TIHI was a fairly large sub, with almost multimilion level of subscribers. If reddit wanted to increase traffic and get more eyes on ads, they're doing quite a terrible job of it so far.
So they want people to pay to not see ads? They literally sell that as a product, Reddit Premium. Why not tie API access to premium subscriptions? It's not even unprecedented; Spotify does this.
Being a cheapass, I would probably have made the switch to using their horrid app. But, it would have been my own decision to be a cheapass so I would've been fine using it.
I can understand that line of thinking. In this instance, I think I'm w/ @bionicjoey on this one. If it was a choice of use their app or pay, I'd have paid. I refused to use New Reddit on the PC. I know folks that have gone to using the new app though (even knowing what we know now) and I guess that's ok. Their choice and all that.
I know folks that have gone to using the new app though (even knowing what we know now) and I guess that's ok. Their choice and all that.
IMO this is the reason why boycotts don't really work in the age of the Internet. It seems like there are just so many people with access and either too apathetic to try and make change or are simply just ignorant to the situation, whatever it may be.
I'm so fucking tired of this line. Redefine success and you'll find most boycotts are actually quite successful - if you include every individual who changes their habits as a success. It took almost 20 fuckin years to get reddit to where it is, to think it was gonna burn in a day is foolish. The fall of Rome (I know I'm being hyperbolic) took what, 250 years?
For good measure, I agree with your concept in regards to most things - general good deeds, small actions that have cascading effects on the people and the world around you. It's just difficult to find that the intent of boycotts, which is to effectively end a businesses customer stream, is effective with the tools available today.
The difference between Rome and a corporation is that a corporation can now be global.
Over 5 billion people have access to the internet. There is simply no way for all of these people to be informed. Reddit is a prime example of something taking 20 years to get where it is, having a "mass exodus" and being... barely affected (their words, not mine!)
Don't get me wrong, I am tired of it too, but the reality is that we are more people today than we ever have been historically. As a result, a mere 100,000 is both enough to keep a company alive regardless of whether the other 5 billion buy or not.
I'm not suggesting we shouldn't attempt boycotting, just that our tactics need to change for modernity. Boycotting when you and your whole town stopped buying from Joe's Wares worked. Boycotting now that Joe's Wares can make sales online means your town is never getting rid of him, regardless of whether you all never buy from him and actively dissuade others from doing so.
Once the battle is joined and a tactic is employed, it is important that the conflict not be carried on over too long a time. …There are many reasons of human experience arguing for this point. I cannot repeat too often that a conflict that drags on too long becomes a drag. The same universality applies for a tactic or for any other specific action.
Among the reasons is the simple fact that human beings can sustain an interest in a particular subject only over a limited period of time. The concentration, the emotional fervor, even the physical energy, a particular experience that is exciting, challenging, and inviting, can last just so long — this is true of the gamut of human behavior, from sex to conflict. After a period of time it becomes monotonous, repetitive, an emotional treadmill, and worse than anything else a bore. From the moment the tactician engages in conflict, his enemy is time.
BTW Alinsky (b.1909) wrote this book to try to stop baby boomers from being dumb and fouling everything up. I am not a huge fan of the intergenerational model of class conflict but I think it is interesting.
It's a difficult issue. I'm definitely not suggesting we shouldn't attempt boycotting, just that our tactics need to change for modernity. As you said, they are already difficult to accomplish effectively. Even just 50 years ago, you and your whole town stopped buying from Joe's Wares could work. Today, boycotting now that Joe's Wares can make sales online means your town is never getting rid of him, regardless of whether you all never buy from him and actively dissuade others from doing so.
Moreso if Joe's Wares knows they can buy reviews and other scummy tactics to make them look more worthwhile than they are.
That's an interesting snippit, definitely something that feels true to society today still. Similar to how I said is disheartening in how many people are apathetic to a cause, that's a very apt description to what exactly about it becomes so tiring.
@gpage@danbob@bionicjoey I've said in other threads that I would have gladly paid $3/month (assuming that even 20% of the reddit userbase would also be willing to pay, making this subscription so cheap) to keep the lights on at reddit - and hell, maybe even turn a profit - if that had been presented as an option before all this debacle.
But then someone replied to me scoffing about how this means not only would I be generating free content for the site, but also paying for the privilege to do so. My take is that if this created a gated online community of contributors, that's probably fine by me.
Now that humans are leaving by the droves, the chatter in the Fediverse is that AI bots will eventually be all that's left on reddit and a few humans who don't know they're talking to bots. But if being a participating member (submissions, comments) cost money, I think it would become cost prohibitive to run bot armies on a platform like reddit.
He took Elon Musk as an inspiration. I am wondering if he has a narcissistic anti-liberal leanings that he just wants to make whatever he can on an IPO while destroying it in the process
It does not make sense to me why the API charge have to be calculated by total traffic of all users of an app either. I've decided to think it is just an excuse to get rid of third party apps until convinced otherwise.
To my understanding it's a somewhat reasonable approach that has its upsides and downsides. I believe Twitter apps were all designed that way back in the day as well.
It's not about the ads. It's about the telemetry you can get on user behavior from a mobile app. Reddit wants to leverage that as part of its ad sales package.
Once you have enough of it to live a comfortable life, money just becomes about power. So, what we have is some spoiled rich asshole who is used to having influence and power being shown that most of that was a gift. That gift has been recinded, and so the only control he has left is money.
He's spending some of Reddit's current and future earnings on stepping on necks. Because that's what the cash was going to be used for, in one way or another, anyway.
It was more than a sub to meme on things you/to dislike, it was more like Oh Gosh Why Would This Exist Thanks I Hate It!
Have you ever imagined a bird with teeth? What about a gif of a needle going into an eye? Or maybe a nice chocolate milkshake in a butt-oriented sex toy.
The difference was Reddit had already built up a reasonably comparable audience when Digg imploded so the migration was easy. If you look at a similar graph of Reddit today and Lemmy/Kbin, you probably wouldn't even see these tools register with the active user base of Reddit so high. I think "rhyme" of history is that another service will eventually win, and it might be ours, but it's more akin to the fall of the British Empire than an overnight event.
Shit like this is why I switched to a third party app a while ago. I used to have the official app on my phone because iOS and everything I remembered seeing as far as 3PAs went was all for Android before I heard of Apollo. But the fact that I was seeing “posts” like this every three-or-so posts, and the fact that they were all over the comments as well was just way too much.
It’s exactly why I will not go back. I have like three niche subreddits saved that have no real equivalent in the Fediverse and I’ll only check in on occasion. Through Old.Reddit. With a browser that has an ad blocker built in.
Good riddance to askreddit. Page after page of “what tv show should be brought back?” with every top comment being Firefly, as if the people answering have no idea there was a movie that killed off half of the characters.
Here is a post about people killing wasps with gasoline...don't see how it's that cringe. The first clip has the female AI voiceover which is kinda played out, and the final clip uses 'Back in Black' by ACDC. It's not that cringey, but 25k upvotes...
It wouldn't surprise me if the popularity was artificially inflated. Social media has known for a while now that encouraging outrage drives views and clicks. Coupled with Reddit using bots when it was first up to artificially populate the site, there has probably always been some bullshittery going on, it's just become more obvious now. I unsubbed to subs like r/facepalm and all the other rage generating subs because they were having a detrimental effect on my mental health and because it was obvious they were encouraging and driving outrage for clicks.
so true it’s awful you can’t tell posts from ads from what your subscribed too. all for what. I started using reddit with Apollo and it has to be the best app that I’ve chose/chosen to use(probably very close to a human guide lines compliment app too so many options and tweaks). to lose it over money grab ego bolstering is just the nail in the coffin for reddit to me. to think it used to be this place to be exposed to new ideas and topics anf by the way if you have any technical, personal, or financial question you can find some good literal information with a little effort for that too. just a shame our societies fr profit mentality.
I don't think the scraping is the full reason. I was not on lemmy/kbin or any other part of the fediverse and I still got this random permaban, in fact it happened before the pricing changes were announced on May 31st.
Also, my username there is different to what I'm using on the fediverse.
Prior to being permabanned I also never used the API for anything. Only used it for the scripts to wipe my account clean (so being permabanned doesn't typically prevent one from creating the API tokens or actually using the API, it seems).
Well that rules out (most) of the malicious possibilities. What we're left with is probably either Hanlon's razer, or something you commented about spez.
If it's the latter, the four accounts I nuked are still alive.
Sadly, it wasn't the later. I never mentioned spez and didn't even know what the CEO's name or username was until the blackouts (i.e. after i got permabanned).
VPN? They have this half-baked user "reliability" rating system that they claim "identifies known alts".
Which is marketingspeak for "we log ips," I think. If they did that as poorly as everything else, it's possible they think you're the last guy to use that vpn before you.
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