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Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

buzl.uk

11–20 of 252 posts

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#11
post #9
post #7

Another point i would like to discuss, if someone has more knowledge than me: How the fuck was reddit not profitable? The founder said it but i still don't belive it. Was all the money spent in bullshit features no one still uses or it was before that?

Reddit has way less users than it claims. I don't know what percentage are bots, but I'd guess it in the 30 to 40 percent range. It's not uncommon at all to find identical comments, or to reverse search any upvoted post and realize it's a repost, with many identical comments from the last time. The real users probably aren't worth much, advertising wise. The key young demographic doesn't use it, and only a small port…

> The real users probably aren't worth much, advertising wise.

Well they have alienated the power users and made the site focused on the 9gag audience then wonder why the value per user goes down

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#12
Reddit was my favorite website growing up. I'd discover new interesting subs, read random posts and comments. The frontpage was somewhat interesting too, but now it feels like a bot fest and propaganda machine.

I still use Reddit but way less than I used to before, and I no longer use it for fun but just to read niche tech subs.

I refuse to use the official mobile app. I've always used Baconreader and then Relay on Android. Relay survived the API changes and adopted a subscription model.

But thanks to Revanced I was able to patch an old version of Relay to use my own API key for free.

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#13
post #9
post #7

Another point i would like to discuss, if someone has more knowledge than me: How the fuck was reddit not profitable? The founder said it but i still don't belive it. Was all the money spent in bullshit features no one still uses or it was before that?

Reddit has way less users than it claims. I don't know what percentage are bots, but I'd guess it in the 30 to 40 percent range. It's not uncommon at all to find identical comments, or to reverse search any upvoted post and realize it's a repost, with many identical comments from the last time. The real users probably aren't worth much, advertising wise. The key young demographic doesn't use it, and only a small port…

Whatever number of users are or were bots it was and is still one of the most visited sites in the world and it was text based (before the image and video hosting) with the added bonus of the user autotargetting themselves and their interests...how can it NOT be profitable?

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#14
post #7

Another point i would like to discuss, if someone has more knowledge than me: How the fuck was reddit not profitable? The founder said it but i still don't belive it. Was all the money spent in bullshit features no one still uses or it was before that?

Probably combination of not actually being good at generating revenue. And also over hiring and wasting money on things beyond core-platform. You know all of the short lived "events" and features.

Developers are cost centre and very expensive one when they spend time on things that do not generate any meaningful new revenue. On site like reddit as long as core product is decent users would stay due to network effects.

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#15
post #7

Another point i would like to discuss, if someone has more knowledge than me: How the fuck was reddit not profitable? The founder said it but i still don't belive it. Was all the money spent in bullshit features no one still uses or it was before that?

They are deliberately unprofitable. The upside is in tax savings, (potential) growth, and any shady side deals the top level can get away with making.

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#16
post #13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has way less users than it claims. I don't know what percentage are bots, but I'd guess it in the 30 to 40 percent range. It's not uncommon at all to find identical comments, or to reverse search any upvoted post and realize it's a repost, with many identical comments from the last time. The real users probably aren't worth much, advertising wise. The key young demographic doesn't use it, and only a small port…

Whatever number of users are or were bots it was and is still one of the most visited sites in the world and it was text based (before the image and video hosting) with the added bonus of the user autotargetting themselves and their interests...how can it NOT be profitable?

Personally, the only people in my circle of friends I know that use it heavily are single, older liberal Millennials. Plenty of others use it for niche topics at times, but not to the same extent. To young people, it might as well be a more boring Facebook.

The key demo of 18 to 34 is mostly uninterested. Of the next demo, you only have one slice of the pie who interacts much at all. Compared to most other social media, it's not worth much.

This, however, is an anecdote of one data point of course.

Edit - Also, why pay to advertise when you can just make a shill account for free?

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#17
post #13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has way less users than it claims. I don't know what percentage are bots, but I'd guess it in the 30 to 40 percent range. It's not uncommon at all to find identical comments, or to reverse search any upvoted post and realize it's a repost, with many identical comments from the last time. The real users probably aren't worth much, advertising wise. The key young demographic doesn't use it, and only a small port…

Whatever number of users are or were bots it was and is still one of the most visited sites in the world and it was text based (before the image and video hosting) with the added bonus of the user autotargetting themselves and their interests...how can it NOT be profitable?

They don't seem to advertise very much. And I'd expect most of the advertising revenue would be going to people cutting out the middle man by posting to Reddit directly. If they aren't making $ per page view, it is not crazy to think that being the most visited site in the world is unprofitable.

If anything, just by the logic of commodity economics, they should in theory be - at best - borderline profitable. They don't provide any obviously useful or difficult service apart from an easily recognisable domain name and they face global competition. No obvious moat, no obvious profits.

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#18
post #12

Reddit was my favorite website growing up. I'd discover new interesting subs, read random posts and comments. The frontpage was somewhat interesting too, but now it feels like a bot fest and propaganda machine. I still use Reddit but way less than I used to before, and I no longer use it for fun but just to read niche tech subs. I refuse to use the official mobile app. I've always used Baconreader and then Relay on A…

> but now it feels like a bot fest and propaganda machine.

Pretty much sums up every popular social media platform these days.

HN is still a good place to learn about whats going on in the tech world and what not because it's simple and filters out alot of "brainrot", although there is an increasing number of comments that soley react at the headline.

Reddit has become like meta, you either have an account or your user experience will be so horrible that you won't use it.

X simply doesn't allow you to use it, atleast it doesn't pretend.

I think we need more simple websites again, but I am not sure about the incentive structure.

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#19
post #5
post #4

Man, i just hate the new reddit, but in a way i appreciate the fact that the update literally stopped me from continuing to use it. It was my togo app, i spent hours browsing and reading random comments and articles, my English got surprisingly better than most of my peers and all it took was a mild internet addiction. Now it's short form content for me. YouTube mainly (premium helps a lot, tiktok enshittified a litt…

> Now it's short form content for me. YouTube mainly Videos take much longer than reading text . And they mostly say the same things. It's just that the better content has moved to youtube, where it can be monetized better

What I like about videos is that I can listen to them while doing other things (e.g., dishes, laundry, walking, or gardening). YouTube premium lets you switch the screen off. Annoying that you have to pay for this, but no ads is a nice bonus. Nebula also lets you do this.

Re: Reddit banned me for developing Geddit

#20
post #9
post #7

Another point i would like to discuss, if someone has more knowledge than me: How the fuck was reddit not profitable? The founder said it but i still don't belive it. Was all the money spent in bullshit features no one still uses or it was before that?

Reddit has way less users than it claims. I don't know what percentage are bots, but I'd guess it in the 30 to 40 percent range. It's not uncommon at all to find identical comments, or to reverse search any upvoted post and realize it's a repost, with many identical comments from the last time. The real users probably aren't worth much, advertising wise. The key young demographic doesn't use it, and only a small port…

If it had the number of real users it says it has, would that really increase the chance of it being profitable?
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