Reddit CEO teases AI search features and paid subreddits

shish_mish@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 491 points –
Reddit CEO teases AI search features and paid subreddits
engadget.com
166

LOL paid subreddits. ok, yea--let me PAY YOU for the privilege of providing content FOR YOU. LOL

get fucked. reddit is a toxic rotting husk of what it used to be. good riddance

Wasn’t that whole the concept behind that reddit gold exclusive subreddit? I’ve never been on there but I heard it was pretty barren anyway.

gold exclusive subreddit

i've been in there, and yea...how many posts about "yay we have gold and we have a subreddit only for us because we're special" does it take before you start to think "this is about the most pointless thing ever..."

It was a wholesome way to fund the site before they sold out. There was nothing wrong with it being mostly pointless. In fact, it's better that way. Money gated subs outside of that one meme seems pretty terrible.

I was in the century club on there, it was actually a pretty nice group of folks. Far less toxic.

i was in there for a minute. my one post was "what is this" and then i was replaced a week later. not my thing i guess

I also got added to that sub. I still don't... Understand what it was

basically /r/CasualConversation for people with too high post/comment karma for their own good. I've made a bunch of good friends over there, but the place has become watered down over time as it became so much easier to get the required amount of points.

I was gifted gold once. The subreddit was mostly Austin Powers Goldmember memes at the time.

That sounds like the only acceptable use of that sub to me.

I'm sorry? I don't speak freaky-deeky Dutch

There are two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch.

I bought Gold when that was the only perk to it, back when they were supposedly trying to independently fund the site.

I deeply regret doing so at this point.

You shouldn't. Reddit was a different place then.

You supported it when it was good, and abandoned it after it sold out. You can be a little proud of that.

The Lounge is where you were given access. That subreddit was ok on its own but really it was a good place to hang out, be friendly and helpful which sometimes resulted in being invited to other private sections of Reddit.

Some of those private subs have a true sense of community who are truly kind, respect each other and fun to interact with. Before the awards went away there were many games with prizes and multi-day parties with lots of engagement and fun. Not anything like the regular Reddit.

Those places still exist but activity has declined since most third party apps and the awards/coin system were taken away. That decision not only damaged the public Reddit subs but also the private ones.

Oh cool so we're gonna get another wave of users joining lemmy, it's nice that they keep fucking up at such a regular cadence

I don't think there's really going to be some noticeable influx, but I hope so. Even though Lemmy isn't nearly intuitive as it could be, but it did improve atleast by some degree.

Voyager is pretty intuitive and can be used without even joining a instance

Voyager is the spiritual successor to Apollo and an all around fantastic application.

I'm an android man, and Voyager has my full support

Reddit isn't really intuitive either. Most platforms have at least some learning curve. We have a great ecosystem of apps that help. I only wish a YouTuber would make a good explainer.

Here's one for the Fediverse that I saw recently: https://youtu.be/QzYozbNneVc

Well that's definitely true in some areas, like the search bar (it's just awful, not non-intuitive).

Well that's the problem though isn't it? If to use the website you need a literal tutorial, then something is fucked. I realize the irony of saying this on Lemmy, but the platform just isn't very user friendly at all. Hell, you could say the same about the whole Fediverse, it's an interesting idea and technology, but for the average person it's too much of a hassle compared to normal social media.

I can't think of a single social media platform that hasn't required me to search how to use it at some point. Twitter was like, "So I can send a text message to a website about what kind of soup I had for lunch? I don't get it." Facebook is regularly full of posts by people who don't understand the platform. The internet itself had celebrity ads, and morning news show explainers.

The Fediverse in general does require a different way of thinking. More importantly, it requires advertising (or publicity, anyway). That is one big advantage corporate media will always have - ad money. But the Fediverse has us.

Using Boost on both it's like I never left. Biggest differences are a bit less diversity here, duplicate communities from different instances, and the spoiler tags don't work.

It's funny because the demographics here remind me very much of old 2010-era Reddit—very techy and/or progressive types making up 90% of discussion.

I think about 2014ish is about the point where Reddit peaked in quality, so we're at least replaying from a good save state here. I fully anticipate lemmy will hit the same peak in a few years and hopefully continues on to surpass it

We say registrations go from 1 or 2 a day to 14 (other instances saw similar upswings). Just on this news. If they do implement it we'll see another Rexxit with similar big numbers.

Left Reddit over a year ago, haven't been back once. It was surprisingly easy, and a year on, it's getting easier for others too.

I miss some of the more casual subreddits, and somehow Lemmy is even more of an echo chamber than Reddit is, but otherwise yeah, Lemmy is fine. Especially with the Photon frontend.

It makes sense, those that backed off Reddit were more than likely against Corpo greed while conservatives cheer it on. Lemmy was created by leftists supposedly and more left leaning people joined after leaving reddit so it's no surprise. Reddit kept the bootlickers and the lazy, Lemmy gained the anti-greed political left so we were sort of destined to be an echo chamber unfortunately.

The only problem is the Lemmy creators are also bootlickers, just the boots were made by a different colonial holding. I'm very thankful for instances like lemmy.blahaj.zone, beehaw.org, and slrpnk.net, as well as to a lesser extent lemmy.db0.net, but the fact is there's a large number of bootlickers here who like a different flavor of boot

Aww, DB0 appreciates you to a lesser extent too, buddy!

Almost joined there. Its a really good instance. Its just the core political philosophy is less directly aligned with me than the ones I listed. Again. Its a really good instance and I DO respect the core political philosophy, its just like... A slightly different kind of libertarian than I am to where its like... I'll coalition with y'all but it would be disingenuous of me to claim to be part of your movement. Me speaking on what I believe while saying I'm aligned with y'all would hurt your messaging and I don't want to hurt y'all like that

Maybe that’s the misunderstanding—we aren’t political, we’re pirates. Our only messaging is arch, btw.

That’s why I’ve enjoyed it there—we are more active about sharing our hobbies than our social opinions.

Tasty, tasty capitalist boots with a lipservice communism sticker on the heel.

Reddit kept the bootlickers and the lazy, Lemmy gained the anti-greed political left

sigh...

Lemmy is even more of an echo chamber than Reddit is,

Yeah I really miss the trumpers responding constantly to anything about him with absolute bullshit lies. That really added perspective to my worldview. Now, if we could only get some more people to join Lemmy who despise Linux /s

There are centrists and even conservatives out there in the world who have valid perspectives and values but who are not Trumpers.

Yes, valuable perspectives like UnIpArTy!!!1 and bOtH sIdEs!!!!1

Edit: I want to agree with your sentiment though, really. I'm just jaded after several years of seeing disingenuous views expressed. Trump isn't really one I can abide by letting off the hook but I've seen that attempted by MANY centrists to the point that I no longer can believe there exists a such thing as a "centrist".

I mean, it's our fault as leftists that it is an echo chamber. We have forgotten how to talk about polemic issues among ourselves. I bet we lemmings have big differences (in the details) but we are afraid of bans or talking to walls, so...

I left also, the API thing was the nudge I needed; I admit I've gone back for niche things: the fan groups of 2-3 bands and two TV shows. Reddit is their defacto fan forum for lots of things

I was desperately waiting for an alternative to show up years before even the API changes. Anything that came up got taken over by Nazis and died shortly after. Lemmy is the only one that managed to actually take off.

Eh, I'm still looking, but this one seems better than the others. I've been here a little over a year and it's getting the job done.

The worst part to me is the shadowbanning. It's easy enough to tell if you're shadowbanned (check subs or comment threads when signed out and in private mode to see if your stuff shows up), but you can't see comments from other people who are shadowbanned. I want to see all points of view. And after the API changes, the sites for viewing removed or hidden comments stopped working :|

Hear hear

Shadow banning has been out of control on that site for years

I tried checking it out recently just for the amount of content. The site is unusable now. Don't bother to comment anything beyond a useless lol comment or you'll get banned for every little thing. The mods really went power mad over there

AI to summarize and recommend content, helping users dive deeper into products, shows, games

Notice they don't talk about hobbies or common interests, just "shit we can sell them"

I'm sure in his wet dreams Reddit is no longer a community site but a thinly veiled astroturfing platform that's paid billions by large corporations to get their adsposts in front of users.

Yeah, that's the definition of enshittification.

  • Make a platform that becomes popular
  • Lock in users and start to milk them
  • Use large user base to draw in companies with ads and influence
  • Lock in companies and squeeze them for all their worth

I mean there had been complaining for years that it was becoming just that; it’s just that they were trying to do it without anyone noticing and then all the tech bros got into a hold-my-beer contest

what a goddamn shithole. the dark thing about this is that they will continue to retain the critical mass of users and they know it. it's where the most users and content are. so many communities were completely erased during the mod strike and it didn't matter. they knew they would be completely fine. the future is an authoritarian world effectively governed by companies like this.

the dark thing about this is that they will continue to retain the critical mass of users and they know it

That's what many social media companies have said, lol.

But the sad thing is many communities will (and already have) move to Discord. Which is even worse, as Discord is a siloed information black hole.

I still don't know how that works. Discord seems like the worst possible substitute for reddit. It doesn't work at all the same way and search sucks.

Yah, I don't get this. So I log into Discord to ask a question, and the only people that will see it are the ones that are currently on at the time. The likelihood of it being seen by the person that can answer it are low, and it's not like it's going to be visible for when that person logs back in. This is all besides the fact that I could probably have answered it myself with a search of old questions on some platform that can be indexed. It's utterly bizarre.

If you're running a FOSS project or a community that needs support, you have rocks in your goddamn head if you think Discord is how to do it.

The one thing Discord is good at is engagement, aka pinging people on their phones, repeating conversations that have been answered a million times, getting people drawn into rambling discussions...

Yeah it's kind of a nightmare lol.

Exactly instead of a bunch of publicly searchable information silos we have a whole bunch of fragmented private ones with absolutely no overlap and far less useful. We need a publicly funded site of some kind.

They're not private. Advertisers have full access and that's what actually matters.

I meant from people like you and me that are Googling an obscure topic or researching something or troubleshooting information, those things are disappearing behind the walls of Discord

It's the most popular alternative, simple as that. There's (sadly) no where else obvious the average community knows to go.

Yeah as soon as I am directed to discord for anything , I move on with something else in life instead.

I'm getting closed to hosting an XMPP server and getting the fuck off discord. They can rot in hell

Cool, I've heard that people love paying for access to their own content that used to be free.

This is a good time for anyone still on the site to share some Lemmy links.

No please. The Redditors that stayed are insane,I don't want them in here

Reddit has that effect. I admit I was a little unhinged when I came here, but either people calm down and start acting like real human beings, or else they realize they can't have their fun being trolls and they leave. It's a funny thing that happens when an entire platform is centered around people, not profit. Bots and ragebait are great for stonks - they drive "engagement" and inflate MAU - so they are pervasive on every platform with shareholders.

While I do miss the subs with thousands, and the very obscure subs for my specific interest, this shit makes me glad I got out

What makes me sad is how a lot of niche communities moved from websites to Reddit, and now they are going to die.

Do you think they will move to lemmy?

No. Most of those communities are dwindling away. The guitar forums on Reddit are all AI shit repost bots. Luckily there are a few good YouTube channels to still get information, but there is no discussion.

Don't worry, won't be long for thousands join Lemmy when Reddit tries the Musk way of running a company into the ground :)

they're definitely going to finally kill old reddit arent they

Schrodinger's old. for me, I haven't had a reason to check if it still exists, and will never see for myself that it does/has been killed.

Fixing reddit search? Just insert a 2021 google search bar on old.reddit. I just saved you millions you dingus. Thank goodness Aaron Swartz doesn't have to see what happened to his joint venture.

Remember when they tried to pretend he was not really involved? And then the time the removed his name? Insert pepperage farm meme graphic.

Wow all 8 of their non-bot users will surely be very disappointed.

Well, glad I jumped ship after the api fee fiasco. I never even used the mobile app, but the tone deaf/elonification, I was done. That's right he got the great idea from Musk. How's that IPO working out?

He doesn't care. His goal is to extract money, period. He's incredibly jealous of his former colleagues who cashed out for millions. He's a greedy little pigboy.

This is a good thing for the Fediverse.

Don't post reddit ads on lemmy thanks.

Honestly, I think it's pretty hard to call this an ad lol

"Lemmy CEO teases users with cookies and free subs" would be removed from reddit in 1 second

Yes, because one is saying positives and the other is saying negatives. “Trump promises project 2025” isn’t a trump ad even if “Harris promises a fucking break from whatever weird bullshit trump said today” wouldn’t be allowed on truth social

Ads are about exposure too. The word "lemmy" is probably banned on reddit because they don't want you to even mention a competitor or people would know.

When the frontpage is all about trump/harris any party that isn't them lose because they get 0 coverage.

Americans need a run off vote system if they want third parties to be relevant

Problem is the ones people currently trust to organise, run, certify, and implement the elections do not want third parties to be relevant. Existing powers entrench against any changes that might result in a more fair system because the unfairness is the reason why they are on top.

I haven’t looked back since they killed Apollo, the only headline I want to see is bankruptcy

Some players in the ecosystem have not been transparent with their use of Reddit’s content, and in those instances, we block access to protect Reddit content and user privacy.

Aka "Fuck you, pay me", at least Reddit is transparent that data is for sale and they think they own it.

Twitter made a great job with the paid blue check. It's so much easier now to detect an idiot just by looking if they have a paid blue check. In Reddit it will be the same. If someone joins a paid sub, you can already say they are an idiot.

Why do you think these people are idiots? I believe Twitter promotes content posted by paid users. Last time I was on Twitter (about a year ago), they were planing to exclude regular users from the "smart" feed. Plus, people could write longer posts instead of threads. Unlike with reddit gold, I see real benefits for content creators.

Personal experience. Every time I see an extremely stupid tweet, it comes from a blue check.

Fuck reddit, I got banned from Worldnews for asking when Ukraine would attack other targets. I was banned for "call for violence" it was a post about the war. So stupid

Pretty sure worldnews is modded by the same people as r/Zion. It's so easy to get banned from there - just call a genocide a genocide

I got banned for suggesting a man who violently pushed a woman off a bike should be pushed himself. Lmao “advocating for violence”

Fuckin’ spineless idiots

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“Tease” doing a lot of heavy lifting there. It’s only a tease if it’s something people actually want.

It's a tease for shareholders desperate for more and more elaborate ways to squeeze a few more cents per user

"Reddit CEO teases new ways to damage and eventually kill Reddit"

Who tf still uses Reddit? It's all bots and power tripping mods nowadays. Lemmy is a million times better imo.

I felt that way till the influx of redditors came to get their little dopamine kicks via the rate buttons and bickering on bs topics.

Exactly lol. I literally get banned from subs for no reason, and i once got banned for literally posting a meme in a meme sub, like wtf

Look, Reddit search is already a shit show. Them overhauling it whatever way can't possibly make it much worse anyway.

Paid subreddits though. I didn't know we were already in April.

That's an interesting way of writing "Reddit CEO proves there's no such thing as enough when you suffer from dragon syndrome."

Reddit has become unusable. I had an account there for 7 years and no problem. I tried checking out Reddit again this year and I got permanently banned within a day. You can't say anything there anymore cause you'll inevitably piss off a power hungry mod who will ban you for nothing. There's no longer discussion to be had there.

I made a comment on the Gladiator 2 trailer, asking why Danzel is playing Micrinus, who was North African but of Roman blood and born in Alegeria and raised in Africa as a provincial. And pointed out how it's similar to that Cleopatra documentary inaccurately thinking that all people in Africa, even Egypt and North Africa were black. I pointed out Micrinus was Berber which were originally a more white race who mixed with Arab blood, so they were like a slightly darker skinned Romans, but not black.

I was banned for "racist commentary and bigotry"

Whaaaa. You mean the volunteer scabs appointed by Reddit admins to replace the "power tripping mods" (pissed off Redditors, 2023) are even more power tripping? I'm shocked, I say! Shocked!

Sorry to disappoint you, but this kind of behavior is not exclusive to Reddit. Lemmy has its own share of power-trip mods in some communities. I thought (wrongly) that someone that took the effort of leaving Reddit and coming here would think differently than the average Reddit mod, but I guess the allure of demonizing anyone that disagrees with you is too irresistible for them.

I think he already got pay-to-search and AI-infiltrated subreddits.

He's just trying new combos.

To go along with your shitty AI written articles!

Imagine if reddit makes porn subreddits paid

If there's one thing that united the Internet, it's don't fuck with our porn. It's how Tumbler died, pornhub lost over 95% of their videos, and it'll put the final nail in reddit if they try it.

They're already demanding search engines pay to search Reddit; will they have to pay even more to search paid subreddits?

Maybe the search engines could pass on the cost to the user, so you can pay to search the subreddits you pay again to view, which link to websites you pay to view. Add a sprinkle of tracking and targeted ads and some email offers from trusted partners, and you've got yourself a business model.

Subscription models are finally coming to Reddit! It's about time those greedy bastards start milking their userbase.

Redditors staged a coup and overthrew the CEO once before, why isn't it happening again?

Because Ellen Pao (the unpopular CEO who was ousted) was set up as the fall guy. Her entire purpose was to be at the helm while Reddit implemented (at the time) unpopular measures that angered the "free speech absolutists". Once that was done, she was cast aside so the anointed pigboy they have today could claim his promised seat on the throne and not have to walk back anything.

Because it was Russia overthrowing the CEO to install Spez.

I know the average person usually doesn't care, but surely most of the population of reddit must have realized how shit it is by now.

Last time I've been using search on Reddit (ages ago) normal search already produced shitty, useless results. And now he wants to make it even worse by throwing in AI?