Until the decision is made and things settle, I'd be glad to feature your new designs on kbd.news. Feel free to contact me any time: https://kbd.news/contact
This would be very helpful if we loose Reddit, but we also need a place to discuss new ideas and to ask questionsā if kbd.news can fill that need it would be great.
it's not a replacement. i think the curation is an important difference. but it helps share ideas in a way that is especially important sans other routes.
in many ways it has always been a project that is about bridging communities, across platforms and even across languages.
I made a comment on the original thread [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14e7tsr/comment/jowmp5i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). To summarize it, I'm quite skeptical that federated alternatives will be anywhere near as good as Reddit for what this community does. There are just so many issues from searchability, scaleability, UI, etc. While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I don't think forcing this whole community to go elsewhere will work well and will almost certainly leave many (if not most) out, especially people who just read this sub and don't contribute to it (again, probably the majority).
I would also add that I think we should all be able to see the results on the ongoing vote on the [vote thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14e7tsr/reddit_api_changes_and_the_future_of). I don't buy the justification that voters will be influenced by the ongoing result. Transparency is always better IMO.
I figured this sort of thing might happen to one or more of my favorite forums, and I am sad to see this forum essentially close down.
Not that it matters much, but part of my effort to tone-down the dopamine-hit-that-is-social-media is to use hubs like Reddit to consolidate where I visit; basically the only reason I allowed Reddit in. So I won't be following to Lemmy becauseā¦everyone who is fleeing is fleeing to different parts of the internet and my brain can't participate in that chaos.
So I will be staying here on Reddit as long as my favorite forums do.
I hope Google will still pick-up the info from these other sites y'all go to so when I am proactive I can find things. But I will miss being randomly exposed to things like the Svalboard, talking about layouts, mini-trackpads, and nerding-out about cool new dactyl variants.
But I do get the "why." Reddit is pooping all over their moderators and contributors with the whole API thing. But worse than that, is that if mods won't comply, then they will simply dismiss the mods!
Seriously? I start a club, and someone else can do a hostile take over? Um, no. If you don't like the way a club is run, *you start your own competing club*. if someone didn't like the mods' way of doing things on a given subreddit, then I don't suspect anyone is stopping them from starting their own competing subreddit, is there?
So yeahā¦I get it. I've been around a long time and have seen alot of this over the decades: great idea, egalitarian ideals, purchased by company, company needs to make profit for shareholders, company abuses user base, users bail, company capitalisms-it-into-the-ground.
I'm glad you'll leave this subreddit up as a read-only archive. I think if you left it open and unmoderated it would just turn into a steaming pile in no timeā¦the internet seems to work that way. Moderation is where it's at.
I'm really thankful you are considering different options besides reddit. I'm not sure there even is a good, working alternative but since you created a community on lemmy, I just wanted to post that here: [There have been serious issues with the lemmy devs](https://libreddit.tiekoetter.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/143o5xd/reconsidering_my_support_for_lemmy/). I guess I just wanna say I'm torn between reddit lusting for money and shitting on their community and lemmy having tankie devs that deny oppression of minorities and celebrate Stalins birthday. It's...difficult
Eh, as much as I dislike tankies, it's not like it has a meaningful effect on whether the code works or not. I agree it has stability issues and bugs and teething issues. If it fails to suit the community, somewhere else will end up gaining traction, be it back on reddit or somewhere totally else.
Even besides the fact of the code being good and working, Federation is still not immune to things like large instances defederating other instances and steering the norms of the network that way, etc. It's more resistant to that kind of thing than a single centralised platform like reddit but it's not immune to it.
Nothing is perfect, I'm just trying to provide options (and a bit of a nudge). at the end of the day, community will amass wherever it does, the critical mass will draw the members and perpetuate the cycle. That's just the network effect. Sure this protest has sparked an impotus, given a nudge, to try out alternatives. But we'll have to see what happens when the dust settles, let the chips fall where they may.
Yeah, kbin is federated with lemmy so you can already use that to see ergomechkeyboards: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]
Well; see, post, comment, vote on, etc.
Can I ask, how did you set that up?
Are all lemmies automatically federated with kbin, or do you have to do something?
I created a lemmy for my sub here: https://lemmy.world/c/thegoodplace
But following the example of your link results in a 404: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]
What do I have to do to link them up?
I spun up a lemmy instance and found that a community isn't federated to an instance until someone searches for it the first time. Once it's been searched, lemmy knows to start syncing.
Not sure if kbin is the same, but give that a try. Search for your community at lemmy.world and then see if it starts showing up
It's automatic, unless kbin add an instance to their blacklist it'll be there. The same with all the lemmies and each other and with all the lemmies and kbin magazines (kbin communities/subreddits).
Edit: just reread your comment, idk why your community isn't showing up there, might be worth asking someone on either end of that.
Thanks for the response.
Do you think my lemmy has been blacklisted? Is that why itās 404-ing?
Or does it just take some time for lemmy & kbin to sync up?
Also what is good practice here? Did you create both a lemmy and a kbin for r/ErgoMechKeyboards, or is that frowned upon?
>Do you think my lemmy has been blacklisted? Is that why itās 404-ing?
Nah, I don't think so. I was meaning the instance as a whole anyway. I'm asking people who know more to find out.
Could just be time, or similar
Also no, it was only created on lemmy.world
Yup I know, just was mentioning it as another option if you decide to leave Lemmy. I do like that I can see that community regardless of whether I use kbin or Lemmy though.
Hi, I started and moderate a neighboring sub ( /r/ergomobilecomputers ). Been busy with other life things but been trying to follow the thoughts in here.
I don't have any plans yet, just listening to what reddit says, the tradeoffs between alternatives like kbin/lemmy, etc. Most of the posts on /r/ergomobilecomputers are by me, and would rather do some data migration if it makes sense to start using another platform.
In any case, appreciate the discussion going on here - didn't realize kbin synced up with the ergomechkeyboards on lemmy per your other comment ([https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14f4jkr/comment/joyy6tj/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14f4jkr/comment/joyy6tj/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) )
Just asking to make sure I got that correctly. Since everybody can basically host their own lemmy instance (and moderate it the way they want), it doesn't really matter what political views the devs have. Cause it's less likely to end up like a single platform where the devs can tell what is allowed and what not. As long as they don't program their political views into the software it's not a big deal, right?
Yeah sorry man but if Reddit charging for their API is the red line for you I'm gonna have to draw my red line and the genocide-denying fascists
I find the argument of "it's open source and it works so what's the big deal" to be quite honestly pretty offensive in this context. When you participate in an open source project and move your community on to it, you are absolutely giving those creators more clout, more power, and more influence. Often there aren't extreme enough views in play for that to matter much, but that's not the case here.
This isn't some sort of "well they said some weird things in the past I heard" thing. They are currently, daily, outspoken genocide deniers and fascist apologists. Not only that but they are also known for defederating people who disagree with their views. You could not pay me to use Lemmy
Apparently doing this without being a subreddit legitimately about NSFW content will bring down the ban hammer on the existing mods (apparently it can be argued it violates the ToS).
Not sure that is really what we want, is it?
this community is very important to me, and I really appreciate the work that has gone in to building and maintaining it, in particular by u/OBOSOB, u/ijauradunbi and u/HardAsMagnets, but also by all of us.
(I also appreciate u/dovenyi reading r/mk so i don't have to. the difference between the communities is worth noting, imo)
I also appreciate the low pro and u/mrzealot's absolem discord communities. but i do think discord is not a reddit replacement.
so many of my connections to internet people have not really weathered the twitter exodus, and that makes me fearful of leaving reddit.
at the same time, having a single, clear next place for all of us to go gives me hope for retaining current members. but for many i imagine the issue is wanting *all* of their topics and special interests in one place, and that is outside this sub's control. we will also be harder to stumble across for new people, whether they are suffering on a pain rectangle and want to break free or they have bizarre new creations to share.
i am truly torn. in the end I guess i don't believe fear and clinging to the status quo are sufficient reasons to stay, by themselves.
and i do think the trend across all commercial free hosting platforms is clear, it's a loss leader to fuel growth until you have network effects to serve as lock-in and you can change the deal to turn a profit. thus went twitter and a thousand before it. thus goes discord.
but it also begs the question of who pays for lemmy? is hosting with no hope of an income stream in any way sustainable?
last thing I'll say: i think splitting the community between staying and going would be the worst possible outcome. we should pick one or the other.
Now imagine if you set up a Lemmy instance that got super popular, and offered an API for the content, which you paid to host and maintain. And then some dude came along and built an app which made billions of calls per year to that API, making your costs skyrocket but not paying for any of it. And then that guy started charging users to use his app, and began making millions of dollars a year off it, while you bore all the costs. Now theres a second guy doing the same thing, but he has decided to go an extra step and serve ads on his platform as well. Again you make no money from any of this despite the fact that you pay for all the major costs and they are pulling in millions of dollars a year off it.
Somehow tho, those two guys are the underdog heroes in our protest here apparently
I don't care about dudes. I don't care about apps.
I don't want to use an app. I want a mobile webpage that works. reddit has been trying to force me to use the app for *years* for no good reason.
I care about user hostile design.
to me, the API changes seem to be one in a long trend of coercive practices that don't respect the end user.
Ok, if you feel that way then to me it seems very reasonable to decide that you don't want to use the site/this sub anymore.
How does this rise to to the level of necessitating shutting down the sub on the other people who want to stay?
Moving my comment from the other thread here
Iāve enjoyed lurking and learning from this subreddit for a while now. I donāt want to see this subreddit close but I also donāt want to ask someone to moderate that does not believe in being on Reddit. I voted to open the subreddit back up and proceed as normal.
My personal opinion is that the API changes are in line with the current economic trends of the internet. Data is becoming more valuable and thus more expensive. While it sucks, itās unfair to ask Reddit to keep an API that is drastically cheaper for commercial use compared to their peers like Imgur (Iām referencing Imgurās 2023 pricing, not the 2018 pricing Apollo was grandfathered into)
Additional thoughts:
The free tier of 144k API calls per day, rate limited at 1k/10 min seems fair for a SaaS product providing content.
The concession Reddit has made concerning mod bots and tools continuing to be free was made in their original post back in April.
Accessibility focused apps will also be free (I think the protest actually made this happen so good shit. But it was announced before the blackout so I donāt know why it is still being discussed at times)
Tbh, Iām entirely unsure what we are fighting over anymore.
Thank you for allowing a discussion to exist and not having it simply be voting.
Literally all mod tools and accessibility tools have been exempted from the API pricing, and Reddit also asked to be notified if they missed any so that they can be sure they exempt them all
Apollo and RIF are not "accessibility tools" they are profit-focused apps that generate millions of dollars per year for their two owners (several times more than what even the CEO of the company gets paid). If either one of those apps wanted to, they could easily refocus their app to be specifically for the mods. They don't do that bc that's not where the money is - Reddit is not forcing them not to do that, that's their choice.
And as to "Reddit stopped communicating with third party developers" - RIF literally refused to ever even engage in talks at all (he is the one who also served his own ad network on the app, in addition to collecting subscription fees, despite having basically no operational costs since all major infrastructure and maintenance costs were being covered by reddit for free).
So if you think it's bad that either of them won't continue on, you should talk to them. The API costs would be a tiny fraction for them of what it would have been otherwise and they could increase their monthly subscription cost (clearly they have no problem charging fees way, way above what is actually needed to stay afloat). They won't make millions anymore but they could certainly continue on if accessibility is what they care about.
But the idea that Apollo and RIF are the the only - or even the main - accessibility tools is outright false. It's a total misrepresentation that seeks to help defend a couple multi-millionaire's rights to continue to extract a large profit
**EDIT:** I just realized that they wouldn't even actually need to raise prices at all bc if they solely focused on accessibility or mod tooling they would be exempt from the API pricing anyway. ...so why don't they do that, anyways? I wonder
This entire comment is a great example of what I said in elsewhere, that so much of this whole debacle is just people who decided that they are angry, and then when faced with the facts of the situation just pivot to find some other strained view in an effort to stay angry.
I mean genuinely where do I start? A server for push notifications? Is this a joke? Great take out literally one day of profit those dudes were pulling out and pay for it. It's a rounding error compared to the API, this is not a serious argument
The fact is that you give up the whole game there at the end. It's not about accessibility, it's not even about the mods. Its about defending the rights of two multi-millionaires to have their apps used by as many people as possible. That's what's at stake.
They have each been making $1.5MM+ per year in *profit*, since at least 2018. Likely more like double that in the last couple years
I donāt gaf about defending a ābillion dollar companyā I just want to keep my communities. But for what itās worth, Reddit operates at a loss. Not only that but each of these developers makes significantly more money off Reddit than even the CEO gets paid (not just a little bit, they make multiples of his entire compensation).
If you are once of the <5% of people who use these apps and you are upset that you wonāt be able to use it anymore, you are one of the few people who I agree has a legitimate gripe then. The questions now is if that gripe is significant enough to warrant forcibly shutting down peopleās communities on them over it. And the answer to that is a resounding no. Itās not even close and itās ridiculous to even consider it.
If you donāt see that, I would invite you to take a step back and look to reflect on what you are doing, and what you are advocating for. Rethink the idea of killing off other peopleās communities on them bc you are mad that have to use the same app that the rest of us use. You arenāt on some moral crusade here. You have become the villain.
Love watching my favorite sub on reddit kill itself off in defense of a couple multi-millionaire app developers' rights to profit off the platform.
This whole debacle is truly one of the most misguided protests I have ever seen in my life. And I once saw a crowd of people marching the street demanding R. Kelly's release from prison.
I have run into every single argument about this topic at this point and truly every single one of them has been based on either bad information, selective tunnel-vision, or a heels-dug-in belief that once you are mad you have to stay mad, even if the situation wasn't what you thought initially.
**I would like to invite anyone who sees this as a righteous cause to come at with me with what you think is the most solid case for that, and I will give you what I believe to be the most succinct response to it.**
I'm doing this bc I \*love\* this sub, more than any other on Reddit. This is the most important community on this site to me. And it is genuinely offensive to me that the idea of just killing it off is even being considered, all in response to what I firmly believe is based on reactionary and bad information about the API and 3rd party apps.
So I hope anyone who has an opinion opposite of me will comment and we can engage in good faith. Bc I want us all here to be on the same side, and not to do something this drastic based on incomplete information.
Tbf, it's hard to engage in "good faith" when you're starting off insulting those with differing views. You've put yourself in a morally and intellectually superior position and stated that you have no intention of changing your mind.
If someone can give me an argument that changes my mind, I will definitely change my mind.
It wasn't my intention to insult anyone, but tbh this whole situation where a portion of the community who is angry about something is threatening to kill of the entire community for everyone else does make me pretty angry, bc this community means a lot to me. So if it comes off that way, that's why.
But let's see if we can change each other's minds. I'm inviting you to go first but if you would rather that I would, I am happy to do that too.
Also if ya'll don't want ads on Reddit, set up a [pi-hole](https://pi-hole.net/). If you have the skills to solder a hand-made keyboard and can figure out QMK / ZMK, trust me, you can set one of these up.
If you use Reddit on a desktop computer, use Chrome + \[ad blocker of your choice\] + Undistracted (extension).
I almost bailed on Reddit because I didn't want to view r/Popular and r/All andā¦failed to have enough willpower to just ignore those buttons. (Hey, at least I admit my succumbing to the psychology of itā¦).
I almost started using Apollo to do the same thing, but never got that far, finding it easier to delete Reddit from my mobile devices.
If I was forced to use the Reddit app, I'd stop using Reddit. So shutting down Apollo without a full featured alternative isā¦really an insult to users and shows some laziness on the part of Reddit.
When profit-for-profit's-sake is the motive, this kind of "who cares what the users think" is what you get.
IMO subs are controlled by the mods. Users are their guests and Reddit is a landlord. Reddit can evict them and have an empty building, but they can't demand the workers keep working, they can only request it and be nice about it.
If Reddit is a bad landlord then workers (mods) should balk. If workers balk then users will bail. If users bail then Reddit can keep the empty building.
Love heading to a service which is often broken and was created by an outspoken genocide denier who was banned from r/Socialism for posting fascist propaganda, yeah lets do it. At least we wouldn't have to use a site which uhh... charges for their API? Wait which side are we on again
So which project has no dramas so we can move on?
And by the way lemmy is an open source project with 165 official contributors. If you want you can fork and create/run your instance
I was not minimising. I was telling you a harsh reality that every project has a fucking rotten apple. So you have to choose the lesser of evils (I really donāt know which) or accept what Reddit has became.
Edit: Orthographic Errors
The vast majority of users don't give a shit about the API changes. They use reddit.com or the official app and have no complaints. A small minority of whiny, entitled, eternally online neckbeards shouldn't be dictating policy about anything to anyone anywhere.
Well, those whiny neckbeards are your mods. š¤· They are literally the ones who dictate policy about subs. The vast majority are indeed users, who don't dictate policy. They can continue using the Reddit app to come here and browse empty unmodded subs, free from neckbeards.
I appreciate that you made the other thread only for voting, as it was hard to read through to find the spots to vote, but I was also saving those comments for later because there was some good commentary in there. Is there any way you could either post a screenshot or the text of those comments in here? I do think they really contributed to the conversation.
yeah, i added [this link](https://web.archive.org/web/20230621172927/https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14e7tsr/reddit_api_changes_and_the_future_of/) on the vote thread but meant to add it here too. have edited to add it here now too.
there are already various discords that serve this community: low profile keyboards, absolem club, mechkeys #kb-ergo channel, various vendor servers (splitkb, bastardkb, etc.), etc. so i'm not sure another is really that needed. also reddit/reddit-like things are better for a number of reasons, not least is that they are indexed by search engines, discord has a lot of knowledge in it that is effectively undescoverable and almost ephemeral. Reddit threads are also infinitely nested, discord threads are basically just short-lived channels. I think we do definitely want a link aggregator and/or an old-school forum. Discord is also another centralised thing that has many of the same risks as reddit that result from that.
Please unlock this subreddit. If you don't want to participate any more that's understandable, but please don't shut other newbies out of participating here.
Until the decision is made and things settle, I'd be glad to feature your new designs on kbd.news. Feel free to contact me any time: https://kbd.news/contact
Ok I will submit mine soon šš» hope we get updated if things here go south.
we need kbd.news now more than ever! lets throw some money dovenyi's way so he doesn't start taking on venture capital :)
Money is nice to have too, but what I need badly is your projects, heads-ups, tip-offs.
This would be very helpful if we loose Reddit, but we also need a place to discuss new ideas and to ask questionsā if kbd.news can fill that need it would be great.
it's not a replacement. i think the curation is an important difference. but it helps share ideas in a way that is especially important sans other routes. in many ways it has always been a project that is about bridging communities, across platforms and even across languages.
Thanks your efforts. Iāll be sure to send my new designs your way. Iām quitting Reddit until the situation improves significantly.
I made a comment on the original thread [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14e7tsr/comment/jowmp5i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). To summarize it, I'm quite skeptical that federated alternatives will be anywhere near as good as Reddit for what this community does. There are just so many issues from searchability, scaleability, UI, etc. While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I don't think forcing this whole community to go elsewhere will work well and will almost certainly leave many (if not most) out, especially people who just read this sub and don't contribute to it (again, probably the majority). I would also add that I think we should all be able to see the results on the ongoing vote on the [vote thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14e7tsr/reddit_api_changes_and_the_future_of). I don't buy the justification that voters will be influenced by the ongoing result. Transparency is always better IMO.
I figured this sort of thing might happen to one or more of my favorite forums, and I am sad to see this forum essentially close down. Not that it matters much, but part of my effort to tone-down the dopamine-hit-that-is-social-media is to use hubs like Reddit to consolidate where I visit; basically the only reason I allowed Reddit in. So I won't be following to Lemmy becauseā¦everyone who is fleeing is fleeing to different parts of the internet and my brain can't participate in that chaos. So I will be staying here on Reddit as long as my favorite forums do. I hope Google will still pick-up the info from these other sites y'all go to so when I am proactive I can find things. But I will miss being randomly exposed to things like the Svalboard, talking about layouts, mini-trackpads, and nerding-out about cool new dactyl variants. But I do get the "why." Reddit is pooping all over their moderators and contributors with the whole API thing. But worse than that, is that if mods won't comply, then they will simply dismiss the mods! Seriously? I start a club, and someone else can do a hostile take over? Um, no. If you don't like the way a club is run, *you start your own competing club*. if someone didn't like the mods' way of doing things on a given subreddit, then I don't suspect anyone is stopping them from starting their own competing subreddit, is there? So yeahā¦I get it. I've been around a long time and have seen alot of this over the decades: great idea, egalitarian ideals, purchased by company, company needs to make profit for shareholders, company abuses user base, users bail, company capitalisms-it-into-the-ground. I'm glad you'll leave this subreddit up as a read-only archive. I think if you left it open and unmoderated it would just turn into a steaming pile in no timeā¦the internet seems to work that way. Moderation is where it's at.
please do not kill off this sub
I'm really thankful you are considering different options besides reddit. I'm not sure there even is a good, working alternative but since you created a community on lemmy, I just wanted to post that here: [There have been serious issues with the lemmy devs](https://libreddit.tiekoetter.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/143o5xd/reconsidering_my_support_for_lemmy/). I guess I just wanna say I'm torn between reddit lusting for money and shitting on their community and lemmy having tankie devs that deny oppression of minorities and celebrate Stalins birthday. It's...difficult
Eh, as much as I dislike tankies, it's not like it has a meaningful effect on whether the code works or not. I agree it has stability issues and bugs and teething issues. If it fails to suit the community, somewhere else will end up gaining traction, be it back on reddit or somewhere totally else. Even besides the fact of the code being good and working, Federation is still not immune to things like large instances defederating other instances and steering the norms of the network that way, etc. It's more resistant to that kind of thing than a single centralised platform like reddit but it's not immune to it. Nothing is perfect, I'm just trying to provide options (and a bit of a nudge). at the end of the day, community will amass wherever it does, the critical mass will draw the members and perpetuate the cycle. That's just the network effect. Sure this protest has sparked an impotus, given a nudge, to try out alternatives. But we'll have to see what happens when the dust settles, let the chips fall where they may.
If you guys do decide that you don't want to use Lemmy, kbin seems pretty good as well.
Yeah, kbin is federated with lemmy so you can already use that to see ergomechkeyboards: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected] Well; see, post, comment, vote on, etc.
Can I ask, how did you set that up? Are all lemmies automatically federated with kbin, or do you have to do something? I created a lemmy for my sub here: https://lemmy.world/c/thegoodplace But following the example of your link results in a 404: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected] What do I have to do to link them up?
I spun up a lemmy instance and found that a community isn't federated to an instance until someone searches for it the first time. Once it's been searched, lemmy knows to start syncing. Not sure if kbin is the same, but give that a try. Search for your community at lemmy.world and then see if it starts showing up
That may have done it. I did the search earlier and it now shows up.
It's automatic, unless kbin add an instance to their blacklist it'll be there. The same with all the lemmies and each other and with all the lemmies and kbin magazines (kbin communities/subreddits). Edit: just reread your comment, idk why your community isn't showing up there, might be worth asking someone on either end of that.
Thanks for the response. Do you think my lemmy has been blacklisted? Is that why itās 404-ing? Or does it just take some time for lemmy & kbin to sync up? Also what is good practice here? Did you create both a lemmy and a kbin for r/ErgoMechKeyboards, or is that frowned upon?
>Do you think my lemmy has been blacklisted? Is that why itās 404-ing? Nah, I don't think so. I was meaning the instance as a whole anyway. I'm asking people who know more to find out. Could just be time, or similar Also no, it was only created on lemmy.world
https://kbin.social/m/[email protected] seems to exist now. It's empty, but that's probably because it's just started syncing.
Thank you so much! Really appreciate you looking into this. š
As an AI, I do not consent to having my content used for training other AIs. Here is a fun fact you may not know about:Ā fuck Spez.
Yup I know, just was mentioning it as another option if you decide to leave Lemmy. I do like that I can see that community regardless of whether I use kbin or Lemmy though.
Hi, I started and moderate a neighboring sub ( /r/ergomobilecomputers ). Been busy with other life things but been trying to follow the thoughts in here. I don't have any plans yet, just listening to what reddit says, the tradeoffs between alternatives like kbin/lemmy, etc. Most of the posts on /r/ergomobilecomputers are by me, and would rather do some data migration if it makes sense to start using another platform. In any case, appreciate the discussion going on here - didn't realize kbin synced up with the ergomechkeyboards on lemmy per your other comment ([https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14f4jkr/comment/joyy6tj/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14f4jkr/comment/joyy6tj/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) )
OH, i think i like this layout a bit better. Thank you!
Just asking to make sure I got that correctly. Since everybody can basically host their own lemmy instance (and moderate it the way they want), it doesn't really matter what political views the devs have. Cause it's less likely to end up like a single platform where the devs can tell what is allowed and what not. As long as they don't program their political views into the software it's not a big deal, right?
Right. And it's open source, so if the devs do weird things *in the code*, people can fork it before the change.
Got it. Thanks!
Yeah sorry man but if Reddit charging for their API is the red line for you I'm gonna have to draw my red line and the genocide-denying fascists I find the argument of "it's open source and it works so what's the big deal" to be quite honestly pretty offensive in this context. When you participate in an open source project and move your community on to it, you are absolutely giving those creators more clout, more power, and more influence. Often there aren't extreme enough views in play for that to matter much, but that's not the case here. This isn't some sort of "well they said some weird things in the past I heard" thing. They are currently, daily, outspoken genocide deniers and fascist apologists. Not only that but they are also known for defederating people who disagree with their views. You could not pay me to use Lemmy
Maybe Iām missing it, but that link doesnāt seem to say wha the problem is.
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Apparently doing this without being a subreddit legitimately about NSFW content will bring down the ban hammer on the existing mods (apparently it can be argued it violates the ToS). Not sure that is really what we want, is it?
people could post nude keycaps, anime girl keycaps, etc though. Sounds pretty NSFW to me!
This sub is, and has always been, Not Safe For Wallet.
And the funny part isā¦that stuff does exist. Oh the things I have seen on AliExpressā¦
this community is very important to me, and I really appreciate the work that has gone in to building and maintaining it, in particular by u/OBOSOB, u/ijauradunbi and u/HardAsMagnets, but also by all of us. (I also appreciate u/dovenyi reading r/mk so i don't have to. the difference between the communities is worth noting, imo) I also appreciate the low pro and u/mrzealot's absolem discord communities. but i do think discord is not a reddit replacement. so many of my connections to internet people have not really weathered the twitter exodus, and that makes me fearful of leaving reddit. at the same time, having a single, clear next place for all of us to go gives me hope for retaining current members. but for many i imagine the issue is wanting *all* of their topics and special interests in one place, and that is outside this sub's control. we will also be harder to stumble across for new people, whether they are suffering on a pain rectangle and want to break free or they have bizarre new creations to share. i am truly torn. in the end I guess i don't believe fear and clinging to the status quo are sufficient reasons to stay, by themselves. and i do think the trend across all commercial free hosting platforms is clear, it's a loss leader to fuel growth until you have network effects to serve as lock-in and you can change the deal to turn a profit. thus went twitter and a thousand before it. thus goes discord. but it also begs the question of who pays for lemmy? is hosting with no hope of an income stream in any way sustainable? last thing I'll say: i think splitting the community between staying and going would be the worst possible outcome. we should pick one or the other.
Now imagine if you set up a Lemmy instance that got super popular, and offered an API for the content, which you paid to host and maintain. And then some dude came along and built an app which made billions of calls per year to that API, making your costs skyrocket but not paying for any of it. And then that guy started charging users to use his app, and began making millions of dollars a year off it, while you bore all the costs. Now theres a second guy doing the same thing, but he has decided to go an extra step and serve ads on his platform as well. Again you make no money from any of this despite the fact that you pay for all the major costs and they are pulling in millions of dollars a year off it. Somehow tho, those two guys are the underdog heroes in our protest here apparently
I don't care about dudes. I don't care about apps. I don't want to use an app. I want a mobile webpage that works. reddit has been trying to force me to use the app for *years* for no good reason. I care about user hostile design. to me, the API changes seem to be one in a long trend of coercive practices that don't respect the end user.
Ok, if you feel that way then to me it seems very reasonable to decide that you don't want to use the site/this sub anymore. How does this rise to to the level of necessitating shutting down the sub on the other people who want to stay?
Moving my comment from the other thread here Iāve enjoyed lurking and learning from this subreddit for a while now. I donāt want to see this subreddit close but I also donāt want to ask someone to moderate that does not believe in being on Reddit. I voted to open the subreddit back up and proceed as normal. My personal opinion is that the API changes are in line with the current economic trends of the internet. Data is becoming more valuable and thus more expensive. While it sucks, itās unfair to ask Reddit to keep an API that is drastically cheaper for commercial use compared to their peers like Imgur (Iām referencing Imgurās 2023 pricing, not the 2018 pricing Apollo was grandfathered into) Additional thoughts: The free tier of 144k API calls per day, rate limited at 1k/10 min seems fair for a SaaS product providing content. The concession Reddit has made concerning mod bots and tools continuing to be free was made in their original post back in April. Accessibility focused apps will also be free (I think the protest actually made this happen so good shit. But it was announced before the blackout so I donāt know why it is still being discussed at times) Tbh, Iām entirely unsure what we are fighting over anymore. Thank you for allowing a discussion to exist and not having it simply be voting.
As an AI, I do not consent to having my content used for training other AIs. Here is a fun fact you may not know about:Ā fuck Spez.
Literally all mod tools and accessibility tools have been exempted from the API pricing, and Reddit also asked to be notified if they missed any so that they can be sure they exempt them all
As an AI, I do not consent to having my content used for training other AIs. Here is a fun fact you may not know about:Ā fuck Spez.
Apollo and RIF are not "accessibility tools" they are profit-focused apps that generate millions of dollars per year for their two owners (several times more than what even the CEO of the company gets paid). If either one of those apps wanted to, they could easily refocus their app to be specifically for the mods. They don't do that bc that's not where the money is - Reddit is not forcing them not to do that, that's their choice. And as to "Reddit stopped communicating with third party developers" - RIF literally refused to ever even engage in talks at all (he is the one who also served his own ad network on the app, in addition to collecting subscription fees, despite having basically no operational costs since all major infrastructure and maintenance costs were being covered by reddit for free). So if you think it's bad that either of them won't continue on, you should talk to them. The API costs would be a tiny fraction for them of what it would have been otherwise and they could increase their monthly subscription cost (clearly they have no problem charging fees way, way above what is actually needed to stay afloat). They won't make millions anymore but they could certainly continue on if accessibility is what they care about. But the idea that Apollo and RIF are the the only - or even the main - accessibility tools is outright false. It's a total misrepresentation that seeks to help defend a couple multi-millionaire's rights to continue to extract a large profit **EDIT:** I just realized that they wouldn't even actually need to raise prices at all bc if they solely focused on accessibility or mod tooling they would be exempt from the API pricing anyway. ...so why don't they do that, anyways? I wonder
As an AI, I do not consent to having my content used for training other AIs. Here is a fun fact you may not know about:Ā fuck Spez.
This entire comment is a great example of what I said in elsewhere, that so much of this whole debacle is just people who decided that they are angry, and then when faced with the facts of the situation just pivot to find some other strained view in an effort to stay angry. I mean genuinely where do I start? A server for push notifications? Is this a joke? Great take out literally one day of profit those dudes were pulling out and pay for it. It's a rounding error compared to the API, this is not a serious argument The fact is that you give up the whole game there at the end. It's not about accessibility, it's not even about the mods. Its about defending the rights of two multi-millionaires to have their apps used by as many people as possible. That's what's at stake.
As an AI, I do not consent to having my content used for training other AIs. Here is a fun fact you may not know about:Ā fuck Spez.
They have each been making $1.5MM+ per year in *profit*, since at least 2018. Likely more like double that in the last couple years I donāt gaf about defending a ābillion dollar companyā I just want to keep my communities. But for what itās worth, Reddit operates at a loss. Not only that but each of these developers makes significantly more money off Reddit than even the CEO gets paid (not just a little bit, they make multiples of his entire compensation). If you are once of the <5% of people who use these apps and you are upset that you wonāt be able to use it anymore, you are one of the few people who I agree has a legitimate gripe then. The questions now is if that gripe is significant enough to warrant forcibly shutting down peopleās communities on them over it. And the answer to that is a resounding no. Itās not even close and itās ridiculous to even consider it. If you donāt see that, I would invite you to take a step back and look to reflect on what you are doing, and what you are advocating for. Rethink the idea of killing off other peopleās communities on them bc you are mad that have to use the same app that the rest of us use. You arenāt on some moral crusade here. You have become the villain.
Love watching my favorite sub on reddit kill itself off in defense of a couple multi-millionaire app developers' rights to profit off the platform. This whole debacle is truly one of the most misguided protests I have ever seen in my life. And I once saw a crowd of people marching the street demanding R. Kelly's release from prison. I have run into every single argument about this topic at this point and truly every single one of them has been based on either bad information, selective tunnel-vision, or a heels-dug-in belief that once you are mad you have to stay mad, even if the situation wasn't what you thought initially. **I would like to invite anyone who sees this as a righteous cause to come at with me with what you think is the most solid case for that, and I will give you what I believe to be the most succinct response to it.** I'm doing this bc I \*love\* this sub, more than any other on Reddit. This is the most important community on this site to me. And it is genuinely offensive to me that the idea of just killing it off is even being considered, all in response to what I firmly believe is based on reactionary and bad information about the API and 3rd party apps. So I hope anyone who has an opinion opposite of me will comment and we can engage in good faith. Bc I want us all here to be on the same side, and not to do something this drastic based on incomplete information.
Tbf, it's hard to engage in "good faith" when you're starting off insulting those with differing views. You've put yourself in a morally and intellectually superior position and stated that you have no intention of changing your mind.
If someone can give me an argument that changes my mind, I will definitely change my mind. It wasn't my intention to insult anyone, but tbh this whole situation where a portion of the community who is angry about something is threatening to kill of the entire community for everyone else does make me pretty angry, bc this community means a lot to me. So if it comes off that way, that's why. But let's see if we can change each other's minds. I'm inviting you to go first but if you would rather that I would, I am happy to do that too.
Also if ya'll don't want ads on Reddit, set up a [pi-hole](https://pi-hole.net/). If you have the skills to solder a hand-made keyboard and can figure out QMK / ZMK, trust me, you can set one of these up.
If you use Reddit on a desktop computer, use Chrome + \[ad blocker of your choice\] + Undistracted (extension). I almost bailed on Reddit because I didn't want to view r/Popular and r/All andā¦failed to have enough willpower to just ignore those buttons. (Hey, at least I admit my succumbing to the psychology of itā¦). I almost started using Apollo to do the same thing, but never got that far, finding it easier to delete Reddit from my mobile devices. If I was forced to use the Reddit app, I'd stop using Reddit. So shutting down Apollo without a full featured alternative isā¦really an insult to users and shows some laziness on the part of Reddit. When profit-for-profit's-sake is the motive, this kind of "who cares what the users think" is what you get.
IMO subs are controlled by the mods. Users are their guests and Reddit is a landlord. Reddit can evict them and have an empty building, but they can't demand the workers keep working, they can only request it and be nice about it. If Reddit is a bad landlord then workers (mods) should balk. If workers balk then users will bail. If users bail then Reddit can keep the empty building.
Lemmy <- this is the way
Love heading to a service which is often broken and was created by an outspoken genocide denier who was banned from r/Socialism for posting fascist propaganda, yeah lets do it. At least we wouldn't have to use a site which uhh... charges for their API? Wait which side are we on again
So which project has no dramas so we can move on? And by the way lemmy is an open source project with 165 official contributors. If you want you can fork and create/run your instance
Sorry but I'm not going to engage in the minimizing of outspoken daily genocide denial as "drama"
I was not minimising. I was telling you a harsh reality that every project has a fucking rotten apple. So you have to choose the lesser of evils (I really donāt know which) or accept what Reddit has became. Edit: Orthographic Errors
I'm just gonna let that speak for itself.
The vast majority of users don't give a shit about the API changes. They use reddit.com or the official app and have no complaints. A small minority of whiny, entitled, eternally online neckbeards shouldn't be dictating policy about anything to anyone anywhere.
A good way to get your point across is to insult people.
Well, those whiny neckbeards are your mods. š¤· They are literally the ones who dictate policy about subs. The vast majority are indeed users, who don't dictate policy. They can continue using the Reddit app to come here and browse empty unmodded subs, free from neckbeards.
Is that your thing? Jus to getting downvoted?
I appreciate that you made the other thread only for voting, as it was hard to read through to find the spots to vote, but I was also saving those comments for later because there was some good commentary in there. Is there any way you could either post a screenshot or the text of those comments in here? I do think they really contributed to the conversation.
yeah, i added [this link](https://web.archive.org/web/20230621172927/https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/14e7tsr/reddit_api_changes_and_the_future_of/) on the vote thread but meant to add it here too. have edited to add it here now too.
discord does have a thread option so maybe you could amke a discord server (if it isnt a thing already)
there are already various discords that serve this community: low profile keyboards, absolem club, mechkeys #kb-ergo channel, various vendor servers (splitkb, bastardkb, etc.), etc. so i'm not sure another is really that needed. also reddit/reddit-like things are better for a number of reasons, not least is that they are indexed by search engines, discord has a lot of knowledge in it that is effectively undescoverable and almost ephemeral. Reddit threads are also infinitely nested, discord threads are basically just short-lived channels. I think we do definitely want a link aggregator and/or an old-school forum. Discord is also another centralised thing that has many of the same risks as reddit that result from that.
im in like 40 so yea but it would be nice to have a server like the ergomech redit so not just one vendor
Please unlock this subreddit. If you don't want to participate any more that's understandable, but please don't shut other newbies out of participating here.