Technology

The Verge posted the actual memo that was released, you can find that below and the article here

Hi Snoos,

Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.

While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.

Again, we’ll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.

To me, this looks like it was absolutely destined for a public release/intended leak. The victimisation says it all with them crying that their employees are going to get attacked. This is a simply absurd statement.

Any indicated statement from a CEO of a community forum that insinuates that their users, who are currently undergoing a completely peaceful protest, are in fact, volatile enough to attack employees simply doing their job has completely lost the plot. Their position as CEO is completely untenable.

Thanks Reddit for throwing extra wood on the fire. I was getting concerned that it wasn't raging enough.

Fediverse will still take years to get up, but this was a massive boost forward for it, the momentum has shifted.

Blow this, reddit

I don't care if all the subreddits come back. I've already deleted my account and will not be going back.

It's cute how this asshole thinks he's in control lmao, dude hasn't made an original post in his life.

He used rhetoric that any terrible leader would use. The threat of violence is to separate them from us. We see it play out with all our favorite narcissists that run business and our country. Glad I blocked them.

I mean to be honest there's a good chance he's not wrong. I really hope it won't and they will reconsider their decisions but knowing the majority of people this will last for about a week, there is still a decent amount of people who do use the official app and there are a lot of subs that, even if they're part of this black out now, will go up again because a big part their community did not take this situation seriously at all and felt like it's just outrage culture thing or just a temp solidarity thing. Even if it will blow over reddit will never be the same for sure, but it still might be profitable enough to keep it running the way it is. Hope that im wrong though.

Go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all this to blow over!

I can't wait to see how this all pans out. Will we see a "we listened" grovelling non-apology once they realise their core users are gone?

Cool. I was going to hold out hope that something might change. But I've just deleted my account of 12+ years.

You know what, even if it does and everyone goes back. I will be continuing to hang out here I like this community and it's worth keeping this going regardless!

Sadly, I don't think he's wrong. It's quite easy to see how:

1. A lot of people currently on Lemmy still have a pretty big addiction to reddit - I've seen a lot of threads about how they instinctually pull up reddit
2. This is still a vocal minority. There were some statistics (I unfortunately can't pull up the numbers - I think I saw them on a subreddit that has gone private), where the number of people using third party applications was an extremely small number that probably won't move the needle for them revenue-wise.

That being said, I personally have been enjoying the discussions being had on Lemmy. It seems to prompt for better discussion, since it appears that most people here are more tech-adept and willing to go through growing pains. I'll likely stick around, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number of active users here drops once this blackout ends. Still hoping for a change.

Dude's unironically saying "you'll be back" lmao. Well, it sucks that the intimidation tactic of demonstrating our numbers and solidarity with a short strike didn't work as I originally feared. I said a couple times in the lead up to the strike that only striking for two days instead of indefinitely was ultimately going to be a performative move because it would give them assurance that it would be temporary and so ultimately the scene as a temporary inconvenience at most by Reddit management. That to really make them hurt and to make them scared a sizeable portion of subreddits would have to go dark indefinitely.

Someone pointed out to me that the performativity was kind of the point, because it was just a demonstration of concern and solidarity, and I had hoped that would work as a sort of forewarning of a more serious strike if they didn't listen, but that didn't pan out I guess.

He's using the kind of language that abusers do.

I hope he's wrong, but I'm pretty sure he's right. 2 days isn't going to change anything, elpecially if he's willing to lie about everything.

So we're going to do a forever protest on June 30 right?

I expected it but still, it's a shame

Realistically, it will. What’s left behind depends on the mods and users. Reddit isn’t going away that easily. Time will show impact