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An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

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

#201

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

ken wrote: post #191
jackcosgrove wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It makes sense to think of Reddit as an application rather than a company. Reddit the application depends on network effects to grow, and without growth, decay will be inevitable. Facebook the company has been able to create other applications that grow, even while Facebook the application is starting a network effect-triggered death spiral. Reddit Inc. has not created any other growth applications like the Reddit app, so will die.

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

#202

Post by ken »

harimau777 wrote: post #31

It feels to me like social media has been imploding recently. It seems like I am seeing more and more efforts to overtly force people use an app, associate browsing with an account, and link their account with a real world identity (e.g. via phone number). This in turn makes the platforms less useful and more hostile to users and presumably at some point that will cause users to leave the system. It also feels like s…

In the past, a social platform was replaced by another one that did basically the same thing but better, in the eyes of users. Today, we're seeing real issues with social media, but there's no viable platform which fixes the problems with these platforms we want to leave.

I think the demand is still there. There's a power vacuum just waiting for someone to fill it. But the replacement can't just be "like Facebook but run by people slightly less creepy". You've got to fix some other root issues.

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

#204

Post by onychomys »

kresten wrote: post #48

I eventually conceded to Medium’s constant harassment to sign in for free. Now it demands I pay. I wonder if there is a way to permanently exclude medium.com from all my search results.

There's a way to do it for google: https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/4513886?hl=en

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

#205

Post by the_gipsy »

coldpie wrote: post #44
harimau777 wrote: post #31

It feels to me like social media has been imploding recently. It seems like I am seeing more and more efforts to overtly force people use an app, associate browsing with an account, and link their account with a real world identity (e.g. via phone number). This in turn makes the platforms less useful and more hostile to users and presumably at some point that will cause users to leave the system. It also feels like s…

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…

It's like image hosting sites.

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

#206

Post by jandrese »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #43
nyolfen wrote: post #36

reddit should be a protocol

It was. It's called Usenet. And Usenet even included posting a single message to multiple groups, and people from both can respond.

I would be thrilled if the followup to Reddit is Usenet but with working moderation.

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

#207

Post by noelsusman »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #100
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…

I wish Reddit had gone the way of VLC -- keep your core product, the thing people liked, and stop chasing profits. Why do so many of these companies fall to the profit motive and lose their "soul"?

It's a for-profit company. Chasing profits is the entire point. If that wasn't the point then they would have an alternative organizational structure and enjoy the various tax benefits that come with it, like VLC does.

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

#208

Post by Zhyl »

WhiskeyJack55 wrote: post #142
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.

Sounds ass backwards, and I've been signing up for newsletters in addition to a little more HN to ween off of Reddit. Read some curated headlines in the morning, sure there's usually a "word from our sponsers", but it's a better experience overall than social media imo.

Any newsletter recommendations? I've been thinking of going down an RSS/Email&&Procmail route myself, but haven't done the research on quality sources yet.

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

#209

Post by Analemma_ »

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.

That's playing with fire. If/when Google figures out what you're doing, they'll nuke your entire Google presence- YouTube, Gmail, everything- with no recourse.

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

#210

Post by justincredible »

Cephalopterus wrote: post #119
sithlord wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same thing quora did, which made it hated by the masses.

Quora is arguably worse, it actively incentivized people to post inane and unproductive questions reducing the overall quantity of the content. Language topics are littered which questions such as "What is the colour red in the language X" while topics like Math has stuff like "What is 1+1". I wish I was kidding about that last one, it's an actual question on Quora with 1,078 answers as of this comment. It's insane

Most of the answers to that last question are inane and unproductive. The first answer is funny though: https://www.quora.com/What-is-1+1
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