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Considering the company's apparent lack of concern over the intense backlash from moderators, I suspect that they're not just planning to kill third-party apps,

Considering the company's apparent lack of concern over the intense backlash from moderators, I suspect that they're not just planning to kill third-party apps, they're planning to eventually kill user-managed subreddits as well, i.e. bringing ownership/moderation of the most popular / highest revenue subreddits in-house (employee mods able to use some of the internal admin tools) and making the rest some mixture of read-only and quarantined.

Banditoz 3y ago
Could they realistically do this? Aren't user-modded niche subs a big thing? If all that's left is a handful of subreddits curated by reddit themselves is the site even the same? Why would anyone want to visit at that point?
- 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  I'm not suggesting at all that Reddit as we know it would survive the transformation, rather that Reddit management probably has reasons to think that the transformation is worth the fallout. At this point, I think their "ideal user" is basically the opposite of people who cut their teeth on classic Reddit: the person who doesn't use ad blockers, scrolls the default subs for hours, rarely posts problematic content, and never gets angry at the admins.
- atomicnumber3 3y ago
  I would wager that 90% or more of their revenue comes from the generic TikTok meme slurry of r/all and the front page. I think some big % of their users aren't even signed in. So the long tail of hobby subs are probably just noise and operational burden. So if they're wanting to IPO, they probably want to cut costs and focus hard on ad revenue. I'm guessing banning nsfw stuff is probably in the works too.
  - russelg 3y ago
    Yep, their API won't be serving NSFW content anymore.
    - Seattle3503 3y ago
      Depending on how they implement that change, that is going to mess with a lot of spam control bots.
  - marisnom 3y ago
    that seems going too far from me, they would be killing their strongest positives (easy to access communities for niches) just to become tiktoks sewage outlet?
riku_iki 3y ago
mods are the same type of gatekeepers as reddit itself, push agenda because were trusted by community. Also, backslash is not that large, there are only about 60 subs supported protest so far.
- Firmwarrior 3y ago
  Yeah, there is some extremely shady stuff taking place among the Reddit powermods.
ravenstine 3y ago
They may not be able to accomplish that without backlash, but I believe that Reddit deep down would love if they could get rid of user run subreddits. Therea more profit to be had giving the keys over to big corporations to propagandize through their own "communities", just like how most tv/movie fan subreddits are at least partly managed by studios and production companies.

Banditoz 3y ago

Could they realistically do this? Aren't user-modded niche subs a big thing? If all that's left is a handful of subreddits curated by reddit themselves is the site even the same? Why would anyone want to visit at that point?

0xcde4c3db 3y ago
I'm not suggesting at all that Reddit as we know it would survive the transformation, rather that Reddit management probably has reasons to think that the transformation is worth the fallout. At this point, I think their "ideal user" is basically the opposite of people who cut their teeth on classic Reddit: the person who doesn't use ad blockers, scrolls the default subs for hours, rarely posts problematic content, and never gets angry at the admins.
atomicnumber3 3y ago
I would wager that 90% or more of their revenue comes from the generic TikTok meme slurry of r/all and the front page. I think some big % of their users aren't even signed in. So the long tail of hobby subs are probably just noise and operational burden. So if they're wanting to IPO, they probably want to cut costs and focus hard on ad revenue. I'm guessing banning nsfw stuff is probably in the works too.
- russelg 3y ago
  Yep, their API won't be serving NSFW content anymore.
  - Seattle3503 3y ago
    Depending on how they implement that change, that is going to mess with a lot of spam control bots.
- marisnom 3y ago
  that seems going too far from me, they would be killing their strongest positives (easy to access communities for niches) just to become tiktoks sewage outlet?

riku_iki 3y ago

mods are the same type of gatekeepers as reddit itself, push agenda because were trusted by community. Also, backslash is not that large, there are only about 60 subs supported protest so far.

Firmwarrior 3y ago
Yeah, there is some extremely shady stuff taking place among the Reddit powermods.

ravenstine 3y ago

They may not be able to accomplish that without backlash, but I believe that Reddit deep down would love if they could get rid of user run subreddits. Therea more profit to be had giving the keys over to big corporations to propagandize through their own "communities", just like how most tv/movie fan subreddits are at least partly managed by studios and production companies.