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Just some anecdata for the Reddit blackout, unless everyone is sick of it; I went through all my own personal subscribed subreddits and looked for their stance on the blackout:
NOT joining blackout: 135 subreddits. Of these, less than 10 actually posted why. Most ignored it entirely.
STILL DECIDING: 9 subreddits. Of those with public vote totals, overwhelming majorities for blackout and majorities for indefinite duration.
YES, for 24-48 hours set duration: 39 subreddits.
YES, for AT LEAST 48 hours: 20 subreddits. Most copied and pasted a vaguely worded post that implied only 48 hours but threatened longer, so hard to say how many conversions to the next category.
YES, INDEFINITELY: 16 subreddits. Honestly I'd be scared as shit as a mod that my mod powers would be permanently taken away from me. I sense from some of these announcements a real grieving process.
Overall if all the fence sitters black out, that's a good 84/219 going dark. I don't plan on visiting reddit those two days, but even if I did, that's a 40% reduction in content (number pretty fuzzy though). Not quite critical mass to be noticeable to me or to another user if I were representative, but surely enough to degrade the experience. A lot of the bigger content subs aren't participating, so maybe more like 30%.
So, my main two takeaways. One, most moderator teams genuinely don't seem to care, at all. I think almost any truly conscientious mod would at least address the issue head on rather than ignore it. The ones who did make an actual post saying they won't participate in the blackout generally had good motivations and impressed me, (which made the lack of response elsewhere even more deafening). One case was /r/manga, they didn't want to attract attention to a copyright-skirting sub. Another few think they are the online equivalent of support subs, or "essential workers", mostly fair arguments. One was scared of the sub being banned as it almost had under previous lax moderation, as a one-man mod team without an easy replacement.
The second takeaway was looking at the general quality of the subreddits that aren't participating. There's a few with obvious admin ties/ mod plants. But the bulk of them were either very small one-issue subs, or in most cases the nonparticipants all had one thing in common: low-effort, often comedic TikTok-esque video subreddits. I enjoy them, obviously, or I wouldn't be subscribed. But only about 3 or 4 that I recall actually decided to shut down (shoutout to /r/videos, a massive sub that is going completely dark). What's the implication of this anecdata? I predict that reddit is clearly headed even more strongly toward TikTokification, if the blackout fails. Ironic, because the official app does so poorly at displaying and loading videos!
I'm out of the loop. Where can I find the best explanation of what is going on and the what the argument is for why Reddit shouldn't be doing this?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36231016
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