6 ms·

Is the inevitable fate of any social media site to be antagonistic to its most dedicated users?

maccard 3y ago
I don't know if it's inevitable, but it's clear at this point that people are unwilling to pay $ for access to the content in the forms we know now. I think until we find a better way of having people pay for content and curation, we're likely to see this happen again. That said, Reddit has (so far) lasted a decade on the throne, which is a third of the life of the www. It's not like there's anoter competitor sitting there ready to dethrone it so I suspect it's here for another while.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  When was a last time a big and popular social mediaish or like platform properly died? Media companies have not survived, but platforms seem to have been sticky or then I just haven't used them.
  - philistine 3y ago
    I would be interest in seeing Pinterest’s usage numbers. That place has turned into a Wish.com ad farm faster than you can blink.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  So I think it's relatively clear that Reddit doesn't _want_ to reach some kind of deal with 3rd party apps, but honestly, I think that if they _had_ wanted that, most of these apps could have survived with a much smaller userbase of paying customers. I would have paid the $3-5/month it would have cost to keep my preferred app. And while yes, it definitely would have been fewer people, my guess is that it would have been enough to worth continuing. And if Reddit had been willing to figure out some kind of deal with ads, it might have been even more.
fnimick 3y ago
Yes: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ First, platforms are good to users to attract them. Then, they abuse users to attract advertisers. Then, once they think they have a moat, they abuse both sides to extract as much money as possible before it all crashes down.
- chx 3y ago
  It is astonishing to watch the enshittification of Reddit and StackExchange at the same time. I would say, as much as there is such a thing and it can be dated, Jun 9, 2023 was the end of Web 2.0 -- we found out reddit is not backing down and SE has disabled the backup job to archive.org. For SE the death march to enshittification has been much clearer, starting with the hiring of the new CEO, the firing of community managers to recently first completely ignoring and then going against the community on AI. Reddit just has been mostly wasting their time and money until they realized they need to make money and as Doctorow says, the siren song of enshittification is irresistible.
  - ItsMonkk 3y ago
    This is not happening at the same time by pure chance. Once the Fed turned off the free money, all of the negative profit companies need to adapt or die.
    - chx 3y ago
      Yeah but it's surprising to see neither have better ideas.
  - Systemmanic 3y ago
    [dead]
- mostlysimilar 3y ago
  Link to the same article on his personal blog: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys Why? It's right the header: > No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.
yanderekko 3y ago
When the most dedicated users are fundamentally hostile to the idea that the social media site may need to limit features for the sake of profitability, it seems likely. Rhetorically the activists here are a step or two away from treating Reddit as a public utility and free API access as a human right. At least until they shift focus to finding wrongthinkers that they want to ban again, then we'll shift back to the usual "it's a private platform sweetie and your presence has negative value" smugness.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  You are fighting a straw man you yourself erected. Nobody believes they have a right to reddit but nor does reddit have a right to viewership. They are trying to leverage the value their communities bring to the platform. There is nothing morally wrong with this.
  - yanderekko 3y ago
    >Nobody believes they have a right to reddit When people castigate the mere idea that Reddit should be trying to guarantee a return to its investors - and I can point you to examples of this if you wish - it's hard to interpret this as anything other than people saying that their interest to unfettered API access is more important than the interest that investors have in a positive ROI. I guess you could say that this isn't establishing a "right to Reddit" but that seems like hair-splitting to me - "we don't have a right to Reddit but anything that would take Reddit away from us would be evil."
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      > t's hard to interpret this as anything other than people saying that their interest to unfettered API access is more important than the interest that investors have in a positive ROI. Reddit is removing all api access to for-profit apps. Anyone willing to pay who contacted reddit has been ignored. By acting in bad-faith, they lost all moral ground at all.
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
atemerev 3y ago
Yes, if you want to keep that sweet growth. If you are OK staying where you are as a relatively niche outlet (like HN), you are safe. But transitioning to the general public stage will require you to sell your soul. No getting around that.
CSMastermind 3y ago
I've long thought that the only way to make a sustainable social media platform is to have it be controlled by its contributors. Governance is human problem and not a technical one. We have a few millennia of experience organizing and governing human effort, yet the control structure of every subreddit is akin to some kind of Oligarchy with unelected moderators wielding considerable power. These moderators in turn are at the mercy of the Oligarchical Reddit admins. A better system would be to offer different governance types as a choice for organizing the subreddit. Have different types of built in voting mechanisms if people want to use them but still allow 'dictator' subreddits if people want to use them. Set up a revenue sharing system where each subreddit gets the portion of money they generate for Reddit. Allow the governance structure the subreddit has decided on to dictate the way those funds are split between moderators and contributors. Then set up some sort of governance structure that rolls up the Subreddits. As an American I'm biased towards the way the US does things but I'm sure there are other good ways to do this as well. You could have the equivalent to 'states' similar to the sections of a newspaper: Sports, Entertainment, Money, Technology, Travel, etc. with the equivalent of 'counties' within those (football, baseball, basketball or books, video games, movies, etc). Replace the corporate Reddit structure with the equivalent of a federal government: have the 'states' hold a 'constitutional convention' and delimit powers that the corporation should have and reserve every other right to the individual 'states'. Then you can have some kind of election system that governs the corporation, CEO being equivalent to president, etc. Then you have a system that broadly aligns the interests of the participants and provides mechanisms for information to be transmitted when needed for decision making. --- The other problem that social media needs to solve is that of anonymity and content presentation. Here I think Reddit fails by having a global karma count instead of one that's localized to the 'state' and subreddit you're on. If they did that then users could actually gain reputation and credibility within the context of a space. They also should offer identity services that allow the verification of information like employment, citizenship, education, etc. that some subreddits have their own haphazard mechanisms for verifying. This would allow moderators to leverage this type of credential more easily and users to have more trust in sharing them (because they're sharing with Reddit proper not some random subreddit moderator). Finally, they should have some sort of verification system that lets users tie their accounts to their real identity. Obviously anonymous accounts should still be allowed but this type of verification system tamps down on many of the problems that social media platforms face. --- If anyone wants to fund the development of a platform like this let me know lol
cragfar 3y ago
This is 99% manufactured drama by the power mods wanting to be able to keep modding 100+ subreddits with their 3rd party tools and AI companies wanting to mine reddit data for free. The fact that Spez has let them do it for this long has probably put him in the hot seat.
- TX81Z 3y ago
  The fact that he isn’t keeping his free labor force happy is the problem. Other companies put hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of staff into moderation. This moron has people doing that FOR FREE and he’s pissing them off. Seriously, do you have any clue how much just YouTube alone spends on content moderation? Or Facebook? These are absolutely massive investments.
  - cragfar 3y ago
    There's always another power hungry person to step up. The site would probably be better if the entire crop were removed outright. How many social media websites have you used where you can't even comment on a basic news forum for the first two months?
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      Why don't you mod then? Everyone thinks it is an easy job with all these 'power' perks, then when they get onboard they figure out it is actually a lot of work and mostly just pissing people off because you can never please everyone. It is like people who say 'those who cannot do, teach'. Hey, maybe teaching is hard work and most people suck at it? The type of person who thinks mods are all power tripper do-badders who could be easily replaced is usually the type of person who doesn't bother reading the rules of the community before posting, or who resorts instantly to insults in disagreements, or who think it is funny to piss people off.
      - cragfar 3y ago
        Do you even use reddit? I'm genuinely curious because your post comes off as someone who doesn't know how it works. To be a mod I would have to cozy up to the current mods and play politics to become one. I was banned from r/news years ago for saying the migrant caravan existed in response to a comment saying there was no evidence that migrant caravans existed and linked one of the multiple videos. The message was simply "get out" followed by a presumptive muting so I couldn't respond to it. I was also blanket banned from ~70 subs because I made one post correcting someone in r/nonewnormal.
JasserInicide 3y ago
That's just how most VC-funded projects run. Give away the product for free to build a community. Once it's large enough, start building the real money making products and start exploiting said community. Then IPO/get acquired and fuck off with money.
freediver 3y ago
That is true of any business, as long as the business model does not align incentives.

I don't know if it's inevitable, but it's clear at this point that people are unwilling to pay $ for access to the content in the forms we know now. I think until we find a better way of having people pay for content and curation, we're likely to see this happen again. That said, Reddit has (so far) lasted a decade on the throne, which is a third of the life of the www. It's not like there's anoter competitor sitting there ready to dethrone it so I suspect it's here for another while.

Ekaros 3y ago
When was a last time a big and popular social mediaish or like platform properly died? Media companies have not survived, but platforms seem to have been sticky or then I just haven't used them.
- philistine 3y ago
  I would be interest in seeing Pinterest’s usage numbers. That place has turned into a Wish.com ad farm faster than you can blink.
MostlyStable 3y ago
So I think it's relatively clear that Reddit doesn't _want_ to reach some kind of deal with 3rd party apps, but honestly, I think that if they _had_ wanted that, most of these apps could have survived with a much smaller userbase of paying customers. I would have paid the $3-5/month it would have cost to keep my preferred app. And while yes, it definitely would have been fewer people, my guess is that it would have been enough to worth continuing. And if Reddit had been willing to figure out some kind of deal with ads, it might have been even more.

fnimick 3y ago

Yes: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ First, platforms are good to users to attract them. Then, they abuse users to attract advertisers. Then, once they think they have a moat, they abuse both sides to extract as much money as possible before it all crashes down.

chx 3y ago
It is astonishing to watch the enshittification of Reddit and StackExchange at the same time. I would say, as much as there is such a thing and it can be dated, Jun 9, 2023 was the end of Web 2.0 -- we found out reddit is not backing down and SE has disabled the backup job to archive.org. For SE the death march to enshittification has been much clearer, starting with the hiring of the new CEO, the firing of community managers to recently first completely ignoring and then going against the community on AI. Reddit just has been mostly wasting their time and money until they realized they need to make money and as Doctorow says, the siren song of enshittification is irresistible.
- ItsMonkk 3y ago
  This is not happening at the same time by pure chance. Once the Fed turned off the free money, all of the negative profit companies need to adapt or die.
  - chx 3y ago
    Yeah but it's surprising to see neither have better ideas.
- Systemmanic 3y ago
  [dead]
mostlysimilar 3y ago
Link to the same article on his personal blog: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys Why? It's right the header: > No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.

yanderekko 3y ago

When the most dedicated users are fundamentally hostile to the idea that the social media site may need to limit features for the sake of profitability, it seems likely. Rhetorically the activists here are a step or two away from treating Reddit as a public utility and free API access as a human right. At least until they shift focus to finding wrongthinkers that they want to ban again, then we'll shift back to the usual "it's a private platform sweetie and your presence has negative value" smugness.

michaelmrose 3y ago
You are fighting a straw man you yourself erected. Nobody believes they have a right to reddit but nor does reddit have a right to viewership. They are trying to leverage the value their communities bring to the platform. There is nothing morally wrong with this.
- yanderekko 3y ago
  >Nobody believes they have a right to reddit When people castigate the mere idea that Reddit should be trying to guarantee a return to its investors - and I can point you to examples of this if you wish - it's hard to interpret this as anything other than people saying that their interest to unfettered API access is more important than the interest that investors have in a positive ROI. I guess you could say that this isn't establishing a "right to Reddit" but that seems like hair-splitting to me - "we don't have a right to Reddit but anything that would take Reddit away from us would be evil."
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    > t's hard to interpret this as anything other than people saying that their interest to unfettered API access is more important than the interest that investors have in a positive ROI. Reddit is removing all api access to for-profit apps. Anyone willing to pay who contacted reddit has been ignored. By acting in bad-faith, they lost all moral ground at all.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago

atemerev 3y ago

Yes, if you want to keep that sweet growth. If you are OK staying where you are as a relatively niche outlet (like HN), you are safe. But transitioning to the general public stage will require you to sell your soul. No getting around that.

CSMastermind 3y ago

I've long thought that the only way to make a sustainable social media platform is to have it be controlled by its contributors. Governance is human problem and not a technical one. We have a few millennia of experience organizing and governing human effort, yet the control structure of every subreddit is akin to some kind of Oligarchy with unelected moderators wielding considerable power. These moderators in turn are at the mercy of the Oligarchical Reddit admins. A better system would be to offer different governance types as a choice for organizing the subreddit. Have different types of built in voting mechanisms if people want to use them but still allow 'dictator' subreddits if people want to use them. Set up a revenue sharing system where each subreddit gets the portion of money they generate for Reddit. Allow the governance structure the subreddit has decided on to dictate the way those funds are split between moderators and contributors. Then set up some sort of governance structure that rolls up the Subreddits. As an American I'm biased towards the way the US does things but I'm sure there are other good ways to do this as well. You could have the equivalent to 'states' similar to the sections of a newspaper: Sports, Entertainment, Money, Technology, Travel, etc. with the equivalent of 'counties' within those (football, baseball, basketball or books, video games, movies, etc). Replace the corporate Reddit structure with the equivalent of a federal government: have the 'states' hold a 'constitutional convention' and delimit powers that the corporation should have and reserve every other right to the individual 'states'. Then you can have some kind of election system that governs the corporation, CEO being equivalent to president, etc. Then you have a system that broadly aligns the interests of the participants and provides mechanisms for information to be transmitted when needed for decision making. --- The other problem that social media needs to solve is that of anonymity and content presentation. Here I think Reddit fails by having a global karma count instead of one that's localized to the 'state' and subreddit you're on. If they did that then users could actually gain reputation and credibility within the context of a space. They also should offer identity services that allow the verification of information like employment, citizenship, education, etc. that some subreddits have their own haphazard mechanisms for verifying. This would allow moderators to leverage this type of credential more easily and users to have more trust in sharing them (because they're sharing with Reddit proper not some random subreddit moderator). Finally, they should have some sort of verification system that lets users tie their accounts to their real identity. Obviously anonymous accounts should still be allowed but this type of verification system tamps down on many of the problems that social media platforms face. --- If anyone wants to fund the development of a platform like this let me know lol

cragfar 3y ago

This is 99% manufactured drama by the power mods wanting to be able to keep modding 100+ subreddits with their 3rd party tools and AI companies wanting to mine reddit data for free. The fact that Spez has let them do it for this long has probably put him in the hot seat.

TX81Z 3y ago
The fact that he isn’t keeping his free labor force happy is the problem. Other companies put hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of staff into moderation. This moron has people doing that FOR FREE and he’s pissing them off. Seriously, do you have any clue how much just YouTube alone spends on content moderation? Or Facebook? These are absolutely massive investments.
- cragfar 3y ago
  There's always another power hungry person to step up. The site would probably be better if the entire crop were removed outright. How many social media websites have you used where you can't even comment on a basic news forum for the first two months?
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Why don't you mod then? Everyone thinks it is an easy job with all these 'power' perks, then when they get onboard they figure out it is actually a lot of work and mostly just pissing people off because you can never please everyone. It is like people who say 'those who cannot do, teach'. Hey, maybe teaching is hard work and most people suck at it? The type of person who thinks mods are all power tripper do-badders who could be easily replaced is usually the type of person who doesn't bother reading the rules of the community before posting, or who resorts instantly to insults in disagreements, or who think it is funny to piss people off.
    - cragfar 3y ago
      Do you even use reddit? I'm genuinely curious because your post comes off as someone who doesn't know how it works. To be a mod I would have to cozy up to the current mods and play politics to become one. I was banned from r/news years ago for saying the migrant caravan existed in response to a comment saying there was no evidence that migrant caravans existed and linked one of the multiple videos. The message was simply "get out" followed by a presumptive muting so I couldn't respond to it. I was also blanket banned from ~70 subs because I made one post correcting someone in r/nonewnormal.

JasserInicide 3y ago

That's just how most VC-funded projects run. Give away the product for free to build a community. Once it's large enough, start building the real money making products and start exploiting said community. Then IPO/get acquired and fuck off with money.

freediver 3y ago

That is true of any business, as long as the business model does not align incentives.