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"These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free. And that free comes at the expense of our other users and our business. That’s what this is about. It can’t be free."
Funny, seems like he has been getting all of it from content to moderation for free, and now he is the one angry it isn't free any more....huh.
If they had charged API fees such that 3rd party apps would have had to charge a monthly fee to users....I would have probably just paid. And I know I'm not the only one.
But they priced it intentionally to kill 3rd party apps, because they wanted to channel access through their garbage app with its "promoted" ads all over the place.
It's not about "free vs. not free" it's about intentionally killing off the applications that made reddit likeable as a platform.
Yup, if two months ago they said reddit premium members won't experience any changes, and started pushing ads to 3rd party clients and restricted NSFW posts on 3rd party clients without premium I bet there would have be considerably less push back. I know I probably would have ponied up to $60/year,but instead I have abandoned the site without any intention to return.
That's why this whole debacle is so mystifying to me. If they would have tried to monetize the 3rd party space by way of charging a reasonable API price to the devs, it's not hard to imagine that most serious Reddit users wouldn't have any qualms with parting with a few bucks here and there to keep the status quo. I can't imagine that Reddit is able to create a situation where they earn more from their advertising platform per user than having users simply pay to maintain the existing experience.
The only theory I've heard that makes a lick of sense is that if Reddit fundamentally changes the site experience to pursue other monetization options (Hello Reddit NFTs), then 3rd party apps would've been able to just ignore implementing those features entirely.
I had thought those where your words at first, you can quote like this;
These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free. And that free comes at the expense of our other users and our business. That’s what this is about. It can’t be free.
I'm struggling to show you what symbol it is without it turning into a quote, so here's a picture of the greater than symbol;
To display formatting characters without having them actually affect formatting, put a backslash in front of them. Like this:
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That produces this:
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But the ownership class always deserves to get things from regular people for free. It's only those of us who make our living from our physical or mental labour, rather than owning property, that don't deserve free shit.
That's just the hierarchy in action, doncha know.
Yep mainly moderator's.
Also the thing we were getting for free (or paying for app) was a good service. If the Reddit app wasn't crap when could have had that money. Many pay for premium to remove ads and still use these apps
Seems like a case for r/selfawarewolves ... If that's a thing that still exists.
It's the same as when he started talking about "landed peasantry", the projection is strong, aware or not.
You're right on the money. Spez is just a generic CEO waving his dick around. Prick.
The money quote IMO is at the end:
Reddit, like any commercial platform, is only a community until its owners need it to be something else.
That's a good reason to be mindful of what we're building here on Kbin, Lemmy, and other federated networks. We're not just trying to build a Reddit methadone, to help us down from our high after quitting cold-turkey. We are, I hope, aiming to build (or rebuild) a community -- one not dependent on the monetizing whims of a private owner.
The author is right: Spez lost site of the community aspect. Here's an opportunity to show them that the idea still means something to a lot of us.
If for some reason kbin becomes bad, you just move to another instance (that defederated kbin) and you still get the prior cached posts and comments, just new stuff won't be shitty. I guess you'd have to leave your kbin profile behind.
Considering there's no global karma, your account isn't much more than your subscription list, and down the line migrating that should get easy!
One thing that the Reddit guy says that is true, it takes money to run sites. People joining the Fediverse need to realize this and should consider contributing money to their instance if they can.
That's honestly one thing that I think will be a problem for many Fediverse services and instances. People nowadays are extremely loath to pay for any sort of online content or service. That's why ads proliferated; nobody wants to pay for eg. news, video streaming or a social network site, and the people producing the content and services need to eat too.
Many have been so conditioned into getting everything for free that they get outright angry when someone suggests that maybe news and social networks are so shit nowadays is exactly because they have to bait people into clicking on stuff so they'll see more ads, and that maybe they should be paying for the content they consume instead of assuming they're entitled to it by virtue of being online
I come from the era of the BBS. The PHP Forum. SlashDot, and Digg. I come from online games ranging from EverQuest, to Multiverse Crisis MUSH, to Moments in Tyme, to Warframe, and More. I have walked messenger clients from the times of AiM, IRC and Yahoo, to Skype, Steam, and Discord.
In my thirty years of being online, this is not the first petty tyrant claiming that upset users are the problem rather than taking a long hard look in the mirror. This will not be the last.
The best we can do is grab popcorn and watch as his platform dies. He won't admit to making any mistakes. Especially with money involved because he's under the deluded belief that showing any weakness invites a price drop from investors. Yet this behavior? It REEKS of weakness and insecurity.
Migrate and Move On. the rest is just playing u/spez's game.
I'd expect that Matrix and Revolt will eat a small portion of the discord userbase. Twitter and Reddit are clearly shattering into pieces.
That would be nice! The last time I was on Matrix, there wasn't much going on, but I'm seeing a lot more community servers being set up. It might be time to update my old instance and join some channels!
One thing that spez notes is that the communities are supposed to be democratic and he's pushing towards having moderators and admins of the subreddits being left to a vote... While at the same time increasing the amount of draconian measures by implementing his own moderators of the communities.
I feel like the ability to vote on mods and admins of communities should've been implemented ages ago on Reddit to decentralize the power trip, but now with spez doing businessman things instead of harboring a passion for people/ease of use/whatever Reddit's initial purpose was, this change has come far too late.
He seems to misunderstand that the people who use and contribute to Reddit use it like other social media platforms, but it's simply not the case. People use Reddit to stay on topic about their hobbies and passions, and ease of use is a huge part of that. Reddit has been constantly trying to inject more invasive shit into user's feeds: chats, video ads, obnoxiously colored ads (in the app), those dumbass live streams that they pushed for a hot minute that sucked - when the whole purpose of the site is to get your information about a specific topic or check in on a specific topic.
Eventually, users do scroll out of the topic and that's when people's purpose for staying on reddit changes: they move more towards the entertainment side of things with memes, circlejerking, and simply discussing and hanging out with like-minded individuals (or starting an argument with them over something fringe in regards to the topic at large). And keep in mind this is only 10% of the user base doing this form of contribution - the banter that's needed to sustain the quality of Reddit. The other 90% of users will realize something is off when things like this go missing, simply because it's entertaining to not just engage in, but also to read and watch from a lurker standpoint.
The theme here is that he doesn't even care enough to create the illusion of caring. The community was never given "democratic" solutions to dysfunctional mod situations until this business reason arose. There's no community liaison trying to do damage control or make the users feel heard right now -- just the CEO himself telling everyone in the plainest terms that nothing they say has any impact because he does not care. People should take all of this at face value.
His inability, or unwillingness, to even put on a show of trying to finesse the community is one of the strangest things about the situation. Handling things in the most ridiculously hamfisted way he could and picking a huge fight with the people that provide him with free content and moderation, and right before the IPO... it's just so bizarre and dumb.
Mr. Huffman is stretching in a variety of directions here. Reddit is not a feudal government, or a city in any sense; neither is it ultimately “democratic,” as he frequently suggests. It’s an advertising and subscription-supported web service that also depends on free content and unpaid labor from its users. It is, substantially, in the same business as Meta, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok — giving people something to use mostly for free in exchange for their monetizable time and attention.
I really appreciated this callout in the article.
landed gentry
democratic
Bro, that's just a little too much bullshit coming from your mouth for me.
Dude, my bullshit meter blew its fuses and the magic smoke's poured out.
No users, no Reddit. It's as simple as that. Why the paint huffer thinks he can take content from his users for free, then sell it back to them, is mystifying. No, no, dickhead. You're acting like you're the most important component of Reddit when you are, in fact, the most expendable.
I was definitely addicted to reddit but it's been surprisingly easy to stop using it. I have been reading instead and I'm 75% of the way through Wool right now. Before I would endlessly scroll through but now when I open reddit I am bored in a few minutes. I'll probably still use it to find useful answers on Google but otherwise 🤷♀️
I don't think I would have broken away without Kbin/Lemmy. Turns out I was addicted to discussion, not Reddit.
That's kinda what you find out over time and as you see platforms crumble.
the platform itself is just a wrapper for the discussions. If you can find somewhere with those discussions? The wrapper is irrelevant.
There really is no other large social media site that allows you to converse with actual people. Youtube and Twitter are all about chatting with the content creator, trying to get their attention. Facebook is for getting yelled at by distant relatives. Fortunately Kbin and Lemmy where there to catch us.
I was definitely addicted to reddit but it's been surprisingly easy to stop using it
The last time I closed the Apollo app was last Sunday night, and I haven't been back since. And each day gets easier on two fronts:
I've always been pretty good about limiting my casual reddit browsing to only when I have literally nothing else I can productively do with my time, so I'm very pleased that for the most part Lemmy and kbin can already pretty effectively fill that gap for me despite containing a fraction of the firehose that is reddit.
And you're absolutely right that it's a great excuse to refocus on any other hobby.
I'm kinda glad Reddit is blowing up, it has been shit for a long time to be honest. Yes you can seclude yourself into smaller and more niche subreddits, but they all end up catering to the lowest common denominator eventually. If fediverse really kicks off I'm sure the same thing will happen in 10 years, but for now I'm excited to be trying something new
If third party reddit browsing apps are competitors to reddit, that means that I have preferred their competitors this whole time! I think I am going to stick with reddit competitors.
I'm enjoying learning about the alternatives though.
I hope Spez gets explosive diarrhea every day for the rest of his life.
And if for some weird reason he is into that, then I hope he gets concrete constipation every day for the rest of his life instead.
As a bearer of IBS, this is evil. I like it.