Quote from the post:

Hello everyone, I’ll try to keep this short as I know there’s been a lot going on over the last few days. When we made our announcement last week, we intended to get Reddit’s attention on a subject that our team found extremely concerning. /r/Videos is joining a larger coordinated protest and signing an open letter to the admins found here.

The announcement was of exceedingly high API prices which we all know was to intentionally kill 3rd party applications on reddit (Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Boost, Relay, etc.) Since that post several things have become clear; Reddit is not willing to listen to its users or the mod teams from many of its largest communities on this matter. Yesterday all major third-party Reddit apps announced that they would be shutting down on the 30th of June due to these changes. There were no negotiations and Reddit refused to extend the deadlines. The rug was pulled out from under them and by extension all of the users who rely on those tools to use reddit.

In addition to this, the AMA hosted by Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, which was intended to alleviate concerns held by many users about these issues, was nothing short of a collage of inappropriate responses. There are many things to take away from this AMA but here are the key points. Most disappointingly it appears that Reddit outright misconstrued the actions of Apollo’s creator /u/iamthatis by saying that he threatened Reddit and leaked private phone calls, something done only to clear his name of another accusation.

So what’s happening? The TL;DR? Effective tomorrow (6/11/2023), /r/Videos will be restricting posting capabilities. Anything posted before the cut off date will likely be the final front page of our community before we go private indefinitely. In the unlikely scenario that Reddit ownership has a sudden change of heart and capitulates on their decisions we will reopen, but until that happens /r/Videos will stay closed. Many other communities have come to similar decisions and we support those who have decided to take a stand.

  • Rat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is great to hear! Unfortunately the reddit exodus will likely splinter a bunch of niche communities, but it will definitely be for the best. I’m all down for the “de-consolidation” of the internet!

    • Ghostalmedia@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      The tricky thing will be the small niche communities that are already hosted on Reddit. For example, there is a group of us dorks who are really into home automation with HomeKit. I’d hate for that small group to splinter into smaller groups that are so small that they’re no longer a good source of collective knowledge.

      I don’t really have a great solve for that problem, but as someone who does experience and service design by trade, I’ve found this to be a fun puzzle to marinate on over the past few weeks.

      • Rat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah that is a really tricky thing, even if those communities decide to go “we’re moving to ______”, they will inevitably be leaving behind a lot of their userbase, and be giving up a large amount of SEO and discoverability. The large number of users is what gave reddit its value, so I can only hope that groups that might disperse find a central place again. I definitely don’t envy the position this leaves moderators in rn.

        • pwnappl@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          My big fear is that a lot of niche communities might move to discord, which will really hurt discoverability. One of my favorite things about reddit is that if I am listening to a new band that I like, there’s a good chance I can find a subreddit named after them with plenty of fans who are happy to discuss their music.

          Being locked behind a discord server is even worse, because it is very difficult to preserve the messages and posts made there.

          • Rat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Absolutely - discord is probably one of the worst choices to host a “discussion board” type page for those reasons. They are well on the path of enshittification too with all the bloaty unnecessary features they’ve added over the years.

            • overlordror@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              The over reliance on Discord has made me give up participating in some reddit communities, too. It sucks to start a discussion only to be told by regulars That its frequently discussed in the Discord and I should look there.

              No. Discord is IRC 2.0, not forums for preserving convos like reddit and lemmy.

              • TunaLobster@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                They made a forum feature. Heck I’ve used slack at work as a sort of community knowledge base. Discord does have some features thread conversations for topics.

                • overlordror@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  The forum feature feels half-baked when you have to click through bots to even access the knowledgebase. IDK. I’m old school and from an era of the internet where chat interfaces where chat interfaces and forums were kept separate. I don’t appreciate the threading in Discord because it makes past conversations harder to follow, not easier for me.

            • BobQuasit@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              When I was part of a group searching for alternatives to GoodReads, one of the problems I had a hell of a hard time explaining to some users was the “walled garden” effect. They just couldn’t understand why having posts be invisible to search engines and forcing non-members to sign up in order to see posts was the kiss of death when it came to potential growth.

          • Zagaroth@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Agreed. I love Discord for having a hub for friends groups or gaming groups or whatever, it’s nice to have everything in one place, but when you want a discoverable forum, discord is not the place. It’s a communications hub, not social media.

      • psuasno@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        That’s where most of my devastation lays with all of this. Parting ways with reddit was more and more in the back of my mind steadily over the last few years. I was only holding on due to being active in some of those small, niche communities. I finally deleted my reddit account the other day and have no intention of going back, and I feel horrible about what will happen to those little communities but I cannot continue to support the big, soulless corporation that reddit has been striving to be.

        It’s going to be a weird and interesting transition period for a part of the online commhnity going forward. We can only hope for the best!

      • closure1170@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I was thinking the exact same thing. My interests are home automation with Home assistant and media management with sonarr/radarr and associated programs. Reddit is such an incredible resource for those communities, it’s gonna be hard to replace.

        • skater@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          There’s a home assistant group on one of the servers, I found it the other day. It doesn’t have the traffic of reddit’s of course, but it does exist. I’d link it but I don’t know how in the app.

      • lamentforicarus@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        It sort of feels like someone should download all of reddit, pull out the actual good information, and discard the rest. That’s likely an impossible task though. It would take forever.

      • Targox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Same! 90% of my Reddit time was simply r/homekit and r/Apple . I see that there’s now a Homekit community, !homekit@lemmy.ml it doesn’t really have content yet but we have to start somewhere right?

  • runarskoll@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    For me it’s a double sided problem. Even if reddit solves the moderation tools problem which user the api (and they will because those are the tools of the free labor they explore) there will be still the problem with the user experience. Even if subreddits reopen I will never use the official reddit app, the same way I refuse to use the official twitter app since apps like Falcon Pro, Flamingo or Talon stopped working.

    Reddit CEO can bargain the deal he wants that I don’t care anymore. For me reddit is now only a repository where I will continue to search specific information. It is no more a place where I want to participate in online communities.

    • heartburn@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      That was my line of thought as well, however…

      Reddit will stop being a good information repo very quickly as users who actually know what they’re talking about leave and the information stops being up to date. The trend of adding “reddit” to every google search will die out soon.

      • lawliot@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I already edited my reddit submissions to something along the lines of “this has been deleted in protest against API…” using PowerDeleteSuite. Some of my past comments has useful information in them and people might end up there via google. I’m taking my data with me when I walk out.

          • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I’ve read this from someone on reddit a few days ago, but I think it’s true: reddit-archive like read-only lemmy instances should be set up. The data is available, see the-eye.eu/redarcs

            r/DataHoarder also has some more info on this with tooling in a pinned post. They didn’t private the sub, it’s only read-only so it’s still readable

    • Domiku@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yeah - the AMA with spez was the writing on the wall. No matter what/how users protest, they can only delay the inevitable changes. I deleted my 10+ year old account and cut my losses. The last thing I want in my social media is platform drama.

    • socsa@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I definitely get the sense that spez is just going to nuke these mods until they get compliant ones in there. It’s going to end up being a bloodbath, and I think it perfectly fits with his weird fantasy of being a post-collapse tyrant.

    • Clbull@beehaw.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      I can see a lot of people moving to Lemmy, just because the other alternative that’s popping off (Tildes) is a far more serious discussion-driven site.

  • Kevin Herrera@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I appreciate the effort, but since this is one of the main subreddits the Reddit admins will simply purge these subreddits of their mods, install new ones, and reopen it (they’ve already done something like this before).

    The real question is how well will the sub operate then? I imagine not very well since all of the experienced mods and their tools are gone.

    • Lycan@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      This was my immediate reaction too. Reddit will likely replace the current moderator team of r/videos and reopen. Nonetheless I can appreciate and respect the gesture/message.

      • CleoTheWizard@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        This is easy to do for one subreddit. And it’s a large one. Would easily need 10+ mods to keep it running. But if a few of these large subreddits revolt, I don’t think reddit can simply replace them all.

        Not only that but I think replacing the entire mod team would cause a revolt anyways. Tensions are extremely high

        • setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          I wonder if Reddit might just end up like YouTube: mostly relying on automated content moderation bots, and the human review being a big pool of low paid people who aren’t assigned to specific subs who just do quick checklist reviews.

          It’s gonna be great.

          • Silverhand@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            I can see that happening, they’re definitely not going to pay for all the mods they’d need to replace current ones. Sounds like that would absolutely kill a lot of smaller communities, but I doubt they care.

            • CleoTheWizard@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              I can’t exactly go into why this isn’t possible in the short term, but it’s extremely unlikely that reddit could effectively moderate things automatically in the near future.

              I mean hell, look at youtubes comment section.

              And they don’t have the money to pay moderators. As spez said, they aren’t profitable (only thing I believe him on btw). I seriously think that spez has entered a Putin-type situation where he has very few opportunities to keep his job right now.

    • Valliac@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Seconding this. They’ll likely install their own mods and force-reopen the sub, since it’s one of the bigger ones.

      Same with r/technology, and other main subs, id assume

  • AllBetsAreOff@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Man it’s just so wild to watch what’s going on over there right now. Even when subreddits come back after a couple days it may not matter if bot-assisted moderation becomes impossible over there in the long run.

    If reddit backs off enough to save the accessibility and moderation issues, I hope enough people still leave to help create a strong alternate ecosystem.

    If alternatives like this site had existed through previous years, I don’t think Reddit could have survived a lot of its previous mistakes.

    • ajimix@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      If alternatives like this site had existed through previous years, I don’t think Reddit could have survived a lot of its previous mistakes.

      Lemmy exists at least since 2020, when I registered to the platform. That is 3 years ago and it hasn’t had much of activity until the Reddit drama started recently

      • Cheander@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        What’s happened with Twitter and now Reddit is hopefully enough to make people realize the pitfalls of corporate-owned, centralized social media. Mastodon has really taken off with some major news outlets now posting on there. I could see the same happening with Lemmy now.

    • lowleveldata@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      If reddit backs off enough

      They might do that, but for how long? I can only see them gravitated toward doing the same thing in more subtle ways if that’s what earns them the most money.

      • AllBetsAreOff@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Yeah I mean that’s a fair point. Their motivations seem pretty clear. I just know that getting people to migrate, especially non-technical people, is hard. So I can see how many communities might end of staying there if it is at all viable.

  • LemmyAtem@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Thanks for grabbing the text, that’s very helpful. Good for /r/videos, way to send a strong message.

    • acmon@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Hopefully other subreddits follow suit and help push people out to new sites. Too much is held by the big corporations, love the idea of more options and a wider source to take from rather than just a handful of micromanaged sources.

      • LemmyAtem@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I’m really using this as an excuse to be more active again. I used to engage with Reddit ALL THE TIME in college. It was so fun to just comment back and forth and talk to people. I haven’t done that in ages, and even though I feel like I have nothing all that worthwhile to post, I’ll post anyway. Nobody is going to discuss content that isn’t there!

  • smallerdemon@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Ultimately here’s what’s going to happen: These closed communities will be forcefully reopened by Reddit admins, the mods will be removed and replaced with toadies that will follow the new rules, and it will inevitably descend into exactly what Twitter is descending into: a right-wing propaganda outlet with racists, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, homophobic content dominating the forums that took a stand.

    • bashrc@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      I’ve seen this floated a few times, and this is a genuine question, how would Reddit do this? I don’t really understand how they could force a community open by removing mods and adding new ones - what rules are they breaking by closing the subreddit?

  • Moneymunkie@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Good god I knew it wasn’t going to go well but I didn’t think they’d crash and burn it THIS bad.

    The bar was on the floor and they still managed to somehow clip underneath it through the floor, end up in some backrooms-esque dimension only to trip on a banana peel and land face first in a pie.

    • overlordror@beehaw.org
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      That’s inevitably what happens when you get a call from your VC backers asking why you’re still bleeding money into a pit instead of milking the community for profit.

  • mobyduck648@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Good on the mod team of /r/videos! It must have been a difficult decision to walk away from a 26M+ sized community but I think it’s definitely better to scuttle the ship and go down with it than capitulate at this point. This is a bold choice that’s left Reddit between a rock and a hard place.

    • phi1997@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’m sure they’ll force it to reopen with a new, handpicked mod team that won’t do nearly as good of a job.

      • Hyperz@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I can’t think of a better way to put more gasoline on the fire. If it happens I hope the users revolt and completely shit up any sub where they pull this stunt. Let’s see how long those new mods last then, and how many advertisers they lose.

  • harbo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Lemmy is gonna be rough for a few days at least but after the growing pains we’re going to have an even greater community