I’ve seen that some subreddits went dark and said they’d come back in 2 days (June 14th), and others said they’d go dark indefinitely, until the API changes are rolled back. I’d like to make an appeal for the admins who’re willing to go back: please don’t.
I think Reddit wouldn’t withstand 2 weeks to a month without their largest subreddits, and maybe they’d change their minds about API changes. Some may say they’d just make the subreddits public again and promote someone to mod (which I totally agree, they’ll probably do that if the blackout endures for too much time), but I think most people don’t realise the PITA it is to be a good mod, and just want to be one because of the status (I’m not an ex-mod btw, I just heard it is very complicated to moderate and I believe it really is).
Secondly, there’s no guarantee that Reddit won’t pull the rug again. Even if they roll back the changes and everyone goes back, they’ll probably come up with this strategy again some time in the future. So instead of going back, stay in the Fediverse: all applications are open source AFAIK; you can run your own instance if you wish; you can defederate other instances if you wish; you can contribute with new features you miss or create a fork aplication of your own if you want to; heck, you could create your own Fediverse application if you want. And there won’t be a scumbag to come and try stop you.
I’m prob gonna get downvoted but I wanted to share exactly why FMHY is only doing 2 days.
I do not like Reddit or their actions, I know there’s a lot of other people who do too, but it’s a necessary evil for resources (like FMHY.) Even after having multiple backups and linking them in the private subreddit’s message, lots of people were still relying on the Reddit version. (Apparently some people can’t see the message - possibly a bug on Reddit’s end.) There are also tons of people who are unable to get answers and whatnot from private subreddits.
Also, FMHY is going to fade to obscurity if and when it gets off of Reddit. It’s where nearly everyone came from, and outside of that, there’s not a lot of places people can find out about it. Same for r/piracy and other similar subreddits.
We’re probably going to do a poll on whether or not to do a one/two day/s per week blackout, but doing it indefinitely is off the table.
I’m one of those who found FMHY and piracy related things through Reddit, and I understand you, like a lot of other communities there. But if everyone thinks the same, then Reddit will have almost every big community up and running, thus making this protest pointless.
A subreddit I moderate is shut down. When the other moderator started it, he checked the message showed up for both old and new reddit, and it did. Later, I got a flurry of notifications about join requests, and checked again. The message still showed up in old reddit, but not new. They might have intentionally hidden such messages either to keep people unaware of the reasons for the shutdown or to annoy moderators into reopening, or it might have been that they were A B testing something that accidentally broke it.