"These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free. And that free comes at the expense of our other users and our business. That’s what this is about. It can’t be free."
Funny, seems like he has been getting all of it from content to moderation for free, and now he is the one angry it isn't free any more....huh.
Funny coming from a techbro that thought to farm out getting site content from that userbase he's now wanting money from.
Like I get it if he's wanting to not go into debt, but at the same time he's shot any chance at user good will and assistance in the face with a cluster fat man.
Generic CEOs wouldn't do a catastrophic AMA like he did. They would stay out of it and let PR or somethind handle the situation. He puts his face out there, I suppose, particularly because he looks up to Elon Musk and wants to emulate him.
But the ownership class always deserves to get things from regular people for free. It's only those of us who make our living from our physical or mental labour, rather than owning property, that don't deserve free shit.
Also the thing we were getting for free (or paying for app) was a good service. If the Reddit app wasn't crap when could have had that money. Many pay for premium to remove ads and still use these apps
I had thought those where your words at first, you can quote like this;
These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free. And that free comes at the expense of our other users and our business. That’s what this is about. It can’t be free.
I'm struggling to show you what symbol it is without it turning into a quote, so here's a picture of the greater than symbol;
::: spoiler test post, please ignore //><; the narwhal bacons at midnight //><; :::
I hope the inconsistent escape character behavior doesn't break anything. Also, it would be nice to have some way to start a new paragraph after a spoiler with a blank line between them.
If they had charged API fees such that 3rd party apps would have had to charge a monthly fee to users....I would have probably just paid. And I know I'm not the only one.
But they priced it intentionally to kill 3rd party apps, because they wanted to channel access through their garbage app with its "promoted" ads all over the place.
It's not about "free vs. not free" it's about intentionally killing off the applications that made reddit likeable as a platform.
Also, as a disabled internet user, those APIs are of value for the sake of accessability. Given Reddi'ts own app is, and forgive me to use technical jargon here, steaming pile of bullshit even for those with perfect vision?
their app is so ass and the response is to kill all other apps rather than improve their own
I mean, they could have just stolen the good designs from other apps and made theirs more user friendly, but fuck that, better to scorched earth the motherfucker
honestly, I was going to stick around reddit but after seeing all the bullshit he's spewing in these tech interviews I don't want to give him a penny of my time/data
That's why this whole debacle is so mystifying to me. If they would have tried to monetize the 3rd party space by way of charging a reasonable API price to the devs, it's not hard to imagine that most serious Reddit users wouldn't have any qualms with parting with a few bucks here and there to keep the status quo. I can't imagine that Reddit is able to create a situation where they earn more from their advertising platform per user than having users simply pay to maintain the existing experience.
The only theory I've heard that makes a lick of sense is that if Reddit fundamentally changes the site experience to pursue other monetization options (Hello Reddit NFTs), then 3rd party apps would've been able to just ignore implementing those features entirely.
My speculation is that they want to charge LLMs like ChatGPT, especially for training. Those devs basically want to access every conversation on Reddit.
What's weird, it doesn't make sense even then. I feel like it started as a simple miscalculation by Spez which he took personally. I mean, the part he insulted the Apollo dev is clearly that, but maybe the whole thing as well?
My "make it make sense" theory is--this is entirely about the IPO and we need to look at the biggest issue from last years social media sale.
Musk sued Twitter for obfuscating/failing to disclose how much of it's activity was bots during negotiations. It was a legit point of contention. These social media services are incentivized to turn a blind eye to the problem. (eg The "impressions" number that Facebook and Google sell advertisers is all malarkey) You'll notice that now that Musk owns twitter he doesn't say a word about bots other than occationally patting himself on the back for shutting bots down (ok yeah sure elon).
I think reddit is in a similar predicament where they really want to inflate their user stats with bot activity for the IPO, but they can't because the app stores provide solid stats on users and user activity and they don't control that flow of information, the 3rd party developers do.
If they think 15%-30% of the sites activity is repost bots, they really don't care about alienating the 5% of users using third-party apps.
The AI learning angle is all smoke-and-mirrors.
And in reddit's case, rather than someone like Elon buying/fact checking the terms of purchase, for IPOs you have to get your disclosure documents past the SEC. Smart people, but hardly experts at how social media companies run.
Yup, if two months ago they said reddit premium members won't experience any changes, and started pushing ads to 3rd party clients and restricted NSFW posts on 3rd party clients without premium I bet there would have be considerably less push back. I know I probably would have ponied up to $60/year,but instead I have abandoned the site without any intention to return.
Yeah. It's the paying a lot for considerably less since NSFW makes up a huge proportion of the content. I don't think (all) users would have balked at $5/mo for unrestricted content access. $10/mo with restricted access, though? Some people have a problem paying that for streaming which has real costs. It's just not happening to get access to half of a text based platform which barely hosts videos.
I think there's a little more to it. If they're trying to go the Meta way where dwell times and other such evil metrics are used, they need to have their own app for that level of info. It might be a requirement for their IPO or requested by their advertisers.
Seems like those kinds of metrics could be collected by the 3rd party devs if Reddit requires them to include a bit of code in their 3rd party apps as a condition for API access.
I come from the era of the BBS. The PHP Forum. SlashDot, and Digg. I come from online games ranging from EverQuest, to Multiverse Crisis MUSH, to Moments in Tyme, to Warframe, and More. I have walked messenger clients from the times of AiM, IRC and Yahoo, to Skype, Steam, and Discord.
In my thirty years of being online, this is not the first petty tyrant claiming that upset users are the problem rather than taking a long hard look in the mirror. This will not be the last.
The best we can do is grab popcorn and watch as his platform dies. He won't admit to making any mistakes. Especially with money involved because he's under the deluded belief that showing any weakness invites a price drop from investors. Yet this behavior? It REEKS of weakness and insecurity.
Migrate and Move On. the rest is just playing u/spez's game.
That would be nice! The last time I was on Matrix, there wasn't much going on, but I'm seeing a lot more community servers being set up. It might be time to update my old instance and join some channels!
Reddit, like any commercial platform, is only a community until its owners need it to be something else.
That's a good reason to be mindful of what we're building here on Kbin, Lemmy, and other federated networks. We're not just trying to build a Reddit methadone, to help us down from our high after quitting cold-turkey. We are, I hope, aiming to build (or rebuild) a community -- one not dependent on the monetizing whims of a private owner.
The author is right: Spez lost site of the community aspect. Here's an opportunity to show them that the idea still means something to a lot of us.
One thing that the Reddit guy says that is true, it takes money to run sites. People joining the Fediverse need to realize this and should consider contributing money to their instance if they can.
That's honestly one thing that I think will be a problem for many Fediverse services and instances. People nowadays are extremely loath to pay for any sort of online content or service. That's why ads proliferated; nobody wants to pay for eg. news, video streaming or a social network site, and the people producing the content and services need to eat too.
Many have been so conditioned into getting everything for free that they get outright angry when someone suggests that maybe news and social networks are so shit nowadays is exactly because they have to bait people into clicking on stuff so they'll see more ads, and that maybe they should be paying for the content they consume instead of assuming they'll get it for free
If for some reason kbin becomes bad, you just move to another instance (that defederated kbin) and you still get the prior cached posts and comments, just new stuff won't be shitty. I guess you'd have to leave your kbin profile behind.
No users, no Reddit. It's as simple as that. Why the paint huffer thinks he can take content from his users for free, then sell it back to them, is mystifying. No, no, dickhead. You're acting like you're the most important component of Reddit when you are, in fact, the most expendable.
I was definitely addicted to reddit but it's been surprisingly easy to stop using it. I have been reading instead and I'm 75% of the way through Wool right now. Before I would endlessly scroll through but now when I open reddit I am bored in a few minutes. I'll probably still use it to find useful answers on Google but otherwise 🤷♀️
I know this is off topic, but wool is a great book! If you haven't watched the Apple TV show I'd recommend it as well; they definitely switch up the story a bit but I've enjoyed it so far.
I don’t think it was was exactly an addiction not for me anyway. I think more accurately it was just an easy option at any given moment. Bored? Open reddit. Stopping using it was difficult only in the sense that I kept reaching for the app. But as soon as I started to get over the reflex and find some alternative things to do, turns out I didn’t miss it at all.
I’m enjoying the slightly slower pace over here.
Also I need to finish wool myself stopped at about 1/5 through book one for some reason I don’t remember.
There really is no other large social media site that allows you to converse with actual people. Youtube and Twitter are all about chatting with the content creator, trying to get their attention. Facebook is for getting yelled at by distant relatives. Fortunately Kbin and Lemmy where there to catch us.
This is the thing that absolutely blows my mind. It's such an important niche. When you look at what the internet can do the most important thing you come to is basically reddit. Reddit all but wiped out traditional forums when it took over the niche and has dominated that space for years but it's such an absolutely piss poor implementation of the concept. I think it really speaks to how under utilized social media has been towards doing actual GOOD in the world.
It is important for people to have a place to discuss or hear others discuss important topics -- so I really think we're all a bit addicted to discussion.
I've always been pretty good about limiting my casual reddit browsing to only when I have literally nothing else I can productively do with my time, so I'm very pleased that for the most part Lemmy and kbin can already pretty effectively fill that gap for me despite containing a fraction of the firehose that is reddit.
And you're absolutely right that it's a great excuse to refocus on any other hobby.
Mr. Huffman is stretching in a variety of directions here. Reddit is not a feudal government, or a city in any sense; neither is it ultimately “democratic,” as he frequently suggests. It’s an advertising and subscription-supported web service that also depends on free content and unpaid labor from its users. It is, substantially, in the same business as Meta, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok — giving people something to use mostly for free in exchange for their monetizable time and attention.
One thing that spez notes is that the communities are supposed to be democratic and he's pushing towards having moderators and admins of the subreddits being left to a vote... While at the same time increasing the amount of draconian measures by implementing his own moderators of the communities.
I feel like the ability to vote on mods and admins of communities should've been implemented ages ago on Reddit to decentralize the power trip, but now with spez doing businessman things instead of harboring a passion for people/ease of use/whatever Reddit's initial purpose was, this change has come far too late.
He seems to misunderstand that the people who use and contribute to Reddit use it like other social media platforms, but it's simply not the case. People use Reddit to stay on topic about their hobbies and passions, and ease of use is a huge part of that. Reddit has been constantly trying to inject more invasive shit into user's feeds: chats, video ads, obnoxiously colored ads (in the app), those dumbass live streams that they pushed for a hot minute that sucked - when the whole purpose of the site is to get your information about a specific topic or check in on a specific topic.
Eventually, users do scroll out of the topic and that's when people's purpose for staying on reddit changes: they move more towards the entertainment side of things with memes, circlejerking, and simply discussing and hanging out with like-minded individuals (or starting an argument with them over something fringe in regards to the topic at large). And keep in mind this is only 10% of the user base doing this form of contribution - the banter that's needed to sustain the quality of Reddit. The other 90% of users will realize something is off when things like this go missing, simply because it's entertaining to not just engage in, but also to read and watch from a lurker standpoint.
The theme here is that he doesn't even care enough to create the illusion of caring. The community was never given "democratic" solutions to dysfunctional mod situations until this business reason arose. There's no community liaison trying to do damage control or make the users feel heard right now -- just the CEO himself telling everyone in the plainest terms that nothing they say has any impact because he does not care. People should take all of this at face value.
Exactly, he did not give an inch, instead he kept throwing fuel to the fire. That alone was going to push me away once RiF was gone, but once certain individuals (recent redditors that are just there to consume media) also started pushing against mods, I just felt that place was no longer the same community and nuked my accounts.
His inability, or unwillingness, to even put on a show of trying to finesse the community is one of the strangest things about the situation. Handling things in the most ridiculously hamfisted way he could and picking a huge fight with the people that provide him with free content and moderation, and right before the IPO... it's just so bizarre and dumb.
If third party reddit browsing apps are competitors to reddit, that means that I have preferred their competitors this whole time! I think I am going to stick with reddit competitors.
I'm kinda glad Reddit is blowing up, it has been shit for a long time to be honest. Yes you can seclude yourself into smaller and more niche subreddits, but they all end up catering to the lowest common denominator eventually. If fediverse really kicks off I'm sure the same thing will happen in 10 years, but for now I'm excited to be trying something new
I disagree, you can use the fediverse practically forever as long as others are still using it. If an instance gets too big for your britches and you find the content has deevolved into low quality garbage, you can simply block it!
Add comment