I think its going to end up a successful move for them.
They built a platform. The users built the site over the years with minimal interaction from reddit.
They now have a platform, millions of users, and full control of what they want on that platform.
The writing has been on the wall for a while now, they want the traffic but don’t want the problems that come with mostly community driven content.
All the profile redesigns, ability to “follow” users, profile pics, awards, all that has been an indication of the direction over the last few years. The last few steps was to kick out the problem users and be left with those who don’t really give a shit and just want to see memes on their phone while they take a shit. The people who hear about reddit and just grab the official app from the store. The people who don’t care about APIs and protests and modding or accessibility tools. Just eyeballs to look at their ads.
Those people will stay. It doesn’t matter if 25% of the community leaves, because the natural growth in the next few months from the eyeballs will claw it back over time.
Once they have an obedient user base who are strictly bound to what reddit want them to see, think TikTok or facebook users, that’s when they will see off. And it will pay off handsomely.
I would have agreed with you if it had just been the API changes, but the recent behaviour from admins is extremely alienating. All they needed to do to fix this situation is strike a deal with app developers and say sorry. The protest would have been over in a day and things would have largely gone back to normal.
Instead, they dug in their heels and behaved like insecure little tyrants. They lie, they force mods out of their subs, they undelete comments, etc. There’s no trust left between admins and community, and in the long run that’s going to kill the website.
The thing that makes reddit great is the user created content. That content is provided by a tiny minority, while the vast majority just consumes.
Most of the people creating the content care about the platform, and they will leave if they are alienated enough. That’s not even mentioning the thousands of hours of unpaid mod work. You might find some power-hungry replacements for the bigger subs, but the quality of mods will decrease, which will make the community worse in the long run.
If they continue on this path, reddit will end up like 9gag. There’ll be content, but very little of it will be original, and it won’t be all that interesting for targeted advertising like it currently is.
It won’t disappear, but it certainly won’t be a multi-billion dollar company.
But, you see, the biggest problem here is: these generic users do not post anything. They may repost from Instagram or Tik Tok, or whatever, but if the power users, the ones responsible for the good content that the casual access leaves, it’s just a matter of months for it to die for good.
And the mods are the ones that fight the phishing scams, disinformation bots, t-shirt spammers, etc. If reddit were capable of automating those away, they wouldn’t still be so prevalent.
I straight up don’t believe reddit staff is as technically competent as those at Meta/IG or TikTok. They can’t pull it off without a volunteer army filling in the capabilities gap.
I think years instead of months, but the rest is spot on. 30M pics users and 50k voted on the Sexy John Oliver change. 0.16% engagement on one of the highest traffic subs. So much of the front page has become tiktok it just a matter of time before people get their content direct from the source. The rest are news stories with the same arguments over and over again (ChatGPT and comment repost bots are already driving those) and reposted videos and memes from the last decade.
I’m still convinced that Google is driving a great deal of traffic to the site due to the depth of problem solving in old posts. I got a comment or DM every week or two thanking me for a solution I’d posted 3, 5, even 7 years prior. Those are all deleted now, and I’m keeping my account to regularly purge any restored content. If the top 100k-200k posters deleted their content, many google searches would lead to a dead end. Eventually it will end up like pinterest - you’ll put -site:reddit.* in your search (or add an extension to do so) just to avoid getting the useless results.
A site a large as reddit doesn’t die overnight, any more than Digg, Twitter, Usenet, or any other platform that is past its prime. But it certainly doesn’t bode well for the future value or IPO success.
I think its going to end up a successful move for them.
They built a platform. The users built the site over the years with minimal interaction from reddit.
They now have a platform, millions of users, and full control of what they want on that platform.
The writing has been on the wall for a while now, they want the traffic but don’t want the problems that come with mostly community driven content.
All the profile redesigns, ability to “follow” users, profile pics, awards, all that has been an indication of the direction over the last few years. The last few steps was to kick out the problem users and be left with those who don’t really give a shit and just want to see memes on their phone while they take a shit. The people who hear about reddit and just grab the official app from the store. The people who don’t care about APIs and protests and modding or accessibility tools. Just eyeballs to look at their ads.
Those people will stay. It doesn’t matter if 25% of the community leaves, because the natural growth in the next few months from the eyeballs will claw it back over time.
Once they have an obedient user base who are strictly bound to what reddit want them to see, think TikTok or facebook users, that’s when they will see off. And it will pay off handsomely.
I would have agreed with you if it had just been the API changes, but the recent behaviour from admins is extremely alienating. All they needed to do to fix this situation is strike a deal with app developers and say sorry. The protest would have been over in a day and things would have largely gone back to normal.
Instead, they dug in their heels and behaved like insecure little tyrants. They lie, they force mods out of their subs, they undelete comments, etc. There’s no trust left between admins and community, and in the long run that’s going to kill the website.
The thing that makes reddit great is the user created content. That content is provided by a tiny minority, while the vast majority just consumes.
Most of the people creating the content care about the platform, and they will leave if they are alienated enough. That’s not even mentioning the thousands of hours of unpaid mod work. You might find some power-hungry replacements for the bigger subs, but the quality of mods will decrease, which will make the community worse in the long run.
If they continue on this path, reddit will end up like 9gag. There’ll be content, but very little of it will be original, and it won’t be all that interesting for targeted advertising like it currently is.
It won’t disappear, but it certainly won’t be a multi-billion dollar company.
But, you see, the biggest problem here is: these generic users do not post anything. They may repost from Instagram or Tik Tok, or whatever, but if the power users, the ones responsible for the good content that the casual access leaves, it’s just a matter of months for it to die for good.
And the mods are the ones that fight the phishing scams, disinformation bots, t-shirt spammers, etc. If reddit were capable of automating those away, they wouldn’t still be so prevalent.
I straight up don’t believe reddit staff is as technically competent as those at Meta/IG or TikTok. They can’t pull it off without a volunteer army filling in the capabilities gap.
I think years instead of months, but the rest is spot on. 30M pics users and 50k voted on the Sexy John Oliver change. 0.16% engagement on one of the highest traffic subs. So much of the front page has become tiktok it just a matter of time before people get their content direct from the source. The rest are news stories with the same arguments over and over again (ChatGPT and comment repost bots are already driving those) and reposted videos and memes from the last decade.
I’m still convinced that Google is driving a great deal of traffic to the site due to the depth of problem solving in old posts. I got a comment or DM every week or two thanking me for a solution I’d posted 3, 5, even 7 years prior. Those are all deleted now, and I’m keeping my account to regularly purge any restored content. If the top 100k-200k posters deleted their content, many google searches would lead to a dead end. Eventually it will end up like pinterest - you’ll put -site:reddit.* in your search (or add an extension to do so) just to avoid getting the useless results.
A site a large as reddit doesn’t die overnight, any more than Digg, Twitter, Usenet, or any other platform that is past its prime. But it certainly doesn’t bode well for the future value or IPO success.