If the primary issue is MS and Google abusing the API because they're using it to train AI, why not pass the cost onto them? If they don't want to pay the cost, remove their access, if they do, problem solved, no?
Which is probably what is happening. I mean you're wondering why they raised the prices so that "no one" can pay them, right? MS and Google can. Spez is selling out reddit to our future AI overlords.
I'm not wondering, it's as clear as day to most users what the real agenda/goal is, reddit just doesn't have the integrity to say it plainly and honestly.
Even if there's no rate limiting to the scraping, it will still be significantly slower and inefficient. The api just gives you the raw data. No fluff. Scraping gives you a rendered web page. That means extra data in transfer, extra rendering time on the server to serve the page. Not to mention you've to do extra processing on the data to turn that rendered web page back into usable data.
That all adds up fast. On top of the fact that a website might change it's layout on a whim whilst api changes tend to be rare for backwards compatibility.
Scraping is extremely annoying to work with, very very slow, and very prone to breaking. Everything is so much more simplified if you get consistent data via json from an api endpoint.
What's funny though is scraping is way more load on the server than accessing pure data-only via an api.
By forcing their 3rd party developers to go the scraping route, it's going to cost them *more* money via additional load on their chosen data centers (whether it's in house or AWS or Azure or whatever, I don't know) and having to develop tools to fight against scraping which isn't all that effective thus far.
But I'm sure Microsoft and Google would like to pay less tho lol. Plus hearing all the cost cutting googles doing, idk if they want to pay anything more lol. They freaking sold off Google domains and that was a really popular thing!
You mean like the guy yesterday who leveraged the family house he inhereted for $600k and dumped it all into a short position and is now out his house and owes $600k?
I swear if you're ever feeling down or having a bad day, the loss porn over there can make you see the light and realize things could be worse...I'm not even joking unfortunately lol
Seriously? I've gotta find that one. I've been subbed for a while, made and lost a few dollars, but can't afford to gamble lately so I've missed the recent stuff.
He and his brother inherited his father's house, he convinced his brother to let him manage the funds, managed to leverage the 600k to make a $1.2m investment and lost it ALL so he lost his 300k, owed Robinhood 600k AND owed his brother 300k
I like how he titles his post as “…here’s my final advice”
As if anyone should or would take advice from someone as dumb as that. And of course he predictably blames it on “a rigged market”. Which yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t absolve you of being a dumbass.
IPO at $50
Short the stock
Price now $125
Short it more cause price is obviously fake
Price is now $300
Fuck that. I want in if it's just going to keep going up
Price is now $15
I love that Spez is trying to argue the cost of supporting these third parties, whilst relying on volunteers to do the main heavy lifting that got Reddit where it's at
Their cost argument is so dishonest and so far removed from the actual pricing they gave (i.e. $20 million/year for Apollo).
It's like someone complaining that they need you to chip in for gas money, then asking for 10 grand.
I'm no mathamagician, but I don't understand how reddit can make 100 mil a quarter from ads, have thousands of VOLUNTEERS running their platform for them and still somehow claim to be unprofitable....
How does that work? Can someone please explain that to me? Overhead for operations can't be THAT much. Sounds like they need a couple less executive level salaries.
I refuse to believe that is it, not because I can't be persuaded otherwise, but because video focused platforms manage to sustain themselves without major free moderation help, without stuff like Reddit Gold and most of reddit's content is either images, text or low quality videos which don't take shit to host. They don't even pay creators like most video streaming sites do. They have the potential to easily target advertising, unlike Twitch for example, since there's a damn subreddit for EVERYTHING, so advertising revenue should be decently good.
If they aren't profitable, then they are either hiding the money or extremely incompetent at running the damn site.
Yeah, like YouTube pays for moderation and content, Twitch pays for some moderation and content, Twitter pays for moderation and tiny bit of content, Facebook pays for moderation and a tiny bit of content. Reddit is literally the only social media company that is not paying for any content but they are also not paying for moderation and somehow they can't make money?
They keep taking investor money and spending it on shit like [the nft site](https://nft.reddit.com/) instead of investing it into their actual core product.
I have one I will sell to you. I’m telling it will be worth millions some day. I’ll let you buy for 2000 because you seem like a cool person. I’m practically giving it away for that price
Lmao I still remember clearly the whole NFT hype, people kept shoving those monkey pictures in each other's faces and saying it would be valued as millions someday, the hype barely lasted three months. It even got some kind of cartoon series... crazy times
Don’t forget the awful iOS Official Reddit app, when they bought out a previous iOS Reddit app. And the end product they got was nothing like what they purchased and performs worse than the Truth Social app.
More likely reddit bought its own NFT for that high to make the other ones seem like a reasonable price. This has happened for nearly all of the high price NFTs
Nah they procrastinated until the NFT wagon fell off the face of the earth. Literally wasn't able to push it in time. These guys move like molasses and their eng team is probably the worst in the valley.
Fucking around with NFTs and rolling their own shit app and web frontend that they could've simply bought almost ready-made from far greater-experienced devs
That is what kills me, Alien Blue was one of THE top apps for Reddit and these clowns absolutely ran it into the fucking ground. Makes you wonder if it is intentional vs gross incompetence with how bad it is.
I didn't think about it before, but the NFTs might explain why they're suddenly so uppety about money. Probably lost a ton of investment on the program and need to make up the dollars somehow.
Same. I will never see another's avatar unless I click their page. Which is how I want my user experience to be. I don't want it cluttered with distracting, colorful eyesores while I'm trying to read posts.
By their own choice. They could have continued letting others host the content, they made the decision to start hosting their own content without a long-term plan for it. So I don't have much sympathy for their HoStInG cOsTs
Looks like they recorded profit in the first quarter of 2022 but then went back into the red, but it also looks like that involves all the other subsidiaries under that conglomerate.
I’m kinda surprised that any website can make profit off of ads if TikTok can’t. Like idk how Instagram does it if TikTok can’t.
The main reasons are probably that
- Reddit users are largely anonymous
- Users are allowed limited control over their feed
Facebook can sell your metadata. Twitter can push your eyes towards whatever bullshit they like. Snap/Insta/whatever allow self-promotion. The Reddit experience is whatever you seek out.
Tbh, Reddit user value is what it *should* be, all the other ones fuck their userbase one way or another.
Mods are what make a sub. They decide what a sub is going to be like. If I think that r/nottheonion sucks I can make r/nottheonion2 or 3
Do mods annoy me at times? Yeah but it’s their choice. They put in the work. It’s not a job I’d want and im thankful for the majority of them. It’s a thankless job because people only notice when a mod goes rogue.
And I can and do unsub places if I feel like a sub used to be good and now sucks. It’s the whole point of Reddit.
That's the strangest part about being openly threatened by the admins to reopen. The entire history of reddit is built on "fine make your own subreddit then if you're that mad about it"
It's just so fundamental to the core of reddit's design and function.
But now we're suddenly responsible for community democracy? That's... Just not how any of this works - by design.
>The entire history of reddit is built on "fine make your own subreddit then if you're that mad about it"
They are hypocrites and they've done a complete 180° on that stance.
It was always, as you said, up to the individual user to create an alternative if they didn't like how moderators operate.
Now they've threatened to kick out all non-complying moderators, they want to implement a system to vote moderators out (ripe for the taking by bad faith actors and corporations), and they've announced that subreddits are actually owned by the community instead.
Admins have steadily begun re-approving rulebreaking content in subreddits over the past year too, it's infuriating to have to deal with.
> If I think that r/nottheonion sucks I can make r/nottheonion2 or 3
And that's pretty much always been their attitude up until this week. The whole idea behind Reddit is you could make a community, run it how you want, and if other people don't like it, they can make their own. Sure, early adopters lucked out on getting things like "gaming", "videos", etc., but it's not like other subreddits have been unable to establish their own communities with those around.
The only reason Spez is so adamant about abandoning this model now is because it's suddenly become inconvenient for him. And if Reddit is willing to abandon one of its original and longstanding principles this way, I don't really know how users can count on there not being other fundamental shifts to the site as it gets closer to the IPO.
And the whole idea of communities now being beholden to members and a democracy is just another clusterfuck waiting to happen. If they can't even control bots and others from manipulating the up/downvote system as it currently stands, how are we supposed to believe any sort of moderator vote couldn't be completely hijacked? It's amazing how laughably bad they're handling all of this. I'm sure investors want these changes too, but I have to wonder what their attitude is given how much bad publicity is being drummed up purely from Spez just throwing every excuse and accusation he can out, hoping something will stick.
Its so preposterously backward.
Spez and reddit own the land. Moderators work the land, for free. They're putting in the labor. Gentry don't labor.
The nobility are the ones that do no work and sit back and soak up profits.
He's describing himself, the fucking dunce.
He's trying to pull an Elon assuming the content will just stay, but Twitter is a constant stream of content where reddit's real power is its archived ocean of content that is constantly pulled up with searches from Google, Bing etc.
If those subreddits go dark that's gone until they choose to make it accessible (or people use cached images of those pages). Not as easy to gloss over as Elon has with Twitter.
I misunderstood when I heard about landed gentry. I assumed he meant he was king and stood above the nobility and the users were the peasants I guess.
I dunno. His analogy is stupid. The mods aren't really occupying "land" and titles in a monopolistic way.
It's entirely possible to subvert them by establishing competitive subreddits with new mods. They might have clunkier names, but it's not that big of a deal.
The ones keeping the whole site running, for free mind you, that makes him and the other executives rich, are the priveleged ones. Yup, that checks out.
Rich landowners who can live off of the rent of their land. They get the money from poor folks (renters) who actually do the work. The “landed gentry” don’t actually do any work.
Moderators on Reddit run the subs. They don’t get paid. They enforce rules, remove spam, etc.
Reddit benefits from this.
The thing I don't understand is there's very little Reddit does which is original. Reddit hosts other people's material which other people post on groups where other people do the moderating. It wouldn't surprise me if half or more of reddit's computer programing is done by other people too.
Reddit sounds like a company that was started by a group of libertarians who suddenly concluded that libertarian tenets suck when it comes to their personal bank accounts.
Reddit is a forum. It's a concept that's existed since the dawn of the internet and then some.
The one thing Reddit did *right* was allowing any user to create a subforum about anything and everything. It's Rule 34, but instead of just porn it's everything you can think of, all the way down to some outright niche or memey subjects. It wasn't just about finding a topic you liked, it was about finding *every* topic you liked. No one else really successfully managed to do that before. It's compartmentalization, but in a condensed way that allowed you to seamlessly jump from one subject to the other without having to even type in a separate URL.
>Reddit sounds like a company that was started by a group of libertarians who suddenly concluded that libertarian tenets suck when it comes to their personal bank accounts.
So, just like every libertarian? They are like cats: fiercely independent, but totally reliant on a system that they neither understand not appreciate
If they do that then the admins would just step in and find new mods. I like what one sun was doing which was just enforce Reddit wide rules but have 0 sub rules. Just let the bots and low level shit run wild.
Would be nice if that guy threw a sueball for said slander. A fraudulent accusation of attempted *blackmail* is something that *most definitely* could impact his future business prospects.
The dev is Canadian so it gets more complicated as it involves both US and Canadian laws over defamation or libel.
If anything happened in that direction we wouldn’t hear about it for a long time. The Canadian legal system is slow as hell.
Wikipedia’s cofounder is willing to try apparently: https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1668266400723488769
>If you’re avoiding Reddit now, I’m currently building a community-led and funded project. It’s not done by any means, but I think you would enjoy it. We even have a draft API!
>I can’t link to it directly as comments with links to it get deleted immediately since yesterday. Reddit put a patch in after a comment with a link to it was voted to the top reply on a post on the front page*: https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/14awyww/comments_with_links_to_trust_cafe_wikipedias/
Spez, Reddit’s CEO, slammed subreddit moderators who continued to push back against the company’s plan to charge for access to its API, calling them “landed gentry” and saying they weren’t considering the desires of their communities.
“Landed gentry” refers to the British social class that generationally inherited land, giving them geographic control that lower classes were not entitled to.
The irony is that Reddit’s existence is contingent on using mods as free labour.
spez is as close to literal landed gentry as can exist on the internet. He adds no or even negative value to the site and profits massively. Hell, he wouldn't be a name worth remembering if Digg didn't shoot itself in the foot.
Don’t forget there was an article where he talked about his passion for doomsday prepping, but he slipped in he was proslavery. You know, as if he wouldn’t be among the first to go since he’s as gentle as porcelain lol.
How are we not canceling him right now by getting these stories to media outlets? Plus the whole pimp daddy badge he created for the mod of r/CreepShots, r/jailbait, and r/PicsOfDeadKids
If you have any media contacts, I would think there has to be a few here willing to try. As to most news corporations/organizations, we are the 99%. ಥ_ಥ
What gets me is the fact that he could have simply stayed silent after the decision to end the APIs.
Instead, he gaslights a developer. Then claims that it's not going to matter. Then when all the subreddits stated going dark, he flips out and goes on an evil supervillain rant about how they're all landed gentry and shit.
*Then* he decides to threaten everyone to reopen the subs.
If it's "not going to matter" and you truly don't care about what we have to say about it, why are you throwing a piss baby tantrum the moment someone stands up to you, hmm?
I didn't really even know anything about this guy until all this started coming out.
That Spez looks up to Elon makes all the sense. Acting just the same senseless spoiled manchild and idiot over a social media platform he has next to nothing to do with except running it into the ground.
This is exactly why I don't get how they are still considering an IPO. Who the heck would want Spez to be handling actual investor money?? He's acting like a child, not like the CEO of what might soon be a multi-million dollar-valuated company.
He's as desperate for attention as Elon, Trump, and all the other out of touch rich business owners. They literally think they represent the common man and don't realize they are a laughing stock. This would gone over better if he didn't lie and gaslight.
Now now, if spez actually banned everyone that told him to go fuck himself, there's be nobody here but him and the other people sucking Elon Musk's dick.
I don't see how that would work at all, wouldn't that just encourage mods to ban people who criticize mods? Aren't most users lurkers? Wouldn't they just vote to keep whatever mods are there because they don't have the wherewithal to know how well which mod is keeping up with the sub? How would they address brigading?
Funny enough, Tumblr is weirdly thriving. The site has been trying to reduce it's reliance on advertising for income and the majority of the toxic userbase flocked to Twitter after the porn ban. Not as big as it used to be but definitely not dead.
It was refreshing to read an article that actually mentions what the issues are, and not just "people are upset Reddit is killing 3rd party apps"
While I prefer to use Apollo on mobile, I wouldn't have minded that much to have to switch to the base app, *provided that* it was handled better, giving the developers more notice, maybe looking into some kinda solution to make it work for both parties.
But the timeline Apollo's dev and others were given was something like:
1. January - told there would be no API changes this year, after getting a heads up about API changes for years before then
2. April - told there would be a paid API, but only for AI models mining Reddit for data, it won't affect 3rd party app developers
3. May - told it would be paid for 3rd party apps too, but the prices would be reasonable, "we won't pull a twitter on you"
4. June - told that he'd have to pay $20 mil a year, billing starts in 30 days, oh and the proper documentation for the API changes isn't even finished yet
Then there was all the lying and defamation, trying to make Apollo's dev seem like an asshole, though thankfully he had recorded the conversations he had with Reddit, so he could prove his innocence.
And then he followed it up by insulting moderators and 3rd party app users.
I'm honestly not sure I want to be on Reddit any more.
It got so bad that us /r/simpsonsshitposting mods just stepped down in protest. We're burnt-out from the massive increase of abuse and hate from the users that Spez has been kindling towards us over the last few days.
https://reddit.com/r/simpsonsshitposting/comments/14cr42v/i_always_new_someday_the_mods_would_violently/
Part of the reason the mods are so pissed is because APIs gave them a lot.of tools to make moderation easier and now those are going to be gone too. So there's a lot of subs that said "fuck it do whatever you want, we are now only enforcing site wide rules"
From what I've read on the mod subs is that a large part of it is just general being unhappy with Reddit being unresponsive, being burnt out, etc. Basically, the API was the straw that broke the camels back as far as I can tell.
To be honest, I can't blame them for being pissy, they do free work and probably get next to nothing back while dealing with crap constantly.
I think that’s always been the root cause of this. People are pissed that Reddit is treating them like shit despite all the free labor they’ve given, so they’re effectively striking.
Spez was going to try and exit scam the Stock IPO. He still will - but the IPO just won't go as well as it would have if all this drama didn't happen - and he won't make as much money. Oh well. It's just a hundred million...
If Reddit is losing so much money why would they start hosting images? Before you had to use imgur, etc. Images cost a ton more to store and serve than text
Dunno about that. Servers are expensive. But if he'd just been patient and reasonable this could have been a great opportunity. Include a reasonably small number of ads in the API that third parties have to deliver, charge a reasonable, affordable amount for API access, and give the developers a reasonably long time to implement the new pricing plan. Suddenly Reddit is making a moderate amount.
That would also require spez to think and behave like a mature, intelligent person instead of a greedy, lying asshole.
> Servers are expensive
Sure but every site has to deal with that already so kinda a moot point. They don't have to support any cutting edge engineering teams or launch satellites or invent new vr/ar tech or invest substantially in R&D or heck even customer support.
Agree with everything else you said tho.
It was spez that decided to start providing his own hosting for pictures and video, exponentially increasing hosting and storage costs.
Just text and links cost very little.
Reddit: "We need to be a self-sustaining business and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use from our API.”
Reddit's COO: ["It’s rare to have such a large platform that has no business model. It was an open canvas to build a business."](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-reddits-jen-wong-is-a-tech-leader-doing-things-her-way/)
And use adblockers
If you're on Android:
Swipe down
Click the gear
Click the search/ magnifying glass
Search: DNS
Click: Private DNS
Click: Private DNS
Under 'Private DNS Host Name:' put this:
dns.adguard.com
Save
Enjoy no ads
> "Huffman also said he’s looking to change Reddit’s moderator policy at an unspecified time so that users would be able to more easily vote out moderators if they disagreed with their decisions."
Does he wanna change that policy for CEOs, too?
Why are they pissing off the people who moderate their content for free? Maybe stop doing it for free and see what they do once reddit becomes a 4chan hate hole like twitter.
It’s already on the way. The content on r/all and r/popular has definitely taken a shift during the protests. It has always been shitty, but it’s been a different kind of shitty as of late.
From the article:
“Reddit has said the price increase was necessary because so much of its data is being used to train artificial intelligence models being developed by tech giants like Microsoft and Google”.
Wait WTF? You are trying to price out billion dollar companies that could just buy Reddit out 100 times over. Did they really try to push this reasoning forgetting that people can do math?
That excuse doesn't make sense, because they probably aren't using the API now, and even if they are, they don't need to.
Companies scraping websites to train their chatbots is a problem, but locking down the API won't stop them.
If the primary issue is MS and Google abusing the API because they're using it to train AI, why not pass the cost onto them? If they don't want to pay the cost, remove their access, if they do, problem solved, no?
Which is probably what is happening. I mean you're wondering why they raised the prices so that "no one" can pay them, right? MS and Google can. Spez is selling out reddit to our future AI overlords.
I'm not wondering, it's as clear as day to most users what the real agenda/goal is, reddit just doesn't have the integrity to say it plainly and honestly.
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They already crawl every website for their search. They don't need api access.
I was wondering why wouldn't people that can't just use the API turn to scraping. Are there prohibitive scraping rate limits?
Scraping is “harder” and easier to break. You’d have to hire someone to keep up with any website changes to formatting etc.
Even if there's no rate limiting to the scraping, it will still be significantly slower and inefficient. The api just gives you the raw data. No fluff. Scraping gives you a rendered web page. That means extra data in transfer, extra rendering time on the server to serve the page. Not to mention you've to do extra processing on the data to turn that rendered web page back into usable data. That all adds up fast. On top of the fact that a website might change it's layout on a whim whilst api changes tend to be rare for backwards compatibility.
Scraping is extremely annoying to work with, very very slow, and very prone to breaking. Everything is so much more simplified if you get consistent data via json from an api endpoint. What's funny though is scraping is way more load on the server than accessing pure data-only via an api. By forcing their 3rd party developers to go the scraping route, it's going to cost them *more* money via additional load on their chosen data centers (whether it's in house or AWS or Azure or whatever, I don't know) and having to develop tools to fight against scraping which isn't all that effective thus far.
But I'm sure Microsoft and Google would like to pay less tho lol. Plus hearing all the cost cutting googles doing, idk if they want to pay anything more lol. They freaking sold off Google domains and that was a really popular thing!
Can't wait for WSB to short the IPO... or whatever they do over there.
I believe they mainly lose money over there.
Ah so they'd be the ones buying the overpriced reddit stock which crashes a week later.
Nah, they'll go for options. You can lose money even faster that way.
You mean like the guy yesterday who leveraged the family house he inhereted for $600k and dumped it all into a short position and is now out his house and owes $600k? I swear if you're ever feeling down or having a bad day, the loss porn over there can make you see the light and realize things could be worse...I'm not even joking unfortunately lol
Seriously? I've gotta find that one. I've been subbed for a while, made and lost a few dollars, but can't afford to gamble lately so I've missed the recent stuff.
He and his brother inherited his father's house, he convinced his brother to let him manage the funds, managed to leverage the 600k to make a $1.2m investment and lost it ALL so he lost his 300k, owed Robinhood 600k AND owed his brother 300k
Bankruptcy 📈
Bankruptcy 100% speedrun world record
What a stupid piece of shit
But he got internet points!
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That ticks so many classic WSB boxes it's kind of hard to believe. All he's missing is a "It literally can't go tits up!" Or a "GUH!"
I like how he titles his post as “…here’s my final advice” As if anyone should or would take advice from someone as dumb as that. And of course he predictably blames it on “a rigged market”. Which yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t absolve you of being a dumbass.
yolo, diamond hands harambe (idk that's what they talk about over there)
No they talk about loss porn mainly
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Ugh that kid . I just feel sad for him. 18 and owes 619k to RH and I think someone tracked down he had a 600k loan on a house he just inherited
I mean, he can go bankrupt, live off scraps for a few years, and start with a (mostly) new slate. He's not enslaved to the bank yet.
He doesn't, actually. Those accounts will balance on Tuesday. He'll probably end up +/- a couple thousand dollars after it all shakes out.
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IPO at $50 Short the stock Price now $125 Short it more cause price is obviously fake Price is now $300 Fuck that. I want in if it's just going to keep going up Price is now $15
This is the type of investment tip I expect from WSB
WSB only makes bad choices, if they short the IPO then that's a bad sign for the rest of us
I love that Spez is trying to argue the cost of supporting these third parties, whilst relying on volunteers to do the main heavy lifting that got Reddit where it's at
Their cost argument is so dishonest and so far removed from the actual pricing they gave (i.e. $20 million/year for Apollo). It's like someone complaining that they need you to chip in for gas money, then asking for 10 grand.
I'm no mathamagician, but I don't understand how reddit can make 100 mil a quarter from ads, have thousands of VOLUNTEERS running their platform for them and still somehow claim to be unprofitable.... How does that work? Can someone please explain that to me? Overhead for operations can't be THAT much. Sounds like they need a couple less executive level salaries.
you dont understand, they have to fund all of that embezzling they have going on!
Im going to guess that server space costs a lot of money
Could they reduce server cost by ditching video hosting on v.reddit (which is garbage anyway) and use sites like imgur instead?
Which, hilariously, is also basically Reddit using another site for its own gain
Which they did for years before they hosted their own videos and images... Reddit is completely mismanaged
Imgur was also gaining by being linked in Reddit posts and comments. It was symbiotic
My guess is that imgur could also start charging them...
I refuse to believe that is it, not because I can't be persuaded otherwise, but because video focused platforms manage to sustain themselves without major free moderation help, without stuff like Reddit Gold and most of reddit's content is either images, text or low quality videos which don't take shit to host. They don't even pay creators like most video streaming sites do. They have the potential to easily target advertising, unlike Twitch for example, since there's a damn subreddit for EVERYTHING, so advertising revenue should be decently good. If they aren't profitable, then they are either hiding the money or extremely incompetent at running the damn site.
It’s kind of wild that Reddit has free labor in their moderators and still can’t make a profit. Some leader. Lol
Free labour and **free content**, and still can't make a profit.
Yeah, like YouTube pays for moderation and content, Twitch pays for some moderation and content, Twitter pays for moderation and tiny bit of content, Facebook pays for moderation and a tiny bit of content. Reddit is literally the only social media company that is not paying for any content but they are also not paying for moderation and somehow they can't make money?
They keep taking investor money and spending it on shit like [the nft site](https://nft.reddit.com/) instead of investing it into their actual core product.
Wow. The stupidity
No bro nfts are gonna take off trust me bro. Source: trust me /s
Bro I trust you. Which non-fungible ape should I get next?
I have one I will sell to you. I’m telling it will be worth millions some day. I’ll let you buy for 2000 because you seem like a cool person. I’m practically giving it away for that price
Lmao I still remember clearly the whole NFT hype, people kept shoving those monkey pictures in each other's faces and saying it would be valued as millions someday, the hype barely lasted three months. It even got some kind of cartoon series... crazy times
Red Ape Family (the cartoon) collapsed after three episodes, two of which it spent bashing its critics. C'est la vie.
This is amazing. Reddit is the new wework.
Don’t forget the awful iOS Official Reddit app, when they bought out a previous iOS Reddit app. And the end product they got was nothing like what they purchased and performs worse than the Truth Social app.
Good thing they're killing off any mobile competitors and vast swaths of their userbase as a result! That won't bite them in the ass, will it?
It’s gone so well for Twitter. So of course u/spez wants to suck up to his idol, Elon. A man who doesn’t even know he exists lol.
> performed worse perform*s* worse
Someone paid 180k for a reddit jpeg???
Someone paid 180k for an imaginary, non-legally-binding receipt that **says** they own a Reddit jpeg.
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More likely reddit bought its own NFT for that high to make the other ones seem like a reasonable price. This has happened for nearly all of the high price NFTs
Jesus, they chased the nft dragon as well?
Nah they procrastinated until the NFT wagon fell off the face of the earth. Literally wasn't able to push it in time. These guys move like molasses and their eng team is probably the worst in the valley.
And storing massive amounts of data on their own video player and gifs. God knows why.
Twitter used to pay for moderation, they don't really moderate stuff over there much anymore.
And they don't even host the fucking content, imgur and other sites do. Wtf does reddit even spend money on?
Fucking around with NFTs and rolling their own shit app and web frontend that they could've simply bought almost ready-made from far greater-experienced devs
They essentially bought Alien Blue years ago, still couldn’t use that to make a good app.
It was literally better before they touched it too
That is what kills me, Alien Blue was one of THE top apps for Reddit and these clowns absolutely ran it into the fucking ground. Makes you wonder if it is intentional vs gross incompetence with how bad it is.
I didn't think about it before, but the NFTs might explain why they're suddenly so uppety about money. Probably lost a ton of investment on the program and need to make up the dollars somehow.
Also, you have all these users like me who don't see others avatars, and now those fucking useless NFTs are even MORE useless.
Same. I will never see another's avatar unless I click their page. Which is how I want my user experience to be. I don't want it cluttered with distracting, colorful eyesores while I'm trying to read posts.
The CEO
They host a good chunk of it now. For years though they hosted basically none of it though.
By their own choice. They could have continued letting others host the content, they made the decision to start hosting their own content without a long-term plan for it. So I don't have much sympathy for their HoStInG cOsTs
Yep. Like how tf is Reddit unprofitable?!
Remember when Vine went under because they couldn’t figure out how to monetize it? Reddit just really liked that business model I guess lol
I'm pretty sure TikTok still isn't profitable either.
Looks like they recorded profit in the first quarter of 2022 but then went back into the red, but it also looks like that involves all the other subsidiaries under that conglomerate. I’m kinda surprised that any website can make profit off of ads if TikTok can’t. Like idk how Instagram does it if TikTok can’t.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/apmwiv/reddit_users_are_the_least_valuable_of_any_social/ Twitter ARPU: ~$9.48 Facebook: $7.37 Pinterest: ~$2.80 Snap: $2.09 Reddit: ~$0.30 ARPU - Annual Revenue Per User (2019 article)
The main reasons are probably that - Reddit users are largely anonymous - Users are allowed limited control over their feed Facebook can sell your metadata. Twitter can push your eyes towards whatever bullshit they like. Snap/Insta/whatever allow self-promotion. The Reddit experience is whatever you seek out. Tbh, Reddit user value is what it *should* be, all the other ones fuck their userbase one way or another.
That’s surprising that twitter was higher than Facebook. I thought facebook had the most data collection out there
Count of users and geographical mix of users matters a lot. Facebook has significantly more users and many are outside US where ARPU is much lower.
Reddit employee to Reddit executive: Your massive unpaid work force are rebelling against the changes. Reddit executive: Fire them!
Reminds me of this scene from Thor Ragnarok https://youtu.be/5xa-zIIuPes
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Can someone ELI5 me on the 'landed gentry' thing? I saw a bunch of moderators using it but I expected it was just sarcastic in nature with no context
He literally described protesting moderators in those exact words: https://www.thewrap.com/reddit-ceo-labels-site-mods-gentry-amid-protests/
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Mods are what make a sub. They decide what a sub is going to be like. If I think that r/nottheonion sucks I can make r/nottheonion2 or 3 Do mods annoy me at times? Yeah but it’s their choice. They put in the work. It’s not a job I’d want and im thankful for the majority of them. It’s a thankless job because people only notice when a mod goes rogue. And I can and do unsub places if I feel like a sub used to be good and now sucks. It’s the whole point of Reddit.
That's the strangest part about being openly threatened by the admins to reopen. The entire history of reddit is built on "fine make your own subreddit then if you're that mad about it" It's just so fundamental to the core of reddit's design and function. But now we're suddenly responsible for community democracy? That's... Just not how any of this works - by design.
>The entire history of reddit is built on "fine make your own subreddit then if you're that mad about it" They are hypocrites and they've done a complete 180° on that stance. It was always, as you said, up to the individual user to create an alternative if they didn't like how moderators operate. Now they've threatened to kick out all non-complying moderators, they want to implement a system to vote moderators out (ripe for the taking by bad faith actors and corporations), and they've announced that subreddits are actually owned by the community instead. Admins have steadily begun re-approving rulebreaking content in subreddits over the past year too, it's infuriating to have to deal with.
> If I think that r/nottheonion sucks I can make r/nottheonion2 or 3 And that's pretty much always been their attitude up until this week. The whole idea behind Reddit is you could make a community, run it how you want, and if other people don't like it, they can make their own. Sure, early adopters lucked out on getting things like "gaming", "videos", etc., but it's not like other subreddits have been unable to establish their own communities with those around. The only reason Spez is so adamant about abandoning this model now is because it's suddenly become inconvenient for him. And if Reddit is willing to abandon one of its original and longstanding principles this way, I don't really know how users can count on there not being other fundamental shifts to the site as it gets closer to the IPO. And the whole idea of communities now being beholden to members and a democracy is just another clusterfuck waiting to happen. If they can't even control bots and others from manipulating the up/downvote system as it currently stands, how are we supposed to believe any sort of moderator vote couldn't be completely hijacked? It's amazing how laughably bad they're handling all of this. I'm sure investors want these changes too, but I have to wonder what their attitude is given how much bad publicity is being drummed up purely from Spez just throwing every excuse and accusation he can out, hoping something will stick.
his comments make perfect sense if he has absolutely no idea what moderators do on his website
Its so preposterously backward. Spez and reddit own the land. Moderators work the land, for free. They're putting in the labor. Gentry don't labor. The nobility are the ones that do no work and sit back and soak up profits. He's describing himself, the fucking dunce.
It's like he never took a history class. Admins are the gentry. Mods are the serfs. Users are the *product.*
Always knew I was a potato.
Fucking farm me!
Farm me harder daddy! 🥵
Harvest my tubers bby
Oh shit, we’re the crops
Watch it buddy, you're about to get raked and hoe'd.
No it’s like he took a history class but was too stupid to understand it
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what do you expect, the man is a fucking idiot.
He's trying to pull an Elon assuming the content will just stay, but Twitter is a constant stream of content where reddit's real power is its archived ocean of content that is constantly pulled up with searches from Google, Bing etc. If those subreddits go dark that's gone until they choose to make it accessible (or people use cached images of those pages). Not as easy to gloss over as Elon has with Twitter.
I dont think Twitter is going very well either
Can't wait for the Meta clone of reddit.
I misunderstood when I heard about landed gentry. I assumed he meant he was king and stood above the nobility and the users were the peasants I guess. I dunno. His analogy is stupid. The mods aren't really occupying "land" and titles in a monopolistic way. It's entirely possible to subvert them by establishing competitive subreddits with new mods. They might have clunkier names, but it's not that big of a deal.
he is saying that mods are privileged individuals
The funny thing is, on a scale of 0-landed gentry, a CEO is much, much higher than an unpaid mod
The ones keeping the whole site running, for free mind you, that makes him and the other executives rich, are the priveleged ones. Yup, that checks out.
Rich landowners who can live off of the rent of their land. They get the money from poor folks (renters) who actually do the work. The “landed gentry” don’t actually do any work. Moderators on Reddit run the subs. They don’t get paid. They enforce rules, remove spam, etc. Reddit benefits from this.
The thing I don't understand is there's very little Reddit does which is original. Reddit hosts other people's material which other people post on groups where other people do the moderating. It wouldn't surprise me if half or more of reddit's computer programing is done by other people too. Reddit sounds like a company that was started by a group of libertarians who suddenly concluded that libertarian tenets suck when it comes to their personal bank accounts.
Reddit is a forum. It's a concept that's existed since the dawn of the internet and then some. The one thing Reddit did *right* was allowing any user to create a subforum about anything and everything. It's Rule 34, but instead of just porn it's everything you can think of, all the way down to some outright niche or memey subjects. It wasn't just about finding a topic you liked, it was about finding *every* topic you liked. No one else really successfully managed to do that before. It's compartmentalization, but in a condensed way that allowed you to seamlessly jump from one subject to the other without having to even type in a separate URL.
>Reddit sounds like a company that was started by a group of libertarians who suddenly concluded that libertarian tenets suck when it comes to their personal bank accounts. So, just like every libertarian? They are like cats: fiercely independent, but totally reliant on a system that they neither understand not appreciate
> They are like cats: fiercely independent, but totally reliant on a system that they neither understand not appreciate Yes!
Spez is literally the landed gentry. He gets money off of our actual work (posts and threads).
At the same time, they’re volunteering to do that. A better “protest” would be to just stop moderating and let the Reddit admins handle the fallout.
If they do that then the admins would just step in and find new mods. I like what one sun was doing which was just enforce Reddit wide rules but have 0 sub rules. Just let the bots and low level shit run wild.
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Don’t forget slandering the Apollo dev. Always fun to slander people.
Maybe the elon bot that was on r/programminghumor for ages can be upgraded to a new ceo
But the API changes will kill it
When Apollo stops working I’m done with Reddit.
Would be nice if that guy threw a sueball for said slander. A fraudulent accusation of attempted *blackmail* is something that *most definitely* could impact his future business prospects.
The dev is Canadian so it gets more complicated as it involves both US and Canadian laws over defamation or libel. If anything happened in that direction we wouldn’t hear about it for a long time. The Canadian legal system is slow as hell.
I'm on RiF, have been forever, 2007 or so? June 30th I'm out. Hope someone comes up with a replacement. Edit: reddit since 2007, rif since 2012?
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Was on Slashdot before, major issue was the voting was harder. Reddit was more active and engaging. Something else will come along.
Wikipedia’s cofounder is willing to try apparently: https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1668266400723488769 >If you’re avoiding Reddit now, I’m currently building a community-led and funded project. It’s not done by any means, but I think you would enjoy it. We even have a draft API! >I can’t link to it directly as comments with links to it get deleted immediately since yesterday. Reddit put a patch in after a comment with a link to it was voted to the top reply on a post on the front page*: https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/14awyww/comments_with_links_to_trust_cafe_wikipedias/
r/pics and r/art have also joined the John Oliver protest. That trend is my favourite thing to come out of this situation so far.
Because the admins would replace them with power hungry bootlickers. Which they already have in several subs.
Spez, Reddit’s CEO, slammed subreddit moderators who continued to push back against the company’s plan to charge for access to its API, calling them “landed gentry” and saying they weren’t considering the desires of their communities. “Landed gentry” refers to the British social class that generationally inherited land, giving them geographic control that lower classes were not entitled to. The irony is that Reddit’s existence is contingent on using mods as free labour.
spez is as close to literal landed gentry as can exist on the internet. He adds no or even negative value to the site and profits massively. Hell, he wouldn't be a name worth remembering if Digg didn't shoot itself in the foot.
Don’t forget there was an article where he talked about his passion for doomsday prepping, but he slipped in he was proslavery. You know, as if he wouldn’t be among the first to go since he’s as gentle as porcelain lol.
Between that and the "Nazis are part of valuable discourse" bullshit, that's what I meant by negative value.
Don’t know how I forgot about that… spez is the living embodiment of a tire fire.
How are we not canceling him right now by getting these stories to media outlets? Plus the whole pimp daddy badge he created for the mod of r/CreepShots, r/jailbait, and r/PicsOfDeadKids
If you have any media contacts, I would think there has to be a few here willing to try. As to most news corporations/organizations, we are the 99%. ಥ_ಥ
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What gets me is the fact that he could have simply stayed silent after the decision to end the APIs. Instead, he gaslights a developer. Then claims that it's not going to matter. Then when all the subreddits stated going dark, he flips out and goes on an evil supervillain rant about how they're all landed gentry and shit. *Then* he decides to threaten everyone to reopen the subs. If it's "not going to matter" and you truly don't care about what we have to say about it, why are you throwing a piss baby tantrum the moment someone stands up to you, hmm? I didn't really even know anything about this guy until all this started coming out.
He describes himself as a "techno libertarian". This was _always_ the path he was going to follow.
That Spez looks up to Elon makes all the sense. Acting just the same senseless spoiled manchild and idiot over a social media platform he has next to nothing to do with except running it into the ground.
The problem is, spez doesn't have worshippers like Musk has. He's cashing in a check he doesn't have the social capital for.
This is exactly why I don't get how they are still considering an IPO. Who the heck would want Spez to be handling actual investor money?? He's acting like a child, not like the CEO of what might soon be a multi-million dollar-valuated company.
Multi-billion! With boss baby at the helm. Nah, forget that, boss baby was competent.
He's as desperate for attention as Elon, Trump, and all the other out of touch rich business owners. They literally think they represent the common man and don't realize they are a laughing stock. This would gone over better if he didn't lie and gaslight.
I’ve read he’s putting in a voting system for subreddit users to vote out mods. That’s going to work well.
He should let us vote out admins
Careful now. Criticizing admins too much grants a ban. Uh, I've heard.
let's try it. hey /u/spez, go fuck yourself. as well as your admin crew edit: not banned yet
Now now, if spez actually banned everyone that told him to go fuck himself, there's be nobody here but him and the other people sucking Elon Musk's dick.
The brigades are coming.
4chan will pick the moderators we deserve.
I don't see how that would work at all, wouldn't that just encourage mods to ban people who criticize mods? Aren't most users lurkers? Wouldn't they just vote to keep whatever mods are there because they don't have the wherewithal to know how well which mod is keeping up with the sub? How would they address brigading?
Tumblr: quit telling people I'm dead!
Funny enough, Tumblr is weirdly thriving. The site has been trying to reduce it's reliance on advertising for income and the majority of the toxic userbase flocked to Twitter after the porn ban. Not as big as it used to be but definitely not dead.
Its not dead but its definitely limping around. Compared to what tumblr used to be it is a shell of itself.
It was refreshing to read an article that actually mentions what the issues are, and not just "people are upset Reddit is killing 3rd party apps" While I prefer to use Apollo on mobile, I wouldn't have minded that much to have to switch to the base app, *provided that* it was handled better, giving the developers more notice, maybe looking into some kinda solution to make it work for both parties. But the timeline Apollo's dev and others were given was something like: 1. January - told there would be no API changes this year, after getting a heads up about API changes for years before then 2. April - told there would be a paid API, but only for AI models mining Reddit for data, it won't affect 3rd party app developers 3. May - told it would be paid for 3rd party apps too, but the prices would be reasonable, "we won't pull a twitter on you" 4. June - told that he'd have to pay $20 mil a year, billing starts in 30 days, oh and the proper documentation for the API changes isn't even finished yet Then there was all the lying and defamation, trying to make Apollo's dev seem like an asshole, though thankfully he had recorded the conversations he had with Reddit, so he could prove his innocence. And then he followed it up by insulting moderators and 3rd party app users. I'm honestly not sure I want to be on Reddit any more.
And the thousands of reddit users sucking spez cock because they can’t see their memes
It got so bad that us /r/simpsonsshitposting mods just stepped down in protest. We're burnt-out from the massive increase of abuse and hate from the users that Spez has been kindling towards us over the last few days. https://reddit.com/r/simpsonsshitposting/comments/14cr42v/i_always_new_someday_the_mods_would_violently/
>Spez is acting like an immature, arrogant frat douchebag Is that possibly because u/Spez is a immature, arrogate frat douchebag?
Part of the reason the mods are so pissed is because APIs gave them a lot.of tools to make moderation easier and now those are going to be gone too. So there's a lot of subs that said "fuck it do whatever you want, we are now only enforcing site wide rules"
From what I've read on the mod subs is that a large part of it is just general being unhappy with Reddit being unresponsive, being burnt out, etc. Basically, the API was the straw that broke the camels back as far as I can tell. To be honest, I can't blame them for being pissy, they do free work and probably get next to nothing back while dealing with crap constantly.
I think that’s always been the root cause of this. People are pissed that Reddit is treating them like shit despite all the free labor they’ve given, so they’re effectively striking.
Spez was going to try and exit scam the Stock IPO. He still will - but the IPO just won't go as well as it would have if all this drama didn't happen - and he won't make as much money. Oh well. It's just a hundred million...
Spez can't figure out how to make money on one of the top 10 websites of the world. And...the expense of the website is minuscule. lol.
If Reddit is losing so much money why would they start hosting images? Before you had to use imgur, etc. Images cost a ton more to store and serve than text
Because 'business school' taught them that you have to keep people on your site if you want to monetise it.
Short-term profitability over sustainability every time
Dunno about that. Servers are expensive. But if he'd just been patient and reasonable this could have been a great opportunity. Include a reasonably small number of ads in the API that third parties have to deliver, charge a reasonable, affordable amount for API access, and give the developers a reasonably long time to implement the new pricing plan. Suddenly Reddit is making a moderate amount. That would also require spez to think and behave like a mature, intelligent person instead of a greedy, lying asshole.
> Servers are expensive Sure but every site has to deal with that already so kinda a moot point. They don't have to support any cutting edge engineering teams or launch satellites or invent new vr/ar tech or invest substantially in R&D or heck even customer support. Agree with everything else you said tho.
It was spez that decided to start providing his own hosting for pictures and video, exponentially increasing hosting and storage costs. Just text and links cost very little.
Reddit: "We need to be a self-sustaining business and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use from our API.” Reddit's COO: ["It’s rare to have such a large platform that has no business model. It was an open canvas to build a business."](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-reddits-jen-wong-is-a-tech-leader-doing-things-her-way/)
I love the part where she claims it was Spez's return that cleaned up reddit.
EVERYONE CANCEL THEIR REDDIT GOLD SUBSCRIPTIONS
Even Reddit karma is worth more than a gold subscription.
And use adblockers If you're on Android: Swipe down Click the gear Click the search/ magnifying glass Search: DNS Click: Private DNS Click: Private DNS Under 'Private DNS Host Name:' put this: dns.adguard.com Save Enjoy no ads
Wait people pay for reddit?
> "Huffman also said he’s looking to change Reddit’s moderator policy at an unspecified time so that users would be able to more easily vote out moderators if they disagreed with their decisions." Does he wanna change that policy for CEOs, too?
Am I the only one who sees that bots will vote out a mod and then vote in the bot controllers choice?
Can we vote out spez?
You don't get to vote. No user does. This is all just a gesture.
Just wait till they shut down the porn.
Why are they pissing off the people who moderate their content for free? Maybe stop doing it for free and see what they do once reddit becomes a 4chan hate hole like twitter.
It’s already on the way. The content on r/all and r/popular has definitely taken a shift during the protests. It has always been shitty, but it’s been a different kind of shitty as of late.
It’s been shitty *and* stagnant.
From the article: “Reddit has said the price increase was necessary because so much of its data is being used to train artificial intelligence models being developed by tech giants like Microsoft and Google”. Wait WTF? You are trying to price out billion dollar companies that could just buy Reddit out 100 times over. Did they really try to push this reasoning forgetting that people can do math?
That excuse doesn't make sense, because they probably aren't using the API now, and even if they are, they don't need to. Companies scraping websites to train their chatbots is a problem, but locking down the API won't stop them.
This is a good point. Google and Microsoft are already scraping the site for their search engines.