Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit Doubles Down

platformer.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 462 posts

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#161

Post by Macha »

whyenot wrote: post #127
pcurve wrote: 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.

Note that while Advance Media is still a large shareholder, they haven't been the majority shareholder since some point in 2017-2019 as they got diluted by various investment waves

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#162

Post by userbinator »

Every website, including Reddit, already has an API you don't need to pay extra for. It's called HTTP and HTML. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that you need permission to choose what user-agent to access a site with; that's what the truly open Web is about.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#163

Post by 111111IIIIIII »

CommitSyn wrote: post #51
extr wrote: post #38

I don't really understand why it had to be this way. It's so easy to think of other ways this could have been handled. Even just announcing the same change with 6 months of lead time rather than 1 month would have gone over better. Or boil the frog and gradually introduce API restrictions. It's as if the CEO is purposefully being as belligerent as possible to rile people up.

Or they're broke and reddit is soon to be bankrupt. But even so, if they had just said that, the outcome would be so much different. Because as of now it seems like they're fucking people over for the sake of fucking them over.

[flagged]

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#164

Post by willis936 »

whyenot wrote: post #127
pcurve wrote: 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.

I think that point was 5-10 days ago.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#165

Post by bunga-bunga »

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…

> how their stance interacts with any of the privacy laws passed in the last 10-12 years.

You’d be surprised how big players work around those.

I asked GitHub to remove an issue from a repo whose owner blocked me. Being both I and the owner EU users, I sent a GDPR removal request. They just said they’re a “controller” and that the request would be forwarded to the owner.

Nothing came of it.

GitHub even has customer support, Reddit does not, so you can imagine how little chances you have in doing so unless you fire up your lawyers.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#166

Post by 111111IIIIIII »

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.

[flagged]

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#167

Post by willis936 »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #78
pcurve wrote: 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 do hope the mods have the balls to continue the blackout as long as it takes. This couple days is a joke. A longer strike will be noticed, especially by would be IPO investors. As it is, if this IPOs, I’ll be selling short via put options on this. Management is incompetent. Will not succeed with this anti visionary leadership.

I wouldn't say it takes balls to not click the "public" button and instead touch grass. Everyone will be just fine without their feed crank fix.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#168

Post by lapcat »

CSMastermind wrote: post #64

> A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout I find a CEO referring to their employees as 'Snoos' to be offputting personally. I'm sure it's meant to be a fun and inclusive term but the guy is sending out a pretty serious email that ends in, "I am sorry to say this, but please be m…

It sounds like something from Dr. Seuss

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#169

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

CSMastermind wrote: post #64

> A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout I find a CEO referring to their employees as 'Snoos' to be offputting personally. I'm sure it's meant to be a fun and inclusive term but the guy is sending out a pretty serious email that ends in, "I am sorry to say this, but please be m…

Reading the full letter[1] I think the first use of that term seems generally fine ("Hi Snoos,") whereas the 2nd one comes across as grossly tone-deaf (which is exactly what I expect from reddit at this point), mostly because the first one is just the opening greeting and can be a bit more colloquial while the 2nd one is addressing actual human beings who are suffering from the strain ("working around the clock" etc) and feels like he's trying to dehumanize them.

The whole letter seems incredibly tone-deaf. calling the protests "noise" is incredibly dismissive of their user base and their concerns. The whole section about not wearing reddit gear outside is an obviously farcical attempt to paint people who oppose this change as violent when they are more likely to be people who never go outside, let alone people who are prowling around with weapons looking for vengeance for API changes.

1. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#170

Post by greiskul »

userbinator wrote: post #162

Every website, including Reddit, already has an API you don't need to pay extra for. It's called HTTP and HTML. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that you need permission to choose what user-agent to access a site with; that's what the truly open Web is about.

Reddit was literally running an experiment on disabling their mobile web site for some users: https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/135tly1/comment/jim40...

I would not be surprised if there are people on reddit who are thinking of closing down the garden and removing reddit from the open web.

Post reply on HN