From the article:
And this bumps up against another part of Cory’s enshittifcation concept: it only works when switching costs are high. Social media can make that work. But I’m not so sure that Reddit has the sheer gravitational pull that social media has. Yes, there are social media-like communities on various subreddits. But, on the whole, the communities are built around topics, and it’s kind of easy to just move elsewhere (again, fediverse options Lemmy and Kbin are already looking pretty nice for that).
Figures that Techdirt is the first (and only so far) place that I’ve seen to mention Lemmy/Kbin, and also not do a mess of it!
I have a feeling the big surge will be on 7/1. Or at least a second wave when the apps actually go away. I think a lot of folks are in a wait and see hoping Reddit chnages course and the app devs were given exceptions etc. since that may not happen and even if it does the apps may shut down the real surge will be around then.
👀
Techdirt isn’t really afraid of being punted from their usual social platforms or losing access for interviews.
Fair point. They’re also pretty solid and tech-savvy in general.
We try our best. But, yeah, I don’t really need “good” relationships with any company, and calling it like we see it has served us well all these years.
Techdirt goes way back and has always had a “rough around the edges” feel that made it feel more grounded and realistic than a lot of tech news reporting. Probably because they’re not unwilling to show their bias and call out bullshit. Probably also because they tend to actually know wtf they’re talking about.
Three EFF (electronic frontier foundation) did as well but that’s all I’ve seen, though I haven’t really been looking or reading articles on this
we knew we had the power position when lemmy’s world stood it’s ground and didn’t explode on the day before yesterday.
did anyone expect it to explode after 48 hours past? Like even 1% of reddit user says fuck this I am out going to other format, that’s enough to sustain a healthy alternative. (oh, and don’t forget these are actual human account migrate as well, not bots.)
Human accounts and generally the main content creators on top of it. The ones who create posts, the ones who drive discussion and commentary.
The bulk of their ad revenue probably comes from lurkers and consumers, but their platform is built entirely on the aggregation of a small subset of the power users. You need both. He doesn’t seem to really understand that. Sure you can replace mods, maybe they’re better, maybe they’re worse, but you can’t replace content creators and force conversation.
He’s definitely sweating bullets by the way he’s throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
Yeah, he is doing everything that contradict what he said or set out to do just to make quick bucks and maybe so that he can pull the CEO->CEO->CEO route like many past CEOs after successfully IPO reddit. If that ever happens, what happen to reddit is no longer his concern, that’s why he didn’t give anything a fuck to achieve that goal.
IMO, reddit have 4 main components:
- creator: bot, repost, actual human contribution, doesn’t matter who submit the link to an article. People or people that makes bot to generate enough engagement posts drive the traffic and follow comments, votes.
- active user: people that actually participate in discussion, this is what kinda make or break a reddit like env, without meaningful comments(meme or not, something that engages you), the last group will feel bored.
- mods: the people that cares for topic and sacrifice enough time to keep the community intact.
- passive consumer: people who mostly only upvote/downvote and just read the post like rss feed looking for things to make their boring time a bit more interesting.
Any user can be a combination of above when they visit different parts of the reddit, but what spez pissed off most are the “mods/active” aligned users. (if I category my reddit profile, I am like 0.5% creator, 29.5% active, 70% passive. )
Simply put, reddit won’t survive with just creator and passive consumer, the community like features(asking questions/sharing tips) are essential for a sub to survive. It’s not going to implode and snap away, just slowly become a bot create/bot comment/bot mod/bot upvotes farm.
I can’t wait to see how it actually shakes out. I’m worried about the number of people I’ve seen who just say screw it im not leaving Reddit and just give in to using the 1st party app.
Truth. I’m hopeful for more meaningful conversations here.
The Reddit community is the one in charge if the ceo doesn’t like it then we will go somewhere else and build our own community !
With blackjack and hookers!
We have an entire instance dedicated to porn, so we’ve got the hookers part covered. Not sure about the blackjack, though.
I mean, honestly? Yeah. People forget that their widespread support and cooperation is ultimately the source of other people’s power. Your boss might be able to fire you, but they can’t fire everybody.
I was honestly on the fence about just being a passive consumer and going to the Reddit app until I saw the derision and lying out of spez. Then I realized I could no longer support them with my ad revenue and I haven’t been back on Reddit since (except for muscle memory for the app and then I close it immediately).
To be a pedant: They’re using “social media” wrong. They mean “social networking site”, which Reddit is not. But it absolutely is a “social media” site.
They’re right about Reddit’s lack of social graph making it much less sticky, though.
