IAmA mods no longer willing to work for reddit for free
IAmA mods no longer willing to work for reddit for free
Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we'd be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.
You're viewing a single thread.
Reddit has killed its golden goose. I don't see Reddit recovering from this, certainly not without reverting the API changes.
Doubtfully even if they reverse the changes. There has been a culture shift in what people are willing to do for free as a whole, let alone for reddit. Reddit won't pay, and then they made the mistake of letting everyone see that the grass is greener on other platforms, and the devs they screwed are scrambling to build up those other greener platforms like they did for reddit.
Its the equivalent of a brain drain of scientists fleeing a country at war.
Thing is, only total nerdburgers like us (myself included) use Federated social media. WE understand the dangers presented by "gentlemen" like Elon and the paint huffer, but mainstream internet users just aren't involved enough in tech to care. The celebrities who were using Twitter to promote themselves will, almost without exception, just abandon social media entirely. A few have left for Mastodon purely out of spite (ie Kathy Griffin) or have explored Mastodon as an alternative (ie George Takei), but the big fish will just scatter. You'll get George Takei on Masto, but George Clooney, not so much.
Perhaps it's for the best. When a web site achieves mainstream popularity, that's the first step on the road to enshittification. The internet was more fun when it was underground.
enshittification as defined by Cory Doctorow shouldn’t be possible on the fediverse because the fediverse isn’t run by any one corporate entity. The cycle of [good for users -> good for advertisers -> good for the company itself -> site death] shouldn’t happen, or at least should be much less common, since the fediverse makes it really easy to swap instances if the owners of yours decide to enshittify.
(I agree with and enjoy your first paragraph, though)