First all the bs with Twitter and Elon, then Reddit having an exodus to Lemmy (not complaining lol), then Twitch. Are we like, in an alternate self healing dimension or something?
The timeline split after harambe. This is known
It is known.
I wonder what our alternate timeline selves are doing. Good for them, right?
In Timeline-α the Visitors didn’t turn away in disgust and Contact was approved. The Uplift process is well underway, environmental conditions have been stabilized and restoration is progressing well. Space travel is still restricted to the Solar System but Humanity is on track to full Membership. Ambassador Harambe has resumed his duties on the Council.
I have a sinking feeling that these moves are not about money, but more about power and manipulation. If you squeeze these user bases such that the savviest users are forced out, those more likely to ask “Why?” about damn near anything, you will own access to a group of people that can be influenced to think/do/buy whatever the top management and/or majority shareholders want. If you lose a few million users, what does it matter if they were dissidents to your goals?
Not money per se, but the oil of the 21st century: data.
I guarantee it’s primarily about improving their ability to harvest and sell user data.
Exactly. The native apps can gather so much more info than a website and they have to kill third party apps to force people to use the official client.
This is where my mind goes. Kinda convenient that Twitter and Reddit, both likely particularly dangerous to those seeking power happen to be destroyed seemingly intentionally in the same year ahead of a sure to be insane U.S. election season.
Hmm, kinda interesting. A lot of Trump shit was spread on Reddit during the 2016 election, makes sense they would try to get rid of anyone who would oppose that content
100% power There’s parallels to the writer strikes Netflix ceo got like 2x the money that all the writers are asking for in bonus so it’s not about money It’s something else
From everything I have observed, businesses are hunkering down for a recession in the next fiscal year. It explains the lay offs, the penny pinching, and puzzling decisions that look like business suicide.
For services that are free for users, advertising revenue and investment fund raisers are the only thing keeping them afloat. With banks like SVB getting seized by the FDIC, it’s starting to scare investors. Advertisers are seeing the writing on the wall that people will stop spending as much as they used to. We are also probably seeing jacked up pricing across the board because businesses are taking what they can before it’s gone.
So what’s left? Squeeze users for money. Additionally, shed users that actually cost them money and these tend to be power users. The question, which everyone seems to be assuming is a foregone conclusion, is if this shedding strategy will end up killing the service. In reality, we don’t know but the idealists would sure feel good if someone else ate their market share.
I’m just glad that federation is picking up steam in the social media space.
So why do layoffs at all if they don’t actually work? “People do all kinds of stupid things all the time,” Pfeffer says. “I don’t know why you’d expect managers to be any different.” https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/26/23571659/tech-layoffs-facebook-google-amazon
That’s a very enlightening article!
There is a psychology at work in layoffs—ownership forces management to choose to hurt people to give more to ownership. Like paying a blood tribute to the king, but dumber.
I like, and suspect this to be the true reason, the argument that one company sees another doing layoffs so they do layoffs. It’s all just a race to the bottom.
Also what hasn’t been touched on very much in this thread is the increase in interest rates from the Federal Reserve. The money hose has shut off and expansionary business policy won’t work for the foreseeable future even without a recession. All these internet companies have developed and grown in an essentially 0% interest rate environment that rewarded growth beyond all else. With rates increasing, investment in risky companies that may or may not grow is becoming a less attractive option and so I bet a lot of these non-profitable, growth-focused web companies are seeing liquidity dry up and are having to reach profitability to avoid bankruptcy since servicing new debt in this current interest environment is basically impossible without solid cashflow and a clear corporate vision.
This is leading to all these companies suddenly raising prices, cutting staff, choking competition, and cheaping out to try and break even instead of grow. It’s a paradigm shift.
Crazy to hear people talking about this stuff out in the wild. Feels like I’m on superstonk, only place I tend to hear anyone connecting these dots.
Speaking of superstonk, is there a good superstonk or wsb personalfinance lemmy community? I am subbed to the beehaw finance community, but it’s really not a tube yet and seems to be a bit more economics leaning than pure personal finance or investing.
The subs I spend a lot of time on were FIRE, financialindependence, wsb, and personal finance and I miss them lol.
I agree with most of what you said. I would say classifying SVB as a seizure is probably not accurate. The FDIC only came in when it was clear SVB was going to fold and in fact insured far more than the 250k per account guaranteed. Mainly to try and stem a run on midsize banks because
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Many companies had large holdings, undiversified in these banks
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The banks were borderline negligent with how they handled those deposits, sticking them all in “safe” government bonds that ruins liquidity.
Once the interest rate on the bonds was lower than the base borrowing rate, no one would buy the bonds instead of just buying new bonds with a much higher guaranteed return.
So, given that, I would say the FDIC instead bailed out the banks. Something they would never do for you or I, or even a business with similar valuation as any of the banks customers.
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The reality is that nothing is really dying and nothing is really changing. Twitter is still fully operational and other than a small hit nothing happened. Twitch already did a step back. For Reddit we’ll see but only a really small percentage of reddit is using third party apps.
It’s not the services that are dying, but the internet as we used to know.
Change is natural, but the services are all changing in a way not beneficial forthe users.
I think the “the internet is dying” perspectives are all incredibly overblown. They aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. I remember all of the “Facebook is dead, I don’t know anyone using Facebook!” posts, but I suspect many here are invested in some index fund that is being pulled upwards by Meta.
But how many people are still exchanging facebook contacts? Because I haven’t met anyone anymore …
The hit Twitter suffered might be bigger than you think: Yahoo Finance (from Bloomberg) link
Talking about use, not how much the company is worth. It was overinflated anyway like many of s&p500
I don’t think it’s fair to say nothing is changing, but “dying” admittedly seems like hyperbole.
Organizations can die slowly or not at all but still be gravely damaged. They are almost certainly making these moves to capture the least critical (most profitable) portions of their userbases and hunker down for survival. Even if the change is extremely painful, they’re (likely) planning for the specific goal of avoiding total death.
twitter was overvalued. reddit has made a lot of questionable business decisions over the last decade or so but their recent API change will be their death knell. it feel like a cash grab. I personally only use Twitch to watch Bob Ross reruns :P
There’s Bob Ross reruns on twitch?
https://www.twitch.tv/bobross ;)
great to watch & fall asleep to
Well, while it is surprising it’s all happening within a year or so, it’s not unexpected at all.
They’re ultimately for-profit companies. They have openly demonstrated the obvious truth that when push comes to shove, users don’t matter to them, at least not as much as money. Our attention was the product.
These companies have proven time and time again that a quick moneygrab will win over retaining the people who make the site work. capitalism 101 baby.
Yep, think of the math like this:
1000 users that we can get $1 of profit from totalling $1000 profit
Or 500 users we can get $3 of profit from totalling $1500 profit.
$1500 > $1000 Therefore it’s a good decision.
Welcome to the mind of corporate executives
Source: I work with these dumbasses
F
Sustained or not ultimately it’s a big circlejerk of all the rich people trading money amongst each other that they siphon off of us 🤷🏻♂️
From Cory Doctorow:
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
Some of it is because we had a decade of cheap borrowing which has come to an end and many of these platforms were never profitable.
please can youtube be next?
I really want to stop using my google account and that’s the only thing keeping me from moving away from it.
The issue with replacement for YouTube is that it needs to be both sustainable AND pay the professional content creator. This is not an easy task and the main reason why alternatives are usually running behind a subscription service.
Check out Odysee
Have you tried https://yewtu.be/donate yet?
the problem is that google takeout does not let me export my subs for some reason so I haven’t really used it. (it says no data found)
also google sent them a legal notice
The twitter thing is sad, but honestly not a huge deal. I rarely used it anyhow.
The reddit thing is depressing, since I’ve been a huge supporter and user of Apollo for many years. It feels like getting stepped on and I feel for the developer Christian Selig who devoted so much time and energy to the app.
I hope nothing happens to Twitch in the way that Twitter and Reddit have though, the small time streamers I follow and support won’t survive a thing like that.
Reddit has so many small communities that the people in charge have absolutely no care for. I hope one of these services takes hold as a clear Reddit replacement so that they can be built back up.
I think this is the most tragic thing about leaving Reddit… The tech subs, the politics subs - those are easy communities to make replacements for on any platform. But the in-depth analyses and discussions of Star Wars lore or joke communities around Garfield will be tougher to replicate I think.
Yeah, I heard someone pitching the old let “AI” handle it line. Machine learning can’t moderate those communities to even a mediocre standard. It’s just too variable, subjective and nuanced. Even actual members of communities can be crappy at moderating them!
Even actual members of communities can be crappy at moderating them!
Ummm…have you been on Reddit? 😆
As a mod of a small community on reddit, I’m weary of building up from scratch again. The sub is about polls, which isn’t a feature on Lemmy. So I guess I’ll just give up on my moderating hobby for now.
I get the impression that owners of large servers aren’t too interested in the growth from Reddit. I think some post even said that using “Reddit refugee” as a reason for application for an account is gonna get you rejected.
Which is fine because you can join another.
Same, but ReddPlanet. I paid for Redd, but not Apollo because you can’t convince me to pay for something if I don’t have a chance to see if the features are worth it.
ReddPlanet, slide, Relay were all amazing.
I recently saw my wife use the official Reddit app. I… can’t take that kind of user experience.
What about switching back to YouTube from twitch? Some streamers I follow stream on both.
I think it’s an important lesson in impermanence.
The net will always have good bits and bad bits, but they won’t always stay the same.
I hate it when things change, but you’re totally right.
Higher interest rates means less investment, resulting in these companies racing to make a profit. The reality is that Reddit is bleeding money and has been for years, and Twitter is barely profitable.
Where do you see this information on their profits?
At least for reddit, spez used saying it isn’t currently profitable as a pity point in the ama today.
There isn’t much public information because all those companies are private. But, various journalists have looked into things and declared it isn’t profitable, for example:
That has left Reddit, known as a bastion of free speech, walking a delicate tightrope between its outspoken audience of 330mn monthly active users and new advertisers that can propel it into profitability.
https://www.ft.com/content/c4c01d86-85f5-49c8-9966-cbf935d834a2
Awesome. Thanks for the follow up. Crazy how hard it is to find. I’m sure their income is enough to pay them decent wages though. Not the moderators though, screw those people
The problem is that from day 1, Reddit was a Y-Combinator project, meaning it was VC backed, and the VCs want a big money-making exit. It looks like social media in general, and link aggregator website in particular are not great money-making ventures. A private company might just shrug and accept a small but steady profit. But, VCs want a big splashy money-making event, and they’re willing to risk killing the company to achieve it.
This Lemmy migration does feel like waaaaay more positive of a result than I ever expected from reddit getting worse.
I’ve always appreciated the idea of the fediverse, but mastodon and the twitter-style of social media has never appealed to me, and Lemmy used to be so tiny and niche, so I didn’t invest much time in it until now. But this sure is nice, comparatively. I’m probably on here too much though!
I think we do have a sufficient number of users now to keep going irrespective of how reddit fares. Communities are beginning to form and even if there is no futher mass exodus from reddit, I think Lemmy will be fine and will see organic growth over time.
I’ve already noticed I’m spending more time of Lemmy than reddit since the past few days.
It’s easier to spend time on Lemmy for me because the comments are actually worth reading. Seems like the type of person who’s drawn here are actually interested in holding a conversation vs. reddit where it’s about saying something witty or whatever to get them upvotes
Same. Never cared about Twitter, but I like new internet stuff, so I got on Mastodon. Never used it and forgot about it for years. Came back to it with all the Elon stuff and realized the instance was dead, so I created a new account on another instance to never use. The point is, like you said, Lemmy is something I will actually use if the community continues to grow and sticks around.
Mastodon has a place, just isn’t for some people. I found the same problem you had with it. Just like how conversations work better in a Reddit-like style of communicating.
I think this is “normal” and the previous status was a glitch due to the low interest rates. Investors threw money at tech companies and didn’t care whether they made any money. Not any more. It’s now “make money or go bust”. I am not sayiny these new trends will make them money, but IMHO it’s what’s driving them
I dunno. A lot of the investors were (are) on waverides from previous success. There are absolutely loan-backed ones, but as one startup investor said to me “I look for 200-300% return in 5 years to not call something a failure.” With expectations like that, you hold to record profits even if 2/3 the companies you invest in fail.
That is a great point. I never considered this to be an effect of interest rates increasing. But I think Reddit was already profitable.
But it recently went public and I think the board is like, “Make more money now!”
They really just want to get everyone on the Reddit app so they can collect user data to sell and to show advertisements.
Reddit hasn’t gone public yet (it’s planned for this year) and very likely isn’t profitable — we don’t know for sure because it hasn’t published its financials.
Was there some sort article or post, I only heard people say they will.
Thanks for the heads up. I thought that it already happened.
Profitable is probably a big word here, but they were surviving and without any real ambitions, not a lot of money was necessary. Originally, the Reddit gold awards seemed to be enough for them to pay for server usage and the handful of developers/admins.
However, the last couple of years things felt like they were changing behind the scenes. More investors were attracted and growth became an objective. The low interest rates indeed meant a lot of money was available and that investors wanted more growth as there were plenty of alternatives that WERE growing. If your growth is/was disappointing, you’d lose the investors as they would go elsewhere. The current situation is likely just the tail end of that process.
I think you are right. Investors just want more money than they have and it is ruining the platform. I guess that is why I love these federated platforms. It is not really easy for them to be taken over.
They can, however, be misrepresented by media, to the general public, using sometimes fabricated other times exaggerated events. And that agenda can be pushed, more than ever from July onward, by lobbying. Not that I care, because I don’t give a **** about what other people think of the place where I spend my time, but a lot of people do. Even reddit had a time like that “oh, isn’t that the network where the CP / jailbait scandal broke?”. I’m sure Lemmy will have some of these growing pains.
It’s the thing with capitalism, init. Moar!!
Doctorow’s Enshittification describes it pretty much dead-on. It’s basically the cancerous form of late-stage capitalism that we’re living under now.
Thank you for this! I never really thought about late stage capitalism but this post helped a lot.
Spot on! We are seeing it happen before our eyes and I love it!
Wow that’s a great read!
Definitely accurate to the situation lol
We’ve reached the end of the VC-funded golden age where they are all now demanding a return on their investment, hence why the screws are now all getting tightened.
I’m honestly surprised it even got this far. It was just common sense to me, even a decade ago, that companies that burned through VC cash and tried building up user bases with little regard for actual profitability couldn’t possibly keep it up forever.
It also coincides nicely with web3 becoming a less nebulous thing and investors starting to shift their focus from user created content to practical applications of ai.
is reddit a zirp phenomenon?
The big sites got big by being there when a previous big site died. But nothing lasts forever, and eventually a social site becomes desperately uncool because there are people old enough to have grandkids on it. And they totter on, like a zombie, until they fuck out badly, and most people leave. But not everyone, I still get linked to blog entries on Livejournal now and then, sometimes I even end up on Blogger when I’m following a trail and people are still updating some of those.
It’s probably just confirmation bias, but I also like platforms small, before all the rabidly negative 500k+ sized communities show up. When stuff gets too large, sites become impersonal. Regulars drowned out by a megaphone of spam, rage content, mass downvotes, “have you ever touched a boob? I’m not horny I just really wanna know” type questions, and which X is best X type threads.
Reddit was getting far, far too large for its own good in regards to some default and even non default subs. Some went from meaningful conversations to just images drowning out all text threads. felt like shouting into the void after that.
WhAt TuRRNs yoU oN WxMen Of REDDiT??? 45k upvotes on r/askreddit every day…
Forearms. It’s always forearms.
I am feeling the same, reddit became too large for me, and while I think they could at least try to make it good place for smaller communities (like recommending small subreddits, allowing for beter moderation…) they focused just on growth.
I am not certain advertisers will be happy with just teenagers (who don’t spend much money) over there.
Same as YouTube, I get it that big channels make money, but I don’t like all polishing and teams of professionals “creating content” for me. I want to listesten to my peers, sharing their thoughts and hobbies, maybe promoting themselves amd their business… but current situation is unusable. I never see recommend video without milions of views, I don’t even know how to find those small channels - if they even exist anymore.
I’m with you on that last paragraph. I’ve dropped all my streaming apps for YouTube at this point. I just genuinely like the feel of smaller YouTubers. I follow some that have millions of subscribers, but the ones I enjoy the most are small time creators. One of my favorites has a few thousand subscribers right now, and I get excited every time they upload a new video.
September came for Reddit long, long ago. Personally I stay way the hell off of any popular subreddit because they’re just a total wasteland. And September comes for the small subreddits now and then, too - they’ll grow too big, the active mods get overwhelmed, and it starts to turn into 4chan. And I unsubscribe. If I’m lucky I hear about the mods starting up a new offshoot subreddit that’s trying to be small, relatively quiet, and aggressively unpopular.
Hey, I’m still on LiveJournal!
Okay, mostly DreamWidth with an echo to my LJ. And all of my friends are gone. But it’s still a damned good service. Frankly, I suggested it as an alternative to Reddit if Lemmy fell through.
The last straw for LJ for me was when they made any mention of queerness illegal so as to conform to the laws of their new home country. I logged out and never logged in again. I still get badly-translated email about anniversary gifts for my various 13-year-old accounts now and then.
I have a DW account but it lies fallow, mostly because I could never get the auto-crossposter plugin to work on my Wordpress site.
@EgyptUrnash @BobQuasit oh I miss the old lj every day
