If you go to Reddit, you will still see their ads, be they obvious or hidden through disguising as user interaction (bots are more or less obvious, AI is at the stage where they can fake users). You drive engagement and site traffic. The only way to do anything disadvantegous to Reddit is to stop going to Reddit (if you also delete all your content they have less things to put inbetween ads for the remaining users). You are the product they offer to advertisers, be it through being the buyer for advertised things or providing content to put between the ads so the users who may buy those things don’t only see ads. Your enjoyment of the platform is largely if not completely irrelevant from the corporate standpoint. If anything, your disgruntlement can make you engage more providing them with more content to put between ads.
On the other hand, transitioning hasn’t been smooth at all for a lot of comunities. The user is loosing access to them by leaving Reddit.
I think that trying to be more proactive on Lemmy by getting those comunities you miss from Reddit to thrive here + becoming a Reddit lurker using adblocks and some of the 3rd party apps that won’t be dead in a couple of weeks is the “least wrong” way to make the change if you want to make it gradual.
you’re not wrong about that, but one thing is missing here, one thing that will start becoming clear on July 1: people need to stop thinking of reddit as a place, a platform, that can somehow be “saved”, that, somehow, everything is going to be ok.
come July 1, there will be a sudden and noticeable drop in quality as 3rd party apps and mod tools stop working. In addition to the waves of tens of thousands who have left already, another wave of users will finally call it quits then plus another wave who leave after getting frustrated when they try using the website and/or official app before discovering how intolerable they are to use and just give up. then smaller wave after wave will leave when their subs and the site as a whole all drop off a cliff as far as quality and user moderation become inept and useless or simply vanish altogether.
Reddit is going to slowly transform, over the next few months, just as twitter did to a hellscape of trolls, nazis, and bots with nobody left who either cares or possesses the tools needed to keep them at bay. and this is how the reddit death is different than what happened with Digg-- what happened there was a massive change to how the whole site worked and looked. one day, everyone was instantly affected, and unanimously hated it. it took mere weeks for most people to leave forever. Reddit’s death is slow and painful for a smaller group at first then later for everyone, many of which who can’t or won’t admit that the writing is on the wall, and that Reddit, as we all knew it, is dead; spez killed it. it will always have users (digg is still around), but it will never, ever be what it was. the well is poisoned.
as far as I’m concerned, there’s no point in spending any energy trying to save it or even protesting. trolling and vandalism ae just petty and childish. it’s better to just move on. and while news of the repeated self-ownership of spez in the news can be entertaining, I can’t see it as anything else than the voyeurism of yet another overconfident and entitled tech bro self-destructing. i won’t deny taking some pleasure in it myself, yes, but I feel a little dirty about it.
in the end, I’ve decided to just move on and focus my time and energy on lemmy and what I can do to contribute here. Reddit and spez don’t need our help fucking themselves over-- they’ve done that well enough already.
Well said.
well, it does if you just repeatedly upload those 1gb videos of static to your profile without navigating anywhere. but that’s kinda pointless if you’re the only one doing it and, ultimately, a waste of time.
Yes and no. It is true that going to reddit to troll reddit benefits reddit in the short term, but I think it’s harmful in the long term. By making /r/pics, /r/gifs, and /r/aww John Oliver themed, /r/wellthatsucks becoming vacuum themed, and /r/interestingasfuck and /r/iOS becoming essentially unmoderated, it is making those communities ultimately pointless, irritating users away from the site, and raising awareness. John Oliver even tweeted about it and provided dozens of pictures for their use, and it’s likely at this point that LWT will do something on the situation when the writer’s strike is over. I’ve only gone to reddit to vote in the troll polls- I don’t think that’s the kind of engagement reddit actually wants at this point.
Do you have a link for the tweet? I want to read it now lol. Also what’s LWT mean?
Last Week Tonight, John Oliver’s show
Apologies, I didn’t get a notification for this reply. The tweet is below, though his feed is nothing but pics of himself at the time of this comment.
https://twitter.com/iamjohnoliver/status/1670179738348933120?cxt=HHwWgMC-9e_n1a0uAAAA
No worries, thanks for the link!
I’m seeing a lot of subreddits try to “”“”" protest"“”“” by changing the type of content they allow. Like /r/WellThatSucks only allowing vaccuums. It completely misses the point because it does nothing to reduce Reddit’s traffic.
Maybe not in the short term. Lots of the users who don’t give a shit about the protests are just getting aggravated by that stuff, based on the comments. Casual users getting pissed off are more likely to seek out somewhere else for their non-vacuum entertainment.
There is no other way to protest for big subreddits currently. If you completely private your sub, reddit admins will replace you with mods that will keep it online.
The only real way to do it is to keep moderating, but make the content of the sub extremely boring, like just pictures of vacuums
What if we go after the advertisers? Hit spez right in the wallet.
I think that’s somewhat what this trolling is doing. Advertisers don’t want their ads to be next to a ton of “fuck Spez” or unmoderated comments. Similarly, they target ads at specific subs and changing what the sub is about subverts that targeting.
It actually does, because it leaves lurkers with nothing to look at and they start using mother social media sites. How many pictures of vacuums or John Olver is someone going to be amused by while on the toilet before they just go somewhere else?
Social media follows a 90-9-1 rule. 90% of users are lurkers, 9% are commenters, and 1% are content creators.
If you cut down on the amount of time that 90% spends on the site, it has a huge impact on ad revenue. These acts of malicious compliance are a totally legitimate way for the 1% group to continue their strike while making it much harder for Reddit to bring in scabs and forcibly end it.
Indeed. If anything, it may cause more traffic.
