have compiled large lists of resources and books to buy. Some of those have gone dark, and it's sad to see.
I really agree with this too. While the community and mods can be pretty terrible, it’s also the best place for sharing information for many different topics. I don’t support the company and their CEO but this blackout doesn’t hurt them at all, only the community. It’s worthless.
@@kingcodester1112 "It's worthless and needs to stop." Imagine so shamelessly bowing down to a company like this. holy hell man, turn your life around.
Lame just watch films bro
@@jxmpking4384 I'm not defending the company at all, jesus christ. I have other things I much prefer than wasting time on reddit all day.
@@kingcodester1112 You literally are though by going after the blackout. The blackout should've gone on for LONGER to show that these API tools are invaluable to both moderator teams and users. Instead you're acting like the blackout is the thing hurting people. It never would've had to happen in the first place if this ridiculously greed driven change hadn't been announced
Reddit’s commitment to this protest reminds me of when they tried to buy an island for themselves, they gave up immediately
They didn't give up tho, they just trusted every guy who said "give me money i buy island" like 3 or 4 times and nothing happened
Bold of him to assume the Reddit employees were going to get attacked in the streets, as if redditors ever leave their house.
They will send a really mean tweet!
💀💀💀
What else will they do? Browse reddit? Farm karma?
The Reddit CEO is a great example of what happens when a CEO crosses into cartoon villainy. Literally he’s acting like a literal cartoon villain, I have doubts that Reddit will survive this. I hope things change for the betterment of the users, but going off by how the Reddit CEO is acting… it’s unlikely. He’s probably going to kill the app and say it was the user’s fault, he already accused the developer of Apollo for blackmail(which was a false accusation). The man can’t take any responsibility for his shit decisions. I doubt a longer blackout would do much at this point.
Average leftist. Spez is one of those.
@@hentypewhy must you people bring politics into absolutely everything
He's become the real life version of Mr. Krabs
@@jclau77 heheheheheh that was a good one man!!
@@hentype he's a libertarian prepper you doof
These companies are insane. First Twitch, than Netflix, than Reddit. Everybody just simultaneously decided to squeeze more money from its users.
i better not catch you with your cheeks open or its gonna get wicked
Things are about to heat because most of the companies saw the writing on the wall and are trying to take as much money as possible before leaving. Mainly due to a combination of a recession, the wrath of the people regarding their practices, and basically people just tired of working for pennies.
almost like that's what late stage capitalism causes...
Don't you mean then?
How do you see this as Reddit trying to squeeze more money out of it's users?
Honestly the biggest Problem i find with this is all of the documents are pretty much gone now if they keep subs private forever. Just yesterday I googled how to do something like five times, clicked on Reddit links and nothing. Information just gone.
The only way the 2 days would work is if they also set a strike resume date. "We will all go offline 2 days every week until we are met at the table for talks". That would probably hurt the company in a long view.
reddit admins would just kick them and appoint someone they like.
@@quantumhawk806 one of that most feared things is "Reddit staff could be taking control over all the locked subs if the subs are shutting down for too long"
Unfortunately, there's a subreddit that I'm on where members pretty much said enough is enough. 2-days was enough and they want things opened again. Some even shared a link to a new sub in hopes it replaces the currently private one.
You have to put an end date on an initial strike this big or half of all the subs participating wouldn't even have joined in at all, and it's easier to convince someone to keep it going when they've already started it and even gotten negative feedback like in this case
Thats what they did w covid and it worked lol
Ya like lockdowns
@@RoBoTrOnIc1001001 Holy shit you're right
"2 weeks to flatten the curve!!"
It was also needed to see how Reddit will respond. Now many subs who can't afford to go private, will go private once a week due to the poor response.
And yes, some subs genuinely can't afford to go private because they're the only tools on Reddit to help homeless people, people with cancer, etc.
That's not how it works. That's just how the corpo mindset works. If it has an end point then they will still sh't on the consumers.
Hoffman needs to suck one, and Reddit mods have the ego and power to c_ck him
Never thought I’d see the day Reddit would fall before Twitter
i better not catch you with your cheeks open or its gonna get wicked
Nobody is going to leave. People are addicted to those apps.
It's genuinely entertaining to see these social media fall apart out of protest. The fact that chronically online people have finally witnessed a situation where they can instill and establish justice on these greedy CEOs. It's its own drama. I wouldn't mind to see what would happen to Twitter!
I never thought I'd see a time when both Twitter _and_ Reddit users would flock to _Tumblr_ for refuge - but here we are.
reddit mods are losers just crying cause they cant have more power lmao
From what I understand some of the subreddits are being forcibly turned public. As in reddit is removing the mods of those subreddits, replacing them with their own, and banning any mention of it. So its not doing good
In solidarity with protesting subs I decided to not open the site until this shit gets resolved. And I have crippling addiction as it turns out, because it's hard as fuck. But maybe this will be an opportunity for me to overcome this and transition fully to grass-touching productive person instead of a doomscrolling procrastinator I was.
You aren't going to overcome your crippling addiction to social media by posting about your crippling addiction to social media on social media. Good luck of your rehabilitation.
@@MrMakoto2 TH-cam is hardly a social media in that sense, I just put videos in the small window while working. I rarely comment something, only when topic is very relevant to me.
@@AlleonoriCat No didn't you hear? You aren't allowed to make compromises that fit your situation. We only do extremes here, no grey areas E V E R. /s
Swear to god that sort of shit is among the most brain dead takes that someone could have...
I had a 25 book backlog on my Kindle. Just swapped the rif and Kindle icons on my phone and its been great, I'd forgotten what it was like to get totally engrossed in a book. If you like fantasy, I recommend the Malazan series instead of reading about u/spez's fantasy where resdit remains a viable platform after July 1st.
@@MrMakoto2that’s a really stupid take
The entire thing has been so frustrating. I’m so tired of seeing these massive platforms completely reject the communities that made them popular.
For those who use reddit, please avoid spending extra time scrolling for now until they reverse these horrible decisions.
i better not catch you with your cheeks open or its gonna get wicked
Way ahead I'm jumping to Lemmy for now to avoid it. Best case scenario reddit is dead or changed its mind. Worst case scenario reddit is alive
I'm only checking NCD from now on.
They’re not going to listen. Be ffr. Reddit isn’t gonna change 😂
I'm not really not seeing the problem with reddit, there's alot of knowledge to gain from their forums
I'm old enough to remember the great migration from Digg to Reddit. Time to go full circle, boys. Back to Digg.
Digg: "You could not live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me."
I've never even heard of Digg before.
What the fuck? The reply section to your comment isn’t loading. I’m on mobile. Is TH-cam censoring you?
@@RaceBanditsame
oh wow it's been years since I heard that name
And this is exactly why we need to make our own websites. We can't just rely on social media.
But we are retarded and don’t know how. Everyone’s retarded.
I really wish old forums would come back that were based on smaller communities. Now everything is centralized and way less interesting. Hopefully all the problems with Twitter, twitch, and reddit will help boost smaller sites.
But then the cycle would probably happen again
@@unfairdev8197 Yep. These sites need money to run and yet everyone throws a hissy fit when they try to. Eshh.
+@@rawrii1928 Exactly, and all the information is locked behind those apps. Can't search Twitter without giving it all your data. Can't search Facebook without giving it all your data. Can't search TikTok without giving it all your data. More recently, Instagram. And nobody is getting upset anymore because they're addicted to the apps, so they just grit their teeth, cope, and endure. The problem is, though, that if instead of coping, they boycotted, they'd be able to make changes sooo much easier. I do understand that people need something else to switch to (since they're addicted), and I do think individual forums (where NO one company has a monopoly) might be the saving grace. Maybe even implementing a voting system within search engines where users can vote on the accuracy of every single result so that people can win back their internet from SEO abusers again. There would have to be systems put in place to prevent brigading of course- I'm thinking the same system they use for Google Reviews, but I do think there sre very real solutions.
Do you guys remember when Digg was the bigger, better, more popular version of Reddit before they changed their website and ruined everything? Good times
Standard "innovation"
History is doomed to repeat itself
Lol, this is the internet history no one knows. Digg was so much better and reddit looked like absolute dog poop. The funny thing is that the only reason I remember there was a giant migration to reddit was because the introduction of ads! It was a different time (2007ish?) and the bar was very low to piss off users. Reddit hit critical mass after that migration and became the defacto public internet forum.
imagine a world where digg stayed that way and instead of having redditors we have Diggers
@@Kokopell-EDiggDuggs
As someone pointed out under your first video on this, it's not about the mods not liking the changes, but that they literally can't enforce their guidelines and stuff. If this policy change goes through they won't go dark indefinetely to hurt the Reddit CEO but because they can't operate anymore. This is not really a protest but much rather a taste of what is gonne happen if these go through.
"but that they literally can't enforce their guidelines and stuff." plays small violin lol
@@LiveBenchmarks You say that now, but just wait until r/aww is filled with gore/vore/abuse videos because mods don't have tools to efficiently moderate
Yes they can operate. You can mod without 3rd party apps.
@@isaacgame7304 right click > ban is the only tool you need.
@@Lemosa3414Not very bright, huh?
There has actually been a pretty huge influx of Reddit users coming over to Tumblr and unlike the Twitter infestation from a while back the new users have pretty much been welcomed with open arms. The tag 196 has been trending since shortly after the blackout started and it's pretty fun.
Never checked out Tumblr. Maybe I should.
Oh hey that’s me! I’m trying to avoid Reddit, I completely uninstalled the shitty app.
Not that tumblr is any better, it’s always been a hellsite. But at least some of my niche interests are there. That and it’s way easier for me to stop doomscrolling on tumblr than Reddit.
Isnt 196 the tranny subreddit
Why 196?
@@suruzu I believe it was one of the much larger subreddits that shifted to private, one where the main rule of the sub was "dont leave without posting" Tumblr loves it because the previous influx of tiktok and Twitter users led to a lot of users not making nor reblogging posts at all, only occasionally liking posts which effectively does nothing over there, so reddit users pouring in and actually interacting with posts is making the local tumblrinas very happy.
I usually rely on Reddit for finding solutions to most of my problems. I often add reddit to my search queries because, more often than not, I find answers there more easily compared to sifting through lengthy articles. In fact, I practically visit Reddit every day.
However, it completely baffles me to hear Reddit explicitly stating that it wasn't designed with third-party apps in mind. When I first joined Reddit almost a decade ago, they used to recommend third-party apps for mobile devices. Eventually, they developed their own app, which turned out to be terrible and still is. I had to switch back to the previous apps, and I haven't changed since.
While I do spend alot of time on Reddit, if the ways I use the platform are disregarded in favor of Reddit exerting more control and maximizing their profits from my usage, then I'm ready leave. I'm all for the indefinite blackout and when July 1st comes around I will be gone. Cant wait to see what alternatives are built because there will be one.
Don't use reddit, simple as that
I visit reddit every day, and I still wish all subs would go dark indefinitely until Huff-and-puffman comes back down to Earth. He looks and acts like a spoiled brat. He's more like Mark Zuckerburg than Mark Zuckerburg at this point.
Imagine if Reddit removed the ability to make subreddits to go private
Then initiate Reddit genocide. _Delete_ every subreddit.
Then people would delete the subreddits permanently
@@baconmangaming7002 Then Reddit gonna remove the ability to delete the subreddits permanently.)
@@user-qk7tk8gj1t Then the last option the Redditors would have is to permanently ghost the site, at that point, I'm not sure what Spez would do next
@@baconmangaming7002 then reddit would remove people’s ability to permanently ghost the site. checkmate atheist.
Saying it was going to be 48 hours, then 48 hours later extending it indefinitely was actually a pro gamer move, it gives the strike a chance to actually affect the company rather than letting them walk it back in two days time
Reddit helped me figure out what to put in the nameholder section when using a store-bought mastercard gift card online. I tried various names like my own, and "your name", and was gonna give up using it online completely. Then some random reddit comment said use "gift card" as the name, and it worked. I cried tears of joy. Reddit seriously has some super helpful, and super useless advice.
There was also the guy a week or two ago telling the story of how he got his dick smashed into a wall by the tine of a forklift, and after surgery it's now kind of a corkscrew and he's gotten laid a lot more because it's a unique sensation apparently, and then a bunch of people were asking for pictures. On a completely unrelated original post. For better or worse, there's nowhere else you get that kind of content.
Reddit helped me revive my dead kindle ❤️
Reddit had my baby!
@@Lunatic5306
Twins, right?
@@TheMightySnul I’m glad you remembered, hun.
Many of the subreddits going dark (and staying dark even now) has actually been a huge problem when it comes to my work. I often use Reddit to find solutions from other users or to post/dicuss problems that frequently come up while I'm for example editing video or using the Adobe suite, trying to fix a toilet (Charlie knows about this one).
r/videoediting has gone dark as well as most of the subreddits revolving around editing/using adobe software. There isn't really another site that provides the same function as Reddit. We're all kind of screwed if some of these subreddits go permanently dark due to this change. There is such a wealth of information on these subreddits when it comes to the process of troubleshooting problems you encounter in everyday life/work.
Don't use reddit, simple as that
@@wS21z. It's a very useful site and there aren't alternatives right now.
I mean. You and everyone else. It’s easy to say “yeah, I’d like to see positive change as long as achieving it doesn’t affect me literally at all”. Protests don’t really work unless they are pretty significantly inconvenient. Sometimes you have to swallow a couple weeks of inconvenience for something that is really important.
@@LiterallyJustAnActualPotato Uhh, it has to be inconvenient to the person they are protested against, not the everyday person. A good way to blow up your protest and make everyone hate it is making the everyday person suffer. This isn't affecting reddit at all which is why the protest isn't working. They are still posting and still active and still pulling people to check on reddit. Every time i see the blackout posts they are upvoted like 40k times which is 40k accounts, 40k people, all online on reddit. See? Pulling in reddit traffic. The protest is killing itself lmao.
i dont think reddit will allow itself to die something this big will always crawl back somehow
Leave your entries in the SubReddit, bros, and I'll watch your submissions in the next episode of LWIAY
Paper Mario sub is still goin. Civic Si, shitty dark souls, prettyaltgirls. Shit. Reddit works for me. 😂
i better not catch you with your cheeks open or its gonna get wicked
@@BDChupacabra Yeah, as long as r/Acura_RSX and r/WarThunder and r/BeamNG works for me I’m fine lol
It won't. Some of the bigger subreddits have already had their top mods kicked and replaced by new ones who opened the sub's back up. I think r/AdviceAnimals was one.
Reddit instituting their own mods to take over and turn the subs back on while getting rid of the existing ones would be an absolutely hilarious win.
One of the main reasons mods themselves are upset is because the API change is going to kill some of the apps that allow them to moderate properly.
As much hate as mods get, they do a lot behind the scenes keeping bots under control. It'll be a stroke of karmic justice if the subreddits are forced back online only to be overrun with bots.
From what I have heard, some subreddits have already had this happen and it went very poorly. Drastic drop in moderation and stuff. Can’t confirm it, but that’s just some hearsay I’ve heard.
I think a lot of bots also run via the API. Would be funny if they force the subs back open AND cure a lot of the bot problems
I used to mod /r/science and /r/askscience and the mod tools are 100% a necessity. The amount of garbage people post is insane.
@@gitgud1536not that hard to make a bot that runs on a headless browser. Sure it may be a bit slower but can still spam like a mfer.
@@gitgud1536Nah. It's too easy to make bots that do simple tasks
Agreed, it should’ve been longer and unannounced. I think if they wanted to go nuclear, if they were forced to unprivate, they could delete the subreddits.
Joined this protest and deleted the app. This made me realize how seriously addicted I was. Even if they back down I'm not going back. Hours a day wasted in that cesspool
From NPR:
"In his first interview since the coordinated blackout began, CEO Steve Huffman tells NPR that giving away a service for free is not something Reddit would be able to do forever."
Charge, if you must, but charging millions will empty Reddit quickly. Money-hungry developers are the bane of the planet.
Don't blame developers for executive behavior!
@@NickByers-og9cx Mayhaps you missed the "money hungry" part?
The problem is, reddit is not profitable, just like most of these big websites. Things simply can't go back to how they were, I think people would be a lot more accepting if the reddit owners weren't acting so shady and disrespecting the users. The proper way to do this, in my opinion, would've been to first improve their app significantly, it's truly one of the worst things I've used on my phone, secondly they should've simply said that they are no longer giving out API access since they can't afford it, lastly, they should've been respectful to the community and sympathetic to the third party developers. They should've done all this instead of pretending that they are giving out APi access and then shit all over the third party devs with the "we don't actually want you to use the API but we're not gonna say it out loud" pricing.
Yeah, in the post by the Apollo dev, he said that he would be fine with paying as long as the prices were reasonable. But they arent, so here we are. All of this could have been so easily avoided...
@@denjidenji9162 the thing is there is probably no such thing as reasonable pricing for a platform like reddit. It will not be profitable unless they take drastic measures
@@phee3D the solution isn't to make third party devs pay millions, which they won't
they are not going to generate any revenue from the api. how many customers are going to pay 20 mill a year? this is to kill off 3rd party apps, not to generate money. in the end they will actually lose money when people leave reddit and there are less eyes and content to attract advertisers
@@bleack8701 yes, agreed. I expressed the same in my original comment.
A lot of individual users are also boycotting longer as well as subreddits.
I figured going into this I was avoiding reddit at least till Friday.
The thing is only a small percentage of people really post a lot and add to the community especially for smaller reddits.
A lot of people are figuring they're at least going to be on reddit a lot less in the future because it's less convenient to do it on mobile. Some people are even moving elsewhere.
The end date was necessary because Admins have been known to kick mods of subreddits out and appoint new mods to subs.
Same here. I’ve been avoiding Reddit. I personally don’t use third-party apps. However, I think it’s healthy for them to exist. It means Reddit has to effectively compete with itself, with keeps them honest. This API change is a scummy move on Reddit’s part.
As a 3rd party app user, I'm still boycotting and set my screen time timer for Relay to 1 minute. I only opened it once on Wednesday to see which subs were active again, but haven't opened it since. If third party apps go away, I will probably just move on. I've done it before when Twitter first killed the good apps, I kind of stopped using it for years and never went back to being a heavy user.
I'm going to continue avoiding the site. It's sad seeing the shit level of content that makes it to the front page now.
It's frustrating... because I don't use any 3rd party apps, not even the mobile app... and now I have to suffer thru this shit... not being able to access many useful subreddits where you can actually find help, information and answers you need... and of course all the "useless" subreddits are up
It was so avoidable but the Reddit employees just kept on making mistakes lol
I work for a contractor of reddit and we're asking reddit "wtf m8 what are you doing?"
I think you mean "snoos".
It's probably more like leadership making trash decisions and not funding things they should rather than general employees being incompetent as a whole. Employees can/should only do as much as they are paid to do.
@@BOBINDUN That site has become progressively worse especially from the aspects of interface and content. Professional accounts and bots are a large part of what makes it to the top.Without ad blocker, old reddit, and RES the UI is a nightmare.
Not sure if you're know, but there was also an Reddit AMA by the reddit CEO and it's essentially him consistently shooting himself in the foot. I'm unaware if the thread is open since reddit is dark, but highlights exist on twitter. The original decision to change the API was also decided due to wanting to monetize the data/traffic on Reddit for AI purposes. (from Verge+NYT article with the CEO).
Thanks for the video.
I’m pretty sure AI already uses Reddit as a source for data right? So the CEO just wanted to get money from that?
@@geraltrivia9565 My question, is that why not just charge the AI companies only? (Beyond the obvious fact the CEO is clearly wanting to squeeze as much profit as he can.)
One could argue that Apollo, RiF and the others have the benefit of actively improving the quality of life for users, whereas something like ChatGPT doesn't really do that, so it shouldn't be allowed to essentially mooch off Reddit.
Honestly I agree with the idea that AI devs shouldn't be allowed to mooch off others, and should compensate people/companies whom they gather data from. Shame that the CEO is such a nitwit that he can't do this in such way that won't screw everyone else over.
I want to make it clear that Most of the Subreddits that have continued the shutdown actually voted to do so once the 48 hours ended. People have been spinning this strike as the Reddit mods being spoiled: but I don’t think that’s the case because the Subreddit members themselves have decided to continue this.
For example from the Subs I follow, R/ Minecraft unanimously voted to shut down permanently, and people were sharing the 4chan and discord as the new platform for the Subs followers. Meanwhile R/StarWars is Doing another 48 hours then holding another vote. And R/rollercoasters did the opposite and voted to reopen (they actually reopened early and it’s clear they didn’t want to strike)
I noticed there's been a massive amount of "it's just spoiled Reddit mods" comments but only AFTER the blackout. I think it's people who didn't actually know the blackout was going ahead, then got annoyed when it happened so defaulted to the standard "mods are cringe" argument
Keep those cesspools private indefinitely
In all fairness in most cases the 48hr blackout was a decision made solely by the mods without a vote from the rest of the users, in which case the users do have a right to complain. Mods already earned a reputation for being power hungry weirdos, things like this aren’t helping their case. Putting it up for vote is the way to go.
People with internet addictions are more likely to toss out their critical thinking skills for the sake of mouth-breathing at their desktop computer for hours on end.
Pretty much everyone with a brain knows that accessibility is going down the shitter because of this new CEO. It's the incels who have nowhere else to be that are complaining about the strike tbh.
@@seniorspam2453They didn’t blackout cause they didn’t get a goodnight kiss. They literally did it for the good of the ENTIRE platform and EVERY single person who uses it…now and in the future. So anyone who is crying about “not being asked” for their permission for an entire Sub to blackout is the real spoiled baby.
as an IT guy, reddit is the wikipedia of random obscure tech issues with no clear fix, more than half the things I can't figure out on my own I solve using information from reddit. This will be felt by more than just the greedy CEO's
Also, I noticed a Reddit thread regarding the timeline issue, someone involved in organizing for protests strongly suggested that successful protests must gradually increase in scale over time. Regardless if the demands of protestors are met yet, it demonstrates that the user base does have the power to disrupt the service. Unless the protest makes people feel they have less power, it is likely amping up the willingness to double down on the cause.
The problem with this whole idea is that reddit can easily manually remove the mods for subs and put other users of those subs in their places. Ones that wont go private. Theres just no overall threat because Reddit holds the only nuke.
Yeah, as far as I know, r/AdviceAnimals was one of the subs that had their top mods replaced by reddit-appointed ones, was unprivated, and now it's an absolute shit show there
@@mayravixx25 "now it's an absolute shit show there" - that's exactly what will happen - because the mod tools have not been provided.
It's not an instant win button. Sure, they can do that... but you'll end up with random people not that used to being mods (and reddit killing third party mod tools that use the API certainly doesn't help) and a good chunk of the community probably quitting/boycotting it. The subs will survive sure but not unscathed.
honestly i dont think the subs would thrive with new corporate mods, why would the users want to post?
Why are they even shocked? Did they really think a 48 hour black out they ANNOUNCED was gonna change anything? I can't believe it took a literal note from the CEO for reddit users to get that the company doesn't give a shit about them.
Them telling how long the strike will last is akin to criminals telling the feds how and when they're going to rob a bank.
As time goes by, we see corporations show their ultimate true colours like no tomorrow
If you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-Lincoln
Whether the protest does work in the end or not, participating did make me realize how addicted to it I was to it. I hope it ends up being a success and the redditors win, but I’m most likely not going back.
I hope that we see some kind of success on the community side of this, but this whole scenario is also a good example of why boycotts and protests are very often not successful at all. It's hard to get people to genuinely commit to abstaining from things in a way that actually changes their lives in a noticable way. People don't like change, even when they have to change to prevent worse changes from happening. Catch 22
People do like change, but.. imagine this, if you will:
You are a drug user, and your local shelter is organizing a drug protest to bring awareness to the dangers of substance abuse. In solidarity, you quit drugs, because you don't want to see a bunch of teens and homeless people fall into a bad addiction. A day goes by, and your withdrawals are so intense that you go back to using.
The people who are addicted to Reddit are finding it very hard to quit using it. They know an indefinite protest will be for the better, but they're so terminally online that a week feels like a year to them. Granted, there are plenty who have quit using Reddit for good, but not everyone needs a reason to quit using it. I quit using social media years ago and I haven't gone back; never had a reason, I just quit.
Protests and boycotts work. Addiction and armchair activism makes it hard.
I didn't expect them to comply to the protesters from day 1. Most of Reddit users are too addicted/dependent on the website itself and it would be hard to start somewhere else.
As Charlie said, it would only really work if atleast 70-90% of subreddits went onto an indefinite strike, but as predicted this 2-3 day strike did pretty much nothing. People would like positive change as long as it doesn't affect them in anyway, unfortunately here it affects people quite a lot and the CEO knew this.
Large corps never comply day 1, because they are confident they can outlast the people due to having more resources.
This is principally the same as a union strike IRL, except that usually involves jobs and livelihoods so it's even easier for corps to get away with it since people need money more than they need Reddit.
If Redditors can't even hold out to keep their third party apps going I fear for humanity. And I already see the 'this is hurting us more than them' sentiment. It's worrisome.
The API change literally doesn't impact most of us. Most people use the actual reddit app. By a HUGE margin. The positive change is that we can finally get rid of some of the terrible mods.
@@stevendemayo3631 Yeah, let's purposely hinder the ability to moderate subs because you don't like one mod that did something you don't like that one time.
It's not like a tidal wave of bots and shitty anon nazis would suddenly wash over the entire site or anything.
It's as if people don't think about anything besides their immediate gratification. There will be consequences if we allow them to just do whatever they want.
The Reddit blackout is an impressive cooperation to protest a terrible change, I hope we see more internet users standing up against greedy websites
i better not catch you with your cheeks open or its gonna get wicked
It's not really an impressive cooperation once you realize that the same mods are moderating for multiple subreddits.
i hope we can see more people standing up against greedy corporations period honestly
@@chcicknspider *Opens cheeks* bet
Not gonna happen.
I still don’t really know what all this API stuff means because I barely ever use reddit anymore, but just seeing how the CEO acts is enough to get me on board with the protest.
Api is basically a password that lets your code interact with Reddit. This allows you to have a computer read a subreddit instead of a human. This password used to be free allowing large communities to be moderated. But bow that the api cost money it puts more work on mods
@@zuraxle5012 It's far more than that.
@@Dice-Z thanks for the comment man
@@Dice-Z thx 👍
@@Dice-Z Too bad we don't have ELI5 to offer simplified explanations to people who aren't in the loop. Can't have people watering down their explanation to make more sense to laymen, no sir
The saddest part is exactly like you mentioned so many gave an end date and arent really doing anything more, but there are many more niche subreddits I enjoy (and can talk about/share things I otherwise cant in normal life) and since they plan to hold out and are niche, I fear noone will care. I also plan to hold out and see what happens. I know one person won't make a difference but the more news this gets and the more people stay away Reddit will hurt. I hope they dont just try to replace mods with those that will tolerate this crap. Also, noone is wearing Reddit merch (I hope).
we need to try keep off reddit too as the users, less users, ads etc has to be a help
Don't use reddit, simple as that
Man, every time a new contender makes his appearance in the "Burn your company to the ground with stupid changes" Cup I don't know who will win, First Netflix, then twitch doubled down and now Reddit is partecipating as well
don't forget twitter, ofc
when charlie wears a black shirt for 5th time in a row we know we are going to hear something important
i better not catch you with your cheeks open or its gonna get wicked
@@chcicknspiderhmmm yes please, daddy.
@@chcicknspider What is the reference? I have seen this before but I dunno the context.
Organised strikes usually give an end date for the sake of keeping order. It makes participation easier. But this strategy only works because they can, as an organisation, settle on a new strike as a collective. That’s the point: the power to strike is not dismissed by a set end date, and the other side is made aware of that fact.
So the reddit community should have agreed on a new strike or an extention publicly and as a unified entity.
The issue with undefined strikes is precisely the lack of organisation: they die down gradually, because individuals break under pressure as they have harder and harder time to see themselves as a collective. By regrouping, making a new collective decision and starting a new strike both the strikers and their opposition can see the end of the current strike, but only the strikers get to voice their opinion if the next one is warranted.
For the opposition, counting on the collective not declaring a new strike is more of a gamble than their ranks slowly falling apart during an indeterminate strike. The striking coalition is no longer a formidable entity that can utilise its power as a collective, to ends they as an entity determine, but a set of individuals who each have their own goals and length of time they are willing to strike.
But to act as an entity there needs to be an organisation, and the decisions need to be made through a process the members accept. Usually worker unions do this through election system and organising votes on important issues. For a community such as reddit users, forming such organisational structure is much harder. In such cases just declaring an end date for a strike doesn’t come with the threat that new decision can be reached. But for better or worse, redditors chose to try this more organised strategy.
Correct, they should clarify that the date would be renewed if their demands don't get answered
This is an absolutely excellent explanation, more people need to see this since I see many people believe indefinite or nothing is the way to go. Strikes in reality so not last forever for a reason
I think the problem here frankly is that people aren’t getting paid. People participate in companies for money. On social media? It’s rank/karma no? You can get money from any job, but you can only get karma on Reddit.
@@zeo5009 On the other hand, pay is exactly the reason most strikers break under pressure. Because they need to be paid to live. Mods already do this for free, users browse for free, both they lose nothing of value by striking. Only the company suffers, as now they have to live with the uncertainty strikes can occur at any time (and need to tell shareholders yeah we fucked up so bad our mods basically unionised)
I went on Reddit the day the blackout started and I was mildly inconvenienced. Now I haven't thought about Reddit since you posted this video, and having been there eight years I remind myself that I really don't give a shit about it lmao
Reminds me of how I felt after I stopped going to a forum I used for nearly two decades. These sites are built on their communities, when they fall apart, what you liked about it has been lost so it's easy to move on.
I stopped using Reddit months ago and my life improved immensely
not using it daily doesnt mean it's not a valuable resource for a significant number of people, esp when it comes to tech troubleshooting
@@geraltrivia9565 reddit is sometimes useful
@@anon1963 eh. i dont see the point in using it cuz most of the users are incredibly biased. or just stupid
I love sitting back and watching two of my enemies fight.
CEOs and Redditors.
It’s beautiful
It reminds me of back in highschool when two assholes you hate get into a fist fight.
Only this time it’s a rich pompous asshole and a fat greasy weirdo
The fact Reddit's administration didn't head the warning shot tells me they have no clue what Reddit's community could do to their entire business at a moment's notice.
you know what the saying is...
"Even brainless zombies are deadly in hordes"
Then do it
Don't just sit there and go "why I otta...." And shake your fist
@adambonesaw3689 this is like saying "don't do a peaceful protest! Just jump straight to violence" the definite blackout is a *threat* not a fist shaking
@@sanrusdyne an indefinite blackout is not violence either. A protest must disrupt in order to have an effect. Disrupt a revenue stream even if it means disrupting regular users. Sucks they have to go find a geriatric forum for their tech support but that is the way of it.
The issue is that the users, not the mods who run the subs, are the ones who have to protest. Anyone can just make a similar subreddit to one that went dark and it would likely get a lot of the users from the dark one to come there.
“Let’s organize a boycott but let’s make sure that we specify a time limit to make it clear to Reddit that we don’t actually care and want to just virtue signal instead.”
That's the most Reddit move possible. Do nothing of value in the real world, just give updoots to people with the "correct opinion".
Yeah. I knew that this stroke was pathetic from the beginning. Even if it was indefinite, they would not do anything about it, because they know damn well we *need* it. I feel ashamed to know that our generation is so apathetic that they'd rather submit to oppression than actually make a change. That's the epitome of laziness, and I am ashamed to be alive in this fucking timeline. I would like to end myself!
Like @thebenjipoo said, I couldn’t think of a “protest” that more perfectly captures the reddit mindset than that. As loud, emotional and visible as possible so that everyone can see them doing it, while also ensuring no actual sacrifices need to be made. I stopped using reddit a little over a year ago, haven’t regretted it for a second.
The 48 hour blackout was a joke. It should've been indefinite if they actually wanted results. But when you find out that many of the top subs on the site all share this one guys who probably works directly for reddit, it quickly becomes apparent that these were basically theatrics just to quell the users. Reddit is unfortunately not dead
Hard agree. Two days was virtually nothing. Being indefinite would've been better.
They probably would've eventually been fired and replaced if they continued with the protest.
dayum. again. my reply got shadowbanned by youtube ai. I can't even do discussion.
Because doing it indefinitely was possible wasn’t it lol.. You think mods have any power what so ever over the actual people behind Reddit? You dumb?
They can’t lock it forever. It’s not like reddit company itself doesn’t have to power to just kick out the mods at any time.
Whats hilarious to me is how redditors thought anyone would actually care if the site was open or not. If reddit shut down tomorrow, nobody would care after a week.
I would, how am i going to find out how to manage my tech problems and my skin care routine without having to go on shitty sponsored sites or quora
It's like when Bethesda tries to release a game without modding support.
As a community, we are simply too compliant to let big companies to make negative changes. I really hope the 'strikes' go on and grow until Reddit is forced to revert the change, especially on a platform like Reddit where the users have the most control.
They won't, the company is becoming public, they need to generate money where there is none.
they shouldnt change shit lmao reddit mods need a fucking life instead of whining about an app
@@plokoon9619 Then the users will just make Reddit as unmarketable as possible
As I understand basically those 3rd party apps just provide alternative front-end for the reddit (both for users and moderators) that offer objectively better UX than the original one.
From what I can see reddit's back-end is not particularly complicated (even considering relative high load).
And now we have a considerable amount of users dissatisfied with the company direction, to the point of boycott.
Wouldn't it be a perfect moment to try and develop alternative using the experience of these 3rd party devs?
Although should prolly do it fast xD
Reddit: we are charging for our api because of lost revenue from opportunity cost and we own the infrastructure
The internet: Your infrastructure is ran by the community. The data you are trying to sell is created by the community. Reddit is only possible because of the community.
This is the biggest push to decentralized platforms and I'm all for it
insane how these companies are all speedrunning their downfall
i better not catch you with your cheeks open or its gonna get wicked
@@chcicknspider💀
Vocal minority won't make a dent in their revenue. Even the CEO is making fun of they impotent boycott
because of reddit i found this super cool SCP that made you fill out a bunch of questions (it wasn't the madlibs one, it was one that made you answer a question and move on to the next page and there were a LOT of questions and lots of pages) and i do not remember which one that was :(
I think the reddit strike should have lasted for weeks to actually make an impact. Am happy that a lot of big pages are still offline.
Same here, even r/minecraft is staying dark, and I can't help but respect 'em for it despite how much I hate their sub lol
@DUSKvsDAWN "I think the reddit strike should have lasted for weeks" - don't worry - it ain't over yet.
@Meli or even years
Imagine reddit mods not going on a power trip against people who actually deserve it for once. I can't believe some of these subreddits actually opened up after two days when the CEO mocked them.
Imagine Reddit mods doing something useful. The blackout did nothing but harm the users. They should have just let anarchy take over and blame it on the lack of moderation ability with the loss of third-party API access. It would have accomplished way more and in a measurable way than a symbolic do-nothing protest.
Yep somehow people could unite against(?) Gamestop but not this?
@@alexcarter8807 I stopped using it, without 3rd party I wont ever use it. old reddit site is going after that and then there is absolutely 0 reason imo.
@101iq4 "actually opened up after two days" - some are contemplating closing again. But they care about their subscribers, too, so they're kinda stuck in the middle.
As a casual user, the Reddit app worked fine, so I never looked into 3rd party apps.
I used to use Reddit for most of my problems and Redditors always resolved things for me more than most websites out there. I haven't been on in a while though so thank you for the updates on what's new with Reddit.
yeah reddit can be a useful source of information so you can see multiple perspectives of a question or issue. of course sometimes it just devolves into a cespool.
@@wiseoldman_tv Honestly given enough users any social media platform can devolve into a cesspool
Havent used reddit since the 12th and I actually feel how addicted I was. My life feels different but I am not planning on coming back if they are not taking back their decision.
Its funny how they call it a strike but they ended it at a certain time. You don't stop a strike unless you get what you want or someone higher up puts of forceful stop to it.
Strikes end regularly all the time. Last transport strike I saw lasted 1 day. Same with teachers strike. These people have more real power than reddit mods though, and are harder to replace. They also have unions that are using those timed strikes as part of a wider strategy.
@@JewTube001 the reddit strike was not something that should've ended so early. They need to keep pressing them until they come to an agreement
Edit: it also depends on the company/industry. Since reddit is a giant company, it will take time to make a dent
Why comment when you have no idea? Strikes obviously end at a certain time. Jesus
Power to the Reddit protests. I wish there were more coverage and strikes like this for Twitter when they killed 3rd party apps.
I hope they persist. I worry that reddit execs will brush it off and implement a delay or something to prevent subreddits from easily going private in protest again.
Most of the subs are still private
@@itsOZone Nope, more than 50% already back up; users DGAF
The admins started to threaten mods with removal if they didn't open up. A lot of subs are reopening.
@@NikolaevAlexander Ah yes, I too like to throw out random, arbitrary numbers with nothing back them up at all as stated facts.
They should just remove the private feature, the problem with this protest is that it forces unwilling participants.
The fact that they even gave out an end date for the protest just shows the total lack of commitment to the protest.