just so this doesn’t overwhelm our front page too much, i think now’s a good time to start consolidating discussions. existing threads will be kept up, but unless a big update comes let’s try to keep what’s happening in this thread instead of across 10.
developments to this point:
- Apollo for Reddit is shutting down
- Reddit is Fun will also shut down
- Reddit CEO (/u/spez) is going to hold a AMA about the API update
- Sync has announced it is shutting down
- ReddPlanet has announced it is shutting down
- Reddit creates an API exemption for noncommercial accessibility apps
- /r/videos is planning to shut down indefinitely, beginning June 11
- A subreddit dedicated to migrating to kbin.social has been closed by Reddit
The Verge is on it as usual, also–here’s their latest coverage (h/t @[email protected]):
other media coverage:
I think this reply by spez has been badly overlooked:
“the LLM explosion put all Reddit data use at the forefront”.
What he means here is that earlier this year the board realised they were sitting on a massive gold mine, and their single focus right now is to exploit that as ruthlessly as possible. Jacking up the prices to access Reddit data to eye-watering levels is intended to fleece desperate AI bros, and this may well be the only revenue stream Reddit cares about in the future.
The fact that they have put no thought or care into managing the damage that this does to third party apps and to their own reputation with the Reddit user base tells me something else too. Why bother being a good custodian of a community website that has never made a profit, when you could live off selling access to one of the largest bodies of good quality human-generated text-based content out there?
Do they even care if Reddit goes to shit in the future? Maybe not, especially now we are beginning to realise how easy it is for careful bots to poison the conversations with AI-generated replies.
It’s going to become a barren wasteland of bots communicating with each other.
Haha, you just reminded me of this cartoon:
yeah. this one’s always relevant
Love it lol
This right here. I’m not scared of AI itself. I’m scared of what humans will do with it.
100%. I’ve said exactly that to friends.
@myk @alyaza “Why bother being a good custodian of a community website that has never made a profit, when you could live off selling access to one of the largest bodies of good quality human-generated text-based content out there?”
Goes to show how important it is we use FOSS and decentralized tools for real community communications.
yeah, and multilingual on top of that, there are content in so many languages on reddit.
fleece desperate AI bros, and this may well be the only revenue stream Reddit cares about in the future.
Isn’t it a bit late for that?
I mean, GPT is on its fourth iteration, they’ve been working on it for years, I don’t know about Bing Chat but MS surely didn’t start develop it only yesterday.
How can Reddit be so sure “AI bros” haven’t already got the data they needed to train their models?
There’s going to be lots of other challengers out there: I’m sure every ML postgrad with any nous has spent the last couple of months contacting every funder they can track down to explain how their model is going to knock the socks off the old fashioned models used by these lumbering corporations.
And even the established models have been shown to contain content obtained in violation of user licences and copyright laws, leaving them open to all sorts of legal and political challenges. They will all be scrambling now to demonstrate that they’ve got clean hands in future models.
It will be like the NFT gold rush all over again—the only sure way to get rich is to sell the shovels.
Sharing this because it should be shared
This was the moment that cemented my choice to move away from Reddit. My plan initially was to see how the blackouts would play out, but this showed even more clearly than the initial thread about Apollo’s woes with Reddit just how garbage the decision-making at Reddit is.
Ditto. I saw that, I deleted all my posts/comments and then my 11+ year old account.
Remember to check that it stayed deleted. My account rolled back my deletions. Possibly due to “stability”
Wait what! Things have gotten this bad!? Like, this actually happened? I’m guessing there was no follow up question.
I mean, it’s either a dumb corporate strategy to discredit or psychopathic behaviour, or, sadly, both.
Also something weird, when I saw this combo, iamthatis was the first reply. Now it’s way down there, despite the upvotes and gilds.
I really don’t like putting on the tin foil hat, but since spez admitted in the past that he changed other users comments, I’m calling it, this guy is still messing around with things behind the scenes
Christian should sue him for that, looks like libel to me.
I’m not a lawyer though.
doesnt that require monetary losses?
sure, he lost out revenue from the spp, but that is due to the api changes and not due to the libel. might be difficult to argue otherwise, but Im also not a lawyer
In the US, with slander and libel, there are two standards.
If someone is a public figure, they need to show actual damages in order to be successful, this is the scenario you’re describing.
If you are not a public figure, then you can sue for slander or libel without needing to show actual damages, just harm to your reputation or similar.
So the answer on that turns on whether Christian Selig is a public figure or not - I do not know the answer to that question.
IANAL but even though their statements are “in public” but I doubt either of them would qualify as public figures - that is reserved for politicians and such.
That being said, spez here seems to have actually slandered iamthatis. This occurred when when spez claimed that iamthatis was “blackmailing” reddit for 10M$, which incidentally lead iamthatis to post audio recordings proving that spez was lying.
Maybe I’ve got some of those details wrong, so correct me if I am.
oh interesting, I didnt know there is a difference there.
Christian is Canadian so the laws might be a bit different. I know a few people in Reddit mentioned that the laws would be more favorable to Christian since he’s Canadian, but I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know how accurate that is.
I think it can be just damage to your reputation but yeah… not sure really 😕
Any lawyers reading this?
'nuff said i guess, who doesn’t want to leave someone this full of shit.
Christian also responded to another comment made my Spez
Yeah this AMA was eye opening for sure
I’ve been getting used to lemmy for the last couple days, going back and forth between here and reddit and following what’s going on, and I think I just realized something that I hadn’t been able to put into words.
The lemmy community feels responsive and fun to talk to, and I think that’s because the people who are coming here from reddit are the people who are motivated to communicate, and are people who care about the topics in each community. That’s pretty cool.
I’ve been feeling weird about leaving Reddit; mainly because it’s been my main source of entertainment, news, and community for over 10 years but this is a really good point about any ‘social’ network. Even the link aggregator sites like Reddit. Over the past couple of years, I feel like my engagement has dropped significantly because it hasn’t been FUN to engage with the communities I was a part of the same way it was when I first joined. I’m hoping to recapture that a bit here specifically on Lemmy and in the fediverse at large.
There is an energy here that I haven’t really felt from reddit as a whole in years…
Certain (smaller) subs could still get that same feeling sometimes, but so far I am very much enjoying lemmy. Yeah there’s a bit of a learning curve to figuring things out but I think people will catch on fast!
Exactly! Reddit turned in a whine site.
Yes!
I can post and comment here without getting yelled at or worthless, and off topic, replies. I hope they keeps the trolls to a minimum and encourage meaningful contributions.
Great point. There will be a big wave i’m sure (it happened w/ Mastodon/microblogging fediverse platforms) and after a few months, some of the people tried it and left. The people who remained are such an engaging and fun group to talk to.
The active mod team of r/videos (nearly 27M subscribers) has agreed that their shutdown will now be permanent. https://reddit.com/r/videos/comments/145vns0/the_future_of_rvideos/
In a tildes post (I’m riding a lot of horses right now) one of the mods said:
I know this is likely a symbolic gesture because I’m fairly confident reddit will just kick us out and bring the subreddit back up, but after being on the mod team for over a decade its going to be interesting to see how things even function if they decide to take that route.
[Edit: just seen that’s there’s a top level post on this too]
No way Reddit is going to be able to replace so many mods on so many subs that deal with so many millions of users. They can try, but that doesn’t mean it will work.
Apparently they’ll be laying off about 90 workers (5%) whilst also lowering the amount of people they will hire. So, less staff to begin with. Less mods. It’s going to be a shitshow. The admins don’t even deal with moderation, really. Reporting is outsourced to their “Anti Evil Operations” team. So wtf are they going to do? I can’t wait to see the downfall.
At this point, after that poor excuse of an AMA, their reputation is tanked.
They’ll appoint new mods. New mods that don’t have any experience or any professionalism. New mods that may not even be the age of majority yet. It’s a dumpster fire waiting to happen.
It’s a damn shame.
Yes I was totally blown away when I saw how large that sub is. It’s incredible to see Reddit losing people with that much experience of managing and growing massive communities, but the board’s focus right is only on selling existing content to AI bros so they probably don’t care that much at the moment.
That’s why it’s important for normal users who leave the site to delete their comments and submission too.
Or for the paranoid, edit then delete 😀
They rely on the free labor of the community mods. They can’t handle that workload. They’d have to replace those mods with other free mods without the years of experience, or mods with experience that will suck up to Reddit to keep their unpaid job.
Either way, I predict it will end in fireworks.
Also they don’t have the language skills, I’d be serously impressed if they managed to scrunge up employees with the language and culture skills for many subs.
what blew my mind, and the minds of many other people on reddit is that they (reddit) have 2,000 employees and yet still can’t piece together a good and accessible experience for their users…
I’m out. Redact is busy just now deleting everything under my account.
One of us! One of us!
What’s redact?
An app that allows you to remove all your posts from Reddit and other social media accounts.
By chance, do you have a link to it? I’ve been doing this manually, and it’s taking ages.
Amazing! Thank you!
Tonight, we erase the past!
Check that it stayed deleted. My posts came back after deletion.
Lol. This sounds like a dig at spez.
It’s simply disappointing to see the disaster for the AMA. Saddens me to see Reddit go down like this. At least we got the Lemmy-proxy being a community project. Would love to still use Infinity as my main “reddit” browsing app, after all.
I just don’t get how a site based on freely produced content thst employs volunteer mods can actually monetise.
That part just gets me. The site has nothing without the users and the users have nothing without the mods.
The thing is, they have operating costs. I’m sure it’s a boatload of money as well, given the size and scope of Reddit. Almost all startups run at a loss. And then continue to do so long past when they’re a “startup”. The money they “make” is from rounds of investors who believe they will find a way to make money in the future. Eventually investors get restless and demand that they find a way to monetize so they can recoup. Without those investors money, the site will come crashing as soon as they miss some critical payments for stuff that keep the site up. I’m absolutely sure that’s what we’re seeing. I think either way, its time has come.
Pinch the users to try to keep it alive for a little bit more. Don’t pinch the users and it dies in a grinding halt when they miss some key payments.
So realistically, what would a sustainable business model be for something like Reddit?
Something like lemmy or a fediverse platform is going to rely on donations and community support. In the case of mastodon, for example, it’s been shown to work well enough for sustainable operations. For those willing to work on something worthwhile for lower salary, it is potentially a great gig. In a commercial context though, it’s basically a subscription based business model.
If we’re to recover from this ad driven data tracking economy, subscriptions seem like a healthy thing for businesses to adopt.
Reddit may have already signed their deals with the devil. But generally, the point of the fediverse is to escape this corporate manipulation of our basic communications in the internet, and it’s still interesting to ask what profitable but sustainable operations can look like.
I think that federation will help Lemmy a ton–there will be a lot of small, cheap servers rather than a single extremely expensive one!
Possibly. I’m not sure how true it is that the fediverse necessarily leads to more efficient computing needs per user. I’d bet it’s the opposite.
But, as you perhaps allude to, there are other factors. For those who only want niche smaller communities, they can enjoy a more stripped down experience without needing speedy and beefy servers. Similarly, the platforms here are probably slimmer and not bloated with features that are trying to engage and monetise.
The major factor, IMO, is ownership. Admins literally own their servers. And should have a much closer and codependent relationship with the users in their servers, except in the case of large instances which become different beasts. Additionally, users have much more choice and mobility on the fediverse. All of which means admins/moderators and users have more at stake in their relationship. More ownership over their platform/instance. And therefore actually have a reason to donate and contribute and help out.
The interesting thing for me is that the federated system allows for a potentially huge variety of business models, and we’ll get to see what works and doesn’t. Whereas reddit has to stick with just one
There used to be a daily progress bar on the front page of Reddit to show if the sales of Reddit Gold that day were enough to pay for that day’s worth of server usage. I recall it usually hitting over 100%.
We don’t know if that’s the case, though…
You’re right, we don’t know for sure. But it’s a good bet. I’ve been in tech a while.
Still, if they’d only communicate this and then use it as a reason for some other strategies for making money (without killing all user choice i.e. 3rd party apps), that would be a much more sympathetic way of approaching the issue.
100% agree with you.
They can always work together with platform developers to make profits. Yet they’re killing the very platform that bring traffics to the site. I can only see greediness here.
They’re taking us all for granted. They are going to embarrass themselves if they go public
Let ‘em, we’ll share content here.
Hopefully my old popcorn machine still works. I’m going to need it.
It’s because of the contract every user has with Reddit. It’s that legal document nobody ever reads.
That legal document isn’t worth the pixels it’s drawn on. As soon as the moderators leave Reddit en masse, spammers move in, Reddit goes belly up, and the contract won’t change that in the slightest.
The contract’s entire validity with moderators is questionable, by the way, seeing as how there isn’t any meaningful consideration. Subreddit moderators contribute to Reddit and receive essentially nothing in exchange. For ordinary users, one could argue that you agree to do the things in the contract in exchange for access to and participation in all the content and community on Reddit, but that argument doesn’t work for moderators.
r/iPhone mods 6 hours ago: In less than 24 hours, /r/iPhone will be going private indefinitely.
Hacker News: Reddit bans subreddit detailing how to move to competitor Kbin
KbinMigration Subreddit URL: https://old.reddit.com/r/KbinMigration
Hacker News Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36268458
I’m glad at least one site is taking off the kid gloves with the title.
It’s sad to see Reddit go down this path, but the writing has been on the wall for awhile now. Losing Apollo is what had me make the jump to Lemmy.
Hopefully we build a strong community here.
Edit: typo
Wow, RedReader somehow managed to get spared due to its accessibility features. Was not on my bingo card at all. I guess somehow I can still manage to use Reddit completely ad free, but who knows for how long. Even better, the RedReader dev might have plans to integrate Lemmy into it.
I don’t know how RedReader will survive without monetisation, either since the conditions are they are “non-commercial”. It’s such bullshit and just a ploy to further profit off free labour.
I feel like that’s gone a bit under reported. Reddit is basically saying that their current apps aren’t usable for users who need accessibility features, so they’re relaxing rules for apps that have better accessibility features, but those apps can’t be “commercial”.
So basically they don’t want to improve their own apps, and they don’t want to allow people who build apps with good accessibility to make any money, which means the only conclusion is that they put literally zero value on users who require those apps. Or, alternatively, they put zero value on developers of those apps, which makes their decision to charge other developers tens of millions of dollars to use the API almost inconceivably hypocritcal.
Yeah, but I’m sure that that’s only until the official app can add those features, and they’ve already stated that they’re actively working on that. Even for apps like RedReader, their days are numbered. Maybe a larger number than the rest of the apps, but still numbered.
What I struggle with a bit is that making apps accessible on iOS is pretty straight forward. You almost have to go out of your way to not do it. I don’t have experience in Android development, but would imagine it’s at least similar? So I can only conclude that it’s something reddit really doesn’t care about. Not even an after-thought. So I’m sceptical of any company with that sort of mindset being able to do a good job.
Agreed on RedReader. I wouldn’t be putting any time, effort, or money in to developing a reddit app or bot right now. The writing’s on the wall.
I haven’t compiled for Android in years, so can’t speak to the present, but in the past it wasn’t too terribly hard to make an app accessible, just adding a few libraries and linking them properly. So, yeah, they’re just not caring to do any of that. Iirc, they didn’t even build their “official app” anyway, they bought it and rebranded it.
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re right. It’s consistent with Reddit’s past philosophy too: if Reddit doesn’t want to devote the resources to add a feature, they let third party developers do it for them for free.
RedReader has never been monetized. They don’t have servers to support and distribute for free on f-droid and the play store. It’s a small open source project and an influx of users won’t change costs for them. The app acts purely as a reddit client for each user and doesn’t need a go between server. They accept donations through Patreon and you can find the link on their GitHub repo.
In the case that reddit eventually cuts off their api access too, they’re planning on adding support for Lemmy, HackerNews, Tildes and RSS in a future refactor but that’s probably not any time soon.
TIL! Thanks for the explanation!
