Imagine how differently this would have played out if Reddit CEO Steve Huffman had taken a collaborative approach with app developers and stake holders. A few months ago, he could have called them up and humbly asked them for ideas and assistance in making Reddit profitable. Reddit would be on path to financial success by now.
It’s a corporate us vs them mentality. I don’t think Steve would even ask his own employees for help - the people who are on the ground running the company. The internal memo strongly indicates that Reddit doesn’t have a two-way communication channel with leadership.
It’s a shame, because refusing to take feedback is what ends up sinking most companies.
I don’t think it’s wrong for Spez to charge for API access, but the rates he’s vowing to charge are excessive and clearly designed to nuke third-party apps from their ecosystem.
As for how I’d make money from Reddit in his shoes, I’d:
- Add more features for Reddit Premium, like being able to view more than 1,000 items on the front page, video uploads in comments, or enhanced search functionality.
- Add OnlyFans-style subscriptions or revenue sharing for partnered subreddits/users, with a 90% to 10% cut between content creators and Reddit.
- Bring back RPAN as a full time streaming platform to compete with the likes of Twitch/Kick.
As much as I do hope this helps, I’m afraid it won’t change a thing: Like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well." -Spez. Seem they will ride out this storm. This have to be permanent to make any changes at Reddit.
Problem is it will work lul. Just read some comments in some subs that are restricted like the Star Wars one. Kinda sad to see people bend over so easily only because they cannot post in their sub for a few days. Like, geez doesn’t matter at all what % of people use 3rd party apps. A little bit of inconvenience doesn’t kill anyone and it’s good to stand up for stuff like this as well.
Keep in mind that Reddit is running a propaganda campaign to try to squash the blackout. Notice most of the comments are almost exactly the same. As we saw with Trump, all it takes is a few well placed comments to stir up dissent and get people to parrot dumb talking points. Reddit can easily manipulate votes and comments to make it look like most people don’t care, but obviously they do, because there was the biggest blackout I’ve seen on a social media platform ever.
I’m sure they do but I have no doubt a ton of people also simply are in the typical “I don’t care, it doesn’t affect me directly but the subs going dark does so it’s bad” mode as many are with lots of things these days sadly.
But not for me. I’m forever gone.
And if there are enough power users (lots of comments, posts) like me who feel the same, it will have an impact.
There’s a HUGE middle ground between “nothing changes” and “reddit goes out of business.” As we see with Twitter, you can have a zombie platform that persists but slowly loses inertia month after month.
It’s not that Reddit dies abruptly. It’s that the platform is wounded now and, without attention, will bleed out slowly over many years.
At a communications conference last week, a Bloomberg reporter told the attendees that most tier 1 journalists are looking for stories on LinkedIn now instead of Twitter. It’s gone from vital to junk in just a few months. Without its moderators, Reddit faces the same fate: lots of activity, but most of it junk.
Its not the loss of moderators, its the loss of content. If reddit hadn’t changed their original self moderation model this couldn’t happen. Or at least, not like this.
Moderators are not responsible for making content, they just moderate a sub where others create content. Originally users moderated content on their own.
Pretty funny how reddit’s move to authoritarianism has worked against them this time.
a lot of people back on Reddit could not give less of a shit about the issues and just want their content; they even see this as just mods powertripping again
it’s kind of annoying to see that, tbh, even if I sort of get it
A look at their comment histories might be interesting, to see if they’re the ones contributing content worth reading.
I suspect I can guess the answer.
I haven’t seen that. Everyone seems to be rather upset about Apollo, RIF, Relay, etc. The only person I’ve seen suggesting power tripping mods is u/spez.
they could easily have their cake and eat it too by signing up to lemmy. There are a lot of instances out there and they could make their own if none fit.
but that’s not immediate and requires some work and effort (to figure out how federation works, to figure out how Lemmy works, to learn how to create an instance and to make one, to start over with an entirely new community); many on Reddit want the easiest path to get their content
which again, understandable, but still annoying to see
I’m happy to find a place like Lemmy. It’s good to have federated services that don’t have to be at the beck and call of a group of heartless investors with the face of a petulant manchild like Spez.
wish sub’s would announce migrating to Lemmy instead, maybe reddit would start to listen. based on the memo spez sent out looks like they are waiting for it to blow over. 48hrs a week, whatever. they are playing the long game so should we
I would be cautious too if I were a sub owner and guiding people to an alternative honestly. Lemmy and Kbin both are relatively unstable right now, even if they are pretty good. Waiting a little to see which instances are more stable and likely to last is a good move before planting people somewhere and making an official replacement sub.
The major Star Trek subs all have. Started their own Lemmy instance (startrek.website) and have their private message directing folks over.
that would explain why Im suddenly seeing a ton of star trek posts on my federated feed, I mean Id expect some but Ive seen a lot more all of a sudden
That’s awesome. Starting a community is cool but starting their own instance is next level.
Well they uave been familiar with the Federation for very long time.
I guess Reddit has introduced free API calls for moderator apps. They’re trying to placate the mods, but screw the users. Good luck with that.
My problem with the “free API” is there are no control mechanisms for it. What’s to stop Reddit from discontinuing the free contract if they decide to develop their own specific use App? A creator or developer of any said App will be beholden to bend or subjugate themselves to the whims of Reddit admins, any controversial comments or events like that of Apollo could nullify the free API if they don’t approve of your actions.
It’s a slippery slope and we’ve already been shown that Reddit can and will change/vilify anyone who doesn’t fall in line especially when IPO time comes.
It’s almost like they never considered that moderators use the same third party apps as the rest of their users, either.
Though based on the leaked internal memo, it looks like Reddit doesn’t think very much of their users at all.
It turns out though, the mods are also users. That’s the whole free labor market Reddit has tapped into. They don’t have to pay mods and so users are mods. Yet now they are trying to monetize just half and completely failing to understand what their user base even looks like. I don’t know many mods but the ones I do know are users first and moderators because they want the community to be decent.
correct.
It will not pass until it is made right.
Cool that sites are reporting on it. Maybe that’ll add pressure.
Couldn’t the Admin team just force-open subs, at least the big ones?
Am I missing something? I mean they could just hire new mods.
I hope they don’t, but spez isn’t exactly known for being righteous
They could, but this would probably anger people further. So they’re hoping it blows over without them needing to take aggressive actions.
Stuff’s already starting to go back to public, I expect nothing to change for the better.
I mean it seems like only a couple thousand went public, the site is still very much noticeably short on content.
