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The Reddit blackout will continue

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Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#341

Post by mitchell209 »

skc wrote: post #263
jampa wrote: 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…

Ultimately he's right I think. Most of the sports related subs I follow are indeed back after a 48 hour hiatus.

People started this blackout without any alternatives. Twitter users had Instagram, Facebook (even though that’s a worse shitshow and IG is owned by Meta), tiktok, Mastodon, and probably a couple others I’m forgetting. There’s nothing equivalent to reddit with half as much daily activity as even the worst Twitter-alternative, so they’d never catch on. People append “reddit” to google searches now, that’s how integral this site has become to the internet. The strikers should have waited a few days to a couple weeks before this strike instead of reacting immediately.

Every sub is pointing to their own discord server. That’s absolutely not an alternative and a chatroom will never replace a global forum.

The Denver Nuggets sub didn’t even shut down because they were so excited about their potential win. That’s literally the best time to show solidarity and they fucked that up because they cared more about posting 1 sentence meme or hype comments to a game thread.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#343

Post by mgdlbp »

hutzlibu wrote: post #245
jaimex2 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how so? genuine question, it looks rosy from the outside.

There is certainly lots of drama going on, but I am unaware of anything remotely dramatic or open fight/strike like is happening on reddit between users and company (non profit foundation).

Eh, do Superprotect and Framgate count? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_revolt#Wikipedia

Reddit section needs an update. The page was created following Reddit's 'AMAgeddon', too. 'APIcalypse' this time?

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#344

Post by PrimeMcFly »

BlackJack wrote: post #28

I read the comments and many are in this vein: "Agreed, moderators with a power complex are the worst thing about this site. Don't even care about this API crap." Never realized mods were so disliked. I thought the blackout sent a message+got coverage, but don't like subreddits extending it without consulting their users. I use reddit about 5-10 minutes/day so I don't care either way.

There are so many 'supermods' that control hundreds of subs, and so many that do abuse their power. Mods are definitely one of the worst things about that site.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#345

Post by Xelbair »

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 :(

Honestly looking for information about hobbies is horrible nowadays. It's all first and foremost subreddit, which has mostly memes and no info except maybe a sticky, THEN you find a discord link there, and finally all the knowledge is organized in google docs spreadsheet, that's in some random pinned post in some weirdly named channel.

I miss the days of the forum and wikis, it was vastly easier to search and lurk. and now you need a multiple accounts to even find that information.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#346

Post by epups »

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…

Reddit has a ton of revenue - $500 million per year. Considering the work of actually running the site is done by volunteers, what is baffling is that they cannot be profitable with this amount of money.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#347

Post by mitchell209 »

FeetYeet wrote: post #235
xwdv wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Every social network sells ads 2) Building and maintaining an API is as rent seeking as building any kind of subscription service, I don’t see the issue. 3) Why would you pay a volunteer? They’re volunteering. In exchange they wield incredible power over the community, which is the real reason they volunteer. 4) The UX sucks, but there’s still old.reddit.com, so you have options. 5) What additional value can be pr…

1) Every social network sells ads Yes, but all other social networks are GOOD at it and make a fuck ton of money. That’s the issue. Reddit has had plenty of chances to turn profitable, but they can’t seem to figure it out. Now they’ve run down the checklist and apparently “kill 3rd party apps” is their newest brilliant idea to make money.

Wasn’t Twitter the most popular social media site on the planet and still losing money?

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#348

Post by klik99 »

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…

Ad networks fudged the numbers for many years, free just isn't as viable as thought.

I don't mind paying - either for a service or for server costs of hosting my own instance or whatever - and I certainly don't mind paying reddit specifically. However the price point, putting it on developers and not regular users so they thought users wouldn't be bothered (I guess they assumed apps like Apollo would pass it on to their users and appear to be the bad guy? It's the only way I can make any sense of how they did it) is pretty shitty.

But the worst part is killing off all these tools that mods require - that second order effect will likely kill Reddit.

The only other time I could see a company make a decision that would so clearly kill a product was the facebook algorithmic feed, though admittedly that did take 10 years.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#349

Post by JanneVee »

jampa wrote: 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…

Yeah this is really impressive, this time around the discontent feels different. There from my point of view there was a decline for a long time for the usefulness of reddit for me. I thought it was only me getting older but now that I see this happening is that it isn't just me.

They have consistently worsened the conditions for quality contribution with their default interfaces. I didn't realize it until now how important it is until now, because of this protest. I've already left and if my little anecdote is anything to go by, other might feel the same and do the same as me.

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