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Good. This works out for everybody except the brain dead C-level executives that tried to bully indie app developers. - regular people get a break from their e

by xyst 3y ago

Good. This works out for everybody except the brain dead C-level executives that tried to bully indie app developers. - regular people get a break from their echo chambers - VOLUNTEER mods get a break - journalists get their news article The only loser here is the corporation side. Significant loss of value from decreased user activity. Subsequent loss of revenue. Inability to extract as much value from the users data via comments and posts. I said this in another post but the existing CEO needs to get replaced. Maybe throw in a few other C—level executives to serve as additional blood sacrifices. Although I do foresee Reddit “super mods” forcibly removing the blackout through their backend, removing mod status from the “rebels” and inserting their own friendly mods until they can find replacements.

depereo 3y ago
I added reddit.com to my ublock filters - it was kind of an automatic click a few times a day and it's been a nice way to break the habit so strongly. I've got friends doing the same, and our microcommunity has formed around another platform already, after collectively losing reddit. It was so clearly a half-assed, badly thought out policy. No mention of mod tools. No mention of accessibility tools. No mention of research. Just 'API priced at ridiculous levels in 4 weeks'. They immediately had to walk a bunch of exemptions for those obvious considerations out. So extraordinarily half-assed. And for such a small sniff of revenue. They must be desperate.
- OldManRyan 3y ago
  I also added reddit to my ublock filters. Amazing how I never realized how often I go on autopilot and type reddit.com/r/whateversubreddit. If anyone else wants to do it, just add ||reddit.com^$all to your filters in ublock origin.
  - plsbenice34 3y ago
    Thanks, i just did it too since you made it easier to know how
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  I just logged out of my account everywhere, and turned off "remember me". It's shocking how I'm catching myself just reflexively, almost subconsciously alt-tabbing to Firefox and typing "reddit.com". Thanks, /u/spez, for helping me break the habit!
  - yamazakiwi 3y ago
    Breaking the muscle memory has been the hardest part for me. I don't have that much investment in Reddit succeeding and I'll be damned if I don't try to tap the app on my phone 3 or 4 times a day still, even after deleting.
    - CommitSyn 3y ago
      I deleted my account and my 3rd party app and I found myself reflexively tapping the now-empty spot on my home screen 5-10 times yesterday. Today I haven't and only went to the mobile site a couple times to see what's going on with the state of things, but left as soon as the first "Oops, this /r/AskReddit text-only post is NSFW, open in the app!" message came up. I have however visited HN and kbin 5-10x more today.
      - cgranier 3y ago
        I moved the Sync icon to a folder and replaced it with Hack (a hacker news app).
        yamazakiwi 3y ago
        Good idea, I've followed suit.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Replace re (enter) with ne (enter) and hang out in new. Hehe
    - CommitSyn 3y ago
- DSMan195276 3y ago
  The last part is really what gets me. How could they possibly get that far along with the plan of "charge for the API" without doing a basic analysis of all the stuff people currently use the API for? That really gives an indicating of where their focus is.
- thefourthchime 3y ago
  I deleted my 8yo account. It was right after someone downvoted me because pointed out something that broke with their opinion. That kind of summed up my view Reddit. Groupthink circle jerks. Why was I part of any of that??
  - housemusicfan 3y ago
    > It was right after someone downvoted me because pointed out something that broke with their opinion. It took you 8 years to realize that's how that place operates? Hell, that describes the culture on HN pretty well. Freewheeling downvoting was a flawed idea from the beginning. 20 years later it turns out Slashdot had the right model for moderation.
    - tester457 3y ago
      I've never used Slashdot, how is the moderation model superior?
      - function_seven 3y ago
        Instead of plain up- and downvotes, you rated a given comment with one of several positives (insightful, interesting, funny, informative) or negatives (troll, flamebait, offtopic) The best part was you could set your personal filters to exclude “funny” comments, or boost “offtopic” ones if you want. With thresholds! So the funniest stuff could still break through, but you didn’t have to wade through a million pun posts to find the serious comments. They also have a metamoderation system where others’ moderation choices are shown to you and you agree or disagree. Never seen another site like it. Kinda hope /. makes a resurgence.
        wmoser 3y ago
        If I remember correctly, you also couldn’t moderate on posts that you had commented on so it prevented using downvoting as extra signaling that others agreed with you in an argument. Also, you got 5 moderation points sort of randomly, you didn’t have the option to always be moderating. I browse Slashdot occasionally but once I found HN, the topics and discourse interested me here more, haven’t really spent much time there in years.
CincinnatiMan 3y ago
Your view is a little simplistic. There is plenty of useful information on Reddit. I'm a big fan of home-related subs for example, where a lot of trade-knowledgeable people seem to hang out. There is a wealth of information on subs like r/DIY, r/HomeImprovement, r/paint, r/woodworking, etc.
- majormajor 3y ago
  I've often wondered why people use Reddit for stuff like this since the information and conversation management and organizational tools seem vastly inferior to most any pre-Reddit forum software. My current working theory is largely that internet search is just broken. It's easier to search for subreddit once you're on Reddit than to wade out into the sea of SEO crap and try to find a live, reliable format on the broader web. Google+search+display ads at scale killed the web, now we're back to AOL.
  - WheatMillington 3y ago
    Everyone uses Reddit because everyone uses Reddit. Most people old enough to remember forums agree that forums were a dramatically better solution, but they're generally dead now (with some exceptions). Discourse is almost entirely Reddit or Facebook these days.
    - deely3 3y ago
      I can't agree that forums is dramatically better. I know/remember the feeling when you opens thread in forum with title that you are interested in just to see 200+ pages of slowly ongoing flamewar and spam.
    - asveikau 3y ago
      Forums were and are generally terrible. When you get a forum in a Google result, or for some topics where forums still are a major way to distribute information, usually you get a crowd of uninformed but confident people, paginated poorly, with a bunch of dead links. The worst is people who write or distribute code and use forum posts as a substitute for version control. That is still a thing in some niches.
rurp 3y ago
> Although I do foresee Reddit “super mods” forcibly removing the blackout through their backend, removing mod status from the “rebels” and inserting their own friendly mods until they can find replacements. I agree this is likely, which will extend the negative reactions further and alienate even more users. Unless Reddit execs do a 180 in the very near future I think the platform will be forever crippled. Large networks rarely die overnight and whatever happens they will still have a number of users for the foreseeable future, but the steady fade to irrelevance will begin in earnest. Power users drive a huge amount of content and moderation, and they are especially livid right now for good reason.
- ssl232 3y ago
  Where will reddit get enough mods to police the hundreds (thousands?) of subreddits each with tens of thousands of members that are rebelling against the API changes? Blocking/firing the existing mods would make the site descend into chaos.
  - a2tech 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - nomel 3y ago
      I recently learned this is actually something that college aged people do for extra cash.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Well they’ve already started doing it
    - deadso 3y ago
      Which subreddits?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
s1k3s 3y ago
It doesn't work out for everybody. Lots of high quality communities outside of reddit have been invaded by people looking for an alternative and as a result they are now fighting massive traffic spikes, spam or the general reddit hive-mind taking over their discussion.
- WheatMillington 3y ago
  Do you have any examples?
  - s1k3s 3y ago
    HN
  - malermeister 3y ago
    lemmy.world
  - hayst4ck 3y ago
    There is a noticeable uptick of barely concealed white supremacy here in the last 2 days. I would feel confident saying that the way upvotes and downvotes work on a cultural level has changed. We've had conservatives here forever, but I haven't seen people talk about things like "replacement theory". I think there's been a definite overton window shift towards the right wing. Yesterday there was a question where someone asked what /. is and there were 20 replies with "slashdot" in reddit style. I haven't seen a straight out of reddit comment thread like that for months. I've definitely found myself angrier reading hacker news than I have been in the months previous. I haven't figured out if that's more of a "we become what we behold" (https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb) or a real change.
    - theossuary 3y ago
      The right-wing bent on HN has been here for at least 5 years, probably longer. I haven't noticed it get worse, just more confident because its been allowed for so long.
6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
> The only loser here is the corporation side. I'm not convinced they lose out either. The front page doesn't really feel different than it did before. There are a handful of "Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself). Read more in the comments" posts, but I'm kinda blind to them the same way I'm blind to ads as I scroll past. Otherwise it just feels like any other day on reddit.
- lom 3y ago
  Completely disagree, my homepage is almost empty. I was looking at tents earlier and wanted to see reddit reviews but literally every single link was private. Reddit has to be noticing this.
- plorkyeran 3y ago
  The top ten things on /r/all is currently two articles about Trump and "Reddit is killing third party applications (and itself). Read more in the comments." from eight different subreddits.
- dmix 3y ago
  People thought the meltdowns over the various FB redesigns or [x] decisions would hurt FB too (there were many major ones). Most regular users on Reddit view it through feeds not individual subs. It’s very plausible the bulk won’t even notice, except when other people tell them it’s happening or it makes the news. Eventually others might wonder why they haven’t seen some sub posts recently but it will probably take a month or so. These are the people clicking ads and using their mobile app.
- WheatMillington 3y ago
  Are we using the same website? Reddit is devoid of any decent content right now, on account of the blackout.
  - tester457 3y ago
    But r/popular looks normal for the most part.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
SirMaster 3y ago
I don't think that's the only losers. As a mod I am getting messages from regular users who are desperate to see posts that have likely troubleshooting answers to problems they are having at work. Reddit is kind of a critical technical resource for some people and this is really hurting them at least right now.
- ribosometronome 3y ago
  Has there been any suggestion to update messages to suggest using the internet archive to see old posts?
  - SirMaster 3y ago
    Yep, I suggested that and I also suggested an IRC channel which I know to have active people that help with the same technical system that the sub does.
- dirtyid 3y ago
  Shopping for a phone plan last few days have been pretty annoying.
__loam 3y ago
If they forcibly replace mods, Reddit is dead.
- pyeri 3y ago
  That's a very dicey prediction to make. It might be dead in the long run but for now, the pent up traffic will all start flowing back to those subs. And who knows, who is to say if the newly installed mods are better or worse than the present ones? Maybe they will just be the same.
hn2017 3y ago
[dead]
hayst4ck 3y ago
You are clearly feeling very righteous, but I think you should temper your righteousness. You might want to consider that while spez may not be the best human, he has had a commendable commitment to free speech. The Reddit platform has been protecting speaking truth to power, and in this case that power is himself. He has the power to shut down anti-spez content on reddit and for the most part has let his platform be leveraged against him. Another executive won't matter because it's not the executives determining direction. It is the investors. It is the investors that want to destroy one of the last bastions of free speech on the internet. It is investors that don't want Reddit to be a platform for speaking truth to power because they are that power that truth would be spoken to. When people write posts like this, they are missing the forest for the trees. It is the investors who are to blame. The investors benefit when spez gets blamed and not themselves. I see no reason to think we would get a new CEO better than spez. I am not defending spez, I am not defending his edits of people's posts, but the fish rots from the top, and the investors are above the CEO. The investors are the party that deserves blame.
- shapefrog 3y ago
  > he has had a commendable commitment to free speech and a love of r/jailbait
  - CommitSyn 3y ago
    What 20 year old doesn't?
- killingtime74 3y ago
  If you want to go back to original sin then reddit should not have gone public and installed the investors as the ultimate power. Steve Huffman was one of the founders
  - hayst4ck 3y ago
    I'll give you that, but I also don't think it was clear at the time that "next quarters profit" culture would destroy everything good. The culture at the time was "growth is money" and "we can figure out how to monetize later." Today we have the knowledge that monetization requires enshittification, but I think there were dreams that monetization could succeed without enshittification, and now those dreams have died.
Animats 3y ago
"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! Let the ruling classes tremble!" Barron's reports that Reddit's potential IPO is now in trouble.[1] [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/reddit-stock-ipo-revolt-6e8fd4c8 https://www.barrons.com/articles/reddit-stock-ipo-revolt-6e8...
schlauerfox 3y ago
a certain reddit-astroturfing restaurant with a big campaign launching, must be less than pleased.
tiffanyg 3y ago
Agreed - good. Huffman / Reddit Inc. have misread this repeatedly. Just saw he's reportedly assured staff it will "blow over" and "hasn't hurt revenue". Wrong move. Completely avoidable PR disaster, and until the ego(s) driving all of this step back, they'll just keep making the situation worse. I will be extending my blackout on the site indefinitely. Just one of the dumbest PR / corporate comms debacles I've seen. Almost as though the Reddit execs saw what Twitter is doing and said "hold my beer".
jrnichols 3y ago
> journalists get their news article well, except for Buzzfeed, who seems to exist solely to repost Reddit threads with GIFs.
more_corn 3y ago
Maybe AI scabs?
pxmpxm 3y ago
Am I missing something - all reddit has to do is one code change to prevent subreddits from getting private or closed. Feels like a bunch of people are completely misreading their self-presumed social status and leverage. The content is what drives traffic and revenue, not their fungible volunteer labor.
- SirSourdough 3y ago
  Reddit forcing open the subreddits would result in massive backlash from moderators, who are often the main people providing content and enforcing content quality. It would crank the degree to which Reddit is tarnishing its reputation to 11. A very small portion of users are responsible for the majority of the content and community building on Reddit. I think you might be underestimating how reliant the 99% of users who don’t post top-level content or serve as moderators are on the 1% who do.
  - tmn 3y ago
    Maybe. I'm not sure though. Reddit has an organic way to grow it's user engagement. It didn't start out with all of these mods. The general mood/experience on reddit today is much chiller. A lot of the people susceptible to feelings of indignation are gone. I think it's very possible new mods / content contributors will grow organically, conforming to whatever in house tools reddit creates. But who knows, maybe it will go the way of digg.
- redsky880 3y ago
  That would make some communities public that had nothing to do with this protest
chaosjevil 3y ago
Blood sacrifices won't be enough, unless the sacrifice is the company as a whole. Oddly enough, the only time that Reddit managed to unite its userbase for a cause, that cause was against Reddit itself. Users might disagree on the best approach, but practically nobody trusts the company any more, it isn't just the CEO. That's specially bad for the company in the light of the IPO. >Although I do foresee Reddit “super mods” forcibly removing the blackout through their backend, removing mod status from the “rebels” and inserting their own friendly mods until they can find replacements. They could, but this would cause damage on its own. People might hate the current mods but they'd hate the sycophants even more.
redsky880 3y ago
End-users lose too. There's a lot of information that is now harder to find (assuming it's cached by a 3rd party) or not reachable at all.
raxxorraxor 3y ago
Reddit probably needs a way to monetize their platform, I have no idea how well their finances look. I think reddit did change for the worse though. Restrictions to speech and opinions, aggression if you deviate from the allegedly correct perspective. The company did revoke their principles of free expression for sleazy advertisers and market "research". Typical corporation. Of course they need a way to finance their costs, but I think in the long run they shoot themselves in the foot. I believe we will also see age restrictions in the near future and do away with anonymity. Might kill the platform completely though.
az226 3y ago
Reddit is seriously underestimating the impact of users waning in muscle memory launching their app or going on their site. This is going to cost them way more than the $1M per year or so in missed ad revenue from users who wouldn’t user their app without Apollo. The reputational damage alone is huge. Add the angered mods and users. Investors who were considering buying into the IPO see how much power the community has, and can topple the platform, which means they will value the company less. A prime example of cutting your nose to spite your face.

by xyst 3y ago

depereo 3y ago

I added reddit.com to my ublock filters - it was kind of an automatic click a few times a day and it's been a nice way to break the habit so strongly. I've got friends doing the same, and our microcommunity has formed around another platform already, after collectively losing reddit. It was so clearly a half-assed, badly thought out policy. No mention of mod tools. No mention of accessibility tools. No mention of research. Just 'API priced at ridiculous levels in 4 weeks'. They immediately had to walk a bunch of exemptions for those obvious considerations out. So extraordinarily half-assed. And for such a small sniff of revenue. They must be desperate.

OldManRyan 3y ago
I also added reddit to my ublock filters. Amazing how I never realized how often I go on autopilot and type reddit.com/r/whateversubreddit. If anyone else wants to do it, just add ||reddit.com^$all to your filters in ublock origin.
- plsbenice34 3y ago
  Thanks, i just did it too since you made it easier to know how
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
I just logged out of my account everywhere, and turned off "remember me". It's shocking how I'm catching myself just reflexively, almost subconsciously alt-tabbing to Firefox and typing "reddit.com". Thanks, /u/spez, for helping me break the habit!
- yamazakiwi 3y ago
  Breaking the muscle memory has been the hardest part for me. I don't have that much investment in Reddit succeeding and I'll be damned if I don't try to tap the app on my phone 3 or 4 times a day still, even after deleting.
  - CommitSyn 3y ago
    I deleted my account and my 3rd party app and I found myself reflexively tapping the now-empty spot on my home screen 5-10 times yesterday. Today I haven't and only went to the mobile site a couple times to see what's going on with the state of things, but left as soon as the first "Oops, this /r/AskReddit text-only post is NSFW, open in the app!" message came up. I have however visited HN and kbin 5-10x more today.
    - cgranier 3y ago
      I moved the Sync icon to a folder and replaced it with Hack (a hacker news app).
      - yamazakiwi 3y ago
        Good idea, I've followed suit.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Replace re (enter) with ne (enter) and hang out in new. Hehe
  - CommitSyn 3y ago
DSMan195276 3y ago
The last part is really what gets me. How could they possibly get that far along with the plan of "charge for the API" without doing a basic analysis of all the stuff people currently use the API for? That really gives an indicating of where their focus is.
thefourthchime 3y ago
I deleted my 8yo account. It was right after someone downvoted me because pointed out something that broke with their opinion. That kind of summed up my view Reddit. Groupthink circle jerks. Why was I part of any of that??
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  > It was right after someone downvoted me because pointed out something that broke with their opinion. It took you 8 years to realize that's how that place operates? Hell, that describes the culture on HN pretty well. Freewheeling downvoting was a flawed idea from the beginning. 20 years later it turns out Slashdot had the right model for moderation.
  - tester457 3y ago
    I've never used Slashdot, how is the moderation model superior?
    - function_seven 3y ago
      Instead of plain up- and downvotes, you rated a given comment with one of several positives (insightful, interesting, funny, informative) or negatives (troll, flamebait, offtopic) The best part was you could set your personal filters to exclude “funny” comments, or boost “offtopic” ones if you want. With thresholds! So the funniest stuff could still break through, but you didn’t have to wade through a million pun posts to find the serious comments. They also have a metamoderation system where others’ moderation choices are shown to you and you agree or disagree. Never seen another site like it. Kinda hope /. makes a resurgence.
      - wmoser 3y ago
        If I remember correctly, you also couldn’t moderate on posts that you had commented on so it prevented using downvoting as extra signaling that others agreed with you in an argument. Also, you got 5 moderation points sort of randomly, you didn’t have the option to always be moderating. I browse Slashdot occasionally but once I found HN, the topics and discourse interested me here more, haven’t really spent much time there in years.

CincinnatiMan 3y ago

Your view is a little simplistic. There is plenty of useful information on Reddit. I'm a big fan of home-related subs for example, where a lot of trade-knowledgeable people seem to hang out. There is a wealth of information on subs like r/DIY, r/HomeImprovement, r/paint, r/woodworking, etc.

majormajor 3y ago
I've often wondered why people use Reddit for stuff like this since the information and conversation management and organizational tools seem vastly inferior to most any pre-Reddit forum software. My current working theory is largely that internet search is just broken. It's easier to search for subreddit once you're on Reddit than to wade out into the sea of SEO crap and try to find a live, reliable format on the broader web. Google+search+display ads at scale killed the web, now we're back to AOL.
- WheatMillington 3y ago
  Everyone uses Reddit because everyone uses Reddit. Most people old enough to remember forums agree that forums were a dramatically better solution, but they're generally dead now (with some exceptions). Discourse is almost entirely Reddit or Facebook these days.
  - deely3 3y ago
    I can't agree that forums is dramatically better. I know/remember the feeling when you opens thread in forum with title that you are interested in just to see 200+ pages of slowly ongoing flamewar and spam.
  - asveikau 3y ago
    Forums were and are generally terrible. When you get a forum in a Google result, or for some topics where forums still are a major way to distribute information, usually you get a crowd of uninformed but confident people, paginated poorly, with a bunch of dead links. The worst is people who write or distribute code and use forum posts as a substitute for version control. That is still a thing in some niches.

rurp 3y ago

> Although I do foresee Reddit “super mods” forcibly removing the blackout through their backend, removing mod status from the “rebels” and inserting their own friendly mods until they can find replacements. I agree this is likely, which will extend the negative reactions further and alienate even more users. Unless Reddit execs do a 180 in the very near future I think the platform will be forever crippled. Large networks rarely die overnight and whatever happens they will still have a number of users for the foreseeable future, but the steady fade to irrelevance will begin in earnest. Power users drive a huge amount of content and moderation, and they are especially livid right now for good reason.

ssl232 3y ago
Where will reddit get enough mods to police the hundreds (thousands?) of subreddits each with tens of thousands of members that are rebelling against the API changes? Blocking/firing the existing mods would make the site descend into chaos.
- a2tech 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - nomel 3y ago
    I recently learned this is actually something that college aged people do for extra cash.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Well they’ve already started doing it
  - deadso 3y ago
    Which subreddits?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

s1k3s 3y ago

It doesn't work out for everybody. Lots of high quality communities outside of reddit have been invaded by people looking for an alternative and as a result they are now fighting massive traffic spikes, spam or the general reddit hive-mind taking over their discussion.

WheatMillington 3y ago
Do you have any examples?
- s1k3s 3y ago
  HN
- malermeister 3y ago
  lemmy.world
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  There is a noticeable uptick of barely concealed white supremacy here in the last 2 days. I would feel confident saying that the way upvotes and downvotes work on a cultural level has changed. We've had conservatives here forever, but I haven't seen people talk about things like "replacement theory". I think there's been a definite overton window shift towards the right wing. Yesterday there was a question where someone asked what /. is and there were 20 replies with "slashdot" in reddit style. I haven't seen a straight out of reddit comment thread like that for months. I've definitely found myself angrier reading hacker news than I have been in the months previous. I haven't figured out if that's more of a "we become what we behold" (https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb) or a real change.
  - theossuary 3y ago
    The right-wing bent on HN has been here for at least 5 years, probably longer. I haven't noticed it get worse, just more confident because its been allowed for so long.

6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago

> The only loser here is the corporation side. I'm not convinced they lose out either. The front page doesn't really feel different than it did before. There are a handful of "Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself). Read more in the comments" posts, but I'm kinda blind to them the same way I'm blind to ads as I scroll past. Otherwise it just feels like any other day on reddit.

lom 3y ago
Completely disagree, my homepage is almost empty. I was looking at tents earlier and wanted to see reddit reviews but literally every single link was private. Reddit has to be noticing this.
plorkyeran 3y ago
The top ten things on /r/all is currently two articles about Trump and "Reddit is killing third party applications (and itself). Read more in the comments." from eight different subreddits.
dmix 3y ago
People thought the meltdowns over the various FB redesigns or [x] decisions would hurt FB too (there were many major ones). Most regular users on Reddit view it through feeds not individual subs. It’s very plausible the bulk won’t even notice, except when other people tell them it’s happening or it makes the news. Eventually others might wonder why they haven’t seen some sub posts recently but it will probably take a month or so. These are the people clicking ads and using their mobile app.
WheatMillington 3y ago
Are we using the same website? Reddit is devoid of any decent content right now, on account of the blackout.
- tester457 3y ago
  But r/popular looks normal for the most part.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

SirMaster 3y ago

I don't think that's the only losers. As a mod I am getting messages from regular users who are desperate to see posts that have likely troubleshooting answers to problems they are having at work. Reddit is kind of a critical technical resource for some people and this is really hurting them at least right now.

ribosometronome 3y ago
Has there been any suggestion to update messages to suggest using the internet archive to see old posts?
- SirMaster 3y ago
  Yep, I suggested that and I also suggested an IRC channel which I know to have active people that help with the same technical system that the sub does.
dirtyid 3y ago
Shopping for a phone plan last few days have been pretty annoying.

__loam 3y ago

If they forcibly replace mods, Reddit is dead.

pyeri 3y ago
That's a very dicey prediction to make. It might be dead in the long run but for now, the pent up traffic will all start flowing back to those subs. And who knows, who is to say if the newly installed mods are better or worse than the present ones? Maybe they will just be the same.

hn2017 3y ago

[dead]

hayst4ck 3y ago

You are clearly feeling very righteous, but I think you should temper your righteousness. You might want to consider that while spez may not be the best human, he has had a commendable commitment to free speech. The Reddit platform has been protecting speaking truth to power, and in this case that power is himself. He has the power to shut down anti-spez content on reddit and for the most part has let his platform be leveraged against him. Another executive won't matter because it's not the executives determining direction. It is the investors. It is the investors that want to destroy one of the last bastions of free speech on the internet. It is investors that don't want Reddit to be a platform for speaking truth to power because they are that power that truth would be spoken to. When people write posts like this, they are missing the forest for the trees. It is the investors who are to blame. The investors benefit when spez gets blamed and not themselves. I see no reason to think we would get a new CEO better than spez. I am not defending spez, I am not defending his edits of people's posts, but the fish rots from the top, and the investors are above the CEO. The investors are the party that deserves blame.

shapefrog 3y ago
> he has had a commendable commitment to free speech and a love of r/jailbait
- CommitSyn 3y ago
  What 20 year old doesn't?
killingtime74 3y ago
If you want to go back to original sin then reddit should not have gone public and installed the investors as the ultimate power. Steve Huffman was one of the founders
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  I'll give you that, but I also don't think it was clear at the time that "next quarters profit" culture would destroy everything good. The culture at the time was "growth is money" and "we can figure out how to monetize later." Today we have the knowledge that monetization requires enshittification, but I think there were dreams that monetization could succeed without enshittification, and now those dreams have died.

Animats 3y ago

"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! Let the ruling classes tremble!" Barron's reports that Reddit's potential IPO is now in trouble.[1] [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/reddit-stock-ipo-revolt-6e8fd4c8 https://www.barrons.com/articles/reddit-stock-ipo-revolt-6e8...

schlauerfox 3y ago

a certain reddit-astroturfing restaurant with a big campaign launching, must be less than pleased.

tiffanyg 3y ago

Agreed - good. Huffman / Reddit Inc. have misread this repeatedly. Just saw he's reportedly assured staff it will "blow over" and "hasn't hurt revenue". Wrong move. Completely avoidable PR disaster, and until the ego(s) driving all of this step back, they'll just keep making the situation worse. I will be extending my blackout on the site indefinitely. Just one of the dumbest PR / corporate comms debacles I've seen. Almost as though the Reddit execs saw what Twitter is doing and said "hold my beer".

jrnichols 3y ago

> journalists get their news article well, except for Buzzfeed, who seems to exist solely to repost Reddit threads with GIFs.

more_corn 3y ago

Maybe AI scabs?

pxmpxm 3y ago

Am I missing something - all reddit has to do is one code change to prevent subreddits from getting private or closed. Feels like a bunch of people are completely misreading their self-presumed social status and leverage. The content is what drives traffic and revenue, not their fungible volunteer labor.

SirSourdough 3y ago
Reddit forcing open the subreddits would result in massive backlash from moderators, who are often the main people providing content and enforcing content quality. It would crank the degree to which Reddit is tarnishing its reputation to 11. A very small portion of users are responsible for the majority of the content and community building on Reddit. I think you might be underestimating how reliant the 99% of users who don’t post top-level content or serve as moderators are on the 1% who do.
- tmn 3y ago
  Maybe. I'm not sure though. Reddit has an organic way to grow it's user engagement. It didn't start out with all of these mods. The general mood/experience on reddit today is much chiller. A lot of the people susceptible to feelings of indignation are gone. I think it's very possible new mods / content contributors will grow organically, conforming to whatever in house tools reddit creates. But who knows, maybe it will go the way of digg.
redsky880 3y ago
That would make some communities public that had nothing to do with this protest

chaosjevil 3y ago

Blood sacrifices won't be enough, unless the sacrifice is the company as a whole. Oddly enough, the only time that Reddit managed to unite its userbase for a cause, that cause was against Reddit itself. Users might disagree on the best approach, but practically nobody trusts the company any more, it isn't just the CEO. That's specially bad for the company in the light of the IPO. >Although I do foresee Reddit “super mods” forcibly removing the blackout through their backend, removing mod status from the “rebels” and inserting their own friendly mods until they can find replacements. They could, but this would cause damage on its own. People might hate the current mods but they'd hate the sycophants even more.

redsky880 3y ago

End-users lose too. There's a lot of information that is now harder to find (assuming it's cached by a 3rd party) or not reachable at all.

raxxorraxor 3y ago

Reddit probably needs a way to monetize their platform, I have no idea how well their finances look. I think reddit did change for the worse though. Restrictions to speech and opinions, aggression if you deviate from the allegedly correct perspective. The company did revoke their principles of free expression for sleazy advertisers and market "research". Typical corporation. Of course they need a way to finance their costs, but I think in the long run they shoot themselves in the foot. I believe we will also see age restrictions in the near future and do away with anonymity. Might kill the platform completely though.

az226 3y ago

Reddit is seriously underestimating the impact of users waning in muscle memory launching their app or going on their site. This is going to cost them way more than the $1M per year or so in missed ad revenue from users who wouldn’t user their app without Apollo. The reputational damage alone is huge. Add the angered mods and users. Investors who were considering buying into the IPO see how much power the community has, and can topple the platform, which means they will value the company less. A prime example of cutting your nose to spite your face.