• f_lambda@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Reddit’s CEO said he expects this blowup will pass eventually.

    This was precisely the wrong thing for him to say if he wanted that to happen

    • Gravelsack@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Seriously. Talk about poking the bear, he got me pissed all over again. Never going back to reddit now.

      • EvilColeslaw@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Nah I think it’s clear he wanted it to leak. He’s just an egomaniac who thinks he’s actually a good leader. That section of the memo was for investor confidence. (It’ll pass, no revenue effect so far, etc.) The other part about warning employees not to wear Reddit gear in public for fear of violence was meant for the press and for the uninformed, to try to garner sympathy and paint the protestors as bad actors.

        • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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          1 year ago

          Obvious tactic, paint the other side as violent and you’ll get sympathy. Won’t someone please think of the corporation.

          Make no mistake, spez would love to see someone in a reddit tshirt beat up on the street. He’d be able to plaster that everywhere he could showing how sad his side is

          • j4k3@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            A false flag is a typical right wing move. I can picture spez doing it. He should pick some kid name Aaron just to make it that much more spiteful.

          • HQC@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            It’s working, too. The Forbes article which I saw posted either here or on Kbin didn’t even push back on Huffman’s claim that traffic from LLMs was the reason for the price hike, and I haven’t seen any big publication use the audio or transcripts showing a slam-dunk case of slander (or libel, whichever one applies to text) against the Apollo developer.

            • EvilColeslaw@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              The problem with the libel/slander is unless it falls into a few categories of what’s called per se defamation, you’re required to prove damages. (From the libel’s/slander’s damage to your reputation, not from something like Reddit’s API change destroying his business.)

            • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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              1 year ago

              LLMs were just the catalyst for sure. They saw that as the opportunity to start milking all API users. They could have classified the users into groups and charged those groups differently, but they didn’t, and here we are

        • GraceGH@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          The other part about warning employees not to wear Reddit gear in public for fear of violence was meant for the press and for the uninformed, to try to garner sympathy and paint the protestors as bad actors.

          Glad people aren’t blind to this obvious ploy. When LGBT violence is at an all time high I don’t think you need to be worried about wearing a reddit shirt.

    • Uniquitous@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      He expects so because he’s going to have his admin staff de-mod all the rebels, open the subs back up, and ruthlessly ban anyone who says a word about the controversy. The user population that remains will eventually go back to sleep, and all will be well in Reddit-land.

      • Blissingg@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Lol good luck finding new mods that will be any good after pulling a stunt like that. They certainly aren’t going to pay for any either.

        • Clbull@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          The News and Worldnews subreddits prove there are people still willing to lick Spez’s boots.

          • Uniquitous@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            This. There will always be people attracted to power, even power as ultimately meaningless as being a reddit mod. Spez will enlist a new squad of wanna-be petty tyrants.

            • Clbull@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              They could easily do that by:

              1. Threatening to site-wide ban moderators who keep their subreddits dark (on the basis that they’re disrupting the regular function of the website.)
              2. Actually banning them if they follow through on another blackout.
              3. Doing a bit of overtime to moderate /r/redditrequest, on the condition that people don’t request subs that already have more than two million subscribers.
    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      That’s why I’m not sure that letter was intentionally leaked. He said all the wrong things for de-escalating this situation, he just added more fuel to the fire.

    • Ethereal87@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I mean, the charitable read is the CEO of the company reassuring the entire company that they’ll be OK. That’s his entire job. Yes, it’s a pretty crappy thing to say but we all weren’t the intended audience. He’s there to rally the troops and keep morale up.

      That said, fuck u/spez and I’m way happier over here than there.

    • Daniele@feddit.it
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      1 year ago

      After reading his message I blocked Reddit at DNS level. I wasn’t planning to leave it completely before, but now I’m not planning to unblock it till when u/spez will be there.

    • Lockely@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      The major Star Trek subs all have. Started their own Lemmy instance (startrek.website) and have their private message directing folks over.

        • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          You know, I wonder if that was in all seriousness actually part of it, because they do have positive associations with the word federation, and that’s the same effect marketing mainly tries to achieve. Might make people just that little bit more interested in it and more willing to work through any troubles getting used to a new system.

          • Damage@feddit.it
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            1 year ago

            I’m sure that subconsciously influenced the decision at least a bit. Plus the whole socialist and “fuck money” attitude in Trek.

        • Einar@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I see what you did there. Keep doing this here an you will prosper. 🖖

      • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        that would explain why Im suddenly seeing a ton of star trek posts on my federated feed, I mean Id expect some but Ive seen a lot more all of a sudden

          • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            More star trek fans in the fediverse = awesome, imo. Welcome aboard, and thanks.

            • Clbull@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              As somebody who isn’t even a Star Trek fan, I still think a flood of trekkies is infinitely cooler than a flood of white supremacists which have killed similar platforms.

        • Damage@feddit.it
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          1 year ago

          Hey Trekkies are top nerd, would you expect any less? Godspeed brothers.

          I grew up with TNG and it warms my heart that it’s still going strong, we definitely need some of that optimism for the future.

      • EvilColeslaw@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Oh nice I was looking for a good Trek community. Did /r/tuvixinstitute /r/daystrominstitute move over?

      • Wintermute@lemmy.villa-straylight.social
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        1 year ago

        This only proves that you can’t unilaterally migrate a subreddit. That instance currently has ~250 users. I don’t know how active the subs it represents were, but surely they had at least an order of magnitude more active users than that?

        • Lockely@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          Since it’s based around a show, Trek as a whole is in a show lull until Thursday. The folks who normally run the weekly content posts have already migrated over. There has been half a dozen attempts at replacing r/startrek with versions of it not run by that mod team and all have failed to gain traction, so good luck to anyone trying to do that. They run a tight ship and make it one of the more enjoyable subs on the site.

          Trekkies have existed in groups in one form or another since Usenet and BBS. Moving to a new technology is nothing new to us.

          That being said, 250 users in 1 day (they didnt get it set up and actually open until last night) is nothing to scoff at.

          Edit: As of now (2am ET on Wednesday) they’re at 800+ subscribers to the mainsub. That’s-- not bad at all.

      • HectorBarbossa99@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Oh nice! I’m gonna have to follow them on here too- now I just need other subs for my interests (cars, aquariums, etc) and shitposting sites (dccirclejerk, batman arkham) to make their way here

      • gingerrich@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        That has made me very happy. The Star Trek sub was the only one I was using over the last few months.

        Now to see if I can get it set up on this Jerboa app thing.

      • SickIcarus@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Does anybody know yet if you are allowed to criticize startrek on those communities? I had a major problem with /r/startrek in that you couldn’t say anything less than glowingly positive or you were banned. Like, not even about the whole woke bullshit, you couldn’t even say the writing was below par - banned.

        I just wanna talk about startrek, both the good and the glaringly bad lol.

        • Lockely@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          You could always criticize them, you just couldn’t be lazy about your criticism.

          I’ve many times talked about the inconsistency in character development, the trend to “give backstory and then kill a character,” and the absolutely nauseating camera movement (especially in the early seasons) of Discovery, for example. Never even got a warning, nor my posts removed.

          There was a major thread like a year back talking about how in Disco, the actors don’t actually move about a scene when they do things. The movement is from room to room, and then they are stuck in place as they talk and it really throws you out of it.

          Edit: In fact, there’s literally a post critiquing season 4 of Discovery right now on their front page with healthy discussion in the comments.

          All of these were allowed before and still.

          • SickIcarus@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Disagree. I was banned from there when they signed on with the brigade to get /r/nonewnormal banned. My offending post? “Et tu, /r/startrek?” (Off topic - so much for Reddits rules against “brigading.”)

            That was it. And it was in that thread (so it was on topic.) And I watched others get banned in the same thread for literally quoting from the TNG episode “The Drumhead.” So I found alternate startrek subs and saw the influx of other users who were banned from the main sub for mild criticism (with receipts). Then watched those subs get banned as well for not towing the Paramount line.

            I firmly believe that the main ST sub was monitored, if not infiltrated by, Paramount (or a PR/marketing firm hired by them) to halt any negative discussion of the new shows. I watched similar things happen all across Reddit, especially in the larger subs. After being on Reddit for nearly 15 years (since just prior to the Digg migration), that place has changed.

            • Lockely@pawb.social
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              1 year ago

              That couldn’t be further from the truth.

              Considering you used “woke” as a pejorative earlier and now you’re ranting about conspiracies involving Paramount (why would Paramount sanction a move to the fediverse where they can’t show ads?) and supporting a sub that was about supporting anti-mask/anti-vaxx nonsense during the beginning of a global pandemic that’s killed ~7 million people since 2020, I really am not even interested in furthering this discussion with you. LLAP 🖖

              • SickIcarus@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                I really am not even interested in furthering this discussion with you.

                Aww, and we were having such a pleasant conversation. That’s ok, I’m going to respond to you anyways, for the benefit of anybody else who comes across this.

                Ahem.

                Considering you used “woke” as a pejorative

                I believe what I said was “woke bullshit.” And I used it as an adjective to describe, specifically, one aspect of a show that you were not allowed to criticize on /r/startrek. Like it or not, you cannot deny that Disco is woke AF. I would personally argue that ST has always been progressive, and in the modern era going woke was the obvious and logical next step for the franchise. Furthermore, it has been criticized for this, rightly or wrongly. But that’s the literal point of a discussion board, to have a discussion. And people are allowed to like different things - that’s ok. They’re even allowed to * gasp * like things that are different than you like, or like things that you don’t like - that’s also ok. What is not ok, IMO, is censoring the conversation because you don’t like it (to a point, please don’t use this as a straw man or slippery slope, let’s keep this on topic). And that’s what was happening on /r/startrek with all the bans.

                ranting about conspiracies involving Paramount

                “Oh no, he’s ranting! Watch out, he’ll start raving next!” 🙄 Because it makes zero sense that Paramount would keep an eye on the largest message board on the internet dedicated to discussing their flagship product. No sense whatsoever. Crazy talk. And it further makes even less sense that they would want to advertise on the platform hosting that message board, to try and drive traffic towards their subscription service, being buoyed by their flagship product. Complete lunacy. And then to even suggest (gasp!) that they would use those advertising dollars to apply pressure to the platform to quell any sort of negative discussion about their flagship product, well that just crosses a line. I mean, that would never happen, and to suggest otherwise is clearly insane.

                why would Paramount sanction a move to the fediverse where they can’t show ads?

                Never said they did. I said that my belief is that they were involved to an extent over on /r/startrek. I don’t think they would follow over here, for the reasons you’ve stated. But knowing that the same mods that ran /r/startrek are also running startrek.website is enough to give me pause about what sort of criticism of the brand will be allowed.

                Edit: If Reddit dies a miserable death, and startrek.website becomes the de facto startrek message board on the internet, it would be extremely naive to think that Paramount (or their PR/marketing firm) wouldn’t follow the Fediverse. They wouldn’t be able to apply pressure directly like they can/could on Reddit with their advertising dollars, but if I worked for that department I’d get very creative to see how I could exercise control over the content of the community. Just off the top of my head, first thing I’d do is to offer a job to one of (if not all of) the moderators - “We’ll pay you $ to make your community look like this. Welcome aboard!”

                and supporting a sub that was about supporting anti-mask/anti-vaxx nonsense

                It was a sub dedicated to vaccine hesitancy, vaccine-induced injuries, and vaccine mania (“take the vax or lose your job!”). And Covid vaccine injuries are very fucking real. I’m old enough to remember the last time a vaccine was rushed to market, and allllll the problems that caused - there is very good reason to be hesitant this time around. Personally, I believe “you do you” - but the hive-mind hysteria would have none of that. (“Brought to you by Pfizer!” ?)

                So that’s ok. I think we’ve both gotten what we needed out of this conversation. You have yourself a wonderful day, I wish you nothing but health and happiness.

                Edit: almost forget this gem!

                That couldn’t be further from the truth.

                To quote Nero: “Don’t tell me that didn’t happen! I watched it happen! It did happen!” Lololol

                • rknuu@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  Whilst we’ve defederated with some of the parties in this chat thread and won’t see this comment, please remember our rule of “Be(e) kind to each other”. It’s okay to have differing opinions and to get heated, but don’t overdo it like what’s happened here.

            • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              “Et tu, /r/startrek?”

              I feel your pain. I "and my ax"ed a comment thread on /r/pics and got a ban.

              When I went back to it, the entire thread was just deleted comments. Shadow-banned?

              When someone finally responded to a plea for an explanation and we tried to discuss the error and a path toward a fix

              • no context was available
              • no one could explain the ban
              • no one could confirm the ban was justified
              • no one had an idea why “and my ax” was somehow bad in any context
              • no one could offer anything I could do - apologies, I was thinking - to reinstate access

              They just said “I don’t know why but you’re still banned” or so and that was it.

              Power-tripping mod shadow-banned everyone in a thread? Some mod whose spelling I corrected, somewhere, projected guilt as wrath? We’ll never know.

    • simple@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I would be cautious too if I were a sub owner and guiding people to an alternative honestly. Lemmy and Kbin both are relatively unstable right now, even if they are pretty good. Waiting a little to see which instances are more stable and likely to last is a good move before planting people somewhere and making an official replacement sub.

      • Lucas@lemmy.lucaslower.com
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        1 year ago

        This is the main issue I see right now as well. I created my own instance for my account to live on, just so I know it will be there as long as I want it to. But that doesn’t do anything for communities I’m subscribed to that could, potentially, be on an instance that later goes down.

        I think communities of similar topics are going to need to coordinate in the long run, and perhaps run their own instance to house their communities. This way the folks running the community and the folks hosting it are one in the same. You’d have instances that mainly house users, and perhaps a community or two. That’s where most folks would have their main account. Then you’d have instances that mainly house content, with few users besides the moderation/admin team(s).

        • BlackCoffee@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          I am gonna be honest but instances going down and losing communities could have the same probability as Reddit shutting down Subreddits just because they feel like it.

          I understand your concern, but I think it would first be wise to let some communities flourish and look how it holds up in the grand scheme of things.

        • GhostMagician@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          I think what would help is the introduction of multisubreddit equivalent for lemmy and then allowing similar duplicate communities to have the option of linking up with each other so people can subscribe to public multisubreddit.

          • SickIcarus@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            That is brilliant. A sort of sub-federation within the grander federated instances. Subfeds (you heard it here first!) could feed off of and into each other, so if one instance goes dark it’s community and content are not lost as they’ve been replicated across the Fediverse. Sort of a cross between multisubs and RAID.

        • megaman1970@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          How about extending the software so that communities replicate between sets of servers over time? That way, things are more robust even if one server goes down.

      • Ragoo@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        That and there is some rapid development for the apps going on right now. Lemmy definitely still needs some UI improvements and has a bunch of little problems which could turn away new users prematurely. So it would be good if there was some advertisement in July when the reddit apps shut down.

        Fittingly I had two rewrite this comment and another comment 10 minutes ago because I got errors when trying to send them…

      • Nyanix@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I mean…Reddit was taken offline by subs going private, and they had forewarning this was going to happen. Lemmy is handling a veritable monsoon of new users

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        1 year ago

        This will be like the YT changes in 2017 only much sharper. The utility of reddit is already dead. The whole point in all of this is to be another mindless zombie platform. The native app and nu(ked) reddit were already like this. Now you won’t be able to search and find anything anywhere on the internet unless you are escorted there by an algorithm.

        • simple@lemmy.world
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          Eh, this was already the case on Reddit to an extent, but the point is moderators really carried the platform on their backs and if many of them really do leave then Reddit will collapse as a useful platform with actual discussion.

          • GhostMagician@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Reddit without niche subs would probably become a aggregate for tiktok, Instagram, and Twitter videos. Which it has been trending towards when it comes to what reddit displays to users as default.

        • GraceGH@beehaw.org
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          Speaking of: Remember when YouTube was good? When your feed showed you your actual subscriptions, the earlier algorithm was showing you stuff you actually want to see and not 6 late night shows, an ad for YouTube TV, and maybe a decent video essay or two?

    • fiah@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      they are playing the long game so should we

      that’s why we should be spreading the word about the fediverse

      • j4k3@lemmy.world
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        There are enough people posting to see a fresh dozen or so posts an hour my Subscribed > New feed and I don’t have a ton of subs, mostly STEM. Honestly a few days ago that was a crazy pipe dream. With this kind of mass threshold passed, we only need is to expand the scope/quality of posts and this can be a permanent home that organically draws people to the platform. I think we need a page on the major instances that show the plans and limitations if those hosting the instance and where they need support. Like learning Ruud has a bunch of other federated .world servers and seeing his remarkable ability to handle scale makes me much more confident to be here.

        • fiah@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          people will have to stick around for this to work though, if the honeymoon period is over and perhaps spez stops being such a knob, people could disappear just as quickly as they appeared

          • j4k3@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            No doubt it will cool off some here, but I like this more and it seems like some others feel the same. I don’t think there will be any going back because it won’t be the same reddit ever again.

      • ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This may seem a tad ironic since I’m posting here in the fediverse, but I think we should also be encouraging a variety of alternative, self-hostable options, e.g. Postmill (similar to reddit but not federated), Discourse (more of a classic forum structure but with some modernizations), etc.

        Not everyone will want to try to figure out federation/ActivityPub, and that’s okay, because there are more options that folks can spin up. The fediverse, imo, benefits as much from other self-hosted sites as it does from those that connect with it.

      • KonQuesting@lemmy.sdf.org
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        I think the big Mastodon push last year has made things a little bit easier for Lemmy. Basic awareness of the fediverse has broken into the mainstream of social media, rather than being a niche interest of Free Software enthusiasts.

        Now that Lemmy’s gotten this initial nudge of mainstream support, I’ll be far more engaged here than I ever was on Reddit.

        • fiah@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          undefined> doing my best :) PS how did you quote me?

          well if you select text in a comment and then click reply, it comes out like that. I don’t know why it says “undefined” here, must be a javascript bug. Simply copy pasting and prefacing it with a > works fine

          > like this

          which looks

          like this

    • mobyduck648@beehaw.org
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      Can the various servers take it? The one I’m on (BeeHaw) has held up admirably but I’ve heard of others going down with an influx of users.

  • Clbull@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Apparently the head mod of /r/Tumblr has already been forcibly demodded. A bit weird that Tumblr of all places has been the starting point.

    • Emi@beehaw.org
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      The real question I think is will Reddit retaliate back and forcibly recover communities and install new mods?

        • wxboss@beehaw.org
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          And I’m sure the new mods being installed will have an even stronger alignment with Reddit’s philosophy and direction which will only make life in that place more hellish.

          I’m glad I jumped ship when I did.

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        If they tried to hire enough mods to do a quality job of it they’d be bankrupt by the end of the year. I don’t know if they’ll have enough capable volunteers for a significant fraction of the subreddits.

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      1 year ago

      I predicted this but kind of surprised that it happened so fast. I’m guessing this mod won’t allow anything critical of spez.

      • Mango@beehaw.org
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        I predicted forcible demods…

        But like, I feel like the one thing that would work is the one thing no one has been talking about.

        A mod strike!

        Maybe it has been suppressed because it would seem too radical but like, if the communities are going to die anyways might as well go out with a bang. Mods should all go on strike and spammers can run free and burn the site to the ground. That’s basically what happened with Twitter, right? Has Spez seen what has happened to the valuation of Twitter this past year or what?

        I went on Reddit during the blackout and on the front page there were shitty tattoos of bdsm furries with their dick and balls out… If the front page could all turn into that and the enforcement of NSFW tags was lost due to lack of mods, I can’t imagine that the shareholders would be happy about what the site has become.

        Mod + user direct action - everyone should post spacedicks/porn and mods should refuse to enforce the rules. Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO. Plus, the internet can get VERY active when it comes to participating in mischief instead of watching things slowly fall apart. I’d upvote spacedicks for the cause.

        I have no idea why no one is talking about this unless posts/comments like that are being suppressed. Since it seems like most 3rd party apps have the best mod tools and most mods won’t keep up their work if they don’t have the right tools, the end result will be the same anyways.

        Edit: they can’t afford to pay people to replace enough mods. Spez deserves a look at what reddit will become BEFORE the IPO in my opinion.

        • LastThreeOfItsKind@lemmy.world
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          Mods are basically the slave labour that make Reddit profitable and allows for its existence.

          The exploit is taking superuser’s hobby or specialty and getting them to work 24/7 in an permanent unpaid internship position that doesn’t run counter to labour laws.

          No one wants to upset that tenuous (and likely quasi-illegal) system of exploitation by empowering the mods to know that they can make changes by organising or going on strike.

          Neither Reddit executives nor the protesting app developers and other API data users have the actual interests of reddit superusers at heart.

        • ASCIIansi@infosec.pub
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          Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO

          To be fair… reddit was originally designed to be self-moderated by the users… and it use to work really well. It would be a miracle if they moved back to that model and I would no doubt switch back to them from lemmy if they did. Those were the hey days of reddit and the internet as a whole.

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    Imagine how differently this would have played out if Reddit CEO Steve Huffman had taken a collaborative approach with app developers and stake holders. A few months ago, he could have called them up and humbly asked them for ideas and assistance in making Reddit profitable. Reddit would be on path to financial success by now.

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      I don’t think it’s wrong for Spez to charge for API access, but the rates he’s vowing to charge are excessive and clearly designed to nuke third-party apps from their ecosystem.

      As for how I’d make money from Reddit in his shoes, I’d:

      1. Add more features for Reddit Premium, like being able to view more than 1,000 items on the front page, video uploads in comments, or enhanced search functionality.
      2. Add OnlyFans-style subscriptions or revenue sharing for partnered subreddits/users, with a 90% to 10% cut between content creators and Reddit.
      3. Bring back RPAN as a full time streaming platform to compete with the likes of Twitch/Kick.
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      It’s a corporate us vs them mentality. I don’t think Steve would even ask his own employees for help - the people who are on the ground running the company. The internal memo strongly indicates that Reddit doesn’t have a two-way communication channel with leadership.

      It’s a shame, because refusing to take feedback is what ends up sinking most companies.

    • Chup@feddit.de
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      Well now they have to take over the subs and get new moderators. They won’t just sit there and watch Reddit burn further.

      For the 2 days private protest, their comment that it will be over soon was appropriate. As giving an exact time frame allows to know the exact end of it. They could just sit there and wait it out.

      Now with the indefinite protest, they have to act. And to get to content onto Reddit again, they will probably be looking for new unpaid strike breakers mods for those subs, so they don’t have to actually hire and pay people to moderate content on their soon publicly traded company website.

    • BeardedSingleMalt@beehaw.org
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      No, it would’ve been something along the lines of “A: We are evaluating it at this time for the best approach moving forward”

  • Nix@lemmy.world
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    It was truly unexpected to see how large social networks find new and innovative ways to ride and accelerate their downfall.

    From my perspective:

    • Facebook --> Cambridge Analytica fiasco

    • Twitter --> Elon was bluffing but Twitters Legal team forced him to proceed otherwise the SEC was already looking for blood and an excuse to make his life very difficult for all his previous shenanigans

    • Reddit --> already downhill since just before Ellen Pao nonetheless may I speculate that perhaps one or more of the larger shareholders/investors forced the current situation but Huffman underestimated and did not realize that the power users and pro bono moderators were entirely dependent on third-party apps.

    Moreover, I exclusively used reddit through old.reddit.com I have no idea how current Reddit actually looks like nor do I care as it was unusable.

    Sad to see great things go but life continues onward.

      • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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        Be mildly competent at computers… or know someone who is and willing to help you.

        Either setup your own instance, or find an instance that’s already setup that you like and the owner will let you add stuff to the database…

        Start a community…

        Read here… https://github.com/rileynull/RedditLemmyImporter

        Success! now you’ve migrated your subreddit to lemmy!

        (This is a little sarcastic. I’m not good at legit guides. But it is possible!)

        Edit: tweaked phrasing… doing this to general public servers would be unlikely.

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          Just wanted to add that not all instances are allowing new community creation, including Beehaw.

        • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.org
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          Well, that is an interesting script. I wonder how many will come across? Maybe they will pull the top 20% or something.

      • jherazob@beehaw.org
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        Well, on Beehaw you cannot create new communities, but you certainly can be made a mod of one even from another instance. Find the ones you want and ask the current mods of it.

        • Dymonika@beehaw.org
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          Why can’t we create communities on here? Do the Beehaw admins specifically restrict this? Thanks, by the way.

          • rknuu@beehaw.org
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            We’ve outlined the rationale in this thread: https://beehaw.org/post/140733

            The tl;dr is that having many communities make it difficult to govern and ensure a safe space exists for the overall community and having too many can result in highly fragmented discussions that would be a challenge to grow and nurture organically like we do in the physical world.

            It’s not that we don’t permit new communities, but more towards we moderate their creation based off the communities interests.

    • Silviecat44@vlemmy.net
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      I haven’t found many moderator features on Lemmy so far. The community that I created does not seem to have any way of blocking posts.

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    Stuff’s already starting to go back to public, I expect nothing to change for the better.

    • Rick@lemmy.world
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      I mean it seems like only a couple thousand went public, the site is still very much noticeably short on content.

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    Cool, well the reason I’m here instead of on reddit is because of this. Last time I did this was when I found reddit after digg.

      • DarkGamer@beehaw.org
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        Digg was a site that was a lot like reddit, it was incredibly popular until they did a site redesign that many users hated and they were unable to roll back, engagement went way down, users looked for alternatives, and reddit got most of the refugees. I haven’t been back on digg for many years.

        I thought reddit learned its lesson from digg given they kept legacy old.reddit.com running even after their own redesign, but they failed to remember that 3rd party interfaces to their API is almost the same thing; users like interfacing with their social media using the UI/UX design they chose and grew accustomed to. If they take that away, it risks alienating users and driving them to alternatives.

        If reddit was smart they’d make it so that people with reddit gold can keep using API access instead of locking them out entirely.

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          But that would be contrary to Reddit’s actual goals, which is to monetize their user’s data as much as possible. They can’t do that if third party apps are providing a better experience, so they are trying to force everyone to use only the website and apps that are directly controlled by Reddit. So they can track our behavior and sell more ads.

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            I read somewhere that a lot of the API pricing has to do with people training LLM’s on reddit comments for free; reddit wants to get paid for it. I guess they’ll just have to scrape instead. /shrug

            There’s still a lot of tracking that can be done via api calls but you’re right that they lose ad revenue and UI/click info.

            • HQC@beehaw.org
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              That is the claim from Reddit, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because LLMs are not using the API to get content from sites like Reddit. They are scraping data from the entire Internet, much like Google does.

              Even if it was using the API, however, it’s still a bullshit excuse because Reddit would be fully within their rights to enforce existing rate limits or other TOS violations.

              Nobody would have been complaining if Reddit revealed that apps like Apollo or OpenAI were abusing the rules that were already in place and everyone agreed to. For that matter, nobody would even be complaining if the pricing and timeline for the changes was anything close to reasonable!

        • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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          What reddit doesn’t seem to get that for many people old.reddit (or a 3rd party app) is reddit for them. If they take that away they’re forcing them to learn a new UI or to get a new app. It’s naive to think that everyone is just going to switch to the official ones. Might aswell find an alternative to reddit and learn to use that.

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            It’s not just about learning the new interfaces…I’ve used the new site design and have heard the official app is just as bad about shoving ads down our throats. Baconreader made ads at least fairly unobtrusive, but with all the drama I’ve decided: fuck it. I appreciate Lemmy and other decentralized options for being user-funded rather than reliant on corporations

      • giloronfoo@beehaw.org
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        Same but different. The site sold out and made some changes that were good for investors, but bad for users. It also happened to slashdot. When that went bad, we all went to digg.

        Looking back, I’m surprised reddit lasted as long as it did. Digg and slashdot still exist, but aren’t what they were in their heyday. I’m sure reddit will continue in some form.

        • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
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          Tbf, reddit is infinitely more mainstream than digg and Slashdot ever were. Reddit has well over 500 million monthly active users. We are just reaching 100,000 here.

          I’m all in, I’m committed here and never going back to reddit. But I want to manage expectations about what we should expect in the coming months and years. People need to understand that this isn’t going to be a seamless transition like that one. Part of the reason that was even possible was because reddit got hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital funding as they rapidly grew. We don’t have that option here.

          It will take years for this platform to come anywhere near the current size of reddit, if ever. Now, many of us would argue that reddit was better back when it only had say 50 million MAUs (which was about 10 years ago). That still leaves us 49.9 million users short.

          If we want to build a truly free, independent, decentralized space, it’s going to take a lot more commitment and time than switching from digg to reddit did. And I think it will be a rewarding journey for those that stick around.

          But don’t count your chickens yet people, we are still in the first round and it’s going to take more than this to bring down the big bad reddit. I’m just glad I finally have some way to fight back.

          • pimeys@lemmy.nauk.io
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            Mastodon/Akkoma/Calckey/Misskey/Pleroma side of the fediverse is somewhere over 10 million users right now and it’s already starting to be quite active and having lots of quality content. It went from less than a million users to the current numbers in about six months. We’ll see where Lemmy is in December…

          • RomanRoy@lemmy.world
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            Yeah, I’m committed as well, and you’re right about your input.

            A few notes in my mind, tho:

            1 - Reddit became really mainstream, yeah, but I figure a huge part of the user base were tech people. Probably work in tech somehow.

            2 - those who came to Lemmy/kbin already are also tech people, I figure. Right now, I think it is just normal that the first to pull the trigger are in tech. It’s not too friendly to the average user (despite the forum format really not being what the average user goes after today)

            3 - these people will start to contribute to the development, even if not providing actual code and developing apps or creating their instances, most will post issues about their user experience and will have valuable input about the platform.

            4 - I think the true take off of the Fediverse will come once content creators start to post their content in here. And I expect the first of them, at least, to also be tech content creators.

            I’ll try to encourage some of the guys I follow, mainly course creators, to invest a bit in the Fediverse. Some of them already do. I know that Twitter puts food on their table, but it should be easy to automate and crosspost to Mastodon, for example.

            I hate social media overall. It’s not really hatred, I just don’t use most of them, don’t find the motivation and don’t really value what they have to offer me. I think Instagram sucks for searching anything (who would say searching pictures would be hard, huh?).

            I, for one, started lurking on Reddit because of fantasy football. Reddit was really good as a link and content aggregator, and I got most of my news from there. But it depends on Twitter as well, since the reports mainly come from there. And you see where the problem is at? Most of the people who advocate for the Fediverse don’t really use Twitter as well.

            So I can only dream of the day Ian Rapopport will post some breaking news to Mastodon and a bot will auto-crosspost it to /c/fantasyfootball.

            A man can hope about this ideal future.

    • Swuden@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I honestly don’t care whether or not reddit (the company) gives a shit. I just want users to realize that reddit deserves to be replaced by something more open and user focused.

    • UselesslyBrisk@infosec.pub
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      Im surprised they havent just performed takovers of the private subreddits and installed new mods.

      Maybe they have but are doing it at a slow pacing, either because its manual or because it may attract less attention.

        • Damage@feddit.it
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          I’m skeptical about these claims. If they wanted to do that, why start with AdviceAnimals? Why not funny or pics?

        • UselesslyBrisk@infosec.pub
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          I haven’t. But now I’ve seen a couple. I believe they did /r/tumbler or something dirty too.

          It’s a shame. Totally antithetical to their culture they (Reddit) started and grew with as a freedom of speech platform.

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            They’ve been running away from their culture of free speech since 2008. The only direction they have ever moved has been in the opposite direction.

        • ASCIIansi@infosec.pub
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          I expect most of the “popular” subs (like the one you mentioned) aren’t ones I have ever been aware of or cared to be aware of.

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    Good. I really hope this causes a snowball effect. I’d say there is enough momentum to get a good half of the participating subs on board with an indefinite blackout, if not way more. And with more moderators checking their inboxes and feeds tomorrow, “after the blackout,” I anticipate seeing a second wave starting tomorrow and throughout the next week, as these mods return to reddit temporarily to coordinate.

    KEEP IT GOING!!!

  • Ben@lemmy.world
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    Well, despite the difficulties translating to Federated platforms, I will certainly be working on alternative social platforms.

    I no longer use Quora or Facebook…

    I unsubscribed my ‘YouTube’ channels and added them as RSS feeds, so there’s no need for me to be signed in there to consume content from creators I follow.

    I hope that a month or two with the Fediverse will allow me to understand it better. I’m sure that many Fediverse users will also remain on Reddit and be able to advise folks on what to do.

    If anyone on, for example, r/firefox announced activity over here, I’d follow them here. So whatever the ‘bots’ say, I know what’s occurring in my corner.

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          Was that Quora as well? I thought that’s only StackOverflow :c

          But yes, I very much hope that the ethos of beehaw makes for “programming question” communities that are as useful as StackOverflow while not being so rude.

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      RSS is one thing I have yet to dive into. There are videos that I want to watch and channels that I want to be subscribed to but I’m disliking the constant monitoring if activity online.

      Cirfsnglh on travel with AirBNBs and the smart TVs with logins feels so weird knowing what others are up to, and I don’t feel comfortable adding my recents to their lists.

      • Ben@lemmy.world
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        Inoreader works very nicely for me. I have quite a few folders set up…

        • Digg Top Stories (43 unread) if I get bored - at least a dozen of those will keep me entertained.
        • Reddits (e.g. Dad Jokes)
        • Fediverse (https://lemmy.world/c/dadjokes)

        I added the Firefox extension, so if I visit Youtube - for example (open this in a PRIVATE window, not logged in) Insights from Ukraine and Russia then I can Easily add the RSS by searching in Inoreader.

        Here’s Daily Dose of Internet

        The beauty being that you can quickly go through all this stuff - great keyboard accessibility (90% covered with Shift J-K to go to the next/previous feed, Shift-X to toggle expansion of the folder, J - K to go (and mark read) the next/previous item (but you can ALWAYS view all articles in a thread)… all without visiting the sites.

        Feedly and Inoreader are both awesome - and you can (and should regularly) export a list of your feeds as a backup/migration strategy.

          • Ben@lemmy.world
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            RSS is one of the oldest protocols existing. Basically it’s like a feed with links to things posted…

            I’d suggest you start with Feedly or Inoreader, make an account and take a look.

            For me, it means that I can see notifications (Inoreader) telling me how many unread items have occurred across the 79 websites I added as feeds.

            • I have a folder for ‘Fediverse’ with feeds like Lemmy - ukraine (also Reddit’s r/ukraine).

            • I have a ‘Linux’ folder, containing a few interesting blogs - like Niccolo’s KDE developer blog, a few news sites, plus announcements from my OS forum.

            • I have a ‘News’ folder with various sources (one is a journalist I know with a Facebook page - as I don’t use Facebook).

            • I have a ‘Video’ folder

            • I have a ‘Time Waster’ folder which has things like Digg, WindowSwap, Drive & Listen

            Basically, any time you make an account and request updates from a website, the same can be done with NO account and simply copying the RSS link.

            It gives you updates on things you don’t need to bother bookmarking or opening to follow.

            • bruzie@lemmy.nz
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              I’m still bitter about bloglines shutting down. I tried thisoldreader and inoreader but it never felt the same. Then I found reddit.

          • norb@infosec.pub
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            RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

            Back when blogs were a bigger thing, they would be setup with RSS to “push out” notifications when new posts were published. (Technically your RSS client pulls the RSS feeds but the end result is the same - the feed is just a list of posts basically).

            You open up your RSS client or site and there will be a list of sites you’re “following” and any new posts they’ve made.

            Plenty of sites still support RSS. A lot of readers can pull the RSS feed automatically if you just give them the site URL/web address.

            My personal choice is NewsBlur which is at https://NewsBlur.com. You can get a free account there to try it out.

        • red@feddit.deOP
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          Feedly is great, use it for my private RSS stuff.

          At work, on macos, I use rssbot - which isn’t an RSS reader but just an … uhm … rss linker? It doesn’t feature the capability to read content but just gives you a list of links to anything new. If that’s enough for you, it’s a great app.

              • Osayidan@social.vmdk.ca
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                Depends on context. Yahoo Answers was so bad it was a form of entertainment (unintentionally), especially with people curating the funny stuff so you never had to even set foot there.

                Quora on the other hand just pays people to participate so you end up with people who don’t even have any questions they need to ask making up garbage, then people giving copy/pasted or even completely wrong answers to boost their reputation. The site also always pesters you to log in. It’s not even useful as a source of a good laugh.

          • Silviecat44@vlemmy.net
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            1 year ago

            Thanks for the A2A.

            No, miles morales from Spider man tm into the spiderverse tm is not related to dipper pines from gravity falls

            Stay curious Signing off Have a good one -username

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        Other than blocking you from browsing their site unless you join (or clear your cookies) you mean?

    • Silviecat44@vlemmy.net
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      I realised after a while that Quora is full of dumb question askers and question answerers wanting to sound smart. I earnt $5 from it though so can’t complain

    • Vroix89@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      Can you elaborate further on the YouTube - RSS feeds? Seems like something I’d like to use too

  • vriska1@lemm.ee
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    Also there alot of bots going around Reddit saying the protest is not working and all the subreddit mods are going to be easily replaced, with who I don’t know.

    • Hexorg@beehaw.org
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      Well if only bots are talking, mods can be bots too. /r/SubredditSimulator will just take over the whole Reddit

  • TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.orgM
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    Hey folks. Looks like I let this one get by so I’ll leave it since there’s already some discussion happening, but for the next few days please try to keep discussion of the Reddit situation in the megathread.

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    1 year ago

    Ahead of the Tuesday post, more than 300 subreddits had committed to staying dark indefinitely, SpicyThunder335 said. The list included some hugely popular subreddits, like r/aww (more than 34 million subscribers), r/music (more than 32 million subscribers), and r/videos (more than 26 million subscribers). Even r/nba committed to an indefinite timeframe at arguably the most important time of the NBA season. But SpicyThunder335 invited moderators to share pledges to keep the protests going, and the commitments are rolling in.

    A surprising amount of big names there. I figured it would be more obscure/niche subreddits like /r/TaylorSwift, /r/SpaghettiWesterns, or something like that

    • Millions@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Surprised nba is joining, from what I’ve heard they’ve been dicksucking spez here more than some admins