The last major holdouts in the protest against Reddit’s API pricing relented, abandoning the so-called “John Oliver rules” which only allowed posts featuring the TV host. It's the official end of the battle. The Reddit protest is over, and Reddit won.
The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.::Reddit corporate claims victory over its disgruntled mods as r/aww, r/pics, and r/videos abandon the "John Oliver rule."
Bullshit. Nobody, or at least very few people, expected Reddit to revert the changes. A protest can be successful even if it doesn't lead to immediate change. I was here on Lemmy long before the API nonsense happened over at Reddit, and the difference over here is night and day. Lemmy has been around for awhile, but until these last few months it couldn't hold a candle to Reddit in terms of content or activity. Maybe it still can't, but now it has enough users to be viable. Reddit might go on like nothing happened, but in the background a competitor has been born.
I migrated from Reddit. Most of the communities I followed would be hours or days between posts (if they were not private). Everything left was just not pleasant.
I am still fumbling around here but for the most part it is has better discussions and people seem less rude.
I do not regret leaving at this time. I am sure my infinitesimal presence or lack there of does not bother Reddit, but it made me feel better.
Yeah, when I have looked at reddit recently I have observed that mostly the conversation is terrible. There is definitely more content than on Lemmy, but I also like talking to people who speak in entire sentences.
I think that's a good thing. Less is more, maybe? Dose it really have to be at the scale of reddit? I hope not. Tbh I hope Lemmy becomes bigger for sure but it doesn't need to become the biggest thing. The more alternatives the better!
Same here. I think that the only thing that I can do now to add something of value is to participate in good and respectful discussions while sharing content that I genuinely like. A grain of salt ends up adding to a mountain they say.
I deleted 16 years worth of my 'content' across 6 handles and moved to Lemmy/kbin. When I do go back to check on Reddit, it's easy to see that many of the better contributors are gone, the quality of comments and posts, as well as the voting on posts, has greatly diminished. Some subs barely have anything in their 'new' queues.
There are SO many bots here, they just don't seem to be impersonating people like on Reddit. They just automatically post stuff like news or mirrored Reddit posts.
For sure. I'm using Lemmy much more than reddit. But it sucks because I really loved Reddit and I still use it to some degree. But when Relay stops working I might just stop altogether. I'm not installing their shitty app.
Reddit still holds a ton of valuable info in niche topics which will take Lemmy years to build, and that's only if the niche communities here ever see the light of day. I've deleted most of the useless content I have there, but the more helpful ones I'll leave for the sake of others like me who still visit occasionally for answers you can't get anywhere else.
I've made the switch over and Lemmy feels perfectly viable and improving very quickly especially with the third party app devs working on supporting Lemmy. Reddit won't die but it looks like it'll stagnate, whereas Lemmy has got a brighter future.
It was to be expected, but I found Lemmy because of everything that happened, uninstalled Reddit, and now use Mastodon and Lemmy as my social media platforms of choice, so it’s a personal win.
Hopefully, as Lemmy continues to thrive, instances hold up to the pressure of growth and we see an influx of content that made Reddit so valuable to users and Reddit corporate alike.
I also found Lemmy because of Reddit's fiasco, and I think its much better. Being able to have so many instances to get stuff from and forge communities offers a lot more freedom.
+1, I wouldn’t have even considered moving off of Reddit until all the drama that had happened but once it did - and I found out about Lemmy - I’ve been happily more active on here in my communities of interest. Only reason I go back to Reddit these days is to encourage others to give Lemmy a go.
I wouldn't say Lemmy is better but it has great potential. The mobile apps aren't as good as Reddit's third party apps but that's changing. The content we are getting here isn't as good and reddit has its history of content to search through. Lemmy will have its own issues we will have to sort out but it can be done if we work together.
I think a big issue on Lemmy that I'm seeing is people making it to be Reddit-no-corporate when I believe it should be is own unique thing. Since it isn't corporate and thus no ads I think it would be hard to monetize high "karma" accounts so maybe we can get higher quality discussions. But if also seen people trying to create their echo chambers here by demanding defederation when one instance has a problem with a few trolls.
You’re not alone, the growth stats of several instances show that thousands of us did the same move. I now only use Reddit when I search error codes at work and an old reddit post has the answer. It’s gone from my phone and I’ve been on lemmy since the day Apollo was murdered
They didn't win, they just didn't fail as badly some had hoped. What was accomplished was spreading out a fair portion of their user base. Maybe not a huge percentage of it, but enough that they don't have the same level of monopoly. People are more aware of other options (and Reddit's flaws), and more will depart in time.
It's still a drop in the ocean for reddit and the people who left (or just spend less time on it) were never the target audience of this "new course". Reddit will be just fine.
Well put. I think there was permanent damage done to user's trust, but don't see many of the smaller subreddit communities migrating away yet.
I worry that Lemmy is even more an echo chamber with a handful of default communities, I hope it grows to the point where I don't feel obligated to join the popular communities so there is actual content to scroll through.
In my eyes Gizmodo is not seeing the big picture. The protest didn't kill reddit, but that was not a realistic outcome to begin with. However it significantly hurt reddit and helped push lemmy as an alternative. Reddit will be around for a long time, until lemmy has more widespread adaptation. It's the beginning of the end for reddit and they'll experience that with a disaster ipo
Lemmy actually feels like a viable alternative now with apps like Sync upping the experience. Seems like Reddit literally shot itself in the foot by kicking 3rd party apps to competition.
The number of folks interacting too is such a night and day difference. I dabbled in some lemmy instances before all this but never stuck around being there just wasn't much going on.
Lemmy appears to be financially stable due to user donations. Reddit relies on investors and monetizing users.
I bet, if we keep donating like we need, and the code iterates and works... this place can be hopping. I'd like quality to not suffer, but there will be more options as population increases.
Technology is just going to keep getting better, too. Running servers and storing lots of media will get cheaper and cheaper in the long run, even if there are ups and downs short-term. That means that more hobbyists will be able to run these types of services on a lower budget and less donations.
Nobody cares though. The reddit administration has dethroned their own site, it will never gain that back. They're done, even if the site hangs around like a bad smell for a few more years.
The incredible thing about these articles is that they don't make the slight mention of lemmy.
That one linked is a well written summary of what happened, but it's partial if they don't include the migration that happened, even if it wasn't that big.
Honestly I feel that this protest just showed me how uninteresting Reddit has become. Outside from small niche communities it's basically equivalent to any other news feed out there be it google news, Twitter or whatever.
Me too! I thought it’s be hard to be without reddit, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. And I’ve noticed that lemmy is growing faster than I expected.
I’m here and I have an ad-free, troll-free, wholesome community to engage with on mostly the same topics I followed on Reddit. I declare myself the winner
Reddit won against its own users, the very people it relies on to stay relevant. In doing so, it showed a large number of users they don’t need reddit.
As the Lemmy apps get better, more and more people will check out the ad-free reddit. We can get their content without needing their platform, which is huge.
Reddit won at building its own viable competitors like Kbin, Lemmy, and Squabbles and all the users of those platforms also won big from Reddit's hubris. The one thing I know for sure is that they have grown Lemmy by 7000%, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
Really‽ I just checked and many of the small subreddits I used to follow became much less interesting/active if not dead.
Meanwhile, some of the bigger subs became a repost dumping ground of years old posts/images/videos/memes by fairly new accounts (i'm guessing those are bots karma farming).
The fediverse is the much better way IMHO.
In any case, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit have become too toxic to use I will keep away (though, I never had a Facebook nor a Twitter account)
First I want to say hurray at the interrobang I love seeing them in the wild!
Secondly, I recently started doing research about Electric Vehicles and made another account for reddit to ask questions. I...forgot how much of a difference it was between Reddit and Lemmy when it came to discussion. There's so much aggression on Reddit it's crazy.
I joined a few EV groups on Facebook for the first time in years and it was nasty there too, not to mention my feed was full of shit I didn't even ask for.
I am not really shocked because the only way to really beat Reddit is by leaving the platform completely as in what many did when Melon Husk took over Twitter. Mass exodus. Express displeasure by voting with your feet and GTFO.
it feels like a biased, paid and made up news for spez's money to try and revive this hole of a website. most of r/all posts are repost bots, as well as comments in them.
Sadly, for some they will believe it and feel defeated and return to reddit thinking it's true, and watch as reddit becomes the Facebook/Myspace of this era.
How nice it will be if the IPO is an absolute disaster!
I can't use a mobile browser to view most content on Reddit anymore due to one of the changes to the site. I get a bunch of prompts to log in or verify my age or something that can only be removed by switching my browser to desktop mode.
This basically ensures that I won't ever use Reddit because I do most of my doom scrolling on mobile when I'm bored.
I think today I'll investigate one of the means of automatically changing all of my comments to fuck spez and then delete my account.
Real or faked? Because they have tons of bots and paid traffic to make the site look busier than it actually is. Steve figured that out years ago because he's a sociopathic liar with access to venture capital and an IPO to defraud.
Steve looks forward to the hell of interfacing with shareholders, which makes me giddy. Reddit is now a money machine and no longer a community. The enshitification is well underway.
Reddit lost the trust of many users, a non insignificant part of contributors and moderators left, the enshittification of the platform is not going to stop but they lost a big part of what made Reddit great.
They damaged their image and popularity.
It's like saying Elon won by trashing Twitter. Sure he does what he wants with it but making your platform less desirable sure isn't a win for the platform.
That's not true. It may be true in r/technology, but reddit hasn't won. It's just that those still on Reddit didn't make it.
We showed that we care, and we showed that we can dump them. Reddit is currently dying. It may be a slow process, but I don't think the enshittification of reddit will stop.
Yep, and while Lemmy was rough around the edges when people started looking for alternatives, now there's a glut of great clients and active communities. Reddit only needs one more screw up before the remaining users find a compelling alternative.
Looking at the site recently it feels like half the content is gone. A lot of old stuff hanging around /hot on subs that I frequented doesnt seem like anyone "won" here. Reddit lost content creators, the users lost site functionality and content and half the mods got kicked to the curb for nothing.
They might have won but now that Rif doesn't work anymore I'm testing Lemmy.
I've noticed that reddit content is less updated throughough the day so I suppose that some active posters have left.
I bet the "Reddit won" statement is a bit premature.
Yes in a sense it pushed forward what they wanted to do kicking out third-party apps and moderators who didn't toe the line. In the end, they kept the traffic but it must be mostly the silent majority of lurkers. I bet a significant chunk of the minority providing content and discussion went away or at least is trying out alternatives and finding a new home in the likes of Lemmy.
Time will tell if Reddit stagnates/declines content-wise.
I dont know what you say, I transitioned to Lemmy 100% and deleted my acc at reddit.
The only super annoying thing is that they get to keep the cake whole and the dog full (my comments by deleting my name and my acc deleted). Which I despite them for that even more now and just make me avoid the platform even more and dis-advertise it.
I would be fully happy if I had my account, changed my comments first to "fuck /u/spez" and then had deleted my account, but I only knew so much. I was naive enough to think they would delete my comments too, since they're My Intellectual Property. Right? They came from my own mind, I took the time to write them, and I deleted them! But no! We will keep them, just delete your name.
And when you google my reddit username, you still get from the google's cache directed to threads with my deleted comments. Fuck you spez. Fuck you.
Time will tell if reddit won. It's not a short-term fight. I deleted my discord a Chinese Tencent's vessel and a product that makes no money but burns money for the sake of gathering data. My Instagram, my Meta account thus my FB too, my WhatsApp, every app that was there just to gather my data or exploit me now or in the future.
I do everything to keep off being fingerprinted. I use platforms that use more and more end-to-end encryption like Matrix. Or at worst Telegram which is not end to end but the best of the worst since my relatives still use it.
Just because you don't see it yet, doesn't mean that a movement against anti-consumer platforms like reddit don't exist. I inform my mom about it, I inform my relatives and friends about it. I move friends and friends move me to safer for the future to use platforms and de-centralized.
If you still have access to your account there's a bot service that will edit all of your comments to whatever message you'd like (eg. "Fuck spez" or w.e) and then when you delete them that's what it'll display.
I don’t unfortunately, I would even have done it by hand despite that I’m a developer and could have made a bot myself. Point is, if I knew about it I would be so furious that I would have no problem doing it by hand. Fuck spez.
There is no easy to use singular Reddit replacement. (The fediverse is not easy to use to normal people.)
Reddit is such a large social media site now that all the nerds getting angry and leaving doesn't matter. 10 years ago this change would have killed Reddit, but now that normal people like my mom are on Reddit they don't give a shit about using the official Reddit app, in fact they were probably already using it.
But your mom was probably not part of the 1% of Reddit posting things people cared about. A lot of those people left and, I'm told (I haven't been back to look), the change is noticeable.
Politics - I'm banned because of my username, but plenty of subscribers. Interestingly I can't figure out how to contact a moderator to get unbanned. The information page doesn't list who the moderators are. I had a similarly "offensive" name on Reddit for a decade and never got banned from r/politics
askreddit - plenty of subscribers on Lemmy
Android - plenty of subscribers on Lemmy
Linux - plenty of subscribers on Lemmy
Economics - maybe a post or two a day
When I go back to Reddit, on desktop, all of those are operating as they normally do, with no perceptible change on the amount of posts.
"I'm bleeding, making me the victor!" - Reddit after losing half their valuation, alienating their user base, removing veteran mods, and revealing how shit of a company they actually are
Partly because the majority of the people didn't even know there were 3rd party apps lol. Many people don't even care about the protests. Reddit is too big for it to go down overnight.
The only thing we could do now is build better communities here.
I was one of those people, didn;t even know about the 3rd party stuff until they were nearly gone. The site took a noticeable decline in quality and that's why I'm here.
I thought Mastodon, Lemmy, and Kbin were all the same thing until about a week before I lost access to RIF. I'm glad I looked into all the Reddit alternatives and found Lemmy. Reddit has been shitty for years anyway.
Reddit didn't win over me. I edited all my comments to "fuck u/spez", got suspended from a couple subreddits, and then never logged back in to my account. Been using Lemmy ever since.
Nobody is surprised. They strong armed all the mods with integrity off the platform and replaced them with the spineless willing to play the game. Somehow they’ve become even more of a vacuumed echo chamber than they already were, which I’m sure they’re pleased with anyway. But they lost even more legitimate users. I do have a “troll” account that I use to express my true opinions before I’m eventually banned for saying something that goes against the status quo. But it is nice to not have to worry about every comment I ever make getting me downvoted to shit and banned because I said something the hive mind didn’t agree to. Lemmy is my main now, but I also check out Tildes and Hacker News. Glad I found these places instead.
Assuming that this is not just Reddit paying Gizmodo for an article to discourage people from using Lemmy by shaping the narrative that everyone is back on Reddit, then I would say it's just way too early for Gizmodo to make this call.
Enough people have come over to make a push/pull environment happen between the two sites. Time will tell which one pulls the most over to their side.
I don't think the war has been won. This might have been the biggest battle, but it's going to be the years that tell the story, not the months or the days.
I was thinking it was like chat groups in IM apps the owner/creator of the group can delete the group, so only Reddit can delete the subreddit that I create!
No surprise here, just like Bernie Sanders, Mueller, and everything else, le reddit blindly overestimated what was going to happen. I'm willing to bet less than 10% of reddit even knows there were other apps, they just want cat pics and reposted tiktoks.
I agree that reddit won but it was a, pyrrhic victory the content quality has massively gone down. I still have a secondary account there but I only use it to spread the word about lemmy. Haven't used it in weeks because I don't want to attract too much attention and get suspended.
No they did not win. People just expect people to move out from an historic platform overnight. This just doesn't happen like that. Like Twitter, they'll be small events that will make users want to find alternatives and migrate here.
That crisis made Lemmy way more populated, just for that we won in a way
Sadly, Reddit has won.
Their traffic is higher now than before the API protests. It seems like the saying "All publicity is good publicity was true in this case.
While one can appreciate a minimal downtrend in Twitter interest (as expected), Reddit interest is growing and even more after the protests.
Google trends:
That is search terms not traffic. If I Google "Reddit controversy" it will add to the Reddit stat. Your literally just asking Google to tell you how many people included the word "Reddit" in their search query.