Because the most active contributing users left. I used to comment a lot on reddit, but I’ve been exclusively on Lemmy since my 3rd party app was axed.
And I’ve been very active here. Like, even on this alt account that I made 16 days ago, my app says my post “karma” is already higher than my reddit comment karma was from over a decade.
I feel more willing to contribute because there’s a sense of community, and I’m not just providing free entertainment for a company to profit off of.
I’ve been having fun doing it. I just post a few memes throughout the day whenever I think about it, and I also try to spread it out among some smaller communities that I want to help grow.
So, memes and a handful of communities that I’m personally interested in.
I’ve definitely seen you around a lot lately. 😁 Thanks for the joy and memes.
I was never famous on Reddit but I was a prolific commenter for six years. I gradually phased out from Reddit as I got into Lemmy until July, when I pledged not to comment or vote on Reddit ever again. I’ve since kept my word.
I had over 300k comment karma, on the site every single day for about 10 years. Comparing the comments here vs there it’s crazy I hung around so long. It’s like getting out of an abusive relationship, you don’t realize how much you’re being mistreated until you’re out from under them.
Yeah. Lemmy users aren’t saints but there’s a lot more friendly, cool and deep discussion than on Reddit. In the last year before I left, I had felt it’s gone so shallow.
Same. Thing is, I would usually get gold like once or twice a month. I would post well sourced, long and often highly upvoted comments. Try to be genuinely helpful or insightful. I used to be a journalist, it was an outlet for me.
Not that they were that great, redditers upvoting stuff doesn't make a comment right or interesting, and wasting too much time there was really not something to be proud of, but if just ten thousand users like you and me quit reddit, that leaves mainly teenagers, bots and 'comedians' rehashing the same tired puns.
It can effectively kill smaller subreddits, as has quite obviously happened in some cases.
We weren't just customers, we also produced a disproportionate amount of the content on reddit. More than our relatively small numbers would suggest. IRC the 1% rule states that only 1% of users actively post/comment. If you're posting relatively coherent or thought out comments, you're the 1% of that 1%.
could have fooled me; my biggest issue with the fediverse is the lack of content and reddit's content just keeps getting bigger and bigger by the day.
fortunately it works for me since i want to detox myself from all social media and the fediverse has so little content to i'm done after 30/45mins per day; in fact, i can still spend hours on reddit unregistered lurker and get more content every day than the entirety of the fediverse since its creation, combined.
I'm sure the notifications are annoying you by now, but I'd like to borrow the moment to agree with everyone else. You're one of the users who have ended up becoming this place's lifeblood somehow, and I pretty much always enjoy whatever you post. Or at least, a ton of what I enjoy ends up having your name on it.
I heavily appreciate seeing you around and while you are allowed to slow down for the sake of your sanity, I would notice and miss it.
Yeah I already seem to be somewhere among the 1% top posters on Lemmy and I bet users like me were much more valuable to reddit than 10 lurkers. I’m sure a relatively tiny fraction of the users created 90% of the content on reddit and those most likely are also the people most annoyed by the death of 3rd party apps and I’m sure there’s a ton of others like me who switched. That’ll definitely show in the activity even though it might not be much in absolute numbers.
You’re not alone. Just check https://subredditstats.com/r/technology or any other sub you used to visit and you’ll see a clear drop in comments/day. After the APIcalypse, so many people just left and never came back.
Oh, that is a good point actually. However, drop in comments is probably also associated with a drop in quality posts and the number of people who upvote them.
Well, the site says it shouldn’t be used for serious purposes, but I would say it’s still safe to consider it semi-quantitative. If you see a drop like that, there really is a drop. What the exact value was before or after might not be that reliable, but it’s not even important in this case.
I think so, all the older data points make sense (you can clearly make out the begin of COVID and the Ukraine war). It’s really insane, 50-90% less activity is no exaggeration.
Wow, that’s a serious drop off! I looked at a few of my old fave subreddits and they’re all the same. It’s like one of those old towns in the US that was once on a main highway before a new route was built. Once bustling, now dead.
Aww, yeah some people really hate the idea of “karma” because it’s just useless internet points, but early reddit knew what they were doing by adding them. It encourages engagement when monke brain sees number go up.
Same. I had a 15 year account with a couple hundred thousand karma and commented and posted a lot. If you piss off the people who actually use the site you will reap what you sow. Reddit should have known that since the exact scenario happened fir Digg when everyone migrated to reddit.
It’s easy to argue why they thought it’s not going to happen to them. They saw Facebook shrug off all of its scandals, and thought that being in a similar position, network effects are going to help them weather any storm. And it can be argued that Steve Huffman and his site did weather this particular storm. But like Facebook, trust in Huffman’s site have taken a blow, and in the demographic that they would ill afford to antagonize.
That we’re starting to see its effects as early as now should scare any sane person in Huffman Inc.
They looked at the leaves, and failed to see the forest, thinking that simply not killing old.reddit was enough to avoid Digg-ing the grave. Because from their view that’s how Digg died - v4 happened, users couldn’t go back, they got pissy, and they left.
@megane_kun is also right when he says that they compared Reddit with other social media platforms and took the wrong conclusions. What keeps people in Facebook aren’t “content creators” or what have you, but their relatives and friends; in Reddit there’s no such thing, people weren’t there because of more people but because of the content that those people created, so their connection with the platform is considerably weaker.
I also think that the trust thermocline played a role. It wasn’t the first time that the platform pissed its own users.
Agreed on the reasons why FB stayed relatively strong despite its reputation going down the drain. What kept many people from leaving FB for good is actually network effects: that one’s friends and family, coworkers and colleagues, are more likely to be in FB than not in it. Huffman’s site? Not so much. I don’t care if someone I know IRL is in it, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want them to know I used it.
The platform formerly known as Twitter is a more apt comparison, to be honest, but it’s still way too early to tell if it has actually weathered the storm, or has become so rotten on the inside that it’d spectacularly fail in the near future.
Perhaps Twitter is a third can of worms, it’s neither about content (as Reddit) nor the users’ social circles (as FB), more like a few anchor people keeping the others there. Due to that Musk’s idea (to pay creators to stay there) might actually help.
I still think that it’ll fail due to other decisions Musk took, but less spectacularly than Reddit. Musk is at least trying to think by himself, Spez is simply following others.
I think Steve Huffman is only after the possible profits he’d make on the IPO. He doesn’t care if his reputation would be sullied amongst the proles like us, nor does he care if he’s being original and ground-breaking. He just cares about the money.
Will it work though? I want to bet on the possibility that his IPO will fail due to all the bad news about his site as of recent, but given that the world in general has been disappointing recently, I’ll just keep my money to myself, lol!
He is after the IPO money but Dunning-Kruger is the hell of a drug, Spez is simply not a good CEO and he doesn’t know how to maximise pre-IPO numbers. So odds are that he thought “who’s in the same situation as me? Ah, The Iron Man¹! He’s a cool guy, has lots of money and a platform like mine. I assume that he knows what he is doing², so I’ll ape what he did!”. Musk killed 3PAs and got rid of the people criticising his platform, so did Spez.
And killing 3PAs pre-IPO does actually have some merit. They created value³ for Reddit, but detracted from the immediate profit; but if you’re selling the company you don’t care about the value, you care about the immediate profit to show your potential buyers “see? This company is profitable, gib lotsa moni”. However odds are that things happened faster than Spez predicted, odds are that he assumed that the protests would last a bit and die, not that people would say “enough of this shit”. And now odds are that he lost that “magical” window of opportunity to maximise Reddit’s price to the potential new buyers.
I cringed writing this.
Spoilers: Musk does not know what he’s doing.
By “value” here I mean the potential of a company to generate profit over time.
Hahahaha~ If it’s any consolation to you, I also cringed reading the part that made you cringe while writing it. More than enough cringe for all of us to share around!
Yeah, you actually said out loud what I was just thinking to myself when I wrote my previous reply. Not exactly what you wrote, but I was thinking that if it worked for others, it’s good enough for himself. Why think of a good idea when you can just copy others’? Something along those lines. However, copying ideas actually does take some work as well. It’s not enough to just copy what they did and apply it to your situation. You’ve also got to think about whether or not what you’re copying is a good fit for your circumstances.
About the third point though, the way I see it is that Huffman tried his best (the key word is ‘tried’) to increase the profitability of his site to entice potential buyers, which even though it’d detract from immediate profitability, would add to the money he’d cash out at the IPO in the end—or so he imagines. Agreed with how things didn’t happen according to how Steve anticipated them though. And in fairness to Huffman, other flareups have ended in a similar way. What he didn’t anticipate is how these changes (the API changes) will affect how a lot of people (and the ones that contribute a lot of content) would interact with his site. So, yeah!
It has come to our attention they Sundays and Wednesdays aren’t always the best content days. In order to return to smarter thinkin and good design, we are discontinuing reddit’s feature known as “being accessing on Sundays and Wednesdays”.
This comes after much thought. We know some of you have gotten great value out of using Reddit on Sundays and Wednesdays, and we hope you can cherish with us the memory of those days’ access on Reddit.
But the future is progress, and the market has spoken. Despite what the market says, we are listening to management. Not to worry though. Sunday and Wednesday access will still be available until September of 2023, when we will begin a phased shutdown of two sevenths of our service.
Why are we doing this? The current move is a compromise between those who wanted Sunday removed but Wednesday to remain, and those who wanted Wednesday to be removed while Sunday remains.
For those of you who just can’t do without your Sunday or Wednesday Reddit fix, we recommend trying Reddit on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, or Saturdays.
We are absolutely dedicated to continuing to bringing 24/5 news, cultural, and community-driven content straight to your web browser or Official Reddit App.
That and the mobile website. They’re already running an A/B test where they just flat out block mobile users and instead demand they download the app. That fucking app man… They’ll try anything to push the app, anything except making it actually enjoyable to use that is.
Blocking mobile browser users will be the beginning of the end. Very few casual read-only users will download the app just to read some content on Reddit. Reddit is highly ranked in search engines and the kind of users that flock into Reddit via Google and the likes for sure make up a decent percentage (perhaps the majority?) of traffic on Reddit. I for sure hope they will enforce this policy, that will only increase Reddit’s downfall.
I think you might be right about the removal of anti-corporate or anti-capitalist subreddits. They're not exactly suited for ad placement, so they're pretty much worthless to reddit at this point.
Fire Steve Huffman and install a CEO who is capable of even pretending to care about balancing the needs of users and (potential) shareholders. It’s too late to ask for feedback.
I feel like they might actually do this. It wouldn’t be the first time that they use a CEO to implement unpopular stuff, then fire him to say “everything is fine now” - cue to Ellen Pao.
They should. At least half of this debacle was created by the mind-numbingly horrible communication straight from his mouth (or fingers). Even if they just said look guys our CEO is dick, he shouldn’t have insulted the moderators and passionate users who loved apps…it isn’t ok snd we’re sorry. Even just that would be something.
They intended on crushing third party apps, they don’t care about users or moderators…that will never be different. The lying, insults and douchbagery was the cherry on top.
I used to browse Reddit with my Adblock turned off, man, so they would make money. The people that are the most pissed cared the most…
The irony is that Pao was brought in to implement changes that Spez wanted. Remember he used to own it, then sold it and “stepped down” as CEO to bring Pao in. Then he took the seat back again after she left. But this time they just skipped that step entirely, because Spez has just been making the unpopular changes himself.
So I don’t actually think it’s the case this time. If it were, Spez wouldn’t be CEO during all of these changes. I think Spez is simply trying to cash out when the company goes public later this year. He doesn’t care what the users think of the changes, because he’s entirely focused on the investor valuation. He’s doing everything he can think of to claw profit out of a site that has never been profitable, simply so he can point to this quarter during the IPO and go “Look! Reddit makes a lot of money! It’s worth a lot, and the stocks I’m offering should sell for a lot too!”
They won’t, Spez is the ass clown they need to toe the line and take the bad press for all this. Once they get what they need, they’ll reward him but make it look like he was fired and hope you’ll be to happy to realize.
Nobody with the power to fire spez has a problem with what he’s doing. This is likely driven by VCs and other investors wanting their money now that the Fed has turned off the cash hose.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear - they care, but think he’s doing what’s necessary to drive value for investors by eliminating places where revenue or potential is being lost - 3d party apps that don’t show Reddit ads/collect user data and the new found value of posts and messages as training data for LLMs.
You’re replaceable to them, and frankly the fact that you care makes you less valuable than a random person who’ll just click on memes and post answers to questions. The communities that they can effective extract value from are more trouble than they’re worth. You and your ilk are the problem, not spez.
Fidelity now estimates that Reddit’s holdings could be around $15.4 million as of May 31, which is down over 7% from the fund’s estimates of $16.6 million from this past April. This new figure is is also a reported 45.4% slide since Reddit secured Series F funding in August 2021, when an asset manager acquired the platform’s shares for $28.2 million.
The numbers are from May of this year, not since June.
Fidelity now estimates that Reddit’s holdings could be around $15.4 million as of May 31, which is down over 7% from the fund’s estimates of $16.6 million from this past April.
This was from before the whole shit fiesta actually happened.
This new figure is is also a reported 45.4% slide since Reddit secured Series F funding in August 2021, when an asset manager acquired the platform’s shares for $28.2 million.
That asset manager was also from Fidelity, who are the investors who keep writing off Reddit value.
Yes, and? That doesn’t change the fact the article talks about numbers that came from before any of the protests happened.
Fidelity’s devaluation (along with the increased overall desperation in SV venture capital) is a cause of the API changes and heavy handed suppression of the protests, not a result of them. It’s an attempt to halt/reverse that slide by asserting control and taking concrete measures to better extract value from Reddit.
Yes, we will not see affects from that until their next reporting quarter. But they haven’t just devalued by 7% overall. It’s quarterly reporting. Stay tuned to q3 to see if they think Reddit really screwed up.
I couldn’t think of a worse time to try an IPO, though. They’re selling into an already less than enthusiastic market. Although there’s been recoveries on parts of the tech sector, if the VCs are hurting for funds and the institutions are being conservative, it’s going to be a disaster.
I am not sure that the bad press over the APIpocalypse is going to have a lasting effect in and of itself, but if they’ve lost users or have slowed growth in the US market as a result, that definitely might. Elon destroying all remaining value at Twitter and spurring an exodus to Threads and other sites is also going to make people question hopping onto a big social media investment because the market has become less predictable than it was a year or two ago.
The late 90s were where you could use an IPO as a take the money and run exit strategy. I think they should have avoided Musking the site and instead pushed all out for growth and look to get acquired, maybe by a Chinese company looking to own a large US-based social media company.
It really looks like the financial decisions at reddit are being handled with the same level of competence as the site policy decisions.
Reddit likely doesn’t IPO until Q4 or Q1 2024, by then most of the 3rd party drama will be forgotten. IPO is their only choice, there isn’t tons of VC money looking to get spent, and they’ve already burned several rounds of funds to limited effect. I agree it’s not a great time to IPO for Reddit, but they really don’t have a choice.
I also think the drama will have died down, and even of it didn’t, it would have a limited effect on the IPO by itself. Twitter losing about 2/3 of its value isn’t because people think Elon is a jerk. It’s because he’s killing growth and revenue. If a company can’t trade on its profitability, it has to do so on its KPIs. What I’m saying is that if reddit’s growth was negatively affected by the ham fisted decisions, it’s going to pile negatives on top of already existing negatives.
Basically, I think it was a desperate move but also a terrible idea, not unlike Elon forcing $13B in debt on Twitter and then making up for it via the destruction of verification.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the $8, and lose his own advertisers?
Mark 8:36, approximately
I don’t think reddit was positively affected (as of yet) by the decision - otherwise they wouldn’t be doing the outreach stuff. If only 20% of reddit users are creating 80% of the content (a wild ass guess that’s not unreasonable as a starting point), and if those engaged users are more likely to be protesting/leaving, then the aftereffects are going to be showing up over the next two quarters. If spez needed to show a turnaround for the money folks, it needs to be a turnaround and not a “we tried.”
I just think they’re selling into a down market - down for them in particular but also for the industry - and if they IPO under those conditions I don’t think they’ll hold their initial pricing. “Here’s a turd. Do you want to pay a premium for it in case we can polish it?”
It’s absolutely desperate, but they don’t have a choice. The company isn’t profitable, their revenue per user is awful, they are running out of VC money, they hired a ton of people to growth hack their metrics and it appears to have largely failed, they have no plans for effective monetization of the site or how to be profitable at an acceptable level for the amount of investors they have.
I completely agree, it’s a pretty bad time for an IPO - in general. But, they also raised 10 rounds ($1.3 billion total) in funding over the years, a lot of that in the last 3-4 years; their E and F rounds were in 2021, for $250 million and (iirc) $700 million respectively. That’s a lot of pressure to produce results, especially after the pandemic-inspired craziness has worn off and the Fed changed the zero percent interest rates that drove a lot of poor business decisions.
To quote a sadly departed poet on the subject - mo money, mo problems.
I agree and I’m even a bit sympathetic - not to their leadership, who can sleep in the bed they made, but to the idea of the site. I just think they could have taken a few of those millions and used it to figure out something other than “We can increase revenue by eliminating access and making the experience worse for users that remain unless they pay us monthly.”
The heavy-handedness of the policy combined with the short timeline and non-negotiable, let-them-eat-cake stance makes me feel like this was a shoot from the hip thing rather than something fully investigated via models with decision points and predictions. In short, very Elon/Trump.
I think the core problem is that Reddit’s leadership wanted it to be an SV unicorn, and they tried lots of ways to make money off the site (cryptocurrency, Reddit gold, an official app that I swear was designed to make you click on ads by mistake, etc.). But it as never going to be the kind of cash making machine, actual or potential, that they were looking for. Well, that and, once you start taking outside investments (especially from VCs), the goals of the organization necessarily change towards making an exit (IPO or acquisition).
I think this essay gets at a lot of the things about how the place worked and why the value was hard to convert into money. The feudalism frame is a little gimmicky, maybe, but does provide some perspective and a useful analogy.
Hilarious that Huffman openly admitted that Reddit “isn’t profitable” (somehow) and they have to squeeze 3PAs out to try to make up for that, but apparently they found spare funds in the budget to pay spambots to keep reposting content to keep things from going barren.
“Shit, the people who actually cared about the platform and contributed good content are leaving. Quick, throw money at the problem instead of fixing the issues we created!”
The caveat there is that at the time there wasn't a invite system. You'd just add mods. So him getting modded there isn't as big a deal as one would think.
The fact that it wasn't banned until after he was long gone and only then after a CNN piece on it, that should raise an eyebrow.
It’s possible that someone else made him the moderator of that sub, but this shit still makes me laugh every time that I see it. Steve Huffman, someone so deeply interested in jailbait that he’d even mod a comm about it!
I got tired of holding the line against that long before the protests - that is why I believe what I heard said about the fact that most mods that cared about their communities only lasted a year, maybe two. I gave up modding one game community, and then along with the protests a second one, and each time I can barely stand to go back and read the posts there, bc they always trend more towards this, as you say bc it takes continual efforts to stop them!
And like, on the one hand, if that is what the people there want...then power to them? Except even they complain about it too, bitterly - both "why can't I say whatever I want, when/however I want?" while also at the same time "why are others free to say what they want too, can't they be removed somehow?" (ignoring the obvious answer that yes they can be blocked, though that takes all of two whole clicks!:-P). Also, they seem pissed whenever they ask a question on the sub's main feed (ignoring the rules & things like a prominent Questions megathread pinned for precisely that purpose, or in some cases a "Questions" flair, instead putting something like a "Guide" flair, representing the exact opposite purpose of what that was designed to mean) but then nobody remains who wants to answer it. Like: "What phone should I purchase?" (ignoring the fact that the previous 10 posts all had an identical title, nor are there any details about what the person is looking for, plus again a megathread for precisely that)
I would say that it's literal children taking over the internet, except some of the people complaining say they are retirees, others middle-age with kids, others in college, etc., so it is not a matter of mere physical age. Still, it is a childish mindset of wanting others to take care of them, while not being restricted from doing any of the things that they want to do. Nor is it selfishness, I believe, not precisely; although it may be more akin to self-centeredness. In this way then, it is like a public park or playground where people choosing not to abide by the rules destroy the experience for everyone, ironically also including themselves (when they come in wanting to play, and then everyone leaves rather than play with them, under those circumstances).
And like, on the one hand, if that is what the people there want…then power to them?
Two important details on the fluff principle: it isn’t exclusive to Reddit (it was first noticed on Hacker News, and it’s probably here too) and it’s a bit independent on what users want. It’s mostly the result of good content being often hard to judge, so people often skip it while upvoting barely passable content.
As you probably know, mods usually handle this by discouraging the barely passable content, either directly (“don’t post memes here”) or indirectly (random/small post requirements to cull out effortless posts). Or at least they did in Reddit.
I would say that it’s literal children […] although it may be more akin to self-centeredness.
I know which type of behaviour you’re talking about. I wouldn’t call it childishness, self-centredness, or even selfishness; it’s simply lack of reasoning and insight, as those users ruin the very subreddits that themselves would use, so I call it “stupidity”. And Reddit in special has an endemic stupidity problem. It’s a bunch of vicious cycles:
users ignore why rules exist →users post shit → mods take action → users whine → mods give up reasoning with users → nobody explains the rules → users ignore why rules exist
users post shit → mods create new rules → users rule-lawyer their way out → users post shit
users demand spoonfeeding → users are spoonfed → higher noise/info ratio → users give up looking for info due to high noise → users demand spoonfeeding
users assume words onto each others’ mouths → finger-pointing goes rampant → users feel the need to state things to avoid finger-pointing → assumptions get reinforced → users assume words onto each others’ mouths
etc.
I’m saying this because this “endemicity” of stupidity in Reddit is one of the reasons why moderation there is so fucking shitty and laborious, even with comparatively better tools (even now!) than Lemmy.
Okay I hear you - so self-centeredness may still be present, as is selfishness, purely short-term thinking, loads and loads and loads of toxicity, etc., but it is not only each one of those, but all of them combined that leads to that enshittification effect.
I once had a guy beg me to block him. I was trying to train new mods and felt the need to literally screenshot his request (sent via DM) b/c it was barely believable otherwise - he simply could not stop himself from being toxic to others on the sub. Ofc such people exist in the world, but at some point, it becomes the fault of the systems themselves if they both allow all-comers yet cause the absolute best stuff to become buried amidst a flood of posts sorted by New, plus even Hot has such a heavy newness component, etc. i.e., requiring moderation in the first place + doing everything possible to "increase engagement" (for the sake of enshittification advertising profits, e.g. you get the privilege of watching moar ads by clicking on or scrolling through posts, not writing out meaningful responses), while also limiting pinned posts to strictly 2 slots, plus making megathreads super-complicated to try to set up in the first place without access to a 3rd party bot written for that purpose (then charging communities who already donated their programming time to make that + computing time & access to run that for the privilege of being able to use it) e.g. the latest megathread cannot simply include a link to the previous megathread that it replaces, + other things too like virtually hiding the sidebar/About section (on the official Android mobile app anyway) with tiny fonts and making it disappear as you scroll. => Everything basically feeds forward to reinforce the doomscrolling effect and toxic commenting - to turn Reddit into the next 4chan/Discord? - while taking Reddit away from its forum board origins.
And all b/c the guy in charge worships at the feet of Elon, not even realizing that what at best would have worked for those circumstances (e.g. a public company transitioning into private, rather than a private one wanting to get an IPO to become public; and yes, highly debatable that Musk's efforts may work even for that other company:-D) will not necessarily work for Reddit.
Though as you said, a lot of this is independent of the specific company & product itself, and relates more to trends that occur purely b/c of human nature. It reminds me of computers trying to fend off viruses: you can't just exist in a soup of code that you feel absolutely safe running without any protections, b/c it is too vulnerable to selfish, self-centered, short-sighted counter-purposes that can destroy you. And biological cells are an even better and more complex example, as they also fight off cancerous states of being - ones own cells that have been perverted, twisting the purpose to now grow in a selfish, self-centered, purely short-sighted manner rather than working for the health of the overall body. Our immune systems protect us from all of that and more, including literal dirt that we don't want floating in our bloodstreams, and that reinforces your point: fluff spreads unless you have a system in place to counteract it. It seems like that is literally a physical rule of the universe, that also applies in virtual as well.
So I guess in this analogy, Huffman is like HIV then (!?:-P), in that greatly diminishing the capabilities of the "immune system" (moderation) - not just recently here with the protests but for the past several years worth of changes to Reddit that continually pushed towards "engagement" but at the expense of thinking/reading before speaking - has lead to the result of modern-day Reddit as it is now compared to what it used to be. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step after all, and it should be no surprise that after taking a bunch of steps towards a particular goal, that we they have now reached it.
If your house is burning, saying “nooo! my precious home! I’m angry at the fire!” won’t stop it from burning. You need to either quench the fire, or move out and rebuild your home in another house.
In other words: I can understand the anger that that mod feels, and I felt something really similar in the past. But ultimately, anger doesn’t change anything, what matters are actions. That mod should’ve realised a long time ago that you can’t quench this fire, the only solution here is to move out - like OP did, I did, and most people who’ll read this comment did.
I understand how they feel because the people who destroyed reddit won’t be punished as individuals. It would be so nice if the whole website was just destroyed. And the ghouls who migrate here banned forever.
Ayep. It’s a clever move to get a July traffic bump to offset any losses from the unpopular API etcetera decisions. Then they can point to the overall numbers and say hey, our average visits per user actually went up after we closed the API, so this is proof our users actually love all our shitty recent decisions.
Meh, any engagement bump will be fleeting, and meanwhile they're going to have another round of Reddit Sucks articles about either a) /r/place being taken over by anti-reddit people or b) Reddit censoring /r/place.
For those that don't want to give Reddit traffic, this is the post by the reddit admin:
Hi all,
I’m u/venkman01
from the Reddit product team, and I’m here to give everyone an early look at the future of how redditors award (and reward) each other.
TL;DR: We are reworking how great content and contributions are rewarded on Reddit. As part of this, we made a decision to sunset coins (including Community coins for moderators) and awards (including Medals, Premium Awards, and Community Awards), which also impacts some existing Reddit Premium perks. Starting today, you will no longer be able to purchase new coins, but all awards and existing coins will continue to be available until September 12, 2023.
Many eons ago, Reddit introduced something called Reddit Gold. Gold then evolved, and we introduced new awards including Reddit Silver, Platinum, Ternium, and Argentium. And the evolution continued from there. While we saw many of the awards used as a fun way to recognize contributions from your fellow redditors, looking back at those eons, we also saw consistent feedback on awards as a whole. First, many don’t appreciate the clutter from awards (50+ awards right now, but who’s counting?) and all the steps that go into actually awarding content. Second, redditors want awarded content to be more valuable to the recipient.
It’s become clear that awards and coins as they exist today need to be re-thought, and the existing system sunsetted. Rewarding content and contribution (as well as something golden) will still be a core part of Reddit. We’ll share more in the coming months as to what this new future looks like.
On a personal note: in my several years at Reddit, I’ve been focused on how to help redditors be able to express themselves in fun ways and feel joy when their content is celebrated. I led the product launch on awards – if you happen to recognize the username – so this is a particularly tough moment for me as we wind these products down. At the same time, I’m excited for us to evolve our thinking on rewarding contributions to make it more valuable to the community.
Why are we making these changes?
We mentioned early this year that we want to both make Reddit simpler and a place where the community empowers the community more directly.
With simplification in mind, we’re moving away from the 50+ awards available today. Though the breadth of awards have had mixed reception, we’ve also seen them - be it a local subreddit meme or the “Press F” award - be embraced. And we know that many redditors want to be able to recognize high quality content.
Which is why rewarding good content will still be part of Reddit. Though we’d love to reveal more to you all now, we’re in the process of early testing and feedback, so aren’t ready to share official details just yet. Stay tuned for future posts on this!
What’s changing exactly?
- Awards - Awards (including Medals, Premium Awards, and Community Awards) will no longer be available after September 12.
- Reddit Coins - Coins will be deprecated, since Awards will be going away. Starting today, you’ll no longer be able to purchase coins, but you can use your remaining coins to gift awards by September 12.
- Reddit Premium - Reddit Premium is not going away. However, after September 12, we will discontinue the monthly coin drip and Premium Awards. Other current Premium perks will still exist, including the ad-free experience.
- Note: As indicated in our User Agreement past purchases are non-refundable. If you’re a Premium user and would like to cancel your subscription before these changes go into effect, you can find instructions here.
What comes next?
In the coming months, we’ll be sharing more about a new direction for awarding that allows redditors to empower one another and create more meaningful ways to reward high-quality contributions on Reddit.
I’ll be around for a while to answer any questions you may have and hear any feedback!
Reddit The Company would only be doing this if engagement and submissions had fallen off significantly, and they're scrambling for a way to prop that up.
And it's like they're doing a Digg speed run, essentially handing over priority to power users.
Reddit isn't going to televise the fall of Reddit and admins do not allow mentions of the blackout. Even so, most Subreddits are still rebelling or are black, and a lot have just moved away to Kbin, Lemmy and even discord. Reddit is not going put with a bang, but with a whimper. Users that are still there will slowly notice that most moderators and power users are gone, that more bots are present and that the quality is down, and will filter out.
Reddit is already dead. It just happened so fast that nobody got around to tell it.
The only actual solution crypto does have is, as one would guess, encrypted transactions.
Banks have a use for it, financial institutions who want to send money from A to B have a use for it. Countries in civil war and strife who need funds and are blocked on most other methods have a use for it.
I don’t get the “doesn’t have a purpose” meme when it’s written right on crypto’s sleeve, and it is used for those purposes, and does a good job of it.
If a website creates its own cryptocurrency that means they are in control of it. If Reddit, Plebbit, and Brave really gave any sort of a shit about crypto as it exists, they would’ve used LTC or BCH or something easily transferrable that can’t rug because it isn’t in their hands to rug it, but then that defeats the purpose of milking short-term gamblers of their funds, which was the entire point.
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