this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful…

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[–] [email protected] 136 points 1 year ago (3 children)

For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.

I'm glad Reddit is feeling something from this, however, at the same time. I kinda don't care. It's a shame it went the way that it did. But spez can't take back his terrible attitude and decision making on what happened. Most people were sympathetic and wanting Reddit to be profitable and rooting for Reddit. However, spez just decided to come out swinging from nowhere hitting his allies in the face.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeh I’m in the same boat. The day the internal memo came out about how everything will blow over, I deleted Apollo. I haven’t been back to reddit since and after the first week, I don’t even miss it now.

I wish lemmy was a bit busier, but outside of that the general atmosphere and quality here is better. Even if everything was reversed and Spez was booted, I won’t return now.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Just wait till the third party apps shut down tomorrow, loads of people will be rolling in here. Then when the RIF and Sync developers release their Lemmy apps (with the same names) even more people will come. If you want there to be content right now though just keep contributing to posts you see. The more content we make right now, the more likely it is for new users to stay,

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

While I want to it be a little bit busier, I'm pleased that we're not at the low-effort comment point e.g. every other comment being a pun or a shitpost or "this"

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Actually, I like the small community vibe of Lemmy. It’s the dead sub vibe I have a problem with. There are lots of really interesting communities, but you don’t see people posting anything yet.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It’s worth mentioning the article said prior to the blackout ads saw ~14,500 clicks so they’re currently down 40-50%

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I am glad that this happened because Lemmy is very interesting platform.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (10 children)

I’ve barely been back to Reddit recently and with Apollo gone, I’ll only ever duck my head in when I really have to. I find it a lot easier to leave Reddit behind than Facebook. On FB I’m connected to real world relatives and friends who I just would lose contact with otherwise. On Reddit I converse with strangers and that’s easy to replace. Lemmy has already done it. Is there anything unique about the hobby forums on Reddit? No. They can be reassembled or restarted elsewhere. In some ways it’s probably good to dump the old structures and shake things up. Some subs were better managed and some really just coasted on their name.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I totally agree. I'm on Android and never used Apollo, but I'm using the wefwef web app and it's fantastic. People are saying it feels like Apollo!

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Agreed. I deleted my 15 year account. Mods should just leave.

Reddit can’t exist without the free labor.

Other side is I don’t know what the mods that stick it out get. I’m guessing there is some monetary benefit to the bigger community mods I don’t know about.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I literally made a reddit account a few days before the hullabaloo started, specifically to buy advertising on reddit.

  1. The ad interface is terrible. Most of my experience is with Google Ads, but in general, platforms try to be super-nice to their advertisers and give them a good experience. Not reddit. The same overall shittiness the infests the rest of the site is also in their ad portal.
  2. Most of the clicks were fairly poor quality (high bounce rate).
  3. Whatever I tried to configure to limit geographic reach to US+Canada either wasn't set up right or was just ignored. I got plenty of clicks from all over world.

I stopped advertising on blackout day for moral reasons regardless, but it also seemed like it just overall wasn't worth it in general. And, my observation of the ads I see as a user has been that they aren't at all tuned to what I would be likely to want, or constructed so I'd be likely to click on them. Some platforms I have to consciously avoid clicking on ads or scroll past them deliberately when my natural tendency is to click on them. On reddit it's just weird nonsense that I want to scroll past anyway.

In short, my brief experience with reddit ads made me conclude that it's probably a waste of money anyway.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Personally the redditbusiness page marketing to advertisers reads like wishful thinking or something straight from /r/boringdystopia.

"Look there's places where people come to discuss flashlight options and other users/google results trust them! Pay us money to look like you're part of that! It's not creepy to try and co-opt at all!"

I'm not surprised that their interface isn't great, they haven't paid for developers to do anything other than try to look more like twitter/facebook in a long time.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I had no idea about this. This is the weirdest goddamned thing. I found so much that I made a whole separate post. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I had no idea.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Too many people ad block everything on Reddit in any decent category that you might want to target.

The real way to do it is an army of paid shills making posts and comments by a third party.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I agree with your comment while I enjoy this piping hot Dominos Cheesey-Cheese Delix Pizza, delivered hot and fresh right to my door.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I would assume that almost all clicks are from people on the mobile app accidentally tapping ads while they try to scroll past them, because they're in the main feed. So click quality being garbage doesn't surprise me.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Imagine that once upon a time (5-15 years ago), I actually had addblocker disabled on reddit, because I considered it worth supporting. lol

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Proof that people will gladly support a good product.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At the end of the day, Reddit is just a message board. The absolute hubris to think that one could seriously go public with a message board website... It's baffling.

Honestly, Reddit missed the ship to IPO. They should have done it a decade ago if at all.

Without mods, Reddit will become overrun with bots, rendering the precious data Reddit so desparately tries to monetize practically useless.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I mod a small/mid size sub that is still blacked out. Should I leave it private or just let it get overrun with spam?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sell promoted posts directly, admins have made it abundantly clear they're in it for money over community, get your cheddar too.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sure is funny how reddit wasn't concerned with with mobs having to much power or enforcing any code till it affected the snowflake admin

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not just "not concerned", it was literally their formal position that mods owned the subs that they modded. You couldn't remove a mod for anything except breaking TOS or for being inactive. If the mod was active and not actively breaking TOS then reddits response has ALWAYS been "if you don't like the way the sub is being handled, make your own sub and let the free market sort out whether yours or theirs is better".

They held that position since the founding of reddit and it was as fundamental to the platform as the ability to create your own instance with your own rules is here on Lemmy. Right up until it was starting to get in the way of the CEOs big IPO payday.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

This is why all the "fuck the mods I'm with the admins" folks are so short sighted. The only reason bad mods can exist is because the admins won't remove them. They're fine with bigotry and power abuse. The current mods are just a sacrificial lamb

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (2 children)

WE made the content. The community. No doubt the majority of level-headed folk would have accepted ad requirements in 3rd party apps. Hosting isn't free, something needs to be monetized.

But that's not what it's about. It's about locking down content from the new wave of AI models and charging for it. Charging for content we created freely to be shared.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Ads? No, I would not accept ads. What I would have accepted was a subscription payment. Hell, I went so far as to purchase Apollo lifetime ultimate.

I am more than willing to support things I use. I am not willing to deal with ads though. Especially when they sneak in like they are posts, and take up entire scroll widths.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

However, Similarweb told Gizmodo traffic to the ads.reddit.com portal, where advertisers can buy ads and measure their impact, has dipped. Before the first blackout began, the ads site averaged about 14,900 visits per day. Beginning on June 13, though, the ads site averaged about 11,800 visits per day, a 20% decrease.

For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.

This is the only metric that matters to Reddit, so it's nice to see!

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

So they really are following Twitter's example. Twitter's lost 59% of ad revenue since Elon took over, now Reddit ad revenue is plummetting. It's stunning how stupid companies can be.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (35 children)

Just noticed today that Twitter requires one to log-in to read posts. It's like these two platforms are competing on which one can destroy their reputation first.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Twitter requires one to log-in to read posts

I'm actually kinda liking this. Maybe it'll encourage people to stop reposting "Tweets". Folks need to think about Twitter the way most of us think about Digg: Rarely.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

I don't understand why the CEO thinks this is some 4D business move. This is not the first time most of us have transitioned like this regarding social outlets. There must be records and archives proving that it is unwise to treat a community as negatively as it has ...... because it's too easy for internet folk to just up and move to a new place of interest. Time is wrought with soo many examples:

For those of you who are ancient, there were the bad days of AOL and Yahoo, and then time moved on with ideas like social networks and board systems like 4chan. But how did they not know? Just look at what is in store for future Reddit by heading to the front page of Digg.

For one, I mean, look at this sad, sad, sad thing! Further, have you wandered to see Myspace...... not sure who that audience is, but hey, to each their own. Hell, I can assure you that most of us only keep FB to keep some contact with family and old friends. I suppose the root of what I am saying is

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I doubt spez cares about reddit. He cares about money. If he has to throw the site under a bus to make some more money he will gladly do it

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If investors have any memory at all though, they aren’t going to give him tons of money, because he triggered the Reddit collapse before he sold out.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Understand that Spez is so out of touch he even managed to piss off gigantic pacifist nerd-communities like r/startrek to leave and switch over to the open source side! These subs inevitably take dedicated users and quality memes with them. The users and mods create the value. Honour to you and your house Lemmy. Qapla'

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The beatings aren't improving morale, you say? I guess we just need to increase the beatings then.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I came from days of dialup and gone through yahoo groups, Myspace, tons of geocity sites, ask jeevs, LiveJournal, and so on. Sites will only be an attraction tell something comes that offers more. With federation and decentralized systems coming up, the hold on people and corporations trying to use you as a commodity will only tarnish the shine that it once was. When companies hold a noose around your neck thinking there isn't another option, telling you to go ahaid and jump, thinking no one will and when something comes by that makes the jump just a step down and you can take off the noose, there is nothing that they can hold onto anymore. They cannot say you have nowhere else to go. With the choice around in a federated system, you cannot be held hostage by a single entity. When people have the freedom of choice, the people win.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well we’re here basically figuring it out. Time to show them they aren’t needed anymore.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (5 children)

reddit is just a frame. it always was and will always be, despite the efforts of a few dumb cunts.

the content is the people. that's the secret sauce. just provide people with a framework, and they'll fill the empty space. try to monetize that, and you're just a dick.

i have faith in defederisation. my autocorrect says that isn't a word. let's make it a word.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (5 children)

It isn’t even about the API drive out anymore of why I’m not going back to Reddit. It’s the CEO though and though

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Because the goal was never to get some kind of fair price for using the API. That's why they priced it at "Fuck You."

Ultimately what they want is for people to stop using 3rd party apps entirely because 3rd party apps either don't show advertisements, or they show advertisements that give ad revenue to the developer.

They want everyone using their app because the valuation of tech companies directly correlates to the number of eyeballs they can serve ads to. Old.reddit will be next, and I bet they'll try to start blocking ad blockers after that.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (16 children)

Just wait for July 1st! Once millions of people find their apps not working anymore and their porn gone there's no way going back for Reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

lol spez literally killed the platform with draconian policies. this is going to be something that is mentioned in college courses for decades.

probably not how he wanted to leave his mark on history...

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"Oh yeah Plebbit? What are you gonna do next, hack my PC and force me to read nothing else than random reddit content for the rest of my life?"

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

why did it have to be aaron swartz

why couldn't it have been huffman...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Good people do good things and get punished by bad people.

Bad people do bad things and get rewarded.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

The enshtification of reddit has reached a head.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (21 children)

I feel like old af now that I’ve watched two huge sites implode due to mismanagement. I was a Digg refuge way back, and now here I am on lemmy…

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So traffic is back to normal but ad clicking is way down? Have they not figured out how to make their bots click the ads?

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