The reason the splintered subs could be a problem is that it often left the disruptive people to represent entire ideas, for better or for worse. It fractures movements that should otherwise have common goals into smaller and smaller slices that are unwilling to co-operate towards otherwise shared goals.

Groupthink emerges; people voting up/down not based on whether a comment contributes meaningfully, but whether or not they agree or feel good about it. Thus even constructive minority voices are drowned out.

Let me share to you what I'm thinking of when I say that, as I understand it's a broad statement. I can offer one that is more nuanced, if longer to read. I'll bold the key statements.

The one that comes to mind for me is r/childfree. It started out as a resource for those who'd chosen a child-free life to find support, collate a list of recommended doctors that recognised body autonomy (its often very difficult to get sterilised, especially if you're younger and/or don't already have several children), how the workforce treated them differently for being child-free (such as expecting them to cancel their plans and sacrifice their time off for parents on short notice), impact on their social lives, etc.'

However, over time it stopped being pro childfree lifestyle choices, and support for a group that is often seen as 'selfish'; and started becoming anti child lifestyle choices. The frontpage became mostly rants, filled with terms like 'crotchfruit', 'breeder', etc. What was once a community of a minority lifestyle trying to find support and legitimacy gave way to anger and tribalism.

Eventually enough of the users that consider choosing to have children to be an equally valid lifestyle choice - merely one they'd chosen not to live - slowly started lurking, unsubbing, or otherwise becoming invisible. Anti-child/'breeder' rhetoric became more and more prevalent. Eventually, r/truechildfree was founded to do what r/childfree used to - collate resources and support for those who have chosen a child-free life in a world where children are considered 'opt out'. Thus childfree users split into pro-child and anti-child tribes.

Which is lovely for r/truechildfree and its users (I am child-free, but I like children; I just recognise I am not equipped to raise them). But it meant that the largest and most visible sub, r/childfree, became almost only child-haters, and an already maligned community often considered 'selfish' is now represented by absolutists that are no longer willing to respect people who disagree.

I understand that it is the nature of humanity, once pushed, to push back. I understand why those who see mistreatment in the workplace or socially for their choice to be child free would be upset, same as anything we hold close to our hearts. That pain is why the r/childfree support group came to exist in the first place.

But it is diversity of opinion that makes discussion so interesting, that allows us opportunity for growth, that has us looking at the ways we are similar instead of fighting over the ways we are different.

I think the anger of those in the new r/childfree is real, valid, legitimate.
I think the users of r/truechildfree's discomfort with how that anger was displayed is also real, valid, legitimate.

I wish we'd looked for a better way to handle it than for letting communities devolve into absolutism, though. Whatever your reasons for not choosing to have children, you still deal with the same stigma; it's a shame to have people who are struggling against the same chains to schism over the metal they're made of.

This is why I'm hoping Lemmy can resist against some of the Reddit-specific culture that I think would dampen the experience here. Animosity towards emojis, creating echo-chamber communities/subreddits, the air of smug self-righteousness, discussion as something one can 'win' etc.

Redditors in general aren't bad, but a lot of vocal users had it in their heads that they were somehow better than people who used other platforms, and staked lines to maintain that cultural divide. Some of them concluded they were better than other redditors; turning communities into Us vs Them tribalism, until they would fracture into r/subreddit and r/truesubreddit.

Lemmy is not Reddit. It had a culture and it had users before the API shuffle; it's an opportunity to start fresh. It's not appropriate to expect Lemmy turn into Reddit, with all the unpleasantness that entails, and at the expense of the lemmings that were already here.

I'm quite honest about it; I spent years on Reddit too. I'm a redditor. But being here on Lemmy has been such a wonderful breath of fresh air, the 'I disagree but I'll respectfully explain why' that Reddit was missing for years. I can feel how miserable modern Reddit is in comparison and I really hope we don't recreate it.

After how pleasant I'm finding Lemmy, if I ever get the urge to join a short-form social site I'll use Mastodon.

Facebook is literally the last company I would join for this.

This... is dumb. Reddit gets traffic from people using it as a secondary search engine to get relevant answers.

Most people on the Internet view it from mobile. Reddit already makes their mobile experience genuinely awful despite this. Blocking it entirely?

The herding to their mobile app is so transparent (and DEFINITELY through stick, not carrot) I'm morbidly curious to see what horrible things they planning to put in their app that they know users will loathe, that requires their alternatives to be zero.

It's going to be satisfying watching them slowly tick green.

Anything using timers, especially based on the clock. It just artificially adds playtime, and it also means I forget about them and lose track of what I was doing most the time, too.

Yeah, not surprising tbh. They tested the change in smaller countries like NZ first, which allowed them to determine if it was worth doing the same elsewhere.

Password sharing is really common, but I don't think enough people realise - if they give a shit about what they use and where it comes from, they're the minority. That goes for almost any service, not just streaming. The people willing to change their habits to protest are always going to be less than the entrenched people who can be pushed, inch by inch.

Most Netflix users just want something to watch with minimal effort and without having to try or think about it. So if the password doesn't work, they shrug, they accept it, they make their own account, and their routines stay the same. In fact I'm willing to be that of the new Netflix users, a majority of them are probably also subscribed to at least one other streaming service, too.

Convenience is a commodity, and users have different price points.

Either it doesn't get engaged with, or the people who engage with it have the reading comprehension of a carrot.

I noticed you didn't explicitly say in your post that you don't kick puppies, so let me assume that you believe that is acceptable and then vividly describe what a horrible person you are. Also,

Time to start over

...now that I've pulled a tiny portion of comment out of context to make it easier to attack, how dare you.

So far I am loving that the communities I've subscribed to on Lemmy are not only interactive, but that the people interactive are genuinely contributing discussion and perspective! It's sooo refreshing. I fucking love it.

As we get more people joining I'm sure that will slowly change; if Lemmy gets easier for people to join then it will change. If Reddit goes down completely it will definitely change: most casual redditors probably won't move unless Reddit itself no longer has the content they want.

But right now? Ahh... I'm enjoying Lemmy more than I have Reddit in well over a year.

You're not wrong; I've noticed the same. Less 'horny' specifically, and more.... reasonable and engaged; vs impulsive and reactive.

I think the accessibility of reddit vs Lemmy plays a feature there. Lemmy requires at least some level of tech literacy to understand well enough to use, and it also isn't where most of the people are. So the people choosing to use Lemmy fully intend to use it; we're not casual users.

Because it's so easy to use, I think Reddit has a lot of young and/or immature people (demographics that overlap, but aren't the same). So it's full of impulsive, heavily-opinionated, casual users who aren't really invested in their communities, that can easily make a new account on a whim, and that create echo chambers with their votes.

It's not really Reddit's fault, tbh. It's an issue of user population, especially when 90% of the users do nothing more than upvote (so generically agreeable things rise) or downvote (anything that challenges them falls). The bigger a user platform gets, the more it homogenises.

Reddit was only unusual in that subreddits let it homogenise on a sub-by-sub basis and create echo chambers; a savvy redditor could still find smaller subs with better discussion (r/patientgamers rather than r/gaming for example). Or subs would get bigger and start becoming hostile or tribal, losing their original mission - and somebody from the old days would make a 'true' version (r/childfree vs r/truechildfree).

Lemmy is too small for groupthink to homogenise it (yet?). But particularly large instances could potentially go the same way given enough years. It's just that Lemmy being federated means that we can make new instances, and defederate from any that we may find unpleasant. I've already learned of one portal that isn't federated to my chosen one.

I understand that Reddit needs to monetise. It's not a link aggregate site anymore, hosting video/image files is expensive, Reddit operates at a loss and the 3p users cost them even more. They have reason to be dismayed that they operate at a loss while 3p apps using their API do not.

And I understand their concern with adult content. They can't control if 3p apps will display it with or without checks, but Reddit hosts it; limiting it on 3p apps is probably the better choice to them than removing it from their site entirely. After all, they're operating at a loss; they can't afford the fines and fees. Sexual content is heavily legislated.

But goddamn. Limited negotiation with devs, adversarial communication (to the point of outright animosity), frankly absurd timeframe, the use of accessibility as negotiation for the blackout... there's no good faith anymore.

Reddit is user-generated. The users are the content, their engagement is Reddit's product. Users that don't want to engage with their platform give them less sellable product. The users that engage the most (commenting, contributing, moderating) are the minority, and also the ones most likely to use 3p tools.

Reddit has good grounds for wanting to monetise. There are good reasons for bringing devs to the plate about how to do that. Devs were readily agreeing to covering their costs in calls, and expecting to negotiate what the revenue margin should be. Mutually equitable arrangement.

But this was handled so fucking badly, communicated so fucking badly (by one of the devs too tbh), that an equitable arrangement cannot possibly be reached anymore. Nobody wants to bargain in good faith anymore.

Now all the users want Reddit to cancel all the changes, publicly apologise, and remain operating a loss. Now Reddit wants devs to shut up and pay up, and blame them for the situation they're in.

Now everybody loses, because devs close apps, high-activity users contribute less or outright leave, and Reddit decays down into a pit of low-interaction lurkers picking over ad-bleached bones, until it's considered so unprofitable and unrecoverable that it is shut down entirely.

I listened to the recording, and read the transcript, and I can... I can see it. Not overtly, not intentionally - but the dev did not communicate clearly at all.

Twice the Reddit representative asking him to repeat himself, and still he failed to actually specify his intentions. The wording in the transcript never actually expanded what the dev was saying ('buy out Apollo'). The evasive language made it sound like a shakedown, 'pay me $10mil to make this all go away'.

I linked the dev's own transcript above, but the actual quotes from the dev:

I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20 million per year, cut me a check for $10 million and we can both skip off into the sunset. Six months of use. We're good. [Low voice:] That's mostly a joke.

Okay, if Apollo's opportunity cost currently is $20 million dollars. At the 7 billion requests and API volume. If that's your yearly opportunity cost for Apollo, cut that in half, say for 6 months. Bob's your uncle.

I was just saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20 million a year. And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months. Beautiful deal. Again this is mostly a joke, I'm just saying if the opportunity cost is that high, and if that is something that could make it easier on you guys, that could happen too. As is, it's quite difficult.

Now, we know that what the dev is doing is essentially offering to outright sell Apollo to end the demand it represents to Reddit. He doesn't expect them to take it, but a lot of users asked if it were possible, and he's suggesting it anyway.

But the wording of all of this never specifies 'buying Apollo'. It sounds like he wants Reddit to like... pay him his 'protection fee'. I'm sure he means 'go quiet' as in like, 'go quietly into that good night' (shut down) or 'stop being so demanding' (be retooled), in fact he later clarifies he means the latter and the Reddit representative apologises profusely.

But man, that was worded so poorly, and he was given two opportunities to clarify, and he just... didn't. Only when the Reddit stand-in asked if he was suggesting Reddit buy his silence and compliance did he clarify that wasn't at all what he was saying.

It was completely unintentional, no doubt. But it was miscommunication of the highest order, and it damaged the lines of communication so irrevocably it probably incentivised Reddit to cease negotiations completely.