An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads? • Hacker News Board

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#191

Post by ken » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

jackcosgrove wrote: post #113

Someone1234 wrote: post #45

This is classic shortermism. Reddit is, in the short term, driving more external users towards creating user accounts while in the long term removing one of the major value funnels for why they would (i.e. the quality of comments, particularly in certain niche communities/about niche topics). This will give them a short term "bump" at the cost of the site's long term relevance (as it falls down Google's search result…

Nothing lasts forever. Reddit is 14 years old. They've had a good run. I think there is a general trend away from user-generated content as a business model, because that content can be a bit salty. Reddit might just be cashing out because the wave they rode has already crested.

It's possible to migrate software without driving off all your users. It's soft, after all. When the 8-bit wave crested, that didn't mean Apple was done as a company.

Why do we accept that such a short-lived company (less than one human generation) is "a good run", just because it's software? If Tesla turned into a "classic pump and dump scheme", nobody would say "Well, Tesla is 16 years old. They've had a good run."

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#192

Post by Karunamon » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

Flozzin wrote: post #185

Chirael wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is starting to do this as well. For example they've made it so that accounts with less than 1000 subscribers can't do live streams any more. Not coincidentally, 1000 subscribers is the threshold for monetization (i.e., when ads start getting shown on all the account's videos). A lot of smaller channels are upset about it, since live streams were one of the ways they were /getting/ to 1000 subscribers in the f…

I wonder how much it costs to get a thousand bot accounts to subscribe to your account.

About $90ish after some cursory searching. I wouldn't do it, though, seems like a great way to get a nasty surprise in the future when the bots get terminated.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#193

Post by XaspR8d » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

DocG wrote: post #183

XaspR8d wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for the reddit site itself I wonder what is the ratio of old.reddit viewers vs reddit viewers are. I moderate a top 100 sub and if the built-in stats are to be believed, the recent breakdown is something like: = Pageviews = 40% apps 28% old reddit 17% mobile reddit 15% new reddit = Unique visits = 41% mobile reddit 27% new reddit 24% apps 8% old reddit This doesn't really capture the ratio of contributors who us…

Oh damn, old is so high. I thought the old would be lower than new. I guess I shouldn't be so afraid of old going away soon then :) I'm using old Reddit, on mobile.

Well it's hard to guess what the admins are planning. They said it would stay around for the foreseeable future but I agree their changes are becoming increasingly adversarial. (EDIT: Though new reddit has brought about a number of good improvements to the moderating experience. Sadly at this point the mod community had already implemented all of them and more via 3rd party browser extensions...)

Our community might have a slight old-reddit bias -- we have a core group that doesn't like change -- but I have a hard time believing it could have a terribly large effect once the numbers are in the millions.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#194

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

Glyptodon wrote: post #71

coldpie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same thing that happens to all "free"/ad-sponsored/VC-backed services. Unless you're FB or Twitter or YouTube, your ads aren't profitable enough to run your business. The business model is unviable unless you get that big. So you lose a bunch of money until you find a way to monetize or close. This always takes the form of user-hostile anti-features. Currently that's forcing users into your special apps, whe…

I'd caveat this very slightly, as sometimes a business model turns out to be existentially viable, but lacks the kind of scale, revenue, or exponential growth that VCs want to see.

Which means the business never should have taken VC funding, because it just puts the whole venture at risk while adding zero value.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#195

Post by ken » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

Chirael wrote: post #170

Cephalopterus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because that content can be a bit salty. AKA the fate of every site that is a collection of usergenerated content with an ad based business model. If you want to get serious about monetization then you need to actively curtail any content that is not "advertiser friendly" which in most cases means alienating your core content generators, case in point, Tumblr.

YouTube is starting to do this as well. For example they've made it so that accounts with less than 1000 subscribers can't do live streams any more. Not coincidentally, 1000 subscribers is the threshold for monetization (i.e., when ads start getting shown on all the account's videos). A lot of smaller channels are upset about it, since live streams were one of the ways they were /getting/ to 1000 subscribers in the f…

YouTube is definitely doing this. If you watch a video without being signed in, it now displays a popover (over the video) that says "You're signed out of YouTube. Sign in to like videos, comment, and subscribe. [GOT IT]"

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#196

Post by trts » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #159

dmix wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe Reddit admins heavily influence the culture of the hyper-modding but at the same time tons of subreddits go way beyond just moderating out the bad stuff and act like full blown newspaper editors who delete 75%+ of organically upvoted submitted content because it doesn't fit their view of what the subreddit should be. They really aren't legitimately user-generated subreddits anymore and there's always thi…

I still am very upset about /r/politics becoming super partisan. Reddit as a whole has always had biases, but there was a time when /r/politics was fairly centrist and genuinely useful as an aggregator with intelligent commentary. It's now a reposting of vox/buzzfeed more or less.

I don't remember this time at all. But I've never found much value in the big subreddits because of the incentives to game them for karma and traffic. The most interesting communities have always seemed like the small ones since there are more people interested in a conversation vs. a popularity contest.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#197

Post by ativzzz » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

Kaiyou wrote: post #136

mFixman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digg failed because Reddit existed. There's no similar social media for Reddit refugees to go to.

Well, there is voat, but not many people can endure the culture over there.

Just went to voat, and it keeps redirecting me to the sign in page regardless of where I go, so looks like they've beaten reddit in terms of unfriendly accessibility.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#198

Post by basch » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

Pigo wrote: post #151

basch wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook was always lame, it was a utilitarian communication tool. It's like calling hammers or wall calendars or trash bags lame. It's similar to the argument you here when people say "they youth arent into facebook anymore, now they use xxxx." That's nice and all, but as long as they get facebook when they graduate high school or go to college, facebook wins. It doesnt need to be hip and cool if its the network glu…

I was on Facebook back when you had to have a college email to be on it. It was were you could go to find out the name of that cute girl in class. It was also when social media was still a new concept. MySpace was a much bigger deal at the time, but Facebook was the first place where I could meet people my age nearby, organize a party, find out what was happening around campus. I have not doubt Facebook will continue…

Facebook wasnt cool. The people on facebook were cool. I believe facebook took off for two reasons. One is the one you mentioned, that it was exclusive. Two was that it was the anti-livejournal/myspace. No css, no glitter, no strobing, no sound, no hard to read colors, no moving elements around the page. IT standardized where and what functions looked like, and acted more like creation software (photoshop) than the output of the document layout tools. Facebook was utilitarian in that you couldnt customize its look, you couldnt express yourself. It took itself as a white pages, not a portfolio.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#199

Post by harshalizee » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #69

I deleted my Reddit account recently in an effort to curb social media. I've still been checking r/all and some favorite subreddits. Thank you Reddit for further breaking the site and making it easier to ween myself off of. Thank you HN for the addiction block contols on the account screen.

Exactly what I thought! I deleted the Reddit Apollo app when I realized I was using for over 3 hours a day. Now I catch myself sometimes using the mobile version. But the fact that they keep going out of the way to make it work and worse everyday means I actually get to stay away from it.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#200

Post by Karunamon » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

WhompingWindows wrote: post #108

cies wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you are like in HK and need to organize yourselves for some reason. > If we're not going to pay with dollar bills, we pay with privacy. Paying with ads is also possible.

But if you pay with ads, don't you need to see a LOT of ads, unless your privacy is compromised and they use trackers about you to give you targeted (i.e. more lucrative) ads?

I don't see why topic-based ads based entirely on on-site participation would be a problem. No need for any user-hostile garbage, bucket your communities into topics, and let advertisers target the topics or the intersections between them. Ads are sold on-site, not via third party networks.

Reddit does this, but no idea how successful it is.