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The biggest Reddit communities are in open rebellion. Twitter is, charitably, a mess. Twitch started taking a full 50% of the revenue of their top creators, who

• hiddencost 3y ago
  Interest rates
• xmonkee 3y ago
  no more free money
• dmitrygr 3y ago
  The end of free money from the fed?
• ls612 3y ago
  Interest rates go up.
• rvba 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • LegitShady 3y ago
    I disagree with a lot of your post. You’re correct that the Reddit IPO will likely lead to traditional finance holding the bag, much of which will be large funds. Twitter was bought by musk, but your comments about his wants are fever dreams. Twitch is losing the streaming wars to Youtube.
  • roastedoolong 3y ago
    [flagged]
• marklar423 3y ago
  I would add on - enshittification driven by money, as coined by Cory Doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
  • TeMPOraL 3y ago
    That's not a new trend, though. It's the bait-and-switch startup ecosystem has been built around for over a decade now. There may, however, be some underlying trend that's the reason why so many social media companies are pulling the bait-and-switch right now, simultaneously.
    • soundsgoodtome 3y ago
      The simple reason is usually the best - it works
• SoftTalker 3y ago
  > What's the bigger trend that's causing all these platforms to go so user-hostile? The economy has changed and now they actually have to try to make money.
• Exuma 3y ago
  This is a very stupid question - but can someone explain what the "interest rates" and "no more free money" replies mean? Is it because reddit isn't profitable so relies on constant money supply from investors? Or is it something else
  • ddorian43 3y ago
    Low interest rates make people do very high risk bets (stocks,startups,crypto). Increasing rates will make people more risk aware.
  • iaw 3y ago
    I'll try to be quick and simple: - The US government sets a base interest rate it will pay if you buy bonds from them - Bonds are basically loans - People with money want that money to make money so they buy bonds and invest in stocks/companies - When bonds aren't giving any money rich people put more into companies - When bonds are giving money rich people shift money into bonds, less money for companies This is a gross simplification but hopefully gives the idea.
    • Exuma 3y ago
      Ahh, thank you. That helps a lot. I suppose it's interesting that the return from companies is even remotely comparable to the return from bonds. That's probably a dumb realization but I don't know much about this stuff.
      • iaw 3y ago
        Not dumb, this stuff isn't really taught unless you explicitly pursue it. One note: the return on some companies may be higher and others lower, the issue is that the risk for money in companies is higher. Very simplistic example: the US government can offer you a flat 5%, a company investment offers 10% half the time, 0% the other half. One is a sure thing, one is a gamble. The more the 'gamble' the more risk and that is a driving factor in investments. People are willing to take huge risks if the payoff is very large (Look at Michael Burry and the big short)
      • 3y ago
• ahahahahah 3y ago
  > The biggest Reddit communities are in open rebellion No, the __mods__ of __some__ of the biggest Reddit communities are in rebellion. Of the top 20 subreddits by subscribers, only 6 are currently closed. For the most part, the users of those subreddits dgaf about this issue, and even if the mods hold these subreddits hostage forever, the users will just move on to some similar subreddit that will take its place. The only loss here will be in smaller subreddits where some mod takes their toys home and nobody cares enough to start up something similar, and in that case, it's honestly not a big loss to reddit.
  • ayemel 3y ago
    Plenty of users are in rebellion too, you are glossing over the reality to fit your narrative.
    • ddingus 3y ago
      I logged out, plan on never logging back in. Already, life changes, new places, people, appear interesting. Won't be long and it will be just like before I used Reddit.
  • californical 3y ago
    Idk, > it's honestly not a big loss to reddit. Even though there are some giant subreddits that will probably all return, those are the least interesting part of Reddit. I feel like even the people who just want to scroll memes and rage content on the big subreddits still get a lot of value out of a few smaller subreddits related to their hobbies. I feel like that’s what made Reddit special compared to TikTok or others, was that you could join those niche areas that were specific to you. Reddit still has the same garbage as other internet sites, but you could also find the really interesting and insightful content related to your hobbies. And in many of my niches specifically, almost entirely the mods have resigned from those smaller communities. And since I’m not interested in the rage memes of the major subreddits, Reddit has nothing for me at this point. But even the people who do like that stuff, I would guess also have their own niche hobbies that they enjoy, and if that part of Reddit goes away then they might as well just be on TikTok or whatever. And then why would they stay on Reddit when it’s so similar to those others? To phrase more elegantly: the big subreddits may have the bulk of content, and will probably still be around. But the long tail of tiny subreddits is what made it interesting, and it would take a gargantuan effort for Reddit to restore the community of all of those little subreddits that are individually only valuable to a few, but everyone has some tiny subreddits that are really important to them.
• deleted 3y ago
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• thunderbird120 3y ago
  People are starting to come to terms with the new reality where tech companies actually need to have a viable business model which takes in more money than it expends. The return of nonzero interest rates means that the runway is no longer infinite, you can't just raise more money to cover costs forever, eventually you have to either take off or crash. This is revealing just how much of a nonsensical anomaly most of the 2010s were for many internet companies. COVID provided a brief return to this period but it couldn't last. The idea that large companies can be run at an operating loss indefinitely is going to be dying a slow painful death over the next few years along with any companies which can't make the transition to actually earning money, and that is the way it should be.
  • yamazakiwi 3y ago
    Twitch revenue was 2.8 Billion last year. In what way does prioritizing more revenue mean they will achieve a viable business model when they're already generating billions. Business types want you to think they're tidying up, but most are using this zeitgeist as an opportunity for greed and the chance to shift more power away from workers.
    • thunderbird120 3y ago
      To state the obvious, total revenue does not tell you if a company is actually making money. If operating costs exceed revenue you lose money. It doesn't matter how much revenue you're making. Given the costs required to run twitch, they are likely still losing money, not making it. Losing money is not a viable business strategy.
      • yamazakiwi 3y ago
        I am aware that revenue is not profit, we are on HN after all. While it is possible to run a company at a loss with extremely high revenue, contextually, you're making excuses for a company that could easily keep running with 2.8 Billion dollars yearly. It's likely that after they extract more money from creators they will increase their spend more to maintain operating at a loss. At what point does it end?
• 0x_rs 3y ago
  Discord also is in the process of asking 200 million users (monthly active as of 2023) to change their username, previous ones they will inevitably lose due to the uniqueness requirement, something nobody seems to have ever asked and might be unheard of on this scale. There's a few other examples of platforms going against their users too. It definitely seems to be an industry-wide movement, perhaps racing to be ahead of the changing economic climate with very poorly though out, short sighted steps, possibly to maximize revenue. (on paper, as advertised by some management before being approved and put into motion, but some corpos might still get away with it)
  • WesternWind 3y ago
    The username thing makes sense for discord, in that few people can remember the number that comes after it. I snagged a four letter username that was my username without the number so I'm happy about that.
  • paulmd 3y ago
    discord is most likely well-aware of the criticism that it's an unsearchable black-hole and that people are nonetheless bashing it into being a docs/wiki system despite the poor product fit. when your customers start doing weird shit with your product, they're telling you what they want the product to be, and as a result discord is pivoting towards being a forum or at least having the option for communities to have public wikis/forums associated with them. this is probably only intensified now that reddit is teetering in the middle of their own pivot and leaving this opening for low-friction community building. like why not have a reddit replacement for the public content, built on top of the discord communities that already exist? but, reddit with non-unique usernames would kinda suck, wouldn't it? to make a global public forum work, you have to require that they're unique and migrate the existing usernames to the new schema somehow. You don't have to use the new username, discord's legacy functionality isn't forcing you, but if you don't you probably won't get access to disreddit features when it launches, because replying to paulmd#0069 on a reddit-clone would be an awful experience. but the reason the username change is happening "even though nobody asked for it" is very simple. nobody is asking for username changes, but lots of people are asking for discord to step into the gap that reddit is leaving, and provide more powerful public-facing tooling for non-ephemeral content that's searchable and discoverable. And unique usernames are kind of a mandatory part of that model. I haven't really used Lemmy/Mastodon much but it seems like an inherent disadvantage of that model too. weedgoku69@mastodon.social is not the same user as weedgoku69@masty.me and people will have to get used to the idea of looking at the whole username rather than reddit's unique usernames. It's also going to be tough when there's not a 1:1 correspondence between "subreddits" and the discords underneath them. I guess your discord.gg URL is now your canonical subreddit URL... hope you boosted your server and squatted that custom invite URL a couple years ago, because it's your "domain name" now!
• kart23 3y ago
  they’re not profitable. twitch probably loses money, reddit definitely loses money. economy has changed to where money is harder to get, and investors are probably much more skeptical now. and in order to get profitable, they have to start some user-hostile practices.
  • faangsticle 3y ago
    The funny thing is that reddit could be rolling in cash if they hadn't decided to become a (very crappy) video and image host
• masklinn 3y ago
  VC money has dried out, platforms suddenly try to extract money, and they go at it way ham-fisted with little rhyme, reason, or respect for the user base.
• stiltzkin 3y ago
  Twitter is still working fine, even community notes are a huge welcome.
• seydor 3y ago
  also social media saturation. With the coming AI personas and deepfakes next year, it will be impossible for humans to compete
• deleted 3y ago
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• dcchambers 3y ago
  > What's going on? What's the bigger trend that's causing all these platforms to go so user-hostile? These companies need/want to start making money. Either due to investors wanting a return on their investment (Reddit IPO, Amazon buying Twitch), or poor decisions which have lead to lots of debt (Elon buying Twitter). Companies can't get free/cheap loans any more since interest rates are high. Many of these social media companies all followed the tried-and-true "embrace, extend, extinguish" methodology... Offer a free/cheap product until you gain the network effect that kills your competitors, then crank up the prices to turn a profit.
  • monnok 3y ago
    Inflation and rising interest rates sure seem like they can explain so much of the puzzle... especially timing. But Twitter is an especially interesting piece of that puzzle. It seems to be immolating itself in a deliberate enshitification, closely mirroring every other mega site - yet I doubt it can be related to debt in any way. I don’t think we can just shrug and chalk it up to a poor decision by eccentric Elon, either. There are only a handful of mega sites. Some (Meta) have had bots between users for a long time. Some (TikTok) were born that way. The rest, including Twitter, seem hellbent on racing to get bots between us as fast as they can. I think this undermines the debt-urgency argument. I suspect it, instead, highlights a recent growth spurt in the market value for mega sites with bots between users. We’re getting bots everywhere, not because time’s up and bots were the best idea they had, but because bots are exploding in value. We might even look back and shake our heads because Elon so clearly underpaid for Twitter.
• jesuspiece 3y ago
  > What's going on? VC money is drying up and these companies need to turn a profit now finally
• deleted 3y ago
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