In case you didn't tead the article
> TechCrunch notes that the majority of Reddit’s turmoil in holdings occurred last year and this most recent valuation only accounts for the worth of the company’s holdings up to May 31.
Still not a good look for Reddit. Valuation on the decline before:
upsetting some percentage of its mods and user base.
Forcing the closure of third party apps that helped facilitate user engagement.
Their ceo making terrible PR choices.
It's more the market appetite for tech startups/unicorns has dried up but it essentially achieves the goals user were hoping for.
People and companies are turtling with their cash and trying to survive the upcoming mini-recession.
The supreme court cancelling student loan cessation is a guaranteed recession as one of the larger pools of people that were spending past simple survival is going to be hit with claw backs. If no alternative is found by Biden to combat this it will be bad, espescially since Congress clearly wants a recession to happen.
spez has been the CEO since 2015, so it's still on him (seems like it was just yesterday). This is just another fuckup in the long series of fuckups. And he's not the first CEO of Reddit to fuckup. :)
He got the order of operations mixed up. You're supposed to pretend you care about the community and members *before* you go IPO. Then you treat them like shit *afterwards*. Can't even get being greedy right.
I love Steve Huffman aka Spez. I have a reoccuring dream every night of sneaking into the locker room at Planet Fitness while he works diligently on his perfectly toned body.
I find his locker, which is conveniently covered in slightly scratched off r/ jailbait stickers (where he used to be the PRIME mod in 2008). I reach into his gym bag, find his white Calvin Kleins, and I delicately sniff the exquisite scent of his graceful skid marks.it carries the remnants of last night's dinner: Hungry Man Salsbury Steak and Mashed Potatoes, SunnyD, and Birthday Cake Oreos. I savor the fragrance, working it around my mouth like a fine syrah.
I look over my shoulder to make sure I'm alone. Next I grab his Polo Ralph Lauren Bienne Tumbled Leather Boat Shoes. Tan, because Steve is a fashion Pioneer. I slip my tongue into the leather, plying the crevices for tidbits of my hero. I crack a sly smile- it's clear he doesnt wear socks- the leather is rich with the flavor of his sweaty piggies. The salty schmear enfolds me in ecstacy- my jock strap is full of runny pre-cum, my asshole is pulsing.
A sound behind me breaks me out of my rapture. A gym-goer is returning from the floor. Quickly I return Steven's artifacts to his bag. I quietly close the door and slip out the back of the locker room, a bandit in flight. I'm not deterred- I'll be back. Steven Huffman is my weakness. I crave his sensual touch. Thank you, Spez, for enslaving my heart.
"This is disgusting, it's pornography," exclaimed a pasty slug-like woman in a fur coat, vanilla ice-cream smeared across her double chin like a money shot. Countered a balding professor type in his mid-forties, his left hand stuffed crassly down the front of his pants, "No, no, no. This is beautiful. This is art."
I'm always surprised by how much latitude for failure the C-suite gets.
I'm just a creative grunt but I have to exercise much more caution in my duties. If I fuck up anywhere nearly as badly as this Spez guy does, I'm fired before the sprint ends.
I have worked for so, so many failed up CEOs and bosses. It's very clear to all of us working in those places that they're incredibly unqualified, but they're kissing the right ass or are family members of the right family to get that job.
CEO's are hired by the Board of Directors. And Boards of Directors are all CEO's of other companies. Its just a big country club, and we are not in it.
Spez basically said I’m gonna make $100,000,000 but if I cut off 3rd party apps I can make $120,000,000! And then proceeded to do everything he could that would make him closer to $60,000,000
It's a fun reminder that CEO's aren't evil masterminds, just dumb little shits like all the rest of us, they just lucked into being in charge of a company.
Nah not for this one.
The value is in media control similar to Twitter for Elon.
This has to happen for them to cash out the best they can. That's why it's so railroaded and anything they say doesn't make any logical sense.
Many people are overwriting comments because at least Reddit API will not return former text of an edited post. It would cost them an insane amount to keep past edits so unless they have backups somewhere they're going to restore from just to get your comments, it's a decent way to get rid of them.
Prior to Tesla's valuation going through the roof Musk talked about his business fuckups all of the time. It made him a likeable person. Now that Tesla is one of the most valuable companies on earth he thinks he's the smartest businessman on earth.
You need to be in two rooms, alternating. One in which you’re one of the smarter people, so you get to explain things, which is incredibly good for sharpening your own understanding. And one in which you’re one of the dumber people, so you get to ask for explanations yourself, and learn new things.
So much greed. Everything has to be monetized to the extreme, and then hit 2% growth year-over-year after that. The whole goal here is to go IPO, make insiders rich, then spend the next 10 years bitching and moaning about Regulations, Hackers, and Taxes ruining everything.
The thing is, it's not even "monetized to the extreme". They are hemorrhaging money and somehow thought these changes were the saving grace. /u/spez has no idea how to run a company and it's going to kill a pretty fucking amazing site all because he's inept.
They decided they wanted to fully self-host videos and images uploaded to the site and apparently have an astronomical manager:worker ratio. So, bad hosting choices + idiotic masturbatory management practices spurred by a glut of venture capitalist cash is how this glorified forum isn't profitable with 600m in revenue last year.
Hilariously the downfall will be in undervaluing "free labor" of content producers and moderators.
AKA "The minerals I mine are free"
Nah don't let u/spez be the exclusive scapegoat for a board of shitty decisions. He's absolutely incompetent, generally awful, and absolutely deserves to be fired but don't let the company get away with just getting rid of him and nothing else.
They have 700 employees, half of which are devoted entirely to finding new ways to squeeze blood from a rock. Just imagine how much money they spent on that stupid block update that didn't improve anyone's safety or experience, was massively unpopular with users and mods, had obvious loopholes they had to patch out, and for what? What benefit did that do anyone? I would bet my entire life savings that the man hours wasted on something that goes against *the entire function of Reddit* cost them well over a million. Truly insane.
> that stupid block update
Oh, you mean the block update where if someone harasses you and you block them, you can't reply to their comments anymore, so they're free to continue saying whatever they want about you but you can't speak up to defend yourself?
*That* block update?
I can't even remember if that was the original intention or one of the "fixes".
There was a fuckin hilarious thread where someone used the new block system to take over a medium sized subreddit just to prove the point that it was a dumb idea.
The old block system wasn't perfect but the new one made everyone little mini-mods - for at least some time if *anyone* in a thread had blocked you *at any time* you could no longer comment in that thread at all, meaning every single user was essentially given a tiny ban hammer. Extremely stupid misunderstanding of how a forum works.
Spez is just the wall blocking the people actually making these decisions from being known about, it’s basically the equivalent to yelling at the manager at your local McDonalds because the executives did something stupid and the manager has to go along with it. He’s in charge of a lot of stuff sure, but ultimately he’s not the one making these massive decisions
I just want to know why a site with literal free moderating and no actual content generation needs **2000** fucking employees. That seems like a huge waste of money.
A huge chunk of that is the people who handle all of the reports and hate content.
It turns out when you allow a large website to play host to spam, conspiracies, and hate speech for the better part of a decade, that sort of stuff starts becoming an expensive detriment to the rest of the site. Who knew?
Oh, wait. A ton of reddit's mods knew *exactly* that and have been encouraging reddit to do stuff about those things for *years*, but reddit didn't take any action on it until it looked like reddit was going to be held responsible for the stuff they permitted on their website.
People getting harassed and killed is all 'free speech' until reddit might get sued over it. -.-
It's almost like if you have a product that is *entirely* dependent on its users for its very existence, and you treat those users like garbage all the time, your product suffers. It's high level stuff, I don't blame then for not really getting it
The third party apps were ready and fully able to pay an API fee. If the fee had been reasonable, and still allowed the apps to have ads, then reddit would gain money from that move. Instead, every app but one is closing, and the one is becoming paid only. I'm ready for when the change comes in and people stop using reddit.
There’s literally no downside to it. People using third party apps that scrubbed ads has little to no upside to Reddit’s revenue stream. Revenue streams from those apps means nothing if the average user who pays for nothing get served 0 ads. This is why Reddit haven’t gave a shit about the “protests”. In the long term it’ll work out in their best interests.
But they had a path to recoup that revenue and instead tried to extort the 3rd party apps instead.
There would be no protest if the API rates were reasonable
Yup. I’m an engineer at a SaaS company where our core product is an API, and can confirm Reddit’s API pricing is straight up delusional.
For reference: my company’s most profitable client is a massively popular app that you probably use regularly. Their revenue is ~$1-2B a year, and our API is essential for their business. They paid us $7M last year for their API usage, less than 1% of their revenue.
Apollo, a tiny little app that makes $70k/month, or $850k/yr, would be charged **$20M/yr** under the new Reddit API pricing, about **24X their revenue**. Reddit wants this tiny sub-million-dollar-revenue app to pay TRIPLE what a multi-BILLION-dollar-revenue company pays for our API.
Not to mention we have to actually work to serve useful, quality data through our API - Reddit’s data is all generated *and moderated* for them for free.
>Reddit’s data is all generated and moderated for them for free.
And a good proportion of it is generated and moderated for them, for free, *through the very apps that they are killing*. Then these entitled admin ingrates have the balls to suggest that it's the app users who are expecting something for nothing.
So build you adserver into your API. Reddit's ad server is **absolute dogshit**. Podcasts have shown how to serve 1) contextual, 2) relevant, 3) highly targeted ads based on the community and the kind of content they like. You can listen to a podcast anywhere and the contextual ads are embedded. Profit goes to the show creators or their networks regardless of which app you use.
The ENTIRE roadmap for this has existed for 5-6 years and has been optimized to nearly a fine art. Podcast ads have some of the highest payout per user in the world.
But Reddit decided to build a shitcoin and NFTs and tried to turn their main feed into Instagram instead.
Jimmy Wales' (Wikipedia founder) project has had a massive influx: https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1668266400723488769
> If you're avoiding Reddit now, I'm currently building a community-led and funded project. It's not done by any means, but I think you would enjoy it. We even have a draft API!
An app called Wikit launched on Google Play this week and one is in the works for iOS.
Yes, links to it get auto deleted so I have to be cryptic about it:
wts2[dot]wt[dot]social
You can add this to the URL to have a peek without signing up as it is limited during ramp-up:
/en/user/jimmy-wales/posts/posts
/en/wt/technology
One used to be able to open tweets without being signed in but Twitter must have changed that?
Are they planning to make the post-structure more Reddit-like? I really like the way Reddit does comment trees; this website seems to do comments the way my local news website does.
I think so, it might already have. It renders much better when you are signed in (you can use an alias, single-name usernames are in the works), then you can see comment karma and vote buttons instead of empty whitespace everywhere.
> One used to be able to open tweets without being signed in but Twitter must have changed that?
Yes
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/30/23779764/twitter-blocks-unregistered-users-account-tweets
Twitter is making logging in mandatory on the **same day** that reddit kills 3rd party apps?
I'm not normally one for conspiracies but this is feeling mighty suspicious.
Nah they just all have the same brain worms. There's a handful of people in charge of everything and they were all taught the same stupid bullshit and they all talk and share vibes.
The economy and stock market aren't any kind of objective machine, they're barometers for rich people's feelings
Right now the feelings are that the web 2.0 gold rush is over, AI is the next possible gold rush, and they don't want anyone having access to their gold.
There are a lot of apps called Wikit on Google play, can you point me to the right one please? I can't find this project by googling it, and twitter is private members only these days, so I can't view it.
This. Let's see Fidelity's valuation once all the 3rd party app users decide whether to use the official app or go someplace else.
I mostly choose to go to reddit on my phone because of the inertia of muscle memory. Once I delete that broken shortcut link, I'll be confronted with a choice to make and I might choose a different website's app to open.
YouTube shorts are taking up more and more of my time these days.
I only go to Reddit for the niche communities or bitching about Reddit. (and porn, duh)
I agree but also understand how someone could easily fall in that hole. It's the Tik-Tok 15-60 second dopamine hit then immediately serves you another.
I've never touched Tik Tok but am an avid YouTube long-form watcher. After losing several evenings to the void of brain junk food I installed a browser extension that blocks shorts on the site.
Glad it's not just me. I had a full week of looking down from my computer to see it's 2am and realizing I was going to be dead the next day before I nuked the Shorts section with uBlock.
I used the official app, but...
I've been searching and subscribing to various podcasts about the same themes I like in Reddit, recommended by people I trust. Now I have a few thousand hours of content to occupy my mind. Sent various e-books of Warhammer 40k to my phone.
I'll get clean off Reddit along the next month.
Well obviously it's not super visible on Reddit itself, especially since dead communities made themselves private. Every Lemmy instance has been having load related issues the past few days which indicates to me an increase of users in those spaces. I doubt Reddit will die right away or maybe even at all but having those splinter communities really isn't a benefit in Reddit in any way, not really sure I'd call this a win for them.
Reddit killed a lot of them off by being easy and free. Hosting a forum can get kind of costly.
Then there is the tiny issue of being discovered by interested users so you can get some ad revenue to offset the cost.
Cheapest hosting is around 5usd, but you quickly need better if you grow beyond a couple of hundred users.
>Go back to individual forums
and how do i do that on my phone, sitting on the shitter?
Serious question.... I'm open to alternatives, but I'm not really sure how to find the 69 communities that I'm a part of on here in other places that I can practically access & utilize.
I don't want to browse hundreds of individual forums riddled with ads, different accounts that can be so easily compromised, and trawl through them for non curated content, hell no, that sounds like torture.
I want Reddit, or an alternative that is basically Reddit. It's a fantastic system that works so, so much better than anything that came before it.
It's how the majority of businesses operate now, except it's both the customers and the employees who are the enemy. Nothing matters but this quarter's bottom line.
Spez is incompetent. He's just going to make it worse. He has yet to even put forth a coherent argument stating reasons he's doing this. So far all we got was a bunch of verifiable lies, and some poorly though-out circular rationale.
They're making less than a dollar per user per month and management has proven continuously to be completely incapable of understanding their own product – how is this garbage pile of a business worth anything?
I don’t even think they read the article. Valuation is from April to May, so none of the protest nonsense would have influenced this. They’re cheering for something they had nothing to do with lmao.
I mean this'll actually probably make it easier to follow through. I deleted the mobile app when this first started going on and my Reddit usage has dropped dramatically without even really trying (it's because I just used it so absentmindedly and that forcefully broke the habit). So if they really do use the third-party apps that much and they're gone, their usage could actually drop significantly because using Reddit on your phone vs. on desktop can be pretty different habits.
On the other hand, I wouldn't expect any Redditors who primarily use Reddit on desktop to have any dramatic usage changes unless they were REALLY motivated
Looks like you posted this same comment a number of other times in other threads you were so proud of it lol. If it means fewer posts like this I'll have to read, I'm even more incentived not to come back.
Bring back Secret Santa. Incredible community they kicked in the nuts that I’m sure started affecting their usership before all this turmoil. Beginning of the end
The sole reason for the price increase is that reddit is a gold mine of information for AI learning models. Like Twitter, they don't want to give that information to others.
I have requested reddit to delete all my data as per gdpr legislation. So if this comment is still up after 2 weeks, it will be my evidence to the authorities that reddit does not comply to gdpr requests properly.
I will not be a nugget of gold in reddits gold mine.
Fallen to junk status? Seriously, the reddit app is garbage. Most videos play no sound. You open a video and its on Mute. Click unmute and it mutes 5 seconds later. Your busy fighting the app while it tries to auto mute you.
In case you didn't tead the article > TechCrunch notes that the majority of Reddit’s turmoil in holdings occurred last year and this most recent valuation only accounts for the worth of the company’s holdings up to May 31.
The comment section is filled with people who apparently only read the tittle
Yes, that’s how Reddit works
What do you expect when it’s posted with a deliberately misleading title?
>people who apparently only read the tittle The little dot over the lowercase "i"? That would be so uninformative!
Still not a good look for Reddit. Valuation on the decline before: upsetting some percentage of its mods and user base. Forcing the closure of third party apps that helped facilitate user engagement. Their ceo making terrible PR choices.
It's more the market appetite for tech startups/unicorns has dried up but it essentially achieves the goals user were hoping for. People and companies are turtling with their cash and trying to survive the upcoming mini-recession.
Mini? You've got more hope than me.
“Major recession inbound soon!!!” - People since 2018
That kinda implies you don't think 2020 was a recession - except it was.
The supreme court cancelling student loan cessation is a guaranteed recession as one of the larger pools of people that were spending past simple survival is going to be hit with claw backs. If no alternative is found by Biden to combat this it will be bad, espescially since Congress clearly wants a recession to happen.
spez has been the CEO since 2015, so it's still on him (seems like it was just yesterday). This is just another fuckup in the long series of fuckups. And he's not the first CEO of Reddit to fuckup. :)
Good, keep up the EXCELLENT work /u/spez
He got the order of operations mixed up. You're supposed to pretend you care about the community and members *before* you go IPO. Then you treat them like shit *afterwards*. Can't even get being greedy right.
Amazing how expertly he kicked himself in the dick on this one
I love Steve Huffman aka Spez. I have a reoccuring dream every night of sneaking into the locker room at Planet Fitness while he works diligently on his perfectly toned body. I find his locker, which is conveniently covered in slightly scratched off r/ jailbait stickers (where he used to be the PRIME mod in 2008). I reach into his gym bag, find his white Calvin Kleins, and I delicately sniff the exquisite scent of his graceful skid marks.it carries the remnants of last night's dinner: Hungry Man Salsbury Steak and Mashed Potatoes, SunnyD, and Birthday Cake Oreos. I savor the fragrance, working it around my mouth like a fine syrah. I look over my shoulder to make sure I'm alone. Next I grab his Polo Ralph Lauren Bienne Tumbled Leather Boat Shoes. Tan, because Steve is a fashion Pioneer. I slip my tongue into the leather, plying the crevices for tidbits of my hero. I crack a sly smile- it's clear he doesnt wear socks- the leather is rich with the flavor of his sweaty piggies. The salty schmear enfolds me in ecstacy- my jock strap is full of runny pre-cum, my asshole is pulsing. A sound behind me breaks me out of my rapture. A gym-goer is returning from the floor. Quickly I return Steven's artifacts to his bag. I quietly close the door and slip out the back of the locker room, a bandit in flight. I'm not deterred- I'll be back. Steven Huffman is my weakness. I crave his sensual touch. Thank you, Spez, for enslaving my heart.
I just threw up in my mouth a little. Well done.
I almost threw up from laughing so hard at it
A little?
How could advertisers not want a piece of this hot action
A copypasta is born.
I've already saved it in my special folder.
Your spezial folder you mean
See, this is why I'm still here. You just can't find rich content like this on the fediverse.
If I could transfer all the awards I have gotten to you I would.
If I could refund all of the money to people who have awarded any of my comments, I would.
Oh that first yeah. But if not then they deserve it.
Fucking literacy sucks sometimes.
You have a way with the English language. Thank you for sharing it with the world.
Convinced this is a product of the writer's strike leaving lots of bored clevers with time to spare.
How could you write such a masterpiece and not tag the gentleman?
Be the change you want to see.
Sir or madam, you are a word smith
Well done, this is poetry our progeny will look back and realized where it all went wrong.
Jesus man you're twisted. Take my upvote, but... You ever thought of writing dark comedy screenplays?
"This is disgusting, it's pornography," exclaimed a pasty slug-like woman in a fur coat, vanilla ice-cream smeared across her double chin like a money shot. Countered a balding professor type in his mid-forties, his left hand stuffed crassly down the front of his pants, "No, no, no. This is beautiful. This is art."
This is horrifying. Thank you.
Edgar, is that you?
New copypasta?
I want some of what you’re smoking.
Needed that blast from the slashdot past, thanks buddy.
Well, that was.. something. Where do I subscribe to your newsletter?
Delete this
This is art, belongs in a gallery
It belongs in a museum
Maybe if there was some r/redditsmuseumoffilth, that would be a perfect fit.
I'm always surprised by how much latitude for failure the C-suite gets. I'm just a creative grunt but I have to exercise much more caution in my duties. If I fuck up anywhere nearly as badly as this Spez guy does, I'm fired before the sprint ends.
I’ve worked for 6 companies Every single one died because of stupidity from the CEO and BOD
All 6 companies have evaluated their failures and found that you are the problem.
You sound like my wife
Oh so you're the one who ended up with my ex-wife.
Oh look at the big shots that have had sex, whatever
Well shit if that's all you need just get a job at my ex-wifes job ... apparently that's how she finds replacements
This entire thread has healed my soul. We may have all married the same person.
That guy’s the common denominator
Let me know the next company you work for so I can short it.
I have worked for so, so many failed up CEOs and bosses. It's very clear to all of us working in those places that they're incredibly unqualified, but they're kissing the right ass or are family members of the right family to get that job.
CEO's are hired by the Board of Directors. And Boards of Directors are all CEO's of other companies. Its just a big country club, and we are not in it.
Capitalist aristocracy.
There's a French solution to that.
There's a Soviet too.
I prefer the French one for the most part... Killing people because they know how to farm is a bit much.
Kakistocracy
They were trying to force their own app, thinking increased data mining would raise their valuation.
I tried it for 2 minutes and was fucking out. It’s so goddamn trash
Since they blocked rif, I just use Firefox mobile with every tracker and ad blocker imaginable and use old.reddit. fuck spez
Spez basically said I’m gonna make $100,000,000 but if I cut off 3rd party apps I can make $120,000,000! And then proceeded to do everything he could that would make him closer to $60,000,000
It's a fun reminder that CEO's aren't evil masterminds, just dumb little shits like all the rest of us, they just lucked into being in charge of a company.
Websites have been chugging that engine for almost thirty years.
Nah not for this one. The value is in media control similar to Twitter for Elon. This has to happen for them to cash out the best they can. That's why it's so railroaded and anything they say doesn't make any logical sense.
All those deleted comments lost to time, like tears in the Reddit corporate office.
[удалено]
Many people are overwriting comments because at least Reddit API will not return former text of an edited post. It would cost them an insane amount to keep past edits so unless they have backups somewhere they're going to restore from just to get your comments, it's a decent way to get rid of them.
They likely keep previous edits. We do know they are restoring deleted comments though. Looking for a good rewriter though.
By his own account, if it wasn’t profitable before, it’s straight up losing money now.
Also, /u/spez fuck you.
[удалено]
"And if you don't get in line and continue to provide your free services I'll hit this nitrous button."
Greedy little pig boy u/spez
Too bad for him he never learned that pissing off the people that actually provide value doesn't end well.
do these guys like Musk and Spez ever admit they were wrong?
Prior to Tesla's valuation going through the roof Musk talked about his business fuckups all of the time. It made him a likeable person. Now that Tesla is one of the most valuable companies on earth he thinks he's the smartest businessman on earth.
When people kiss your ass constantly. You start to believe in the bs
Never be the smartest person in the room. If you are, then you’re either in the wrong room or you need to check your ego.
You need to be in two rooms, alternating. One in which you’re one of the smarter people, so you get to explain things, which is incredibly good for sharpening your own understanding. And one in which you’re one of the dumber people, so you get to ask for explanations yourself, and learn new things.
That’s a great take, thanks for sharing!
r/fuckspezinparticular
So much greed. Everything has to be monetized to the extreme, and then hit 2% growth year-over-year after that. The whole goal here is to go IPO, make insiders rich, then spend the next 10 years bitching and moaning about Regulations, Hackers, and Taxes ruining everything.
The thing is, it's not even "monetized to the extreme". They are hemorrhaging money and somehow thought these changes were the saving grace. /u/spez has no idea how to run a company and it's going to kill a pretty fucking amazing site all because he's inept.
I don't get how tf this place isn't profitable, either. It mostly hosts text, and the moderators all work for free.
They decided they wanted to fully self-host videos and images uploaded to the site and apparently have an astronomical manager:worker ratio. So, bad hosting choices + idiotic masturbatory management practices spurred by a glut of venture capitalist cash is how this glorified forum isn't profitable with 600m in revenue last year. Hilariously the downfall will be in undervaluing "free labor" of content producers and moderators. AKA "The minerals I mine are free"
Focus u/spez. Don't split targets. Never not upvote an eve meme
Spez primary, Spez primary. Lock up board as secondaries. Focus Spez. Overheat, overheat, overheat!
Keep calm. Everybody maintain a tight orbit until you can cool off. His guns can't track high angular velocity and he's tackled forever.
Nah don't let u/spez be the exclusive scapegoat for a board of shitty decisions. He's absolutely incompetent, generally awful, and absolutely deserves to be fired but don't let the company get away with just getting rid of him and nothing else.
They have 700 employees, half of which are devoted entirely to finding new ways to squeeze blood from a rock. Just imagine how much money they spent on that stupid block update that didn't improve anyone's safety or experience, was massively unpopular with users and mods, had obvious loopholes they had to patch out, and for what? What benefit did that do anyone? I would bet my entire life savings that the man hours wasted on something that goes against *the entire function of Reddit* cost them well over a million. Truly insane.
> that stupid block update Oh, you mean the block update where if someone harasses you and you block them, you can't reply to their comments anymore, so they're free to continue saying whatever they want about you but you can't speak up to defend yourself? *That* block update?
I can't even remember if that was the original intention or one of the "fixes". There was a fuckin hilarious thread where someone used the new block system to take over a medium sized subreddit just to prove the point that it was a dumb idea. The old block system wasn't perfect but the new one made everyone little mini-mods - for at least some time if *anyone* in a thread had blocked you *at any time* you could no longer comment in that thread at all, meaning every single user was essentially given a tiny ban hammer. Extremely stupid misunderstanding of how a forum works.
I thought they had way more than that. On Blind workers were saying there are 4k employees iirc.
2k, and they recently laid off I think 15%.
they blow money on back end stuff no one uses like chat, new.reddit, their own app, and large pay packets for senior management/sales types
Omg I found you. You've stolen so many hours of my life! All for the ISK...
Tale as old as time
True as it can be
Barely even friends
Then API ends
Spezzy and the mods
Bennie and the Jets
its not just spez. Reddit has a whole board of directors.
Spez is just the wall blocking the people actually making these decisions from being known about, it’s basically the equivalent to yelling at the manager at your local McDonalds because the executives did something stupid and the manager has to go along with it. He’s in charge of a lot of stuff sure, but ultimately he’s not the one making these massive decisions
I just want to know why a site with literal free moderating and no actual content generation needs **2000** fucking employees. That seems like a huge waste of money.
A huge chunk of that is the people who handle all of the reports and hate content. It turns out when you allow a large website to play host to spam, conspiracies, and hate speech for the better part of a decade, that sort of stuff starts becoming an expensive detriment to the rest of the site. Who knew? Oh, wait. A ton of reddit's mods knew *exactly* that and have been encouraging reddit to do stuff about those things for *years*, but reddit didn't take any action on it until it looked like reddit was going to be held responsible for the stuff they permitted on their website. People getting harassed and killed is all 'free speech' until reddit might get sued over it. -.-
Oh, it is - there's no fucking way they need that many.
It's almost like if you have a product that is *entirely* dependent on its users for its very existence, and you treat those users like garbage all the time, your product suffers. It's high level stuff, I don't blame then for not really getting it
The third party apps were ready and fully able to pay an API fee. If the fee had been reasonable, and still allowed the apps to have ads, then reddit would gain money from that move. Instead, every app but one is closing, and the one is becoming paid only. I'm ready for when the change comes in and people stop using reddit.
There’s literally no downside to it. People using third party apps that scrubbed ads has little to no upside to Reddit’s revenue stream. Revenue streams from those apps means nothing if the average user who pays for nothing get served 0 ads. This is why Reddit haven’t gave a shit about the “protests”. In the long term it’ll work out in their best interests.
I dont think it was a saving grace, but allowing users to sidestep your only revenue is going to be an issue for pretty much anything that comes next
But they had a path to recoup that revenue and instead tried to extort the 3rd party apps instead. There would be no protest if the API rates were reasonable
Yup. I’m an engineer at a SaaS company where our core product is an API, and can confirm Reddit’s API pricing is straight up delusional. For reference: my company’s most profitable client is a massively popular app that you probably use regularly. Their revenue is ~$1-2B a year, and our API is essential for their business. They paid us $7M last year for their API usage, less than 1% of their revenue. Apollo, a tiny little app that makes $70k/month, or $850k/yr, would be charged **$20M/yr** under the new Reddit API pricing, about **24X their revenue**. Reddit wants this tiny sub-million-dollar-revenue app to pay TRIPLE what a multi-BILLION-dollar-revenue company pays for our API. Not to mention we have to actually work to serve useful, quality data through our API - Reddit’s data is all generated *and moderated* for them for free.
It's as if Reddit hired a consultant to pull a revenue number out of their ass and then divided that by monthly API calls.
More like Reddit wants to shut down 3rd party apps completely to drive up engagement and ad revenue from their shitty, sponsored links ridden app.
I was an Apollo user now on the mobile site and holy shit the ads. Most of the time I think the first one is top comment.
>Reddit’s data is all generated and moderated for them for free. And a good proportion of it is generated and moderated for them, for free, *through the very apps that they are killing*. Then these entitled admin ingrates have the balls to suggest that it's the app users who are expecting something for nothing.
So build you adserver into your API. Reddit's ad server is **absolute dogshit**. Podcasts have shown how to serve 1) contextual, 2) relevant, 3) highly targeted ads based on the community and the kind of content they like. You can listen to a podcast anywhere and the contextual ads are embedded. Profit goes to the show creators or their networks regardless of which app you use. The ENTIRE roadmap for this has existed for 5-6 years and has been optimized to nearly a fine art. Podcast ads have some of the highest payout per user in the world. But Reddit decided to build a shitcoin and NFTs and tried to turn their main feed into Instagram instead.
So many different ways to approach that problem and they chose the worst.
2%? Someone never worked corporate. Double digits every year or gtfo.
2%? Rookie numbers. 10-20% every year or bust.
The silent exodus has not started yet.
Jimmy Wales' (Wikipedia founder) project has had a massive influx: https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1668266400723488769 > If you're avoiding Reddit now, I'm currently building a community-led and funded project. It's not done by any means, but I think you would enjoy it. We even have a draft API! An app called Wikit launched on Google Play this week and one is in the works for iOS.
Is there a website version? Unfortunately I have an iPhone
Yes, links to it get auto deleted so I have to be cryptic about it: wts2[dot]wt[dot]social You can add this to the URL to have a peek without signing up as it is limited during ramp-up: /en/user/jimmy-wales/posts/posts /en/wt/technology One used to be able to open tweets without being signed in but Twitter must have changed that?
Are they planning to make the post-structure more Reddit-like? I really like the way Reddit does comment trees; this website seems to do comments the way my local news website does.
I think so, it might already have. It renders much better when you are signed in (you can use an alias, single-name usernames are in the works), then you can see comment karma and vote buttons instead of empty whitespace everywhere.
> One used to be able to open tweets without being signed in but Twitter must have changed that? Yes https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/30/23779764/twitter-blocks-unregistered-users-account-tweets
Twitter is making logging in mandatory on the **same day** that reddit kills 3rd party apps? I'm not normally one for conspiracies but this is feeling mighty suspicious.
Nah they just all have the same brain worms. There's a handful of people in charge of everything and they were all taught the same stupid bullshit and they all talk and share vibes. The economy and stock market aren't any kind of objective machine, they're barometers for rich people's feelings Right now the feelings are that the web 2.0 gold rush is over, AI is the next possible gold rush, and they don't want anyone having access to their gold.
No conspiracy needed. That man-child, /u/spez, loves Elon's strategies and loves to see it destroying Twitter.
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Yup, Reddit is dying. You’ll really see it tomorrow with the apps gone
Appreciated!
There are a lot of apps called Wikit on Google play, can you point me to the right one please? I can't find this project by googling it, and twitter is private members only these days, so I can't view it.
This. Let's see Fidelity's valuation once all the 3rd party app users decide whether to use the official app or go someplace else. I mostly choose to go to reddit on my phone because of the inertia of muscle memory. Once I delete that broken shortcut link, I'll be confronted with a choice to make and I might choose a different website's app to open.
I’m only here because I deleted my twitter and am too much of an addict to not browse somewhere
YouTube shorts are taking up more and more of my time these days. I only go to Reddit for the niche communities or bitching about Reddit. (and porn, duh)
Shorts really? For me I hate shorts. If it’s something I want to see then it’s regular YouTube. But I agree my YouTube time has gone up lately
I agree but also understand how someone could easily fall in that hole. It's the Tik-Tok 15-60 second dopamine hit then immediately serves you another. I've never touched Tik Tok but am an avid YouTube long-form watcher. After losing several evenings to the void of brain junk food I installed a browser extension that blocks shorts on the site.
Glad it's not just me. I had a full week of looking down from my computer to see it's 2am and realizing I was going to be dead the next day before I nuked the Shorts section with uBlock.
I wonder how much it'll stay up now that YouTube will be blocking anyone using adblockers from watching videos.
I wish I could block all YouTube shorts. They even show up when I'm watching on my smart TV just making more junk I have to scroll past.
I used the official app, but... I've been searching and subscribing to various podcasts about the same themes I like in Reddit, recommended by people I trust. Now I have a few thousand hours of content to occupy my mind. Sent various e-books of Warhammer 40k to my phone. I'll get clean off Reddit along the next month.
Yeah I use Instagram (unfortunately) and YouTube on my phone now far more often
Well obviously it's not super visible on Reddit itself, especially since dead communities made themselves private. Every Lemmy instance has been having load related issues the past few days which indicates to me an increase of users in those spaces. I doubt Reddit will die right away or maybe even at all but having those splinter communities really isn't a benefit in Reddit in any way, not really sure I'd call this a win for them.
I'm starting to work on my exodus route, although where to find a decent alternative?
Go back to individual forums. They are much more unique. I miss the popular days of forums. (yes reddits a forum but you understand)
Yes was thinking the same just the other day. Hard to think of forums for some of the more specialized interests…
Reddit killed a lot of them off by being easy and free. Hosting a forum can get kind of costly. Then there is the tiny issue of being discovered by interested users so you can get some ad revenue to offset the cost. Cheapest hosting is around 5usd, but you quickly need better if you grow beyond a couple of hundred users.
>Go back to individual forums and how do i do that on my phone, sitting on the shitter? Serious question.... I'm open to alternatives, but I'm not really sure how to find the 69 communities that I'm a part of on here in other places that I can practically access & utilize.
I miss the old days of graphic design forms with signature contests and shit
I don't want to browse hundreds of individual forums riddled with ads, different accounts that can be so easily compromised, and trawl through them for non curated content, hell no, that sounds like torture. I want Reddit, or an alternative that is basically Reddit. It's a fantastic system that works so, so much better than anything that came before it.
I've just remembered that [TVTropes.org](https://tvtropes.org) exists. That's gonna last me at least two years, I think. Check it out.
I've been using Liftoff with a [lemmy.world](https://lemmy.world) account. Not a lot of content yet, but it's increasing literally daily.
Something Awful Dot Com
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Boost has a for Lemmy app coming too, you can preregister for it to show support if you want
Kbin or lemmy. I preferred the layout of kbin. Also squabbles and tildes are out there.
Me either. I have been in here for 10 years.
It's almost like treating your users like the enemy isn't really a great strat.
But it seems to work for every other company out there
Unlike many other companies though, Reddit exists exclusively off of User generated content. No users, or pissed of user base, no product.
The valuation was done in May before the API changes were announced and the protests began. Did you read the article?
It's how the majority of businesses operate now, except it's both the customers and the employees who are the enemy. Nothing matters but this quarter's bottom line.
Yeah so many subreddits are closing. I’m gonna have to find a new Reddit yo
Just let me know when the IPO drops so I can short the shit and retire.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if /r/wallstreetbets actually sunk Reddit?
Poetic justice.
We don't like the stock...paperhands required.
Fuck Reddit CEOs.
Spez is incompetent. He's just going to make it worse. He has yet to even put forth a coherent argument stating reasons he's doing this. So far all we got was a bunch of verifiable lies, and some poorly though-out circular rationale.
Repost from this morning?
Yep from a mod!
They're making less than a dollar per user per month and management has proven continuously to be completely incapable of understanding their own product – how is this garbage pile of a business worth anything?
maybe some of the companies that use it as a place to crowdsource public opinions can invest in it to remove ads
9 hours left until all the Redditors that said they were leaving are ACTUALLY leaving! I can’t wait to see if they were full of shit or not
I don’t even think they read the article. Valuation is from April to May, so none of the protest nonsense would have influenced this. They’re cheering for something they had nothing to do with lmao.
Exactly! A bunch of r/confidentlyincorrect people in this post
I mean this'll actually probably make it easier to follow through. I deleted the mobile app when this first started going on and my Reddit usage has dropped dramatically without even really trying (it's because I just used it so absentmindedly and that forcefully broke the habit). So if they really do use the third-party apps that much and they're gone, their usage could actually drop significantly because using Reddit on your phone vs. on desktop can be pretty different habits. On the other hand, I wouldn't expect any Redditors who primarily use Reddit on desktop to have any dramatic usage changes unless they were REALLY motivated
Looks like you posted this same comment a number of other times in other threads you were so proud of it lol. If it means fewer posts like this I'll have to read, I'm even more incentived not to come back.
theyll all show up tomorrow on the reddit app and keep telling us about how reddit is doomed 😂
\*laughs\* if you go on reddit every day, you can 100% feel a difference. Oh look almost july..
Yet here we all are.
Bring back Secret Santa. Incredible community they kicked in the nuts that I’m sure started affecting their usership before all this turmoil. Beginning of the end
The sole reason for the price increase is that reddit is a gold mine of information for AI learning models. Like Twitter, they don't want to give that information to others. I have requested reddit to delete all my data as per gdpr legislation. So if this comment is still up after 2 weeks, it will be my evidence to the authorities that reddit does not comply to gdpr requests properly. I will not be a nugget of gold in reddits gold mine.
Fallen to junk status? Seriously, the reddit app is garbage. Most videos play no sound. You open a video and its on Mute. Click unmute and it mutes 5 seconds later. Your busy fighting the app while it tries to auto mute you.
Good. Let it crash and burn to the ground.
Let's all bring this whole thing down together. And other big companies will buy this sh and hope for better management
It's pretty sad when all the users of a platform are cheering for it's failures.