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Lurkers are pure consumers, free-riders. They produce nothing. They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized. People like to say that us

Lurkers are pure consumers, free-riders. They produce nothing. They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized. People like to say that users who post content care about lurkers because they want to be seen/heard. No. People who post content care about commenters (and up/downvoters at the bare minimum) who interact with them in meaningful ways, not lurkers. Lurkers are the cosmic neutrinos of social media: they pass through without leaving a trace. Reddit wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want millions of hours of unpaid labour from mods, posters, and commenters. And they want to control these people as if they were employees (by dictating what tools they're allowed/not allowed to use). This will not turn out well!

riku_iki 3y ago
> They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized. yes, and fund service running. Looks like important part of the ecosystem.
- chongli 3y ago
  Only for a centralized, corporate-owned system like Reddit. A volunteer-owned fediverse system can monetize via donations, Patreon-style. This changes the incentive structure: making the administrators accountable to the most invested people (power users).
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    > A volunteer-owned fediverse system can monetize via donations, Patreon-style does it exist and works on scale, or it is like communism where everyone will be happy, but it is never achievable and sustainable just because most of the people want money, power and free stuff.
    - predictabl3 3y ago
      Matrix has 20+ million users, and is federated.
      - riku_iki 3y ago
        ok, then reddit problem is solved. Or not because they solve different problem and need very different infra?..
        predictabl3 3y ago
        There are social network UIs written for Matrix the same way ActivityPub is used for Lemmy and Mastodon and Flickr-clones. I expect these to multiply as the protocol gains more features too. Recent Matrix enhancements are about modeling content relationships, seemingly to this end. And yes, the entire foundation structure of the platform and protocol are quite different, that's kinda the point. ActivityPub and Matrix protocol are similar in this regard. And yes the AP impls are seeing huge explosions in growth in the last 3 weeks. Riku, I can't reply to you because this site is a joke, but I don't think I want to anyway, you don't seem to get the point, across the board. Not everything is about profit for bleep's sake. Also, I'll sign up for s month of reddit premium if you can find 3 subs that voted to re-open. Or literally any single person besides you and spez that think every single app dev is scamming, and nearly every single mod. And no reddits infra is not a most, lmao. Their site crashes daily and runs on AWS, and every single bit of value is derived from the people you accuse of spamming - you know the ones that keep voting to keep the homepage looking like a wasteland of porn and AITA posts. You're completely out of touch.
        riku_iki 3y ago
        > protocol are quite different, that's kinda the point I am not familiar with all those projects, but my understanding is that reddit's moats are: - infra which can serve significant traffic over petabytes of content with search and recommendation on top of them - they have bootstrapped content volume and communities - they have monetization in place which pays for all infra and salaries how far mentioned projects from that state?
        narism 3y ago
        > infra which can serve significant traffic over petabytes of content with search Search? Reddit search is so bad it’s practically a meme. They only added the ability to search within comments (y’know, like 90% of the site) _this year_. https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/11dgwzy/whats_up_with_reddit_search_episode_viii_the_last/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/11dgwzy/whats_up_wi... > they have bootstrapped content volume and communities Do you mean when the founders (including current CEO) posted as a bunch of fake users to create the illusion that it was popular? https://venturebeat.com/social/reddit-fake-users/ https://venturebeat.com/social/reddit-fake-users/ > they have monetization in place which pays for all infra and salaries How is possible if Reddit has never been profitable/reached breakeven? https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkd09c/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve...
PragmaticPulp 3y ago
> They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized. Why are you dismissing this? I don’t understand all of these comments talking about Reddit as if it was 100% free to operate and the only important users are the commenters
- chongli 3y ago
  Reddit at its core is a utility. A "dumb pipe" operator whose main role is to keep the servers running and pay the bandwidth bills. Yet like so many (internet-based) utilities, they have delusions of grandeur, born out of a sense of entitlement to the incredible value produced by their users. Why did they hire 2000 people? Nothing they have done in the last decade has provided new value to users. If they had simply accepted their role as a utility instead of chasing the mega-growth tech fantasy then they would be a (modestly) profitable company with 200 employees at most.
  - balder1991 3y ago
    “But Reddit needs to make money” /s https://mastodon.social/@robotdeathsquad/110543755195398954 https://mastodon.social/@robotdeathsquad/110543755195398954
v01dlight 3y ago
Except even just viewing a post leaves a trace, whether a the service chooses to display view counts or not. The webhost knows how much traffic they're getting, and those numbers help them set rates for advertisers.
- chongli 3y ago
  None of that matters one bit to the average Reddit poster: the person who creates a text post without any links. If any value is captured from that lurker, it all goes straight to Reddit.
a13o 3y ago
Lurkers can participate with upvotes and downvotes. You don't even have to join a subreddit to participate in this way. Lurkers (who did click join, but never posted) are included in the subreddit user-counts advertised on the protest subreddit. If they count as users there, they count as users here.

riku_iki 3y ago

> They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized. yes, and fund service running. Looks like important part of the ecosystem.

chongli 3y ago
Only for a centralized, corporate-owned system like Reddit. A volunteer-owned fediverse system can monetize via donations, Patreon-style. This changes the incentive structure: making the administrators accountable to the most invested people (power users).
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > A volunteer-owned fediverse system can monetize via donations, Patreon-style does it exist and works on scale, or it is like communism where everyone will be happy, but it is never achievable and sustainable just because most of the people want money, power and free stuff.
  - predictabl3 3y ago
    Matrix has 20+ million users, and is federated.
    - riku_iki 3y ago
      ok, then reddit problem is solved. Or not because they solve different problem and need very different infra?..
      - predictabl3 3y ago
        There are social network UIs written for Matrix the same way ActivityPub is used for Lemmy and Mastodon and Flickr-clones. I expect these to multiply as the protocol gains more features too. Recent Matrix enhancements are about modeling content relationships, seemingly to this end. And yes, the entire foundation structure of the platform and protocol are quite different, that's kinda the point. ActivityPub and Matrix protocol are similar in this regard. And yes the AP impls are seeing huge explosions in growth in the last 3 weeks. Riku, I can't reply to you because this site is a joke, but I don't think I want to anyway, you don't seem to get the point, across the board. Not everything is about profit for bleep's sake. Also, I'll sign up for s month of reddit premium if you can find 3 subs that voted to re-open. Or literally any single person besides you and spez that think every single app dev is scamming, and nearly every single mod. And no reddits infra is not a most, lmao. Their site crashes daily and runs on AWS, and every single bit of value is derived from the people you accuse of spamming - you know the ones that keep voting to keep the homepage looking like a wasteland of porn and AITA posts. You're completely out of touch.
        riku_iki 3y ago
        > protocol are quite different, that's kinda the point I am not familiar with all those projects, but my understanding is that reddit's moats are: - infra which can serve significant traffic over petabytes of content with search and recommendation on top of them - they have bootstrapped content volume and communities - they have monetization in place which pays for all infra and salaries how far mentioned projects from that state?
        narism 3y ago
        > infra which can serve significant traffic over petabytes of content with search Search? Reddit search is so bad it’s practically a meme. They only added the ability to search within comments (y’know, like 90% of the site) _this year_. https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/11dgwzy/whats_up_with_reddit_search_episode_viii_the_last/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/11dgwzy/whats_up_wi... > they have bootstrapped content volume and communities Do you mean when the founders (including current CEO) posted as a bunch of fake users to create the illusion that it was popular? https://venturebeat.com/social/reddit-fake-users/ https://venturebeat.com/social/reddit-fake-users/ > they have monetization in place which pays for all infra and salaries How is possible if Reddit has never been profitable/reached breakeven? https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkd09c/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve...

PragmaticPulp 3y ago

> They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized. Why are you dismissing this? I don’t understand all of these comments talking about Reddit as if it was 100% free to operate and the only important users are the commenters

chongli 3y ago
Reddit at its core is a utility. A "dumb pipe" operator whose main role is to keep the servers running and pay the bandwidth bills. Yet like so many (internet-based) utilities, they have delusions of grandeur, born out of a sense of entitlement to the incredible value produced by their users. Why did they hire 2000 people? Nothing they have done in the last decade has provided new value to users. If they had simply accepted their role as a utility instead of chasing the mega-growth tech fantasy then they would be a (modestly) profitable company with 200 employees at most.
- balder1991 3y ago
  “But Reddit needs to make money” /s https://mastodon.social/@robotdeathsquad/110543755195398954 https://mastodon.social/@robotdeathsquad/110543755195398954

v01dlight 3y ago

Except even just viewing a post leaves a trace, whether a the service chooses to display view counts or not. The webhost knows how much traffic they're getting, and those numbers help them set rates for advertisers.

chongli 3y ago
None of that matters one bit to the average Reddit poster: the person who creates a text post without any links. If any value is captured from that lurker, it all goes straight to Reddit.

a13o 3y ago

Lurkers can participate with upvotes and downvotes. You don't even have to join a subreddit to participate in this way. Lurkers (who did click join, but never posted) are included in the subreddit user-counts advertised on the protest subreddit. If they count as users there, they count as users here.