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Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

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

#891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well simple logic would say that if they get $.12 per user/month, the costs to serve each user (in terms of compute) is probably below $.12 or else they would be losing money, no?

$.12 is MAU, which visit sites few times a week. Apollo devs claim his users make 250 reqs/d, which is very different users and there is likely huge gap in costs numbers between cohorts.

MAU as a figure cannot be a dollar amount, but instead only an integer no?

Silly.

Maybe you’re thinking of ARPU?

Even if the ARPU was an order of magnitude higher, it would still be half as much as Reddit is charging per user to 3PAs.

It’s not about compute cost, because compute cost is almost definitely below revenue and the fees being charged don’t seem to have any direct link to it anyway.

Compute cost per user must generally be below ARPU, right? So even if a 3PA user cost 5x in terms of compute, at most that would be $.75 if they’re making no profit. Significantly less than the $2.50 3PAs are being charged per user per month.

tldr: reddit is charging significantly more for API access than is reasonable to expect it costs them even in lost revenue, let alone raw compute

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

#893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this argument a lot on here and I don't really get it. I go to specific hobby subreddits to talk about specific hobby subreddit things, not to see other people make irrelevant comments or something that might mildly offend someone else. As far as I am concerned mods are well in their rights to shut that kind of stuff down.

This sort of sentiment usually comes from someone that can't help but argue about politics in an area for, say, houseplants. Sorry, but I don't want to discuss Grundrisse in a hobby subreddit. I don't want nazis yelling at me about jewish conspiracies in an analogue synth subreddit. "Waaah I can't say edgy things everywhere I want" is such a weak complaint against community-led moderation.

Ahh yes. The classic anyone who sees any issue with the current state of things must be in line with Nazi conspiracy theorists. Such depth.

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

#894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of sentiment usually comes from someone that can't help but argue about politics in an area for, say, houseplants. Sorry, but I don't want to discuss Grundrisse in a hobby subreddit. I don't want nazis yelling at me about jewish conspiracies in an analogue synth subreddit. "Waaah I can't say edgy things everywhere I want" is such a weak complaint against community-led moderation.

Ahh yes. The classic anyone who sees any issue with the current state of things must be in line with Nazi conspiracy theorists. Such depth.

Did you notice that I criticised communists that inject politics into everything too? I suppose you do not know what Grundrisse is?

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

#895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Redd…

Based on your last line, I am not surprised that you are surprised. Users are the reason why Reddit has any value. They are the ones generating and reading the content. Let's see how this strategy plays out. day -1, total API requests X Bn per day, rev $0 day 0, third party apps shut down previously accounting for Y Bn requests per day, total API requests (X-Y) Bn per day, rev $0 day 1, everyone migrates to reddits g…

That's a great list. You might want to consider applying at Reddit for a PM role :)

https://www.redditinc.com/careers/

I don't think reddit cares as much about third-party clients as much as being mined for data. There is a case to be made that third-party clients take away from their ad revenue in the same way that third-party Twitter clients took away from Twitter's ad revenue (Twitter's financial woes are not due to limiting third-party clients by the way). It also adds a level of complexity since all changes to the platform require API changes as well (and backward compatibility support).

In fact, most, if not all, of your ideas require that a user use a first-party client.

Thinking that monetizing API is a good idea is not contrarian, by the way. It's what the company is looking to do. Rolling back this decision is the contrarian approach. Semantics but worth pointing out.

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

#896
post #844
post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah exactly. I have issues with what social media does to people and some of what Mark has done.. but he is nowhere near my level of despise for Musk, Kanye or others in that circle.

I just want to remind you that of the three people listed only Mark took actions that exacerbated a genocide (Rohingya in Myanmar).

This is an unfair take. Whatever you think of Meta as a corporation or Zuckerberg as a person, neither caused the Rohingya crisis, much less the conflict; and while it's fair to argue that FB/Meta could have done more to stem hate speech on the platform, your phrasing intentionally villainizes a single individual for an entire ongoing, complex sociopolitical situation.

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

#897
post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to remember that Digg imploded for the same reason that Reddit is having trouble: a big investment, followed by demands to recoup it. Reddit was ready to take up the slack. The thing that will save Reddit is that there doesn't seem to be another service ready to absorb the outflow.

If someone can make Lemmy more resilient than Lemmy seems to be the answer.

Kbin is what you’re looking for https://kbin.pub/en

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

#898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$.12 is MAU, which visit sites few times a week. Apollo devs claim his users make 250 reqs/d, which is very different users and there is likely huge gap in costs numbers between cohorts.

MAU as a figure cannot be a dollar amount, but instead only an integer no? Silly. Maybe you’re thinking of ARPU? Even if the ARPU was an order of magnitude higher, it would still be half as much as Reddit is charging per user to 3PAs. It’s not about compute cost, because compute cost is almost definitely below revenue and the fees being charged don’t seem to have any direct link to it anyway. Compute cost per user mu…

> So even if a 3PA user cost 5x in terms of compute

in case of apollo my belief is that it will be much more than 5x

it is also not just about pure compute, but also paying salaries.

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

#899
post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well simple logic would say that if they get $.12 per user/month, the costs to serve each user (in terms of compute) is probably below $.12 or else they would be losing money, no?

i thought they _were_ losing money?

Reddit likely could’ve taken profit in recent years, but was instead focused on growth. Reddit doubled its headcount in 2021.

There’s no reason to think that compute is a constraining cost for reddit imo. They produce what is at this point legacy tech.

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

#900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, and? It's a subreddit, not presidential nomination.

"It's a subreddit" is a diminishing comment when it comes to these channels where you have significant amounts of people turning to them for information. That's the point of my comment, really: this isn't just some site on the internet anymore.

It's literally just a site on the internet. You can go to any other site on the internet, even the same site but different slice.
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