cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1260794 > Hello /r/london. > > We're back - for now. > > I've decided to write something of my own rather than repost another copy of the official messaging and I hope you'll excuse me for it. Funnily enough, I've had a lot more free time than usual over the last couple of days. > > I think there is a lot of anger and rhetoric going around at the moment, and while the anger is absolutely justified, it's getting hard to understand what's actually happening due to the fog of war. > Background > > In May, without warning, and contrary to many public statements made previously by current and former CEOs, Reddit Inc announced broad API policy changes that will price out most commercial third-party apps from continuing to operate. > > Already, Apollo and Reddit is Fun have announced they will shutter on July 31st as these changes take effect. Other apps will likely end up joining them. > > Reddit has done this for a very simple reason: as a loss making company, they need to a path to profit to successfully launch their IPO this year. One way to do this is to drive people to their official app because that's where they can monetise their users the best through buying premium, awards, showing more adverts, and whatever bullshit they're doing with NFTs. In particular, it's no coincidence that Reddit Inc launched new ad options just this weekend - I'm sure these new forms of ads are in no small part responsible for wanting eyes on their apps only. > > Another issue is the rise of the large language models (ChatGPT etc.) which are clearly using social media posts as a large part of their training corpus. So, the social media companies have suddenly decided this is a valuable asset and they should charge for it. Something u/spez > > (the Reddit CEO) and Elon (over at Twitter) are no doubt looking to cash in on. > > It's not completely unreasonable for a company to want people to use its official apps. It's not completely unreasonable to charge for an API. What is unreasonable is Reddit's timing, pricing, lack of feature parity, and u/spez > > 's frankly insulting attitude to the community on which his company and its revenue relies. > The Timing > > Reddit Inc announced these changes in May, to be enforced from July 31st. This is far too short a timescale for apps like Apollo to entirely rewrite their backend to ensure compliance and cost controls with the new API policies. Many of these apps are one-person operations, many of them are part time projects. They cannot get this done on the timescale Reddit proposed. > > Feels real like a rug pull man. > The Pricing > > Christian Selig of Apollo calculated he would have to pay Reddit $20 million a year just to keep Apollo running, which would mean Apollo would have to vastly increase their per user subscription cost. It's also very clear that Reddit's API does not cost them this much to run for themselves, as otherwise the company's total yearly revenue would be losses in the billions. > > While they may be losing out on some ad revenue, there's nothing to say they couldn't right this by having an agreement with third party app developers that they must show Reddit's ads. Simples. > > But no, they're not doing this. > Lack of feature parity > > The official Reddit app lacks many useful features for moderators, but most frustratingly, lacks good accessibility, which is a huge problem for users of /r/blind and others with disabilities. > > Reddit have partly relented and allowed two accessibility-focussed apps to continue to use the API for free - RedReader on Android and Dystopia on iOS, but under a non-commercial agreement that Reddit can pull with 30 days notice. > > This is not a long-term sustainable model. > > They have also made exceptions for mod tools but they miss the point that many moderators work on mobile only, and the moderation tools in the official mobile app are not good in comparison with third party offerings that will now shut down. > > No matter what you might think of mods, we are volunteers, who put time in for free to manage communities. Each mod is trying to do what they think is a good job in their spare time, for the benefit of their subreddit. Taking away our tools is not helpful, and many mods will likely quit the site or reduce the number of actions they're able to take as a result of these changes. > > Boo-hoo, you might say, but without moderation, the subs would be chock full of hate speech, bots and spam (well, more-so than it is now, we do what we can). The only reward we've ever received from our work is to see the online communities we volunteer in thrive and grow, and the occasional t-shirt. > u/spez > > Spez, supposedly the professional CEO of a large social media company with over 2000 employees, has shown an abysmal attitude towards us throughout the discontent this situation has caused. > > Among other things: > > Dismissive answers in his AMA about the API changes > Severe mischaracterisation of his interactions with Apollo > Leaked memo shows he believes the blackout is meaningless > Complete refusal to compromise > > When Spez returned to Reddit, we were promised a step change in user relations after the Ellen Pao debacle. I suppose ultimately, money talks, and he's been told by his board he needs to take these steps to support the IPO. > > If anything it reinforces the point that these kinds of companies do not work for you: > If you are not paying for the product, you are the product > The blackout > > We participated with many other subs in the blackout this week. Some large subs are continuing to stay locked down, but but we have to balance that /r/London is a community resource, not just a fun/meme/shitposting sub that people can do without for a while. > > So we're reopening for now, and letting the large subs take the heat as many of them are staying shut permanently. > > It's not over though. There's talk of further actions called for, and we may well participate. > > Ultimately though, this may not be a fight we can win on Reddit. Perhaps the best thing to come out of this is the reminder that we can't trust social media companies to act in good faith towards their users. > > I remember the Digg v4 debacle and the great migration to Reddit - nothing says it can't happen again. . Maybe it's time to find a new frontpage of our Internet. Perhaps it's time to start dipping our toes into alternatives. > > Here are some: > > https://kbin.social/ > https://join-lemmy.org/ > https://squabbles.io/ > https://tildes.net/ > > I am not a soothsayer and can't tell you which platform might emerge is "next Reddit", but if we've learned anything from the fall of MySpace, Digg, and Twitter, and the precarious situation of Meta, it's that the next Reddit will come. Perhaps this time we'll learn some lessons about choosing a federated platform or a non-profit to run whatever comes next. > Your thoughts > > We'd like to hear your views on whether we should. Not running a poll this time, as they tend to get brigaded by people who aren't on the sub, so instead please just voice your thoughts in the comments. > > Should we: > > stay open? > keep our eye on things and participate in further blackouts if/when they occur? > participate in the indefinite blackout? > > Honestly want to hear your opinions.

Hello /r/london. We're back - for now. I've decided to write something of my own rather than repost another copy of the official messaging and I hope you'll excuse me for it. Funnily enough, I've had a lot more free time than usual over the last couple of days. I think there is a lot of anger and rhetoric going around at the moment, and while the anger is absolutely justified, it's getting hard to understand what's actually happening due to the fog of war. Background In May, without warning, and contrary to many public statements made previously by current and former CEOs, Reddit Inc announced broad API policy changes that will price out most commercial third-party apps from continuing to operate. Already, Apollo and Reddit is Fun have announced they will shutter on July 31st as these changes take effect. Other apps will likely end up joining them. Reddit has done this for a very simple reason: as a loss making company, they need to a path to profit to successfully launch their IPO this year. One way to do this is to drive people to their official app because that's where they can monetise their users the best through buying premium, awards, showing more adverts, and whatever bullshit they're doing with NFTs. In particular, it's no coincidence that Reddit Inc launched new ad options just this weekend - I'm sure these new forms of ads are in no small part responsible for wanting eyes on their apps only. Another issue is the rise of the large language models (ChatGPT etc.) which are clearly using social media posts as a large part of their training corpus. So, the social media companies have suddenly decided this is a valuable asset and they should charge for it. Something u/spez (the Reddit CEO) and Elon (over at Twitter) are no doubt looking to cash in on. It's not completely unreasonable for a company to want people to use its official apps. It's not completely unreasonable to charge for an API. What is unreasonable is Reddit's timing, pricing, lack of feature parity, and u/spez 's frankly insulting attitude to the community on which his company and its revenue relies. The Timing Reddit Inc announced these changes in May, to be enforced from July 31st. This is far too short a timescale for apps like Apollo to entirely rewrite their backend to ensure compliance and cost controls with the new API policies. Many of these apps are one-person operations, many of them are part time projects. They cannot get this done on the timescale Reddit proposed. Feels real like a rug pull man. The Pricing Christian Selig of Apollo calculated he would have to pay Reddit $20 million a year just to keep Apollo running, which would mean Apollo would have to vastly increase their per user subscription cost. It's also very clear that Reddit's API does not cost them this much to run for themselves, as otherwise the company's total yearly revenue would be losses in the billions. While they may be losing out on some ad revenue, there's nothing to say they couldn't right this by having an agreement with third party app developers that they must show Reddit's ads. Simples. But no, they're not doing this. Lack of feature parity The official Reddit app lacks many useful features for moderators, but most frustratingly, lacks good accessibility, which is a huge problem for users of /r/blind and others with disabilities. Reddit have partly relented and allowed two accessibility-focussed apps to continue to use the API for free - RedReader on Android and Dystopia on iOS, but under a non-commercial agreement that Reddit can pull with 30 days notice. This is not a long-term sustainable model. They have also made exceptions for mod tools but they miss the point that many moderators work on mobile only, and the moderation tools in the official mobile app are not good in comparison with third party offerings that will now shut down. No matter what you might think of mods, we are volunteers, who put time in for free to manage communities. Each mod is trying to do what they think is a good job in their spare time, for the benefit of their subreddit. Taking away our tools is not helpful, and many mods will likely quit the site or reduce the number of actions they're able to take as a result of these changes. Boo-hoo, you might say, but without moderation, the subs would be chock full of hate speech, bots and spam (well, more-so than it is now, we do what we can). The only reward we've ever received from our work is to see the online communities we volunteer in thrive and grow, and the occasional t-shirt. u/spez Spez, supposedly the professional CEO of a large social media company with over 2000 employees, has shown an abysmal attitude towards us throughout the discontent this situation has caused. Among other things: Dismissive answers in his AMA about the API changes Severe mischaracterisation of his interactions with Apollo Leaked memo shows he believes the blackout is meaningless Complete refusal to compromise When Spez returned to Reddit, we were promised a step change in user relations after the Ellen Pao debacle. I suppose ultimately, money talks, and he's been told by his board he needs to take these steps to support the IPO. If anything it reinforces the point that these kinds of companies do not work for you: If you are not paying for the product, you are the product The blackout We participated with many other subs in the blackout this week. Some large subs are continuing to stay locked down, but but we have to balance that /r/London is a community resource, not just a fun/meme/shitposting sub that people can do without for a while. So we're reopening for now, and letting the large subs take the heat as many of them are staying shut permanently. It's not over though. There's talk of further actions called for, and we may well participate. Ultimately though, this may not be a fight we can win on Reddit. Perhaps the best thing to come out of this is the reminder that we can't trust social media companies to act in good faith towards their users. I remember the Digg v4 debacle and the great migration to Reddit - nothing says it can't happen again. . Maybe it's time to find a new frontpage of our Internet. Perhaps it's time to start dipping our toes into alternatives. Here are some: https://kbin.social/ https://join-lemmy.org/ https://squabbles.io/ https://tildes.net/ I am not a soothsayer and can't tell you which platform might emerge is "next Reddit", but if we've learned anything from the fall of MySpace, Digg, and Twitter, and the precarious situation of Meta, it's that the next Reddit will come. Perhaps this time we'll learn some lessons about choosing a federated platform or a non-profit to run whatever comes next. Your thoughts We'd like to hear your views on whether we should. Not running a poll this time, as they tend to get brigaded by people who aren't on the sub, so instead please just voice your thoughts in the comments. Should we: stay open? keep our eye on things and participate in further blackouts if/when they occur? participate in the indefinite blackout? Honestly want to hear your opinions.

Synthesizers dizzy • Now • 100%

Does anyone have a good list of small, handheld, battery powered mini synths, grooveboxes, effects and other noise-makers?

I've preordered a [Dirtywave M8](https://dirtywave.com/) which seems like an awesome piece of gear and it's got me really excited at the prospect of using interesting dedicated hardware machines that I can take to the park or mess with on the sofa. The obvious ones I've come across so far are: - Korg Volca range - Roland mini synths and aira compact ranges - Teenage Engineering OP and POs But these all seem a little uninteresting to me and just rehashed tiny versions of older gear and/or aimed at lo-fi producers. Some less obvious ones that have my attention are: - Monome Norns - 1010music lemondrop, fireball & razzmatazz (not battery powered but easily powered by a USB powerbank) - Bastl microgranny and kastl - Korg NTS-1 - Korg Monotrons - Audiothingies Micromonsta 2 (again not battery powered but can be via powerbank) Are there any you know of that fit the bill? EDIT: Will add more cool things as I find them - Zoom MS-70CDR - small, relatively cheap, battery powered stereo multi-FX pedal intended for guitars. Out of the box it only does time based effects like reverb, chorus and delay but there's an easily searchable hack that lets you load any of the algorithms from any of the other digital FX pedals that Zoom makes which gives it distortion, compression, fuzz, amp modelling and loads more! (check this out for more info https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG3KO1EbFd4)

DeGoogle Yourself dizzy • Now • 71%

Presearch - a private decentralized search engine that pays you for your searches

presearch.org

I just stumbled across this and it seems interesting. Sort of like Brave browser's model but for search. I'll just post the marketing blurb I found [here](https://www.presearch.io/ecosystem) instead of rehashing what they wrote much more eloquently than I could: > **Presearch Engine** > >The Presearch Engine harnesses the power of a number of the world’s top search engines and other data sources to provide users with a compelling search experience that offers great results, protects user privacy, provides more choice and control, while also being censorship-resistant. > >**PRE Tokens** > >Rewards in the form of PRE tokens, the Presearch cryptocurrency are provided to searchers to incentivize them to switch to the Presearch Engine from Google and other search engines. > >**Presearch Nodes** > >Presearch nodes can be installed on any computer or server that supports Docker, and provide the computing resources to power the Presearch Engine. Those running nodes are also rewarded with PRE tokens. > >**Presearch Keyword Staking** > >The Presearch Keyword staking platform enables advertisers to bid on keywords using PRE tokens to have their ads displayed. Whoever stakes or commits the most tokens to a keyword has their ad displayed. > >**Presearch Marketplace** > >The Presearch Marketplace enables keyword stakers and node stakers, as well as project supporters to purchase PRE tokens directly from the project with Bitcoin, Ethereum or USD. > >**Ethereum Blockchain** > >The Ethereum blockchain enables PRE token holders to easily transfer, sell, buy and store their PRE tokens, as well as view all transactions on the network in an open, transparent manner. They also have a referrals system whereby if you join using a referral, both parties get a bonus number of tokens. I'm not bothered either way and my intention isn't to spam this for profit so I didn't include the referral in the main post link. I'm mainly interested in your thoughts on this tech. However, in case anybody would like the initial bonus, here's a referral link: https://presearch.org/signup?rid=2247013

Lemmy dizzy • Now • 81%

Discussion - anonymous transparency/transparent anonymity for mods - what would be the best way to do something like this?

I'm thinking of starting a community for thouroughly researched investment and trading proposals (crypto/stocks/etc) My idea was to have a severely restricted subreddit and/or community here that would have some or more of the following criteria: - No posts from users with account age under e.g. 2 years - No posts that don't meet the requirements set in the community guidelines - No more than 1 post per member each week - Posts must be approved to be visible - etc... The goal being that it can't be easily targeted by spam bots, can't easily be gamed and every post must be approved by a valued member. The main problem I have with subreddits is the amount of power mods have in doing shady behind the scenes deals and/or pump and dump schemes. I don't want anyone to even question that I may be doing that or even be able to do it. My idea on Reddit was to create the subreddit with a new account and livestream that account's inbox to show that there's no funny business going on. That's obviously pretty stupid and inconvenient and would require any other mod to do the same. What I'm after is a community whose content is very carefully curated whilst being as trustworthy as possible by making it heavily locked down and in fact quite trustless. One part of the solution I've thought of is for the platform to have a feature whereby mods can be anonymous and personally uncontactable whilst at the same time making all messages and post requests public for anyone to see. This would remove the ability for scammers and con artists to secretly contact mods and conduct shady deals because anyone would be able to see that taking place. **However mods would still be able to reach out to shady actors and prove that simply by logging in and revealing the dashboard.** The solution to this would be to give many longstanding members of the community some lesser mod privileges to approve posts. These members would have to have been members for a while and have submitted posts to the community. With this system, they also have to approve each post before it is posted. That removes an element of control from the mods. My thinking was that it could choose 3 currently online members who have this lesser mod privilege at random and request their approval. If those accounts go offline or don't respond for a few minutes it then selects approval of other members. **Are there any better solutions that have been thought of or are already implemented?** **Is this something that you guys have thought about or would consider?** Would love to hear your thoughts on this

and lemmy.ml/s for /search etc... Also, the fact that I can't glance at the URL to see what community I'm currently in is proving to be a (very trivial) inconvenience. Instead of: lemmy.ml/post/12345/comment/1234 Could it be: lemmy.ml/c/[community_name]/12345/comment/1234 or something along those lines? More for the sharing of links aspect and knowing what to expect from URL you receive than anything else. I'd be hesitant to click on any link I'd been sent in case it's NSFW/NSFL but I'd be more inclined to if I could see what community it was posted in.

Asklemmy dizzy • Now • 88%

r/The_Donald has been banned on Reddit, what's to stop those users turning Lemmy into what became of Voat?

title