Reddit

You’ve got handful of loyal users that have been very resistant to changes.

Let's be real: almost all of the subs' mods caved when they were threatened with loss of their precious power. A bunch of subs have been operating as business as usual this whole time. Give it a month, and scabs leading apathetic users (many of whom are children) will have settled the ruins and filled in the cracks.

What sub did /u/spez used to moderate?

FWIW, Reddit had a revenue sharing deal with rif, at the very least. Apparently when spez returned as CEO he shut it down.

I also heard that a certain admin on a certain forum has a thing for children, but surely its just a rumor

It’s hard to believe they could be that obscenely short sighted, but at this point I guess I shouldn’t be surprised

Bingo.

spez is acting non-sensical because his investors are done with the company. The era of free money is over, and there's no more waiting for something like Reddit to turn the ship around and become profitable. His hansd are tied: It's just job to see that the board of director's wishes are enacted, and the VCs are pulling the plug, and demanding their money back.

And they want it back several times over. The AI hype has those investors seeing more than just Reddit gold in the company's database. All of our posts and comments from the past 15 years is valuable right now in the light of the LLM buzz, but given the lifespan of recent Silicon Valley fads, they could be in the pile next to NFTs by Christmas. So, they need to sell the company now on the promise of limitless ChatGPT dollars before everyone stops giving a shit.

They acted in a hurry, and they didn't think this API issue would set fire to anything. They thought they could paint Selig as a greedy and entitled nobody who was just trying to piggyback off of their success, but they didn't seem to realize that no one actually likes Reddit: The Company. So, they were caught flat footed. They figured the protests would come and go, as they have before, and then it would be back to business as usual.

But then Selig spoke up, the faithful doubled down, and then the media took notice. Now, they have no plan, I'm sure the investors are getting fed up, and they're just trying to force everything back to normal however they can so they can sell this bridge to some lucky tourists, but nothing's actually working. So, it'll just be an endless stream of nonsense while the engagement and ad numbers continue to slowly shrink, presenting an unpalatable downward trend leading up to their yet-to-be-announced IPO.

In short, they have their marching orders, but their platoon captain doesn't have a fucking clue which way is up, let alone North.

I agree with the exception that I expect the moderators that rise up will be more inclined to use regurgitated content from other sites without expanding upon it. So the site will have worse content.

I have no proof, but neither doubts that they've been experimenting with AI for content creation. Even comments. And sure, the quality will tank. But I think they're banking on what are addicted users to do, not get their dopamine hit?

3rd party apps did not get caught in the crossfire... reddit very specifically targeted them and has crafted the chatgpt narrative as a scapegoat. Chatgpt got the info they needed already reddit won't see a dime and knows this. What reddit wants is everyone on their app and thats their prerogative... I doubt they expected the backlash from longtime and even newer user, they probably anticipated some pushback from devs and maybe mods but this blew up in their face and rightly so... ugh I'm a bit sensitive over this sorry reddit was a home for me through 3rd party apps for a looooong time and I'm a tad upset over it.

The issue was never charging for the API, it always started off as the insane price, the lack of communication, and the timetable for these changes.

Then it became all about u/spez's behavior. Most of the subreddits were going to do just a two day blackout but his actions really made people realize what a piece of shit he is.

I know literally nothing but what the everlovingfuck are their costs? Most content (all until their shitting hosting site) is just aggregated to the site. All this content is free, moderation is free and theyre making ad money. Sure ads for reddit are probably super shit but its something. My best guess is its going to greedy little pig boy?

Is there proof that they're not profitable? I ask because the only place I've heard that is when spez has parroted it on interviews. But I question the reality of that because how else would they be in operation for 15 years if they weren't able to make any profit or were operating at a loss? It just doesn't make sense.

Granted - I'm not saying they shouldn't charge for the API access, but I'm curious what their real numbers are.

1. Reddit could have gotten ad revenue from third party apps by requiring them to display ads they deliver as part of the API, but never did so. Third Party Apps were never able to deliver Reddit's ads. Most people are just using the official app anyway.
2. Don't really see a way they could charge for Reddit without it being useless (as it is now), or detrimental to the experience (like a subscription for posting). They could have increased the amount of ads or preroll ads before opening posts. Worse user experience, but not any worse than what is happening anyway.
3. LLMs can just use web scraping to get data from Reddit without access to the API, which is even more costly to Reddit.

The only way their move makes sense to me is to push people into using the official app so that they can collect usage metrics and sell that data or use it to better position/sell ads.