Hundreds of subreddits plan to go dark indefinitely after Reddit CEO's memo | Hacker News Reader

Hundreds of subreddits plan to go dark indefinitely after Reddit CEO's memo

techcrunch.com

101 pointsde6u99er76 comments

I think every subreddit should have created a community on a reddit alternative, like lemmy, kbin, etc. and actively promoted it as a "temporary" replacement. This way, Reddit waiting out the blackout risks losing marketshare to the alternative.

Right now, that risk is very low because the alternatives didn't seem to have picked up enough critical mass, especially outside a few big topics like technology or news. Without an alternative picking up steam and stealing eyeballs, Reddit doesn't have an incentive to come to the table and can easily wait this out.

https://reddark.untone.uk/

At this point you have to wonder how much Reddit user traffic overall has cratered. That's a LOT of dark subs.

Here's a view that includes the traffic. Looks like a 20-30% drop but it seems to be back to normal today.

https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/

Interesting, I wonder if we're seeing an underlying Pareto distribution of "Redditors who engage with the community, moderate, or otherwise produce content" vs. the ~80% who just vote or lurk and nothing more.

I've found replacement subs for those that went dark, which I expect will be back eventually.

Discord seems like a common subsititute. Anecdotally, I noticed an uptick in new Discord users in my small community.

Something is afoot over there. I updated and then removed all comments, like, everything on my account, and then deleted the account a few days ago. And now its back with the previous comment I updated everything to intact. They did some form of rollback.

Something similar happened to me during the great yahoo hack. My email stayed compromised even across password changes, so I deleted my account. So the person taking it over undid that then updated the recovery information. I was never able to regain control of that account that I'm certain spams my contact list to this day.

After that I stopped deleting accounts. I maintain a firm grip on every one, even ones I never plan to use again (including facebook and reddit).

Wow you aren’t kidding, I did the same the other day and mine appear to be back as well.

This sounds like a missive violation of EU laws.

Wow. I used a tool the other day to delete everything as well. I'll check my comments now. Be great if everyone else here could do so as well and report back. If they did, indeed, do a rollback that is serious malfeasance.

My comments are all still deleted.

Reddit can always bring subs back online - the question is if they can find dedicated mods for those subs that were previously ran by volunteers.

I’ma lurker on Reddit. No account, I just browse the top threads to kill time on the bus.

From my perspective absolutely nothing has changed other than some new subreddits hitting the front page. The topics are the same. Maybe a little more international content——I can’t recall “ich_iel” ever making it to the top before.

I understand most users are lurkers like me. With that in mind, I don’t believe these blackouts will accomplish much. They’ll probably accelerate the homogenization of the platform and the race to the bottom in terms of quality, but that is happening anyway. I already know Reddit is mind-numbing days-old TikTok memes, I use it anyway because I like the interface more.

Edit: it isn’t that I am against the blackout, I just think in realpolitik terms it is not effective since most people are really not that invested or interested in participating in activism for their memes.

Reddit is not alienating the lurkers. It’s much worse, it’s alienating the power users, the content creators, the sub moderators, etc.

Right. And my point is that it won’t affect their bottom line at all. The power users think they have “communities” but they do not. To us plebs it is mostly an afterthought that there are different subreddits at all. Reddits front page could be totally AI-generated and i bet most users wouldn’t notice. Another day, another “what’s something underrated you think everyone should know” thread.

The power users probably have a higher rate of block installed anyhow, so maybe Reddit will see a little uptick in “engagement”

Exactly. The people generating revenue for Reddit would probably have their mind blown knowing their are other apps and wonder why Reddit ever allowed such a thing.

I think you're misunderstanding how Reddit works. Without the 2% contributors and the moderators there's nothing. There's three hard things about community-based platforms: moderation, content creation, users. Reddit has all three, but it's about to lose the first two, in which case it won't work.

This is the narrative, sure, but Reddit isn’t what it was in 2015. Most of the users have joined since the reskin and these power users are the last vestige of old Reddit. I imagine these power users think they are the important ones, but really it’s the people upvoting memes who click on the occasional ad. Those are the people Reddit care about and they aren’t being alienated because they don’t care.

As I said in another comment, a community not only because there are users, but because 2% of them (approx.) will post content, and because you have good moderation. Reddit is about to lose the last two. Users alone don't make it work.

We shall see, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on you being right

I mean, it’s risking losing. I’m not betting it will lost them either because right now they have nowhere to go. Facebook groups really could have created a space like reddit but they failed to do so.

I think you’re focusing on your usecase a bit too much - consider the whole “add ‘reddit’ to your google search for better results” dynamic, and the effect of invested users on it. I totally agree with everything you said tho, just not that /r/popular lurkers interested in 15 minutes of memes are the only users important to their bottom line.

After all, it’s important to remember the network effects that made Reddit big could just as easily make something else big to replace it. And think about how my shitty websites there are for midtier memes, and how they don’t hold a candle to Reddit in terms of size or cultural impact - 9gag, Imgur, and even 4chan immediately come to mind

ich_iel has been on the front page for years.

so r/ich_iel shows up on the current front page? because it's still private[0], and even left a note saying they moved to lemmy.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ich_iel/

I mean they can just force reopen them and new moderators who don’t care about API stuff will take over.

My friend shut down his subreddit and a mod complained to Reddit admins that my friend wasn’t even active, and Reddit admins gave that mod the subreddit.

Great system.

It just means: if you create a subreddit, you don’t own it in any way. You’re granted permission to be its custodian. If your behaviour does not create value / if you anger the Reddit gods, you will be replaced.

This assumes there's an army of competent mods in waiting that the admins can tap into, who could take over (without many of the tools the previous mods used) and effectively run some of the largest communities on the internet.

This strikes me as unlikely.

This assumes there isnt an army of unemployed people with a power fetish using reddit willing to lord over top subs that would be brought back by force. Aside from deleting bad words and over the top vulgar opinions in clean subs what does a mod do besides sit around staring at their screen?

what does a software engineer do besides sitting around staring at a screen, typing and googling? anyone can be a reductive ass. not that i think reddit power mods are good but any forum’s moderators do more than that and you’re just being a dick in bad faith

There will be plenty. Guaranteed.

and?

Just to add to the list of alternatives, I've been working on a platform with a bit of a different take on the online community space. It's sort of a Reddit/Discord/Patreon hybrid. We've built a place to monetarily incentivize ownership over the communities created on the platform. It feels like the people curating the communities should be rewarded for the work that they do.

Here's an example community: https://sociables.com/community/Sports/board/trending

I haven't dug into it too much, and the UI seems a bit cluttered and confusing (e.g. when I click into a community I get a huge amount of random information instead of just some posts), but in terms of structure this is the closest I've seen to something that actually understands what Reddit actually is (a community of communities) rather than just creating a huge bucket full of posts with hashtags and calling it a day. Good work!

Appreciate the feedback. There is definitely a bit of a learning curve to our platform coming from a place like reddit. It's intentionally not a 1-to-1 copy. We're kind of building a Discord/Reddit/Patreon hybrid that combines the best parts of each platform to try and bring a bit of innovation into the community platform space. A focus of ours is to help the community owners monetize.

So, I briefly visited reddit twice over the past 2 days and I noticed something interesting.

Each time I visited, I had a new reply to one of my recent posts.

Each time, the reply was pretty obviously from a bot account (newly created username with a non-sensical reply).

I'm speculating that reddit is being infiltrated by bots. Clearly, I only have 2 tiny data points to support this notion. But I wonder if an influx of bots, coupled with the loss of popular subreddits will be difficult for reddit to deal with.

Basically, if reddit is suddenly filled with noise (bots) it may reduce the desire of real humans to return. </speculation>

This is unfortunate for the long tail of communities since places like /r/hardwareswap do rely on automation significantly to drive their functionality. Reddit is a little bit like a Craigslist in that sense: it is hard to unbundle, but also it is hard for the bundle to capitalize on the market flow through it.

Interesting puzzle, for sure, and I will be curious to see if there will be a new meta-community that can create the wide range of communities like /r/tipofmytongue, /r/hardwareswap, /r/changemyview, etc.

Reddit may be unable to justify its valuation without being able to drive more revenue but there is a place for a meta-community that is more focused like that without having any of the complex pieces of functionality like federation, etc.

I'm doing my part!

Just killed all my comments and then deleted the account, after over a decade on the site. Would have had to go in July any way once my RIF app quit working on me. So what's a few days? Gives me more time to find alternatives before the rush gets there. I remember digg. This is more of the same.

Just history rhyming again.

Other commenters on this post have experienced that their deleted accounts have seemingly had their content and themselves be restored by Reddit.

I'd pay attention to yours.

As another person said, that sounds like a pretty significant violation of EU law? MAYBE Reddit could argue that self-deletion isn't a "request for removal," but I don't think that would stand for very long.

I just checked my account. I deleted all my comments yesterday and today they were all back. Crazy!

>Other commenters on this post have experienced that their deleted accounts have seemingly had their content and themselves be restored by Reddit.

>I'd pay attention to yours.

It says incorrect password and username when I try to log in and when I search for known text from previous comments.

I support this, but as someone who doesn't have a Reddit account currently it also makes me want to create one again, just to be able to read threads that come up in my search results.

But then again I would be supporting Reddit (the company, not the community), which would be counterproductive to the initiatives objective.

Private subs are private for everyone, even members.

Only sub moderators and admins can access private subs. You won't be able to see the threads that come up in your search results either way unless they become public again.

This isn't true at all -- I can see content in all of the private subreddits that I am already subscribed to. It is only restricted to anonymous users or users who are not subscribed.

Those are probably subs that are in read-only mode. Private subs are completely inaccessible.

> It is only restricted to anonymous users or users who are not subscribed.

Those subreddits are restricted, not private.

There's a third tier, something like "approved submitters." Some subs, especially smaller ones, would randomly add users to the list based on some criteria. These people would be able to browse private subs as well. There's a way to see what subs you've been added to as an approved submitter, somewhere on old.Reddit under the subreddits page

I'm starting to see sub Reddit's come back as "unblocked." People are creating r/subreditUnblocked communities and filling the void

How are the reddit mods communicating and coordinating? Is it on Discord?

Ironically using a sub-reddit created for this

That makes sense though. Realistically it’s more important that they can communicate and there wasn’t time to set up an alternate channel.

Yeah fair enough. It definitely was the quickest and easiest approach to organizing fast given the circumstances

As a lowly redditor I feel this has become a fight between a nomenclatura of moderators and Reddit. The moderators believe they are taking the rightful fight, but as far as I am concerned, they they don't represent a community since they are not elected by it. They elect themselves, right? So this is less of a grass roots movement than it may appear.

Many communities did hold votes on this issue. And it would be very very hard to organize a moderator election on a free online forums with hundreds of thousands of members…

It wouldn't be _that_ hard. It would not meet the bar for true democracy but accounts older than X months with a karma > Y and more than Z comments could be eligible to vote for example.

I see a lot of backlash on reddit right now. A few of the top voted comments in a couple of the threads on my current frontpage:

https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/149cq9f/comment/jo4...

https://old.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/148xygd/comment/j...

In most of the polls that I have seen, people are supporting an indefinite blackout. There is definitely some backlash, but overall it seems like people support the protest.

Can you link any of those polls? I saw a lot of polls with a vast majority voting for the initial blackout but the tone of the response to this indefinite blackout feels way different.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cremposting/comments/149a7ge/poll_s...

https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/148w58w/vote_s...

https://reddit.com/r/tennis/comments/148suem/rtennis_blackou...

https://reddit.com/r/SipsTea/comments/148sk76/further_protes...

https://strawpoll.com/polls/e7ZJGVOXBy3 (/r/stardewvalley)

A decent number of them show that people support an indefinite blackout, though there are some exceptions (like /r/tennis), where there is more support for opening back up. It's not universal, but generally people seem to be in favor of keeping the pressure on Reddit this way.

Only today did I spot any poll in the ones I visit regularly, and they voted to stay open for even the initial blackout. Seems like it was mostly mod decisions in the first place.

> I saw a lot of polls with a vast majority voting for the initial blackout but the tone of the response to this indefinite blackout feels way different.

It's selection bias. The average user didn't care or know about the initial blackout. Now that they're affected, they're more likely to vote in these polls.

As they should. As far as I can see, the second they ban the third party services, they will start pushing ads, hard. You'll be stuck with their official app and their website will use anti ad-blocking tech like YT is testing right now. So at the end, it's all about getting more money on the back of the community.

By definition anyone posting/commenting/upvoting right now doesn't support the blackout. I don't think it's fair to say these comments represent the opinions of those communities.

> I don't think it's fair to say these comments represent the opinions of those communities.

The gaming subreddit, relative to other subreddits, is going to be demographically tilted towards the "anti-SJW" types who find collective action intrinsically distaseful regardless of the validity of the cause.

anti-SJW love collective action like vandalizing stores and bridgading forums.

I've noticed that the "anti-SJW" types are inherently opposed to anything that inconveniences them even slightly, no matter how beneficial it is to anyone else (including themselves). If the entire world isn't focused entirely on them they throw a fit.

I mean, you linked a comment with 700 votes in a thread where the top comment has over 9000 votes. Maybe read through the thread without cherry picking comments: https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/149cq9f/reddit_were...

> A few of the top voted comments

Not the top comment. My point was to show that the threads now have highly upvoted comments like that, which was not the case for the initial blackout.

And how is it possible not to cherry pick when picking examples? Would you rather have me pick completely random comments and say "one of these may show what I'm talking about but I don't know"?

Thanks, but not going there. The reddit break has been great for me, apart from agreeing with 'the cause'. As much as I will miss the content, I will now do other things. I never saw it as an addiction, but a pleasant habit, and a very easy one to break. Bye, bye 5k+ points (in about c4 months). I was actually quite proud of that. Now, it can all rot in hell.

Reddit has been kind of bad for my mental health. Like many I refresh the various front pages hoping for my next dopamine fix - addicted to the low commitment required and instant gratification. I let the little karma number affect me way too much - I have started to hate such gamification of forums.

Guess I will get my fix elsewhere now and hopefully someday I will stop altogether and make better use of my time. Reddit going bad just makes it a tad easier.

These people strike me as those who will just take everything lying down. Just because it doesn't impact them it's a lost cause. The reason reddit works like it does today is because of some of those protests.

Reddit was born from protests and seems it could die by them. Digg users protested and migrated enmasse to Reddit. It might happen again.

Based on the interview Christian Selig gave, Apollo has enough active and paying users, that he could continue to make this work with adjustments to the backend code as well as paid products offered by Apollo. Understandably, it seems there is little will after the relationship between Christian and Reddit soured.

My guess is, Christian is content that he can now fully focus on Pixel Pals.

In the interview, he said his biggest problems are timing, and annual plans.

1. He has 30 days from the announcement of what the price was going to be, to implement new paid only plans, that follow some new rules. When the app store can take days to approve a new build, that is not much time to re-iterate and test something that being wrong could be very, very costly.

2. He has many people who paid literally a few dollars a year for apollo, and have months left on their subscription. He can give up $250k refunding their money, or spend a few millionn paying the API fees for them until its renewal time, and hope they renew.

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