It has been more than an year since the Reddit protests. Things only got worse since then. Most activity in popular mods seem to be from bots or corporate shills who are trying to push their product or service. For all intents and purposes, Reddit has ultimately won the war against the community.

Yet, it seems that there is no more talk about effective actions. The whole thing with Blackouts was nothing more than "a warning strike". Very few people that "left" showed enough fortitude to stick to their guns and develop the alternatives.

We now have a set of tools that can help people:

• migrate from Reddit to a diverse set of Lemmy servers with a single click (using Reddit OAuth to automatically get their list of subreddits and find the best suitable server)

• Solve the content discovery problem (users get automatically subscribed to the communities that are replacing their subreddits)

• coordinate their migration efforts, by keeping track of "who is moving where".

Would that be enough to get some renewed effort to ditch Reddit?

If not, what is missing?

After the blackouts, I started muting the annoying "front page" subs, since they were just full of spam bots reposting old memes and shit for karma. And noticed something interesting after that.

Gradually over the last 6-8 months or so, it's been wild watching the commercialization of Reddit. Most everything that swims to the top is some variant of marketing or a product fan base.

Every TV series, video game, streaming service, sports team, anime, celebrity, "streamer content creator influencer," or even movie that isn't in theaters yet gets a dozen subs, from serious to memes/circle jerks. I've muted 7x subs about Fallout alone (loved the classic 90s ones, not bothering with the TV series) and I keep seeing new ones every few weeks. Often I'll see posts with 2-3x as many upvotes on them than subscribers of the entire community end up on the front page, not so stealthily promoting something specific.

There aren't many generic communities which have broad discussion topics making it to the front page anymore, even if they have way more active members. Sure the plural of anecdotes are not data, but I think we've shifted from the "front page of the internet" to the "ad page of the internet" quietly since the IPO. That in addition to fucking annoying ads being stuffed in between every 5-6x posts on top of all that.

But to wit, the TL;DR - Reddit has Balkanized in that it's no longer of collection of forums and content sharing, it's turning into little niche product / media focused commercial YT comments sections. I've managed to keep my communities I help mod open and active discussions, but the platform as a whole doesn't seem to embody that anymore sadly.

Recently to the surprise of many users when they went to download videos from RedGIFs they were met with this. Save video greyed out.

As it turns out RedGIFs moved to obfuscated m3u streams in the form of blobs to prevent downloading.

And from RedGIFs themselves:

Hi there! Thanks for reaching out. Per our copyright policy and to ensure the protection of our content creators and their content, we do not support nor implement any downloading feature with RedGIFs. Any downloading function is not any function we support on the site, and therefore, we cannot further advise. Thank you!

And so, it is confirmed.

There's a lot of convoluted ways users can still download them, though none of which are convenient. VLC, third party sites, extensions...

Ultimately their move is anti-user and has become out of touch and disconnected from their purpose as it's been since they were sold from gfycat (then sold again to these bozos). Its purpose has always been for sharing gifs (videos tbh), and a key part of that is for the end user being able to save it. Many artists have also used them for years for sharing videos for download. Well, that's no longer an option.

It seems to me the only way they'll get the hint that it's not okay is if subs start blacklisting them en masse. And if they don't get the idea maybe a strong replacement will emerge and see popular use.

It's a huge problem in many subreddits, especially pet, fandom, and sports subs. A post shows a picture of an art print, mug, or t-shirt. An account comments that it's the best thing ever and asks where to buy it. Another account or OP replies with a shop link. The asker account leaves a message of gratitude. All the accounts involved are used by the same person. The site in question is unaffiliated with the actual artist who made the art. The shop site always has a "Powered by Gearlaunch" logo.

Usually, the accounts doing it are either very new (less than a day old) or very old (over 6 years, probably bought or hacked). The same applies to some accounts praising the art or asking for a shop link.

That many non-spambot users still comment on these posts that they love the art and want to buy the item shown proves that this is a huge issue that still needs to be solved. How do I spread awareness about this problem? My idea would be to contact many large subreddits' mod teams (plus those I managed to worm my way onto, mostly by warning them about these scam posts), but I'm worried about being annoying, spammy, and getting banned/muted. And what would I do after contacting them?

Genuine question for all the veteran mods as I'm quite new to actively managing subreddits; Are there some sort of rules or limitations in place for making money through the community you moderate? Like, I understand Reddit is a community-focused platform and push selling would come as offputting, but what's stopping mods from promoting a few niche affiliates or products, even donation via pin posts as a way to support the time the mods dedicate to manage everything? I can't wrap my head around why all these mods keep on saying 'free labor' when in fact (according to me) they could be making banks just by following a few simple sales tactics.

Am I missing something here?

I can't fucking believe I spent so much time making post collections just to have all of that work just wiped out. Reddit didn't even have the decency to notify mods beforehand, I could've moved the collections into lists before they were deleted. Now I'm really convinced they don't give a fuck about mods, I've never seen them go this far, straight up reversing work mods did.

I also recently spent a bunch of time make rules with the new Post Guidance feature, if that wasn't released before or around the same time collections got deleted I wouldn't have worked on it all. Is Reddit the new Google in this sense?! Are they gonna release new features just to kill them like Google does?!

Just curious what folks thoughts are, since a lot of power users / mods were run off beginning of last summer. I checked Reddit stats on subs, and most lost like 90% of their user engagement, even if their "members" hit record highs from subscribing bots.

Anecdotally, we lost a lot of quality of the platform. I've muted the majority of the annoying "front page" subs because they're full of zero effort karma whoring reposts, or reprocessed shit ingested from other social media apps.

There were a few "mod tool" improvements rolled out, but they're mostly good at identifying obviously harassing behavior or ban evasion alt accounts...not so much for straight up bot spam. So guess that's a mixed bag and not really a win or loss.

I'd struggle to claim Reddit is the "front page of the internet" anymore, since it's becoming a repost dumping ground for shit people found on Instagram or TikTok, which itself wasn't even new or original content.

What're you all's thoughts? Reddit is dead, long live Reddit? We're just hear in lieu of any better alternative taking off? Or things are pretty good and the concern was overblown?

I've been the main moderator of the same community since 2016. This evening, i approved my last comment.

I'm leaving for two reasons:

1. Reddit went public a week ago. I didn’t volunteer to work for a publicly traded company, i volunteered to work for a community. As long as i live under capitalism i accept that my labor will generate value for shareholders, but damned if i ever do it for free. (this is not a Faulkner quote)

2. April 1st is coming and i'm scared they might do another r/place. Doing in r/place 2022 and 2023 has left me dejected and bitter and i don't want to feel obligated to participate again.

Leaving felt like ripping myself off of something warm i've been comfortably glued to for a long time. Still recommend it for anyone still giving Reddit shareholders free labor

These mandatory emails about the upcoming IPO are a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act because there is no unsubscribe option. The FTC enforces this law, and violations can be reported via a form at https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

Here's the message I'm sending along to the FTC with an example IPO promotional email. Feel free to copy it and make your own report, but writing your own complaint is even more effective.

Subject: Report of Unwanted & Deceptive Email Practices -- Reddit IPO Spam

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to report a series of unwanted promotional emails I have been receiving from Reddit concerning their upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO). Despite my attempts to find a way to opt-out, these emails do not include an unsubscribe link and originate from a no-reply address, making it impossible for me to stop receiving them.

The content of these emails frames Reddit's IPO as a significant opportunity for me, which I find misleading and deceptive. It appears to be an abuse of user contact information for the purpose of promoting their financial interests. This practice not only disrupts my personal and professional life by cluttering my inbox with unsolicited emails but also raises serious concerns about the ethical standards of Reddit's marketing strategies.

In light of the Federal Trade Commission's role in protecting consumers and enforcing laws against deceptive email practices, I believe this issue falls squarely within your regulatory purview. The lack of an unsubscribe option contravenes the CAN-SPAM Act's requirement for a clear and conspicuous way to opt out of future emails. This situation highlights a broader issue of companies exploiting user data for financial gain without providing an easy mechanism to opt out of such communications.

I urge the FTC to investigate this matter and take appropriate action to ensure that Reddit, and companies engaging in similar practices, comply with established laws and regulations governing email communications and consumer rights. I am willing to provide further details or copies of the emails in question if required.

Thank you for your attention to this matter and for your ongoing efforts to protect consumers from deceptive and unwanted email practices.

Sincerely,

A Reddit User

​

Disclaimer: Sorry if the write-up is a bit too long.

I am pretty shocked by how we handled the blackout and the whole Reddit API mess months ago but even more so now with everyone pretty much back to just using this platform.

I admit the blackout was pretty powerful while it happened but we did it for the wrong reason - The blackout hoped Reddit would notice our message and turn over it, but we all know that this was never going to happen.

It is STILL not too late, we can still organize and make a different mass migration, but a more effective and long-term migration happen, we as mods should do more and take that final dip and leave this platform for good, if the majority of mods leave, who would be here left to moderate all the communities? I doubt the admins would be FORM, and a set of admins CAN and DID control all the users and have complete control over this website, all the power we as users had was just shouting and complaining at them, which never had much effect especially if they really wanted to make something happen.

Isn't ALL THAT enough for us to consider Lemmy? What happened has never shown us the importance of decentralization and open source code better than ever, do you think any of this could have happened if the platform was, at the least open source? And the API was free? Do you think admins would have censored a lot of things they did in Reddit's history would have happened if this platform was decentralized or federated?

The blackout lead to several closures of communities for a few days just to be back, but I believe the whole blackout concept was the wrong way.

proposal strategy idea: What we should have done, was keep the communities open, but put it in restrict a few days weeklyand open it back up (back and forth) and have our alternative Lemmy communities PINNED, this way the Reddit communities would still be open the few other days in the week while not giving Reddit admins a reason to force us to reopen it or risk losing our mod positions in our communities due to being inactive.

It is STILL not too late, we can still organize and make a different mass migration, but a more effective and long-term migration happen, we as mods should do more and take that final dip and leave this platform for good, if the majority of mods leave, who would be here left to moderate all the communities? I doubt the admins would be able to do all that, we should follow a strategy like mentioned above and implement that.

Lemmy.world is now the biggest Reddit alternative and even has alternative UIs such as the old reddit and Lemmy as a platform now has over 14 third party apps, 14! Ex-developers from Sync and Boost have moved to Lemmy too, Lemmy has offered these ex-reddit third-party app ecosystem, what we majorly fought for, a permanent free home. I am not saying Lemmy is flawless (in-fact it's far from it), but staying here doesn't help either.

All moderators, it's time we do something, please.

EDIT: The comment section shows why Reddit won, I have nothing else to say.

Say I mod a sub with 5 other mods, and I am # 3 on the mod list. The top two mods are inactive, and under the new guidelines I can re-order the inactive mods to make myself the top mod.

Once I am top mod, I can in theory "go rogue" and remove all the other mods, effectively staging a takeover of the sub.

Are there any tools in place to keep this from happening?

I wanted to ask here before I did a Google search deep dive and I wonder if there's a sub on reddit where I can ask this question to those who ACTUALLY have more needs accessibility-wise and could give a better answer on what it's actually like using reddit these days. TIA

I was doing some updating today and noticed that there were no related subreddits on my sidebar. Not a big deal. I went through and updated them. However, I would swear that there used to be a dedicated section for related subreddits. Maybe an update removed this section?

Am I nuts? Is this like the Mandela Effect™?

https://hopin.com/events/reddit-mod-world/registration

They have events with Spez and some others.