For me its just the third party apps that I care about

I hope this whole ordeal, no matter how it goes down, ends up being a landmark for “social media as a monopoly”. I think there’s been a lot of talk about this in past years, with little real interest, because people are more interested in their next dopamine fix no matter how much they say they care about their data being sold. I hope this is the push we need to start considering these things for real. Most of us are uncomfortable with personal information being sold to 3rd parties, or knowing that users of these sites are technically the product being sold. It’s more weird and uncomfortable knowing the CEO and other execs are throwing a tantrum because user data and user submissions AREN’T being generated for them to sell to earn money to buy some yachts and golf courses.

Should social media be a public commodity, same way a community center or library is? Something paid for by taxes and regulated by government. I think it’s interesting in concept but odd to consider once you get into government censorship and surveillance aspects. Not a good idea either.

I certainly never viewed it as a social media site. I joined it as a link aggregator and a way to find information on topics I thought were interesting, not make friends. It always seems odd to me when people refer to it as a social media site.

Reddit *still is * a bottom-up community, that’s why all their monetization efforts never worked and there’s so much backlash against the API changes. All of the content and value on the site is created by the users and mods. Reddit the company doesn’t own that, and redditors take offense at management’s attempts to take advantage of the users’ free efforts for their own gain.

What Huffman and Reddit should have done was think long term and set up a Wikipedia-like entity that could have ensured the health and growth of the site while only taking a modest cut. Instead they tried to pump up the value and cash out with an IPO, and when that likely fails, they’ll end up with nothing.

Hmmm. Maybe it’s intentional. A purge. Flush out the old crowd with their adblockers and their nonsense ideas about “free speech,” and whoever stays – out of ignorance or compliance – is left with the ad-ridden hellscape that is the new interface and the official app.

Additionally, it’s not even that good of a venue.

I was talking to my friend about this and asked if he could point out a single improvement that reddit has made in the last decade that hadn’t been about monetization, since I exclusively use old.reddit.com and third party apps, I certainly couldn’t. We couldn’t come up with anything…

Its a better analogy that Reddit pissed off the roadies, ushers, ticket takers, and other crew because they wanted 300% of the concession stand’s gross take.

It’s a big, relevant, ongoing event which affects the fediverse directly. There’s a huge influx of new users who were recently burned by it who would normally go to “the other website” to discuss, but no longer do.

Would you prefer they go back, or is there a place here for those displaced?

The more this drags on, the less people think this is about money, and more about controlling the platform.

A real business person finds a common ground, sets terms everyone can at least pay forward. Because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if I have $100 lemonade, if no one is able to buy it.

I really don’t understand why reddit doesn’t just charge end uses for API access. Heck chuck it in with premium or something. They can generate an API that you use in whatever client you wanted.

I’d happily pay Reddit for a key to then use in Apollo, but bizarrely this isn’t an option. It’s not like Reddit lacks the ability to charge end users, they already have premium after all.

I still think that’s one of the most damaging events to the success of the fediverse over the past week

conde naste was reddit and wired’s parent company and I believe still a major shareholder so probably why

FTA:

(Disclosure: WIRED is a publication of Conde Nast, whose parent company, Advance Publications, has an ownership stake in Reddit.)

cast yourself into the kiln, and ignite the age of fire once again

They mentioned “federated alternatives”

The rich control the narrative.

I think it’s sad. There is so much good information stored in the side bars, like for example /r/buildapc or /r/fitness, that I hope gets salvaged by the fediverse.

Plus our spaces here need indexing so we can find answers to obscure questions again.

If reddit backpedals, even just for damage control, it will cement just how much power the users and mods have over that site. As it should.

I think that’s precisely why spez is going to do everything he can not to backpedal.