The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful…
Imagine that once upon a time (5-15 years ago), I actually had addblocker disabled on reddit, because I considered it worth supporting. lol
They’re trying hard to make it like this is some issue about moderators, but they’re just the most vocal group complaining about reddit trying to lock down its entire service for monetization and harming all users (and especially vulnerable users) in the process. Always be mindful of people trying to shift the focus like that.
For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.
I’m glad Reddit is feeling something from this, however, at the same time. I kinda don’t care. It’s a shame it went the way that it did. But spez can’t take back his terrible attitude and decision making on what happened. Most people were sympathetic and wanting Reddit to be profitable and rooting for Reddit. However, spez just decided to come out swinging from nowhere hitting his allies in the face.
It’s worth mentioning the article said prior to the blackout ads saw ~14,500 clicks so they’re currently down 40-50%
Yeh I’m in the same boat. The day the internal memo came out about how everything will blow over, I deleted Apollo. I haven’t been back to reddit since and after the first week, I don’t even miss it now.
I wish lemmy was a bit busier, but outside of that the general atmosphere and quality here is better. Even if everything was reversed and Spez was booted, I won’t return now.
I was apprehensive of moving over to Lemmy, but I’m starting to get the feel of the fediverse and finally made the switch over.
I think the community can grow over time. It honestly feels like early Reddit, I’m quite enjoying Lemmy!
Death to reddit!
So traffic is back to normal but ad clicking is way down? Have they not figured out how to make their bots click the ads?
It isn’t even about the API drive out anymore of why I’m not going back to Reddit. It’s the CEO though and though
thoroughly agree that the api stuff is just one symptom of a broader underlying issue
Because the goal was never to get some kind of fair price for using the API. That’s why they priced it at “Fuck You.”
Ultimately what they want is for people to stop using 3rd party apps entirely because 3rd party apps either don’t show advertisements, or they show advertisements that give ad revenue to the developer.
They want everyone using their app because the valuation of tech companies directly correlates to the number of eyeballs they can serve ads to. Old.reddit will be next, and I bet they’ll try to start blocking ad blockers after that.
Yeah I was trying to convey this feeling to my wife the other night. It’s not just that I won’t be able to use my favorite app (rif) anymore, it’s that the CEO has been lying and gaslighting about what they’ve said. In that AMA thread where he said they want to work with devs who want to work with them and like three devs were like “hey we’re fine with paying but you haven’t answered our attempts to contact you” (not to even mention Apollo’s Dev’s bombshell recordings lol) really shows they don’t give a shit.
I feel like they want that AI money and are furious all these models scraped their content. I get it but it’s not even their content. Regardless of how you feel about artists being mad about their art being used to train models I think we can all agree that a site that merely hosts content being mad that the content was used is laughable.
And the NY Times article that among other silly things just forgot to mention Aaron Swartz as a primary founder of the site, who would be right there at the gates telling us all to fight this bullshit. Guarantee spez specifically told them not to mention him as the optics here would be completely terrible.
Reddit used to have values, but it’s been turned on its head.
I don’t understand why the CEO thinks this is some 4D business move. This is not the first time most of us have transitioned like this regarding social outlets. There must be records and archives proving that it is unwise to treat a community as negatively as it has … because it’s too easy for internet folk to just up and move to a new place of interest. Time is wrought with soo many examples:
For those of you who are ancient, there were the bad days of AOL and Yahoo, and then time moved on with ideas like social networks and board systems like 4chan. But how did they not know? Just look at what is in store for future Reddit by heading to the front page of Digg.
For one, I mean, look at this sad, sad, sad thing! Further, have you wandered to see Myspace… not sure who that audience is, but hey, to each their own. Hell, I can assure you that most of us only keep FB to keep some contact with family and old friends. I suppose the root of what I am saying is
However, Similarweb told Gizmodo traffic to the ads.reddit.com portal, where advertisers can buy ads and measure their impact, has dipped. Before the first blackout began, the ads site averaged about 14,900 visits per day. Beginning on June 13, though, the ads site averaged about 11,800 visits per day, a 20% decrease.
For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.
This is the only metric that matters to Reddit, so it’s nice to see!
So they really are following Twitter’s example. Twitter’s lost 59% of ad revenue since Elon took over, now Reddit ad revenue is plummetting. It’s stunning how stupid companies can be.
Just noticed today that Twitter requires one to log-in to read posts. It’s like these two platforms are competing on which one can destroy their reputation first.
Same here because of a Lemmy post. Truly 2023 is the year of rapid enshittification for the large websites that have dominated the internet for the past decade or so.
Google right there alongside, going from useful results to sponsored ads and replacing the useful basic sections in their nav bar (i.e. “News”) to whatever random categories their algorithm thinks fit your query.
Honestly, I’m worried that people will be put off by extra level of complexity but I really hope the fediverse takes off, this feels like the only part of the internet moving the right direction at the moment.
My 2¢
Lemmy will never be ‘reddit’. The simple act of having to choose an instance (and taking the time to understand instances + how they interact with one another, something even I’m not crystal clear on) is not something your average Joe Schmo will be willing to spend the time on. Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc are all one massive endlessly scrolling feeds of ‘content’ whereas lemmy asks you to dedicate your account to one instance. You can make another account of course, but even the process of choosing an instance will be enough to stifle growth and keep lemmy smaller in the long run, in my estimation.
Wether that’s a good or bad thing depends on how you view the internet and what you want from it, to me it’s a little of both because I bet I won’t see any of the niche communities I subbed to on reddit pop up here for a good long while (ex a community for the model of car I own, smaller videogames, hobby work, etc). But also it means that there will be less low-effort content - theoretically. You win some you lose some, I’m interested to see the state of both Reddit and Lemmy in a year from now.
Also hey its my first comment ever
I feel like old af now that I’ve watched two huge sites implode due to mismanagement. I was a Digg refuge way back, and now here I am on lemmy…
Same.
That’s how I got my username…
3 sites if you include Twitter . Twitter and Reddit seem to be in a mismanagement competition right now. Not sure who’s winning
why did it have to be aaron swartz
why couldn’t it have been huffman…
I have an article Aaron wrote about the Freemont GM plant business case that I read every few months to remind me of the point he was making. And every time I read it, I am reminded of the ridiculous sequence of events that took him away. Sometimes, it really does seem like only the good die young.
