He's had money thrown at him from VCs, thousands of people generating content, and administering content for free, sitting on a goldmine of data and goodwill and Community spirit, and he's managed to lose money, burn bridges, and fuck up the whole deal all for thppe sake of chasing a few dollars of API revenue and a bruised ego. All while others make millions and gain significant community support using the exact same data with business models he could have just copied or shared in.
He's had every opportunity. He's fucked it up at every step.
he's managed to lose money, burn bridges, and fuck up the whole deal all for thppe sake of chasing a few dollars of API revenue
Let's call this what it actually was though, there was no attempt at making money from the API. This was entirely to shut down 3rd party apps. Smart AI companies will just scrape reddit. The only people affected by this are 3rd party app developers and users.
This is even more amazingly incompetent. There are a near infinite other ways they could have handled 3rd party apps not showing ads, but they instead chose the brute force method that makes no one happy.
Fair point. And yes, there's just so many ways he could have made money from third party apps and their users without trashing them. The AI explanation just didn't make any sense to me at all.
A business brain would have followed the money. He's just following half-witted ideas/ego. I don't think he really realises or understands what he had.
The thing that gets me is that rif used to have a revenue sharing arrangement, which was axed when spez came in. He literally had a functional way of profiting off of third party apps and he threw it out.
Remember the threat that Reddit presented to capitalism's status quo around the height of antiwork and GME.
If Reddit falls, it will be on purpose. Same as the 180 of Twitter as a somewhat legitimate forum - Twitter being a key organizing tool during the Arab Spring (with the Saudis being the largest investor in Twitter behind elon of course).
Billionaires do each other favors to keep the class war in balance.
yeah i’m not sure this theory holds water… it’s pretty obvious the community won’t just give up: everyone saw what happened with mastodon
the fediverse is ideologically opposed to corporate and capitalist interference, so they’re just pushing people to a platform that they have even less control over, in a manner that pushes people to be more anti-capitalist, to a platform whose very existence is about being anti-corporate!
mayyybe you could say that combined with threads the “long play” is to embrace, extend, extinguish essentially moving reddit to facebook? but that’s a stretch and a half
i agree with hanlons razor here: spez is just a fucking egotistical moron
So killing a feature before any replacement is ready; cool. I’m sure those who pay for premium and will stop receiving a stock of coins will see a commensurate price reduction. Right?
This seems like the dumbest decision imaginable. Users are flocking to alternatives, many of those who haven't don't trust you, and you're trying to become profitable … so you delete the stuff people paid for without any sort of replacement. What a genius ideaǃ Making the platform less unique and giving the middle finger to the people who give you money in one go!
There's no way a human adult is running this company. It has to be a council of toddlers run by a keyboard-smashing orangutan. At this point, they might as well start encouraging bots and karma farming. Maybe even pay people to do it!
Yes haha. Constantly. I wouldn't be surprised if they're happy to be rid of the type of user who would move to the fediverse anyway. Maybe that was their plan all along.
Yep, and was proud to - let me support Reddit and good contributors.
I wonder if the exodus of people like myself brought this on - the drop in awards given may have been significant indicator or less engagement, so needed to muddy the waters?
Yeah, I bought gold a few times. I had no problem with "this content was so good it inspired me to give back a little to the free service we're all using."
I wouldn't mind some equivalent for the fediverse honestly. Let me donate to the home server of a user who's comment I thought was especially good.
I know you can donate directly, but I do think there was something about also making another user's day that felt good about the Gold system. The service gets some fuel in the tank and the comment author gets a little boost to their mood. It was nice.
I agree it got way too out of hand when they moved beyond Gold though.
I feel like it has to be financially motivated and the only thing I can think of is they want users paying for premium directly rather than having it gifted from a different accounting bucket. But that doesn’t seem like strong enough motivation on the surface.
I think it is a big mistake to underestimate the effect of having reached the critical mass of users. It will not die easily (spez is working hard to achieve this), much less quickly.
MySpace and digg still exist as well. Social media sites don’t die in the typical sense of the word, but they “die” nonetheless. More like abandoned malls than 6 feet under
Yeah it’s changed focus a few times. They focused on music for a while, then pivoted to entertainment news. Surprisingly they still have around 100 employees.
Some years ago they “lost” a lot of data during a data center migration. MySpace was the go-to place for small indie bands in the mid to late 2000s, so a lot of music that was only available on MySpace is totally lost now. People didn’t get a chance to archive it, since MySpace didn’t announce it beforehand.
I say “lost” because my opinion is that it was expensive for them to keep storing all that data and so they just deleted it all and made up an excuse.
Reddit is a bunch of people asking each other to rate them now, including their clothes and wedding dresses. I don't understand the appeal of any of those subs, especially when we already know some of them were specifically created by 4chan to try to get people to kill themselves 😬
Haha I visited with being logged in and it was true what you said. So many rate me sub content. Someone disagreed saying it is your algorithm. I wanted to sign in and comment to say no go log out and see what reddit shows by default when you browse all, but resisted.
I still have a few communities that have yet to migrate, so I hate browse them. But sometimes it recommends these rating subs, and morbid curiosity takes over. I swear, the vitriol that is emitted from some of these people... It's just depressing to see people treated that way
I used to subject myself to those rating subs on 4chan for some dumbass reason when I was younger, do not recommend. Sucks to see people fall into the same cycle.
Yes, Reddit moving another step closer to Dead-Internet Theory.
There were already bots talking to bots on there. This is about to get worse. I don't think most people realised how many bots BotDefense was finding and neutralizing.
Imagine starting [a subreddit], hyping it up, patiently providing four-fifths of the content until people show up, moderating spam, moderating jerks, growing it gradually over time. Setting rules, establishing tone, running the weekly topical threads. Would you feel like that /r/whateverItWas existed because of Reddit the company? Would you feel like it fundamentally belonged to his Royal Highness Steve, and Steve was just delegating it to you to run? No! You started it! You shaped it! You collaborated with the people it attracted to make it what it is! Even those users – they could switch tomorrow to /r/whateverItWasTwo and you couldn’t do a thing about it – if they decided they didn’t like your vision for /r/whateverItWas, they would, so the fact that they’re still here is a kind of voting with your feet, it validates what you’re doing… To the extent that /r/whateverItWas exists as a thing within Reddit as a whole, to be run or misrun, managed or mismanaged? It feels like yours.
But at the same time, to an external observer – you can see how they would feel that this is pretty silly, right? The thing that’s “yours” is nothing but rows and columns in Reddit’s databases13, a series of flags giving you the power to moderate. The only thing you have is set in Reddit’s systems, a permission to edit stuff under a certain scope a bit differently than other users, wowee aren’t you important. It’s not you who has a license to the user posts, it’s not you who controls anything but a tiny little square of grass Reddit let you mow. You’re gonna protest over that? The world at large already doesn’t understand why you might volunteer for this work, why you might care enough to do it unpaid – you seem like a schmuck to them, a victim.
or a power tripper.
I’ll admit that some mods probably are on a power trip. A clear example of “probably not, they have an actual reason to want to stay in power” is r/askhistorians, where you probably don’t want random people replacing people with lots of historical knowledge on a subreddit specifically about history that only allows informative replies complete with a works cited. They care about the online space they’ve built, not that they have a ban hammer and can wield it with prejudice. I’d imagine a lot of other mods are pretty similar. Knowledge about their niche community, though probably not as much as the people on r/askhistorians, a certain subreddit culture that they don’t want to collapse and fall apart… they’d rather preserve the online space they and many other people enjoy. Even if it just looks like free labor and power tripping to outsiders whenever they don’t want to just up and abandon Reddit.
Yeah, as someone who modded for several years, there were two insults people loved to throw at us: Either we were power tripping or we were janitors who didn’t matter.
Either of these were used whenever we enforced the rules of our community and kicked out people who didn’t want to play nice with the rest of it. Of course, they will never have a positive opinion of people who enforce a community’s rules.
And that’s the thing: The community. You do not spend several years modding a subreddit without getting to know the people and having some sort of relationship with them. The community is not an abstract, it’s people you get to know - often over several years - and that’s not something you want to leave behind.
"And that’s the thing: The community. You do not spend several years modding a subreddit without getting to know the people and having some sort of relationship with them. The community is not an abstract, it’s people you get to know - often over several years - and that’s not something you want to leave behind."
Who is asking them to leave it all behind?
The only way you can be part of a community is by being a mod?
If mods are feeling as wronged by Reddit as how they say they feel, why not resign as a mod and just join the community as a member?
I mean you would still be part of the community you say they hold so dear but in a different capacity.
I would think stepping down has some risks at the moment because you don’t know who’s replacing you. Someone who also cares about the niche topic just like you, or someone on r/redditrequest who just wants to collect the subreddit as their 483th moderated sub and won’t do anything? Less of a big deal if you have several mods, but if you’re the only one…
"I would think stepping down has some risks at the moment because you don’t know who’s replacing you"
You could literally give an notice to the Reddit admin or whoever you are in contact with that you disagree with the way they handle things, that you are gonna step down but would like to pick your replacement personally.
Reddit would likely agree because it means that they don't have to search for a mod themselves and if the mods have such a strong connection with the community than finding a replacement should be in the realm of possibility.
The whole striking saga gives a whole lot of "We tried nothing and we are all out of ideas" vibe.
"A clear example of “probably not, they have an actual reason to want to stay in power” is r/askhistorians, where you probably don’t want random people replacing people with lots of historical knowledge on a subreddit specifically about history that only allows informative replies complete with a works cited."
Call it what you want. It is power tripping or having a sense of superiority or higher self for whatever reason.
Since when is Reddit the beacon of all that is right in regards of information? Why not pack up and start an community somewhere else?
Reddit is just a medium and nothing more.
The problem I have with these statements and the course of action overall is the following;
Why even protest? The most ironic thing should be that r/AskHistorians should know of all people what happens with mutinies or strikes that have weak or no resolve.
Why would you even strike when you would fold by the first sign of friction that is coming your way?
Just again, keep modding your community and ignore everything but don't act like they are so very wronged and need to have some sort of sympathy when they are literally happily providing labor...for free.
For example:
2 months ago there were strikes in my country regarding distribution centres of one or the biggest supermarket chain in the country.
In these distribution centres are working around 5500 people and 2700 of them are "migrant workers".
Quoting the union;
"The temporary workers in the distribution centers are almost all migrant workers. Hundreds of them have joined the strikes. That is special and very courageous, because they are in a weaker position and are often put under pressure to keep working."
The end result?
"After months of negotiations and eleven days of strike, the Union has achieved a result with the supermarket group. In it, salaries will increase by 10% and austerity of the Sunday allowance is off the table. Temporary workers also get more certainty about their schedules."
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