Originally published at: Site tracks subreddits planning to go dark over Reddit's initial public enshittification | Boing Boing
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Reddit is the only major social media site organised in the way that Google used to (until its IPO) organise the web. Things were voted for, ranked, by links to something and respect those links had. Obviously they dropped that in 2003 in preparation for the cash grab and have been getting worse and worse ever since.
In general search is broken on what’s left of the open web. While people clutch their pearls about returning “AI” written results, they have actually been ranking chum sites and networks of chum sites for years.
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I feel bad for those who prefer those apps, or who need them for accessibility issues where web browsers won’t work. Otherwise, I shrug and say “let Reddit burn it all down.” It’s not the first and won’t be the last. I’ll keep hanging until the moment they take away my “old reddit.”
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So another third act protagonist turns evil; time for a shiny new rebel leader (neoDigg!) whom we’ll hope has a good run before they also turn evil*…? (“whelp it’s back to usenet for me” nah, google killed that with ‘groups’)
(*evil in this context being suddenly all in for profit rather than holding to some sense of happy community origins)
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Me too. What will probably happen is someone will write an app that hits web page directly instead of through an API and then scrapes and prettifies the result to look like old reddit.
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I’m actually a little surprised that isn’t already a thing… some kind of master CSS layer that de-shittifies their UI into something that is actually usable.
If uBlock Origin can do it for ads, and FBP for f***book, surely someone can dev something up for Reddit.
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I unpinned my Reddit tab and I’m waiting to see if it’s worth coming back to after the blackout.
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To be fair, It has been shit for years and I had to hack it to even be usable on desktop. On top of that the community overall has been shit since gamergate. Around 2016 I also backed out of there as a regular thing as so many places got more and more toxic. I had to start running extensions that showed if a user was a member of various horrible groups.
I only go there once in a great while for some tech info on obscure shit.
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I’ve heard people say this a lot, but why not just conduct a search you feel that Reddit will return better results for… in Reddit? (serious question, not driving trollies) I mean, the search function kind of sucks, but so does Google now.
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I’m guessing 75% of Reddit’s traffic comes from mobile apps nowadays. Sure at home using a browser is what people use for Reddit but outside the home on the phone the apps are superior.
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From what I’ve seen, you’re not far off. It’s closer to a 70/30 split. But I never use apps for anyone’s web service. You can’t control them like you can a browser, and I won’t let a company control me.
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Oh well. Reddit will be replaced by something. Web sites always are. Nothing on the internet lasts except for embarrassing pictures.
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I see Steve Huffman, Reddit’s CEO, is doing an AMA on the site later today. It’ll be interesting to see if it turns into a total car crash - not least regarding the slurs Reddit made about the Apollo app’s author, or if it is moderated into oblivion like one of Putin’s press conferences.
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Nothing forever can remain.
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All this coordinated enshittification…
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One would almost believe a conspiracy to remove digital public squares, and replace them with disjointed algorithmic cesspools with tracking apps
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I can use google to find what I need on reddit faster and more reliably than I can find it through reddit search.
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Looks like the AMA didn’t come up with anything that would stop the blackout
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The going dark is moot for me. I only used Apollo, so I’ve already put in the GDPR request since my reader is shuttering on the 30th.
I’m also surprised in a way that BoingBoing is still chugging along. Pleasantly surprised, I should say. And also all the other blogs in my RSS feed.
And you fellow BBS grognards are also a constant source of smiles. So thank you as well.
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I’ve noticed that reddit has recently made it harder to work with images, at least in Safari.
Sometimes, I liike to open up images in new windows, so I can read the fine print. Sometimes I want to pass them to an OCR program.
But this is how reddit opens up “jpg” files-- as a html document embedding the jpg. Recursion!
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It might be a safari bug, but it strikes me as hostile to the end user.
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