• squidzorz@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Note that these are just quotes from the disastrous AMA he held last week, not new comments that have been made.

    • Artistan@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable - Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO

      Translation - we don’t have control of the 3PA and they are getting in the way of moooore profit, so we want them gone.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        1 year ago

        What a shitty job at astroturphing there.

        "Won’t someone think of the corporations! The evil third party apps (that we admitted were less than 10% of our userbase) are (somehow) bankrupting us! They’re using so much API (even though our website uses at least 5x the API calls)

        [Translation: There’s 10% of the people we could shove ads in front of who are getting around it and I want to sell this sucker so I can buy another vacation property]

        • sWiggn@fedia.io
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          1 year ago

          They’re using so much API

          I’m 100% convinced the reason they think 3PA API usage is unusually high per user is because all the high engagement users use 3PA, because their app actively repulses people from wanting to spend time on it. It seems like such a classic product misinterpretation of the stats, I’ve seen this from the inside as a developer before, ironically also at a company trying to IPO and failing spectacularly by completely misreading the room and their users

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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            1 year ago

            I hadn’t thought about this but it makes sense. It’s widely known that their largest contributors are 3PA users, I wonder if they did take the bias into account

        • Law@fedia.io
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          1 year ago

          Greed destroys everything.and its jot even greed,im sure they were profitable before but they had to squeeze every ounce of dollar.fucking capitalism.

      • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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        1 year ago

        I’m 90% certain that this whole thing is due to to their new marketing execs saying “we can’t run ads on third party apps”, and then deciding that third party apps need to pay up for their supposed “projected loss in ad revenue”.

        It’s the piracy fallacy: “Somebody is using my service without giving ME profit, and so we’re gonna go into a self-destructive tantrum”. “Ignore the fact that nobody ever wanted to pay us for that anyways.” We don’t need that kind of greed in our online communities, good riddance.

      • Ilikemoney@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Something like reddit doesn’t long if it’s not profitable. He’s not in the same reality that we are

        • Artistan@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Instead of working with the 3PA devs to come up with something that is a win-win for both parties, they’ve chosen self-destruct.

    • peanutyam@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Well I just spent the last hour deleting all my old Reddit posts from the last 7 years or so and then deleted the account.

      I will be no part of this continued data mining and making money off users hand over fist, making billions of dollars from data and the actual data source gets nothing.

      #ragequitreddit

      • rettetdemdativ@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        I guess in your case it’s already too late anyway, but if someone else reads this: you don’t have to delete everything by hand. There are tools available like shreddit or Redact.

    • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Dang, after reading that, somehow I’m even more glad I overwrote all my past comments and posts with a protest message. You do not get to monetize my speech down to keyword targetting, reddit!

      The way that’s written is so blatantly and shamelessly “all these people volunteer and provide an amazing service for free! :D look how much money we can make off this free labor without giving any of those volunteers a single cent, and while sabotaging the service!”

      If you want to auto-overwrite your comments and posts, or just delete them, check out Power Delete Suite or Redact by June 30th, before the API change breaks these tools.

      • Edo78@feddit.it
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        1 year ago

        Even if the fediverse didn’t want to monetize on the userbase money are still needed to keep things running

    • Klanky@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I’m done having ads shoved in my face constantly. Corporations ruin everything and this was just the push I needed to remove one more attack vector from my life.

        • Artistan@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          There seems to be a misconception by a lot of corporates that shoving ads down users throats will make the users want what is advertised.

          Personally, I go out of my way to avoid anything that are shown to me intrusively.

          • eric3a@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The reality is that ads work. That’s why they even exist and companies pay so much for them. The safest way to not be influenced by them is to not see them.

            Block them, skip them, use ad free media

          • minimar@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Corporations haven’t been paying millions for superbowl ads on a misconception. Ads work. Obviously.

            • Artistan@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              I think it just depends on how it is served. If it is something non-organic, like shoved in between every other post it would have a negative effect.

              Superbowl ads work because people are willing to watch it. It’s part of the game and made to entertain. But when’s the last time you actually bought something advertised on the Superbowl ads?

              I don’t think there are a lot of people that enjoys an ad on a YouTube video one minute and fifteen seconds into the video you are trying to watch.

    • cablepick@lemmy.cablepick.net
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      1 year ago

      No way. I don’t care if Lemmy doesn’t succeed I’m never going to tolerate that shit. I stopped using Twitter when they killed third party apps and forced even more ads into their piece of shit app.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        1 year ago

        Even if lemmy stays small I don’t care, the community is better here, the apps are open, I don’t see any ads, fuck Reddit, fuck spez, this is what a community should feel like.

        And no ads for bags of fucking water either.

    • Derproid@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      The sad thing is there’s a right way to do everything they want but this ain’t it. Spez is litterally digging a hole using the bricks he could be building with.

    • asqapro@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      That sounds a lot like what happened to Google with SEO getting abused. I almost always append “reddit” to the end of my Google searches to find actual answers and discussions, but now that’s going to be ruined too. I don’t understand how they’ve taken what’s so valuable about reddit, honest and real discussions and answers, and decided to do the opposite of that. It doesn’t even seem financially smart, it will just drive more people away from their site.

    • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I would like to say that “future of reddit” image is really egregious, but I suppose its in line with other social media hell-holes.

      The goggles, they do nothing.

    • eric3a@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I wonder if uBlock Origin and other ad blocks will work against that crap. Not that I intend to use Reddit anymore anyway.

        • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          They can be blocked feom your home network, but most people don’t even set up their own routers. And part of the point of a phone is you can take it outside. So, yeah. Most people won’t even realize it’s an option, let alone take that option.

    • molave@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      They’re free to shape Reddit as they see fit. Although I mourn the loss of the past states of Reddit, I’m also free to extract myself from that ecosystem.

      • AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You would think that more users means more money for reddit. But I think that might be wrong. I can only assume that 3rd party apps make up a small portion of their daily active users (a metric they likely use to sell ad space). And 3rd party apps aren’t giving reddit any ad revenue. On top of that maintaining the API and support for 3rd party apps costs money. From a business perspective it probably makes a lot of sense to start charging for use.

  • realslef@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    “Hold on, dear investors! I’m confident that we can simply steer our ship straight through the middle of the massive iceberg!”

    • Fox@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Ironically, had the titanic hit the iceberg straight on it probably would have survived. Swerving at the very last moment was what made it sink.

      • realslef@fedia.io
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        1 year ago

        Be gone with your counterintuitive realism, getting in the way of an entertaining metaphor!

    • DarkMatter_contract@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “There is no danger that Reddit will sink. The site is unsinkable and nothing but inconvenience will be suffered by the user bases.”

      • realslef@fedia.io
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        1 year ago

        " The site is unsinkable. We’ve simply decided to spend some time underwater while we work out some tech issues. "

  • milkytoast@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    and here i was, truly believing that they would reconsider. as of right now ~4000 of the planned 6600 subs have gone private, if that isn’t enough then oh well

    • heartlessevil@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Bear in mind this article is from a couple days ago right after the AMA happened and before subreddits started closing.

    • Artistan@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I’m hoping that a lot of the subreddits that has gone dark would remain dark indefinitely. Granted, the Reddit admins might try to replace the mods on a lot of the subreddits - but at that point the community may not be the same anymore.

        • ElmarsonTheThird@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          r/witcher has gone dark until further notice as well. Granted, most of the content was stones with holes in it and moaning about the Netflix show, so nothing of value was really lost.

      • I'm Hiding 🇦🇺@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        It’s already over 5000!

        I’m just sad that I keep seeing interesting subreddits I’d never heard of before go private. I’ve missed my chance to check out those communities! Hopefully they migrate to Lemmy in some capacity.

        • JulietEcho@fedia.io
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          1 year ago

          Seeing interesting subreddits I never knew about got me, too. I wasn’t really active on Reddit but I would’ve lurked the heck out of them.

      • milkytoast@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        theres a new one going private every like 5 seconds, and the list of how many are supposed to keeps growing. up to nearly 7k as of rn, so thats 400 more in the past 30 mins

    • legion@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There (likely) won’t be any reconsideration. Reddit’s concern right now isn’t the health of its communities. They’re focused on taking the ball of data they’re sitting on and selling it to AI platforms while the AI gold rush is still happening.

      • jcg@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think that makes sense as an explanation for killing off 3PA/API access. 3PAs would increase user base, and so collection of data, by virtue of providing more channels by which users can contribute and improving the experience for those people would likely increase their engagement. The mod tools that make use of the API would also help with curating that data, which increases its value to an AI consumer.

        • legion@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Cheap API access was letting the AI platforms pull Reddit data directly via API. That’s why the “fix” was making API access expensive, so that buying the data from Reddit instead becomes the more cost-effective solution.

          Reddit’s not (as) worried about gathering more data to sell, they’re worried about selling the years of data they already have.

  • Spzi@lemmy.click
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    1 year ago

    I find this post at a moment when the show has already started (as can be seen on https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/ and https://reddark.untone.uk/ )

    But the article is 3 days old. It seems many did not expect that much unity from subreddits going dark. 2.5 billion affected subscribers is quite something!

    I’m still in hopes they change their mind in light of recent events. Don’t think they will though.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      2.5 billion affected *subscriptions

      Many are overlapping people’s subscriptions of course.

      • Derproid@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Probably 95% of that is overlapping since one person being subbed to 20 participating subs is counted 20 times, and since some default and massive subs are participating there must be a ton of overlap.

  • Ozymati@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    They weathered the fatpeoplhate tantrum, I’m not really sure why anyone thinks a blackout would faze them.

    That said I hope lemmy can grow into a mature social content aggregator.

  • Ilikemoney@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, a 3 day, partial shutdown is less than 1% percent of their annual online time. The strike has got to last much longer imo

  • HisNoodlyServant@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Just saw on Reddit there are 300+ subs going dark indefinitely. That is what needs to happen. Sure Reddit could come in and find new mods but damn might end up being a decent amount of work/chaos. They should screw up their automods and delete the backup logs. Still probably wouldn’t be that hard for an admin to rollback but still the more pain the better.

    • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Who would they even find to moderate subs with substandard tools free of charge? Especially right on the heels of this fiasco. Maybe they’ll put some bots in charge and just allow pretty much unfiltered moderation in those subreddits.

  • kryllic@vlemmy.net
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    1 year ago

    Watching hundreds of subreddits go dark on the hour every hour is very cathartic. The twitch stream started with a couple hundred and now it’s at 15,000 viewers. Looking forward to the Wikipedia write up on this, at least I hope there’s one.

  • worfamerryman@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    What does reddit plan to do with all these communities going dark?

    They should remain dark until changes are made. A strike with an end date is pointless.