What it says on the tin, really. I think this is going to be an issue when they get around to the smaller communities… It’s going to suck majorly, as most people’s default will remain with reddit for community discussion like this…
What it says on the tin, really. I think this is going to be an issue when they get around to the smaller communities… It’s going to suck majorly, as most people’s default will remain with reddit for community discussion like this…
I think this is a important take - as far as users are concerned Reddit merely hosts the content and the community, but as far as Reddit is concerned it owns the content and wants to monetise the community.
The problem for Reddit is the moderation is done by users who do it for free, mostly because they love their communities and want to keep them going. Those people are not easy to replace - plenty of communities shut because no one wanted to moderate them, and plenty of users just aren’t interested. So if they lose the moderators, there is a small pool of people to replace them and many of those may not be motivated in the same way. There will also be bad actors amongst those untested moderators.
Lose the moderators, and the communities fall apart as bad content, rule breaking and negative behaviour takes hold. The “content” becomes lost and the value of what reddit things it owns falls massively. An archive of old reddit comments is actually not worth much - sure people google things and find answers on Reddit - but it’s the current active users and daily content that draws people in.
I think Reddit is doomed as it is failing to understand it’s own business and what made the site successful.
I read a pretty great write up on Mother Jones about the inevitable enshittification of reddit. Seems like all social media sites are doomed to turn into hot garbage eventually.
Yup. An opinion writer in the Washington Post had a weird analogy yesterday, but it works — Reddit’s business model is almost the same as a thrift store’s. People donate stuff (clothes and furniture to Goodwill, analysis and humor to Reddit). Volunteers sort through it and throw out the bad stuff (volunteers at Goodwill, moderators at Reddit). And the business sells it (Reddit has one extra step here in that it sells ads, so it uses the donated-and-sorted stuff to build an audience to sell).
If the donators and the sorters walk, what do they have to sell?
That opinion peace helped me to understand what was different about this situation vs Twitter. The business model at Twitter is different. Twitter didn’t require communities with tremendous user investment to create a community, and by not realizing community was the differentiating aspect of Reddit, they didn’t understand how passionate people would be.
That’s a good analogy, makes it easier to communicate Reddit’s business model and how messed up they are right now. Thanks for sharing!