June 15th will drop by, and everyone will notice what most people here already know: that Reddit is hopeless, and it’s showing its middle finger to the community.
Based on that, I was thinking about releasing an infographic, telling people what’s going on, and asking them to replace their Reddit content with gibberish. And I’m wondering if more people want to join this.
What do you guys think about this? Would anyone here be willing to contribute?
The infographic would list no authorship. It would be, for all intents and purposes, public domain. The only thing that you’d get in return is the warm feeling that you made internet better, by helping to kill Reddit.
The format is up to debate, but I was thinking about:
It’s a picture so it’s easier to share; split into sections that can be read in any order that you want (or you can ignore a few of them).
In special, I’d like help of people who write stuff well. I’m pedantic, verbose, an L3 speaker prone to “then who was phone?” grammar, and I genuinely think that plenty people could do better than I can in this aspect.
I also believe that a collective effort from a bunch of people will be probably better than just a single person doing it alone.
Not personally onboard with this. I think we all know that Reddit is nothing without its users and the content they put out, it is also a good source for people finding information online. I can’t count how many times I have googled something with “reddit” behind the query, so I don’t believe people deleting past content before taking down their account will be “making the internet better”, and replacing it with gibberish is even worse. I get the intent behind it, just not onboard with it.
IMO, if you don’t support Reddit, just don’t use it. Don’t make any comments nor any new posts. I support subreddits going into restricted mode where posts still can be viewed, but no new content can be added.
I’m of two minds on it. I agree with you that a reddit has become a deep well of knowledge on all sorts of topics, but it is also a flawed one. My best example is Pinterest. Pinterest has an enormous, well tagged and cataloged (by Google) images which can be difficult to find any other way. It’s also register-walled for it’s content, so browsing it without logging in is utter cancer, and there is no depth of information - it’s just the image and no backlink or http bibliography, so it’s a manual process of hoping TinEye has seen the image and has traced its lineage.
If reddit becomes fouled with garbage, or is simply filled with removed, it will become another Pinterest. A dead end for searches that we will automatically exclude when using search engines. Heck, on mobile, bringing up a reddit page from a Google search is already frustrating garbage salad of hidden threads, pleas to download the official app, and rampant, useless advertising and “similar threads” which rarely have any relationship to the thread Google says contains your information. And, of course, Reddit’s own search engine is worse than asking a toddler about quantum physics.
At this point, I’m more in favor of burning it to the ground. Partly out of spite, partly because the aggregation of knowledge is poorly configured for research of almost any type. I will feel bad for the people who will not find my useful content (roughly weekly I get a thank-you reply for some obscure function or solution I’ve posted), but most of my thousands of comments are just dad jokes and movie quotes. And I suspect that’s pretty common. Little of value will be lost. Except to Spez. And he deserves to get taken down a peg for this money grab.
Sorry for the extremely late reply!
That’s one of the things that I’d like to address in the operation: that, at the end of the day, we’d be losing more information by leaving it in Reddit than if we simply razed the place.
A few highlights:
- Most Reddit content up to March/2023 is actually archived. It’s available, although not in a good way to browse.
- People can - and should - migrate any quality content elsewhere. It could be to an alternative, or your own site/blog, it’s up to you. It’s your content.
- The content will be eventually lost, as the company behind Reddit is exploiting its value for the sake of short-term profit, so the platform will eventually go down. Or at the very least the company might decide to “clean” older posters and comments there, to reduce data consumption (or other bullshit).
But the biggest problem is: when you leave your content in the platform, other people are encouraged to contribute with it there, instead of doing it elsewhere. This new content will be also lost, once Reddit goes downhill. So by leaving your content there, in the long run, you’re making the internet less informative, not more! It’s a perverse incentive.
(By the way, thank you for the well-thought comment. Honestly - you’re one of the few going deeper on the reasoning than just “no, it’ll ruin the internet!”, like I’ve seen in Reddit.)
I’m pretty good at English and would like to volunteer - but I do have one objection: Wouldn’t this be considered spam?
Sorry for the extremely late reply! I was getting errors 500 and 502 nonstop, plus the “loading” circle, so I couldn’t reply to you in time. (Lemmy admins were migrating servers IIRC.)
In the meantime I did the following:
- a small pamphlet, in SVG; here’s a link for the PNG version
- a rather long wall of text, explaining everything that has been going on
and I’ve been spreading a bit of the word about this in Reddit. However I feel like both things are far from optimal, so if you want to contribute, feel free to mess around with them! (Or just suggest changes to me, up to you.)
In special I’m worried that both are too verbose for your typical Reddit user to read.
… You didn’t answer my question. Wouldn’t this be considered spam?
Sorry, you’re right; I didn’t*.
The content itself wouldn’t be spam. Spam is less about the message, and more about force-feeding it to an unwilling receiver. So as long as this is shared reasonably, it shouldn’t be spam.
*I thought that I did, but it was in an earlier attempt to reply to your post.
Understandable. However, a major point of the blackout is not using the site to make reddit’s usage go down. What about that?
a major point of the blackout is not using the site to make reddit’s usage go down.
Yes, it is; however the blackout will eventually whittle down. A lot of subreddits already reopened and, as time goes by, more and more will reopen. And ultimately the blackout’s effect on user activity in the site will be practically nothing.
(That doesn’t mean that the blackout was meaningless. Far from that - it shows that the community [specially the mods] are pissed with the situation, but still willing to dialogue. If only Reddit Inc. was able to dialogue too…)
And that’s why I’m proposing a few more extreme ways to address the situation. Things that Reddit Inc. can’t simply brush off and say “this is predicted, ignore it”. Like actively going against Reddit Inc.'s best interests (profit, profit, profit… ah, and profit too.)
What about you? What do you think that would be the best approach in this situation?
The blackout will eventually go down. And usage will go up again, provided that nothing else happens. I believe that it’s what u/spez and Reddit Inc. are betting on. And they’re right - things will go back to what they used to be, unless users actively boycott the platform. At least before the initial public offering (IPO), when u/spez and the likes will leave Reddit with their pockets full of money, and the community be damned.
And that’s the basic idea behind both the picture and the text. At least for me - what about you?
A few sections that I’ve already thought about:
- What’s going on? - to provide context on why someone would want to do this.
- Tutorial - the core of the thing, explaining how to replace your Reddit content with gibberish.
- Why should we do this? - explaining why this would be the best approach (reducing the value of the platform for LLM + discouraging new users to settle in)
- Alternatives - a rather large list of alternatives for Redditors to migrate to.
- Why the API price changes? - TL;DR: to kill third party apps + profit from businesses wanting the data for LLM)
- Why firing spez is not enough? - TL;DR because the whole company is rotten
- About the loss of info - addressing the potential loss of information to the internet, in a honest way (nobody here is a spez, right?), telling users how to mitigate it (migrate the info) and why it’s still better in the long run;
- Links - a list of links as sources / “to learn more” and stuff like this;
- Vocab - Small dictionary for terms used across the text, that Reddit users might not be informed about.
Those sections are up to debate, as anything else, in case anyone is wanting to join the operation.
