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Comment by llm_nerd | Hacker News Reader

It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one.

Loads of reddit users are annoyed by the blackout thing and find the arguments for it unconvincing. I mean personally I think all of the blackout people should just leave Reddit. Delete your accounts, delete your comments, resign as mods. Let the rest of reddit just move on.

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> delete your comments

Given reddit is apparently restoring deleted comments, that's going to be a useless gesture.[1]

I agree with the sentiment though; if people en masse migrated away from Reddit the way they did with Digg, that would be the only really impactful long-term gesture.

Edit: Regarding the sockpuppet thing, I mean, we've literally seen that happen a number of times. When you see an account created in 2023 with no comment activity at all post, sure, that could be a lurker deciding to comment on this one very contentious issue. When you see a dozen in a sub that has 100k subscribers, that's odd but probably not unreasonable. When you see thousands, maybe something is going on.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/14av2z3/reports_of...

I've been exploring the fediverse options like kbin and lemmy and I just don't see it. Maybe someone can explain. If one lemmy instance has a really popular community, say "Memes" how can that scale? There could be millions of posts and terabytes of data. Then if multiple lemmy instances have their own "Memes" communities, that's balkanized and a user would have to subscribe to each instances "Memes" community?

Or are communities federated also? Like all instances "Memes" communities get pulled together? Examining [1] that appears to not be the case.

[1] https://lemmy.world/c/android

You can subscribe to the Memes@lemmy.world community from your account on another instance, even if your instance has its own Memes community. Then when you create a thread or post a reply, it'll be sent from your instance to lemmy.world.

You can have an account on one instance and subscribe to a community on another. There's no need for every instance to have a "memes" community, though there will undoubtedly be more than one. Then you can subscribe to the one(s) you like best. Not unlike how Reddit tends to have multiple subreddits for popular things with different mods, norms, and feels.

It is unlike that, because it scales completely differently. Basically what the GP is saying is that it's not possible (economically) in the Fediverse to create a community as large as, say, /r/funny.

Basically the federation is happening at the wrong level for that, since the whole community needs to be on a single server.

Well, I was attempting to reply to questions in the second half of the post.

That being said, I don't think communities of that size should really be the goal in the fediverse.

I assume there'd be a limit on the number of popular communities each server can handle. CommunityA@ServerB and CommunityC@ServerD can grow separately and you could participate in both.

If you had CommunityA at both, eventually everyone might migrate to ServerB; but then there's more room on ServerD for other communities.

Does this mean that instances that happen to have the popular communities gets hosed on hosting costs? Or stop submissions? Meanwhile "CommunityA" on other instances starve for content and subscribes. If that's true, communities should be federated as well. Like a user should be able to subscribe to "CommunityA" and get that content from all instances who have a "CommunityA".

Or is that totally off?

AFAICT yes. Posts are federated, but nothing else is.

I think one looking for alternatives needs to understand what they're hoping to gain from other resources.

If you want low effort jokes, or memes, the most likely outcome is you're going to migrate to where the most people are. Similar to how some subreddits overtook others in popularity, there'll be a federated instance that "wins". We're sort of in a new frontiers phase where people are scrambling to find new homes and there'll be a lot of duplication until winners and losers are settled.

But in the end, if good memes come out of the most populous place. Reddit will probably just simply be the best you have. Anything else will be second rate. Perhaps 'the best' will make its rounds through all sites as reposts just as 9Gag stuff and Imgur stuff finds its way to Reddit or Twitter, or TikTok.

But back to the main point. Lemmy/kbin/etc likely will never be reddit. I'm okay with that because I found most value in smaller niche communities (similar to how HackerNews scratches an itch that Reddit never could). I think there'll be plenty of opportunity to drop my reddit habits as I find moderately active NetSec/Programming/Networking/etc. communities on Lemmy. I'll keep Imgur for lazy image humor, and probably nod to reddit for catching the beat on my local community/provincial subs.

I still see it perhaps as a positive for myself. Loosening my Reddit addiction will be healthy long term. I'll be forced to make decisions on what topics matter to me and how I'll consume them instead of blindly marching through reddit on another doomscroll because it was convenient.

Your comment didn’t address any of OP’s questions lol

I've a fifteen year account and I've found alternatives for my interests that I'm happy with now. Don't think I'll be on Reddit much from now on.

It's a shame as I really enjoyed it while it lasted, especially in the early days.

> Given reddit is apparently restoring deleted comments, that's going to be a useless gesture.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't this weaken Reddit's claim to Section 230 immunity? As in, they cross the line from simply being a provider of user generated content to being a publisher of it? We're not talking normal moderation but rather publishing what was marked for deletion.

It's also an entirely understandable view.

Average Reddit user doesn't care about APIs, they may not realise what it means or much more likely they don't even have a third party app!

To them their hangout just got taken away.

That's the same defeatest advice people always give when you don't like the direction of your country/state/municipality/etc. you should leave/move/etc. I say absolutely not and if you have invested time and energy into something (I've had my reddit account a bit longer than my HN one) then you can and should fight for it. I don't have a vision disability and so am not very impacted by the killing of 3rd party acts but this is an act of solidarity to support those who are (However minor most of our sacrifice is). The least I can do is not complain that my daily quota of cat pictures is unfairly impacted.

You argue the critical importance of Reddit -- equivocating it with legislative bodies (which I find fantastically ridiculous, as an aside) -- but then you also dismiss people annoyed by the blackout as missing out on only cat pictures. It's an extreme example of someone arguing both sides.

Though of course what you probably intend to convey is that people who find the blackout annoying can be dismissed because they're just those weird cat picture people -- they just don't understand the importance like you do, and thus don't count -- and is a perfect example of my point.

I don't care about the API issue, despite being a professional dev. I find sharecropping on someone else's product a perilous path that eventually comes up snake-eyes. Like, the moment someone makes a third party app for Reddit, Twitter, Snapchat, or anything else, they are on an expiry meter. Have people not learned this yet?

The blackout thing didn't work because most people don't care, so some people have stomped their feet and effectively started trying to vandalize the site and I think it's achieving absolutely nothing.

> don't care about the API issue, despite being a professional dev. I find sharecropping on someone else's product a perilous path that eventually comes up snake-eyes. Like, the moment someone makes a third party app for Reddit, Twitter, Snapchat, or anything else, they are on an expiry meter. Have people not learned this yet?

You are missing the forest for the trees here. The issue is not that they are charging for API access. The issue is that assurances were given that the transition would be reasonable but pricing withheld until the last minute.

Negotiations then proceeded in bad faith, with reddit never intending to allow them to pay the price asked (no methods existed to even make this transaction possible with a 30 day deadline, and other app creators were ignored completely when approaching reddit sales).

When the dev made the situation public (with a 'go ahead' from reddit) then Huffman appears to have taken it personally, and instead of engaging with the community concerns about lack of options for mobile moderators, went on a tantrum. He then discounts any concerns over his handling of the situation and doubles down on libelous claims that were proven false.

This is on top of using reasoning that is not only dubious, but contradictory. If they really care about making a profit, why not offer something of value and charge for it, like the 3rd party apps do? You don't win customers by making something shitty and then removing all of their options and then not even have a plan in place to make money with the shitty alternative.

Huffman has been unable to monetize reddit and he isn't presenting any way to. All he is doing is acting unhinged and destructive -- with both community trust/relations and the corporation itself being used in ways that can not be turned around.

Usually corporations burn their trust as a short-sighted scheme to make a bunch of money quickly (reputable brand cuts so many costs the reputation is lost, etc) and this is tragic, but at least they got something out of it.

This guy seems like he is just burning things down because he is frustrated that they exist successfully on their own using the same resources he has, while he cannot.

It's a metaphor and doesn't need to be perfect. My point was merely "don't like it, then leave" is useless advice IMO. I didn't say reddit is critical exactly (though maybe it is for many who frequent https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/), only that it has value to many. Strikes and demonstrations and such are ALWAYS inconvenient by design. That doesn't mean they are pointless. BART strikes and BLM protests impacted me a lot more than reddit blackouts but I still supported them.

Ultimately we are ALL sharecropping where the majority of the web is "owned/gatekeeped" by a handful of big companies like google, meta, microsoft, amazon, twitter (?), visa, mastercard, paypal, yelp, cloudflare, comcast, cox, etc. You may agree or disagree with my list but hopefully you get my point.

It remains to be seen if it worked or not depending on what the fallout is. Will users, moderators and most importantly advertisers leave? Will reddit IPO? Will they be able to hire? Will spez survive this as CEO?

I actually got accused of "arguing in bad faith" by a hackernews mod once because they couldn't fathom that a real person on this site would disagree with net neutrality.

<< It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one.

I would have bought this line of thinking about two decades ago, but between now and then a lot has happened that seriously undermined any kind of faith that the post found on the internet is a genuine perspective or, indeed, that it was even generated by a human.

I think the last straw for me was FCC public comment ISP industry sock puppetry related to net neutrality ( not that there were no indications of foul plays before ) and the fact that nothing changed after those revelations.

That said, I absolutely buy that there are reddit users that are annoyed; I will also admit that I have yet to talk to someone, who does not support the blackout. Still, this may reflect my social circle more than anything else so I do not dismiss your point.

Already done. I know three less accounts is a drop in the bucket, but whatever.

I’m sure reddit will be a really fun place to suck up to big corporations now all the other content has left.

I agree with that in principle, but this particular CEO is known for anonymously editing users comments that were critical of him, and reddit itself has a history of creating fake accounts, so in this case both are judged by their past deeds.

> It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one.

You are absolutely correct that it is a common sentiment. However, this doesn't prove that this sentiment is always wrong.

It all depends on context, for example, accounts that are very new and go strongly against the general "consensus" (as much as that shouldn't be a thing) raise suspicions. Some people suspect the use of LLMs on trying to push for consensus and astroturf. Add the name of a fruit to your answer. Hopefully they will find a solution to that conundrum

> Some people suspect the use of LLMs on trying to push for consensus and astroturf.

I don't even suspect it at this point, I just don't know if it's Reddit or someone else, but what motivation does someone else have to make new accounts that post GPT content unfiltered (and have since been deleted), that also just happen to push against the blackout.

Smoking gun: https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg

https://web.archive.org/web/20230611231119/https://www.reddi...

Other examples:

https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

https://i.imgur.com/0seHYei.png

https://i.imgur.com/Q8Pl2Ms.png

https://i.imgur.com/IRAug6a.png

https://i.imgur.com/N88AxJx.png

https://i.imgur.com/Ar8P95B.png

https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

> Loads of reddit users are annoyed by the blackout thing and find the arguments for it unconvincing. I mean personally I think all of the blackout people should just leave Reddit. Delete your accounts, delete your comments, resign as mods. Let the rest of reddit just move on.

You're not entitled to the communities or their content. The communities themselves are what make the sub. The same happens when users migrate from one sub to another or complain.

You don't control what they do and how they should behave. There was a social contract and it was thoroughly broken, so there's obvious instability now.

The "I couldn't care less, give me my memes" can take their own arbitrary advice and leave if they don't like something. See how useless that is?

> The communities themselves are what make the sub. The same happens when users migrate from one sub to another or complain.

Yes, the sum of all users are the community, not the mods themselves. Therefore if the community is truly aligned in a consensus to not reopen a sub, it won't matter if the sub is forcibly reopened by a newly installed moderator because the community, the users, won't come back anyway. So there's really nothing to complain about; the community is now dead or moved off reddit and it doesn't matter what reddit does with the subreddit that formerly hosted that community.

Unless of course the community is not nearly so united as claimed. Then maybe most of the community will come back to the subreddit. I think this is probably this is what will happen in most cases. And this is why people are mad about reddit threatening to reopen subreddits; because they don't actually have a community consensus to stop using that subreddit. They rely on the subreddit being locked to force the community's hand, and as soon as that leverage is taken away the community will be free to make a decision which is contrary to their own desires.

> the community is now dead or moved off reddit and it doesn't matter what reddit does with the subreddit that formerly hosted that community.

It's an ongoing situation but I love how you're trying to force everyone's hand to get to "how things were" for you. Funnily enough. That's what the protest is about, in a way.

> And this is why people are mad about reddit threatening to reopen subreddits;

I love how the self proclaimed casuals like you who "don't care" have this specific takes about the motives and reasons for things.

The motives are what they are and have been clearly laid out. The one throwing a conspiratantrum is you.

Go create the sub you want. The community will follow you, right?

And yes, that has happened plenty of times that mods go against a community.

> It's an ongoing situation but I love how you're trying to force everyone's hand to get to "how things were" for you.

> Go create the sub you want. The community will follow you, right?

I stopped using reddit 10 years ago, it can burn for all I care. Stop trying to psychoanalyze people (badly.)

If admins lift the blackouts and people go back to using the subreddits, then obviously those people were not committed to not using reddit. This is simply common sense. The answer to this problem is for you to stop using reddit, then reddit's problems won't be your problems.

> Stop trying to psychoanalyze people (badly.)

Classic internet projection.

> If admins lift the blackouts and people go back to using the subreddits, then obviously those people were not committed to not using reddit

Backwards logic. They may be using it to complain or it may be intervened in a myriad of ways. You're set on dismissing while pretending you don't care but then make this claims that display ignorance of typical reddit behavioural patterns.

> The answer to this problem is for you to stop using reddit, then reddit's problems won't be your problems.

You keep going to this myopic well. Hey, if this bothers you shut up. Close your screen. Go to bed.

Basic b writing.

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The only people who act entitled to the communities and think they own them when they don't are the mods here. In what twisted way can you argue that a user of a community not wanting some power tripping mods to close down everything, acting entitled?

Unfortunately, sock-puppeting is a lot more pervasive than most people realize.

There are the reputational firms that make sock-puppeting into a big industry.

They are closely related imo to the PR firms that create wikipedia entries for people

Lol don't forget "liquidate all of your assets to donate directly to Reddit and immediately sign up as unpaid interns, and consult with your betters/superiors how to vote in all upcoming elections".

I don't even know what to say, some folk just don't know how to capitalism right.

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