snarfback

Unlike the Great Library at Alexandria, the information contained in many reddit threads is actually available in other places and can be recreated - often by the same person if necessary and relevant.

I understand people not wanting to have that information deleted, but I think the analogy is a bit heavy. For many, it’s a balancing act where the fundamental disagreement with reddit’s cultural evolution outweighs the desire to participate in the knowledge repository.

I think many people were comfortable with their ideas belonging to the communities that spawned on reddit, and they viewed reddit’s ownership as a necessary technicality for the platform to exist. Once reddit clarified that they intended to act on that ownership, many people no longer wanted to participate.

I think they have that right.

More importantly, who owns our thoughts in this space?

so, as a rough back-o-the-envelope estimate, what i’m hearing is that apollo, rif, sync, etc would each be charged about $20M, so a total of $60M - $70M they’d make if the 3rd party apps all decided to run with the new API pricing. I don’t know what the AI guys would be charged, but lets say an order of magnitude more - $600M - $700M. All told, these API changes - if everyone paid in, would result in ~$1B in extra revenue.

if 85% of people who use reddit continue to do so, and they convert many of these people into their paid app…maybe they get half of that?

so Spez et al get to add $500M to annual revenues, make the potential investors happy, and all it costs is quality?

they’re 40 years old now instead of 23 or whatever…they want money.

if we assume that Musk made some of his moves to really sell his data / meta-data in ways users might not love, I would assume reddit and spez have been doing the same thing and are getting ready to step that up.

reddit is twitter is facebook is cnn is fox is msnbc. engage as you feel comfortable.

I think this is partially resulting from the bias of people here, who more than likely care about the community involvement aspect of online forums/platforms. If the forum I used to live on 15 years ago was still well trafficked, I likely wouldn’t be exploring these spaces the same way.

The reality is that reddit today ISN’T what it was 10 years ago when it killed a lot of forums. It is now a platform, like facebook, that has mass appeal and is going to therefore operate to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Maybe a lot of “redditors” support the strikes, but I’d believe that a majority of people who use reddit don’t.

People want their feeds. They want their dopamine. They want their predictable comments and hot gossip. That’s what people are in larger groups. That’s who reddit is now designed to appeal to.

I think about this kbin/fedithing as a chance to reboot online conversation in an environment that is different than what reddit has become, but I don’t expect reddit to change in any way other than to continue to become boring and ad-data driven.

I’m just some dude observing this space and migrating from reddit - but I looked at Beehaw when all of this started and I immediately thought it was an idea begging to turn into the internet version of Animal Farm. If the goal is to moderate and ban based not on what is said, but on the interpretation of what someone thinks was said or implied…in a straight text based communication medium…?

That’s a problem waiting to happen.

If there are interesting things happening there - and I never tried to join so I couldn’t say - I think they may well become an echo chamber full of cliques.

I don’t know what this space will turn into, but I personally like the idea of a semi open ended reboot.

I personally think you should message them if you think it will make you feel better, but I wouldn’t expect anything to come of it. I assume the mods are aware of the implications of their actions and are choosing to reopen with that impact in mind.

In my opinion, reddit was an interesting experiment 10-15 years ago that grew stagnant and somewhat boring. The people running it have chosen, with intention, to make the site as suitable as possible for their financial goals. I don’t like it, but it’s their right to do so. The issues which have recently boiled over were always present, and I just don’t think you can put the Shit Genie back in the bottle RandyBoBandy.

Reddit will lumber on, it will probably go right behind Facebook and many users will continue to use it. The more creative users will likely flock to platforms like this and create something new that will take a longer period of time to go through a similar cycle.

I may leave my account intact over there. Maybe I’ll occasionally pop over to see if it still works like I do on fark.

I think the fun part of reddit is over.