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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.
And that mods use to effectively moderate.
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.
My speculation is that they want to charge LLMs like ChatGPT, especially for training. Those devs basically want to access every conversation on Reddit.
Also, as a disabled internet user, those APIs are of value for the sake of accessability. Given Reddi'ts own app is, and forgive me to use technical jargon here, steaming pile of bullshit even for those with perfect vision?
Yea fuck you too spez.
I think there's a little more to it. If they're trying to go the Meta way where dwell times and other such evil metrics are used, they need to have their own app for that level of info. It might be a requirement for their IPO or requested by their advertisers.
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:
\>
That produces this:
>
Oh, nice! So I set the quote in between the greater then and less then symbols and it will show the quote? That is pretty cool. Thank you.
Not quite I think. I believe this uses markdown, which just uses the > at the beginning of a line
> This is a quote
should become
This is a quote
And if you need more lines, you just keep symboling
> 1
> 2
> 3
1
2
3
Feels like I'm back on Reddit circa 2015 LOL
This never changed for those of us who used old reddit ;)
I had no idea it was different for new Reddit, I never touched that interface except to hurriedly find my preferences and set them back to Old. :)
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.
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.
You're right on the money. Spez is just a generic CEO waving his dick around. Prick.
Nailed it.
CEOs. Literally the worst. Toss up between "politicians" or CEOs. They take what they don't produce and exploit it for their masters.
Funny coming from a techbro that thought to farm out getting site content from that userbase he's now wanting money from.
Like I get it if he's wanting to not go into debt, but at the same time he's shot any chance at user good will and assistance in the face with a cluster fat man.
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.
Hey, it works for solar panels :)
(at least here in Oz where they give you 7c but charge your 40c per kWh.)
Kbin and Lemmy are the batteries to tell them to go jump.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I still open reddit on accident. Fuck that muscle memory.
I've had RIF on the same part of my home screen for over a decade. That muscle memory will be very hard to break.
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 don’t think it was was exactly an addiction not for me anyway. I think more accurately it was just an easy option at any given moment. Bored? Open reddit. Stopping using it was difficult only in the sense that I kept reaching for the app. But as soon as I started to get over the reflex and find some alternative things to do, turns out I didn’t miss it at all.
I’m enjoying the slightly slower pace over here.
Also I need to finish wool myself stopped at about 1/5 through book one for some reason I don’t remember.
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.
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
This will be an all-time great case study at the Harvard Business School.
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.
"the users are not in support of [the blackout]"
Which users did you poll about this, buddy?
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.