Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#701

Post by stcroixx » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:14 PM UTC

Llamamoe wrote: post #163

Loveaway wrote: post #128

This is so sad honestly. Like wtf is going on, no apology, no good will, doubling down on the complete moral suicide of Reddit. To push an app no-one ever liked, you know that, but whatever. No-one likes “new” Reddit either, you know that, but whatever. Who’s even gonna use the site after this? Social media zombie sheeple is all that's going to be left. Congrats on your dumb little site, from the front-page of the In…

All they had to do was make showing ads part of the ToS for developing third party apps, to require login for API access, and make only mass scraping require $$$.

Why not instead charge 3rd party apps for the API and let the 3rd party apps show their own adds to help pay for the cost of the API?

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#702

Post by badwolf » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

Llamamoe wrote: post #163

Loveaway wrote: post #128

This is so sad honestly. Like wtf is going on, no apology, no good will, doubling down on the complete moral suicide of Reddit. To push an app no-one ever liked, you know that, but whatever. No-one likes “new” Reddit either, you know that, but whatever. Who’s even gonna use the site after this? Social media zombie sheeple is all that's going to be left. Congrats on your dumb little site, from the front-page of the In…

All they had to do was make showing ads part of the ToS for developing third party apps, to require login for API access, and make only mass scraping require $$$.

Or just require a Reddit Gold sub to any user who wants to use another app.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#703

Post by efficax » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #542

What makes me really sad was there was a way around this. Even if we accept the CEO’s lie that running the API is costly , Reddits monthly revenue per user is $0.12 at best. They were demanding $2.50 per user per month from third party apps. A simpler solution - “users who want to use third party apps need to pay Reddit $6/month directly by subscribing to Reddit premium”. That would have raised way more revenue! And…

> Even if we accept the CEO’s lie that running the API is costly

compute isn't free man. it probably costs millions of dollars a year just to pay the cloud providers to support those apps. i doubt that's a lie...

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#704

Post by oh_sigh » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #226

rjvir wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spez is CEO because the board and investors deem him to be the best person for the job. Of course, he founded Reddit, so he has a strong case on merit for why he is the #1 person on the planet to run the company. The process for selecting moderators is way less meritocratic or democratic than this. They merely got there first, finders keepers. The analogy for landed gentry is accurate.

The analogy for landed gentry is accurate. Land is finite and subreddits are not. You can fork off and make your own subreddit whenever you like If subreddit mods are landed gentry, then so are open source maintainers.

Subreddits may be nearly infinite, but good, descriptive subreddit names are not. r/videos is going to get more natural traffic than r/ReallyCoolNewVideos, which is going to get more natural traffic than r/asdlkajflaksjf.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#705

Post by stcroixx » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #226

rjvir wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spez is CEO because the board and investors deem him to be the best person for the job. Of course, he founded Reddit, so he has a strong case on merit for why he is the #1 person on the planet to run the company. The process for selecting moderators is way less meritocratic or democratic than this. They merely got there first, finders keepers. The analogy for landed gentry is accurate.

The analogy for landed gentry is accurate. Land is finite and subreddits are not. You can fork off and make your own subreddit whenever you like If subreddit mods are landed gentry, then so are open source maintainers.

Good names that pull traffic by themselves are what is finite. /r/startrek is much more valuable than /r/startrek1234 or any other forked variation.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#706

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

smashah wrote: post #696

This is the result of shamelessness seeping into business. That contrarian business thinking that does away with any pretense of putting anything other than money first. Also, this idea of charging for API access is lazy and unimaginative.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#707

Post by yadingus » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

seydor wrote: post #635

pnt12 wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All companies depend on their customers, that's not a reddit only thing. If Coca-Cola pisses of their customers, they'll go to Pepsi in the blink of an eye.

sure, but they won't break all the vending machines

The analogy breaks down here because the users made their own vending machines.

For example I made this comment, and I am allowed to edit it or even remove it.

Imagine now for a second if hacker news was allowed to manipulate or modify user comments directly for profit.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#708

Post by parrellel » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

Reddit is also undeleting deleted user content. Now I need to burn my account again.

I am not pleased.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#709

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #240

growingentropy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to sound dumb, but honestly? I filled an rss reader up with some of the best sources I could think of, and am actually really enjoying just quietly taking the world in again, instead of trying to come up with my latest snarky Reddit-friendly quip.

Yeah I did that too when Twitter died, shout-out to the fantastic NetNewsWire on mac. But here's the thing, reading within your own walled garden doesn't expose you to radically new ideas as much. The rss only approach lacks the discovery aspect of social media. Now that Reddit is dying too I'm pretty much down to Mastodon and HN for finding interesting novel stuff.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#710

Post by ppeetteerr » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

smashah wrote: post #696

This is the result of shamelessness seeping into business. That contrarian business thinking that does away with any pretense of putting anything other than money first. Also, this idea of charging for API access is lazy and unimaginative.

I'm surprised to keep hearing that charging for API is lazy and bad for a business. They can do whatever they want with their API and price their services as they see fit. Reddit isn't going anywhere because it's a good product for the end user. It's expensive to run and unfeathered access to their content was part of their acquisition strategy. Now they want to go public and want to be a real business.

I'm with Reddit on this decision. OpenAI is a multi-billion dollar company because of them. Does charging for API calls hurt small app developers? Absolutely. Nothing is free forever.