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Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

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Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#101

Post by wvenable »

bastijn wrote: post #63
prox wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spez seems like the latest outed manchild amongst CEOs.

That awkward moment you realize Reddit is in a better position to win this war because people like us just want to have a digital place to spend time, not fight a war. Truth be told I don't care much about all of this, I just want my subs back or replaced so I can mindlessly scroll them. Wasn't using a third party app, but if I was I'd probably feel unhappy for a week before I simply switch and don't think back.

I've been actively avoiding Reddit during this protest and I just signed up to a Lemmy instance. The UI isn't great but the communities are already pretty hopping. I need to subscribe to a few more things but it seems to handle the fix for now.

I'm never using Reddit's awful app -- it's just not how I like to use Reddit. I'm an old.reddit.com kind of person.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#102

Post by dahwolf »

jleyank wrote: post #33

How does / will Reddit make money? Selling ads? Harvesting data? Monthly subscriptions? Some combination of all three? I have difficulty imagining why anybody would pay a fee to join a bbs no matter how fancy it is. Might be just me as a cheap old codger. Now, they can use ai to generate posts and dispense with moderators and even posters I guess.

I think this question is far more interesting than the blackout drama. It seems Reddit hasn't made a cent of profit in 15 years. That's absurd even by SV standards.

Is it incompetence? Not a priority because the focus was always on growth? Or just difficult/impossible as nobody wants to pay for anything and block ads?

I don't know the answer, but the answer matters. Both in this strike and the Stackoverflow strike many people are dropping claims that the company only cares about money. Those claims make little sense to me when the companies is making a loss.

You could have very valid reasons to strike, but you're striking against a company in financial trouble, facing an existential AI threat, and an advertiser pullback.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#103

Post by thewataccount »

wvenable wrote: post #80
thewataccount wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support the blackouts but > Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers. They don't need to. Aww (36m), music(32m), videos(26m), futurology(18m), me_irl, and abrupt chaos are some of the biggest ones, if they seize just those 6 then they've reclaimed most of the r/popular anyway.

The assumption is that those communities would just go back to normal if they were seized by Reddit. I'm not sure that's a good assumption.

r/aww is literally just cute animals. Most of the others are just memes/reposts of their respective topic.

There's plenty of mods from subreddits that didn't go dark and have 20m+, reddit can just put them in charge.

I highly doubt the specific mods matter that much on these "fluff" subreddits. Subreddits like r/apple I could see it mattering a lot more, but most of the top ones aren't exactly complex topics.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#104

Post by larperdoodle »

dybber wrote: post #34
BoxOfRain wrote: post #13

To the people who've been in this situation, what would you do in Huffman's shoes? From my fairly naïve perspective it looks like he's doing a pretty poor job managing this crisis but am I overestimating the trouble he's in? At some point he'll either be forced to back down or replace the mods of the big subs with people willing to cross the picket line, I don't see why he doesn't just pull the plaster off now either…

I haven’t been in a situation like this. I think they should call it off, and announce that they will go back to the drawing board. Then restart talks with the API users and third party app developers. What if they reduced the price of Reddit premium to $3/month and made API and third party apps only available for Reddit premium subscribers? - Reddit would get many more premium subscribers - App developers would be a…

I think the issue with this is that the bigger third party apps (Apollo) actually host their own backend which talks to reddit on behalf of the apps so they can quickly deploy fixes. I tried to find the reddit thread about it I remember reading to confirm, but uhh... the blackout exists.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#105

Post by jd24 »

erellsworth wrote: post #43
ThomW wrote: post #18

... until they just take over the moderation of their largest communities and this whole thing ends. I mean what's so magical about the moderation of something like r/videos other than the mods being free labor for Reddit?

I think you underestimate the value of that free labor. Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers. Beyond that, the minute the mods are official employees of Reddit, Reddit is fully responsible for all the content on all those subs. Social media companies are already under a lot of scrut…

there was a stat "92 of the most 500 popular subreddits are moderated by the same 5 people"; unpaid people at that

i think they can afford to replace the mods. it'll likely be their last resort though

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#106

Post by linuxftw »

1270018080 wrote: post #69
linuxftw wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the ability of AI to literally solve this problem for almost nothing. The large subs can absolutely be automated moderation, if they're not already. Enough flags on a post? Just take it down, there will be 15 million new posts in an hour.

We're in the "this is how blockchain can solve this" era of the AI bubble.

It seems to me a very trivial problem to classify a post as on topic or not with today's AI capabilities.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#109

Post by ssl232 »

rurp wrote: post #94
xyst wrote: post #50

Good. This works out for everybody except the brain dead C-level executives that tried to bully indie app developers. - regular people get a break from their echo chambers - VOLUNTEER mods get a break - journalists get their news article The only loser here is the corporation side. Significant loss of value from decreased user activity. Subsequent loss of revenue. Inability to extract as much value from the users dat…

> Although I do foresee Reddit “super mods” forcibly removing the blackout through their backend, removing mod status from the “rebels” and inserting their own friendly mods until they can find replacements. I agree this is likely, which will extend the negative reactions further and alienate even more users. Unless Reddit execs do a 180 in the very near future I think the platform will be forever crippled. Large net…

Where will reddit get enough mods to police the hundreds (thousands?) of subreddits each with tens of thousands of members that are rebelling against the API changes? Blocking/firing the existing mods would make the site descend into chaos.
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