Reddit Doubles Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#151

Post by greiskul » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:31 AM UTC

preommr wrote: post #79

givemeethekeys wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone else remember the giant exodus from Digg.com to Reddit? No one I know talks about Digg.com any more. But hey, maybe it is profitable.

Reddit makes like half a billion, it's plenty profitable for what it is. The problem is that management is trying to make it into something that it's not in an effort to make even more money when the site just isn't geared for it. It's like if McDonalds instead of just opening more stores decided that it can make even more money if it turned into a bar and grill because steaks have higher margins.

Agreed. The tech world keeps facing this problem, where to justify the valuations that companies end up getting, they need to keep trying to "take over the world". Sometimes it works, and we get stuff like youtube migrating away from just viral videos and video hosting, into supporting an ecosystem of content creators. But so many times it's just wasteful money and effort.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#152

Post by justinclift » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:31 AM UTC

teruakohatu wrote: post #8

fallat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they?

Because when you visit a search result you get a page saying the page is private instead of content.

As a tip, if you just need to read the content from the search result then they seem to be commonly available in the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org

It does mean you need to cut-n-paste the Reddit url there, but it's been working for the content I needed to look into yesterday.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#153

Post by OldManRyan » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:31 AM UTC

swalling wrote: post #123

jsemrau wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Is it lucky or was that situation an anomaly? Some people are unhinged but they are also keyboard warriors. I doubt even the unhinged redditors are going to go out and start assaulting people over this.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#154

Post by lokar » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:32 AM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #134

lokar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither the cost of allowing these apps or the revenue the charge would produce could possibly matter.

I'm not so sure - I assume the hyper-valuable users are actually generally using 3rd party apps, so forcing them back on the platform could raise their CPI enough to look good at an IPO rather than terrible.

They have to be much less than 1%, I don’t t see how the math works. Views (and ad clicks) are what matter, not posts and comments. They only need the posts and comments to have something to stick an ad next to.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#155

Post by dasil003 » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:32 AM UTC

bwat49 wrote: post #150

a2tech wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a $4/month product ALL ready that removes ads and gives you more features. Making that a requirement to use the API is by FAR the simplest and most profitable option. Its also more profit then they're proposing to get from their API charges

Yeah I find it baffling that they didn't just do this

Most likely it's about control, not financials.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#156

Post by chefandy » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:32 AM UTC

>a commenter let me know that some members had already set up shop on Kbin, a decentralized Reddit alternative that is interoperable with Mastodon and other services on the ActivityPub standard. While the interface is rough even by the standards of Reddit, it works just fine.

Works just fine for who, though? Not for non-technical people.

The FOSS community, especially the Fediverse community continually disappoint me by being so dismissive of, or even hostile to design critique. Nearly universally, trying to engage a project community in rethinking an interface is received like unsolicited criticism of someone's physique. Even as a software developer who's put many thousands of hours into FOSS development, AND a professional designer, And making it clear I'd be willing to research, design, test, and implement myself, the results are usually just as discouraging. I've stopped trying.

Without significant designer input, FOSS social media initiatives will always be two steps ahead technically but 10 steps behind in UX. After the November bump, Mastodon had lost the majority of the active users it had gained by February. I think that if something even comes close to a commercial social media UX, they stand a chance at being a real turning point the world's conception of how social media 'works.'

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#157

Post by sli » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:33 AM UTC

I think it's tripling down at this point. Announcement, maintaining it during the AMA, and not saying it's going to pass.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#158

Post by clutchdude » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:33 AM UTC

a2tech wrote: post #142

judge2020 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An influx of capital would be easier by making everyone pay $10/mo to access the API via third-party clients. Would still be unpopular but would mean people could still have the experience they want to see from reddit. but that's the issue - Reddit's been focusing on other forms of content only in the native Reddit app, like TikTok-esque live streams and promoted posts from subs you aren't subscribed to.

They have a $4/month product ALL ready that removes ads and gives you more features. Making that a requirement to use the API is by FAR the simplest and most profitable option. Its also more profit then they're proposing to get from their API charges

It also weakens the 3rd party apps - all the freeloaders will drop off Apollo, etc. if they learn they have to pay monthly for it.

It's win-win for everyone for the most part.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#159

Post by JKCalhoun » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:35 AM UTC

badtension wrote: post #65

nickstinemates wrote: post #2

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-...

Over 8k subreddits went dark, not just 1k. https://reddark.untone.uk/

Noticed r/indiegaming "gone". Good for them.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#160

Post by CommitSyn » Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:35 AM UTC

nocoiner wrote: post #110

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #20

I hope this unleashes a wave of tools that allow you to exfiltrate content from these systems and put them in longer lasting storage that can be searched even when the original goes down. Then we can just let all these services die every few years.

I actually think I would have been pretty bummed by this week’s events if my long-time Reddit account hadn’t been banned last year for literally no reason. (I know everyone always says that - and then it turns out that they’re inevitably extremely enthusiastic posters about, like, early/mid 20th century German highway engineering or something similarly Hitler adjacent. The only not-nice thing I ever wrote on there wa…

On Reddit, you can say things that would be normal anywhere else, but make a small group of terminally-online individuals very upset. Something as simple as asking 1 question in 1 subreddit. That's how I got my first ban. It's what made me completely apathetic to reddit.

The other bans were my fault (as in, I knew it was likely at that point) but I was apathetic at that point. Still, I appealed because they were silly bans, and my account was reinstated each time.