this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (7 children)

The subs going dark should have only been half of the protest. Users should have also stayed away from the site but I don't think that was really coordinated.

The number of new posts didn't drop much, the comments dropped a bit more but only by like 20%, which isn't a lot given the amount of subs that went dark. Reddit doesn't care about subs, they care about users and it seems engagement was still pretty high.

The next protest should be to all users to stop using the site. Drop the users and they'll start to listen.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Before asking people to leave, subs creator should create similar communities on Lemmy

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Exactly this. A long term blackout, especially a user blackout, is not feasible without a replacement place to go to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

leaving this in lieu of lemmy gold.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure none of them thought about that because they're basically just doing this out of anger. They know it won't change reddits decision so they want to take it away from all the users that don't really care about third party apps or mod tools.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Create coordinated groups on lemmy and dump all comments in the sub they mod. Sure, Reddit could restore, but it would be just one more hassle for their IT staff

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I tried to do my part and heavily restricted my visits to the site. I checked the state of my feed and user profiles a select few times but always left almost immediately.

I even redirected my reddit browser bookmark to a local website which acted as a warning wall, just to stop me from my subconsciously opening and browsing the site.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I did similar, I swapped my shortcuts/apps for ones going to Lemmy. The muscle memory has worked in my favour.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think a non-insubstantial amount of the comment activity was bots to be fair.

[–] erezac 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Medium-substantial. Midstantial?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think this is true but I think it has always been the case. The question is were there more bots than usual and I'm unconvinced there was.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Indeed. Users should have joined in. I did my part at least, I haven't used the site in days and I've also removed all of my comments and submissions.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honest question, (I don't expect you to know) how many of those were some form of bot?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nobody really knows, but I personally don't think there were any more bots on Monday than there was a week earlier. It's a nice story that users dropped with the subs going dark, but I think it might be wishful thinking on our part. To my knowledge there's zero evidence to suggest that they were mostly bots.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The submissions remaining steady while comments dropped off a cliff is eyebrow raising, however given how much the site struggled to handle so many private subs from a technical perspective, I strongly suspect reddit didn't really do much ahead of the blackout. I think the steady submissions compared to the decreased comments tell us more about an average day of reddit how many submissions are bot submitted than it tells us about a change in bot behavior that day.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah when the blackout started I disabled my Reddit app and haven't been back there once since. We need more people doing this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I went back to post on the "We're back from the Blackout" posts to go let them know about the new communities that were started up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I did that for a few that I'm interested in and got downvoted immediately. There's definitely some bot like activity trying to flood content/organic growth on the communities polling/figuring out what's next, so that users would flock back. They are also pushing back on alternatives when a good ol person would be just curious/happy/relieved that there's some semblance of carry-over away from Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

all the subs I liked were dark anyways so opening my app showed super old posts that were cached or blackout notices. Couldn't go back of I tried