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Comment by timeagain | Hacker News Reader

I’ma lurker on Reddit. No account, I just browse the top threads to kill time on the bus.

From my perspective absolutely nothing has changed other than some new subreddits hitting the front page. The topics are the same. Maybe a little more international content——I can’t recall “ich_iel” ever making it to the top before.

I understand most users are lurkers like me. With that in mind, I don’t believe these blackouts will accomplish much. They’ll probably accelerate the homogenization of the platform and the race to the bottom in terms of quality, but that is happening anyway. I already know Reddit is mind-numbing days-old TikTok memes, I use it anyway because I like the interface more.

Edit: it isn’t that I am against the blackout, I just think in realpolitik terms it is not effective since most people are really not that invested or interested in participating in activism for their memes.

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I think you’re focusing on your usecase a bit too much - consider the whole “add ‘reddit’ to your google search for better results” dynamic, and the effect of invested users on it. I totally agree with everything you said tho, just not that /r/popular lurkers interested in 15 minutes of memes are the only users important to their bottom line.

After all, it’s important to remember the network effects that made Reddit big could just as easily make something else big to replace it. And think about how my shitty websites there are for midtier memes, and how they don’t hold a candle to Reddit in terms of size or cultural impact - 9gag, Imgur, and even 4chan immediately come to mind

Reddit is not alienating the lurkers. It’s much worse, it’s alienating the power users, the content creators, the sub moderators, etc.

Right. And my point is that it won’t affect their bottom line at all. The power users think they have “communities” but they do not. To us plebs it is mostly an afterthought that there are different subreddits at all. Reddits front page could be totally AI-generated and i bet most users wouldn’t notice. Another day, another “what’s something underrated you think everyone should know” thread.

The power users probably have a higher rate of block installed anyhow, so maybe Reddit will see a little uptick in “engagement”

Exactly. The people generating revenue for Reddit would probably have their mind blown knowing their are other apps and wonder why Reddit ever allowed such a thing.

I think you're misunderstanding how Reddit works. Without the 2% contributors and the moderators there's nothing. There's three hard things about community-based platforms: moderation, content creation, users. Reddit has all three, but it's about to lose the first two, in which case it won't work.

This is the narrative, sure, but Reddit isn’t what it was in 2015. Most of the users have joined since the reskin and these power users are the last vestige of old Reddit. I imagine these power users think they are the important ones, but really it’s the people upvoting memes who click on the occasional ad. Those are the people Reddit care about and they aren’t being alienated because they don’t care.

As I said in another comment, a community not only because there are users, but because 2% of them (approx.) will post content, and because you have good moderation. Reddit is about to lose the last two. Users alone don't make it work.

We shall see, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on you being right

I mean, it’s risking losing. I’m not betting it will lost them either because right now they have nowhere to go. Facebook groups really could have created a space like reddit but they failed to do so.

so r/ich_iel shows up on the current front page? because it's still private[0], and even left a note saying they moved to lemmy.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ich_iel/

ich_iel has been on the front page for years.

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