Reddit and the End of Online ‘Community’

"These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free. And that free comes at the expense of our other users and our business. That’s what this is about. It can’t be free."

Funny, seems like he has been getting all of it from content to moderation for free, and now he is the one angry it isn't free any more....huh.

No users, no Reddit. It's as simple as that. Why the paint huffer thinks he can take content from his users for free, then sell it back to them, is mystifying. No, no, dickhead. You're acting like you're the most important component of Reddit when you are, in fact, the most expendable.

The money quote IMO is at the end:

Reddit, like any commercial platform, is only a community until its owners need it to be something else.

That's a good reason to be mindful of what we're building here on Kbin, Lemmy, and other federated networks. We're not just trying to build a Reddit methadone, to help us down from our high after quitting cold-turkey. We are, I hope, aiming to build (or rebuild) a community -- one not dependent on the monetizing whims of a private owner.

The author is right: Spez lost site of the community aspect. Here's an opportunity to show them that the idea still means something to a lot of us.

I come from the era of the BBS. The PHP Forum. SlashDot, and Digg. I come from online games ranging from EverQuest, to Multiverse Crisis MUSH, to Moments in Tyme, to Warframe, and More. I have walked messenger clients from the times of AiM, IRC and Yahoo, to Skype, Steam, and Discord.

In my thirty years of being online, this is not the first petty tyrant claiming that upset users are the problem rather than taking a long hard look in the mirror. This will not be the last.

The best we can do is grab popcorn and watch as his platform dies. He won't admit to making any mistakes. Especially with money involved because he's under the deluded belief that showing any weakness invites a price drop from investors. Yet this behavior? It REEKS of weakness and insecurity.

Migrate and Move On. the rest is just playing u/spez's game.

landed gentry

democratic

Bro, that's just a little too much bullshit coming from your mouth for me.

I was definitely addicted to reddit but it's been surprisingly easy to stop using it. I have been reading instead and I'm 75% of the way through Wool right now. Before I would endlessly scroll through but now when I open reddit I am bored in a few minutes. I'll probably still use it to find useful answers on Google but otherwise 🤷‍♀️

I'm kinda glad Reddit is blowing up, it has been shit for a long time to be honest. Yes you can seclude yourself into smaller and more niche subreddits, but they all end up catering to the lowest common denominator eventually. If fediverse really kicks off I'm sure the same thing will happen in 10 years, but for now I'm excited to be trying something new

This will be an all-time great case study at the Harvard Business School.

If third party reddit browsing apps are competitors to reddit, that means that I have preferred their competitors this whole time! I think I am going to stick with reddit competitors.

This will all end badly, and I'm here for it. 🍿

I hope Spez gets explosive diarrhea every day for the rest of his life.

And if for some weird reason he is into that, then I hope he gets concrete constipation every day for the rest of his life instead.

One thing that spez notes is that the communities are supposed to be democratic and he's pushing towards having moderators and admins of the subreddits being left to a vote... While at the same time increasing the amount of draconian measures by implementing his own moderators of the communities.

I feel like the ability to vote on mods and admins of communities should've been implemented ages ago on Reddit to decentralize the power trip, but now with spez doing businessman things instead of harboring a passion for people/ease of use/whatever Reddit's initial purpose was, this change has come far too late.

He seems to misunderstand that the people who use and contribute to Reddit use it like other social media platforms, but it's simply not the case. People use Reddit to stay on topic about their hobbies and passions, and ease of use is a huge part of that. Reddit has been constantly trying to inject more invasive shit into user's feeds: chats, video ads, obnoxiously colored ads (in the app), those dumbass live streams that they pushed for a hot minute that sucked - when the whole purpose of the site is to get your information about a specific topic or check in on a specific topic.

Eventually, users do scroll out of the topic and that's when people's purpose for staying on reddit changes: they move more towards the entertainment side of things with memes, circlejerking, and simply discussing and hanging out with like-minded individuals (or starting an argument with them over something fringe in regards to the topic at large). And keep in mind this is only 10% of the user base doing this form of contribution - the banter that's needed to sustain the quality of Reddit. The other 90% of users will realize something is off when things like this go missing, simply because it's entertaining to not just engage in, but also to read and watch from a lurker standpoint.

"the users are not in support of [the blackout]"

Which users did you poll about this, buddy?

Mr. Huffman is stretching in a variety of directions here. Reddit is not a feudal government, or a city in any sense; neither is it ultimately “democratic,” as he frequently suggests. It’s an advertising and subscription-supported web service that also depends on free content and unpaid labor from its users. It is, substantially, in the same business as Meta, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok — giving people something to use mostly for free in exchange for their monetizable time and attention.

I really appreciated this callout in the article.

Lucky it wouldn't be James Corden on r/pics.

I'm enjoying learning about the alternatives though.