Most people here are probably already aware of the situation on Reddit. This is a thread to discuss it here.
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New poll is up. I’m going to unsticky this thread tomorrow because I’d rather talk about flashlights than Reddit.
Personally, as much as I loved Reddit, I think there needs to be a move away from centralized platforms that can keep pulling this shit time after time. Hopefully there’s a way to ensure the contents of r/flashlight are archived for posterity, but I don’t think I’d be terribly inconvenienced if it was, for instance, permanently locked.
The community is the people, not the place, and I’m happy to be seeing familiar faces here already.
Has anyone tried archiving r/flashlight on archive.org yet?
IMO, it would be best to leave r/flashlight in restricted mode forever, so people can still see the useful info. Then officially announce the transfer to Lemmy (or kbin), and just rebuild the community.
At this point, completely opening r/flashlight again will make the community look weak, in the eyes of the R3ddit the company. In my honest opinion, of course.
Just a note of support from the soon to be ex mod of r/edc!
Welcome. I should probably put /c/edc@sopuli.xyz in the sidebar to encourage some intermingling.
Are you one of the ones responsible for burning that sub down?
The sub hasn’t been burned down. It’s engaging in the extended protest. There’s a difference.
… basically the same thing at this point. Especially since you pretty much threw up the “taking my toys and going home” approach. Hopefully your next mods will be more competent and logical.
Hi, everyone! I’ve really missed r/flashlight. This does feel something like home, though. Glad to be here!
It’s been 48hrs. Is r/flashlight coming back or has the mod team decided to make the blackout indefinite?
It’s reopened as restricted with a poll about what to do next.
I think you might end up with an echo chamber over on Reddit, as people will likely stick to a single platform
'Sup Lemmys. Just made an account here.
I actually hated the move from digg to reddit, mostly because I thought digg having post previews was so much better for readability and avoiding clickbait than reddit. But now Lemmy has them!
The interface is a bit of getting used to, but I’m already noticing lots of nice features.
Like, did you know you don’t need a multi-billion dollar company in order to make a functional mobile site? Crazy!
I have now been on Lemmy for approximately 90 seconds! Layout feels an awful lot like Reddit, seems like it’ll be relatively easy to navigate. Are there apps that work well here, or is web-based the best way to go? I thought about downloading the Mastodon app and trying to access this community from there, but I honestly don’t have a solid understanding of the entire decentralized Fediverse thing.
Either way, thanks for creating a backup community Zak!
There’s Mlem (iOS) and Jerboa (Android), but they’re not very mature and the web interface seems like the way to go right now.
Appreciate it. I just got Mlem from TestFlight, will check it out in a bit. One of the most recent patch notes seems to imply that they hope they fixed the issue of accounts being deleted between logins, so I might hold off for juuuust a little bit.
May get buried in this little bit older post, but I did see this discussion going on over at r/modcoord.
https://reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/149apf9/campaigns_have_notched_slightly_lower_impression/
Seems to imply that even smaller subs being closed could be generating a noticeable impact on Reddit’s long-term advertising. Would suggest that these strikes will have an impact if they go on longer. I’m unsure honestly, trying to listen with an open mind but this at least seems like an actual attempt at looking at the situation as opposed to anyone saying ‘this is dumb, won’t do anything so there’s no point.’
That said, I’m still sympathetic to those who say they want the sub back. I do too! Locking out my favorite place on Reddit has been very obnoxious—but I voted to keep it closed and re-vote again with more info on Monday.
I really wish I’d used contest mode instead of a poll. Some people were upset and confused about the result, but I really do want to do whatever the majority of the community who’s engaged enough to vote about it prefers.
I have my own opinions of course, but I’m trying to be realistic. I don’t think shutting down communities permanently is a good approach, and completely moving a community to a new place never quite works. I don’t plan to move away from Reddit entirely and will continue to participate as long as there’s a friendly community there and old.reddit remains usable.
I do, however believe Lemmy is a better approach than Reddit going forward, and I will be de-emphasizing Reddit in some ways TBD.
Moving to a new site can work really well. After all reddit grew when people abandoned digg. And even though BLF is more active now CPF still exists.
Good point. Let’s make Reddit the new Digg by moving to Lemmy!
How would contest mode have improved the outcome? Right now this whole vote feels like a sham, as the mods didn’t like how it was going so they skewed the results by adding two opinions together. If you don’t want to be there anymore I encourage you to seek out someone else to take your spot instead of just restricting the community and walking away.
Contest mode would have improved the outcome because it is possible to vote on every option, so the vote is not split between similar options.
If I wanted to run a poll where people can only pick one option and make sure option B wins even if option A might be more popular, I could do this:
- A
- A, but slightly different
- B
I realized I had done exactly that by accident so I changed it the best way I could think of at the time.
Nobody intends to restrict the community and walk away. As long as the community is restricted, there will be a poll at least weekly. In the mean time, welcome to Lemmy. It’s smaller, but growing, and we have fun stuff like comments with direct image uploads.
I want to say that most would agree with how you ended up doing the poll, but this is clearly a pretty polarizing issue for the entirety of Reddit. I do hope that most members of the community can at least give you the benefit of the doubt considering the time and effort you’ve put into keeping the sub a beneficial and helpful place.
At any rate, we’re only looking at a few more days and then another round of voting and it sounds like you’ve figured out how to run a better poll next time. I know I appreciate you and Zeroair—and now you and Adair, looks like—for working to keep up with a place to discuss and learn about the hobby.
Thanks. I’ve definitely gained some additional respect for the people who run real elections.
I’d vote for you.
Are you/they planning to add them together against the “stay open” option again too? From what your saying the “open” option would have won already in the previous vote.
Regardless, leaving the community restricted with a vote will lead to less folks caring about the sub over time and eventually it dying off. There’s about 175k folks there vs about 400-ish here - this place isn’t the answer to putting a quality sub on life support.
Are you/they planning to add them together against the “stay open” option again too?
No. Why would I do that? Since contest mode allows voting for multiple options, that would result in some people getting two votes.
See here for why the two protest options were combined.
Because it happened last time when the poll didn’t go as you wanted. I’m sure you understand many having skepticism about this.
You don’t know how I wanted the poll to go. It absolutely wasn’t clear how it would go at the time of the edit; about 150 votes had been cast at the time compared to an eventual 2200.
I appreciate your work getting the community over to Lemmy!
💯 Lemmy is 🔥. People need a place to go, and with subreddits closing down, this is the perfect time and place for folks to express themselves and have fun.
@Zak, agree with above. Thanks for being our awesome mod no matter what platform that may mean.
The whole API thing is a non-issue to me personally other than the effect on moderators because I never used the apps. Tried Reddit’s app once and found it pretty basic, almost crude, so stayed on the PC Browser side of Reddit.
I mainly use old.reddit.com on a PC, but this decision tells me that Reddit takes its users for granted, especially the volunteer moderators and content creators who actually make the site valuable enough to attract other visitors. Building communities on top of somebody else’s for-profit walled garden was probably always a mistake.
Building communities on top of somebody else’s for-profit walled garden was probably always a mistake.
This right here.
Just got signed up.
Oh man! I was hoping this community would come over! Glad to have the flashlight community here!
This explains the sudden influx of flashlight posts on lemmy’s “all” page
I’m actually impressed with Reddit’s management stupidity of not only shooting itself in the foot with that idiotic API fees thing, but then to actually sawing off the whole foot by sticking to it. I just posted a comment to that effect on an r/AskReddit topic to that effect: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1470boa/comment/jo2y3qm
I guess the so-called “management” doesn’t care because it doesn’t see losing users and communities as a problem: as long as they can make some profit in the short run, the long run be damned – and even if they end up losing money in the short run too, the worst that can happen to said “management” is pulling the rip cord on their golden parachutes and going on to some other promising company to eff it up like they’re doing with Reddit, rinse and repeat… “other people’s money” (and interests) and all that… :-(
Thanks again @Zak for prodding us to move to Lemmy with your decision to black out r/flashlight and your awesome blog post – initially I was pissed at the blackout, but now I support you 100%.
I strongly suspect Reddit shareholders want to IPO and cash out with no regard for what happens to the company afterward. That means pumping up metrics like app installs and ad impressions without regard to the long-term impact. They probably underestimated the speed and severity of the backlash.
Best way to punish these creeps is to shove their precious IPO to the curb – hit 'em where it hurts. I for one haven’t logged into Reddit since the SNAFU began, between IRC and BLF and Lemmy (in that order) I have all the fun I need, and Reddit be damned.
