They finally did it: Reddit made it impossible for blind Redditors to moderate their own sub
Open link in next tab
Reddit - Dive into anything
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14o0lic/they_finally_did_it_reddit_made_it_impossible_for/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14o0lic/they_finally_did_it_reddit_made_it_impossible_for/
I hope reddit advertisers can see this. Why would you want to be associated with a site that discriminates against the blind?
they already lost 4.5bn because of this. Their valuation was cut down to 5.5bn from 10bn just the other day
And if I remember correctly that value cut was from before all this happened so it’s probably fixin to drop even more
Here's hoping. (yeah, I'm an unreasonable, hateful bitch. I despise what they did with the Apollo dev (and others) and I hope it bites them in the arse.)
I wish it lives. May we never forget Aaron's dream for the platform. May we never forget it. It's my goal in life to carry on in his and other's footsteps so we may use what we have made to help others.
He definitely would have been all about ActivityPub, if not involved with bringing it about. Still amazes me that he was one of the inventors of RSS, arguably a proto-ActivityPub.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/30/fidelity-deepens-valuation-cut-for-reddit-and-discord/
Valued at 10 billion when fidelity bought an ownership stake in 2021.
Currently they estimate Reddit is worth 5.6 billion
Well done team, I bet the investor calls are going great!
That valuation cut was from before the whole shitstorm. We've yet to see the impact that this has all had on them, but given the attempts to crush the protests by the reddit admins, when they've just sort of ignored this stuff in the past, its likely not good
On one hand, it's likely exactly what they wanted. They get a vanilla app with vanilla content, perfectly tailored for vanilla investors. The part they forgot is that the beacon of internet culture will never be vanilla.
They tumblr'd themselves and they haven't even 100% gotten to the porn part. I hope all the only fans people on reddit have backups and start jumping ship.
That’s not them actually losing money, though. They’re a private company, not a public one. Their valuation is just what analysts think that they’re worth—it has nothing to do with how much money they have.
But valuation is a very real predictive measure on IPOs, and what Reddit is making all these bad decisions in preparation for. They tried to cut a little more pie by dragging third party app users onto their app to try and increase revenue and bump valuation, it's just that it was so terribly misguided and executed that it had the opposite effect and blew up in their face.
True, but the valuation is for investors and per fucknut, Reddit isn’t making any money, hence the api push to a paid platform.
Also, Reddit is going public soon when they IPO and investors aren’t going to want to invest in a bot ridden, non active community.
I’d say 75%+ used Reddit on their phones and many of them used 3rd party apps.
The point is, Reddit IPOing soon and then this fiasco is the worst thing for them.
Splez recently said he thinks they will now go for the IPO later than they had planned originally. So I guess he's hoping this will blow over, the public/investors will forget and they'll recover. I'm not so sure.
Private companies (which is most businesses) are still worth something. If big investors like Fidelity value your business at $1bn, banks will absolutely consider that as collateral for loans and so on. And if they say your business has halved in value, they’ll consider that too.
Reddit is antsy to effectuate their exit strategy.
Or to put it more simply: everyone with a stake in Reddit, from pigboy Huffman, to institutional investors like Fidelity, to employees who earned equity is eager for Reddit to have their IPO so they can offload their shares on the public stock market.
Their valuation will be an important factor, if not the most important factor, that will determine for which price those stocks will initially be put on the market.
So while slashing the valuation in half will not directly lose them money, it could translate into the initial stock price being half of what they anticipated, causing them to get half of what they would’ve gotten had the valuation not be slashed in half.
There is no way in hell that people with equity in Reddit are not pissed about the slashing of the valuation, since they now anticipate getting a haircut as much as half of what they initially expected to get.
True, but the valuation is for investors and per fucknut, Reddit isn’t making any money, hence the api push to a paid platform.
Also, Reddit is going public soon when they IPO and investors aren’t going to want to invest in a bot ridden, non active community.
I’d say 75%+ used Reddit on their phones and many of them used 3rd party apps.
The point is, Reddit IPOing soon and then this fiasco is the worst thing for them.
Greedy Pig Boy has said for a long time that Reddit isn't profitable. That means they're losing money every year.
It could also be accounting tricks. If they pay themselves a bunch of money, reddit inc. doesn't make a profit, but the individuals working for it do.
I mean I have first editions of the original runs from 1997 when they were brand new to the states. In fact, all of my cards are from the original set that was released, I never collected anything past the first 151 set. I'm not saying their valuation was not inflated, but it's the usual trope of "oh hey, you remember that old nintendo, those old basketball cards, old baseball cards, etc.. I got rid of them" trope
Now something that was super inflated, beanie babies and yes, I still have almost all of the old mcdonald's ones still in bags from when I was a little girl. I don't care that they aren't worth monetary value, they are worth something to me sentimentally. Something I collected with my mom.
There have been reports of the traffic to their advertising portal dropping by about 20% over the past month
I'm actually surprised that metric would change much, because the users viewing ads aren't impacted by changes to the API or third party apps. So that's literally just 20% of people who either stopped using the site in solidarity or couldn't get to their content because of the protests.
It’s not out of solidarity, advertisers are worried they’ll turn into lightning rods: https://www.adweek.com/social-marketing/ripples-through-reddit-as-advertisers-weather-moderators-strike/
If good people left Reddit, then the content that remains for the others might not be good enough to keep them engaged.
I get advocacy and I think this is a major point in the API changes, but the blind community deserves better than to just be ammo for this fight.
u/Spez really didn't take the community seriously with the protests which has lead to this mass exodus. Crazy how they killed their platform so quickly with the writing on the wall in neon bright colors.
"I didn't realize that the big button labeled self destruct would be a problem if I push it. I just wanted more space for my money printing machine to print more money and the button was in the way!"
Really looking hard at how the intention of building a community to sell it at a profit has turned out for Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and now Reddit. People are burned out from constantly trying to chase the next big app. It's at the point now where everyone knows playing into corporate social media will only result in its eventual death, so what's the point in engaging?
I’m curious what the actual traffic differences are today from previous. Is it really a significant exodus, or just a blip in the scheme of things.
There's a huge difference between reading reddit (with ads blocked ;)) and actually being active on reddit (i.e. posting/commenting -- adding content).
I believe the former will not decline so fast, there is simply too much info on reddit, especially on niche subjects, from experts. I'll probably keep 'using' reddit for my search results and such. But I've stopped commenting and posting. Reddit needs content, not just readers/traffic.
If there is a decline it will probably be slow, and it will mostly affect the quality of content. If power users leave, it won't make much difference in quantity, but quality, well... And when it comes to 3rd party apps I would imagine most of those users weren't the casual 'read a few posts a day'-users, but the really active ones.
I'd also be curious to see the difference and if reddit actually felt it in their bottom line
I wonder if this could be considered a violation of the ADA. They have no alternatives in place for people with disabilities.
I have not been on reddit for the past 3 days. I try my best to not visit the site when it comes up in search results, I either use web archive or google cached results to find what I’m looking for.
I read the thread and I kind of cringed inside. I understand the moderators of r/blind want to keep the resources & information accessible but they actually tried to negotiate and sort it out with Reddit according to their words and Reddit just didn’t give a fuck about them. What I would’ve done is just nuke the sub and move to Lemmy yet they continue to eat shit from u/spez
I feel for them.
r/Blind is still a valuable resource for many people. No sense denying people access to it. r/Blind mods already created a Lemmy instance which they try to promote for their members. But learning new software can be challenging when you can't see, especially if the software isn't very accessible.
That is a fair, I just hate to see the community abused like that and being held hostage by one VC schmuck who doesn't understand that he's basically killing his platform.
r/Blind is still a valuable resource for Reddit to exploit many people, especially blind people.
I've not looked for myself, but does Lemmy or Kbin have good, accessible tooling? They're both much more modern so I would expect that it would be a priority, but they're also much less mature so I wouldn't be surprised if little in that way has been implemented yet.
The frontend of Lemmy is an inferno app, which is a JS framework like react.
I noticed that command enter didn't submit comments, so I made both a userscript and then later opened a pull request fixing it. The pull request has already been merged, so should be coming to Lemmy soon.
Back 13 years ago, I built the compact interface to reddit. Now, I'm a much better developer than I was then, but Lemmy front end seems a hell of a lot more organized
I genuinely have no idea, regardless, this Stockholm syndrome needs to stop. Understanding when you’re not welcomed is crucial to a community’s success.
As long the API is free, and anyone can whip up instance suited to their need, it's only a matter of time and effort until a good mod tool is created
Just pointing out that no reasonable person wanted the reddit API to be free, rather just a price that actually reflected the real cost to reddit.
I consider myself pretty reasonable, and I wanted the API usage to stay free. They were already making money from all this advertising. Maybe if they hadn't wasted time and resources on garbage features no one needed, they wouldn't have had to create this mess.
Honestly, considering the state of modern capitalism, someone at Reddit probably got scolded cuz some dickhead executive hadn't been able to buy enough yachts this year or some shit.
Rome wasn't built in a day. We're seeing in real-time solid apps pop into existence. The one I'm using right now was only released a few weeks ago. Sync is a big one that just released their app today, albeit under a "coming soon" tag.
It's pretty crazy what's going on right now.
they actually tried to negotiate and sort it out with Reddit according to their words and Reddit just didn’t give a fuck about them.
More than that, during his AMA, spez actually said he was actively working with them. Fucking liar!
This is following a predictable pattern:
Person/group reaches out to admins in good faith to discuss changes.
They don't hear anything at all.
Reddit touts them as an example of how they're working with people.
The admins get back to them.
They don't listen or care about the concerns and aren't going to change anything.
they actually tried to negotiate and sort it out with Reddit according to their words and Reddit just didn’t give a fuck about them.
More than that, during his AMA, spez actually said he was actively working with them. Fucking liar!
Things are getting worse. Some subreddits like /r/breastfeeding, which were private from the start, are now being forced by Reddit to make their subreddits public. It's completely stupid. r/breastfeeding NEEDS to stay private to keep creeps and weirdos away.
Someone needs to start a "campaign" for naming and shaming companies who advertises on Reddit. "[This company] supports a company that actively discriminates against the disabled. #SayNoToReddit"
I already cancelled my Dashlane, after they did an AMA on Reddit during the blackout. I don't support companies who cross picket lines.
Don't know what else to say in agreement to your comment but I very much agree with it
We need to start taking back power from corporations because without us they are nothing
Transfer our reliance away from corporations as much as possible
honestly yes. While I do think "ableism" is sometimes took to a bit of an extreme, in this case it's good... and serves the good purpose of making Reddit even less money, which is a good purpose in and of itself!
This is the way, hitting Reddit where it hurts.
People can complain and try to make Reddit listen but they do not care. As long as they have money rolling in from ads.
What's so stupid is that they don't even have to do that. alt text can be fucking handled by eslint and a pipeline checker. This is basic devops. Reddit has 1400 employees, wtf are they doing?
r/interestingasfuck has been abandoned for a week after the mods were given the boot. I think r/TIHI is also left closed without mods. If the admins were going to act as interim mods, they would have already started with those two. I don't think they've even removed the porn from the former yet.
11 days now and still no mods. Lmao.
Edit: Haha, TIHI pinned a "looking for new mods' post and it says "no experience required." It almost sounds like they're desperate. :D
Getting increasingly frustrated with management decisions while knowing their hands are tied. Being "that guy/gal" who comes up with ideas is an outlier that must be squashed at this point. Everyone is keeping their heads down as long as their pay check clears. Good odds that most are looking for work, but everyone's got mouths to feed so I don't slight the staff in this at all.
Plebbit: "Oh, look! Our loyal users are disliking our new changes. Hmm... maybe we should screw with em by messing with their (basic and expected) user freedom! That will make em go back to their e-home, that's for sure!"
This would be illegal in the EU if true, websites MUST be accessible to those with disabilities. There are no exceptions.
I'm not so sure about the "no exceptions"... I assume you're refering to the Web Accessibility Directive here. It specifically states this:
This directive does not apply to public service broadcasters or non-governmental organisations that do not provide services that are essential to the public or specifically to people with disabilities.
This is very much an exception, and a big one at that.
Since reddit does not provide services essential to the public, they are not required to comply with web accessibility standards.
I'm happy to be proven wrong here, but this is how i interpreted it and it would cause a lot of problems if the EU started going after private websites (which reddit still is, they are not a public sector, nor do they provide essential services to the public) and force them to be accessible.
I'm not up-to-date with the latest in accessibility, but does lemmy cater for those who need assistive tech? (just curious)
Just taking a shot in the dark, but I'm assuming if people were making the needed third party apps for Reddit before, they can repeat this task for Lemmy.
(Please correct me if I'm wrong though.)
Thing about Lemmy is, since its federated, and fully opensource, even if it doesn't right now, adding an accessible interface is trivial. Be it through forks/pull requests, separate clients or frontends, or as a full-fledged federated peer focused on accessibility
Exactly somebody, anybody, can just submit a pull request for their improvement and it's done. No running the change up the flagpole, getting it approved by the board, or developing a six week communication strategy over a high contrast button.
And even if they don't want to merge it, you can fork and run it, and still have access to the same content and whatnot, because it's federated
Mastodon shows this, with the whole pleroma/akkoma stuff, where an elixir based implementation became inactive, and was then forked and maintained
You are absolutely correct. Lemmy's federated nature basically guarantees that free / affordable API access will always be available to app developers.
I've tried out a couple of the apps, and I know of a few others. I've used Connect (which I'm on right now and enjoying it) and Jerboa which was nice. There's also Thunder, boost is being made, Wefwef, and some more. I cannot speak to any of their accessibility functions, but seeing how quickly they're being made to fill in for what 3rd party apps were for reddit, I would expect the devs would add those same or similar features. Especially since some of the devs who made the reddit 3rd party apps are making them for Lemmy now as well. Again, I cannot speak any of that as fact since I don't have sources, but that's what I would expect.
I would assume that Lemmy is not very accessible yet, but Lemmy’s mobile apps are under a month old. They are making fast progress and I would expect that to change very soon.
However, Reddit’s app has been out for years and they have been told about its accessibility problems for just as long. The impression I get is that they didn’t prioritize accessibility since third-party apps handled that for them. When they cut off access to these apps, they made it very clear that they have no alternatives in mind; they consider the visually-impaired userbase to be insignificant and simply don’t care about their issues.
Lemmy’s mobile apps are under a month old
At least one (Jerboa) is considerably older than that, but just hasn't had a lot of polish put into it because it's a first-party app and the devs were prioritizing working on the server software itself.
Lemmy is open source and built by the community - the apps are all third party - with the exception of Jerboa, which is maintained by the same maintainers as Lemmy and lemmys default web interface.
So if the community want accessibility, they can do it themselves, submitting code to the maintainers for consideration or building their own interface based on the official and universal API that all interfaces use.
Essentially the official app is official only because of who maintains it - it has just as much privilege and the same access as the other apps and interfaces, and that's why the app is not called "The Lemmy App" but rather "Jerboa for Lemmy"
Thee official web interface is official and named "Lemmy-UI" not only because of the maintainers but also because it's bundled with the standard instance backend code - you set up a standard Lemmy instance package, it comes with "Lemmy-UI" as it's basic interface, alongside thus it also includes additional tools and access for instance admins to use to administer the instance while it's running. (Defederation and Federation settings, wether to enabled downvoted, 2FA and many other settings)
Eh I wouldn’t call it sad. Reddit is literally just a forum hosting site. The fact you and I are posting here is proof that there are many other avenues for random people to communicate ideas to each other.
Yes, but all of that knowledge available in one place, all extremely easy to navigate through conventional search engines or pushshift-based ones… it’s going to take a lot to rebuild that here (and maybe even more for search engines to understand how to properly index fediverse pages). All because a greedy ass started idolizing the most self-centered person alive.
This is happening because it's about to become obsolete and redundant. This is their last grasp at trying to make the last ten years worthwhile.
Obsolete and redundant? Google themselves said their search results were heavily impacted from the blackout. It fulfills a niche no other social media has (well, except the fediverse or Reddit clones but I doubt they were afraid of them) and it was working perfectly for the common user. Only issue is it wasn’t ready for IPO, and spez really wanted to go public.
I’m curious how accessible Lemmy is to users who need to use assistive technology, and whether the many 3rd party app developers are making their apps accessible.
The nice thing about open source is that motivated developers can fill out whats needed.
In for-profit companies there's always some money-making feature that kicks accessibility down the road. The way I get my work colleagues to give a fuck is to remind them that most blind people aren't born that way, some circumstance causes the blindness - and therefore any one of them could end up on the other side of the fence begging for basic access one day, so act accordingly now.
It's kind of terrible that you have to argue like that. I mean shouldn't the very fact that you can be born blind be a great argument for accessibility?
After all, any of them could have drawn that number in the birth lottery.
Actually, open-source software can be great for accessibility and I've been testing Lemmy with a screen reader.
Overall Lemmy is pretty close right now once a few roadblocks are removed. The audio captcha was broken, I helped fix that in the code just a couple of days ago but it hasn't been released yet (at least not in lemmy.world).
After that I mostly see more subtle issues, not complete deal breakers. I haven't started looking at moderator features, though.
I'm not sure about the current offerings, but I think former Reddit apps transitioning to Lemmy (such as Sync) should retain any accessibility compatibility/features they had.
Spez is such an ableist fascist who is so delusional in his own ego that all the lawsuits and low valuation of reddit will most likely come as a shock to him.
Wow, why am I surprised... They said they were going to keep accessibility for the blind, but it sucks so bad, it's useless.
So dumb.
PS - It's quite awful reading reddit after being here. I uninstalled RES, and good lord reading the comment chains now is ghastly.
The incompetency would be hilarious if not for the fact that it's actively harmful to online communities