4 ms·

The stupidest part of all of this is all Reddit's problems are self inflicted. Reddit the company produces almost nothing. Reddit the users make the site what i

The stupidest part of all of this is all Reddit's problems are self inflicted. Reddit the company produces almost nothing. Reddit the users make the site what it is. The users submit all the content, make all the comments, and moderate the site. Reddit's executives however seem to think they are somehow critical to Reddit's existence and utility. If they all got replaced tomorrow with competent people no one would fucking notice. Everyone would notice if all of Reddit's users disappeared tomorrow. Reddit is making the same stupid value estimation Digg made.

dorkwood 3y ago
Well to be fair, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else for all these users to go, right? So the executives do provide something.
- d4mi3n 3y ago
  Reddit has about as much technical complexity in its core product as Twitter—both can be trivially cloned. Alternatives exist. It’s the network effects that made Reddit valuable: the people, communities, 3rd-party clients, platform integrations, etc. Most of these things are fairly portable, so I think Reddit execs are mainly gambling in users not wanting to bother with finding a new place to gather. I have to wonder why they didn’t just start off charging reasonable prices for the API and dial things up over time. Crummy either way, but less likely to alienate literally everyone they depend on to make the system work.
  - dorkwood 3y ago
    I’ll admit I don’t know much about the back end. I’m not that sort of dev. Is anyone working on a reddit clone to deploy, then? If there was ever a time, it’s now.
    - TheAnachronism 3y ago
      There exists Lemmy, which is a fediverse alternative. From what I've heard, the development of it, is a bit messy, but it seems to work well enough and has potential.
  - matkoniecz 3y ago
    > both can be trivially cloned. Alternatives exist Trivially? No. As can be seen by lack of alternatives of comparable quality.
    - sebzim4500 3y ago
      I think it would be pretty easy to make a clone, but everyone who tries seems to end up getting nerdsniped making something federated instead.
      - fsflover 3y ago
        Only federation defends from what is now happening with Reddit. See Freenode and Libera Chat.
        sebzim4500 3y ago
        Reddit was great for a decade, why can't we just switch website every 10 years?
        fsflover 3y ago
        Because you usually loose a large part of the community on the way?
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        I'm fine with that. Massive popularity is a poison pill.
        mtrower 3y ago
        Not only do you lose the community as already mentioned, but you lose the accumulated data (i.e. post content). This might not matter for a social community; it matters a lot if the community is of a more technical nature; i.e. repair/modding, analysis, etc. A lot of really great and useful content has been lost over the years due to forums going dark; lose a site like reddit and... my god. It's just really a huge step backward. N.B. I have no love for reddit. I generally hate reddit, the site. However there's a massive amount of useful content there.

dorkwood 3y ago

Well to be fair, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else for all these users to go, right? So the executives do provide something.

d4mi3n 3y ago
Reddit has about as much technical complexity in its core product as Twitter—both can be trivially cloned. Alternatives exist. It’s the network effects that made Reddit valuable: the people, communities, 3rd-party clients, platform integrations, etc. Most of these things are fairly portable, so I think Reddit execs are mainly gambling in users not wanting to bother with finding a new place to gather. I have to wonder why they didn’t just start off charging reasonable prices for the API and dial things up over time. Crummy either way, but less likely to alienate literally everyone they depend on to make the system work.
- dorkwood 3y ago
  I’ll admit I don’t know much about the back end. I’m not that sort of dev. Is anyone working on a reddit clone to deploy, then? If there was ever a time, it’s now.
  - TheAnachronism 3y ago
    There exists Lemmy, which is a fediverse alternative. From what I've heard, the development of it, is a bit messy, but it seems to work well enough and has potential.
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  > both can be trivially cloned. Alternatives exist Trivially? No. As can be seen by lack of alternatives of comparable quality.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    I think it would be pretty easy to make a clone, but everyone who tries seems to end up getting nerdsniped making something federated instead.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      Only federation defends from what is now happening with Reddit. See Freenode and Libera Chat.
      - sebzim4500 3y ago
        Reddit was great for a decade, why can't we just switch website every 10 years?
        fsflover 3y ago
        Because you usually loose a large part of the community on the way?
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        I'm fine with that. Massive popularity is a poison pill.
        mtrower 3y ago
        Not only do you lose the community as already mentioned, but you lose the accumulated data (i.e. post content). This might not matter for a social community; it matters a lot if the community is of a more technical nature; i.e. repair/modding, analysis, etc. A lot of really great and useful content has been lost over the years due to forums going dark; lose a site like reddit and... my god. It's just really a huge step backward. N.B. I have no love for reddit. I generally hate reddit, the site. However there's a massive amount of useful content there.