this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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I just posted it elsewhere, but that's only the beginning. They also announced their intent to turn reddit into an even more ad-infested hellhole than it already is: https://www.redditinc.com/blog/investing-in-what-makes-reddit-unique-introducing-contextual-keyword-targeting-and-product-ads
This is the future of reddit everyone - abandon all hope ye who clicketh here: https://www.redditinc.com/assets/images/site/image2.gif
Translation - we don't have control of the 3PA and they are getting in the way of moooore profit, so we want them gone.
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]
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
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
Since this began, I've seen countless screenshots of people showing the Reddit official app crashing. Not just during the blackout, but generally. So it's not just that it has a poor interface or too many ads... the thing just doesn't work properly for a lot of users.
IIRC they used some Reddit outage causing API usage to blow up on all platforms as some sort of anecdote toward 3PA API usage...
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.
I'm 90% certain that this whole thing is due to to Reddit's 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 control of our online communities, good riddance.
Something like reddit doesn't long if it's not profitable. He's not in the same reality that we are
They love to get creative with the definition of "profitable".
@artistan It’s funny in a way that 3PA manage to monetize their business better than they are themselves.
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.
LMAO giving r/BuyItForLife as a good example of where to put ads.
I know, right? I hope BIFL will rip advertisers there a new one by suggesting alternatives.
It is already infested with covert ads posted as content, anyway.
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
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.
Can confirm, I used Redact and it was super easy.
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.
How hard if it to offer a nominally feed as free experience?
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.
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
Corporations haven't been paying millions for superbowl ads on a misconception. Ads work. Obviously.
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.
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.
Even if the fediverse didn't want to monetize on the userbase money are still needed to keep things running
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.
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.
Agreed. Beyond just no ads because I go out of my way to block them on my network and devices its nice to browse new and be able to have discussions instead seeing complete shit posts or popular ones with 1,000+ replies already.
Replies like "This is so fucking stupid" with 50k upvotes.
That summarises the reddit commenting and karma experience for me, any comments I've made that blew up over 1k were just incredibly stupid comments.
I think that's actually what I'm noticing most of all? like right off the bat the news/politics communities are actually talking instead of making puns and tweet length comments
almost like Reddit actively encourages blind rage for clicks
Well ok then, fuck you and goodbye :D
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.
Ya that sounds fkn horrible.
The bright side of all of this is finding out more about the Fediverse and how cool it is
Well Spez is a greedy little pig boy, so I’m not surprised
I wonder if uBlock Origin and other ad blocks will work against that crap. Not that I intend to use Reddit anymore anyway.
That is why they force you to use first party apps, ads in them can be almost impossible to block.
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.
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.
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.
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.