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this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I did a little research a few days ago, and it seems like reddit has grown their userbase upward of 40% since the site redesign in 2017. I think they are banking on most "average" users not even realizing that third party clients or old.reddit even existing. They are more than willing to sacrifice power users who avoid ads for oblivious users who don't.
I think they ran the numbers and went with "We can still make money after pissing off half of our userbase, and we can expect many of the pissed off members to be so addicted they won't actually walk away."
I think they also see this with every major game boycott. Gamers are notoriously unable to stick to their principles and keep paying for games that undermine their "demands" as gamers. While a vocal minority stick to their guns, most gamers who claim to want to boycott games end up buying and playing them. Hogwarts Legacy is a great example of where the boycott basically did fuck-all and many who claimed to boycott ended up buying the game anyway.
"Gamers" and Gamers are two different things. Only "Gamers" ever said they wanted to boycott games, but much like Reddit's userbase, "Gamers" are only 30% of all Gamers.
I feel like if you want to boycott a game but really can't resist the urge to play it the least you could do is just pirate it instead of buying it
Piracy is often one of the few ways to playtest a game without having to spend money to find out you don't like it.
@dingus @raresbears, or worst, spend money to find out that the game don't work in your PC.
Piracy is one possibility, but other is to look for good Giveaways, which are often in Steam or GOG. Also some very good free games out there, like this one (one of my favorite of all time).
https://www.thedarkmod.com/main/
It used to be you could get a demo of a game to try it out, but that stopped being a thing a while back…presumably because game studios know their games suck and don't want people to realize it until it's too late.
I qualify as a gamer and it is indeed quite hard because of the "easy" dopamine shots you get from playing. But speaking for myself, I quitted and actively boycott the Fifa games to this day.
I used to play alot from fifa 09 -12 and stopped at fifa 13 because of the predatory practices of the FUT implementation. It was close to totally random, costed alot of money and it only counted towards the specific game you got.
For example: If you got Fifa 12 and spend all that cash in FUT within Fifa 12, guess what? In Fifa 13 you can start all over again. Miss me with that sh*t.
I hope that for some people this can be a first and after the "first" it gets so much easier to stand by your principles.
I use(d) RIF for as long as I can remember and Reddit can put their ridiculous practices in a place where the sun doesn't shine.
My account is gonna be retiring with RIF, wiped clean and that is it for me regarding Reddit.
Also my first comment in the Fediverse is the name(?) ;)
That's great for you and I'm with you on not buying predatory games, but isn't FIFA incredibly profitable?
If you look at FIFA as an example, you should conclude that reddit isn't going to lose a significant number of people. This and reddit should have gambling if they want to make money, lol.
Of course, Fifa is very profitable even to this day. The FUT mechanics have gambling mechanics (loot packs etc..) it is why it is such a sh*t and predatory system.
The action I took personally wasn't about a delusion of me thinking that just me was gonna make an impact.
But businesses count on people not taking action because of the mentality "What would change?" and "Just me boycotting doesn',t matter so why would I?".
It is much more about putting up a boundary for yourself and enforcing it. I didn't feel like supporting a company that put out such predatory practices so the thing that I can do is to vote with my wallet, which I did.
If I cannot even do the above myself than I have no right in lecturing others.
I don't know how much people will leave Reddit but I have no reason to stay and fund their endeavors.
The thing that I do know is when businesses have a monopoly for a service/product they provide the money isn't gonna go to benefit the user but to maximize profits.
The users of Reddit are gonna get railed in the end, one way or the other.
Some of us stick to our principles, and because some of us do, everyone gets to enjoy a few more indie games every year.
They are going IPO. They are expecting investors to pay 10-15 BILLION DOLLARS for Reddit. Those investors are going to want to extract several times that from the Reddit userbase. Up until this point, Reddit has not been concerned about even breaking even.
Reddit has changed dramatically in the last ten years but it's nothing compared to what is about to happen. Reddit is not the product. Reddit's users are the product. And right now, they are going up for sale to the public for exploitation. The pig is finally being taken to the market. Shit is going to change.
Didn't Yahoo sell for some ridiculous price like 12 billion dollars a few years back? If someone is willing to pay that for a basically dead legacy site, I could see someone doing the same for reddit, especially with all their pro corporate, pro advertising changes as of late.
I am inclined to agree with you but moderators seem to have a stake in this. If they can’t do their jobs, then Reddit will see a noticeable decline in community engagement.
If we're partitioning user engagement from the growth in echo chambers, Reddit's seen continued drop off in community engagement for nearly a decade now. This only marks the bigger nail in the coffin.
Reddit is nothing without content, and a lot of active posters and subreddit moderators use third-party apps and bots. Even if it's a small percentage of Reddit users, it's the most engaged users.
As much as I hate to, I totally agree. People will grumble and eat their shit sandwich if it means things mostly stay the same from their perspective.
Most of the changes will happen behind the scenes as they usually do. Reddit rarely conducts it's extremely underhanded shit out in the open, unless the publicity is going to be unavoidable.