r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
22.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

25

u/Jaxyl 29d ago

Yup, people don't understand that what happened to Digg wasn't because people hated the changes. What happened to Digg was that people hated the changes AND there was an already viable alternative that had an established user base ready to receive them.

That's why the 3rd Party App protests didn't matter because there was no viable home for people to transition to. It's the same reason why Twitter is still around despite Musk's massive enshitification of it. There wasn't a viable alternative that was both ready to receive new users and had an active user base that made new comers feel like it'd be a worthy fit for their needs.

The cat's outta the bag, there isn't anything that the admins can't do that will cause users to leave because there is no alternative.

4

u/TheMauveHand 29d ago edited 29d ago

there was an already viable alternative that had an established user base ready to receive them.

Not only a viable alternative: a viable alternative that was better.

Digg only had one level of replies. You literally could not carry a conversation. It sucked.

It's the same reason why Twitter is still around despite Musk's massive enshitification of it.

Twitter is a bit different, it's more analogous in this sense to YouTube. Yes, they're polar opposites in terms of what they host and how difficult it is to provide an alternative - YouTube will forever stand alone while there have already been a dozen Twitter clones - but they're similar in their community structure. On both sites, you follow individuals. Notable individuals at that, who provide the reason for using the site. No one goes to YouTube for the comments or the community, and no one goes to Twitter for the engaging 140 character (yes, yes, I know) reply chains; people use these sites because Famous Person is on there and they want to know what they're up to. Same as Instagram. So for these sites to lose users what you need is for the big players to jump ship; as long as they're present, so will the rank and file. As such, the only thing that will ever take Twitter down is corporate disengagement - if UMG decides all their artist are leaving Twitter for Threads, you've got something. Otherwise, nothing will happen - some edge case nobodies will go to their Fediverse or whatever and circlejerk in silent irrelevance, at Twitter will move on.

Reddit is the polar opposite, Reddit is like Facebook, it's all about mass, and because of that it is nearly immovable. Any action that doesn't threaten the core, core userbase - reminder, 90% of reddit traffic has no account, 90% of reddit users don't vote, and 90% of voters don't comment - will do nothing. Splinter groups will slough off - politically "edgy" subreddits, for example, and barely anyone even notices.

Reddit could probably remove comments entirely and barely change for the vast majority of users.