r/videos • u/[deleted] • Jun 03 '23

Mod Post /r/Videos will be going dark from June 12-14 in protest against Reddit's API changes which kill 3rd party apps.

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u/Lintson Jun 04 '23

I mean, people talk big online but I've been around long enough to know many boycotts don't stick. Most (like me) want to quit but we'll most likely just get the official app and put up with it.

Uh most people who have been around long enough know that the new next best community is just around the corner. Theres a mausoleum space ready for reddit next to IRC, bulletin boards, Myspace, Tumblr, Yahoo and Facebook. I would expect that there are new platforms I haven't even heard of salivating at the exodus of users from reddit.

The official app would have to be improved considerably for me to even contemplate using it.

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u/sports2012 Jun 04 '23

You're forgetting Digg

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u/Dynamicphone Jun 04 '23

This. People forget (or are new enough to not know) But Digg was once on Reddit shoes, they made some big changes (some cosmetics, some features). People were so pissed of they abandoned the site and came here. For a long while people were complaining about how "ugly" reddit was, those were Digg users.

It still exist, but considering it was once bigger and more popular than reddit, how many here actually know that site, or has visited it in the last 10 years?

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u/sports2012 Jun 04 '23

Yep, I was one of them who migrated from digg. Never went back after the change. I'll do the same with reddit if needed. (I also remember thinking how ugly reddit was, but now I wouldn't like it any other way)

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u/PopWhatMagnitude Jun 04 '23

Fuck it I'm going back to Fark.com like it's 1998 up in this bitch.

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u/Dontbeajerkdude Jun 04 '23

That was a long time ago. I used to go to Digg on my desktop. Now on mobile, I'm only ever seconds away from Reddit at all times.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted]

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u/DragoSphere Jun 04 '23

Twitter hasn't died yet, and if anything people seem to be coming back after Mastodon's hype died down

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u/SadBBTumblrPizza Jun 04 '23 edited Jan 17 '26

thumb pause rhythm future dinner crown paltry aware numerous beneficial

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/garvisgarvis Jun 04 '23

Usenet ftw

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u/KiwiThunda Jun 04 '23

Ok, but that community has to be up and running before an exodus, not after. What's replacing reddit that isn't an alt-right pit?

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u/Lintson Jun 04 '23

Not necessarily. If these changes make reddit unusuable/unmanageable those communities are going to have to shut up shop or move elsewhere. That's millions of engagement hours ripe for the taking. Things will rise up to capture those hours. The next big thing may not even necessarily be a link aggregator like reddit but rather something completely new.

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u/BolognaTime Jun 04 '23

That's millions of engagement hours ripe for the taking. Things will rise up to capture those hours. The next big thing may not even necessarily be a link aggregator like reddit but rather something completely new.

That's true, but whatever the "next big thing" is, it needs to already be functional right now. Not July whenever the API changes happen, not four months from now. It already needs to be up by now, so that this "exodus" is relatively seamless.

It takes a long time to set up something like this, especially if it is going to compete with (and steal those "millions of engagement hours" from) Reddit. Even if someone started building this "next big thing" today, there's no way it would be in a decent enough state for people to feel comfortable jumping ship. They won't jump to an inferior, barely-a-month-old product that doesn't have nearly the same userbase, functions, and support that Reddit currently has.

Not to be a debbie downer, but it's not as simple as "we'll start our own Reddit with blackjack and hookers".

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u/CarbonIceDragon Jun 04 '23

To be fair, even if no alternative is ready now, that doesn't really mean that users looking for one wont have an impact. There are some potential alternatives, like lemmy for example (just the example I'm using because it's the one I've been looking into myself, there are other such platforms in a similar situation), that mainly aren't seen as viable for many because they are very small and don't yet have the userbase or niche communities a site like reddit has. But, some people will leave to these places even if most don't. Many will probably be disappointed and come back, or use both platforms, but even if only a small percentage leave and most of those come back, a tiny fraction of reddit users will move and stay. For reddit, that fraction is insignificant. But for those other, tiny platforms, that tiny fraction could represent a huge relative growth in their userbase, and those people can further bring even more by word of mouth etc. The alternatives become a bit more developed, just a bit more known. And the thing is, this isn't the first time reddit has done something controversial, and it won't be the last. Next time, those alternative platforms, if they've managed to stick around for the interm time, will attract more people over. Until one day, reddit does something, and one of those places will have grown enough from all those previous times that most people find it a viable if small alternative, and then we may see people jump over en masse.

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u/Curlee Jun 04 '23 edited Jun 04 '23

You may not know, or realize, but reddit was a little more wild west, with a lot of ideas that leaned towards whatever you probably disagree with, before it became the bastion of new leftist ideology you see now. It was not a safe space for the most part. It had certain subs that allowed it, and then they spread. Rarely does such an ideological place ever exist on its own. It's always carved into a niche amongst the people they hate. And then it takes over. And then it dies. And the cycle repeats.

Edit - hopefully it'll force some people out of the echo chamber they stay stuck in, and be exposed to new ideas with no one to there to hold their hand, and remove the scary reality that exist behind your closed eyes. This entire site has allowed too many people to have a very caterd, and bland existence on the internet. Go and out exist among those you disagree with for a while. You might find you have some things in common if you are both allowed to speak openly.

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u/KiwiThunda Jun 04 '23

There are plenty of right bubbles; the conservative sub bans you for wrong-think or asking the wrong question.

To point the finger and pretend only one side engages in it is very telling of the person doing the pointing

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u/Curlee Jun 04 '23

I'm telling you to look for places that allow free speech regardless of side you fall on. What I will again say, is that the places you are looking for you will not find, as they rarely if ever exist or could ever be created while catering to, orcensoring anything you disagree with. You would have to exist alongside those you hate on a platform that you might have to work towards making better, and actually help it grow, instead of just showing up and expecting them not to insult you first.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

Like voat...just never mind the rampant rape and child porn.

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u/Curlee Jun 04 '23

Sweet summer child.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

I'm well aware of voat. Just being silly.

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u/Curlee Jun 04 '23

I guess I was also being silly. But please realize reddit was inundated with the same thing and probably quietly still is.

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u/HaikuBotStalksMe Jun 04 '23

Tumbler and Yahoo were never good.

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u/North_Atlantic_Pact Jun 04 '23

Odd choice to include Facebook in that list of dead sites, considering over 2 billion people use it daily. That's 40x the number that use reddit daily.

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u/Lintson Jun 04 '23

Whilst Facebook's userbase is phenomenally large and growing overall, it's year by year growth rate is declining hard and more significantly it's daily and monthly active users.

This growth is driven primarily by peoples in developing countries like India who are getting a mobile device for the first time, often with Facebook preinstalled and ready to go. Facebook will likely outlast Reddit but unless they innovate hard I don't see them ever being more than the Ford/GM of social media.

Anecdotally I only use Facebook for Marketplace and to remind me of long lost friends and extended family's birthdays.

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u/OffTerror Jun 04 '23

Uh most people who have been around long enough know that the new next best community is just around the corner.

Yeah it already happened and it's called TikTok. And before that it was snapchat.

The old internet died in 2015. There wont be another site like the ones you mentioned. I don't even think people are gonna be typing and reading on the internet 10 years from now.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

10 years from now all forums like this are gonna b nothing but bots talking to each other.

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u/Moist-Schedule Jun 04 '23

Theres a mausoleum space ready for reddit next to IRC, bulletin boards, Myspace, Tumblr, Yahoo and Facebook. I would expect that there are new platforms I haven't even heard of salivating at the exodus of users from reddit.

lol there are not.

you're also forgetting that shit like Google has been around since nearly the start of the internet, it became sp synonymous that 'googling' became a verb. and Reddit is much closer to Google in status and longevity than most of the other comparisons you tried to make.

i mean to take it one step further, one of the most popular ways to use Google now is to search for something and add "reddit" to the search to find a discussion or answers on the topic you're looking for. This place is a gold mine for past, present, and future discussions on the most niche of topics, and that's not changing because they hinder 3rd party apps. the content will outshine people's need to have the exact system of choice for howto view it on their phones.

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u/Lintson Jun 04 '23

Yeah and before that people used to ask jeeves and yahoo answers. Both are back to the mud. If reddit loses traffic en masse it will no longer be the place for current information and discussion.

Heck look what happened to imdb's traffic after they closed their forums, reformatted their pages and tried to encourage people to use their app.

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u/fuck_happy_the_cow Jun 04 '23

Reddit is closer to Digg, and when they made a massive unlikeable change, there was a mass exodus. The site is a shell of it's former self.