Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 271 posts

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#231

Post by Asdrubalini »

joecot wrote: post #220
Asdrubalini wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not interested in unpaid labour, I barely have time to do the paid one.

So to be clear: you're fine with all the moderators leaving, but you don't want to moderate, but you also don't want there to be no moderation. You would like an arbitrarily "good" moderation you agree with completely, from someone else. Fantastic. Online community in a nutshell.

I just want reddit to moderate the moderators (there are very few that push an agenda), to me it doesn't seem an archaic idea.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#232

Post by wvenable »

perfectstorm wrote: post #222
wvenable wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird take. You're saying that 3rd party apps should just charge their users whatever is necessary to satisfy Reddit's pricing? As a user, I don't feel like that's a viable solution. Ultimately it's the users who pay and not the app makers. How much is Reddit worth to pay for only on mobile and with a degraded (no NSFW) experience?

I mean that's a common knowledge, no? if the cost of raw materials goes up, manufacturers hike up the prices of the final goods and consumers pay for it.

Most people are perfectly happy paying for cost of materials + reasonable profit. It was expected. Reddit announced a month ago that were going to charge for API access -- no issues then. The Apollo developer himself already pays for API access for other services (like Imgur).

However when they announced both the pricing and the timeline, it's pretty clear that they are unreasonable. Apollo finding it unsustainable is just one developer and one app. Other developers tried to reach out to Reddit to actually sign up and get more information and they were ignored.

In principle, you are correct, this not a big deal. But in practice, it's been a total disaster. And didn't have to be that way -- they could have worked with their "partners" to ensure a win-win situation for everyone. Instead, they turned it into a lose-lose for everyone. They want control more than they want money.

Reddit would rather get rid of me than find a way for me to pay and I'd be happy to pay for it.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#233

Post by gremlinsinc »

TheFreim wrote: post #9

If the blackout is only for two days then they're right, but if they continue indefinitely it could force a change (reddit is currently unusable since all but one sub I enjoy is gone, if it was gone indefinitely then reddit would be indefinitely out of the picture for me).

it's out indefinitely for me, the day I can no longer use relay for reddit on Android.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#234

Post by gremlinsinc »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #91
throitallaway wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should they foot the bill for the API calls? So they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off. Sucks but at the end of the day, will it really matter in 6 months? This would be all fine and well if their official app weren't garbage. They do everything in their power to push you to the mobile app, but they seemingly haven't improved it since its inception.

> This would be all fine and well if their official app weren't garbage It's not garbage. I've used it for years. It's fine. Try not being dramatic online / feeding into the narrative that so and so app is garbage or not / parroting other things people say / being picky.

have you tried other apps ? Just try relay for reddit, for one day and tell me reddit's app even compares. Being able to just choose galleries, image views, or cards, and have many other aesthetical features is priceless. Reddit's app is hardly usable in my opinion, not the way I use reddit anyhow.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#235

Post by gremlinsinc »

aequitas wrote: post #224
cykros wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just waiting to see third party apps that, in lieu of API access, work by scraping the website, and are a LOT heavier on the servers. A major selling point of API's is to lighten the load.

These apps will then also be a lot heavier on the phone’s battery and the users patience. So I doubt they will retain the experience the users are accustomed to.

Not really, all you need is a server that does all the scraping using cron jobs/etc and creates a reddit api backend service that pushes up new content when new content is added. In this way all that extra load would be via some server on digital ocean or even serverless functions.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#236

Post by gremlinsinc »

brainwave92 wrote: post #163
cameronfraser wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no it doesn't, I have barely even noticed there is a blackout because there is plenty of content from non blacked out subs. The only thing I've noticed is when I try to visit subreddits I like some of them are blacked out. A 2 day blackout does literally nothing, just virtue signaling

Exactly. I said the same on reddit and got downvoted (not that it matters, but indicates the mindset of people downvoting). They really thing virtue signalling is sufficient and impactful lol. 48 hours means nothing.

It's not 48 hours though. /r/AskHistorians has gone permananently dark, or protected. Existing content/comments will remain, but only as an archive.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#237

Post by ink_13 »

Atotalnoob wrote: post #210
favorited wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are in the business of making money. Sounds like they're pretty bad at it, then. 4 days ago, their CEO claimed that Reddit is not profitable. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

Cause he 10x'd their headcount. If he kept headcount low like craigslist, wikipedia, etc. They would probably be profitable

Minorly profitable, though, not "giant IPO" profitable.

Reddit has investors who clearly want their money back with a nice return on top.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#238

Post by gremlinsinc »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #153
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the blackout is only for two days then they're right Yeah... I don't know the tradeoffs at play but 2 days is... extremely insignificant / probably a bad decision by all of the moderators? It sends a message sure but, it's a bunch of "whiny reddit mods" versus C-level executives in a "help us make API more affordable versus help us not lose a ton of money offering generous free API hosting/usage" negotiation. Ho…

> they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off I believe they aim for selling API access to AI companies, for (re)training data. Third party apps are just taking collateral damage.

If that were the case, they could offer exclusive deals to existing mobile apps that are NOT using it for AI/data-scraping. Reddit is also financed by the same VC's that finance OpenAI, do you honestly think they didn't know what was going on? They knew, this is not just about AI Companies, this is about control, and honestly maybe some Elon Musk fan-boyism by Steve Huffman.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#239

Post by George83728 »

FemmeAndroid wrote: post #206
George83728 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't need reddit, then they should stop using it to demonstrate that point. > "I'm not addicted, I can quit anytime I want." > "Okay then, prove it and quit today." > "....No."

> If they don't need reddit, then they should stop using it to demonstrate that point. Why wouldn’t you use every available, easy to use mechanism to broadcast a message? Clearly the actual organizing is happening on a variety of channels including Discord.

> Why wouldn’t you use every available, easy to use mechanism to broadcast a message?

Because continuing to use reddit broadcasts a different sort of message: they're a bunch of addicts who will come crawling back.

> Clearly the actual organizing is happening on a variety of channels including Discord.

All the more reason for them to quit using reddit...

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#240

Post by gremlinsinc »

paulmd wrote: post #219
EA-3167 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Reddit's perspective overall this is a terrible idea, but from Huffman's perspective it's purely rational. If he has to walk this back it's probably not compatible with his continued tenure after all, the question of why this was done so hastily and rudely would inevitably undermine his leadership. If he just barrels ahead though, and prays that the addictions of mods and users are greater than their pride/desir…

Huffman isn't going to walk it back or he'd have done so during the Q+A. Like nobody doubts that mods are willing to take subs private, the move was telegraphed well in advance. Spez doesn't care, he's not going to back down on this change, that was the message from the Q+A last week and actually pushing the button doesn't change the status quo from last week. They're gonna wait the 48 hours, lever open any major sub…

Fediverse is too disjointed, I want one place to go for all the seedy "ask reddit" stuff, or for "history", etc. Single-topic silos is a big feature that you can't get in the fediverse when there could be askhistory on multiple instances, etc, and when the whole community is going to different servers to access lemmy, etc..

A centralized reddit that is a co-op / wikipedia like org, would be better. It could still be profitable, it could still run ads even, but it doesn't have to take VC funding, or sell it's soul.

Post reply on HN