Not really real world things but approximately most of the major subreddits on Reddit are going private for a couple of days (and some for longer depending on Reddit's response) to protest new changes to API pricing - pricing that kills a lot of third-party apps and mod tools. This includes places like r/unitedkingdom, r/music. r/ListenToThis is shutting down indefinitely, rip one of my BJSC sources.

 

I'm currently watching a livestream of thousands of subreddits privating themselves and my list of subscriptions has at least halved (with half of what's left being irrelevant sub I never bothered to unsubscribe from)

 

I've been sort of seeing this as a follow-on from Elon Twitter in that big tech are trying to push their monopolies to wring even more profit, at the expense of a user base.

Yeah, good luck with this lol.

I mean, there is an expectation that just doing it for 48 hours isn't going to budge the needle much. I don't expect that unless the site is rendered unusable.

 

However here's where Reddit and Twiter are different, because Reddit is built around structured communities that community volunteers (mods) control, they just have very little incentive to reopen what is drawing people to the site (seemingly the only place left on the internet to get specialist knowledge from actual people rather than corporate-fed algorithms). I do actually expect some walkback from this.

 

and at the very least it's surreal watching so much of what is left of "forum internet" shut down at once.

Like, nah. There's too many communities that fill the same void - /r/UnresolvedMysteries shut down as an example but now I get suggestions from /r/GratefulDoe etc.

 

Ultimately, this is a profit issue and Reddit is by far the least profitable site. This won't go anywhere.

The thing is though a lot of those formats by their nature *aren't* profitable.

 

Trying to monetise them in this way is just going to kill off their userbase and in the long run lose more money. Exhibit A, tumblr.

Oh my Reddit is down :kink:

r/ListenToThis is shutting down indefinitely, rip one of my BJSC sources.

You and me both :cry: :lol:

 

I heard that this was happening the other day but forgot about it, thankfully was on that subreddit yesterday after feeling a bit disillusioned by my last couple of results in the contest and harvested some potentials just in time *_* Bré informed me that plenty of the cat ones are still up and running at least, they're forever the backbone of the internet

Can't we all just leave Reddit and be like on Buzzjack?

Why did thst song one close down permanently??

r/kpop is participating in this for a few days as well. RIP to the BTS 10th anniversary rollout </3

Fortunately the subreddits on Pablo Picasso and Art History are still up!! :cheer: And the subreddits on Westshite are down! :cheer:

Bré informed me that plenty of the cat ones are still up and running at least, they're forever the backbone of the internet

 

/r/OneOrangeBraincell has become my favourite place on the Internet the last couple of months and I would have been devastated if it went down xx

 

Losing access to many of the subreddits that I idly browse all the time has definitely felt weird, I hope Reddit does actually do something to mend the situation (looks like one of the big complaints is a loss of accessibility features which are available on 3rd party apps but not the official one, feel like that should be a relatively easy bone to throw to the 'protesters' by committing to integrating those into the official app) as I do fear a lot of subs are going to end up going indefinitely down otherwise.