Reddit and the End of Online ‘Community’

wave_walnut@kbin.social to Technology@kbin.social – 215 points – Reddit and the End of Online ‘Community’
nymag.com

A standoff between the site and some of its most devoted users exposes an existential dilemma.

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"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.

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.

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.

Is there anything stopping an organization with programming talent from accessing all of Reddit via http and bypassing the API fees?

Google Scholar does just that stoppage, for example. It'd be cheaper to pay API fees.

I guess too. IPO might be for sale to AI big tech.

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.

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?

Yea fuck you too spez.

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.

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.

Even with the api fees, 3rd party apps are no longer allowed to show nsfw content. Would you still have paid a monthly fee?

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

Their app WAS more user friendly. This whole thing is them buying Alien Blue, deciding it wasn't monetized enough, and ruining it

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;

To display formatting characters without having them actually affect formatting, put a backslash in front of them. Like this:

\>

That produces this:

>

Oh, nice! So I set the quote in between the greater then and less then symbols and it will show the quote? That is pretty cool. Thank you.

Not quite I think. I believe this uses markdown, which just uses the > at the beginning of a line

> This is a quote

should become

This is a quote

And if you need more lines, you just keep symboling

> 1
> 2
> 3

1
2
3

Feels like I'm back on Reddit circa 2015 LOL

This never changed for those of us who used old reddit ;)

I had no idea it was different for new Reddit, I never touched that interface except to hurriedly find my preferences and set them back to Old. :)

Well it did because everyone on old Reddit already knew how to use it LOL

And I believe you can do a multi line quote with 3:

>>> hello darkness my old friend
I've come to speak with you again
More
Lines

hello darkness my old friend
I've come to speak with you again
More
Lines

Unless I'm wrong and this isn't actually working

Hmm well that looks like it worked too well

> test
With
Several
Lines

test
With
Several
Lines

Nah, multi-line is just

> line 1
line 2
line 3

line 1
line 2
line 3

You only need multiple > if you want paragraphs:

> paragraph 1

> paragraph 2

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

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Seems like a case for r/selfawarewolves ... If that's a thing that still exists.

It's the same as when he started talking about "landed peasantry", the projection is strong, aware or not.

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.

That's just the hierarchy in action, doncha know.

You're right on the money. Spez is just a generic CEO waving his dick around. Prick.

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.

Yep mainly moderator's.

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

Yeah, the hubris is out of this world insanely unreal. Christ man, whoever that VP of Comms is at reddit is not doing a good job.

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