Hopefully I’m posting this in the right place, but I see Reddit developments as Tech news right now.
Wanted to share a website that is tracking Subreddits that have/will be going dark. It even has a sound notification for when they change their status.
Edit: Adding the stream https://www.twitch.tv/reddark_247
Double Edit: Data visualization https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/
Just flipped the switch (so to speak) on a couple subs I moderate, and the largest (just shy of 1m users) will be going dark in a few hours.
What surprised me most is how well the members are took it. To be fair the subs I moderated are typically quite tech-minded, so everyone is quite in-the-know with what is happening and why.
It makes me furious that a site built and maintained by the users is being exploited at the users’ expense.
I hope Reddit bleeds money from this silly line they drew in the sand.
I’m curious if you directed the users of those subs to any particular alternative?
I mean, apparently they are already bleeding money, but I doubt that these changes are going to do much to help in that regard.
On two we presented the options abailable (Lemmy, Mastodon, Usnet and so on), on the biggest we didn’t do that. It was a last-minute announcement, so didn’t really have the time (also too many cooks with different recipes, so to speak).
I’m sure it won’t matter in the long run, but should we not try? A giant company runs on advertising. And the time we stop users interacting and engaging with these ads can only be a good thing.
As I’m writing this, 4,669 of 6,934 subs have gone dark.
Its beautiful to see.
Now include links to their preferred lemmy alternatives
At the bottom of the site, it does say “use Lemmy for less reddit shenanigans”
Great idea
“6236/7265 subreddits are currently dark.”
85.83%
That’s a pretty good response from the subs.
I’m hoping that a great deal of mods out there will continue to stay dark if nothing changes. And I expect nothing from Reddit’s admin team to change. Just let the site devalue for the rest of the month to bots posting the same garbage over and over.
Nah the admins will probably change. Just for the worse. If things continue for too long, I fully expect them to kick out the mods for most of the subs and start making mods of scabs
93% now
I don’t know about you, but streaming the “Darkening” is like the best thing ever. Just reading all the comments as viewers cheer on each subreddit.
When r/trees wend private I was thinking “shit just got real.”
Anyway, I suggest watching the stream, if just for the cameraderie.
There’s a trees sub-lemmy but it only had pictures of actual trees when I checked yesterday
It exists on Lemmy.world
No 1. The Larch
This is just beautiful to watch. For once reddit comes together to spite… reddit.
It’s sad though I truly enjoyed Reddit like obviously many here, but also to be fair I’ve also felt like the quality of posts and comments overall degraded and the whole thing turned into a big meme factory where only funny images with text and tiktok reposts really were uploaded.
The whole thing started going downhills as soon as the first tiktok reposts started flooding in to be fairly honest. Let’s please not let this happen much here, unless of course in dedicated communities for that because everything has a place.
Also, this is my first ever post on Lemmy, hi 👋
I feel like this still depended on community. There was plenty of more niche hobby specific communities that were enjoyable. r/coffee comes to mind for me or something like r/fountain pens. I still enjoyed r/Analog although that had it’s own issues.
Yeah there are going to be quite a few TTRPG subreddits that I will miss. I really hope that the fediverse will be able to grow enough that niche interest pages can thrive here like they did over on reddit.
Hello!
There’s something so therapeutic about having Reddark open in a tab in the background - every time I hear the ding, a little voice in my head cheers. Interesting times, folks.
Honestly, even a year ago I don’t think I would have imagined this happening. I wasn’t around for the Digg -> Reddit migration but I wonder if this feels a bit like that.
I went LiveJournal > Digg > Reddit, and there’s definitely a similar energy to the Digg days - but the level of organization we’re seeing here feels totally new. The other difference though, is that the Digg migration had direction. It felt like within a month we had all moved to Reddit. I don’t see that happening here, so really this is uncharted territory. It’ll be fun to watch, that’s for sure.
I predict it’ll be like the Twitter debacle at the end of lady year. It’ll lead to a big migration to the fediverse but many will cling onto the platform as it circles the drain. Maybe Reddit and/or Twitter will manage to pull a GameStop or maybe they’ll crash and burn like RadioShack
It does, but I see it less as a parallel to the Digg v4 migration and more to the AACS encryption key fiasco. Brief context, Digg was taking down posts and accounts referencing a hex code that could be used to decrypt HD-DVDs and Blu-rays. The userbase was very unhappy about it and spammed the front page with the code, rendering Digg basically useless. Digg relented pretty quickly, and the site chugged along for another couple of years or so. The “darkening” of Reddit today feels a lot closer to that moment than to the big Digg v4 switchover. Feels very surreal looking back and having been there for all of it.
This one has a pretty nice look with a list of all 6000 participating subreddits and fading in in real-time when a subreddit goes dark:
So satisfying
Love that site. Great to watch.
Wow /r/nba decided to go dark. So unexpected and huge respect to the mods there. Really huge one with the NBA finals going on too.
How will I know, without jumping onto the game thread, that the refs are terrible, and that both teams are being simultaneously helped and hindered by each and every call for/against them?
The level of unity has been awesome. At first I thought this might only really spread through tech minded subreddits, but it really caught on broadly.
so many have gone dark already, this is impressive.
Is the 5,563 on the side the total number of subreddits!? That would mean 1/5 of all subreddits are now private. :O
Feels a little apocalyptic.
We shall see which subs stay closed past two days. A lot of moderators have said they will reopen because otherwise Reddit will remove them. Saying out loud that the protest is toothless. Only the moderators willing to be removed will have any impact. If there is a mass de-modding that requires Reddit Corporate to fill in permanently with their own mods, only then will lasting actual damage be done. Otherwise, the protest is a speedbump that Corporate won’t even feel.
I think that’s just the number of subs that announced they will go dark.
We’re at 1960/6001 right now. So almost 1/3. And the US is still 6 hours away from midnight, I suspect well over half to be dark eventually.
Here’s a live Twitch stream tracking the subreddits going down based upon your link, which is based upon r/Modcoord .
Yeah, from what I understand, so many gave the website the hug of death they had to switch to streaming to keep the site up.
Whether or not this “Great Darkening” has any legs, it certainly got a lot of publicity.
Wild, how close are we to ‘Twitch plays Reddit’?
There’s a handful of NSFW, but I’m surprised their isn’t more since they are getting hit harder than anyone else.
Wait until tomorrow, I guess.
Man, it’s so satisfying to watch all of these subreddits switch to green. I really wish more of them committed to an indefinite shutdown though.
I know of some that decided to discuss that after the initial 2 day blackout. My guess is that at least a few of the big ones will shut down permanently.
