Lmao I didn’t realise the article was on Reuters until I read your comment. Pretty fucking funny man.

I don't know, the actual tone of the article leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. The basic point seems to be that reddit should become more like a business and stop giving so much of itself to users and mods. In essence, it is exactly the mindset of this writer that got us to where we are.

This writer fails to understand the exact same thing that spez fails to understand: the only reason that Reddit grew, the only reason that Reddit is valuable, is because for the last 15 years it has not operated as a business. Reddit could never become a successful one because in order to do that, all of the community power, customizon, and the inherent human element has to be stripped away and replaced with elements that turn profit.

The only way to make Reddit profitable is for the users to (stealing a line from a blog post a few months ago) "stop talking to each other and start buying shit", i.e. stop having genuine interaction with each other and start being dragged in front of other corporations that paid good money for the user' eyeballs. And the moment that happens, Reddit stops being Reddit.

This was a folly from day one. Spez thinks he owns a cow he can milk for years and years. Really, he just owns a pig, that he's convinced himself will provide bacon forever once he takes the knife to it.

Yeah, I agree. I love the idea of u/spez trying to explain to the potential investors why so many users of the investment are working together to actively disturb and destroy the platform as much as they can, while being way more effective than users of pretty much any other other popular social media platform.

good! I more people see Huffman’s bottom tier communications. Reading his comments do not sound like the CEO of a company, it’s always very embarrassing, like he’s cosplaying what a kid thinks a CEO should be.

Yes, but the blackout didn't instantly fix everything everywhere therefore it wasn't worth doing.

I'm thinking Reddit's handling of this is going to be a case study for executive MBA programs in the future, as in, "What not to do."

I mean some people are complaining about the price. But I don't care about the price necessarily, as I'm not "protesting". I'm simply tired of participating in the shittification of social media sites while they seek to monetize us. So them charging anything, or attempting to be profitable, is inherently the turnoff for me, because there is an inevitable path that a for-profit social media website takes.

In my view, or at least why I left Reddit (and support the strike), it's not about the API charging.
It started as the price. Then it was also about
Lies about the 3rd party apps.
Lies about 3rd party app developers.
The whole process from January (no API changes planned) to announcing there will be a cost, to 6 weeks later giving a 1 month deadline and stating the ridiculous prices.
Back up by years and years of failed promises from Reddit, as well as whatever bullshittery they seem to concentrate on instead (chat, streaming, NFTs)

I hope it does IPO... and wallstreetbets has a field day shorting it

It'll be more frustrating that reddit has become the best source of information for a lot of stuff. This will hurt in the beginning, but they can go fuck themselves nonetheless.

I maintain a game wiki that had an extended (~month+) downtime due to hosting issues.

It took about two weeks for us to fall off the first page of google, and our site was far more niche and not well linked throughout the internet than a behemoth like reddit. It's been about six months since we changed hosts, and I still see google try to send people to the old wiki now and then.

Google is trash these days. Now we can add "page indices so old they're growing mold" to the growing list of reasons why.

Ironically, if Reddit were to adopt a reasonable pricing scheme for the API, the more reputable AI companies would probably just pay it instead of switching to web scraping, and Reddit could actually make something from it.

I've been a software developer in corporate America long enough to have some guesses as to why they really want everyone using the first-party app.

No just burn the website into the ground and leave. Its not worth it.

People with this sort of business mindset fail to see that not all mods do it for monetary benefit or rewards. Some people just want to build and be part of a genuine community that shares their interests, and that is all the motivation and reward they need.

Ai training data gets gathered with scrapers... It literally doesn't need the api. And they only need everything once. And maybe update it every year or so...

Also the whole nsfw thing...

This is just and only to kill third party clients.

And spez is close to someone that works for "open" ai... So a even more clownshow move.

allow outside investors to become mods on any subreddit they choose.

I see this going very badly almost as soon as it's implemented.