Protests on the social platform have entered a new phase, with users shirking the platform’s NSFW content rules en masse. The development has some media buyers on high alert, experts say.
Protests on the social platform have entered a new phase, with users shirking the platform’s NSFW content rules en masse. The development has some media buyers on high alert, experts say.
“My number one concern right now as an advertiser would be that Reddit seems to be losing rapport with and control over their users. Reddit needs to talk to their community members now and work to regain their trust and support or risk losing brand advertisers long term.”
Lmao
I can see why she focused on the risk to advertisers, but it sucks she glossed over the shittier parts from Reddit, e.g. that the change isn't just inconvenient, it makes reddit nigh unusable for mods and the visually impaired with nothing that even sounds like a credible plan in the works.
That, and the more inventive responses. Porn is typical. Demanding every post in r/DebateReligion be held in Latin was funny. Giving every one of r/Political Humor's 1.5M+ users mod powers was beyond hilarious and genuinely original. No mention, though, I guess. Just someone posted a boob.
The story seems to be from a marketing-focused website, so it makes sense that the author is addressing advertisers, and how the events with Reddit will affect them.
Also, surely this story proves that the protests absolutely have had an effect. It's causing advertisers to think twice about spending money with Reddit. And as stated in this TechCrunch article, fewer advertisers are visiting the ad-buying part of Reddit's site.
So, the people who complained that these protests are pointless, that they won't change anything, have been proven wrong. The protests are effective. So if people want change in this situation then they should continue with MORE protests. My protest is that I'm not using Reddit.
Advertisers actually thought that Reddit had rapport with and control over their users? Only someone who spends company money on advertising could be that misguided.
The author appears to have a poor understanding of the full scope of what the protests are about, let alone the variety of creative actions being taken. This seems to be a marketing media publication, so that's their focus. I guess what's most important is that advertisers and others in the industry are noticing that Reddit has lost control of it's user-base and has become a risky investment. That's a pretty good result for the protests. The finer details don't matter so much.
Also, they make it sound like the problem is the 3rd party app users will have to pay. That's not the issue. Probably most of those users would be happy to pay some monthly fee to keep their app running. It's how much they are charging for the API that is the problem, and the lack of time to actually implement it.
That and the abhorrent behavior of the reddit team, the last weeks.
The craziest part of that to me is that they could have just charged the users directly without putting the onus for payment on the app developers.
You want your account to be able to use the data API? You have to subscribe to Reddit+. Once you do, that account can use any Oauth App it wants to access the site.
The fact that they put something as complicated as payment flow on third party developers is just obscene.
I guess there's the idea that all press is good press. People who didn't know reddit existed now likely do and they might just check it out to see what the hullabaloo is about. They might not even be internet savvy enough to suspect bot conversations are a real thing.
It's a website that gets paid in traffic, and we're giving people a reason to continue being traffic, and potentially increasing their traffic. We just fed the machine.
The best thing we can do is just stop using it. Making the protests fun is only going to help reddit. They're not negotiating, they've made their decision already, they're not going to back down on it and even if they did some decisions have consequences.
To recover potential skepticism among advertisers, Reddit should start with winning back its loyal user base, suggests Agorapulse’s Allton. “My number one concern right now as an advertiser would be that Reddit seems to be losing rapport with and control over their users. Reddit needs to talk to their community members now and work to regain their trust and support or risk losing brand advertisers long term.”
They've permanently lost their trust with a lot of users. They've lost my trust, that's for sure. Even if they go back to free API or more reasonable prices, I'm not going back.
Schadenfreude is real with this one but I have to wonder will it last. No doubt Reddit will be smaller after this (as it already is from like 55M to 52M users) but they'll eventually get their shit somewhat together, maybe it'll demand admins to be more hands-on by changing mods etc. (since the ones picked in a rush won't be all winners).
Either way it'll probably a lot more straining on corporate end when for now Reddit itself has been pretty hands off. I don't think it'll die over night or a year even. It'll slowly dwindle until there's nothing but wasteland with few stubborn users.