The blackout is starting to have a financial impact on Reddit, but we must stay dark!
The blackout is starting to have a financial impact on Reddit, but we must stay dark!
Reddit is redirecting some impressions away from existing communities, and some advertisers are pausing campaigns.
If the performance weakness continues for a week or two, the agency would start recommending decreasing spend with Reddit or directing it to other platforms.
After the blackout, we will be closely monitoring user behavior on Reddit and guide clients when we can unpause,” said Freddy Dabaghi, managing director at Stagwell-backed Crispin Porter Bogusky, which has asked clients to stop campaigns, depending on their client goals.
Hey! I'm keeping this as it's sharing knowledge with new users from Reddit. However, in future please find another community to post this on, because it is not related to the lemmy.world instance specifically.
Honestly, regardless of what happens, I have no plans to go back. Lemmy's been a refreshing breath of fresh air.
Same. It's really struck me both how little I miss it and how much I like the communities here. There's a much friendlier vibe.
And for the most part, aside from the bullshit threads where it's encouraged and expected, the comments are a lot more 'high-effort,' which is nice. That's something that I would expect to tend to naturally go down with the lowest common denominator as user count increases, but we'll see.
I also like it more and more, especially since more communities are popping up and they get more populated.
It really is, there isn't as much content as reddit and that may or may not change but the lack of people acting like they are better than everyone makes it well worth it. I deleted the app and won't go back
Fully agree, let’s keep this attitude going here! :)
yup, let those folk stay on Reddit.
I wanted to leave for such a long time, but the alternatives weren't active enough.
If enough people stick around, yeah, I'm never going back.
I’m really hoping the federated nature will make advertising harder. That’s what really started making Reddit suck.
I love how these articles always frame the strike as "These needy people are mad because Reddit is now charging for something that was free before." Motherfucker, we're mad because the price was unreasonable and they were unwilling to negotiate in good faith. Third party app developers even agreed that charging for API usage was a reasonable thing but they expected the cost to be reasonable, as well.
I'm mad because of the slander.
The reason the price is unreasonable is because they're butthurt that OpenAI and other companies have used the API to pull a LOT of text for machine learning datasets. They are sad that they didn't get a slice of that cake.
On NPR they did interview the Apollo dev at least.
They still got the frame completely wrong, unless there's a different radio segment I didn't hear. The one I heard was mostly from an expert I had never heard from before who made it seem like "the developers" were mad because they had to pay. They included a single throwaway line from Chris. (I think that's the Apollo dev's name.) No mention they the pricing was clearly intended to be unreasonable.
It's bullshit fr. I also haven't seen one major news article report on that god awful AMA where Spez tried to lie about what Christian said and then claim he was blackmailed but was met with audio recordings of himself that proved he was lying
I know it's not "major" in the sense of traditional news outlets, but Philip DeFranco is covering it at least
If I were world dictator I would just make advertising illegal. It's the perfect dictator move. Simple policy that's hard to enforce which will almost certainly have unintended consequences. But God damn do I hate advertising.
Your wish has been granted, all small businesses have gone bankrupt because nobody knows they exist and since the only form of advertising left is undercover guerilla advertising campaigns every post on every platform is secretly an advertisement!
It is such a bizarre and creepy industry, everything about it is gross. I support you for world dictator!
The problem is that it is basically impossible to clearly differentiate from reviews which are a good and necessary thing. Pay someone to review your product and what now?
don't complain if all the free service become paid...
You ever though about where the money from advertisers comes from? I would pay for Google if I would then pay less for products that waste money on "marketing" by paying millions to Google.
The thing is that there aren't significant direct production costs per user for technology services like there are for material items, just overall maintenance costs that only scale noticeably with a large increase of new users, so it would actually be possible to pay for infrastructure and salary costs and all of that with just a percentage of your overall userbase being subscribed and subsidizing the rest. This is actually a monetization strategy that's working out for some privacy focused services like ProtonMail. So it would be necessary to convince some users to sign up but not necessarily all of them.
sadly adverts are what allows some things to be free to consumers, it's the funding that supports the content that people consume. It's what it is for now, in the future maybe there would be better merit systems funded by tax or something if humans get together and stop being greedy.
Around 14 years ago or so, I actually turned off my Adblocker for reddit, because I respected the platform and how it was run. I've never turned off Adblocker for ANY other site before or since. Reddit can get fucked. I'm not going back period.
I did the same at some point. However, that place is long gone. There is no reason to be stuck there.
I think that's admirable. Personally I'd rather just pay $1 per month or something and not see ads at all and have app access.
Sites need to understand that. No one wants to pay 10$/month for some premium crap, all we want is to replace ad revenue.
But sadly most of them charge ridiculous amounts, so it's infeasible to support many of them. People end up choosing the big ones because they provide the most value per money, so we get more monopolization.
Imagine after the 3rd party apps are killed!
Even if Reddit does negotiate manageable rates for "non profit" 3rd party apps (lol), wait until Reddit users figure out they still can't access NSFW content except from the Reddit official app and the new Reddit layout. Break out the popcorn.
The main draw was that people using 3rd party apps didn't see (reddit's) ads. If 10% of apollo's users go to the official app, that is 10% that are seeing ads were they didn't before.
I personally hope they go bankrupt. I mean I feel bad for the average worker just trying to make a living, but fuck Reddit. Those folks should jump ship while they can and do something better for themselves.
I really like the idea that position if big social networks is not secure, that will make all of them think before making bad decisions.
Facebook is almost dead, at least around me (Meta is not with IG and Wapp), I am now starting to hope that reddit would not recover.
They have been digging this grave for some time now. We should let them go.
Reddit announced a layoff just this past week. Nobody's job there is safe. Best the rest get out while they can.
A new blackout tracker just dropped on the Discord: https://darktotal.com/
I’ve also been liking https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/
This one is much nicer.
I love how this contrasts with the CEO statement that many subreddits would go back to normal after the 2 days
Confused looking at r/gtafk jumping every hour from public to restricted to private to public to....
Mod fight, probably.
Thank you for sharing!
ps, which discord is this?
I cancelled my Reddit premium today. I was hesitant because I was in the $30/yr and didn’t want to get rid of that pricing since it’s $50 now. But I’m liking the fediverse and the quirks that comes with it. Will cancelling make an impact? Probably not. But I’d rather not support them if they’re not going to give me a choice on which app I use.
Earnest question, what did the $30/year get you? I never gave them a penny out of my own pocket, didn't know why I would.
Canceled my premium as well. I'm enjoying Lemmy so far and have no plans to go back to Reddit
I mean. We're all here. No idea how many people will actually stay, but I hope It's enough. I like the change
Any amount will push lemmy closer to mainstream, so it's always a good thing. The world won't stop going into an anti-privacy and anti-freedom direction over night, so we might be looking at some exponential growth after the wave of new users.
I wouldn't say we're all here. The statistics really don't show that unfortunately
I definetly didn't write clearly, sry :p
I meant that everyone on this thread is already on board. I just hope people actually stay in Lemmy
I can only talk for myself. Since yesterday I lurk on Reddit but don’t really engage with it anymore other than that.
As soon as Apollo is gone, even that will go away. I don’t know if I will stay on Lemmy, only time will tell even tho I hope so. But my active days on Reddit are ending right now.
I just moved to Lemmy after staying on Reddit for almost 8 years! Hopefully more people will migrate too :)
Social media should never be centralized and for-profit
Moved today. A big part of what I enjoy on reddit is reading comments and with how active communities are over here, I just might be here to stay!
me too. also really nice to just read normal commentsand not just upvote farming comments.
Two Wpromote clients canceled two premium, takeover-style campaigns that were supposed to launch this week
"Takeover" campaigns are getting canceled. I wonder which blacked out subs were going to be taken over with ads this week.
Wait, the advertisers have campaigns to take over subreddits? What?!
Not literally take over a subreddit, takeover advertising campaigns are typically a high-key screen space domination type of advertising. Think of something like a video games news site where the homepage is completely covered in advertising for a new, high budget game. Ads at the top, ads at the bottom, ads in the normally-empty margins, and often a focus on articles about the subject.
How that reflects to Reddit I'd never know, it's likely something that's exclusive to the newer layout that I have no interest in using.
At this point, even if they were to reverse all the decisions they’ve made, I have no intention or desire to go back to Reddit. Lemmy has been a great replacement and I’m hoping it’ll only improve over time.
100% agree. I do miss apollo, but I'm sure in time we'll have some great apps for lemmy as well
I deleted my Twitter account and haven't been back since blood diamond heir and purchaser, not founder, of Tesla Elon Musk bought it.
I'm done with reddit. I just hope the anti-capitalist subs regenerate here or I'll have to find another place to vent (again, not reddit) in that regard.
I'd love to try to make one, but I'm too busy with wage slave survival to be an attentive mod.
Libel of this nature must not stand. They're blood emeralds.
Green diamonds!
Cut my hands off why dont ya!
I’m just as happy here, for now. A community driven feed and a chance to interact with random people is enough to replace 95% of what I used Reddit for, and Twitter (which I was never really active in) and the alternatives that sprung up following the Musk cliff just don’t scratch that itch.
I’ve actually been expecting Reddit to die for a while and worried I wouldn’t find the Next Thing^TM until it was too late. I’ve gone through and deleted all my alts and their comments/posts, but will give spez another week before I purge my (almost 200k) main account. It would be nice if Lemmy got enough traction in my areas of interest to fully replace Reddit either way. I have some bad habits there I would be wise to leave behind anyway.
Reddit doesn't provide anything I can't get elsewhere. I don't know anyone there, I just reply to comments that pique my interest. Heck I delete my Reddit account every few years for privacy so even my account itself isn't precious. I'm just getting started here but it's hard to imagine Lemmy couldn't replace it entirely.
I've been looking for the next thing for more than a year, because the things that made Reddit a (relatively) healthier form of social media were being eroded. I tried out tildes, and the community was much more friendly, but almost too friendly. It was like they were overcompensating out of fear of the community becoming toxic... It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't comfortable - it felt like meeting strangers who you really want to impress. They're also somewhat anti-growth, which isn't a bad idea, but they were well below the sweet spot
Plus, I never loved the old school Reddit visuals, and it's design principle is html only and had no app or dark mode... All in all it's a great place for a specific group of redditors that didn't include me
Then I made up my resolution to leave Reddit when my apps go down and started looking at making a custom app to collate RSS feeds, and I started hearing about Lemmy.
I liked it enough that I've dropped everything and started building a better app. There's a lot missing, but there's so much good energy.
And the design principles of the fediverse address many of the fundimental problems with social media and the Internet as a whole. This might really be something important
Advertising on the internet has always been pretty awful. I wish it would just stop.
The problem is that they always want more. It's not enough to make money. So the ads and intrusive garbage gets worse and worse until we reach an unusable nightmare.
TV shows have banner ads during the show. Everyone wants to send you notifications. Even cars are starting to have ads on their screens.
It's exhausting.
Corporations don't want to make a little money, they don't want to make enough money, they don't want to make a lot of money, they want to make all the money.
We really shoulda nipped that bullshit in the bud decades ago.
Tuned into watch Nhl this year. My god. There are fast moving full colour animations on the boards. Right in the middle of the action in one of the fastest moving contact sports with a tiny puck you're trying to keep track of. It's unwatchable. Had to just use it like a radio station and only watch when there was a highlight.
It's obnoxious and has made me never want to see ads ever again. I'm OK with seeing something useful like a local ad for deals on a local food place or Safeway deals or something, toys and videogames maybe even movies but I shouldn't have to let them data mine me for targeted ads that end up being repetitive and constant. When living in italy we may have had programming that wouldn't start on time or not at all but at least it wasn't interrupted by ads. I was so confused as a kid seeing gargoyles have a weird spot or two where it would cut off with a dramatic reaction shot then continue with the same or similar one. I had no idea that's where ads went. I have no idea who ads work on but whoever you are stop buying stuff just because you saw an ad please lol!
Unless you want to pay something for every site you visit ads are a necessary inconvenience. Otherwise why would businesses pay to host interesting content for free?
Otherwise why would businesses pay to host interesting content for free?
See, I think that's the problem.
Wikipedia is one of the all-time great projects on the internet, and it keeps chugging along all without forcing miserable ads on its users or charging them a subscription fee or selling their data to the highest bidder.
And their donation drives are perfectly fine, and I'm perfectly willing to give them some money every now and then as long as they're asking for what is needed to keep the site up and running.
Maybe not everything should be run as a for-profit business, with an overriding goal of monetizing clicks and maximizing profits?
Wikipedia and Archives Of Our Own have entered the chat
long live lemmy 💙
This is really nice, if the protests start to hurt their bottom line, they are going to be much more inclined to listen. I didn't expect these blackouts to do something.
Or even better, fire the MBAs who came up with the stupid idea in the first place
I don't think the idea is stupid, just poorly executed. From Reddir's POV, this makes sense (why wouldn't it?). They could have done this in a much better way.
I am/was? A moderator of r/NintendoDE, still backed out, until they take us over or comply with the demands.
Probably we'll be taken over at some point, but I feel like Reddit has lost its place for me, and a large part of the trust that I out there too.
Imagine what it would be like if we strike this hard for fair wages.
Preach.
Reddit's soul was slowly drained off life. It's better here than going back to Zombieland. That's said, I will grab some popcorn and watch this slow train wreck called future of Reddit.
Speaking of popcorn, I'm literally going to go make some right now!
I officially left reddit. Totally done with it. I remember when the Digg exodus happened. No one thought things would turn out the way it did for Digg. There will always be users on reddit, and who knows, maybe they will use AI to aggregate content to fill the void for those who have left. It's all about the targeted ads in the end; they don't care who submits content, they care about the views.
It's hard to stay dark when the admins can put admin-friendly mods in charge of subs.
They can try but without the moderation tools at the core of the issue, the subs will be inundated with bot spam till it dies. There will never be enough admins with free time to replace all the unpaid moderators let alone their knowledge. Not to mention doing a hostile takeover of subs without any understanding of each community's values will serve only to piss off more people.
Besides cashing out a dying platform, there is no winning for Reddit if they keep this up.
The thing that should scare advertisers the most isn't just the slight dip in revenue, but that those users are moving to ad-free sites. Those impressions are unrecoverable by redistributing spend away from Reddit.
that those users are moving to ad-free sites
When I check my ublock origin for this site, it says 0 blocked trackers and ads out of 0%. That's so refreshing. I don't think I've seen a website like that in decades.
Don't forget that in the end of the month and July 1st the third party apps will disappear on reddit. That means more redditors will to like lemmy or squablles etc.
Yeah, this is what I'm most interested to see. Right now it's a forward thinking, principled thing.
Once Relay, RiF, Apollo, BaconReader, and all the others go defunct, a lot more people are going to take notice. If they use the awful official app, they're going to realize Reddit has changed dramatically and not for the better, and they've just been shielded from the worst if it with their 3rd party apps.
I would love to be a fly on the wall come July. If the advertisers start to pull their spots, the earth may rumble just a tad
On Monday, Reddit’s ad manager encountered a brief outage, during which buyers were unable to look at reporting statistics, even while impressions were still delivering, though the impact was fairly minimal, per four sources. (The Verge reported the moderator blackout crashed the site, although it’s unclear whether the crashes are related).
So the site was down for quite a bit of time but the ad related stuff was just a minor hiccup?
Priorities
Ah fuck yeah let’s go
Once Reddit restricts it API usage and Stock goes public it will slowly just become another Digg clone.
I wish the acronym CPM was defined. Maybe I overlooked it.
Cost per thousand. They don’t define it, because it’s a common metric in advertising.
CPM probably means Clicks Per Minute.
It's the price for a thousand impressions of your ad. So, for every thousand times your ad gets displayed to a user, you pay the CPM amount. CPM is short for cost per mille.
I never gave them money, but I gave them free content. That is now done and gone. As soon as Apollo's API is deleted, I'm editing all of my old comments and posts to remove any content and let readers know what. Some of it was very helpful stuff to help others troubleshoot PC and server issues.
That's why you use shreddit. It can go through and remove all of your old posts. I used to have it running on a chron to remove all comments that had no or negative votes after a few weeks. You can actually set it to edit the comment into gibberish as well to muck with the SEO.
Are you going to manually edit all posts and comments or is there a tool one can use to bulk edit?
Power Delete Suite is the one people seem to be recommending, though I'm sure there are others.
Does internet archive preserve these? I agree it's attracting clicks for reddit and should be removed, but a lot of really good information is about to be lost if people do this en masse.
Nice, I won't go back to reddit after Apollo shut down
Holy Moly! Only 9000 of about 100000 Subs reportedly participate in the protest! Not even 10 percent! Ugh!
. Pretty impressive (and impactful hopefully).