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It feels like the "natural" development of VC funded websites - they offer a service that's heavily subsidized and losing money hand over fist to displace other

by kimixa 3y ago

It feels like the "natural" development of VC funded websites - they offer a service that's heavily subsidized and losing money hand over fist to displace other services (I guess in Reddit's case it was self-hosted forums and similar?). But that's clearly not sustainable, it's inevitable they'll pivot to monetizing the service - and that's clearly going to make it less attractive than the heavily-subsidized version people have gotten used to. I guess the ideas is to lock the users in to the degree that the increasing monetization is put up with, and slowly enough there's no "sticker shock" of a previously-free service suddenly having a price. I'm constantly amazed people are surprised by this, isn't it obvious that tying to a loss-leader service isn't sustainable?

tornato7 3y ago
Reddit didn't need to be heavily subsidized. Old Reddit was open source, had community-built apps, and could have been run indefinitely with a handful of employees and Reddit Gold. Like a Craigslist or Wikipedia model. Instead with their VC funding they spent $$$ to introduce things like NFTs and TikTok scrolling, which nobody asked for, but it burned through a lot of cash.
Wildliferanger 3y ago
The bigger problem is the plan was basically infinte growth and was only possible due to 0% intrest rates. The last 15 years has been a weird fever dream of free money, now that intrest is a thing again suddenly the infinte spending expansion and figure out profitablity later model is no longer sustianable and reddit twitter google meta ect suddenly have to actually make money again. Basically the internet everyone has been used to for 15 years is dead as the reality of debt suddenly resumes. Expect things to keep getting worse or revert to the old version of the internet of scattered low power sites and forums. Frankly only microsoft is really the only one that has a somewhat sustianable model for an intrest rate enviroment.
- BrenBarn 3y ago
  > Expect things to keep getting worse or revert to the old version of the internet of scattered low power sites and forums. This is actually the most mood-lightening comment I've seen on this matter. A return to the internet of 15 years ago doesn't sound so bad to me. (Of course, the mood darkens again when I remember that it won't really be that, because, e.g., that internet of 15 years ago couldn't handle the bot-spam of today.)

by kimixa 3y ago

tornato7 3y ago

Reddit didn't need to be heavily subsidized. Old Reddit was open source, had community-built apps, and could have been run indefinitely with a handful of employees and Reddit Gold. Like a Craigslist or Wikipedia model. Instead with their VC funding they spent $$$ to introduce things like NFTs and TikTok scrolling, which nobody asked for, but it burned through a lot of cash.

Wildliferanger 3y ago

The bigger problem is the plan was basically infinte growth and was only possible due to 0% intrest rates. The last 15 years has been a weird fever dream of free money, now that intrest is a thing again suddenly the infinte spending expansion and figure out profitablity later model is no longer sustianable and reddit twitter google meta ect suddenly have to actually make money again. Basically the internet everyone has been used to for 15 years is dead as the reality of debt suddenly resumes. Expect things to keep getting worse or revert to the old version of the internet of scattered low power sites and forums. Frankly only microsoft is really the only one that has a somewhat sustianable model for an intrest rate enviroment.

BrenBarn 3y ago
> Expect things to keep getting worse or revert to the old version of the internet of scattered low power sites and forums. This is actually the most mood-lightening comment I've seen on this matter. A return to the internet of 15 years ago doesn't sound so bad to me. (Of course, the mood darkens again when I remember that it won't really be that, because, e.g., that internet of 15 years ago couldn't handle the bot-spam of today.)