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The Reddit blackout will continue

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Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#201

Post by zozbot234 »

yellowapple wrote: post #168
4dregress wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with this enough. The internet today is a cesspit, it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums. I made a lot of real life friends from the forums I frequented. Oh the good old days :(

That's the thing I'm looking forward to with the evolution of the "Fediverse" and other efforts toward federation/decentralization. The problem with traditional forums was that they were all little silos disconnected from one another; now those forums can talk to each other via ActivityPub or what have you, offering a nicer balance between "isolated but tight-knit community" v. "expansive but highly-impersonal masses…

Are there traditional forums/bulletin boards with Fediverse interop? The Fediverse platforms I'm aware of seem to all be focusing on cloning the existing UX of big walled-garden sites, which seems like a dubious approach. We know that forums/BB's can work quite well, so why not bring that UX back with "federation" (i.e. interacting with outside users and service instances) as a pure added feature?

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#202

Post by haunter »

tbh more and more commenters questioning the mod actions. Just one example I follow: /r/StarWars is kinda falling apart + the push for Discord is so pointless https://old.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/148xygd/rstarwars...

/r/hockey is the same, total pointlessly came back + missed the championship game too https://old.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/148xsck/rhockey_has...

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#203

Post by Havoc »

johnboyega wrote: post #96

server costs money and reddit is not charity either. If they provide a good product that you use everyday, then why cant they charge for the api?

> reddit is not charity either

People aren’t expecting them to be. If the pricing they had announced was even remotely reasonable this protest would not have happened.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#204

Post by johnnyanmac »

username332211 wrote: post #133
reso wrote: 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…

> Is there something counter-intuitive about reddit that makes it hard to monetize? There is - it makes little sense to buy ads, when you can buy comments. https://xkcd.com/1019/

Interesting perspective. But it does beg the obvious question: how effective are comment sections? How many casual redditors in this case actually read the comments and aren't just scrolling through titles?

Either way, the experiment is very cheap and honestly we're dreaming if these were the rates they paid. It's probably more like $2/hour to people in 2nd/3rd world countries.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#205

Post by azangru »

4dregress wrote: post #104
mjburgess wrote: post #56

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…

I can't agree with this enough. The internet today is a cesspit, it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums. I made a lot of real life friends from the forums I frequented. Oh the good old days :(

> it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums

What's stopping anyone today to have a community around a forum? phpBB still exists...

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#206

Post by 13of40 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #166
greatpatton wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main question is why is Reddit a 2000 employees company?

Normally I'm defending tech company size, but in this case it does seem bizarre, given how bad their official apps are, and the mobile site, and the new reddit desktop site. Those are the primary user interfaces for their platform, and they're bad. Enthusiast users in particular seem to overwhelmingly prefer third party apps and old reddit, and those third party apps seem to be made by small teams or even solo devs.

The strange irony there is they seem to be making the mobile site worse over time to drive people to the app, and if that's intentional they must be paying some developer to do it and some manager to tell them the game plan. Imagine being in one of those roles.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#207

Post by dagw »

4dregress wrote: post #104
mjburgess wrote: post #56

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…

I can't agree with this enough. The internet today is a cesspit, it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums. I made a lot of real life friends from the forums I frequented. Oh the good old days :(

On the one hand I feel exactly like you do, on the other hand I observe that my teenage daughter is making real friends on discord and game servers, just like I did on usenet and forums. So maybe it's you/me getting older rather than (just) the internet changing.

Oh the good old days :(

As do I, but I suspect much of what I miss is simply just being young and free and all that comes with that.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#208

Post by frankacter »

eBombzor wrote: post #190

If they wanted to inflate their user numbers before the IPO, why didn't they just buy Apollo or the other apps?

Reddit already has an official Android and IOS app, but it has conflicting internal goals that 3rd party clients do not have to prioritize.

Purchasing another 3rd party app won't fix this, and would still necessitate the changes they are taking now (monetizing the API) resulting in the same backlash from the community.

They have stated their goals to close the gap between their official app and the 3rd party apps, but conflicts will always exist which will limit what they are willing to do. Putting some of that financial burden on 3rd parties helps even that playing field to some extent.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#209

Post by hacb »

zmmmmm wrote: post #136

I think a different approach would work better at this point. They need to stay up but use their subreddits to publicly plan Reddit "exits" for each community. Subreddits should start polls on where migrate to (discord, lemmy, mastodon, etc etc), and then start systematically cross posting anything posted to their subreddit to the new space, with comments turned off on the Reddit version. The key in a negotiation is…

If my favorites subreddits go to Discord, I'll simply not go there. Discord has nothing to do like a forum, it is almost impossible to search for valuable information, and is really hard to use when dozens and dozens of people are talking simultaneously.

I really don't get why so many people want their sub to go to Discord tbh.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#210

Post by xigoi »

azangru wrote: post #205
4dregress wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with this enough. The internet today is a cesspit, it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums. I made a lot of real life friends from the forums I frequented. Oh the good old days :(

> it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums What's stopping anyone today to have a community around a forum? phpBB still exists...

The network effect. Everyone is on Facebook/Twitter/Reddit, so nobody will visit the forum.
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