eldrichhydralisk

He does a really good job of telling the story behind the runs. It's like a really good sports documentary.

There is a !bass_guitar@lemmy.sdf.org over on the sdf.org instance. It's small, but you could get in on the ground floor.

Lemmy doesn't track overall karma. I think you're good. Bring on the cute and funny!

I'm trying my best to remember that all those things that somebody definitely already posted when I was on Reddit might be my job to post here. It's refreshing!

The worst thing about the API changes is the long string of broken promises that got us here.

Reddit said for years that they would provide the tools users needed to moderate their subs (which the mods do for free on their own time). Reddit has failed to do so. Third party devs using the API did that.

Reddit also had years to make their site actually work for people with disabilities. Reddit has failed to do do. Third party devs using the API did that too.

Reddit said that they would not touch the API. Then they changed their mind and announced they'd be charging for it, but they'd work with current devs. Then they announced a price that was totally out of line with what other businesses charge and what was realistic for many apps to pay. With only one month to make those changes before the new pricing went live, despite knowing that many third party apps use a yearly subscription model.

Reddit's CEO said he'd do an AMA to address concerns with the new policy. During that AMA he answered only 14 questions while ignoring the highest-voted questions. He was also caught astroturfing and lying during that AMA.

Reddit said they would not interfere with the ability of redditors to protest the change. Then they threatened to remove entire mod teams if they didn't get back to business as usual and replace them with mods who would run the subs the way Reddit wanted them to.

So, yeah. The API change by itself is doing a lot of devs dirty with an unrealistic price and unrealistic timeframe. But the worst part of it is the heap of broken trust that it sits on top of.

This article's evidence that the #TwitterMigration failed is that when he shut down his server, 25% of the servers he notified didn't respond back. I'm not sure that means what the author seems to think it means. It's not like every user has their own server. And when you let anybody build a server in a network you're going to see a lot of failed launches. Honestly, with the explosive growth Mastodon had, retaining 75% of all those new servers is pretty impressive to me.

Mastodon did not immediately replace Twitter worldwide. That's fine, growing that fast wouldn't be sustainable. But it did get a ton of new users, a lot of visibility, and enough activity to provide content for anybody who signs up. Onboarding kinda sucks, but once you follow enough people and hashtags it absolutely scratches the same itch Twitter did for me. I'd hardly call that a failure just because it didn't instantly become the next social media monolith.

Numberphile has done a bunch of videos with Neil Sloane about some of the sequences in the OEIS. Neat stuff!

I haven't played any of those either. There's a lot more adventure games on Steam than I thought...

Oh, those are both under five bucks too. Great deals!

I've heard some really good things about that one!

I was a mod on Reddit so I was personally aware that for years Reddit's mod tools have been totally inadequate for the job, that Reddit has been promising to give us something better, and that Reddit has failed to deliver. Honestly, it was even worse than just not delivering: we'd get new tools that didn't solve the main problems, were only available on the iOS app, coming to Android eventually, and coming to the websites never. Third party API tools were the only thing that made modding vaguely functional, even on a small sub.

I'm also a supporter of accessibility in apps, which is also something Reddit has been promising for years and Reddit has failed to deliver. Again, third party API tools are the only thing that makes Reddit vaguely accessible right now.

Reddit's API changes are not realistic to implement in a single month. This was made clear early on and Reddit has refused to budge. So at this point Reddit is knowingly upending an ecosystem that makes their site usable by groups of users with no first-party replacements ready. And given their history of failing to deliver these very tools, I have no confidence that they will ever do so.

And THEN the Spez AMA happened. I was hoping he'd listen to the community, engage with our concerns, or at the very least actually do an AMA. Instead he got caught lying, he got caught astroturfing, and he inadvertently made it clear that the real issue was that he was butthurt over these third party apps being better at business than Reddit was. Oh, and later we found out the Reddit CEO really admired Elon Musk's handling of Twitter, a platform I left for all the reasons Spez seems to like it.

Even if none of these issues affected me personally (which they do), Reddit has made it clear that I just can't trust them to run a fair and functional platform. They do not take their obligations to their users, mods, and business partners seriously. If they don't like the way the game is going, they'll change the rules without warning. They will promise features they will not deliver even when those features are essential to their site working for the users who keep it alive.

I don't want to help Reddit build what Reddit wants to make anymore.

I'm just using the mobile website. It works and it doesn't pester me to use something else, which is really refreshing!