No. They are trying to finalize an IPO. No amount of anything is going to stop them from this cash grab.
Short term, I agree with you. Long term, for me it's a virtual certainty that Huffman is fired as CEO of Reddit within one year of an IPO. At that point, the community and content may have deteriorated so much that a new CEO sees value in re-opening the API and third-party apps, probably with some kind of revenue share/ad delivery aspect, and maybe with a (sensible) fee for the biggest users.
EDIT: having just discovered Manifold Markets (thanks @lixus98 !) I've created a market for this: https://manifold.markets/IE/will-steve-huffman-be-fired-or-resi
The IPO will catch on fire, burn up and fall over into the swamp. The last thing you need in the 11th hour of an IPO is bad press and protests.
The move overall smacks of desperation. The investors aren't blind. Spez is openly calling out that they're not profitable, on the eve of the IPO.
Honestly, all things considered in his rock solid stance I'm expecting more of a fire sale.
I don't think they'll cave in, and honestly I don't care what they do.
People like us made reddit what it is, and we can make a home somewhere else one way or the other.
It's time we take the internet as a whole back from the billionaires and their soulless venture capital firms anyway.
Make internet nerdy again, I always say.
I completely agree!
The less algorithms the better
I think it depends on how successful the blackout is, because truthfully, most Reddit users probably don't care about 3rd party apps, and just want to continue using Reddit, but if their favorite communities shut down indefinitely, I think there's a chance.
But Spez also seems dead set on their plan, so only time will tell. But on the bright side, if it doesn't we'll see tons of new faces here
Agreed that most Reddit users don't care about 3rd party apps. They are also more likely just to be lurkers and not interact with the content as much, besides up and downvoting.
So if a larger number of the power users leave, Reddit's content could become more stale and just turn people off from going to the site.
Of course this is all very hypothetical and I don't have stats to back any of this up. It's just a hunch.
As a long time reddit lurker, I care very much that RIF is dead :/
They might not care about the 3rd party apps themselves, but having massive functioning communities would be near impossible using only the official moderating tools. The quality of the website is going to diminish a lot. A lot of niche communities have only a handful of spare time moderators that benefit greatly from the 3rd party api. It's not possible to say the exact scope of problems until the day comes, but by most accounts it's going to be a massive hit.
The quality of the website is going to diminish a lot.
Even still, people will hold on and reminisce of the good old days for another 10 years. The impact will be notable, but you can't save them all.
The content became stale years ago imo.
don't have stats to back any of this up
But look how fast Mr Trump's network - truth? Truthier? - dried up. I forget why, but I'm assuming that after each hillbilly is done virtue-signaling then there's little left to do but get off the site or plan a cou-- oh, now I remember.
If you post about your disdain for Reddit's handling of the situation on a mainstream subreddit you get downvoted and spammed with "official app isn't that bad" replies.
The sad truth is: only power users care about 3rd Party Apps and those make up for a very small percentage of the userbase.
Reddit doesn't care about us.
The sad truth is: only power users care about 3rd Party Apps and those make up for a very small percentage of the userbase.
Maybe a small percentage of the overall userbase, *but *a huge percentage of the mods (who do most of the janitorial work that keeps the place mostly clean of spam and other miscreants so it's usable) use those 3rd party apps.
Their MBAs already crunched the numbers and included users like us in the "acceptable use" category
They would rather you all be gone to be replaced with casuals who can be more profitable
I'm not convinced it'll completely back down but I suspect there is a chance they'll lower the pricing structure to a more 'reasonable' amount.
If I put my tinfoil hat on I'd say this was the plan from the start;
I just can’t see that being the plan with how heavily spez burned bridges with some of the app devs.
Accusing the Apollo dev of blackmail then doubling down once caught in the lie pretty much guarantees Apollo won’t continue with any pricing level.
That seems to be the way it works with a lot of platforms and products.
Eh. The more bad decisions they make, the better it will be for the Fediverse. And with the way things are with corpos across the board, I prefer that at this point.
Agreed. They showed their hand. Better for everyone if they just double down. Rip off the bandaid.
Honestly can't say I care at this point. I rather want Reddit to burn to the ground so that we get some real improvements on other platforms. From the admins to the mods to the users, the platform is just so rotten at this point that it takes most of the fun out of it.
It doesn’t really matter. Spez burned all the bridges with the main 3PA devs. None of them will want to invest time and effort again for a company that treats them like this and could change its mind again on a whim.
This is the important part, I think: Spez showed that he will grind up his marketing partners - as 3PA devs are - into today's lunch ... and likely hope there's more to eat tomorrow.
Maybe, but there's a lot of profit to be made in making third party apps
The things that happened first with Twitter and now with Reddit, proved to me that it's pointless to put trust in closed-source. So even if they decide to revert changes (which they won't do), I lost my trust already. Why do I have to rely on them if alternatives are available?
Decentralization and FOSS are the solution. They have their problems. True, but they solve many BS in social media.
Reddit only really exists because of three things: 1) the company that pays the server bills; 2) the users who ADD content; 3) the moderators who curate their communities, fight spam, etc., etc. The demographics of 2) and 3) are HEAVILY skewed towards third-party apps, especially 3). By blocking third-party apps there will almost certainly be a significant decrease in content creation, and a definite decrease in the quality of moderation. Both of these will hurt Reddit, especially in the long-term. Spez has played his hand really poorly here, and has overestimated the switching costs to other platforms. I'm already feeling at home on Lemmy and kbin, if and hopefully when the communities get repopulated, it's going to be just fine.
Hell will freeze over before they change course. "It's all in the game." to quote one of my favourite series ever.
There you go giving a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck.
Only just a little, to try to get back valuable users without disappointing shareholders, probably with some vague and fake promise.
In any case, the AMA has caused a permanent trust damage for many users
I think if they had been straight up with their intentions and gave 3rd party devs time to adjust, gave them jobs/roles to improve their application. Or literally express themselves in any other way about their plans. I really honestly think that people would have been less pissed. But they decided to be secretive and dishonest about their intentions. I feel like Spez is a sitting duck who will get plucked off the moment the company goes public regardless. The fact that Reddit as he has publicly stated is not profitable now and never has been is quite damning. Investors are not going to like that. And will not willingly invest into a company that will not make them money.
I don't see them backtracking regardless of what happens with spez but they could have been more honest from the forefront. It still would have sucked. People would have probably still moved on. But there would be less animosity towards the suits in charge right now.
Spez is a sitting duck who will get plucked off the moment the company goes public
This, exactly. After that disastrous AMA, I wouldn't be surprised if any venture capitalist or other large investor interested in the company insisted on Spez stepping down as a condition for their investment.
Honestly I think the AMA showed that they are not backing down. Spez answered like 14 total questions on an AMA with 30k comments the last I checked. They don't seem to care, and I don't see there being a significant number of people actually leaving reddit either, the alternatives just don't fix the problems people are having with reddit. If you use a 3rd party app because it has more features, are you going to leave the platform for another platform that only has one 3rd party app?
If you use a 3rd party app because it has more features, are you going to leave the platform for another platform that only has one 3rd party app?
We're here, aren't we?
Reddit has done many shady, anti-user, and blatantly corporate things over the years, but effectively killing off the way I've interfaced with Reddit for over a decade is the biggest and final nail, of many, in the coffin of Reddit's death to me. Rest in Piss.
I agree. I found it easier to transition because I follow mostly smaller tech subreddits that already had a presence here, or quickly started one. I only posted 70 comments total and almost nothing recently. I am more concerned about the power users, mods, and people who need things like screen readers not being able to make the jump. In my opinion Lemmy needs those users more than lurkers.
I feel it. I followed a lot of innocuous bullshit, random stuff, and most of my comments followed suit. It's been a long while since I felt like I could have a conversation on most parts of Reddit. There are some niche communities, and things that don't work well without a lot of users, that I'll miss, but I'm mostly glad to be not spending so much time on Reddit.
I do hope that the open-source nature of Lemmy, and the fediverse in general, will foster a better relationship between developers/admins and users/mods, and more development towards what the mods and users want and need out of the platform. I do have optimism for the future of such an open platform, although I do remember a time when Reddit's software was open-source too.
I can't personally speak for the accessibility issue, so I don't know if it's a problem here, but open-source should definitely help with that too.
although I do remember a time when Reddit's software was open-source too.
Reddit used the MIT license which is dogshit. It not only allows people to steal your work and not contribute back, but it also allows you to revoke the Open Source nature at any time.
Lemmy uses AGPL, which is pretty much the best pro-Open Source license out there. It is copyright violation to run a modified Lemmy instance and decline sharing the source code.
Edit: and just following up on this, it's thanks to AGPL that Truth Social had to release their source code too.
Well that's good to know, thanks for the info. I'm a garbage programmer so I'm not familiar with the nuances of open-source licenses, and have only ever used MIT, because it was the most permissive and I never wrote anything worth stealing or that I really gave a shit about lmao.
I really doubt there’s anything the user base could do to change the company’s path. There are millions of people that will continue to use their product regardless of bad UI and even worse PR. It’s not what the average reddit user is concerned with. The lowest common denominator just wants an outlet to consume media, and Reddit can still deliver that.
My personal opinion on all of this - Reddit will continue to grow and change, and it will get worse and worse for longtime users who remember the earlier years. I’m happy to abandon ship now so that it’s no longer my problem at least.
Sorry for the downer reply lol
Reddit will continue to grow and change, and it will get worse and worse for longtime users who remember the earlier years. I’m happy to abandon ship now so that it’s no longer my problem at least.
Exactly how I feel. I don't think this will have a huge effect on the overall number of people on Reddit, but I certainly do think it will have a large effect on the moderation quality, and overall content/discussion quality. Reddit is, and has been, on its way to joining the homogenized social media group, that a lot of us were on Reddit to avoid.
Implicit in the question is the hope that Reddit will buckle so we can all happily go back there. However this whole debacle has opened people's eyes to a better, brighter future for the internet, where not all is controlled by large corporations. So even if Reddit does buckle, many will stick around at Lemmy. Not because Lemmy's content is better (it will be eventually, although now it remains a bit sparse) but because the whole ethos is superior.
I hope they don't.
Let's diversify the Internet by getting people to Lemmygrad or Mastodon.
Kbin too :D
Wat dat
It all comes down to whether or not the fediverse gets big enough to be a real threat to reddit. If so, reddit will suddenly become a lot more interested in improving their experience. I doubt they'll reverse course on the API, but we'll probably get some perfuse apologies and a real attempt to improve their app and website.
June 12th won't change their course. But I think there will be a much bigger mass migration starting on July 1, and that may be what starts to move the needle.
Even if reddit does cave, I think the communities here are going to grow and be better than reddit has become. Overtime it will probably be the same in many ways, but I like where Lemmy is right now. I won't switch back regardless.
No. They will unperson any recalcitrant mods and drop in their own henchmen. 90% of Redditors won’t know what has happened and will just end up watching many more old videos of kittens falling over posted by bots as Reddit slowly follows Digg into irrelevancy.
The Reddit board will continue to focus on charging AI bros through the nose for access to our content until they all get bored and leave the wreckage with their pockets full of loot.
The only way anything can change at this point is if spez steps down I think.
Third party apps made Reddit what it is today. They used to not even have an official app and having mobile access made it more popular.
Reddit doesn't seem to make a lot of choices or take much action in its own good interest. I moderated a 25+ million subscriber sub there for a number of years. The minimal effort the admin put in to assist was laughable. The brigading against the sub, mod harassment, chronic abusers, the mediocre tools, it was just a poor experience. Four things stand out to me:
At one point this user harassed us via modmail over and over so we got his account suspended from all of reddit for 24 hours. This prompted them to create a throwaway, mail us, claim to be law enforcement and state that he was essentially going to hunt us down. The throwaway was banned, but the original account allowed to serve out its 24 hour suspension and then just carry on. We never got an answer on why nothing happened to that account. The decisions they made were mind boggling. We had a banned user make a new account, and it took a few months to realize that it was him. It's not like the account didn't cause trouble, it's just they were previously banned for making chronically bad posts to karma farm. Just really subtle, but not egregious rule breaking. They'd been contacted numerous times to not post low effort/low quality/inappropriate stuff and after numerous attempts to correct it, with no real come back from them, we banned them. After awhile, and many many removals of their submissions, I realized this new single purpose account was them, sent it in for a ban check, confirmed, only to find out an account which had been used for no more than chronic ban evasion (it posted in no other sub) was handed a 2 week suspension and then just allowed to carry on. It was very frustrating as a mod trying to address abuse when the admin didn't really seem to care.
I found this guy spamming hundreds of subs selling fake masks during the pandemic. I had to personally write 3 bots and chase him around Reddit for weeks to eventually shut him down because the admin were so slow and so inept at dealing with him they simply couldn't do anything. This guy was operating by leaving his posts up for around 15 minutes when he posted so the mods would never get reports and ban him unless they happened to be right there when he did it. He also had dozens of accounts and kept buying more. By the time the admin would show up to ban any of his accounts he'd stopped using them for days and was through several new accounts since. It really didn't take me long to write a bot to identify his posts with 100% accuracy (except for some archive bots that some people had that copied his posts), but they couldn't do a thing to stop him
Pushshift was both the bane of our existence and the biggest tool I used. Bots obviously used it to find old posts to karma farm off of. We used it to track abusers in detail, notify other subs when we saw something up, etc. Without the ability to see deleted posts and comments we would have missed quite a bit. It was really the one tool that made moderating effective.
The horrendous block tool. Which essentially boils down to 'I want the last word and I'm going to shut this discussion down entirely, even though I'm not a mod in this sub and have no business having that kind of control over a public discussion'. The best part was users who'd block someone, wait a bit, unblock, because you have to wait to reblock, then after that time passed, make another sniping comment and then immediately reblock. The old blocking method wasn't perfect, but the new one was a mess. Someone blocking you meant that if a third party entered an on-going discussion, replied to you to discuss something, you couldn't reply to them because the thread was downstream of someone who had blocked you.
This kind of behaviour just demonstrates a site that really doesn't give a crap about its users or the community they try to build and participate in.