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>Reddit, like so many other places, believes it has a right to extract the value the community creates. >But it doesn't. I'm sorry, but it absolutely does. Ye

>Reddit, like so many other places, believes it has a right to extract the value the community creates. >But it doesn't. I'm sorry, but it absolutely does. Yes, it has to do this subject to brand risk constraints. But the idea that investors should just expect to make losses on the site is insane. That trying to turn a profit on their own platform represents "freeloading". I guess normally I'd feel sorry for whatever platforms are afflicted with people who hold this sort of ideology, but Reddit has done a lot to cater to people who think like this.

ng12 3y ago
Right, the investors are the problem. Reddit made a deal with the devil and now the community that made it bears the cost.
calf 3y ago
[flagged]
- yanderekko 3y ago
  I guess you should pray that the CCP invests more money in Reddit in order to make sure it's no longer subjected to the "whims of capitalist forces". Of course, I have trouble taking this seriously when I suspect there's a huge amount of overlap between people decrying profit-seeking behavior here but who also are fine with wrongthink communities being banned out of advertiser revenue concerns.
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  You can host your own community then. At the end of the day, someone has to pay for hosting all of that data. Trying to not lose money from hosting said data is not a "distort[ion] at the whim of capitalist forces."
  - bcrack 3y ago
    "You can host your own community then"; Sorry but I'm not really a fan of this "make your own (...)" attitude, especially when excusing corporate behavior against volunteers I mean that there is a spectrum ranging from paying the bills and making profit to blatantly exploiting everyone involved. Based on the Apollo logistics, reddit API pricing seems to fall on the greedy end of the spectrum. At the same time we have examples with high-traffic websites (e.g. Wikipedia) which manage to build upon volunteer effort and be sustainable without pissing everyone off within a few days.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      > I mean that there is a spectrum ranging from paying the bills and making profit to blatantly exploiting everyone involved. They're not making profit, that's the entire point. > Sorry but I'm not really a fan of this "make your own (...)" attitude, especially when excusing corporate behavior against volunteers I'm similarly not a fan of discounting just how much money and work goes into building a company with millions of users, having helped do that in the past. My comment was not glib, it was entirely sincere; if you want to know just how much it costs, host your own community and see just how "greedy" it is.
      - bcrack 3y ago
        I understand your point. The thing is that they should be able to introduce their API pricing without triggering the events of the past days. I'm not even remotely an expert, but the pricing seems too aggressive and seems to contradict was communicated earlier (again based on the apollo transcripts). On the other hand they are supposed to be experts, or they should at least ask one, given the millions of users, thousands of mods, etc involved.
        satvikpendem 3y ago
        How do you know whether it was too aggressive or not? They could have always revised their estimates when they did the calculation for how much each call costs as well as how much lost revenue they get from third party apps not showing ads. Sure, they could have given more than a month's notice but the bill comes due at some point. Based on the API call figures Apollo has posted and having worked on API products in the past, I can entirely see how $20 million a year is reasonable given how much Apollo is pulling from Reddit's servers.
- b800h 3y ago
  Those 'capitalist forces' you're talking about are 'you have to pay for resources if you want to use them'. But I'm sure this wouldn't be true in magical communist land. They'd be well up for ploughing resources into r/cats and absolutely wouldn't be sending you off to dig up a field to improve production for the next five year plan.
- rahidz 3y ago
  I don't think it's capitalism that's the issue. After all, that's existed for hundreds of years and across so many countries. This seems like a more narrow problem, where the goal of new companies is no longer "Build good product, acquire users, slowly and steadily grow", it's "Build a product, give it away for free at a loss for years, get millions in VC funding, sell your users out, destroy product while laughing to the bank to repeat the process". Seems to really have picked up in the past 20 years or so, and largely specific to the United States.
  - Mistletoe 3y ago
    The last 20 years you say? :) https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-rate Coincides almost perfectly with zero or below 5% interest rates.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    Capitalism is obviously the problem.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Ye, this "it is non of your business as a pleb consumer to complain about companies, use another one" trope is getting old. If Reddit's lusers don't like Reddit they should complain, threaten to leave, then leave. It is like this "Karen"-meme where the protagonist and antagonist are mixed up. The nominal protagonist blames Karen for the employer's fault. If you make money as being a firewall between the Karen and your boss, you are the problem, not Karen.
- berniedurfee 3y ago
  Yet that was the business model from day one, no? Every contributor and consumer of every post on Reddit was being exploited for profit. That’s why social media platforms exist, to exploit its users for profit. The users are the product, always have been. It’s unfortunate, but the internet is businesses all the way down.
  - calf 3y ago
    I also said it was a matter of user expectation. There's a level of extractiveness that is acceptable for users, because users get information, entertainment, etc. in return for their participation on reddit. Of course, that's setting aside the more radical position of "social media is fundamentally harmful to humans, therefore we should all stop using it regardless".
- Ekaros 3y ago
  It is just switching the roles which side is exploiting. Before it was communities, now it will be instead of Reddit. Surely it is reasonable to call people who used platform that didn't make money for their personal enjoyment exploitation. Even if they didn't know they did it.
SemioticStandrd 3y ago
No, it really doesn’t. If they paid their mods, it might be a different conversation. No one on Reddit asked investors to come over and invest. They did so because they thought they could get a return. Well, that’s the risk of being an investor, isn’t it? Reddit brings in hundreds of millions of dollars a year ($550m is what I recently heard). Let’s not pretend that the community is at all taking advantage of Reddit, right? I’m firstly skeptical that a site like Reddit can’t turn a profit on HALF A BILLION dollars a year, but fine. Let’s accept that’s the truth. They could have worked with the community on this. There are things they could’ve done. They could’ve: - engaged the community on the changes - given devs more than a mere 30 days to figure something out - responded to repeated requests by the devs to work together - provided options to the community on various methods of getting more revenue in They did NONE of those things. The CEO lied and spat in their faces.
101011 3y ago
Also, they explicitly do have that right, as laid out by their TOS - https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-12-2021 https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-... > You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content: > When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
- scambier 3y ago
  "they have that right because it's in their TOS" == "they have that right because they so"
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Well, yes, it's their platform. No one forces anyone to use it, if they don't like the terms they can go elsewhere.
hobbescotch 3y ago
3rd party app developers are the freeloaders I would argue. They contribute no revenue to reddit, are exempt from displaying ads but incur OpEx costs. Some are as big as 1B reqs a month but act as though they are the victim. Not only that, instead of being a professional business partner, they go on their respective subreddit to complain about reddit management… on reddit. Kind of hilarious actually.
berniedurfee 3y ago
Agreed. In fact, I’m always a little bemused at the level of shock from folks, especially here, when a company does what companies will inevitably do. Reddit, doesn’t exist for the good of its users, outside of retaining significant numbers for the purposes of generating profit from selling their data and selling ad space. Like every other social platform, the primary motive is profit, full stop. It absolutely feels sleazy that billions of people freely contribute their time and talent to generate content and then get pushed aside when the companies business model changes. But everyone should absolutely expect that from day one. Social platforms are a fun, but one sided relationship that will eventually turn sour.
- DannyBee 3y ago
  I mean, i'm not only shocked, i even said it's the same as it always is :)
DannyBee 3y ago
This is no different the open source/free software. Just because you created some software, and it became popular, and a large contributing community, and you started 1% of the value, does not mean you either created most of the value, or get to extract it. Attempts to do so basically always fail. The argument that it would not have happened without you is almost always wrong - it is almost always a mistake to assume success is simply because of your choices, and not lots of factors. This is one reason repeat success is very very very rare. I'm not saying they have no legal right to try - of course they do. I'm just saying it doesn't work because nobody thinks they should be allowed to let it work. How they run the site and whether they need to make a profit is of no consequence to users - they don't give a shit. You can't make them give a shit. It wasn't who they attracted. They don't have a 100 million users who want them to make a profit. They have 100 million users who don't give the slightest crap about whether they make any money at all. Yes, trying to generate profit on value they don't create is freeloading. Quite literally, in fact. It is the literal definition of freeloading to try to extract value by taking advantage of what others do. You don't argue they create the value, but instead because they own the platform they are allowed to extract it. Legally, yes. But that's sort of irrelevant. Socially, no. The crux of your argument is basically "if my ideology is right than investors are dumb and this is a bad investment" I would agree with that. It was always a bad investment. It still is! Precisely because freeloading of the kind they are doing always generates enough ire over time to ruin the community. Usually before you can extract enough profit to be worth it. You can feel sorry for platforms, and for me, that's okay. But you still haven't shown that i'm actually wrong, and in fact, what i've said is backed up by the consistent failure of things that operate the way you seem to think is okay. I mostly feel sad for you. You seem to have forgotten somewhere along the line that corporations as a kind of entity were created to serve society (not investors), and not the other way around. I'm not saying all things this large should be non-profit, mind you, just that the kind of skimming that reddit is trying to do, where they think they can make a few bucks in profit per user through freeloading, while providing nothing in return, is neither helpful to society, and doesn't work anyway! There are more symbiotic for-profits that realize they need their communities to want them to succeed, and do okay. Put another way - for profits running hosting like Reddit where they think their profit is more important than the communities, and that they are the reason for the success of those communities, basically always fail. Those smart enough to realize neither of these are true sometimes can make a go of it.

ng12 3y ago

Right, the investors are the problem. Reddit made a deal with the devil and now the community that made it bears the cost.

calf 3y ago

[flagged]

yanderekko 3y ago
I guess you should pray that the CCP invests more money in Reddit in order to make sure it's no longer subjected to the "whims of capitalist forces". Of course, I have trouble taking this seriously when I suspect there's a huge amount of overlap between people decrying profit-seeking behavior here but who also are fine with wrongthink communities being banned out of advertiser revenue concerns.
satvikpendem 3y ago
You can host your own community then. At the end of the day, someone has to pay for hosting all of that data. Trying to not lose money from hosting said data is not a "distort[ion] at the whim of capitalist forces."
- bcrack 3y ago
  "You can host your own community then"; Sorry but I'm not really a fan of this "make your own (...)" attitude, especially when excusing corporate behavior against volunteers I mean that there is a spectrum ranging from paying the bills and making profit to blatantly exploiting everyone involved. Based on the Apollo logistics, reddit API pricing seems to fall on the greedy end of the spectrum. At the same time we have examples with high-traffic websites (e.g. Wikipedia) which manage to build upon volunteer effort and be sustainable without pissing everyone off within a few days.
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    > I mean that there is a spectrum ranging from paying the bills and making profit to blatantly exploiting everyone involved. They're not making profit, that's the entire point. > Sorry but I'm not really a fan of this "make your own (...)" attitude, especially when excusing corporate behavior against volunteers I'm similarly not a fan of discounting just how much money and work goes into building a company with millions of users, having helped do that in the past. My comment was not glib, it was entirely sincere; if you want to know just how much it costs, host your own community and see just how "greedy" it is.
    - bcrack 3y ago
      I understand your point. The thing is that they should be able to introduce their API pricing without triggering the events of the past days. I'm not even remotely an expert, but the pricing seems too aggressive and seems to contradict was communicated earlier (again based on the apollo transcripts). On the other hand they are supposed to be experts, or they should at least ask one, given the millions of users, thousands of mods, etc involved.
      - satvikpendem 3y ago
        How do you know whether it was too aggressive or not? They could have always revised their estimates when they did the calculation for how much each call costs as well as how much lost revenue they get from third party apps not showing ads. Sure, they could have given more than a month's notice but the bill comes due at some point. Based on the API call figures Apollo has posted and having worked on API products in the past, I can entirely see how $20 million a year is reasonable given how much Apollo is pulling from Reddit's servers.
b800h 3y ago
Those 'capitalist forces' you're talking about are 'you have to pay for resources if you want to use them'. But I'm sure this wouldn't be true in magical communist land. They'd be well up for ploughing resources into r/cats and absolutely wouldn't be sending you off to dig up a field to improve production for the next five year plan.
rahidz 3y ago
I don't think it's capitalism that's the issue. After all, that's existed for hundreds of years and across so many countries. This seems like a more narrow problem, where the goal of new companies is no longer "Build good product, acquire users, slowly and steadily grow", it's "Build a product, give it away for free at a loss for years, get millions in VC funding, sell your users out, destroy product while laughing to the bank to repeat the process". Seems to really have picked up in the past 20 years or so, and largely specific to the United States.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  The last 20 years you say? :) https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-rate Coincides almost perfectly with zero or below 5% interest rates.
- flangola7 3y ago
  Capitalism is obviously the problem.
rightbyte 3y ago
Ye, this "it is non of your business as a pleb consumer to complain about companies, use another one" trope is getting old. If Reddit's lusers don't like Reddit they should complain, threaten to leave, then leave. It is like this "Karen"-meme where the protagonist and antagonist are mixed up. The nominal protagonist blames Karen for the employer's fault. If you make money as being a firewall between the Karen and your boss, you are the problem, not Karen.
berniedurfee 3y ago
Yet that was the business model from day one, no? Every contributor and consumer of every post on Reddit was being exploited for profit. That’s why social media platforms exist, to exploit its users for profit. The users are the product, always have been. It’s unfortunate, but the internet is businesses all the way down.
- calf 3y ago
  I also said it was a matter of user expectation. There's a level of extractiveness that is acceptable for users, because users get information, entertainment, etc. in return for their participation on reddit. Of course, that's setting aside the more radical position of "social media is fundamentally harmful to humans, therefore we should all stop using it regardless".
Ekaros 3y ago
It is just switching the roles which side is exploiting. Before it was communities, now it will be instead of Reddit. Surely it is reasonable to call people who used platform that didn't make money for their personal enjoyment exploitation. Even if they didn't know they did it.

SemioticStandrd 3y ago

No, it really doesn’t. If they paid their mods, it might be a different conversation. No one on Reddit asked investors to come over and invest. They did so because they thought they could get a return. Well, that’s the risk of being an investor, isn’t it? Reddit brings in hundreds of millions of dollars a year ($550m is what I recently heard). Let’s not pretend that the community is at all taking advantage of Reddit, right? I’m firstly skeptical that a site like Reddit can’t turn a profit on HALF A BILLION dollars a year, but fine. Let’s accept that’s the truth. They could have worked with the community on this. There are things they could’ve done. They could’ve: - engaged the community on the changes - given devs more than a mere 30 days to figure something out - responded to repeated requests by the devs to work together - provided options to the community on various methods of getting more revenue in They did NONE of those things. The CEO lied and spat in their faces.

101011 3y ago

Also, they explicitly do have that right, as laid out by their TOS - https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-12-2021 https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-... > You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content: > When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.

scambier 3y ago
"they have that right because it's in their TOS" == "they have that right because they so"
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Well, yes, it's their platform. No one forces anyone to use it, if they don't like the terms they can go elsewhere.

hobbescotch 3y ago

3rd party app developers are the freeloaders I would argue. They contribute no revenue to reddit, are exempt from displaying ads but incur OpEx costs. Some are as big as 1B reqs a month but act as though they are the victim. Not only that, instead of being a professional business partner, they go on their respective subreddit to complain about reddit management… on reddit. Kind of hilarious actually.

berniedurfee 3y ago

Agreed. In fact, I’m always a little bemused at the level of shock from folks, especially here, when a company does what companies will inevitably do. Reddit, doesn’t exist for the good of its users, outside of retaining significant numbers for the purposes of generating profit from selling their data and selling ad space. Like every other social platform, the primary motive is profit, full stop. It absolutely feels sleazy that billions of people freely contribute their time and talent to generate content and then get pushed aside when the companies business model changes. But everyone should absolutely expect that from day one. Social platforms are a fun, but one sided relationship that will eventually turn sour.

DannyBee 3y ago
I mean, i'm not only shocked, i even said it's the same as it always is :)

DannyBee 3y ago

This is no different the open source/free software. Just because you created some software, and it became popular, and a large contributing community, and you started 1% of the value, does not mean you either created most of the value, or get to extract it. Attempts to do so basically always fail. The argument that it would not have happened without you is almost always wrong - it is almost always a mistake to assume success is simply because of your choices, and not lots of factors. This is one reason repeat success is very very very rare. I'm not saying they have no legal right to try - of course they do. I'm just saying it doesn't work because nobody thinks they should be allowed to let it work. How they run the site and whether they need to make a profit is of no consequence to users - they don't give a shit. You can't make them give a shit. It wasn't who they attracted. They don't have a 100 million users who want them to make a profit. They have 100 million users who don't give the slightest crap about whether they make any money at all. Yes, trying to generate profit on value they don't create is freeloading. Quite literally, in fact. It is the literal definition of freeloading to try to extract value by taking advantage of what others do. You don't argue they create the value, but instead because they own the platform they are allowed to extract it. Legally, yes. But that's sort of irrelevant. Socially, no. The crux of your argument is basically "if my ideology is right than investors are dumb and this is a bad investment" I would agree with that. It was always a bad investment. It still is! Precisely because freeloading of the kind they are doing always generates enough ire over time to ruin the community. Usually before you can extract enough profit to be worth it. You can feel sorry for platforms, and for me, that's okay. But you still haven't shown that i'm actually wrong, and in fact, what i've said is backed up by the consistent failure of things that operate the way you seem to think is okay. I mostly feel sad for you. You seem to have forgotten somewhere along the line that corporations as a kind of entity were created to serve society (not investors), and not the other way around. I'm not saying all things this large should be non-profit, mind you, just that the kind of skimming that reddit is trying to do, where they think they can make a few bucks in profit per user through freeloading, while providing nothing in return, is neither helpful to society, and doesn't work anyway! There are more symbiotic for-profits that realize they need their communities to want them to succeed, and do okay. Put another way - for profits running hosting like Reddit where they think their profit is more important than the communities, and that they are the reason for the success of those communities, basically always fail. Those smart enough to realize neither of these are true sometimes can make a go of it.