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The Reddit blackout will continue

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Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#451

Post by roflyear »

tester457 wrote: post #297
INTPenis wrote: post #146

This whole model of social media in today's internet is unsustainable. We will undoubtedly move towards a future internet with two main camps. The corporate social media where users have to either pay to play, or be locked into walled gardens without their consent, or sometimes even knowledge. The other camp will be various decentralized platforms such as the fediverse and others. We had a relatively quick (in histor…

I can't imagine the decentralized camp ever growing significantly. On r/RedditAlternatives people are discussing what sites to migrate to. The federated kbin and lemmy are getting significantly less attention than the centralized squabbles. [1] Many redditors complain that sites being federated is actually a downside, as they don't understand it and even if they do they rather not explain it to their friends. [1] htt…

It's because reddit is an aggregator - by definition that is centralized.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#452

Post by scheeseman486 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #449
scheeseman486 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta are doing that dumb metaverse shit because they see their VR/AR ambitions as allowing them to build their own stable storefront monopoly. Discord also tried to get in on the storefront game, but bailed and are now in ??? mode, spamming users with begging notices for them to subscribe to their premium shit. Note the trend: established social media companies want to get the fuck out of social media. If all that ma…

If you have a captive audience you can advertise to them. That's what all of this is about, and many companies have made billions with this strategy. Whether the advertising is done by Geocities or MySpace or Facebook doesn't make any difference to the consumer, who's still the product these companies sell to their real customers: the advertisers. Discord can make plenty of money selling ads too, and I would not be a…

"Discord can make money selling ads too, and I would not be at all surprised to see ads in every Discord channel in the future, especially as (unlike Reddit) it doesn't have any third-party clients through which users can circumvent any ads Discord may want to show."

This sounds really uncool, like something that would make a trendy new social media platform flush with investment attractive!

That it's all about ads is the recurring problem.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#453

Post by roflyear »

goplayoutside wrote: post #158

I just opened my subs back up. I mod a few subs for a niche hobby -- there's probably a few tens of thousands of us in the US. The majority of us are not especially technically inclined, and the only other place where the community regularly gathers online is Facebook Groups, which many of us want nothing to do with anymore. I long ago largely stopped using reddit outside of the subs I mod, except browsing the front…

I always found that reddit was a really poor place for a community. Discord even seems better for the "community" bit. Reddit is okay for discovery.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#454

Post by roflyear »

Whatarethese wrote: post #118

No offense to the commentators in this post but do y'all just lay down and take everything that comes at you without a hint of objection? Yeah I get that it's a silly website but it's one that some people have been on for 10+ years.

The funniest thing that I saw was someone posting a long diatribe on one of these threads basically saying "don't do this, Reddit is the only free speech the internet has left!!!"

And totally missing the point that protesting IS free speech! And it isn't like this is really against REDDIT THE IDEA it's against the stance they are taking with these specific things.

I think it will eventually, for some users at least (already has for me) morph into "against reddit itself" but - I'm still for the idea of a link aggregator. I think it's a great idea.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#455

Post by joshstrange »

epups wrote: post #346
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.

There is profitability and then there is VC-profitability. One of them normal people can understand and the other is absurd IMHO.

VC forces you to staff up, spend like there is no tomorrow, and have a huge return or GTFO.

$500M a year should absolutely support a company like Reddit (even giving the API away for free) but that’s not a 10-100-1000x return so it’s essentially $0 to VCs.

When Reddit says they aren’t profitable they really mean they aren’t profitable /enough/ coupled with their high headcount.

Working at a small startup (or a side project) will show you what can be accomplished with 1-10 or <50 people who are all committed.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#456

Post by PartiallyTyped »

goykasi wrote: post #441
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who care are the kind of people who make the community. The community is the content and those who post it, aka the core that ties everything everything together. Lurkers are not part of the community, they might as well not even exist.

If lurkers don't exist, the community doesn't exist. It's well established that internet forums and communities consist of >=90% of users not contributing -- but consuming[1]. A small portion produce where as an overwhelming portion consume. To say lurkers shouldnt exist is extremely reductive and callous. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule

I am well aware that the overwhelming majority does not contribute but consume. Communities need participation, if you are not participating you are not giving back, you are leeching. If everyone is leeching, there is no community. Consumers are not entitled to the content of the producers. Producers both consume and produce.

> To say lurkers shouldnt exist is extremely reductive and callous.

I didn't claim that they shouldn't exist, I claimed that they are not the core of the community since they do not produce or otherwise interact with anyone else.

If a tree fell in the forest and nobody heard it, did it make a sound?

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#457

Post by phpisthebest »

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…

it is amusing that people think Wikipedia is not a corporation, and is not subject to the same problems as reddit.

It is well documented that that Wikimedia CORPORATION that controls wikipedia has all kinds of the same problems, with the directors and management of that corporation at odds often with the users and the "mods" of wikipedia.

That is with out getting into the debate over the overt ideological capture of both the wiki and the corporation

No I dont think the wikipedia model is the one we should look at as an example

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#458

Post by phpisthebest »

suddenclarity wrote: post #437
shusaku wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep thinking back to the Arab Spring. Everyone thought Twitter could bring down dictators. Now users can’t even effectively pressure management. It should be easy for users to take over a platform and dictate terms, but the instant dopamine of infinite scroll can’t be resisted.

> Now users can’t even effectively pressure management. Is that what's happening though? My impression is that it's a vocal minority and powermods that made the decision about blackout. Similar to a lot of political topics in real life. I was never asked about this. There's a Twitch channel now brigading every sub that raises the question if they should continue or not. Look at the vocal people in /r/soccer and most…

The romanticism around "majority revolt" is flawed, almost every change, every revolt, every major action was not started, supported, or even desired by the "majority".

Majority rule is actually a very flawed and dangerous premise

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#459

Post by dale_glass »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #380
dale_glass wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's still a limited license to use it. The primary ownership is still with the comment writer.

It really depends what's in the terms the user agreed to.

You can look it up, you retain copyright.

And while Reddit does have you agree to giving permission to almost anything, they'd be nuts to take that too far. If eg, Stephen King goofed and pasted his upcoming book into a comment mid-AMA, I don't think Reddit would fare well in court if they tried to argue the TOS gave them the right to do turn that into a book.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#460

Post by rchaud »

cykros wrote: post #383
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 :(

I've been spending a lot of time thinking and talking about the decline of independent forums. And I think there's a lot to be said about the fundamental change in the legal environment today compared to the early 2000s. Back then, sure, there was moderation, but there was also plenty of content that, while not egregious, by today's standard would certainly keep a small independent forum sysop up at night. Linking to…

Forums declined because by 2010, they were competing against professionally maintained messageboards on social networks.

Behind almost every PhpBB/vBulletin messageboard of yore is a regular non-technical person who had to pay for a server, learn enough about databases, user authentication and backups to get started, and build and moderate a community.

Who was going to pick up that torch when you can start a subreddit or Discord or Telegram group with a couple of clicks.

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