Reddit to lay off about 5% of workforce: Report
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Reddit is laying off 5% of its workforce and slowing hiring as part of company's restructuring efforts, the report said
    • nLuLukna @lemmy.one
      20·
      1 year ago

      It’s getting there… The Reddit wave should be enough to get us there if the servers hold up semidecently

      • el_cordoba@beehaw.org
        21·
        1 year ago

        Even if the servers don’t. I’d rather deal with downtime (aka forced detox😅) than the ads, the negative trolls, the dumb UI that constantly pushes their app, and so on. Reddit only works because it has so much fresh content. If that breaks down than so will it.

      • Neopolitan@infosec.pubEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        If I could figure out how to participate from my existing fediverse account…that would be the true magic.

  • sickday@kbin.social
    54·
    1 year ago

    It feels weird to want history to repeat itself, but I’m really hoping Reddit has to deal with the ironic situation of users migrating from the platform en masse due to awful management decisions.

    • fernandofig@beehaw.org
      34·
      1 year ago

      I’ve said it (with a different wording) on some post on reddit, I’m saying it again here: I want history to repeat itself. Not because I have a sadistic need to see reddit fail, but because this will ultimately be better for the users.

      All of these protests are a nice sentiment, but I can’t help but think the take I’ve read from some people is right: this is all a “door in the face” technique from Reddit to get people to accept a more reasonable compromise on pricing that they were going for all along, but without taking as much of a PR hit. So people will be relatively happy, and meanwhile reddit will have squeezed redditors just a little more, as they have been doing little by little in the last years. It’s a boiling frog scenario.

      So this protest may well “reverse” this specific situation, but it won’t reverse the general trend on governance on Reddit that has been slowly going on for a few years already, mostly around the time that Victoria got canned.

      So, to that end, I really want to stop using reddit regardless of the outcome of this debacle. Lemmy seems promising, although it does have its own set of problems. But it’s still on its infancy, I’m sure it’ll grow and at least some of these problems will be fixed.

      • sailsperson@beehaw.org
        16·
        1 year ago

        I don’t want to sound like an elitist, but I guess I will regardless: the most important number of people simply don’t care.

        I think it’s safe to say that the people who will be affected by the new API pricing and other decisions, as well as the people who want to protest at least some of it at least somehow (be it boycotting for a few days or migrating to fediverse in any capacity) are simply not the demographic that the Reddit board really cares about. Not necessarily because they’re evil, anti-privacy, Machiavellian moneybags (they still are), but because Reddit is a business, a big one, and big businesses care about money more than anything else.

        I’m not really optimistic about the boycott and any other aftermath. I think the best we’ll see is influx of users on lemmy and other instances, which is good, but that’s about it, and I’m fine with it.

        • cecirdr@beehaw.org
          16·
          1 year ago

          Part of me thinks that while a majority of folks will remain on reddit, the most active, engaged members will leave. …the mods, the people posting original content, the people posting the most replies.

          Over time, the content on reddit could become even more stale, repetitive, and low quality.

          • citable6704@midwest.social
            4·
            1 year ago

            Big agree. Supposedly I was in the top 1% of reddit commenters last year. Now I’m here, dipping my toes in the Lemmy waters. I’m sure I’m not the only one. The comments section makes reddit for me, and if all the commenters and moderators leave it, then it will be an even bigger cesspool.

        • fernandofig@beehaw.org
          13·
          1 year ago

          Oh, I agree with you. Whatever happens here, it won’t mean an exodus en masse from Reddit to Lemmy ( or to any other platform for that matter) on the immediate future. Reddit will bleed users, only in a long timescale.

          I’m not as sure as you are about how things will play out exactly, so for now I’m just watching the situation with curiosity. But I’ll say this: while the majority of users don’t care, those who DO care I (want to) believe are also the ones that generally tend to generate higher-quality content, while those who don’t care (again, I want to believe) tend to be either lurkers or generate lower quality content, although the split here might be closer to 50/50 - we don’t know. But in that case, one likely scenario is that in one or a few years Reddit will have so much low-effort and low-quality content that it will just naturally lose any appeal, and people will move on to something else.

          • SmurfDotSee@beehaw.org
            5·
            1 year ago

            although the split here might be closer to 50/50 - we don’t know

            I’m sure reddit knows where the majority of their content comes from(API pull or not) and they seem to think it’s worth losing them.

        • ApathyMoose@beehaw.org
          11·
          1 year ago

          3rd Party mobile apps will make people think a bit. once moderation goes to crap and everything gets worse, that will make a dent, but a slower one.

          I think the minute they get rid of old.reddit.com they will see a giant loss of people.

          Then all thats left are the people who like reddit looking like facebook

        • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
          9·
          1 year ago

          One thing I’ve realized is that people use reddit in all sorts of different ways. I never look at the memes / pic subs, I 99% only care about conversation subs. And pretty specific ones at that, I guess /r/movies and /r/tv might be the most generic, followed by /r/anime - but I also don’t spend much time in those subs either.

          The subs I spend a lot of time in I can either get the same elsewhere /r/news isn’t exactly special for a news feed lol…

          And for like /r/askphotography or /r/photography there’s discord already, with some mastodon thrown in I guess (though I think thats more like /r/itap).

          The ones I hope sort of migrate over are /r/sysadmin but somehow as a work thing I’ll just go there on old.reddit.com till that dies, at which point I’ll just do without. I expect by then either there’ll be other options I’ll re-find / find, or maybe GPT replaces it lol.

          • GhostMagician@beehaw.org
            4·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, reddit I see is different from the one other people see on /r/all since I have so much stuff blocked on my third party app and through RES on browser. Without it reddit is filled with memes or tiktok and twitter videos and content, which makes sense as the demographic has changed and stuff like following accounts started happening.

            I think the new users of Reddit are happy with it, and it’s more the long time users who don’t make a majority of reddit that are starting to feel pushed out.

          • asexualchangeling
            2·
            1 year ago

            And for like /r/askphotography or /r/photography there’s discord already, with some mastodon thrown in I guess

            There’s also stuff like pixelfed for this kinda thing, it’s very Instagram like

            Though I concede that that isn’t necessarily going to give you that same sorta interaction as a forum like Lemmy

        • Wigglet@beehaw.org
          8·
          1 year ago

          But 3rd party app users are often content contributors or mods or the ones answering questions. I feel like reddit is about to use a chunk of real human active users

        • cavemeat@beehaw.org
          5·
          1 year ago

          Me too honestly. The people who want (or prefer) a more centralized, commercialized web can stay on reddit, and those who don’t have lemmy, kbin, mastodon, bbs boards, and so on.

    • Lohrun@beehaw.org
      7·
      1 year ago

      What would they be migrating to? Neither Lemmy nor Tildes seems to want to take on a mass exodus. Both have said they are not Reddit replacements and they don’t want to be either. I’ve been trying to figure out where people are actually headed to. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, outside?

      • sickday@kbin.social
        4·
        1 year ago

        Hard to say. I used “hoping” because I still have an irking feeling that this won’t ultimately result in much change. I think a small amount of reddit’s base will be upset and may migrate to a different platform (like lemmy, beehaw, kbin, etc.), but the vast majority of reddit’s base won’t actually understand or care about these changes. The group of users that does decide the leave the platform will have multiple options though and I don’t suspect the number of users to truely be unmanageable for any of these places. This is just my opinion though.

      • darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.party
        56·
        1 year ago

        Initial Public Offer. Basically, the company going public on the stock market. They tend to try and look “shiny” before going public to make them attractive to buyers who want to make money from investing into the company.

        In my experience (from working a place that has done this) they will do some waves of layoffs and make some operational budget cuts, as well as sometimes freeze some capex spending so the books look juicier. This includes things that may cause long-term harm, for short ish (under a year) gain.

        Script is pretty similar with most companies that do this in tech, with predictable results.

        • mrbruh@lemmy.one
          20·
          1 year ago

          Firstly I want to really thank you for taking time to write up this response.

          Anyways it definitely makes sense what reddit it doing, although it’s no excuse for being such a little removed. So in other words, let them burn lol

          • leetnewb@beehaw.org
            10·
            1 year ago

            To be fair, most tech companies had layoffs in the last six months and it seems that most were bigger cuts. Also, my best guess is that Reddit has been unprofitable/burning cash from the beginning (~18 years) - that can’t and won’t last forever.

            • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
              8·
              1 year ago

              Honestly, I never really figured how something like reddit (or most social media) was going to be profitable to begin with. At least in a long term sense. They’re entirely dependent on ads, but ads don’t make a lot of money unless you’re running the network. So you end up being an ad business, not a social media business. But of course, no one wants to watch an ad before / after every post - yet that seems to about be where reddit is coming to. And these people don’t want to pay to be on social media, or else things like “The Well” would have been much bigger than they are (how many people are clamoring to pay $15 a month lol).

              I just also think, if you haven’t found a way to make money in 18 years, it seems like a foolish bet that you’ll be able to keep running the same kind of business and now find a way.

            • darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.party
              7·
              1 year ago

              This is also very true. Tech sector has been doing layoffs and admittingly these ones are pretty tiny in comparison to some other places, which is another factor why I think there will be more. And burning cash is quite true, which is part of why their investors are probably pushing hard for them to be ready for an IPO.

        • Rhabuko@feddit.de
          12·
          1 year ago

          The only thing I ask myself right now is: Do they get rid of porn subs before IPO or shortly after?

    • Nullroad@beehaw.org
      3·
      1 year ago

      Agreed. I think the post-IPO layoffs will be aggressive in Reddit’s case.

      It’s not clear to me how reddit could possibly “grow”. They’ve hit peek influence, and ad-revenues haven’t really been a growth factor that has excited investors. They’re not really a technology powerhouse like Facebook or Google - all they have is their central product. So, when the IPO drops, all I can see for reddit is a future of aggressive layoffs and strong enshittification of Reddit as they seek capitalistic eternal increasing growth.

      • darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.party
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yeah Reddit would make an excellent private company with the right owner and likely some re-structuring, but as a public company ooh boy.

        Outside some niche subs I’m not on there more than once a day just to see if my lemmy subs missed something, and it’s my last form of social media outside discord/matrix, so if lemmy does take off enough I’ll probably only be there for the odd technical search, which I suspect lemmy will take care of in time.

    • nodester@partizle.com
      8·
      1 year ago

      Part of Cory Doctorow’s point is that this pattern emerges with all kinds of companies, especially ones where investors are demanding an outrageous return on a hasty speculation.

    • arctic pie (he/him)@beehaw.orgEnglish
      17·
      1 year ago

      The fucked up thing is that it kind of is…layoffs of this kind almost always have a positive impact on stock prices, which is why they do them. Gotta love capitalism!

      • Rentlar@beehaw.orgEnglish
        9·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, upon reflection you are right… this looks to be Reddit saying “notice me, potential shareholders, I’m so efficient!”

      • XLRVEnglish
        9·
        1 year ago

        Disgusting, this is is why this system needs to die, infinite growth is unsustainable, like a cancer, fucking over people is seen as a good thing for “business”, how infuriating.

  • SamC@lemmy.nz
    26·
    1 year ago

    Some people have been saying a 2-day blackout isn’t going to do much. But if they’re struggling financially it will most likely really hurt them.

    • arctic pie (he/him)@beehaw.orgEnglish
      39·
      1 year ago

      They’re not doing this because they are struggling. Its a common tactic for shitty corporations to do so it looks like they made a shit ton more money and can claim losses on their taxes

    • Liz@beehaw.org
      26·
      1 year ago

      Hopefully if the 2-day blackout is unsuccessful they’ll extend it or plan more blackouts.

      • SamC@lemmy.nz
        19·
        1 year ago

        I’d imagine so… it makes sense to me to start with 2 days, and then go from there, rather than starting with the “nuclear” option.

        • Ilikemoney@beehaw.org
          15·
          1 year ago

          Does Reddit have the power to un-blackout the subreddits? I.e. Overrule the mods and open things up? I feel like, as in most cases, there are a modest sized group of high caring individuals that will reject/boycott/cancel reddit, but the majority of users, casual and the ones that make reddit their life, will just continue on, only slightly inconvenienced.

          • SamC@lemmy.nz
            26·
            1 year ago

            Yes Reddit could do that… but mods are extremely valuable, and a lot of subs would stop working without them. Reddit has already been moving to big subs being moderated by Reddit employees, and it generally kills the sub.

            Reddit is big enough that it probably won’t die quickly (e.g. like Digg did), but my guess is that this kind of policy shows that the best days of Reddit are in the past.

            • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgMEnglish
              23·
              1 year ago

              Reddit is big enough that it probably won’t die quickly (e.g. like Digg did), but my guess is that this kind of policy shows that the best days of Reddit are in the past.

              i think twitter is a good model for how we might expect this to go: a slow but undeniable decay into a worse, less functional, generally more miserable site to be on. when the decay will end? who knows. but there’ll likely be an obvious before and after, and an equally obvious point where the site goes from a vanguard of influence online to a social media backwater.

              • SamC@lemmy.nzEnglish
                10·
                1 year ago

                Agree, although it could happen even slower than Twitter. Musk taking over has been a huge shock to the community, and killing off third party apps is only one of the many changes he’s made in a few months. Even if Reddit sticks of their guns on API charges (which they might not), I doubt they’ll do anything as drastic again for a while.

              • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgMEnglish
                10·
                1 year ago

                in fact a good metric for this might be when reddit stops contributing anywhere near as many productive search results as it currently does. that’s undeniably a big use of the site for people so it’d be noteworthy for that to disappear (and despite itself being a symptom of bad things it’d probably be quite bad overall, given the state of online generally right now.)

              • AnagrammadiCodeina@feddit.itEnglish
                6·
                1 year ago

                While i basically never used twitter, i dont see it dying. Some sources post decresing userbase some are saying that after the big hit things started to go back to normal People forgets. Today they protest, tomorrow they bend.

            • TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.orgM
              13·
              1 year ago

              Hey, I don’t think you were trying to be hurtful with this comment, but slurs - even when not directed at a user - don’t really have a place in the type of community that we’re trying to cultivate here.

          • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
            20·
            1 year ago

            If that’s true, it’s even more asinine. A small number of users make numerous API calls from third-party apps, and in doing so, create all the content that the majority of users are perusing with ads? The quest for short-term gains so often harms long-term viability in corporate America, and I truly just don’t understand how we keep hiring C-level people that keep making the same mistakes over and over

            • m_talon@beehaw.org
              10·
              1 year ago

              Because C-Level people are more about “how can this company make money” and less about “how can this company treat its workers/customers well” (unless the latter leads to the former).

              They are told that increasing value for the investors is the thing that matters. If you have to make “tough choices” that abuse the workers or destroy the brand, oh well. It’s worth it if that revenue number keeps going up. To them, it’s an acceptable loss to keep the board happy.

              Every company that has VC, investors, or stock is going to be like this at one point or another. It’s just getting more blatant and obvious now. Disney, WB, Netflix, Twitter, Reddit…it’s a list that just keeps growing.

              • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
                10·
                1 year ago

                For sure it’s unconfirmed. The only things we really know for sure are:

                1. Reddit wants money for API calls
                2. Their monetization structure is unreasonable
                3. The only possible outcome of their monetization structure is the death of third party apps
                4. Reddit is an American company and conducts itself with the same grace and farsightedness as most of them

                Which leads be to the conclusion that the thing you’ve said is quite possible

                • LoreleiSankTheShip
                  3·
                  1 year ago

                  I’m not American, but isn’t it mandated by law over there to do stuff like this, to create the maximum profit for shareholders?

                  Forgive my ignorance of US laws!

            • M. Orange@beehaw.org
              4·
              1 year ago

              I remember seeing someone say that it’s possible they want to monetize using their APIs to train AI on user content. Currently it’s basically free for someone like OpenAI to do it.

  • BobQuasit@beehaw.org
    24·
    1 year ago

    All this has me wondering. Lemmy and other fediverse sites should be resistant to enshittification. But how could American corporations screw that up? Could they start their own servers and instances, and somehow make them dominant? Or would that not be worth it to them?

    It seems to me that capitalism has pretty much been trying to take over everything, with a lot of success. So I find myself wondering if it could happen here.