On the one hand, this doesn’t seem like a lot. But on the other, this is just for June. A lot of people left or drastically cut down their usage at the very end of June, and we’re not seeing this reflected in the data yet.
Even so, no company wants to say they’ve lost 3% of their customers. With 1.7 billion total, that’s still 51 million people. It’s a notable loss, especially for a company trying to become profitable and have an IPO.
It’ll be interesting to see how many users stick with the apps that are continuing. I think the devs are crazy to think that even more than 5% of the users they had will continue to use the app for $5/month. Especially when you can’t view NSFW content.
Yeah, I don't exactly understand how but RIF is working for me, despite the fact you can't log into it. I only kept it as a momento, but it still works as long as you have the subs you want to see memorized...
I think there are still some subs that are private, and I know a couple went NSFW and a bunch are getting harassed by admins to reopen or remove the NSFW tag.
My friend told me the cyberpunk sub couldn’t reply to the email they got telling them to turn off the NSFW tag. Because nearly full on sex scenes, decapitation, huge hogs with giant titties is absolutely SFW.
I think this an overly simplistic way to look at the dynamic. Users are the primary customer, and they don’t provide any direct revenue to the company. Their value is in attracting the secondary customers though, who directly pay the company to access the users. Bring a primary customer implies that the company still needs to treat you as a customer and at least not openly antagonize you. They can’t take you for granted as a product. There is no secondary customer without you.
It’s like bars that advertise free drinks for women on certain nights. The women aren’t directly paying the bar, but the men who come to the bar because of them makes it a net profit. I’m sure there’s other examples of this primary/secondary customer dynamic. Anything cheap for kids that sells expensive stuff to parents for instance.
It might be better if the terms are swapped. I’m only calling them primary because they have to come first before the secondary, and they’re the foundation for everything. There’s probably a better way to term them.
Oh, I’m not denying that the users are the foundation for the business model but when Reddit makes business decisions, they first listen to those who pay them.
That model started with literal radio. It’s not a new thing. We are the consumers and the advertisers are the customers. It’s kinda like how children are the consumers of toys but the parents are the customers. It actually makes business much harder because you have to keep two groups satisfied. The product is still airtime(radio), and nobody likes ads but they are sharing the space and funding the transmitter.
Don’t forget to donate to your local independent stations, folks. Radio is not free! Neither is Lemmy.
In history terms, 3% is everything. I remember seeing a documentary where a guy claimed that every coup in history, in which 3% of the population were ardently dedicated to the cause, has been successful.
I guarantee you that a huge percentage of Redditors have multiple accounts. Many of which might be inactive. Are all accounts ever created on Reddit still considered part of their current total or are only accounts active in the 6 or 12 months count? If people are legitimately leaving Reddit, I think their losses are going to steamroll because they won’t just lose one user, but instead they will lose that one user and their 2 or 3 alternate accounts as well.
Next month or three are going to look like a bloodybath for Reddit.
How many people are less engaged in the internet at the beginning of summer because they’re on vacation or partying? I would think drops like this as the weather improves are pretty normal.
That’s a good point although with smart phones, I wonder how much of the teenager traffic is baked in year round now. Summer Reddit was terrible but then it just became Reddit.
Yeah, I was using Lemmy and Reddit in parallel throughout June (aside from the blackout days, where I stayed off of Reddit out of solidarity,) and only really drastically reduced my Reddit usage this month.
Same. I spent most of June trying to find a lemmy instance to join. Quit cold turkey on 1st July along with nuking my post history. Keeping my account till 31 July just in case they decide to revert my deleted posts.
Also, this data isn’t from Reddit. It’s from SimilarWeb. They track browser access to websites, not API calls. Reddit absolutely won’t report their drop in API access, which is where the largest drop will be.
I used sync up until the 13th or so, then started limiting my reddit usage, and increased my lemmy usage until July 1st. Now I’m solely on lemmy on mobile, and only see reddit on desktop when I come across a search I need.
Other than Lenny, do you replace Reddit with anything else? This thread we’re in now is an exception - there are a lot of posts here. But most threads on Lemmy are pretty empty.
Most people didn’t create content and don’t interact with it (ie most people are lurkers). Take it upon yourself to comment and interact with posts and others will almost always join in and have something to say.
Actually, Cunningham’s Law says nothing of the sort. If you look at the source material as I have done - and in the original Phoenician, because so much is lost in translation otherwise - you’ll quickly note that Cunningham is really attempting to convey the hopeless sense of man’s search for purpose in a cruel, unforgiving world. While some scholars debate the literal truth to this sentiment as expressed by the author, it is generally thought plausible if not outright likely that these writings followed a catastrophic life event of some sort - the loss of a child or death of a spouse, witnessing the end of a great civilization, a dick pic delivered to the wrong person. While the specifics aren’t known, what we do know about the author is that he would likely be further distraught at the loss of control and ownership experienced with a misattributed “law” on the internet should such a thing even be imaginable.
The line of people who want the authority but whom cannot handle the responsibility extends around the block.
Mod turnover will go through the roof. Make no mistake, this is not an untried strategy from Reddit. You get rid off those who can do the job well but are not on-board, you replace them with sycophants who cannot do the job but will toe the line. When shit goes south you hang them out to dry and get in the new batch. Very well known corporate strategy.
I'm afraid to say I'm a mod on FB lol, but it's a UK US based weather group that I'm very passionate about with 92k members.
Basically as a mod, never argue with a member, never show a member up to the rest of the group, there are better ways to deal with things other than flat out banning someone. Being a mod should be keeping things under control so the group remains a good place to go. That's all.
Our main problem is the fake accounts from the Military pilots wanting to speak to the lovely ladies or make you a killing with bitcoin lol.
Yep, I have experience with volunteer work (not on reddit, in an actual organization with good intended objectives).
The organization is great, we are ALL volunteers, from the directives to the everyday volunteers. ALL money made goes back into making the project reach wider, don't want to give many details but money goes into giving out free or very accesible education and health-related services to those in need. We have access to the numbers, its all transparent.
The coworkers are nice, its a very niche area of work and we all know one another (so you also make connections with some important people in the field). Some of us have long lasting friendships. The directives of the organization are a mix of founders and the longer lasting volunteers that want to take on those roles. All positions are decided by vote of the community, anyone from the community can apply to any role and pitch in their ideas to make it better. We do that every six months.
It opens many many doors for you, can't begin to count the amount of stuff I learned, the amount of opportunities that stemed from that (internships, jobs, grants... etc) and volunteers get to use all services the organization provides for free (so I got free education, very discounted health-related services for my family, etc.)
All this to say this is a nice place with a nice working environment (all things reddit is not), that actually gives voice and opportunities to everyone involved.
All that, and we still can't make most of our volunteers stay longer than a few months, because when any other compromise comes up, volunteer work is the first thing to go (which is logical, that's life). So good luck to reddit, getting anyone to stay without the proper tools and right in the middle of the IPO dumpster fire
I have zero modding experience, but I know that doing the job well would be harder (and more time consuming) than it looks.
I’m guessing that most new mods that reddit will end up with just want the “power” but will fall on their faces when it comes to performance. I’m grateful to the good mods on every site/sub/instance who do it for free. Thanks, everyone!
I’ve modded a fair few subs. It’s difficult, boring and thankless work for no reward beyond the satisfaction of smoothly running a community you’re passionate about…or power tripping, for those who’re into that.
Most people who end up becoming mods will burn out pretty fucking quick. Not to mention, there’ll be cases where a sub requires a certain subject matter expert for mod work and…well, those ain’t easy to find.
@TrinityTek Hi - its not the mods at r/liberalgunowners who removed your post. I've been in touch with the mod there and when I made a similar post about Kbin last week it was removed by the Reddit admins, not the sub mods. They wanted to let me know it wasn't them. Spez has been doing all sorts of shit like that, Its one big reason why I'm done with Spezzit. Post in the m/liberalgunowners magazine here on Kbin-social.
I'm probably going to just have to take some kind of leap of faith then, because I've been completely banned from Reddit now, which means I can't message the mods there, and they can't message me. Fuckity fuck.
Is it possible to communicate to the real mods (not from the company) for OP's favor to introduce that Lemmy community? Why not reach and private talk to them? Why not the mods themselves to introduce it?
Also suggestion:
Why not flood advertize Lemmy/etc... by many many supporting users on every sub on that website through posts and comments (would affect to storage space and content-analysis-for-AI)? Let's see if those really fake insecure company pretending to be mods could keep that.
@xptiger wanted to say that the mod team is actively looking for alternatives but as I mentioned they feel that they need much higher functioning mod tools to be able to make the switch
Thanks for letting me know! I certainly hope that's true and it wasn't actually the sub mod team as the message indicated. That's really slimy for Reddit admins to do that and make out as though it's the mods, but it's definitely not surprising at this point.
@TrinityTek I feel very confident that it is not the mods that took your post down. Like I mentioned my post was taken down by Reddit admin, not the mods. The head mod at LGO has been checking out Lemmy and Kbin as potential alternatives. He is concerned about the lack of mod tools here because they get trolls from everywhere. You can check on the LGO wiki for their approach, but the mods feel like they are fucked once the third party apps end. Recommend you DM him on Reddit. Also, understanding mod tools is beyond my technical capability but the way we can help ourselves is to put the tools in place that will give the LGO mods confidence that we’re a viable alternative. They recognize that gun related subreddits are not in Spez’s plans and there is a community being served that vitally needs help.
Whatever survey they used to get that number was probably about something like how if you google for information about a product or service you’ll get spam garbage, but sometimes if you add “reddit” to the search you will get non-garbage information (which is true). No way people would be answering that way if the question was clearly about trusting Reddit the company.
I used to trust Redditors and explicitly used it to research products and services to purchase. But that was before all the bots took over. And now Reddit has taken away moderation controls so I can only assume those bots have gotten worse.
We’ve heard from you that dealing with spam is taking up more of your time, so the goal of this update is to help catch spammy and abusive users at a faster rate so that you can spend more time engaging with your communities and redditing.
So instead of restoring the tools the mods originally had that helped control spam effectively, reddit is rolling out their own 'tools' that will undoubtedly be less accessible, harder to use, and only available in one specific way. Because fuck everyone who isn't a reddit admin.
The problem is the mods and the admins. The mods choose to use massive, opaque automod filters. The admins develop even more opaque scoring systems to feed into the automod configurations. It didn’t have to be like this. They chose to make it this way.
I think it’s about time to finally leave Reddit. I’ve been there for almost 15 years and I just got my first permanent ban from a legal advice sub for one single comment. I’m not sure what I said wrong because I never use inflammatory language. Oh well, I already left Twitter, time to bail on Reddit too.
I was permabanned from… some sub, I don’t even recall which, in a discussion about why LGBTQ+ rights were still incredibly important and cited the Westboro Baptist Church’s “God Hates F***s” signs (just like that) as an example of the kind of hate and vitriol LGBTQ+ people have to face daily. I was banned for using a hate slur.
I’ve been on the Internet over 30 years and it never fails that the more popularity site gains, the less utility that it has. Reddit, Facebook and Twitter will always have tons of users but I don’t think any of those sites are as useful as they were a decade ago.
the more popularity site gains, the less utility that it has.
I think there is a “goldilocks” popularity zone. Right around the time with shitty watercolour and the hell in a cell guy, and when people would ask obscure questions and some ridiculously specific professional would chime in. Those were the days.
I think it was really a matter of being able to downvote poor content and comments into non-existence so those people would never return.
I got banned from star trek for asking about people’s view of worf and discussing his character, there was some rule against opinion pieces, I appealed saying it was a discussion and not an opinion piece and that people were taking part. The mod made the bán permanent and highlighted the part of the post with my opinion in it and said case closed. I told him he wasn’t a good mod that I was trying to discuss something and gave my view and that this heavy handed approach is bullshit. The following day I got a permanent ban sitewide. No explanation. Googled the message content and apparently it was an issue with a lot of people getting the same treatment.
Paramount basically owns the mods of that sub. Found out myself. They’ll ban anyone with a slightly critical opinion. If you didn’t think reddit was astroturfed enough.
I had this happen to me. It seems like even talking back to a mod is a total sidewide ban. It's time to archive old posts and jump ship. The fediverse is big enough we don't need reddit anymore and our effort is better spent building communities here.check out startrek.website
That sounds awful, I’m sorry you had that experience. I highly recommend startrek.website; it’s been a really positive place for discussions so far, relative to r/startrek.
I fucking hate worf, like I like to hate him. He is so shit at everything, no one pays him any mind and he was raised on earth. His Klingon bullshit is all stuff he read.
Can’t say I’m surprised. There is an understanding between mods and admins that whatever the mods do, the admin will agree to. Only in extreme cases will there be interference.
You don’t have to say anything specific to get banned in that sub, you just have to catch a mod on a bad day, which is basically every day. I got banned for a reply to a comment on that sub - not even the OP, just a very buried comment, because they said I was off topic of the OP. My comment was very much on topic and involved how to report an abused child. One of the mods lost their fucking minds that day and banned dozens of people in that post. It wasn’t even a controversial post with a lot of contentious comments and rule breaking, most of us were just discussing child abuse resources, which directly related to the OP. Those mods are power- mad fucking nutters.
The original post there was about somebody who had to pay back $6000 to the food stamp office because there was a year’s worth of overpayments. I said that even though the error was no fault of his own, he still had to pay it back. That is in fact true and I found myself permanently banned 30 minutes later.
I just find it strange that you can get banned for life just because you made one comment that the mods did not like. It’s not like I called the guy a scumbag or loser and that he should go to jail or something equally vindictive.
I have been banned from ask Reddit for almost 8 years people are stupid. The thread was a thread asking for insults and definitions of those insults. Somebody called somebody else a thot among other slang terms. The person it was directed to did not understand and asked for clarification. I transcribed the sentence into English vernacular. The guy who said the f***** up s*** never got in trouble but somebody reported my comment and then a thoughtless admin read it and I’ve been banned for 8 years.
My last permaban was because I quoted a guy who was saying some racist shit, in order to out him as a racist when he was trying to steer a conversation in the “man, we really need to do something about those people” direction.
There are still a couple of niche subs that I use like quitting vapes, my hometown sub and a couple of others but I wouldn’t lose any sleep if I never went back to Reddit. I left Facebook and Instagram almost 10 years ago and bailed out of Twitter about a month ago (had nothing to do with Elon Musk).
As usual, whenever a social media type of site gets immensely popular, it starts going downhill from that point forward.
I’ve only used mobile versions of Reddit a few times and try to use a browser for the ad blocking. Reddit actually started going down the tubes once it was taken over by the corporation that owns Condé Nast and a few other publishers. Corporate interests, whether it’s Disney or Reddit, rarely align with those of the fan base that made them popular in the first place.
What probably got me banned was asking the guy how was he not aware of such a gross overpayment. Oh well, I suppose most people look at a noticeable bump in SNAP benefits and don’t even question it. I would think something was amiss and double check on it.
The slur, “welfare queen” never really has gone away and it’s been 40 years now. Heck, the colloquialism “hipster” barely lasted 10 years. Anyway, a lot of people unaware the fact that the people that get food stamps are pretty much split down the middle race wise. There are just as many white folks getting food stamps as there are African-Americans.
I’m a senior citizen I know a lot of people in my age bracket that get them because their Social Security is not quite enough to cover everything, especially since inflation has run amok the last few years.
The comments on the post the mods made yesterday about discord are awful. “Get over yourselves,” “Spez owned you guys,” “Why would we go to Didcord, we chose Reddit.” They’re all from accounts that are 8+ years old that have never interacted on MFA or didn’t start commenting until Rexxit started.
I agree it’s a great name, but I am still annoyed by it’s real world counterpart. I guess brexit was all about racism and corporate greed, while rexxit is the same but opposite.
It's not a great replacement for a forum experience, a "I need to search for an answer to a specific question" experience, or anything like that.
But for the sense of community that people tended to identify with their favorite subs? I think it's a pretty solid platform. Still has all the same issues regarding any centralized service run by a company, but that's going to be the case for the vast majority of replacements until there's a major paradigm shift across the world.
But one of the worst for everything else it tries to be or people try to use it for, like help forums. It’s a black hole for information. They’ve taken steps to mitigate that, but it remains a half-baked solution.
Sure, but probably the worst for community-forum style content. Links expire, information moves all over the place, no search indexing for engines, can’t view content if you aren’t in the server already, basically impossible to have discussions about anything older than the current day. It doesn’t work for a lot of use cases that reddit/lemmy do.
Agreed, and I never said it is a good reddit replacement. I think discord is lightyears ahead of previous platforms that it replaced like Ventrillo, Teamspeak, AIM, Whatsapp, ICQ, etc etc etc
Sure; it's just so good at being a chat app that it makes a terrible forum.
My understanding is that it can be done and with a whole host of third party tools and bots and a little legion of mods - but that's a ton of work both setup and ongoing, just to reshape Discord into the sort of format that Reddit or Kbin/Lemmy offer pretty much right out the box.
Oh yeah no, I don’t disagree that going to discord of all places is a horrible idea. I hate discord and I hate that people are trying to use it as community alternatives, but the real issue is the Reddit apologism.
Discord is good for live chat, but horrible for aggregation and public discussion. I mean that’s why most of us are here, because the platform works well for our needs. Supposedly Discord has a forum, but I’ve never seen a link to it on the regular site and from what I understand it doesn’t get much traffic. It’s simply not in a position to be an alternative to Reddit.
Reddit is bringing back r/Place — a collaborative project where individual users can edit pixels on a giant canvas — at a time when users are still furious over things like Reddit’s API pricing that forced beloved third-party apps to shut down, the company’s decision to remove chat history from before 2023 with hardly any warning, and its recent announcement that it would be sunsetting the current system to give Reddit Gold. The 2023 version of r/Place kicks off on Thursday, July 20th.
As you might expect, users are already using the announcement post to air their grievances toward the company. The current top comment in reply to the post just says “fuck u/spez” (“spez” is CEO Steve Huffman’s Reddit username), and many of the other comments say only “API,” so I wouldn’t be surprised to see that sentiment show up in some way on this year’s r/Place canvas.
I think even Reddit might be aware that the timing isn’t great. In a short announcement video, the company’s tagline for the event is “right place, wrong time.” In a different post, a Reddit admin (employee) shared a series of pushed dates for when r/Place would kick off — it was supposed to go live at the beginning of April but kept getting delayed:
<pre style="background-color:#ffffff;">
<span style="color:#323232;">April 1st (the previous two r/Place events were April Fools’ Day events)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Then April 20th, two days after Reddit first announced the API changes (but didn’t announce pricing)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Then May 4th
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Then June 15th, which was in the thick of the subreddit blackouts and coincidentally became the same day we had a contentious interview with Huffman
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Then June 23rd, which was one week before apps were set to shut down
</span><span style="color:#323232;">And now, July 20th
</span>
Past r/Place experiments took place in 2017 and 2022. (Josh Wardle, who would later go on to create and then sell Wordle, thought up the idea for r/Place, according to Newsweek.) The final canvases for each (2017, 2022) are honestly fascinating pieces of work, with things like art, country flags, memes, and video game iconography all smashed together into colorful pixel collages.
For the 2023 edition, Reddit is letting subreddit moderators “pin” coordinates on the canvas to help community members more easily navigate to certain areas. While that does sound useful, I imagine some communities will use the feature to help focus their protest efforts.
Reddit declined to comment. It’s unclear exactly how long this year’s version of r/Place will be open to contributions; the 2017 version took place over 72 hours, while the 2022 edition was made over four days.
By the way, this announcement helped me solve where the ugly pixelated Reddit app logo is from: you can see it in Reddit’s r/Place announcement video. For some reason, that video also includes pixelated images of a fire in a garbage can.
Your are right! I cannot find a way to save a comment on Lemmy. However, saving posts appears to be possible with the bookmark logo. I assume it is on the roadmap
You can’t have it both ways. What you’re saying is that a user agreement supercedes federal law (GDPR), and then turning around saying it doesn’t. Which one is it?
Yeah, it’s stupidly euphemistic. I’m not sure if that language is used just to distinguish it as a sitewide action by the admins (as opposed to a single-subreddit “ban” from that sub’s mods), or if there’s some more calculated/nefarious reason for it (maybe being “banned” from an account has legal implications that being “suspended” doesn’t?).
I always get nervous when someone vaguely references their free speech. Aside from it being a poor argument against most censorship, it also doesn’t include any context. There is nothing in this post to suggest the removed comments were anything but spam and threats.
Now I do know a little bit about how Reddit mods operate, and I can fill in some gaps, but I have no reason to believe these were helpful or insightful comments that were just unpopular.
Exactly. Some of the best subreddits were so great because they had heavy moderation.
Probably the best example of this is askhistorians. Made a comment that was on topic but had no sources? Removed! With a clear (and public) comment of why it was removed. It was clearly stated in their rules that this was required, so it was absolutely justified.
We have no idea what these comments were and whether they were in violation of the sub’s rules.
Let’s shit on reddit for the actual things that are going wrong. This seems more like getting outraged over a picture of your ex with another guy/girl/whatever gender their interested in in the background.
I'm gonna need some receipts for that one, mostly because as an end user the content quality on that sub is head and shoulders better than anywhere else on Reddit
Also, like, that kinda weird shit is going to happen occasionally anywhere there are power heiarchies. It sucks when it happens to you, but it's unavoidable when a group of humans is given a set of rules to enforce.
It's the same logic they're still using: they want to monetize Reddit more aggressively, even if that kills its appeal and they have to brutalize their own community to do it.
You’re right, of course, but the person you’re replying to is also correct in that the firing of Victoria years ago was an early indication that Reddit seems to have decided as a matter of principle that it will not under any circumstances pay anyone to manage content.
They fired Victoria because they were trying to aggressively monetize IAmAs in ways that were going to fuck community interests, and Victoria pushed back. Think Rampart, except companies can pay to ensure that it doesn't become a PR fiasco, so it's guaranteed astroturf.
To force people to use their app, of course. Facebook did that several years ago with Messenger. There’s no real reason to not have mobile browser access to it other than to try to make people use the app so it can spy on you in various ways.
My guess is this is only for mobile users which would explain why when the OP request a desk top version of the site he can still log in. That way they can push more mobile users to the app and shove all sorts of ads down their throat and there's nothing they can do about it. You can block ads on a browser, you can't in the official Reddit app.
Shut down all the 3P apps. Prevent mobile users from being able to use their browser on mobile, forcing them to grab the official app. Load it to high hell with ads... Profit.
You can not block in the official app "yet" Wouldnt surprise me if we get some form of Revanced reddit app at some point. Same thing which youtube vanced. For me killing off the infinity for reddit app is my call to not use reddit on mobile anymore but a full switch to lemmy instead.
It actually already exists. The ReVanced project, which has continued to update YouTube Vanced after it shut down, has also expanded to other apps. I've only used their YouTube and YouTube Music apps, but I can't imagine the experience on their apps would be any worse than reddit's current app, given that it's essentially the same plus their patches to it.
Because they want you to open the app when you land on a link.
When you land in the app they can gather way more data on you, including better dwell time metrics and things like that. Also being in the app there’s no back button to return to Google or whatever, so you open the link without ad blockers, see an ad, and presumably view more posts and ads.
Plus having the app installed means notifications (they have a lot of notification types), and they can link your various accounts through your app’s unique identifier.
Normally, transcription like this will take a long time. However, since it's largely text based (e-mails, viewing reddit) and relatively short. It was pretty easy to transcribe to text. With the help of some macOS features like copying and pasting from video, it became a non-trivial task.
I think I spent more time on formatting rather than on transcription.
It's not even a standoff, an asshole working at Reddit (probably not even the CEO) fired an unpaid volunteer and they're ugly crying while drinking boxed wine and freaking out about how they're gonna regret letting them go online.
It's entirely one sided and nobody really gives a single shit about this dummy. I hope they get the help they desperately need.
I hope more that it loses them profit rather than users. I suspect that they will lose users, but only users who weren’t going to drive profits anyway. The IPO is going to go ahead and the investors are going to have a field day while the website becomes terrible for the users.
Well, they're losing one advertiser - me. I was about to start an advertising campaign on Reddit when this all went down. Just pulled the plug on it. At this point, keeping my Reddit ad will be bad for business with my client base.
Not sure where I'll advertise instead, but definitely not there.
Third party app users are likely some of the most engaged users Reddit has, so if or as those users find a new home, the overall content quality on Reddit declines and lurkers shift their attention elsewhere.
And keep in mind, it's not Reddit v. Lemmy. It's Reddit v. Netflix, Instagram, TikTok, etc because Reddit is competing for attention.
This is really it. There are people who create content and then there are casual browsers. I personally browsed reddit casually for years before even commenting and then actually posting. I could look at it on my lunch break or something but I didn't have the time to really get into it, and there are a lot of people who are exactly like I was. It's also just a little intimidating for new people to take that leap because it feels like you're going to be torn apart.
During the time that I was just browsing, I would frequently encounter dips in quality. Like nothing actually worthwhile was happening. Nothing I wanted to click on or engage with, so I'd just bounce after a minute or so. I pulled up Reddit in an incognito browser yesterday and it was exactly like that. Modern day facebook level content was weaved all through the front page.
I honestly cannot think of a dumber move by a company than this. This is Circuit City div-x dvd player level dumb. Not even the debacle with Cricut approaches this.
I think this will be the true litmus test. There's clearly a lot of us concerned and have mostly moved on, but we are probably a minority... The rest of the larger user base, I wonder how much of them will just move back to official apps after Apollo/RIF cuts off service after July 1st, and then observe the outcomes. Part of me really want to see the site go way of the dodo, but part of me thinks they'll linger around like Twitter does, and eventually they'll acquire new users that doesn't know/care for anything beyond what the royal court has to offer.
@chiisana@PBJ I'm surprised none of the 3rd party apps have either tried finding a similar app like Reddit and redesigning their app around that, or try to create their own Reddit alternative, I mean, they DO have the infrastructure to do it, (especially Christian), they would just need to shuffle things around and tweak their apps a bit.
I wish he'd release Apollo with a lemmy backend. I know the dev for RedReader is working on it, though his priority is figuring out Reddits new terms for non-revenue accessibility apps at the moment.
I think I'd say that's consistent with a direction they're trying to send Reddit, for all that it's inconsistent with where Reddit is now.
I think some of the current fire over there is actually aimed at winnowing the hyper-engaged members of the community who are hobbyists and niche interest specialists - and then exchanging them for 'influencers' who are not amateurs, but who have an external financial incentive to maintain spaces, continue engagement, and to toe Reddit's line.
An ongoing remark during the blackouts noted that a whole ton of niche google searches went dull after the reddit portions of the results subsequently bricked. Reddit's niche communities are where people online are going for organic product and service recommendations - people needing advice on products don't search for review sites anymore, they go to reddit discussions. And I think they've realized that the influencer space on IG or similar is exceedingly lucrative.
If they can leverage their own platform's prominence to either boost-for-fees organic influencers or seed dialogue via AI-piloted accounts, that turns into an alternative way of monetizing their placement and niche online.
If they manage to drive off the hyper-engaged community members who might counteract those seeded recommendations, or recapture communities from real organic hobbyists and similar - they can offer key spaces in niche communities with retail importance to both the companies and the influencers ("organic brand evangelists") as a monetization angle down the road.
If you have any way of getting their pitch to prospective partners on record somehow, that would be absolutely fantastic.
While I think you might be onto something - I think this only works for consumer focused goods/products/services. Large language models can seed "what car should I get" type conversations - however they have a tendency to be confidently wrong. And in industry specific communities being confidently wrong (especially when attempting to influence a b2b sale) can lead to all kinds of negative ripple effects.
Being confident whilst caring not one jot for being wrong or right is the essence of selling in modern society, especially when it comes to ideas (especially Politics).
Large language models are great at producing text with all the correct subtle details to trigger the reader's subconscious feeling of "this is somebody who knows what he's talking" with zero of the subtle details that make people suspect the writer is unsure of what he wrote or even deceitful (in a way, LLMs are the perfect sleazy politician).
That said, I do agree with you that amongst expert domain specific communities populated by people who have actual domain knowledge, assured delivery of bullshit doesn't go far. It will, however, very likely go far in the more generic communities which seem to, at least individually, have the most subscribers, so an "influencer" strategy selling to "consumers" (so, B2C not B2B) might make sense if most of the population of Reddit are non-specialists using it as a "Portal to the Internet".
So under this hypothesis, reddit becomes a trove of B2C bots/influencers attempting to pitch outrage/ dopamine (and the occasional consumer good) while letting the professional communities die.
This begs the question - how much of reddits traffic is composed of said technical (as in deep knowledge in a field not tech) communities? Furthermore how much of reddits value prop to large language models is said technical communities (as a source of training).
While I think you might be onto something - I think this only works for consumer focused goods/products/services.
That's not really a huge limitation when you consider what Reddit's primary demographics are.
There are very few B2B deals being worked out on Reddit at the moment, but there's massive amounts of consumer decisions made on any given day, all of which are aided by the discourses taking place on Reddit.
People who are qualified to participate in large-scale B2B aren't getting buying tips from industry communities on Reddit. People who are just entering that grouping, or are in over their head, or are hobbyists looking to go pro ... that's who is taking buying tips from random community discourse or asking for help picking what X to buy. The people who do not have the experience to screen the "confident-sounding but wrong" answers are effectively the only ones who are asking for that sort of help.
I don't think this angle even needs to use language models or AI - just exchange current hobbyist mods and/or key contributors with influencers selected by the campaign relevant to that community. If you have already driven off the hobbyists who might check their inputs, then they have free space to seed responses and sculpt impressions.
The other key factor is that in many cases, you aren't necessarily facing questions about "right" or "wrong" per se - but matters of highly subjective opinion. If your selected influencers are recommending your hardware that's not technically that much better or worse, but isn't a proven brand or is marginally better - the average consumer taken in by the astroturf is never really going to see a cost associated in a meaningful way.
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