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Sync will shut down on June 30

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Re: Sync will shut down on June 30

#111

Post by mikae1 »

dilap wrote: post #23

Rather than shut down, it would be a great time for all these clients to get together and decide on an official alternative site to reddit, and start supporting that. If they did it en-masse and in a coordinated fashion, it might be enough social momentum to achieve escape velocity on the new site.

> an official alternative site to reddit

It's important that it's not an alternative, or else we'll be in this situation again a few years from now. https://join-lemmy.org will allow us to create a network of sites (or instances) that are still able speak to one another.

Re: Sync will shut down on June 30

#112

Post by midnitewarrior »

jjcm wrote: post #57
dilap wrote: post #23

Rather than shut down, it would be a great time for all these clients to get together and decide on an official alternative site to reddit, and start supporting that. If they did it en-masse and in a coordinated fashion, it might be enough social momentum to achieve escape velocity on the new site.

I have an unlaunched open source reddit alternative. Before I go into that too much though, note that there are a bunch: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/ My vision: Free to browse, subscription to interact. You choose your subscription amount. I take $1 to run the server, anything beyond that gets split evenly between everything you upvote that month. For the $1, I give 30% of the cut to any 3rd party app…

The way you replace Reddit is by making its business model obsolete with a better model.

The problem with Reddit is that the interests of the users, mods, shareholders, and advertisers are not aligned. Their interests are being pitted against one another in order to generate profit through enshittification.

The way you make a better Reddit is by creating a cooperative model where the users, advertisers, and mods interests are aligned, and there isn't a profit motive for a shareholder group that takes precedence over the quality and governance of the site.

The web site and free app are ad-sponsored. Paid subscriptions first give you an ad-free experience, and secondly, give you and API key you can use in any 3rd party app. 3rd party apps make revenue from the subscriptions, giving them an incentive to create an ever-better user experience.

Mods earn a fee based on traffic and interactions with their subreddit. Not enough to call it a job, but enough for the community to show appreciation.

As a cooperative model, there are no investment shareholders, the site sells bonds to fund it that pay a deferred, fixed yield to get it started. Bondholders, have a vested interest in the success of the site, but have no say in its operation. Without shareholders demanding profits and growth, the interests of the users, the mods, the advertisers, the bondholders and the non-profit that administers the site are aligned.

The best things in this world aren't for profit, the hug of a child, a national park, a sunset and the stars at night. If you want a Reddit-like experience to stay pure, it needs to upset the apple cart and be a tech entity of a completely different model in order to avoid enshittification.

Re: Sync will shut down on June 30

#114

Post by guptaneil »

jjcm wrote: post #57
dilap wrote: post #23

Rather than shut down, it would be a great time for all these clients to get together and decide on an official alternative site to reddit, and start supporting that. If they did it en-masse and in a coordinated fashion, it might be enough social momentum to achieve escape velocity on the new site.

I have an unlaunched open source reddit alternative. Before I go into that too much though, note that there are a bunch: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/ My vision: Free to browse, subscription to interact. You choose your subscription amount. I take $1 to run the server, anything beyond that gets split evenly between everything you upvote that month. For the $1, I give 30% of the cut to any 3rd party app…

Really love that you’re trying a unique business model! I suspect you’ll struggle to gain traction on anything that requires a credit card to interact with, even if the price is only $1, due to the very high barrier to entry for most of the world but I hope this works!

One idea I’d love to see somebody implement: weight content that a user spent longer typing + editing higher as a proxy for thoughtfulness. Unfortunately this specific client-side metric can realistically only work on a native-only service with device attestation and no API, so that the metric can be trusted, but would be cool to think about other solutions to surfacing higher quality content (like TikTok did), as well as solving the inevitable authenticity problem as more and more online content will be astroturfed by LLM’s.

Re: Sync will shut down on June 30

#115

Post by npteljes »

remote_phone wrote: post #53

Reddit made a huge mistake taking VC money and trying to become billionaires. They could have maintained a smaller footprint and created essentially a lifestyle business like Craigslist and served the world. Taking VC money and trying to extract more money from its users is going to change the site irrevocably. And the biggest problem I have with Reddit is that the investors and employees are going to become rich off…

I mean, first it's a huge mistake, then the employees are rich? I think if they became rich, they haven't made a mistake. And the mods were volunteers to begin with. If they are fed up with Reddit, they'll just serve the world elsewhere.

You could say that it's shame that things like Reddit don't last, I mean in the form of not serving the interest of investors. It could be such a good place. But to me it seems like this is the conscious decision of the powers to be. And so, no mistakes at all.

Re: Sync will shut down on June 30

#116

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

willis936 wrote: post #113
eric_cc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Twitter fail?

Yes.

It has failed to remain good/worthwhile. But what I meant is that it's too big to go away and get replaced by something else completely. It has so many users staying there out of habit/inertia, it will take a decade for them to dwindle away.

Re: Sync will shut down on June 30

#118

Post by nullindividual »

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #32
nullindividual wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ran into a user who shared a screenshot of the mobile app (for unrelated reasons to the topic at hand). They admitted the mobile app 'sucked' yet didn't care. Apathy is real, and most users have it. Reddit will be fine.

Power users are the most affected here, and power users bring the most value to Reddit. Mods specifically have always been Reddit’s golden goose. Free content moderation by volunteers is Reddit’s only advantage over other social media platforms. FB pays absurd numbers of humans to do what power users do for Reddit for free. When the mods fall, the quality falls.

Do you have anything to back up your assertion that power users bring the most value?

Mods certainly don't sustain or bring the quality bar up. Reddit content quality has fallen over the years as it has gotten more popular.

Re: Sync will shut down on June 30

#119

Post by ekanes »

dilap wrote: post #23

Rather than shut down, it would be a great time for all these clients to get together and decide on an official alternative site to reddit, and start supporting that. If they did it en-masse and in a coordinated fashion, it might be enough social momentum to achieve escape velocity on the new site.

100% -- the only reason reddit might get away with such terrible behavior is if people have nowhere to go. :(

Re: Sync will shut down on June 30

#120

Post by jjcm »

guptaneil wrote: post #114
jjcm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an unlaunched open source reddit alternative. Before I go into that too much though, note that there are a bunch: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/ My vision: Free to browse, subscription to interact. You choose your subscription amount. I take $1 to run the server, anything beyond that gets split evenly between everything you upvote that month. For the $1, I give 30% of the cut to any 3rd party app…

Really love that you’re trying a unique business model! I suspect you’ll struggle to gain traction on anything that requires a credit card to interact with, even if the price is only $1, due to the very high barrier to entry for most of the world but I hope this works! One idea I’d love to see somebody implement: weight content that a user spent longer typing + editing higher as a proxy for thoughtfulness. Unfortunat…

So I actually think this model does weigh for better content, but I'd love your thoughts here since it seems like you're thinking about this as well.

Part of the reason why I want engagement to be paid only, is because when you factor in the "anything beyond [the $1 server fee taken from your subscription] gets split evenly between everything you upvote that month" aspect, you have to be more choosy with what you upvote.

Take a scenario where I subscribe for $10/mo. That means $9 gets split between everything I upvote. If the first thing I upvote in a month is an extremely engaging and insightful article that clearly had hours poured into it, as of that time the author of that article will be scheduled to get all $9 of my subscription pool at the end of the month. If I stumble upon a low effort meme that made me chuckle, will I upvote it knowing that it will reduce the amount of the pool that is going to the first article? If I do they'll each get $4.50 at the end of the month, but are the two of them equal? On reddit votes are free and require nothing, but now that there's an aspect of "voting on this takes a little away from my previous votes", there's another factor at play.

My hypothesis is that this will lead to more conscientious voting. No clue if it'll actually work, but again since you're thinking along the same lines I'd love your take.

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