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Reddit mods are organizing blackouts to protest against API changes (www.reddit.com)
submitted 1 year ago by anji@lemmy.anji.nl to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Some of the planned blackouts will be temporary, others plan to shut their subreddits down indefinitely in protest.

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[-] CaptainCarrot@beehaw.org 22 points 1 year ago

I don’t think it’s been clearly voiced enough, but there are thousands of sub moderation bots that do things like automatically flag hate speech for mod review that will all just stop working. Some of the larger, older subs have entire ecosystems of content tagging and linking that will break. An example is putting the name of a tv show in braces [TNGS01E13] and getting a link to that episode’s wiki as a comment reply. It dramatically improves the Reddit experience, but isn’t worth the outrageous cost to keep going.

Overnight, Reddit would turn into a (more) poorly moderated nightmare.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

Sounds like this move will make Reddit worse in every way possible, which is a pretty impressive feat IMO.

  1. Most (or all?) 3rd party apps will disappear. You’ll miss out on all the cool features that actually made Reddit useable.
  2. You’ll have to see the ads again if you use the default app.
  3. Accessing your curated multireddits will be harder. Just try the default app and you’ll see what I mean.
  4. The UI will be full of trash such as “news” and “discover new subs”.
  5. Lots of users will be gone. There will be less quality conversation and quality posts. This means that you will find fewer things worth reading.
  6. Regulating bot spam and other sorts of trash might (or will?) be harder and less efficient. You’ll be seeing more stuff you don’t want to see.

If all of this comes true, Reddit would earn the ”most hostile move towards your users in hopes of an easy cash grab” -award of the year.

[-] Valon_Blue@fosstodon.org 6 points 1 year ago

@Hamartiogonic @CaptainCarrot I've got my fingers crossed that Lemmy will take off, assuming Reddit doesn't change their stance.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

Why would they. Wasn’t this supposed to be the greatest business move in the history of big business.

BTW did the previous protests make a difference?

this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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