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> It convinces itself it has a right to profit here, but it really created almost none of the value. I used to believe that too, but reality has convinced me o

by p-e-w 3y ago

> It convinces itself it has a right to profit here, but it really created almost none of the value. I used to believe that too, but reality has convinced me of the opposite. There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity. So the really difficult part, the one where the value ultimately comes from, does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users. If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it. The demise of Reddit has been a long time coming, and now that it is actually happening, there is once again no plan for "the community" to move forward. The open source alternatives are all effectively worthless, with Lemmy apparently telling people not to sign up (yep, seriously!) because they can't handle the influx. No doubt Facebook & Co, or perhaps new commercial competitors, are going to pick up the slack as usual, because the real value is in the infrastructure and network effects that make platforms like Reddit possible in the first place.

dirkt 3y ago
> There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity. Usenet.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  Usenet has/had hundreds of millions of active users?!? That's certainly news to me.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    I can’t find anyone who says how many users, but 110-120 thousand newsgroups.
    - akiselev 3y ago
      With a tenth active users and ten times the spammers!
- Auracle 3y ago
  Which is just absolutely full of spam now, plus you need to pay for access (largely).
- hackernewds 3y ago
  How about "email"? Do people forget it's a common protocol that isn't monopolized by anyone and is the widest prevalent even today, perhaps because of it?
  - ketzu 3y ago
    I don't think many people consider "email" to be a community in any meaningful way. The same way people don't consider physical mail, the telephone network or the internet as a whole a community.
hgs3 3y ago
> If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it. While not a message board, the Wikimedia Foundation does well financially, hosts lots of content, receives massive traffic, and has an open API. > So the really difficult part, the one where the value ultimately comes from, does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users. Federated authentication and open protocols are a thing. Imagine the internet of old with countless message boards, but under a single sign on. As far as content moderation, folks talk a lot about AI and the spam it will bring, however, there is also the opportunity for AI moderation.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > Federated authentication and open protocols are a thing. In theory, yes. In practice, they are a niche endeavor used by a bunch of hackers and computer science nerds. Lemmy is constantly mentioned in these discussions as an open source, federated Reddit alternative, yet the largest Lemmy instance has 1500 monthly active users. That's... nothing. There are tens of thousands of individual subreddits bigger than that. The "Fediverse" isn't going anywhere.
  - hgs3 3y ago
    The beauty of open protocols is they don't preclude for-profit enterprise hosting large instances on their own server farm. This is already the case with email: I can host my own email server or signup with a small (or large) or free (or commercial) email provider and still communicate with everyone, regardless of their provider.
    - p-e-w 3y ago
      It's generally not in the interest of commercial providers to use open protocols. They do it for email because due to its history, there is a very long tail of small mailservers that they need to federate with to be useful, but the big email providers are all working to phase out the "open" parts, with anti-spam measures making it almost impossible to self-host, and privileged delivery mechanisms like push notifications that require closed APIs to use. The Internet is not moving towards open communication protocols, it's moving away from them.
jaimex2 3y ago
4chan
mnsc 3y ago
Is it reddit by itself that does the "attracting users" part or is it the community activity, aka the users?
hackerlight 3y ago
> I used to believe that too, but reality has convinced me of the opposite. There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity. So the really difficult part, the one where the value ultimately comes from, does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users. If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it. Your logic is: there has never been a not-for-profit large online community, therefore the value comes from the specific for-profit company that currently exists. That is unconvincing because it is overly specific in who it is attributing value to. Is Facebook responsible for most of the value of its community? No, because if Facebook didn't exist, Myspace would still exist and do the same thing that Facebook is doing. Therefore, Facebook (and Myspace) are both not creating the value, because if they didn't exist, someone else would exist that does the same thing. The main reason there's one behemoth is because of network effects, which makes it nearly impossible for competition to start, which gives the illusion that that behemoth is doing something unique and exceptionally skilful. But they are not. One valid interpretation is that they're free-riding off the community that they've captured.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > Your logic is: there has never been a not-for-profit large online community, therefore the value comes from the specific for-profit company that currently exists. No, my logic is: there has never been a not-for-profit large online community, therefore the value comes from infrastructure, network effects, and brand recognition – and not from "the community" as commonly claimed. Once the infrastructure is in place (which requires immense upfront investment) and enough money is spent on promotion, the userbase will cross the critical threshold required for growth, and content will be generated as a result. Just think about it: If it's really "the users" that bring all the value to the table, then why can't those users manage to organize into a community that's not run by greedy profiteers? Because the "running" is where the real difficulty, and thus the real source of value, is.
  - hackerlight 3y ago
    > infrastructure, network effects, and brand recognition That's reasonable, but then you leap from there into giving credit to Reddit per se, instead of a Reddit-like company that would exist in Reddit's place if Reddit didn't exist. That's where we disagree. In Reddit's absence, another company would rise to do the same thing, therefore Reddit is providing little to no unique value to the world. The delta of the world with and without Reddit is close to zero. Hence no value. > If it's really "the users" that bring all the value to the table, then why can't those users manage to organize into a community that's not run by greedy profiteers? Because the "running" is where the real difficulty, and thus the real source of value, is. This is a conflation of necessary and sufficient conditions. Infrastructure, by itself, is a necessary but not sufficient condition. So are users. Either of these things in isolation have no value because neither of them are sufficient conditions.
adrianN 3y ago
Is a company that exists for a decade without turning a profit really a for-profit entity? It looks more like a robin hood scheme to distribute investor money to developers.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  > According to CEO Steve Huffman, who hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) this afternoon, the company has never been profitable. Why would anyone invest in this IPO they are trying so hard to make happen? I can’t think of anything left for them to do after this length of time to become profitable. The only things left are the things they are doing that alienate the user base. It seems Reddit is Uber and WeWork with a different hat on.
JCharante 3y ago
No not seriously. The big instances restricted account creation so people use lower trafficked instances
leokennis 3y ago
The thing is, the site itself while not easy to build or maintain is ultimately a commodity. Reddit replaced Digg. Some other startup will replace Reddit. It’s the users and the content they produce that’s irreplaceable. Maybe sites like this will only be able to function in the long run if there is some profit sharing involved. Every user gets X ads in their feed every month, and for every 5X posts or 50X comments one ad disappears.
DannyBee 3y ago
" There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity." What? Sure there have been. Somethingawful? 4chan? Wikipedia? Usenet? etc They each commanded a significant portion of the attention of the community on the internet at the time. If you don't limit it to hundreds of millions, i belong to mid-sized successful communities (woodworking, electrical, DIY, etc) that are maybe 100k-1 million users, doing fine, have been doing fine for decades, and don't have for-profit entities behind them. In fact, almost all meaningful communities i have belonged to online were not run by for-profit entities. Some later got taken over by for-profit entities, but then failed ;) "does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users. If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it." This is not at all related to the for-profit piece. The difficulty is in becoming popular, which seems to be, maybe mostly luck? Because unlike what you say, everyone is doing it. Is there any evidence at all that the for-profit was a pre-req to being popular? In a world where reddit was not for-profit from the start, i don't think it would have changed anything. It was a place that most Digg users were willing to go to. That was dumb luck. If Digg had not been so stupid, Reddit would not be popular, for-profit or not.

by p-e-w 3y ago

dirkt 3y ago

> There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity. Usenet.

p-e-w 3y ago
Usenet has/had hundreds of millions of active users?!? That's certainly news to me.
- hinkley 3y ago
  I can’t find anyone who says how many users, but 110-120 thousand newsgroups.
  - akiselev 3y ago
    With a tenth active users and ten times the spammers!
Auracle 3y ago
Which is just absolutely full of spam now, plus you need to pay for access (largely).
hackernewds 3y ago
How about "email"? Do people forget it's a common protocol that isn't monopolized by anyone and is the widest prevalent even today, perhaps because of it?
- ketzu 3y ago
  I don't think many people consider "email" to be a community in any meaningful way. The same way people don't consider physical mail, the telephone network or the internet as a whole a community.

hgs3 3y ago

> If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it. While not a message board, the Wikimedia Foundation does well financially, hosts lots of content, receives massive traffic, and has an open API. > So the really difficult part, the one where the value ultimately comes from, does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users. Federated authentication and open protocols are a thing. Imagine the internet of old with countless message boards, but under a single sign on. As far as content moderation, folks talk a lot about AI and the spam it will bring, however, there is also the opportunity for AI moderation.

p-e-w 3y ago
> Federated authentication and open protocols are a thing. In theory, yes. In practice, they are a niche endeavor used by a bunch of hackers and computer science nerds. Lemmy is constantly mentioned in these discussions as an open source, federated Reddit alternative, yet the largest Lemmy instance has 1500 monthly active users. That's... nothing. There are tens of thousands of individual subreddits bigger than that. The "Fediverse" isn't going anywhere.
- hgs3 3y ago
  The beauty of open protocols is they don't preclude for-profit enterprise hosting large instances on their own server farm. This is already the case with email: I can host my own email server or signup with a small (or large) or free (or commercial) email provider and still communicate with everyone, regardless of their provider.
  - p-e-w 3y ago
    It's generally not in the interest of commercial providers to use open protocols. They do it for email because due to its history, there is a very long tail of small mailservers that they need to federate with to be useful, but the big email providers are all working to phase out the "open" parts, with anti-spam measures making it almost impossible to self-host, and privileged delivery mechanisms like push notifications that require closed APIs to use. The Internet is not moving towards open communication protocols, it's moving away from them.

jaimex2 3y ago

4chan

mnsc 3y ago

Is it reddit by itself that does the "attracting users" part or is it the community activity, aka the users?

hackerlight 3y ago

> I used to believe that too, but reality has convinced me of the opposite. There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity. So the really difficult part, the one where the value ultimately comes from, does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users. If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it. Your logic is: there has never been a not-for-profit large online community, therefore the value comes from the specific for-profit company that currently exists. That is unconvincing because it is overly specific in who it is attributing value to. Is Facebook responsible for most of the value of its community? No, because if Facebook didn't exist, Myspace would still exist and do the same thing that Facebook is doing. Therefore, Facebook (and Myspace) are both not creating the value, because if they didn't exist, someone else would exist that does the same thing. The main reason there's one behemoth is because of network effects, which makes it nearly impossible for competition to start, which gives the illusion that that behemoth is doing something unique and exceptionally skilful. But they are not. One valid interpretation is that they're free-riding off the community that they've captured.

p-e-w 3y ago
> Your logic is: there has never been a not-for-profit large online community, therefore the value comes from the specific for-profit company that currently exists. No, my logic is: there has never been a not-for-profit large online community, therefore the value comes from infrastructure, network effects, and brand recognition – and not from "the community" as commonly claimed. Once the infrastructure is in place (which requires immense upfront investment) and enough money is spent on promotion, the userbase will cross the critical threshold required for growth, and content will be generated as a result. Just think about it: If it's really "the users" that bring all the value to the table, then why can't those users manage to organize into a community that's not run by greedy profiteers? Because the "running" is where the real difficulty, and thus the real source of value, is.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  > infrastructure, network effects, and brand recognition That's reasonable, but then you leap from there into giving credit to Reddit per se, instead of a Reddit-like company that would exist in Reddit's place if Reddit didn't exist. That's where we disagree. In Reddit's absence, another company would rise to do the same thing, therefore Reddit is providing little to no unique value to the world. The delta of the world with and without Reddit is close to zero. Hence no value. > If it's really "the users" that bring all the value to the table, then why can't those users manage to organize into a community that's not run by greedy profiteers? Because the "running" is where the real difficulty, and thus the real source of value, is. This is a conflation of necessary and sufficient conditions. Infrastructure, by itself, is a necessary but not sufficient condition. So are users. Either of these things in isolation have no value because neither of them are sufficient conditions.

adrianN 3y ago

Is a company that exists for a decade without turning a profit really a for-profit entity? It looks more like a robin hood scheme to distribute investor money to developers.

Mistletoe 3y ago
> According to CEO Steve Huffman, who hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) this afternoon, the company has never been profitable. Why would anyone invest in this IPO they are trying so hard to make happen? I can’t think of anything left for them to do after this length of time to become profitable. The only things left are the things they are doing that alienate the user base. It seems Reddit is Uber and WeWork with a different hat on.

JCharante 3y ago

No not seriously. The big instances restricted account creation so people use lower trafficked instances

leokennis 3y ago

The thing is, the site itself while not easy to build or maintain is ultimately a commodity. Reddit replaced Digg. Some other startup will replace Reddit. It’s the users and the content they produce that’s irreplaceable. Maybe sites like this will only be able to function in the long run if there is some profit sharing involved. Every user gets X ads in their feed every month, and for every 5X posts or 50X comments one ad disappears.

DannyBee 3y ago

" There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity." What? Sure there have been. Somethingawful? 4chan? Wikipedia? Usenet? etc They each commanded a significant portion of the attention of the community on the internet at the time. If you don't limit it to hundreds of millions, i belong to mid-sized successful communities (woodworking, electrical, DIY, etc) that are maybe 100k-1 million users, doing fine, have been doing fine for decades, and don't have for-profit entities behind them. In fact, almost all meaningful communities i have belonged to online were not run by for-profit entities. Some later got taken over by for-profit entities, but then failed ;) "does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users. If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it." This is not at all related to the for-profit piece. The difficulty is in becoming popular, which seems to be, maybe mostly luck? Because unlike what you say, everyone is doing it. Is there any evidence at all that the for-profit was a pre-req to being popular? In a world where reddit was not for-profit from the start, i don't think it would have changed anything. It was a place that most Digg users were willing to go to. That was dumb luck. If Digg had not been so stupid, Reddit would not be popular, for-profit or not.