Live data from Hacker News

Reddit Strike Has Started

reddark.untone.uk

251–260 of 1001 posts

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#251

Forgive me if I'm making a simplistic reading of this, but it seems the CEO has said that whilst apps and bots are making some good money, Reddit is losing money. Assuming Reddit has already taken cost saving measures (with 2000 staff maybe not), then how can they continue as a business losing money? I wonder if a model would work where all monetization of api calls has to be done through Reddit and the API itself, a…

I think they are fixing this by making bots?

I got more followers in the last 5 days than I've had in the last 15 years: https://i.imgur.com/hjeVvtZ.png

Something is up for sure.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#252
post #34
post #11

Great! There's a picket line I won't be crossing. Not just for those subs, of course, but for all of Reddit. The reason Reddit is valuable is not the few execs making these (IMHO terrible) decisions. It's the thousands of mods and the millions of people creating and organizing the content that I go there to read. Until those people are happy with things, I'm not going back.

Reddit is basically successful despite itself. It's wild.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#253
post #21

Flashback to Digg.com... I hope the people currently in charge of Reddit know how that event played out... it was the single most significant stroke of luck a fledgling Reddit could have possibly hoped for.

Not sure what the relation between YC and Reddit is these days, but wouldn't HN be in the prime position to take over? I feel all that is needed is to add sub-hn's. Reddit got Digg's business because Digg gambled away all of it's good will. That was a long time ago, Reddit since been going down the same path. Point is, all these companies are trying to monetize, generate profits, like they somehow responsible for the…

Not sure what the relation between YC and Reddit is these days, but wouldn't HN be in the prime position to take over? I feel all that is needed is to add sub-hn's.

Then where would all the hn users go? I'm still mad I couldn't get a lobster.rs account 10 years ago, so I'm not going there. And I most definitely don't want to use a website that the average person has heard of.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#254

Is the inevitable fate of any social media site to be antagonistic to its most dedicated users?

When the most dedicated users are fundamentally hostile to the idea that the social media site may need to limit features for the sake of profitability, it seems likely. Rhetorically the activists here are a step or two away from treating Reddit as a public utility and free API access as a human right. At least until they shift focus to finding wrongthinkers that they want to ban again, then we'll shift back to the u…

You are fighting a straw man you yourself erected. Nobody believes they have a right to reddit but nor does reddit have a right to viewership. They are trying to leverage the value their communities bring to the platform. There is nothing morally wrong with this.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They of course know (at the time of the mass Digg exodus Reddit specifically changed their alien icon to welcome Digg refugees), but the difference is that they are betting on the fact that right now there is no immediately obvious alternative, like Reddit was to Digg a decade ago.

I think they're right. Lemmy/Kbin exist, but they're not ready for it. They're in a worse (less mature) place than Mastodon was with Twitter, and even that was rough. With no alternative i think Reddit will be fine in this storm. I see many posts on Kbin/Lemmy discussing Reddit addiction, how they can leave it, etc, and those are niche people. The majority of Reddit users i suspect won't even know anything is wrong i…

> but that's a solvable problem

This requires explanation. If they staff the moderation in-house, costs will rise significantly and there is no chance they can ever profit. The people with the time, expertise and patience necessary to mod will know of alternatives. Mods are niche niche.

But the bigger issue that you allude to for reddit here is that they aren't pulling off the band-aid in one go. Once the apps die, they still need to kill old reddit and RES, they still need to end NSFW. Each time they do this the federated clones will be stronger, and each time more and more will jump ship.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#256
Thinking on how to forward from here.

Is the missing ADs revenue the crux of the problem?

Instead of raising API price, what if Reddit injects ADs as real content for non premium API calls, so those API free riders/crawlers would get ADs indistinguishable from content. Well intended apps like Apollo could allow users to provide their premium identity and get AD free content. If this works, Reddit could even lower the price of premium account thanks to increase in AD revenue.

Also, I believe Reddit should share ADs revenue with subreddits moderators. This would truly align the incentive of all parties.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a fundamental conflict, in that these network effect businesses are terrible as for-profit businesses. They're of great value to those who use them, and indirectly to society as a whole. Yet there's no good way to monetize them (nor does there need to be monetization), and trying to do so damages the functionality of the network. Both Twitter and Reddit would likely be better off (from the POV of the…

Exactly. I'm headed back to wikipedia, where I found community as a teenager. I think you can draw a direct line from wikimedia's nonprofit status to 22 years of greatness and steady improvement.

A friend there once told me the exec-level staff basically just does what the users want and they lack any real “authority” over the site.

However, the drawback is they had a lot of great ideas for improvements but the power users throw a fit over any changes.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Official stats showed that only 3% of moderation actions come from 3rd party apps, this was just a made up argument all along. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

Oh, well if spez says it, it must be true!

I know he is a paragon of virtue who would never use access to production to edit people's comments!

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd need a bunch of dangs to mod every conceivable interest group, like soccer and German politics. People forget that reddit was popular and succeeded during the digg migration because it was pro free speech and minimally moderated. It was one of the reasons people migrated to reddit instead of here. The first 10 years of reddit, the community and the company prided themselves on being a "free speech platform."…

But you at least need someone to clean up spam? Not sure whether there was a forum spamming business back then, but there certainly is now.

Yes. Subs had moderators and they got rid of spam, but that was about it. The mods themselves were heavily pro free speech just like the founders and corporate. Back then, reddit was predominatly american and we all adopted the free speech as an ideal. Then as reddit gained a larger foreign following, they slowly chipped away at free speech. It's pretty much what happened to social media and the internet in general.

The prononents of internet censorship are canadians, brits, europeans, middle easterners, indians, chinese, etc. After all, the only place "hate speech" is protected is in the US. If you think about it, you have to protect "hate speech" if you are to have free speech. You can't have free speech without "hate speech". The idea of censoring "hate speech" is an alien concept in america. It was imported from abroad.

Post reply on HN