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Reddit Doubles Down

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121–130 of 462 posts

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#121

I love that the CEO calls the users voicing their displeasure "noise". When those users voice opinions on other things, it's called content. When those users voice their opinions against reddit, it's noise. Hoffman continues to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reddit is. The very people that give your platform its value are revolting against you, and you think it's noise. What's your product? What do yo…

My personal (cynical) bet is that Huffman actually understands what Reddit is better than us, and Reddit will be just fine after this. To be completely honest, if a two-day blackout is proven to be the most serious "protest" the community can do, I'll buy Reddit stock when it IPO.

I agree. I think that this is a turning point for Reddit but not towards failure: they’re ditching the hardcore nerd audience that made them. But they’ve long since outgrown that audience and will likely (as a company) do just fine without them. As a community there will be a notable loss.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#122

I love that the CEO calls the users voicing their displeasure "noise". When those users voice opinions on other things, it's called content. When those users voice their opinions against reddit, it's noise. Hoffman continues to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reddit is. The very people that give your platform its value are revolting against you, and you think it's noise. What's your product? What do yo…

My personal (cynical) bet is that Huffman actually understands what Reddit is better than us, and Reddit will be just fine after this. To be completely honest, if a two-day blackout is proven to be the most serious "protest" the community can do, I'll buy Reddit stock when it IPO.

Eh...the real problem with shutting down Apollo is that it makes the volunteer moderators lives much harder. Those are the people who provide any value to reddit as a platform.

The protest could end today, the 3rd party apps go...and if the volunteer mods go with it, then the site as a whole tumbles onto a decline that eventually kills it.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#123
post #52

Original report is available on the verge[1], which contains the full message sent by reddit CEO. 1: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...

"I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.” Overreaction much ? Are we really become that desensitized as a society? I find that hard to believe.

There are a lot of unhinged people on any major Internet platform. In 2018, a YouTuber shot three people at HQ because she blamed the company for downranking her videos. It’s actually quite lucky this kind of thing hasn’t happened more.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#124
If Reddit continues to double down on their mistakes, I wonder if they'll go as far as to forcibly reassign control of major subreddits in order to reopen them. They certainly have the technical capability to do so, although I'd expect such an action to result in a mass exodus from Reddit and a massive loss of trust. At the end of the day, Reddit has the final say over what goes on in their website, but playing that card seems risky.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#125
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe reddit’s API pricing is reasonable?

Yes, it's very reasonable, especially when you consider how many hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, these third-party client apps like Apollo have been raking in each year, for so many years. It's only fair that Reddit prices their API to get the lion's share of that revenue, regardless of whatever sob stories these wealthy app developers are trying to manipulate the angry mob with.

The Apollo guy is a real head scratcher. He probably could have charged $10/month to more than cover his costs, and had 10's of thousands of paying subscribers. Or, you know, implement a caching layer.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#126

I am a bit confused about this, do a lot of people access Reddit through a service that uses the API? To me Reddit is a website, people keep referring to it as an app, but I have never used an app for it. It works best in the browser.

You're right, but a lot of people do use third-party apps on their mobile phones since the official Reddit app is crap. From what I've read, third-party apps are also the only way for moderators to perform while they're away from their desktops since the official app is extremely limited in that regard.

Even on desktop, a lot users and mods use Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) [0] because the "default" Reddit is crap too, lol. I'm sure other HN users would also be using the "old" version of reddit, old.reddit.com [1] since it still performs better somehow. RES has also mentioned that it should continue working fine, but they're not entirely sure about it either. [2]

[0]: https://redditenhancementsuite.com/

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/RESAnnouncements/comments/141hyv3/a...

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#127
post #35

Of course, the two day blackout will not have huge revenue impact, but two week one will. And if it goes on beyond that, those who will have the most to lose will blink (i.e. Spez and investors) If Spez doesn't blink, the investors will make him. I don't think he's' going to win this one without making concession.

I wonder what Reddit's owner (Advance Media / Condé Nast) think of all this. I assume there is a point where (from Advance's POV) the API changes hurt the IPO more than they help. There may also be a point where having (Reddit co-founder) Huffman as CEO is more of a hindrance than a benefit.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#128

I am a bit confused about this, do a lot of people access Reddit through a service that uses the API? To me Reddit is a website, people keep referring to it as an app, but I have never used an app for it. It works best in the browser.

There's some third-party clients similar to what Twitter had this time last year, with Apollo being the most popular to the point of having its icon/screenshots in Apple's WWDC presentation last week.

I think the biggest impact, though, is some moderators rely on tools/clients to make their (voluntary) jobs easier. If those tools disappear, then a lot of these subreddits will probably shut down for lack of moderators. And I heard that /r/blind mods literally cannot use the existing Reddit site/apps.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#129
post #49

It will be interesting to see the eventual outcome of this saga. I have already seen backlash against the backlash in many subs. /r/NBA, which was mentioned in the article, had a poll one day before the blackout and made the decision based on 8000 votes (out of a total 8+ million members). Casual users were not happy to find out that they would have nowhere to discuss the most important game of the season, and the mo…

> It will be interesting to see the eventual outcome of this saga.

For sure.

Knowing there’s a backlash against the backlash, I wonder if Reddit triples down and forcibly flips back to public all the top subreddits that went private.

There’s the problem of real quick finding new mods for like 8,000 subreddits. I’m sure the tail is long, but they’d probably start with the biggest and work their way down.

Ultimately all the data and code lives on Reddit servers. They can do whatever they want. The way they’ve acted so far I don’t see them backing down.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#130
Its interesting because I'd say the Endarkening only affected the members of those communities that went dark.

I've gone back to reddit during the dark period and there is still plenty of new tidbits to read. I barely noticed anything unless I specifically went to a community that went dark.

All in all I'd say it was very ineffectual on the face of it. But these things tend to snowball so I'll keep watching this space.

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