SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit.

I wish to stop being a moderator in lemmy.ml. However, I don't know what to do with this community; the last time I asked for new mods nobody showed interest. So I'd like the help of other members of the community to decide it.

Here are a few options:

• Migrate this community. Frankly I don't care about Reddit nowadays, but I'm still willing to mod a comm about it in another instance. So if users tell me "migrate SNOOcalypse to [instance]!", I'll seriously consider it.
• Recruiting new mods. If you wish to be a mod, please tell me so in this thread. I'll check if you'd be a good mod, recruit you, step down myself, and you're free to moderate it as you wish.
• Closing down this comm. There are a few other comms about Reddit across the Lemmy/Kbinverse, so we'd use those instead. If neither of the alternatives above is viable/feasible, this is likely what's going to happen.
• Something else. Then please do tell me. As long as it doesn't boil down to "negligently leave this comm active but unmoderated", I'll consider it.

I'm planning to step down 19/February/2024.

So, what do you think that should be done?

If you're paywalled, check this archive link.

What the article calls "corporate trolls" is simply astroturfing. It became rampant in Reddit; as the walled garden was unwalled, more of the organic grass has been replaced.

IPO = Initial Public Offering, where shareholders offer to sell their shares to the public, shifting a company from a "private company" (it belongs to me, you, and that guy) to a "public company" (it belongs to anyone who pays enough for the shares).

The userbase has been always touchy when it comes to IPO, and rightfully so; they know that the new owners will only care about squeezing the platform dry. As such, I predict a new flood of Redditfugees to Lemmy and Kbin.

Summary: Reddit warns mods that it's ending its crypto program, before it warns the other users. What could go wrong? /s

Excerpt:

Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.

The outcome was predicted by plenty users in this community, but now the news are noticing it.

Relay was (yup) one of the third party apps that survived the API-calypse. But this sort of model is unsustainable in the long run, given that the competitor (the broken native app) is free and unlimited.

The obvious future monopoly of the broken native app is bad for the platform in the long run, given that Reddit always sucked off ideas from third party apps; and now there's no incentive whatsoever to make it better, after Reddit Inc. killed the better competitors.

The title is a bit clickbaity but the article is worth a read. To keep it short:

• large subreddits stopped protesting
• 1.8k subreddits are still in the dark, but those are rather small
• [from the article] "Though the Reddit team likely caused permanent damage to the platform and its relationship with users, Spez got his way. But that victory might not mean much."

IMO it was a Pyrrhic victory. Sure, the protests ended, and most users are still stuck in that shithole... but the reputation damage won't be reversed, Reddit managed to seed its competitors (as this one) with the necessary userbase to make them functional, and odds are that Reddit will keep going in its death spiral. And that doesn't even take into account the amount of bad press that it generated, that will hurt IPO numbers for sure.

I'm sharing this here mostly due to the "official" labels. Excerpt from the text:

“Starting today, we’re beginning early testing of placing a visual indicator on certain profiles to provide proof of authenticity, reduce impersonation, and increase transparency across the platform,” a Reddit admin (employee) wrote in a post. “This is currently only available to a *very* small (double-digit) number of profiles belonging to organizations with whom we already have existing relationships, and who are interested in engaging with redditors and communities on our platform.”

At least for me this looks like a really poor attempt to attract content creators into the platform, while shifting its focus from the content created and shared by the users to the users themselves, as in more typical social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok). It's bound to fail - what made Reddit desirable for the users was the content that they shared among themselves, unlike in Twitter where a few personalities can "anchor" the rest of the userbase.

This community grew far more than I expected. That's great, but a single mod for such an active comm is a liability, plus I want to nurture a few other comms. As such, I'm recruiting new mods.

Does anyone volunteer? Potential new mods should:

• be already active members of this community;
• have spare time to browse, comment, and post in this community fairly often;
• have decent reading comprehension;
• be able to dialogue with other members of the community, in a respectful and cooperative way;
• not be moderators of a large number of other communities.

[EDIT] Two important details:

1. You do not need previous experience as a moderator!
2. I'll still be actively moderating this community, alongside any newcomer. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning it; I'm just future-proofing it.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/233339

Comments from the original poster:

Not much else needs to be said tbh. Fuck Spez. // Edit: Not sure why imgur marked the album as NSFW, but there's nothing NSFW in it other than the name of one of the mods including the word "removed"

Personal comment: the critter isn't even dead but the vultures are already flying in circles around it. I certainly do not envy their situation, I bet that the users will treat them like shit.

The link contains db0's views on the ongoing state of Reddit, and I think that it's worth sharing here - both to document a piece of opinion, and as food for thought. The main points are:

• a comparison between the current state of Reddit vs. Myspace near collapse;
• the illusion that everything is fine based on "raw" numbers like engagement;
• that Reddit was never a "good" site, but it had two positive points (open API and hands-off approach to communities), destroyed by the current events;
• the ongoing progression of the Fediverse as alternative to Reddit;
• the change in quality in both the content and the behaviour of the people still there.

The text mentions an article from Cory Doctorow. I've copied it to a pastebin, in case someone can't access it.

EDIT: I hope that the author doesn't mind, but I'll copy the contents of the article inside the spoilers below. Hopefully for mobile users it'll be a bit more accessible.

Excerpts from the link:

Fake internet points are finally worth something!
Now redditors can earn real money for their contributions to the Reddit community, based on the karma and gold they've been given.
How it works:

• Redditors give gold to posts, comments, or other contributions they think are really worth something.
• Eligible contributors that earn enough karma and gold can cash out their earnings for real money.
• Contributors apply to the program to see if they're eligible.
• Top contributors make top dollar. The more karma and gold contributors earn, the more money they can receive.

Not just anyone can be a contributor. To join and stay in the program, contributors need to meet a few requirements:\

• Be over 18 and live in the U.S.
• Only Safe for Work contributions qualify
• Earn xx gold and karma each month
• Provide verification information. You must have at least 10 gold and 100 karma to begin verification.
• NSFW accounts aren't eligible for the Contributors Program

Here's my take on this. Since this is from the latest version of Reddit's ~~broken browser for a single site~~ "official app", it's likely a recent development, triggered by recent changes in the platform. Reddit Inc. is likely worried about contributors leaving due to the app-pocalypse, and is trying to counter it by throwing them some spare cash.

And I'm going to be honest: holy fuck this sounds like a Bad Idea®. For three reasons.

The first one is demographics; since 47% of the users are Americans, and 21% of them are 10-19yo, it's safe to say that ~60% of the users are ineligible, and thus will only contribute for free.

Will they? People often don't mind contributing for free, as long as the others are in the same page. The picture changes once you get at least someone making money out of it - odds are that those 60% will disengage further.

The second reason is that Reddit Inc. is disregarding the fluff principle. If the money threshold is the number of upvotes and awards that someone gets per period of time, why would the person bother with high quality content? Or even quality content at all - it's easy to make up for lack of quality with quantity. For example, setting up a simple bot to scrape the top posts and repost them. (Is Reddit expecting the mods to delete those reposts? OH WAIT)

The third and final reason is who you expect to give awards to those people, before they feel pissed and discouraged and leave the program, breaking even further their trust in the platform. Who would even buy Reddit gold on first place? The Reddit community has been outright mocking Reddit gold for years, and the suckers actually buying it were the ones who were the most engaged and emotionally attached to the platform, to the point that they're willing to "help" it. (As if corporations need help, but whatever.) It would be a shame if Reddit happened to piss off exactly that demographic... like it did.