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The Reddit blackout will continue

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171–180 of 565 posts

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#171
It's not the Redditors or the 3rd party app devs' fault that Reddit is perhaps the only "big" corp whose main app is so shi*y that people resort to other alternatives. They had a lot of time to facilitate the mods and admins of subs, but they continued to deliver builds that didn't solve users' problems.

However, I feel for the people who have used the official apps for catching up to news, and they are missing out big-time. For example, where do I go now for unbiased football/soccer news?

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has this strategy ever worked in the history of social media businesses?

Instagram broke a bunch of apps in 2018 with no notice or comment and it turned out fine for them. ( https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/02/instagram-api-limit/ )

I suspect reddit is more reliant on third party apps and tools than Instagram was.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#173

Can anyone explain how much pressure and where it comes from for the “raise revenue at all costs” pre-IPO. Is it common for other companies to shoot themselves in the foot by layoffs and policy changes that alienate users? Just feels like no one was smart enough to say “we can try and raise revenue by doing this, but we could lose everything” - maybe companies just constantly forget how defiant and fickle the interne…

The product is the stock price, not "revenue" or "users". If this increase their stock valuation at IPO and destroy the company in a month time, they'll go for it. This is the free market at play, you are welcome.

Couldn't be more relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFTaEenaHM

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#174
post #71

Is there something counter-intuitive about reddit that makes it hard to monetize? That's the core issue. Reddit still makes barely $1/user/month while instagram makes $35. Cutting off the 3rd party apps is a cost-cutting move, not a revenue-generating move. Why haven't they managed to find more revenue? I'm loath to say it but Huffman has had a decade to solve this and hasn't. Might be time for new leadership with ne…

Cutting off 3rd party apps isn't a cost cutting move. It has two clear benefits - firstly they can push users into the officially supported apps where ads can be shown in a more controlled fashion and metrics on those ads can be gathered. Second, it removes the ability for other companies to programmatically gather Reddit's data - this is important in the context of large language models where investors are convinced…

I disagree with you, but especially the second part. Users advertise their interests by the subs they subscribe to, it would be very easy to target them. You could even go so far and let users up and downvote ads they think are relevant to them. The problem is more with the whole way reddit inc goes about how they interact with their users and power users. You shouldn't be openly hostile against your own users (except if you are the mods of askmen).

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#175
post #22

It’s impressive how their CEO keeps shooting himself in the foot on this one, he could compromise a bit by at least expanding the deadline on the pricing changes, but instead he decides to provoke and double down. The leaked internal memo, which is obvious that would leak (after all it is a 2,000 person company) is a clear provocation: > We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as…

I love this bit: > While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia. What is the term for when there's a worker strike and instead of e…

Scabs

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#178

The one very weird thing that I am realising now is that , reddit feels really good due to blackout. I only get updates from my niche subs, no more rage, and I close the app after a few minutes. Its like i got back the old reddit inadvertently .

Unsubscribe from all the big subs (or at least hide them away into multireddits). It makes your life ten times more enjoyable.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#179
post #85
post #22

It’s impressive how their CEO keeps shooting himself in the foot on this one, he could compromise a bit by at least expanding the deadline on the pricing changes, but instead he decides to provoke and double down. The leaked internal memo, which is obvious that would leak (after all it is a 2,000 person company) is a clear provocation: > We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as…

> It’s impressive how their CEO keeps shooting himself in the foot on this one You don't negotiate with blackmailers, because this is what this is now, blackmail. If things continue like this I give it 5 to 7 days until reddit the company forcefully removes these mods.

> You don't negotiate with blackmailers, because this is what this is now, blackmail.

You don’t negotiate with exporters either, yet here we are.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#180

The first 10 years of the internet were volunteers creating for other volunteers. The next 10 was volunteers for 'users'. The last 10, for corporations. The commons built in the 90s was turned into a playground in the 2000s and is now a oil well being mined by megacorps. What, I hope, interest rates are doing is shifting the balance of power to its natural point: the commons is owned by the volunteers. Megacorp's abi…

+1. However, I hope the reddits and twitters of the world continue to exist, perhaps in diminished form, if for no other reason than to provide a place for users who prefer the "outrage porn," shallow memes, flame wars, etc, so that they're less likely to intrude on the smaller, healthier communities that are forming elsewhere.
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