Reddit suffers a major outage after thousands of subreddits temporarily shut down - The company blamed the protest for causing issues across its website and mobile apps.

submitted by neolib from (engadget.com)

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[–]magnora7 16 insightful - 3 fun16 insightful - 2 fun17 insightful - 3 fun -  (13 children)

I think it's important but I also kind of agree. To me, it was obvious reddit was wrecked 5+ years ago, which is why I made saidit. It's kind of been blowing my mind how slowly reddit has collapsed, especially compared to digg which basically imploded overnight. Reddit did a good job containing the damage of public revolts compared to digg, despite all their other failures

[–]bananahammock 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (10 children)

I doubt there will be much of a dent in their 430 million active monthly user base, most of whom may not know much about the purpose of the strike. But this is a very interesting time for Reddit that - ideally - should cost them users and - ideally - get them to think much more about how they've fucked up with the layoffs, other restrictions and incredibly greedy API pricing ("Imgur charges him $166 for 50 million calls compared to Reddit's now-$12,000"). Traffic disruption was likely bot-related, for reasons noted below, where there are much better explanations of why the strike has been necesary:

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api

[–]magnora7 16 insightful - 2 fun16 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 2 fun -  (7 children)

Minus the bots and shills, I really wonder how many human beings are active on that website every month. I bet it's 1/10th of their stated number, they're trying to drive up valuations and metrics with bot activity, and reddit has done this from day 1 when they made tons of fake accounts to make reddit look popular, until it actually was. Saidit never did that. So reddit has a long long history of fluffing itself up to make it look like more than it is.

But overall I agree with the strike. I just think that a strike shouldn't have a fixed ending date, or they'll just wait it out and go back to normal. Also this should've happened years ago, there was just never enough of a unifying event until this API fiasco.

[–]LordBeetusRises 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Totally agree on the ending date thing. If anything, it should be a monthly strike, which includes deliberately supporting reddit alternatives. This would be devastating to Reddit. With long term consequences.

[–]magnora7 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Monthly is a good idea too. Also a strike should have a goal and if the goal is accomplished the strike should end. I assume the goal is "end the API request fees" but several 3rd party services have already been killed off, so I'm not sure what a win looks like at this point.

I think the only real win is migrating off of reddit, because reddit is obviously culturally broken at the root, and it's not like the CEO is magically going to start behaving properly because of this strike. We know where reddit stands, and it has been this way for a long time, so we should be acting on it by migrating to other platforms.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]magnora7 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Agreed, although I'm not even sure what a decent compromise would honestly look like in practice. Just a complete walkback of everything they stated in the last few months? Even then, the problem still persists that made them try it in the first place, the motivations and people that caused it are not changed at all. Leaving reddit and planting roots on other forums is the only true way forward, imo. The huge power reddit has over the information flow of the current internet is insane, and that is the actual root problem underneath all the other problems. It's too centralized, and the power is being abused. Instead there needs to be many more forums that are all frequently used. Putting all our eggs in one basket was never a good idea.

    I have to say the current strike method has succeeded in generating quite a bit of conversation though, which is good.

    [–]divingrightintowork 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

    It's really good for like niche subjects that once upon a time may have had their own message boards, like "Culinary mold," "old sierra game lovers."

    [–]TaseAFeminist4Jesus 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Yeah, and now we don't get to have those niche boards anymore. We just have Reddit, and everything there is a certain way. Terrible IMO.

    [–]ExplodingToasterOven 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    The bots and shills have nothing to mine except for the fringe subreddits. And who the fuck wants to spam someones shoe fetish bullshit for karma?

    [–]ExplodingToasterOven 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

    Honestly, I'm mostly just there for the porn these days. Being able to do any kind of real discourse or debate, nah, doesn't work. It ends up being one big echo chamber where they shut out anyone who doesn't think like everyone else.

    [–]TitsAndWhiskey 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Yeah same. The format here has real promise. And it’s probably time for me to cut back on the titties anyway.

    [–]MaiqTheTrue 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

    Because of third party apps overriding the actual interface. The average user doesn’t see the overuse of ads, the avatars, the chat, etc. Digg never had a bunch of third party apps to fix his code for them so the changes stuck out more.

    [–]magnora7 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    That's a good point. I thought reddit screwed this up when they moved to the redesign, but their smart move was keeping old.reddit.com. If they got rid of that during the redesign several years ago, we probably would've seen a digg situation. Smart move on reddit's part to keep the legacy design accessible.