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…
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Reddit’s not just happy with user’s content and labor, but now also wants compliments. Slavery with extra steps.
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…
3 sites if you include Twitter . Twitter and Reddit seem to be in a mismanagement competition right now. Not sure who’s winning
Tumblr also kind of got ruined a few years ago too for some people if you were into that platform.
I was in art school when Tumblr was at its peak. Looking back it was dumb, just resharing pictures and gifs but I had so much fun. I met so many people through Tumblr that I’m still in contact with.
I really enjoyed tumblr in a way I don’t really understand now. I think I enjoyed creating something to share of my own out of bits and pieces of everyone else. Idk.
We’re all losing, sadly.
I remember the day that Slashdot sold out.
What happened to Slashdot? There wasn’t really one particular event that made me stop using that site, I just sort of drifted away. Was there an “enshittification” moment there, too?
1999, Malda & Bates sold it to Andover.net. It didn’t become terrible, but there was a sense that it went corporate. It’s been sold and resold since then.
I guess I mostly used it after the sale, then. I started in 1998 or 1999 (when the hype for The Phantom Menace was building up) and used it until the early 2010s.
Now this is the real nerd cred here lol. Yea. Same. We’re old now. Has its benefits and disadvantages.
I rarely go to slashdot anymore, but still do occasionally. What did they do?
They were independent then they weren’t. I don’t recall any deeply controversial scandal beyond that. But the content and vibe was never the same after they “sold out”. They are a shell of their former self… they used to be “the thing”. Now they’re just something some people know about.
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Exactly. It started feeling corporate.
Myspace, digg, tumblr, reddit, twitch, could maybe count 9gag and places like gfycat
Heh, I go back to Usenet. Architecturally, Lemmy is closer to Usenet, but Usenet did not have an authentication mechanism.
Yes. At the end of the day it is always corporate greed and shortsightedness that does them in.
Crazy that even Google seems to be realizing that it’s search really leaned on Reddit for decent results nowadays… I’m curious to see if a bunch more things start to implode over time
Google basically monetized user-generated content and discussion (those obscure FAQs and technical discussions), now Reddit wants to get it on it, too. The only ones getting truly shafted is the average user.
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.
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?
Burn it
Sell promoted posts directly, admins have made it abundantly clear they’re in it for money over community, get your cheddar too.
Oh, that’s harsh but fair
You don’t owe reddit anything.
I’m a mod over on r/NoahGetTheBoat and I haven’t even opened reddit more than a couple times since Apollo died.
Shift the community to lemmy and write a pinned post on reddit about the change.
Request members to delete their reddit post.
That would have been a lot easier before the API change. Not sure if that’s an easy task anymore (pegging old content)
Cant see reactions Fixed it!
“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?”
Steve: “Uh… hey Elon, I have an idea for your new Neuralink thing, can we talk about it? I’m positive it’s gonna be a great success…”
Elon: Do I know you?
The enshtification of reddit has reached a head.
This is the only metric that matters to Reddit, so it’s nice to see!
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.
Here’s hoping spez keeps following in his idol Elon’s footsteps!
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.
Same here because of a Lemmy post. Truly 2023 is the year of rapid enshittification for the large websites that have dominated the internet for the past decade or so.
Google right there alongside, going from useful results to sponsored ads and replacing the useful basic sections in their nav bar (i.e. “News”) to whatever random categories their algorithm thinks fit your query.
Honestly, I’m worried that people will be put off by extra level of complexity but I really hope the fediverse takes off, this feels like the only part of the internet moving the right direction at the moment.
My 2¢
Lemmy will never be ‘reddit’. The simple act of having to choose an instance (and taking the time to understand instances + how they interact with one another, something even I’m not crystal clear on) is not something your average Joe Schmo will be willing to spend the time on. Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc are all one massive endlessly scrolling feeds of ‘content’ whereas lemmy asks you to dedicate your account to one instance. You can make another account of course, but even the process of choosing an instance will be enough to stifle growth and keep lemmy smaller in the long run, in my estimation.
Wether that’s a good or bad thing depends on how you view the internet and what you want from it, to me it’s a little of both because I bet I won’t see any of the niche communities I subbed to on reddit pop up here for a good long while (ex a community for the model of car I own, smaller videogames, hobby work, etc). But also it means that there will be less low-effort content - theoretically. You win some you lose some, I’m interested to see the state of both Reddit and Lemmy in a year from now.
Also hey its my first comment ever
It’s early days. Who knows? Maybe in a year or two, when the Federation aspect is a bit more developed, we’ll have a seamless, less fragmented experience.
In my case, whenever I tell one of my friends about Lemmy, they feel like they’re going to be isolated on their own little island (instance), and that they’ll probably be missing out on a livelier community somewhere else. This misconception is probably the result of relying on centralized platforms for decades. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but Reddit is the perfect example of what can go wrong when you put all your eggs in one basket.
I had better luck showing them the Memmy app in action. Hope they join the community soon.
Sure it will put off some users, but those are the lowest effort type of users anyway. I think most people who were online enough to be heavy reddit posters will not have much of an issue grasping how Lemmy works
It needs everyone to be part of it. I’m no idiot (arguably), but I still don’t quite get why I need an account for Kbin and for Lemmy and… just to use it properly. The concept was that I needed one account which linked to everything, yet that’s not the case. I’m in the process of deleting all my reddit posts with Power Delete Suite and it’s taking a while, but this needs to be better if it wants to get people like myself (and those who aren’t so tech-savvy) across.
I totally agree regarding Google. I work in IT and the entire reason I got into my career is because I grew up with Google and I was good at it.
Google’s search results suck now. It’s actually incredible how much clutter and algorithmic nonsense it shovels at you now instead of legitimate results. Once there became companies that specialized in SEO, it was just a race to the bottom and now it’s all bots fighting for the search rankings instead of real content.
Honestly feels kinda like the pre 00’s internet. Barely any bells and whistles.
Reminds me of Usenet. In a good way.
I first saw “enshitification” used in a blog post by Cory Doctorow about TikTok. Love the term. https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys.
That needs to be the word of the year.
It’s like they never learn. They’re trying to turn the internet into cable TV… I guess they didn’t get the hint when a lot of us said “Fuck TV”
Also, Youtube and Twitch have been fucking up a lot lately, helping out sites like Rumble and Twitch.
Tbh I kind of.understand ads: you have server costs that needs to be paid. What I absolutely do not understand is charging ridiculous api prices when they could send those ads like the desktop website does. It makes me really think that the main issue here was to kill 3rd party apps more than monetization
Different takes I’ve heard was the API was setup in such a way it was going to a massive legal liability in the near future especially for EU regions. They no longer have the know how to fix it and close the gaps, they needed a way to cut off the API. And since legal terms of how that API was setup they can’t simply turn it off, they instead resorted to unrealistic demands and costs on the third party to get everyone to stop using it so they can quietly turn it off.
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.
They hope to monetize the content by selling it to AI companies.
To be honest, if this field really picks up, they(Reddit, twitter) might not even need the users anymore. That level of classified content is the real good mine
They’ll need the users if they hope to keep generating new content though.
Scraping the data becomes less relevant the older the data gets
I don’t think that matters much if the purpose is LLM. Not for years anyway. Sure, the information might be stale, but the language part remains the same
Sure is funny how reddit wasn’t concerned with with mods having to much power or enforcing any code till it affected the snowflake admin
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.
And that is exactly why I am here now. I didn’t care that much for the API protests at all. Thought they were pointless. But this behavior meant that they were violating the very thing the made reddit, reddit. If subs weren’t spaces that anyone could use to try to carve out their own communities, then what is the point?
Furthermore, they aren’t even violating the code of conduct they are using to do this, so clearly all of Reddit’s promises are now worthless.
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
Well we’re here basically figuring it out. Time to show them they aren’t needed anymore.
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.
I’ve hoped for decentralizing a lot of stuff over the years and every time the clunky nature prevented them from taking off.
Sadly, until there were centralized spaces the average person didn’t really get into the internet when it was IRC chats and disconnected forums.
The thing is, they COULD’VE monetized it and still kept it alive. What they’re doing instead is killing the golden goose for a quick cash-out.
Edit: I hate your username. A lot of trauma associated with that failed tongue-twister.
As crappy as it would be, charging users a couple bucks a month for ad free and the ability to use third party apps would probably have been the best move they could make.
It’s not defederated it’s federated and decentralized
oops. don’t drink and post, y’all.
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
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.
The only thing stopping 3rd party apps from showing reddits adds though was reddit never including them into the api. They actually HAD an agreememt with the rif author to take a cut of rif’s ad revenue but as soon as spez took over as ceo he quietly axed that.
Investors wanted to see “app growth” for multiple quarters not underatanding that the app isn’t what maked reddit, and so
spezspaz is doing what he is in a desperate and stupid attempt to claw up some numbers so he can cash out when the ipo hits.Reddit app use DID see some grown during the pandemic, but can’t sustain that because its app is shit. They haven’t improved it ever. It began as a 3rd party app and they purchased it from the original dev. The only changes were to add that pathic coin shop and some sticker/avatar crap to sell you.
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This seems intentional at this point…
I literally made a reddit account a few days before the hullabaloo started, specifically to buy advertising on reddit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah and it’s not like you wouldn’t understand that Reddit would 2-tier its API so that paying Reddit users can get served ad-less experiences while non-paying need to see ads for your app to use the API. That’s not even that uncommon from what I interact with at work.
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.
I don’t get how people put up with that either. My wife said that we were being over dramatic about the 3rd Party Apps protests, but will agree that the ads are annoying. Hopefully she’ll convert over here before to long and get a taste for how a message board should be.
Reddit ads are way too intrusive and irrelevant.
Stockholmed into thinking ads are acceptable. They’re not. No social contract says that you have to put up with ads, they’re simply unregulated in the USA and people have mostly given up.
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Imagine that once upon a time (5-15 years ago), I actually had addblocker disabled on reddit, because I considered it worth supporting. lol
Dude, I paid for Reddit Premium or Gold or whatever the fuck it’s called for 5+ years just to support. I wish I could claw it all back.
11 year account…makes it pretty easy to imagine. It was a very different site back then.
I was a paying premium member with ads enabled until recently.
Proof that people will gladly support a good product.
Same curve with Netflix. Pirating went down when they started. They themselves, but all the other Streamers as well have gone so greedy that the good product is no longer supported. Reputation ruined, war with customers ensues.
I am glad that this happened because Lemmy is very interesting platform.
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.
Well said. Couldn’t agree more.
Same, I just miss some of the interest based communities I was in, but they’re growing well on Lemmy right now. Optimistic for the future.
For real. Even though my groups on lemmy are smaller, they’re made up of more dedicated people that participate in discussion alot more. So it’s all great for me!
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!
wefwef is changing my mind about how good webapps can be. The UI is a copy of Apollo but the execution in web tech is absolutely top notch.
Try
phanpy.localphanpy.social for Mastodon! It blew my mind on how well designed, fast and efficient it is. It’s better than the Mastodon local apps - at least on the basic functions.Do you mean phanpy.social?
I did! Thank you.