this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Technology

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Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place, but I see Reddit developments as Tech news right now.

Wanted to share a website that is tracking Subreddits that have/will be going dark. It even has a sound notification for when they change their status.

Edit: Adding the stream https://www.twitch.tv/reddark_247

Double Edit: Data visualization https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Just flipped the switch (so to speak) on a couple subs I moderate, and the largest (just shy of 1m users) will be going dark in a few hours.

What surprised me most is how well the members are took it. To be fair the subs I moderated are typically quite tech-minded, so everyone is quite in-the-know with what is happening and why.

It makes me furious that a site built and maintained by the users is being exploited at the users' expense.

I hope Reddit bleeds money from this silly line they drew in the sand.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm curious if you directed the users of those subs to any particular alternative?

I mean, apparently they are already bleeding money, but I doubt that these changes are going to do much to help in that regard.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

On two we presented the options abailable (Lemmy, Mastodon, Usnet and so on), on the biggest we didn't do that. It was a last-minute announcement, so didn't really have the time (also too many cooks with different recipes, so to speak).

I'm sure it won't matter in the long run, but should we not try? A giant company runs on advertising. And the time we stop users interacting and engaging with these ads can only be a good thing.

As I'm writing this, 4,669 of 6,934 subs have gone dark.

Its beautiful to see.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don’t know about you, but streaming the “Darkening” is like the best thing ever. Just reading all the comments as viewers cheer on each subreddit.

When r/trees wend private I was thinking “shit just got real.”

Anyway, I suggest watching the stream, if just for the cameraderie.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

There’s a trees sub-lemmy but it only had pictures of actual trees when I checked yesterday

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

It exists on Lemmy.world

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago

This is just beautiful to watch. For once reddit comes together to spite... reddit.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago (3 children)

"6236/7265 subreddits are currently dark."

85.83%

That's a pretty good response from the subs.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Wow /r/nba decided to go dark. So unexpected and huge respect to the mods there. Really huge one with the NBA finals going on too.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230612030017/https://old.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1476rje/team_and_community_rnba_is_participating_in_the/

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago

so many have gone dark already, this is impressive.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

The level of unity has been awesome. At first I thought this might only really spread through tech minded subreddits, but it really caught on broadly.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It's sad though I truly enjoyed Reddit like obviously many here, but also to be fair I've also felt like the quality of posts and comments overall degraded and the whole thing turned into a big meme factory where only funny images with text and tiktok reposts really were uploaded.

The whole thing started going downhills as soon as the first tiktok reposts started flooding in to be fairly honest. Let's please not let this happen much here, unless of course in dedicated communities for that because everything has a place.

Also, this is my first ever post on Lemmy, hi 👋

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I feel like this still depended on community. There was plenty of more niche hobby specific communities that were enjoyable. r/coffee comes to mind for me or something like r/fountain pens. I still enjoyed r/Analog although that had it’s own issues.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

They're about 1/5 of the way through the subreddits that said they would go dark. It's crazy watching all of them blink out in real time.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Feels a little apocalyptic.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I found a different one, posted by the author on the DataIsBeautiful subreddit: https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This one has a pretty nice look with a list of all 6000 participating subreddits and fading in in real-time when a subreddit goes dark:

https://reddark.untone.uk/

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There's something so therapeutic about having Reddark open in a tab in the background - every time I hear the ding, a little voice in my head cheers. Interesting times, folks.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Honestly, even a year ago I don't think I would have imagined this happening. I wasn't around for the Digg -> Reddit migration but I wonder if this feels a bit like that.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I went LiveJournal > Digg > Reddit, and there's definitely a similar energy to the Digg days - but the level of organization we're seeing here feels totally new. The other difference though, is that the Digg migration had direction. It felt like within a month we had all moved to Reddit. I don't see that happening here, so really this is uncharted territory. It'll be fun to watch, that's for sure.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

I predict it'll be like the Twitter debacle at the end of lady year. It'll lead to a big migration to the fediverse but many will cling onto the platform as it circles the drain. Maybe Reddit and/or Twitter will manage to pull a GameStop or maybe they'll crash and burn like RadioShack

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Now include links to their preferred lemmy alternatives

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

At the bottom of the site, it does say “use Lemmy for less reddit shenanigans” with a hyperlink

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Man, it's so satisfying to watch all of these subreddits switch to green. I really wish more of them committed to an indefinite shutdown though.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The site has been overloaded, so now they are streaming it on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/reddark_247

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

Oh god here it comes. So long and thanks for all the fish.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (8 children)

blackout.photon-reddit.com

Damn. That is only a tiny little dip in the post/comment rate so far relative to the historical cycle. What, maybe 5%, assuming the vertical axis crosses at zero? Not terribly encouraging....

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I’ve continued to tell people: This won’t kill Reddit in the sense of outright turning it into a ghost town. If your only goal is to make Reddit collapse overnight, you’re going to be disappointed. The quality content that many people here enjoy is not what makes up the frontpage of r/all or what a huge amount of passive users consume. Reddit has more than enough low quality trash to backfill the frontpage and keep users occupied.

Anybody migrating should focus on porting quality content. Let reddit live long and be a dumping ground.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

My partner is a casual reddit user; the experience change was immediately apparent. She got bored and switched to facebook because all of the niche communities that the larger subreddits repost from went silent.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

This should be bumped.

The smaller/niche communities is what made Reddit interesting.

When those eventually decide to pack and the only vibrant communities are the meme subreddits etc then you would probably see a drop in usage.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Time to sit back, relax, and watch ~~the world~~ Reddit burn 😎 🍿

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

This is awesome. We all need to stick together on this one

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

R/SquaredCircle just went dark. They weren't even on the list as far as I saw.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think many go dark without announcement. In the last hours the list of participating subreddits grew from 3500 to 6000. You can search it on https://reddark.untone.uk/, it's there now.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

In the last hours the list of participating subreddits grew from 3500 to 6000

Holy shit that's a big spike!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yeah I'm getting a "You Broke Reddit" message when attempting to old.reddit.com. I didn't break reddit 'you' broke reddit lol.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

Yeah, from what I understand, so many gave the website the hug of death they had to switch to streaming to keep the site up.

Whether or not this “Great Darkening” has any legs, it certainly got a lot of publicity.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't see myself going back to Reddit if they keep those subs closed down. However I do believe that if this "strike" goes on for longer than a week or so, the admins will forcefully replace each closed subreddit mods to make them live again.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I hope that if that actually happens they'll find no volunteers to actually mod those subs and realize they'll actually have to hire and pay the people that actually makes their site usable

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