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I remember 4chan did it by donate or die. They needed server money and they got it because it wasn’t working as long as they didn’t have a server. That was a mu

I remember 4chan did it by donate or die. They needed server money and they got it because it wasn’t working as long as they didn’t have a server. That was a much smaller scale though. Can you talk about your work there? It’s cool if you don’t want to, how was it? You left obviously so I can guess.

PhoenixReborn 5y ago
I honestly don't have any hard feelings or ill will towards Reddit - I liked my coworkers and my time there was fun overall. I worked on mostly backend/data stuff during my time there, but over time it became painfully clear that there was no way Reddit would make it as a business without resorting to the kinds of shady tactics that you see today. I sincerely believe that the leadership tried to avoid the ads revenue stream and all the ills that come with it for as long as possible, and searched for a lot of ways out (see things like Reddit Notes in the past). But I don't think I'll work in the social media domain again, because the experience really soured me on the sustainability model as a whole. People are generally unwilling to donate/pay for the content, and it's impossible to operate a site where there's no subscription revenue coming in.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  What do you think of substack? I like it as decentralized news. Medium dropped off the face of a cliff but substack has freedom of speech, email lists that is controlled by the writer, and they made it a subscription based long form article model. I don’t disagree with you though, if it’s given to you free it’s expected to be free forever. They’ll try to get money somehow but nobody will like it. I definitely liked it at first too, but it’s become so much different.
  - PhoenixReborn 5y ago
    Substack is good, and certainly much better than Medium! But I think it serves a different purpose, since it lets content creators monetize their audience rather than managing P2P user interaction like most social media. I'm not sure where the P2P interactions will go - it's possible that they stay centralized on the major platforms of today, or we see a return to smaller forums as we had back in the late 90s and early 2000s.

PhoenixReborn 5y ago

I honestly don't have any hard feelings or ill will towards Reddit - I liked my coworkers and my time there was fun overall. I worked on mostly backend/data stuff during my time there, but over time it became painfully clear that there was no way Reddit would make it as a business without resorting to the kinds of shady tactics that you see today. I sincerely believe that the leadership tried to avoid the ads revenue stream and all the ills that come with it for as long as possible, and searched for a lot of ways out (see things like Reddit Notes in the past). But I don't think I'll work in the social media domain again, because the experience really soured me on the sustainability model as a whole. People are generally unwilling to donate/pay for the content, and it's impossible to operate a site where there's no subscription revenue coming in.

GhettoComputers 5y ago
What do you think of substack? I like it as decentralized news. Medium dropped off the face of a cliff but substack has freedom of speech, email lists that is controlled by the writer, and they made it a subscription based long form article model. I don’t disagree with you though, if it’s given to you free it’s expected to be free forever. They’ll try to get money somehow but nobody will like it. I definitely liked it at first too, but it’s become so much different.
- PhoenixReborn 5y ago
  Substack is good, and certainly much better than Medium! But I think it serves a different purpose, since it lets content creators monetize their audience rather than managing P2P user interaction like most social media. I'm not sure where the P2P interactions will go - it's possible that they stay centralized on the major platforms of today, or we see a return to smaller forums as we had back in the late 90s and early 2000s.