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Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

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Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#271

Post by smrtinsert »

buildbot wrote: post #58
caslon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heads up! This data is likely out of date or inaccurate now that Reddit has decided to kill the open ecosystem that existed around Reddit. I don't earn any money from this site, and if my calculations are correct it'd cost me a couple thousand dollars per month with their new API pricing, so yeah. If you can, it's probably worth leaving Reddit for other platforms - especially open-source/federated ones like Lemmy.…

It doesn’t matter, because importantly, now they can game it however they need for their IPO. I stopped posting and know many others who did. The platform lost a lot and the front page is noticeably more trashy/Facebook like than it used to be.

Reddit died with the mobile clients.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#272

Post by jabroni_salad »

breckenedge wrote: post #237
jrflowers wrote: post #226

If you hated the mods, the mods lost. If you hated the admins, the admins lost. If you were a longtime user that is familiar with Reddit wholeheartedly supporting r/jailbait to bootstrap growth, you won because nothing about the website could bother you.

Was r/jailbait as bad as the name implies? I was a user for about 11 years and have never heard of it.

It was about photos of minors at the beach. CNN ran a story about it and that event was when Reddit started to get much more hands-on about acceptable content.

Gotta say though.... if you make a fresh instagram or tiktok account that same material will be suggested to you while you are in the wide suggestion phase. Kids love taking pics at the beach, which is just one of many reasons not to start a UGC website.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#273

Post by MegaDeKay »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #2

Some Reddit communities fled to other platforms such as Lemmy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(social_network) Many subreddit moderators protested in various ways and were removed and replaced. Reddit never agreed or compromised and for the most part the movement seems to have run out of steam. Maybe if Reddit squeezes more, more users will go to Lemmy and similar alternative platforms?

Speaking of "other platforms", I know of a 3D printing sub that went over to Discord and they have no plans to ever go back. I wonder how many other subs headed over to Discord as well.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#274

Post by barrysteve »

adra wrote: post #265
thaumaturgy wrote: post #48

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

Poor, poor Slashdot. For me it was murdered during the 2016 US elections when they welcomed infectiously click bait political shit fest that literally spread to like every story. I contributed at that point for like 12+ years? I couldn't stand the vitriol and moderation clearly didn't function, so cest la vis.

Metafilter too became black and white, politically divided in 2015. Murdered by politics.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#275

Post by richwater »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #242
xyst wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I’m addicted to TT :dead:

tiktok made tv shows and movies unwatchable for me haha. that kind of media is just too slow. only sports at this point. I would say I watch 45m/day of tiktok. 5m here and there.

this comment cant be real

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#276

Post by redserk »

Rastonbury wrote: post #217
nerdponx wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly Phyrrhic. "Noticeable in numbers" does not equate to even short-term financial damage, let alone harm to the longer-term financial outlook. Reddit Corporation won unambiguously, as expected by most reasonable observers.

If those numbers are to be believed, it ruined any chance of their IPO for a couple of years. It's hard to sweep 'we lost 20%+ MAUs because of a policy change' under the rug when users/impressions are the lifeblood of a social media site

I’d wager the interest rate hikes and increasing conservative decision making around acquisitions has a greater impact on pushing back the IPO.

Reddit killed off almost every third party app and had half of the site shut down for a few days, but still came out ahead with a site that’s still very active and with the bonus of pruning unpaid mods who would’ve been likely to disrupt the site again.

Reddit’s only realistic time to IPO was mid-pandemic.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#277

Post by DoreenMichele »

intended wrote: post #269
DoreenMichele wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a blogger and freelance writer. I've spent years saying that programmers make good money, then expect slave labor from writers and content developers. If the only way people will "allow" a valuable service to live is as their bitch, the entire internet is welcome to go die in a fire while we dream up some new answer for the future of this world.

In that case Reddit should die. Reddit’s decision changed it previous equation with mods, and redefined the limits of power. Reddit, since inception, had never made specific hire fire decisions for mods, especially for purely monetary reasons. This makes it less volunteer moderation, and purely unpaid labor. NB: I would add return on investment to your cabinet of villains.

Reddit allows me to establish a community for free. I've established a number of them.

If people don't want to be unpaid mods, they don't have to be. No one forced them into that.

Do we need to address some things? Sure. But I have long advocated for the right of people to engage in unpaid labor or low paid labor if they choose to.

It's exactly how Founders of startups create the company that makes them millionaires. Saying no one is allowed to without first being rich creates a permanent social divide.

Would I like for there to be a means to get paid for moderating on reddit? Maybe. I certainly could use more money.

Do I want the burdens that typically accompany a paid day job? No. I'm handicapped and that's a disaster waiting to happen.

A lot of this was not intentional. And it's generally not as simple as people like to pretend it is for the sake of argument.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#278

Post by opportune »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #249
Dylan16807 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did figure out monetization. Their revenue was skyrocketing over the last couple years before they decided to ruin the API.

Wikipedia indicates it's still a private company. My recollection is they are failing to hit figures that would make for an attractive buy out or IPO.

They grew their employee count massively (400->2000) as their revenue grew over the past few years though. Part of that is, yeah, you have to spend money to make money. But I know for a fact not all of those employees were doing ad sales or direct monetization.

You can speculate as to why they hired so many people: pandemic tech hiring FOMO, looking more attractive to investors, empire building, not being willing to settle for a paltry 10-figure valuation and so trying to build out to hit 11-figures. But they don't need that many people and they could easily become profitable by doing a big layoff (just as money software companies could). At this point it's not a question of survival or existence for them, nor of IPO readiness, so much as it is IPO optimization.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#279

Post by pawptart »

jimmytucson wrote: post #245
thaumaturgy wrote: post #48

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

> sharp drop in July 2023 They shut off API access to their data around the very same time. Is that a coincidence?

No, and in fact, it's almost certainly the cause given the huge disclaimer on the linked page.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#280

Post by rglullis »

echelon wrote: post #241
kmlevitt wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have mod status on a large-ish (70k+) subreddit so I can view reddit's internal traffic statistics for it, and these estimates are definitely wrong. These stats claim the sub has had 10-20 comments per day in just the past month, so maybe 300-600 tops. In reality it's had 1200+ comments just in the past week alone and probably closer to 5000 for the month. And you can see the activity with your own eyes in ev…

Did you participate in the blackout? What was your impression of it? Were any of the tools you used impacted by the API ban? I think a much more effective strategy would be a user-led LLM "spamming" campaign. Package up a lightweight, easy to use LLM for Windows users and let them turn their accounts into noise. Purposely generate overly-argumentative, blatantly wrong prose on every subject and in every subreddit. Re…

While an interesting idea, the problem is that the majority of users would be more bothered by it and they simply don't care enough about Reddit's management to fight it.
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