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Usually I am anti-internet stunts like this. The vast majority of boycotts are dumb wastes of time. That said, Reddit should have built better mod tools before
by cm2012 3y ago
Usually I am anti-internet stunts like this. The vast majority of boycotts are dumb wastes of time.
That said, Reddit should have built better mod tools before making their api change.
I think people complaining about not having 3rd party apps to browse reddit is "meh". But moderators need to be able to do their jobs.
- rany_ 3y agoBesides this boycott is at best useless, most are only going offline for 48 hours; it should be permanent until they reverse the decision if they were being sincere.
- BrotherBisquick 3y agoReddit mods are addicted to power. If they don't ban anyone for 48 hours, they get the shakes.
- joobus 3y agoThe third-party apps shutting down on July 1st will be the real test. If Reddit notices a significant drop in traffic on that day, they will probably start walking back the change. I agree that this boycott, while the intention is good, won't do much.
- MostlyStable 3y agoUnless a large number of people who don't use 3rd party apps also leave in solidarity, it won't be a "significant drop". 3rd party apps make up quite a small amount of total traffic. And that's also assuming that TPA users _leave_ and don't just switch.
- michaelmrose 3y agoIf you have 10,000 users you have 1000 commenters, 100 people posting, and 10 moderators. If you keep 97% of your users but you lost half your mods, 25% of your posters and 7% of your commenters its going to lead to an eventual decline bigger than 3% and it can create a self re-enforcing trend because the people contributing to other networks can drag their connections along with them.
- philistine 3y agoThe true number to look at is not traffic, it’s moderation actions. The real problem is the site will get harder to moderate without the API. And it’s why you have the strike; Reddit is not at risk of dying, it’s at risk of becoming even worse that it already is.
- nomorewords 3y agoI don't think Reddit is doing anything based on that day's data. I suspect that they will wait for a month before starting to rely on the data for any long-term prospects.
- BeFlatXIII 3y agoThe real boycott is to stop moderating and let the place become a junkyard of spam and disinformation.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoOfficial stats showed that only 3% of moderation actions come from 3rd party apps, this was just a made up argument all along. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
- anonred 3y agoIt’s impressive what a determined, vocal minority can achieve with just a bit of drama. I hope this ends quickly so everyone else can get back to aimlessly doomscrolling on Reddit.
- appletrotter 3y agoIt’s impressive the power of a misleading statistic more like.
- jeremyjh 3y agoOh, well if spez says it, it must be true!
- michaelmrose 3y agoI know he is a paragon of virtue who would never use access to production to edit people's comments!
- appletrotter 3y agoThat’s for all actions, including auto moderator actions. I understand that the % of manual mod actions is closer to 30% on 3PA.
- anonred 3y agoDo you have a source for the 30% manual mod actions claim?
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
- michaelmrose 3y agoThe first party app is pretty garbage and the mobile experience tries to continually redirect you to the garbage app. Honestly if that was the only experience available I never would have started using reddit.
- breadsniffer01 3y agoAfaik, mods get free Reddit API usage for any tools. There’s been some misinformation being thrown around that claims they also are subject to the API price changes.
- 8organicbits 3y agoSource? My concern is that the 3rd party tools will shutdown or stagnate if usage drops to basically just mods. Reddit doesn't support mods, so it's looking grim.
- thefourthchime 3y agoIf they hadn't blatantly tried to slander him personally and had given a reasonable price or timeline for the price changes, people wouldn't be nearly as upset. All of this has left a sour taste in their mouths. They also see the writing on the wall; they'll shut down old.reddit.com, push more ads via the official app, and continue to milk as much money as possible. The claim that it's not profitable seems kind of crazy to me. They have a huge amount of data on their users to target ads. It's mostly text content so the bandwidth shouldn't be horrible. Maybe I'm naive, but how can Facebook make so much money and yet they can't make a profit? It smells like poor management to me.
- cm2012 3y agoI can answer your last question. Very few reddit users (as a % of the whole) actually subscribe to advertiser-valuable subreddits. Any targeted ads on Reddit have tiny tiny inventories. The rest of the ad inventory is more or less anonymous and gives very poor roi to spend ads against. That's why Reddit has a total revenue of like $100m vs $50b+ for facebook.
- thefourthchime 3y agoI appreciate that insight. Thank you.
- graeme 3y agoI mod a sub with high advertiser value. Just checked without ad block. Reddit it showing completely untargeted irrelevant ads to the userbase. Maybe they're doing some sophisticated tracking of users by interest and showing relevant ads there but somehow I doubt it.