just so this doesn’t overwhelm our front page too much, i think now’s a good time to start consolidating discussions. existing threads will be kept up, but unless a big update comes let’s try to keep what’s happening in this thread instead of across 10.
developments to this point:
- Apollo for Reddit is shutting down
- Reddit is Fun will also shut down
- Reddit CEO (/u/spez) is going to hold a AMA about the API update
- Sync has announced it is shutting down
- ReddPlanet has announced it is shutting down
- Reddit creates an API exemption for noncommercial accessibility apps
- /r/videos is planning to shut down indefinitely, beginning June 11
- A subreddit dedicated to migrating to kbin.social has been closed by Reddit
The Verge is on it as usual, also–here’s their latest coverage (h/t @dirtmayor@beehaw.org):
other media coverage:
I think this reply by spez has been badly overlooked:
“the LLM explosion put all Reddit data use at the forefront”.
What he means here is that earlier this year the board realised they were sitting on a massive gold mine, and their single focus right now is to exploit that as ruthlessly as possible. Jacking up the prices to access Reddit data to eye-watering levels is intended to fleece desperate AI bros, and this may well be the only revenue stream Reddit cares about in the future.
The fact that they have put no thought or care into managing the damage that this does to third party apps and to their own reputation with the Reddit user base tells me something else too. Why bother being a good custodian of a community website that has never made a profit, when you could live off selling access to one of the largest bodies of good quality human-generated text-based content out there?
Do they even care if Reddit goes to shit in the future? Maybe not, especially now we are beginning to realise how easy it is for careful bots to poison the conversations with AI-generated replies.
It’s going to become a barren wasteland of bots communicating with each other.
Haha, you just reminded me of this cartoon:
yeah. this one’s always relevant
Love it lol
This right here. I’m not scared of AI itself. I’m scared of what humans will do with it.
100%. I’ve said exactly that to friends.
fleece desperate AI bros, and this may well be the only revenue stream Reddit cares about in the future.
Isn’t it a bit late for that?
I mean, GPT is on its fourth iteration, they’ve been working on it for years, I don’t know about Bing Chat but MS surely didn’t start develop it only yesterday.
How can Reddit be so sure “AI bros” haven’t already got the data they needed to train their models?
There’s going to be lots of other challengers out there: I’m sure every ML postgrad with any nous has spent the last couple of months contacting every funder they can track down to explain how their model is going to knock the socks off the old fashioned models used by these lumbering corporations.
And even the established models have been shown to contain content obtained in violation of user licences and copyright laws, leaving them open to all sorts of legal and political challenges. They will all be scrambling now to demonstrate that they’ve got clean hands in future models.
It will be like the NFT gold rush all over again—the only sure way to get rich is to sell the shovels.
Sharing this because it should be shared
This was the moment that cemented my choice to move away from Reddit. My plan initially was to see how the blackouts would play out, but this showed even more clearly than the initial thread about Apollo’s woes with Reddit just how garbage the decision-making at Reddit is.
Ditto. I saw that, I deleted all my posts/comments and then my 11+ year old account.
Remember to check that it stayed deleted. My account rolled back my deletions. Possibly due to “stability”
Wait what! Things have gotten this bad!? Like, this actually happened? I’m guessing there was no follow up question.
I mean, it’s either a dumb corporate strategy to discredit or psychopathic behaviour, or, sadly, both.
Also something weird, when I saw this combo, iamthatis was the first reply. Now it’s way down there, despite the upvotes and gilds.
I really don’t like putting on the tin foil hat, but since spez admitted in the past that he changed other users comments, I’m calling it, this guy is still messing around with things behind the scenes
Christian should sue him for that, looks like libel to me.
I’m not a lawyer though.
doesnt that require monetary losses?
sure, he lost out revenue from the spp, but that is due to the api changes and not due to the libel. might be difficult to argue otherwise, but Im also not a lawyer
I think it can be just damage to your reputation but yeah… not sure really 😕
Any lawyers reading this?
Christian also responded to another comment made my Spez
Yeah this AMA was eye opening for sure
I’ve been getting used to lemmy for the last couple days, going back and forth between here and reddit and following what’s going on, and I think I just realized something that I hadn’t been able to put into words.
The lemmy community feels responsive and fun to talk to, and I think that’s because the people who are coming here from reddit are the people who are motivated to communicate, and are people who care about the topics in each community. That’s pretty cool.
I’ve been feeling weird about leaving Reddit; mainly because it’s been my main source of entertainment, news, and community for over 10 years but this is a really good point about any ‘social’ network. Even the link aggregator sites like Reddit. Over the past couple of years, I feel like my engagement has dropped significantly because it hasn’t been FUN to engage with the communities I was a part of the same way it was when I first joined. I’m hoping to recapture that a bit here specifically on Lemmy and in the fediverse at large.
There is an energy here that I haven’t really felt from reddit as a whole in years…
Certain (smaller) subs could still get that same feeling sometimes, but so far I am very much enjoying lemmy. Yeah there’s a bit of a learning curve to figuring things out but I think people will catch on fast!
I think you hit the nail on the head for me. I’m excited to see what comes from this community far more than Reddit.
Exactly! Reddit turned in a whine site.
Yes!
I can post and comment here without getting yelled at or worthless, and off topic, replies. I hope they keeps the trolls to a minimum and encourage meaningful contributions.
Great point. There will be a big wave i’m sure (it happened w/ Mastodon/microblogging fediverse platforms) and after a few months, some of the people tried it and left. The people who remained are such an engaging and fun group to talk to.
I keep sitting here waiting for Reddit to backtrack. But it keeps not happening.
I’m doubtful because I feel like the business goons did the math, found the expected profit of killing 3rd party apps and taking the backlash was higher than keeping the status quo, and have committed to the more profitable option.
Question:
How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement?
We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
This is where I lost all hope.
There’d be all kinds of better ways to go about making profit / becoming financially sustainable. This is blatant ignorance and mismanagement, without hearing or seeing anything. Complete mismanagement.
Reddit isn’t going back. Even if they did I’m sure they just convinced multiple users to not go back. I hope the blackout and tons of users moving will have a big enough impact to devalue Reddit even if somewhat.
I predict Reddit backing out, lowering the API price to something realistic, and then everyone forgets what happened, like every other time something like this has happened.
I just don’t get how a site based on freely produced content thst employs volunteer mods can actually monetise.
That part just gets me. The site has nothing without the users and the users have nothing without the mods.
They’re taking us all for granted. They are going to embarrass themselves if they go public
Let ‘em, we’ll share content here.
Hopefully my old popcorn machine still works. I’m going to need it.
The thing is, they have operating costs. I’m sure it’s a boatload of money as well, given the size and scope of Reddit. Almost all startups run at a loss. And then continue to do so long past when they’re a “startup”. The money they “make” is from rounds of investors who believe they will find a way to make money in the future. Eventually investors get restless and demand that they find a way to monetize so they can recoup. Without those investors money, the site will come crashing as soon as they miss some critical payments for stuff that keep the site up. I’m absolutely sure that’s what we’re seeing. I think either way, its time has come.
Pinch the users to try to keep it alive for a little bit more. Don’t pinch the users and it dies in a grinding halt when they miss some key payments.
There used to be a daily progress bar on the front page of Reddit to show if the sales of Reddit Gold that day were enough to pay for that day’s worth of server usage. I recall it usually hitting over 100%.
So realistically, what would a sustainable business model be for something like Reddit?
Something like lemmy or a fediverse platform is going to rely on donations and community support. In the case of mastodon, for example, it’s been shown to work well enough for sustainable operations. For those willing to work on something worthwhile for lower salary, it is potentially a great gig. In a commercial context though, it’s basically a subscription based business model.
If we’re to recover from this ad driven data tracking economy, subscriptions seem like a healthy thing for businesses to adopt.
Reddit may have already signed their deals with the devil. But generally, the point of the fediverse is to escape this corporate manipulation of our basic communications in the internet, and it’s still interesting to ask what profitable but sustainable operations can look like.
I think that federation will help Lemmy a ton–there will be a lot of small, cheap servers rather than a single extremely expensive one!
Possibly. I’m not sure how true it is that the fediverse necessarily leads to more efficient computing needs per user. I’d bet it’s the opposite.
But, as you perhaps allude to, there are other factors. For those who only want niche smaller communities, they can enjoy a more stripped down experience without needing speedy and beefy servers. Similarly, the platforms here are probably slimmer and not bloated with features that are trying to engage and monetise.
The major factor, IMO, is ownership. Admins literally own their servers. And should have a much closer and codependent relationship with the users in their servers, except in the case of large instances which become different beasts. Additionally, users have much more choice and mobility on the fediverse. All of which means admins/moderators and users have more at stake in their relationship. More ownership over their platform/instance. And therefore actually have a reason to donate and contribute and help out.
The interesting thing for me is that the federated system allows for a potentially huge variety of business models, and we’ll get to see what works and doesn’t. Whereas reddit has to stick with just one
They can always work together with platform developers to make profits. Yet they’re killing the very platform that bring traffics to the site. I can only see greediness here.
It’s because of the contract every user has with Reddit. It’s that legal document nobody ever reads.
That legal document isn’t worth the pixels it’s drawn on. As soon as the moderators leave Reddit en masse, spammers move in, Reddit goes belly up, and the contract won’t change that in the slightest.
The contract’s entire validity with moderators is questionable, by the way, seeing as how there isn’t any meaningful consideration. Subreddit moderators contribute to Reddit and receive essentially nothing in exchange. For ordinary users, one could argue that you agree to do the things in the contract in exchange for access to and participation in all the content and community on Reddit, but that argument doesn’t work for moderators.
Lol. This sounds like a dig at spez.
I’m not sure if there’s a SelfAwarewolves community somewhere in the Fediverse, but if there is, that belongs there.
There is! !selfawarewolves@lemmy.ml
If Yishan is on twitter I hope he responds too
I’m glad at least one site is taking off the kid gloves with the title.
This whole situation feels like a short term revenue grab. I bet shareholders are trying to inflate the numbers in order to cash out in the IPO.
Yeah. I think this is pretty much the accepted narrative. Kill the 3P apps -> Consolidate the user base -> Serve everyone adds -> Hopefully turn a profit -> Go public or sell the company -> Founders/Investors cash out and profit.
The collateral damage is that they risk killing the culture that makes Reddit a place people want to congregate.
This is likely the case. I’m sure we’ll see an IPO this year or early next after they’ve pumped up numbers.
The active mod team of r/videos has agreed that their shutdown will now be permanent. https://reddit.com/r/videos/comments/145vns0/the_future_of_rvideos/
In a tildes post (I’m riding a lot of horses right now) one of the mods said:
I know this is likely a symbolic gesture because I’m fairly confident reddit will just kick us out and bring the subreddit back up, but after being on the mod team for over a decade its going to be interesting to see how things even function if they decide to take that route.
No way Reddit is going to be able to replace so many mods on so many subs that deal with so many millions of users. They can try, but that doesn’t mean it will work.
Apparently they’ll be laying off about 90 workers (5%) whilst also lowering the amount of people they will hire. So, less staff to begin with. Less mods. It’s going to be a shitshow. The admins don’t even deal with moderation, really. Reporting is outsourced to their “Anti Evil Operations” team. So wtf are they going to do? I can’t wait to see the downfall.
At this point, after that poor excuse of an AMA, their reputation is tanked.
They’ll appoint new mods. New mods that don’t have any experience or any professionalism. New mods that may not even be the age of majority yet. It’s a dumpster fire waiting to happen.
It’s a damn shame.
Yes I was totally blown away when I saw how large that sub is. It’s incredible to see Reddit losing people with that much experience of managing and growing massive communities, but the board’s focus right is only on selling existing content to AI bros so they probably don’t care that much at the moment.
That’s why it’s important for normal users who leave the site to delete their comments and submission too.
Or for the paranoid, edit then delete 😀
They rely on the free labor of the community mods. They can’t handle that workload. They’d have to replace those mods with other free mods without the years of experience, or mods with experience that will suck up to Reddit to keep their unpaid job.
Either way, I predict it will end in fireworks.
Also they don’t have the language skills, I’d be serously impressed if they managed to scrunge up employees with the language and culture skills for many subs.
There was a response on the AMA where u/spez said “Reddit would always be profit driven and currently does not make a profit. Unlike TP apps”
You can no longer see this on the Reddit app, it is obscured in someway. Perhaps because of the potential impact for the IPO?
Hilarious I can still see it on Apollo. I did notice while refreshing on spez’s comments that on that particular comment his name changed from red (normal admin color) to black, and then a few minutes later red again. I don’t know what it means, but it smells.
I also noticed the time posted got fuckity on that comment. I’m looking at comments sorted newest on top but the time of that comment is out of order
The AMA doesn’t even show up on spez’s profile. Lmfao.
He is essentially saying, “we are unable to make a profit, so our plan is to use someone else’s profit to make money.”
What I think he’s going for is sympathy points, but he did not read that back lol
I think at point it’s the sole goal of Reddit to pump their ad revenue numbers until the IPO.
do you have a direct link to this one
what blew my mind, and the minds of many other people on reddit is that they (reddit) have 2,000 employees and yet still can’t piece together a good and accessible experience for their users…
No matter how many developers you get, you’re never going to have a good product if the guy calling the shots won’t allow it. I’m confident that the developers working on Reddit probably know damn well that their product is trash and there’s nothing they can do about it because their job isn’t “make a good site” its “do what your boss tells you to do”
I’ve been a developer for awhile and you would be surprised how many companies can’t get out of their own way to improve their products.
This is so true it hurts.
That’s absolutely right, I’m not a developer, I’m a UX/UI designer. I recently had a contract where the contractor slaughtered my initial design to the point where I almost started to hate it, but I was bound by contract to finish it.
If reddit wants, their developer can absolutely build a top notch app.
Well, the AMA was a shining success…
The way that guy gaslit the Appolo dev, and doubles down that the Appolo dev is the bad guy. Even though the recording is clear that the reddit ceo is straight up lying. Imaging working with, or having to interact with someone who so easily lies like that. Shameless
It’s hilarious really. Christian has the fucking receipts. Spez can say what he wants, but it’s meaningless drivel.
Also, I just looked into the AMA and…he only gave 14 answers 🙄
To their credit, there were other admins too!
Collectively, they
answeredresponded to a whopping additional 5 comments!I may miss the community, but I definitely won’t miss reddit.
Oblig. fuck u/spez
Seconded fuck /u/spez
It is hilarious to see this happening. Option A, he could have just shut up, released a press statement and waited till this blew over, he didn’t do that. Option B would have been to do an AMA, engage with people and say nice but meaningless things to placate people and do whatever he wants in private, he didn’t do that either.
Instead he choses to host an AMA, copy pastes canned responses, edits his comment when someone caught it, ditches the canned response when a question is asked about the Apollo thing and doubles down, and finally leaves after answering 14 questions.
You really can’t make this shit up 🤣
I love how the AMA has 0 points. You down vote it and it comes back to 0. No manipulation there reddit. Just that alone shows what a disgrace that company is.
I don’t think posts on reddit ever actually show less than 0 points no matter how many downvotes they get. Comments do, but posts always bottom out at 0 as far as I know.
Ahhh. What about that ea post? Didn’t it have some crazy negative number? Or was that just the comment? Probably the comment
That was a specific comment
On Reddit, comments can show negative scores, but posts will never show a score lower than zero. It used to be possible to determine how negative a post score really was, but that hasn’t been possible for some time now.
Edit: I guess that doesn’t really answer your question. I read too fast, whoops.
When the individual up and downvote counts on comments and threads went away, that was a bad sign. Back in the old days you might see a comment with a -100 total score, but you could also see it had 400 upvotes and 500 downvotes, which made it a lot more clear it was a controversial but perhaps not wholly worthless comment. Modern reddit design just shows the final number, which I think capitalizes on internet hivemind behavior.
One or more of the Reddit interfaces displays a dagger on comments that are “controversial”, notably missing from the official phone app I think. I do miss the individual counts, though.
I have (or should say “had”) the dagger on Apollo, but it’s a downgrade from being able to see the straight numbers. And of course my point being that reddit has continued to obfuscate info, so even though it is on 3rd party they have no problem hiding it from the primary userbase. Just I don’t know. Talking about all this kind of wears me out, ya know? I think everybody here is just tired of reddit the machine.
Oh, it’s been such a long time since I’ve used the official Reddit app that I forgot about this, because you can see the downvotes in other apps.
That’s been a thing for a long time. Threads can not go into negatives. You can only see the upvote percentage.
You aren’t the first person I’ve seen confused about that, which I think indicates a big problem with reddit’s modern design. Back in the old days on every thread and comment you could see both how many up and down votes it got, not just the total number. It was cleaner and more transparent. Over time, reddit has increasingly obfuscated how all the magic numbers work.
Before they changed what numbers they showed, there were karma farmers that specifically posted dumb stuff to rack up the most negative karma score they could. Over time Reddit has done a fair bit of tweaking of what numbers are shown and setting caps or floors in some places.
This isn’t special behavior, all posts have a floor of 0. Only comments can have negative scores.
It doesn’t even show up on spez’s profile lmfao. Last post says 1 year ago. Definitely no manipulation there.
I’m out. Redact is busy just now deleting everything under my account.
One of us! One of us!
I wonder how much backtracking will be done. Are they going to listen to the concerns of the community or are they going to double down on their decisions?
My guess - zero backtracking
From how the AMA went, it sure seems that way. Funny how they just agreed to fuck over Apollo, but are working with the other apps, especially after blatantly lying about the situation. What a mess.
Spez was likely pissy that Christian called him on his bullshit and had all the receipts to prove it.
I’ll bet spez isn’t too happy about Apollo featuring in the Apple WWDC rather than the official app, either
Thin skin and the inability to admit that you’re wrong aren’t great qualities to have in a CEO…
And yet most CEOs have precisely those narcissistic tendencies
They say they are working with other apps but there were other devs posting that they’ve been trying to reach out but not getting any answers. The ball is being dropped on so many aspects.
They will only work with apps that are “non-commercial”, AKA free labour. There’s no way an app survives without some kind of monetisation. It’s just a money sink then. It’s honestly incredible how shitty they’re being.
Yeah, in their answers, they didn’t show any will to compromise.
