Browsing Reddit with those ads felt like driving in the rural US and seeing the billboards.
Reddit protest
- Thread starter simply1
- Start date
It will be interesting to watch. There are examples of mass user exodus that crippled companies as well. In this case, you’ve basically lost a good portion of your free labor and most driven users. I’m not convinced they survive if they don’t find a middle ground.
This makes sense. I am intrigued to see what happens when they go public while having free moderators. I can understand a site like this having some volunteers, but Reddit... Every other big social media company I can think of pays their moderators. Sounds like spam bots have been increasing recently too
There isn’t a credible alternative at the moment and the most active will have the hardest time staying away. I don’t doubt some will delete their accounts, but I’d bet money that 2 months from now activity is almost exactly the same as it was 2 months ago, if not higher.
My understanding is removing the third party apps also makes it incredibly difficult for visually impaired to use the site. Saw something that said screen readers counted as a 3P.
But that would be like people leaving Facebook to go back to MySpace.
I think the other thing reddit is trying to curb is the amount of bot usage that happens. I think a lot more of their "activity" is bots than they care to admit and want to curb that before going public and having to answer to why they're user numbers were so inflated (and losing ad $$).
Also since reddit seems to be down this morning, I love that they seemingly took advantage of the "protest" to do (what I'm assuming) is maintenance to the site since it should be affecting less people. It's super petty but also smart.
Also since reddit seems to be down this morning, I love that they seemingly took advantage of the "protest" to do (what I'm assuming) is maintenance to the site since it should be affecting less people. It's super petty but also smart.
Interesting.
I've always thought of Reddit as mostly peopled by pimply teenager boys sitting in their grandma's basement.
I guess now it's pimply chatbots sitting in an Atari warehouse.
I've always thought of Reddit as mostly peopled by pimply teenager boys sitting in their grandma's basement.
I guess now it's pimply chatbots sitting in an Atari warehouse.
"Leaving" a site that you are in a habit of frequenting everyday is very tough without a viable alternative to fill that hole that you are creating.
Any and all sites that built a business model that relied heavily on venture capitol money is going to have to make changes to stay afloat.
Any and all sites that built a business model that relied heavily on venture capitol money is going to have to make changes to stay afloat.
I too expect it to be about as successful as the wave of cancellations that were to supposed to hit Netflix post password crackdown....
Just to be clear, the API calls are currently free and there will be a free tier (that according to Reddit, 90% of the apps would fall under, but who knows the real number) that will be there starting July 1.
It's just how hard they went from Free > Pretty freaking high prices is the critical issue.
These 3rd Party Apps had to know the day was coming but I with Reddit wasn't acting in such bad faith about the whole thing.
Its why the API tools were so important. Reddit wants free labor to use their options only, and while I have no experience, it sounds like Reddit hasn't invested nearly enough in improving its own product.
A lot of people think that, but Reddit contains an enormous amount of information. If you can think of something, anything, there's probably a Reddit / on it.
I’m a little stunned at this point that the tech model of “acquire users, go public, never turn profit” is still working. You could write a novel about Yahoo/Tumblr alone.
Reddit has since come out and said those type of apps will be exempt for what it's worth.
I get scientology ads the few times I check IG. Probably because of my proximity to some locations. Seems extra icky to be pushing that kind stuff over normal marketing for cheeseburgers and energy drinks.
I think one of the things that drives people nuts about what Reddit is doing is just how obvious their intentions are while pretending as if they're acting in good faith.
They want to kill off 3rd party apps. Full stop.
It's clear in the pricing (going from free to $1Mil+ per month for popular apps) and it's clear in their timeline (only 30 days notice). There are so many ways in which they could have done this, if they wanted 3rd party apps to stick around, such as requiring using an Ads API, requiring more data collection, lengthening the timeline or easing into new pricing models, etc etc the list goes on. But they didn't.
They've hit the point in the "enshittification" cycle of internet platforms where they decide now's the time to cash the hell out, and give a giant **** you to their userbase, betting on their own momentum to just keep going and start extracting value.
They want to kill off 3rd party apps. Full stop.
It's clear in the pricing (going from free to $1Mil+ per month for popular apps) and it's clear in their timeline (only 30 days notice). There are so many ways in which they could have done this, if they wanted 3rd party apps to stick around, such as requiring using an Ads API, requiring more data collection, lengthening the timeline or easing into new pricing models, etc etc the list goes on. But they didn't.
They've hit the point in the "enshittification" cycle of internet platforms where they decide now's the time to cash the hell out, and give a giant **** you to their userbase, betting on their own momentum to just keep going and start extracting value.
I went back and checked out Digg a few days ago and yeah, that isn't going to happen.