Ask HN: Anyone at Reddit can confirm a traffic dip?
Looks like Reddit has gone dark. I logged out and deleted the apps. How are things internally?
105 comments
I’ve been browsing Reddit’s mobile app in Popular mode just to see how the experience is for average redditors.
Unfortunately there’s enough interesting content that I’m not sure average people will even notice or care. And it’s painful to say that.
By “interesting” I mean interesting to the masses. /r/AITAH, /r/iamatotalpieceofshit, /r/therewasanattempt, /r/news… the list goes on.
Part of Reddit’s strength is that even with only a handful of subs, it still surfaces the most interesting content from those subs. The net effect is that people who aren’t a member of a community gone dark won’t really be affected.
At least they’ll see it, though. I had to scroll past many posts about the blackout, which isn’t nothing.
Unfortunately there’s enough interesting content that I’m not sure average people will even notice or care. And it’s painful to say that.
By “interesting” I mean interesting to the masses. /r/AITAH, /r/iamatotalpieceofshit, /r/therewasanattempt, /r/news… the list goes on.
Part of Reddit’s strength is that even with only a handful of subs, it still surfaces the most interesting content from those subs. The net effect is that people who aren’t a member of a community gone dark won’t really be affected.
At least they’ll see it, though. I had to scroll past many posts about the blackout, which isn’t nothing.
Scrolling through the list of subreddits that are participating it became clear to me that a lot of the sort of places that facilitate a kind of repetitive mindless viral content churn stayed open. That's not really all that surprising. So in that way I think you're right, users who like that sort of thing probably won't notice much or care.
So the TikTok part of Reddit is still open for business?
I guess, I don't know much about TikTok beyond the stuff that showed up in subreddits that I wound up filtering.
I gotta say my home view and my popular view are obviously impacted by the protest. I think nearly all of the subreddits I subscribe to participated, so all I see is content in the subreddits I moderate (which are also shut down). Popular looks old & stale to me, so I turned off my filtering... which revealed a bunch of stuff I don't care about.
For me this is turning into a meditation about how new users are frequently impervious to the messages and signs intended to help them and instead often want a real person to spoon feed them the content of those messages and signs. In the future I'd really like improve the experience of new users but I am not sure how to politely encourage them to engage their brains.
I gotta say my home view and my popular view are obviously impacted by the protest. I think nearly all of the subreddits I subscribe to participated, so all I see is content in the subreddits I moderate (which are also shut down). Popular looks old & stale to me, so I turned off my filtering... which revealed a bunch of stuff I don't care about.
For me this is turning into a meditation about how new users are frequently impervious to the messages and signs intended to help them and instead often want a real person to spoon feed them the content of those messages and signs. In the future I'd really like improve the experience of new users but I am not sure how to politely encourage them to engage their brains.
I think you've got it. /r/worldnews, /r/news, /r/askreddit, /r/WTF, /r/games, /r/politics, all fairly large subs, all still up and running. Enough for that dopamine hit.
Some subs that didn't go completely dark are understandable, like /r/outoftheloop and /r/explainlikeimfive which have gone read-only so that readers can ask and get explanations of what's up.
But there are some surprising ones, like /r/programming. Maybe because it was created by /u/spez? Somewhat interestingly, he's also a mod of /r/outoftheloop.
Some subs that didn't go completely dark are understandable, like /r/outoftheloop and /r/explainlikeimfive which have gone read-only so that readers can ask and get explanations of what's up.
But there are some surprising ones, like /r/programming. Maybe because it was created by /u/spez? Somewhat interestingly, he's also a mod of /r/outoftheloop.
r/games not going private is a massive let down. The userbase downvoted the thread saying they were staying open into oblivion.
I actually think this might be a good thing. If the people looking for modern social media (mindless scroll dopamine hits) stay on Reddit that's less noise for the rest of us who are looking for internet community. There's so much discourse about this right now, so many discussions about alternatives, the nature of internet community, etc. I'm hopeful we'll see a resurgence of smaller communities full of people who actually want to talk to each other, not just scroll mindless content.
Let them have Reddit, we can do better.
Let them have Reddit, we can do better.
I'm confident that you are fully correct. I also believe that many of us were just looking for good alternatives and needed the correct motivation. Maybe there's another Orkut out there and we can truly dialogue once again.
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Yeah, i just checked it out of curiosity and while some of the subreddits i usually skim aren’t present, there was still a lot of interesting content.
If those subreddits were to die off definitively I’d probably still go on reddit.
If those subreddits were to die off definitively I’d probably still go on reddit.
Sad to see those subreddits not participate. If things change and I'm back on Reddit, I'd love to get a list of subreddits that didn't participate and perma-block those.
Some are, even though they’re not private. /r/books is restricted but open, for example. Honestly it might have been a better idea for the plan to be open but restricted with an announcement, so that the announcement is all that anyone sees when they load popular.
Some are doing that, which I agree is a better approach. First thing I saw when loading Reddit was a bunch of those protest notices.
I can imagine their sysadmin team going: It's going very well, load average is extremely low and all the servers are running cool!
I can just imagine some piece of automation de-allocating spare capacity or something similarly obtuse.
The anticipation of traffic coming back would have me on edge.
Maybe everything expires from caches and new traffic comes in on cold caches and slams databases with requests causing the databases to slow down making them unable to handle any traffic...
The anticipation of traffic coming back would have me on edge.
Maybe everything expires from caches and new traffic comes in on cold caches and slams databases with requests causing the databases to slow down making them unable to handle any traffic...
> I can just imagine some piece of automation de-allocating spare capacity or something similarly obtuse.
Remember we're talking about a company that can't even make a functioning text input in their new UI.
Remember we're talking about a company that can't even make a functioning text input in their new UI.
Eh, front end development and site reliability engineering are two different teams for sure.
If the ui code is bugged, the sre team will still get that delivered it to your web browser.
If the ui code is bugged, the sre team will still get that delivered it to your web browser.
Of course they are two different teams. They are still one company though, one that displays absolute disdain for their users, why would they suddenly care about properly up and downscaling when they can't even get absolute basic UX/UI right?
Yikes! If they end up deprovisioning capacity and then some of those subreddits come back after 48h, the engineering teams are gonna be in for a rough couple of hours. I'm expecting that they have frozen autoscaling during this time.
I don't doubt Reddit's ops competency, I doubt we will see any problems. I am sure they have people going through the mental exercise of "what is this 'strike' going to do to our infra?"
As an ops person the only time I have ever thought "It's going very well" is when something I expected to cause an outage didn't or a new automation seems to be working properly.
Everything else is change and failure is proportional to change. 5000 subreddits going dark is definitely change, and I would definitely be anxious about the uncharted territory, not happy to see low load on the servers.
I think I would be worried about these people who are downloading their post histories, deleting their post histories, or potentially mass deletion of accounts. Requests against old posts and uncached content could potentially be expensive. Of course, without a deep understanding of Reddit's infra/architecture, it's hard to really estimate what kind of problems might arise.
As an ops person the only time I have ever thought "It's going very well" is when something I expected to cause an outage didn't or a new automation seems to be working properly.
Everything else is change and failure is proportional to change. 5000 subreddits going dark is definitely change, and I would definitely be anxious about the uncharted territory, not happy to see low load on the servers.
I think I would be worried about these people who are downloading their post histories, deleting their post histories, or potentially mass deletion of accounts. Requests against old posts and uncached content could potentially be expensive. Of course, without a deep understanding of Reddit's infra/architecture, it's hard to really estimate what kind of problems might arise.
Well this didn't age well rather quickly. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/12/23758002/reddit-crashing-...
I'm more worried about how the HN servers are doing. Hopefully they gave them a pep talk.
My home feed on Apollo is hilarious. It's the smallest subs I subscribe to that never make it to my front page. It's basically "small hobby subs". Even if I were interested in continuing to use Reddit it's basically broken as of right now. I can see what's happening with Warhammer and Kubernetes patch notes.
> It's the smallest subs I subscribe to that never make it to my front page.
This is a big flaw in Reddit's algorithm if you ask me. On your feed, small subs get crowded out by large ones, despite the fact that you may be more interested in the small sub.
It doesn't seem very hard to improve. They could use the click rate or upvote rate to weigh the interest of each sub as well as normalize how many upvotes an item got based on the average upvotes an item gets within a particular sub.
This is a big flaw in Reddit's algorithm if you ask me. On your feed, small subs get crowded out by large ones, despite the fact that you may be more interested in the small sub.
It doesn't seem very hard to improve. They could use the click rate or upvote rate to weigh the interest of each sub as well as normalize how many upvotes an item got based on the average upvotes an item gets within a particular sub.
they already do over-weight content from smaller subs, it seems proportional to how much activity a "normal" thread from that sub sees and if something is very popular in a smaller sub it'll pop to the top.
it's just not enough to outweight very regular, very popular content from the mega-subs. And more threads in popular subs increases the chance of something going viral. How often does something from r/zfs catch fire, really catch fire? Not that much. Even if that's only 100 upvotes for a smaller sub, it just doesn't happen that much. Smaller subs are generally closer to their average, they go viral less.
Frankly maybe 5 years ago I blocked Gallowboob and filtered a lot of the larger content-churn subreddits and it's dramatically improved the overall experience. There is (or was) still plenty of content in r/popular and the frontpage.
it's just not enough to outweight very regular, very popular content from the mega-subs. And more threads in popular subs increases the chance of something going viral. How often does something from r/zfs catch fire, really catch fire? Not that much. Even if that's only 100 upvotes for a smaller sub, it just doesn't happen that much. Smaller subs are generally closer to their average, they go viral less.
Frankly maybe 5 years ago I blocked Gallowboob and filtered a lot of the larger content-churn subreddits and it's dramatically improved the overall experience. There is (or was) still plenty of content in r/popular and the frontpage.
I'm not opening the website, but sad to hear that the Kubernetes sub isn't participating. Reddit uses Kubernetes for it's infrastructure management, and it would have sent a message.
Sad but we all know the avg. K8S operator has a limited capacity for autonomy -- they are using Kubernetes after all.
Warhammer is on a postage stamp in the UK!
Found it: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/06/01/celebrate-the...
Then again, there’s also: https://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=2275...
Then again, there’s also: https://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=2275...
Ok, so there's a list of communities that went dark [1] - but is there anywhere a list of communities that went dark and are moving elsewhere?
Like, where exactly?
I, for one, don't plan on getting back onto Reddit, i've deleted the official app and keep Apollo around for as long as it is still working.
Love the protest and i really hope Reddit leadership gets the message, but IMHO the bridges are burnt and Reddit itself is too - even if they, somehow, reverse course - i'd rather have communities moving elsewhere than going dark for like 2 days and then return to business as usual...
[1] https://reddark.rewby.archivete.am/ for example
Like, where exactly?
I, for one, don't plan on getting back onto Reddit, i've deleted the official app and keep Apollo around for as long as it is still working.
Love the protest and i really hope Reddit leadership gets the message, but IMHO the bridges are burnt and Reddit itself is too - even if they, somehow, reverse course - i'd rather have communities moving elsewhere than going dark for like 2 days and then return to business as usual...
[1] https://reddark.rewby.archivete.am/ for example
I found https://reddark.untone.uk which has some data, not sure of the accuracy.
AFAIK quite a bit of communities recently started being active in kbin but it's pretty quiet still.
Not that I know of. I thought tildes was supposed to be a Reddit alternative, but I guess they never caught on.
I would not be surprised if there's a traffic bump. A lot of people just want to see the chaos
I could totally see people going on other still open subreddits discussing how cool their protest is going.
I had a look, clicked on a post in WritingPrompts and got a page that said that 'I broke Reddit'. After hitting that, I wasn't interested in clicking on any more posts and left. So I guess the protesting is having a chilling effect.
I'm not seeing chaos exactly. Pages load quickly, but the issue is that the content is stale, there's a lack of new articles or comments. The server is fast, the content feed is slow.
Did you think chaos meant the servers are gonna be slow?
I think that stasis, low load, boredom and nothing happening - metaphorical tumbleweeds, is the opposite of chaos.
Servers timing out, error messages on the user's screens, overload, flashing lights and on-call PagerDuty alarms going off would indeed be an example of chaos.
Servers timing out, error messages on the user's screens, overload, flashing lights and on-call PagerDuty alarms going off would indeed be an example of chaos.
You have a very unimaginative and one dimensional view of chaos tbh.
I urge you to focus both on reading comprehension, where "an example" is not the same as "a view", and on effective communication, where words don't just mean anything, they have well-known meanings distinct from their opposites.
So what’s the next Reddit. 9gag? Imgur? HN?
For me it's Lemmy.
Much smaller userbase and it will probably never grow _big_ (because federation is too daunting for some), but for me that's a plus. It's a bit like HN: sometimes it's good to _not_ become mainstream (e.g. by having a design that scares away people).
Much smaller userbase and it will probably never grow _big_ (because federation is too daunting for some), but for me that's a plus. It's a bit like HN: sometimes it's good to _not_ become mainstream (e.g. by having a design that scares away people).
I'm turning to a grandfather, but I hear Discord is popular nowadays. I'm not a fan/I probably only have less than 1 hour experience with it, but the UI on this screenshot looks almost like it's reddit's new design:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/14/discord-forum-channels/
If they were clever they would've done some guerilla marketing to get people onto their platform off reddit...
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/14/discord-forum-channels/
If they were clever they would've done some guerilla marketing to get people onto their platform off reddit...
> If they were clever they would've done some guerilla marketing to get people onto their platform off reddit...
It was already happening "organically". Every single gaming subreddit had a discord as well. When they announced the blackouts, they left a "see you on discord" message. It's sad because I don't really like discord, it's a blackhole of information. With Reddit you could google and find things, unfortunately nothing gets indexed on Discord by google. So to find anything useful you need to join a discord "server" (not really a server) and use their search (which isn't great).
It was already happening "organically". Every single gaming subreddit had a discord as well. When they announced the blackouts, they left a "see you on discord" message. It's sad because I don't really like discord, it's a blackhole of information. With Reddit you could google and find things, unfortunately nothing gets indexed on Discord by google. So to find anything useful you need to join a discord "server" (not really a server) and use their search (which isn't great).
Discord are up to something with their new global unique @ username system. I expect totally public forums like Reddit soon.
And the community really hates it. It is just that there isn't good alternatives to protest. Apart stopping paying for Nitro.
After Musk took over Twitter and people were looking for alternatives, one that stuck to me was Discord: they have a user base basically tethered to the Internet and a solid brand. If they wanted to launch a competitor, it could really take off.
It appears that Discord have been hiring former FAANG employees(esp META) based from their glassdoor reviews which was found by a redditor https://archive.md/asyPC
Reddit, only a handful of vocals are leaving
Unfortunately for Reddit, that handful includes many moderators.
Has there any been a single instance of a subreddit with a shortage of people volunteering to mod?
There has been lots of instances of bad quality mods and mod abuse, which I assume will only become a bigger problem in the future. Having embedded community talent leave is never a good thing.
A huge sub like /r/funny (40 million subs) will have zero issues finding volunteers.
Finding volunteers you can trust though...
An audience that big + lack of morals + power = chance to make money by manipulating what gets through.
Finding volunteers you can trust though...
An audience that big + lack of morals + power = chance to make money by manipulating what gets through.
I don't think that's true. The majority of reddit users actually use reddit via third party apps and all those users will be impacted by reddit effectively shutting down all those apps. Anecdotally, I have a bunch of different friends who only use RIF and Apollo to browse reddit and say they won't use reddit anymore once those apps shutdown. They aren't vocal users advocating other people to do the same, they are just normal reddit users with low tolerance for poorly designed mobile ui's.
The estimates I've heard of percent of users who use Reddit via third party apps are 5-10%, so nowhere close to a majority. I wouldn't be surprised if for power users the fraction is much larger though.
As a user of RIF I will be very sad when they shut-down. I'm hoping there's some alternative platform I can spend time on, but it's hard to see myself fully leaving Reddit given the sheer utility of it from an information stand-point.
As a user of RIF I will be very sad when they shut-down. I'm hoping there's some alternative platform I can spend time on, but it's hard to see myself fully leaving Reddit given the sheer utility of it from an information stand-point.
nobody really left Twitter, nobody is really going to leave Reddit.
I mean the data suggests a fair number of people left Twitter or at least check in a lot less: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-deep-dive-the-...
Yeah, it seems like the network effect is simply too strong to overcome in these two cases. I deleted my Twitter account in protest of the harsh approach Musk took in laying people off, but I find myself back on the platform. I imagine it will be similar with Reddit...
I wonder how big the network effect is for Reddit. From a personal perspective it's nonexistent. There is a critical mass, for sure, and that may be just as hard to overcome, which makes it perhaps a bit less all-or-nothing.
I left, haven't logged in in months, do no consume it except when it is linked from somewhere else and then I look at it and go straight back.
I joined, so it evens out :)
Well the advertisers left. That should be worrisome enough for any business.
The activity on my Twitter feed has definitely decreased ever since Musk took over. And I've decided to migrate basically >90% of my tweeting to Bluesky because I'd rather use Bluesky and I need to put my posts where my mouth is.
Not that I can effectively even read those tweets now that the third-party apps are killed.
Not that I can effectively even read those tweets now that the third-party apps are killed.
I deleted my reddit account, 12+ years are no more. It was hard, but that way I will not go back to it. Comparing it with twitter, which I never left because I was never there to start will be hard.
*yeah, I have a twitter account. It's the only point of contact with some companies. I may use it a couple of times a year max.
*yeah, I have a twitter account. It's the only point of contact with some companies. I may use it a couple of times a year max.
Big difference between political reasons and usability reasons.
I left Twitter. Most of the people I follow are now on Mastodon, and with Ivory, it’s essentially almost the same experience. I don’t miss it at all.
Nobody left Tumblr? Right now it is up in the air if this is Twitter or Tumblr result if people are going to leave due to this discontent.
I’ve left Twitter. I used to spend hours on it. Last week iOS unloaded the app for me since it had been so long since I used it.
If they really wanted to protest they would nuke the content and delete their accounts. This is just child throwing temper tantrum. They will be back.
I think that's one of the problems here. When Digg happened, Reddit was already a very viable alternative.
But now there doesn't seem to be any.
But now there doesn't seem to be any.
Surprised to see 9gag mentioned in the context of Reddit alternative. Does anyone use 9gag for more than memes/funny stuff?
Beats me, the 9gag community certainly has postured itself as a rival to Reddit’s (which, of course, is another meme). But more insane to me is that 9gag is a Y Combinator startup:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313644
The comment by brackin predicting 9gag becoming a (Buzzfeed-style?) media company with “9GAG Magazine, the book and TV shows” is pretty bonkers, as well as the appearance of- moot???
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313644
The comment by brackin predicting 9gag becoming a (Buzzfeed-style?) media company with “9GAG Magazine, the book and TV shows” is pretty bonkers, as well as the appearance of- moot???
I'm hoping it'll encourage people to go out to the internet and find a multiplicity of replacements.
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Anyone at Reddit: how out of date is your CV now that you need to update it?
Let's be clear about what's happening here- Reddit is prepping to IPO. Those engineers at Reddit are probably very happy to finally see a liquidity event. They'd be leaving money on the table and jumping into a cool jobs market for tech.
It will not be their decision though. There are different ways to boost profits. Also, the new CEO might want to shake things up a bit - even if they just apologize and roll things back.
So what keeps Reddit from 'taking over' these subs? They probably already have auto moderation in some form, they could outsource manual moderation temporarily to some companies. Probably some people who contribute a lot will get angry and not post anymore, but the world is big. Until a new similar platform pops up, you will still find new contributors who might not care about this protest.
The current moderators are paid only in internet points and power over a community. Zero actual dollars.
The automatic moderation tools are hilariously bad, that's why people are using the API for 3rd party tools.
Let's see how this develops.
The automatic moderation tools are hilariously bad, that's why people are using the API for 3rd party tools.
Let's see how this develops.
Wouldn't that increase expenses? Today the mods work for free, and the point of all of this is to cut costs before the IPO.
> they could outsource manual moderation temporarily to some companies
That's going to be difficult or expensive (basically making it pointless), 6500+ subs have gone dark.
Almost 400 1+ million subs are participating.
Total is ~28200 moderators
That's going to be difficult or expensive (basically making it pointless), 6500+ subs have gone dark.
Almost 400 1+ million subs are participating.
Total is ~28200 moderators
> Total is ~28200 moderators
5 moderators control 92 of the top 500 subs. That cuts both ways.
There are a lot of mods lower on the totem pole but it's a handful of people making the call to shut reddit down, and it wouldn't be that costly to kick them out, put an admin at the top, and open the subs again.
Once you've pried the big ones back open... who cares if r/warhammer wants to stay closed? You don't need to take over every little niche hobby sub, as long as the big tiktok-style content-drip subs get back running.
That's the future of Reddit, in Reddit's eyes. Tiktok 2.0. That's where the shareholder value is, they don't give a shit about your niche hobby sub with 10k users being closed.
Even if the lower-ranked mods don't want to mod anymore, you will always find some schmuck who wants to push buttons at people. People can't resist it even here on HN, people love flagging/downvoting. What's the least amount of power that can go to someone's head? Internet forums moderator, most definitely. There will always be an endless stream of people willing to do it for the tiny bit of clout it affords them.
> (basically making it pointless),
saving the business isn't really pointless for reddit. They have procedures to replace mods after 48 hours and we very well might see them deploy them.
They've made it clear they understand the frustration and where people are coming from and they don't care. In fact they are actually doubling down on fucking up the web experience for mobile etc to push people to the native app on those platforms.
She's not that into you, bro.
Remember, this is Reddit... they bought Dubsmash, with a 25% market penetration in the black teen community, killed the platform/app, and turned it into a subreddit with 1.5k subscribers, a conversion rate of around 0.01%. They don't mind doing big Twitter-style changes that risk losing a lot of users even if the conversion rate is abysmal.
People are approaching this from the perspective of "what would I, a rational person do, to preserve the Reddit I know and love?" and not Reddit's perspective of pivoting the business to being Tiktok 2.0. In their (probably correct) assessment, that pivot evidently requires people being on the native app/new experience.
The hobby stuff is fine especially if it draws in users but it's not where the money is for them. They need advertiser $.
5 moderators control 92 of the top 500 subs. That cuts both ways.
There are a lot of mods lower on the totem pole but it's a handful of people making the call to shut reddit down, and it wouldn't be that costly to kick them out, put an admin at the top, and open the subs again.
Once you've pried the big ones back open... who cares if r/warhammer wants to stay closed? You don't need to take over every little niche hobby sub, as long as the big tiktok-style content-drip subs get back running.
That's the future of Reddit, in Reddit's eyes. Tiktok 2.0. That's where the shareholder value is, they don't give a shit about your niche hobby sub with 10k users being closed.
Even if the lower-ranked mods don't want to mod anymore, you will always find some schmuck who wants to push buttons at people. People can't resist it even here on HN, people love flagging/downvoting. What's the least amount of power that can go to someone's head? Internet forums moderator, most definitely. There will always be an endless stream of people willing to do it for the tiny bit of clout it affords them.
> (basically making it pointless),
saving the business isn't really pointless for reddit. They have procedures to replace mods after 48 hours and we very well might see them deploy them.
They've made it clear they understand the frustration and where people are coming from and they don't care. In fact they are actually doubling down on fucking up the web experience for mobile etc to push people to the native app on those platforms.
She's not that into you, bro.
Remember, this is Reddit... they bought Dubsmash, with a 25% market penetration in the black teen community, killed the platform/app, and turned it into a subreddit with 1.5k subscribers, a conversion rate of around 0.01%. They don't mind doing big Twitter-style changes that risk losing a lot of users even if the conversion rate is abysmal.
People are approaching this from the perspective of "what would I, a rational person do, to preserve the Reddit I know and love?" and not Reddit's perspective of pivoting the business to being Tiktok 2.0. In their (probably correct) assessment, that pivot evidently requires people being on the native app/new experience.
The hobby stuff is fine especially if it draws in users but it's not where the money is for them. They need advertiser $.
> She's not that into you, bro.
Where the hell did this come from?
Where the hell did this come from?
It's a concise quip for when one party in a relationship values the relationship a lot more than the other party.
https://www.google.com/search?q=She's+not+that+into+you%2C+b...
"Reddit doesn't care about hobbyists as long as they get eyeballs scrolling their tiktok content" just isn't as catchy.
Anyway, that's the case here. There are a lot of people who are very emotionally attached to their posting, and it's a personal disaster for them to lose that. It is not, however, a disaster to Reddit - you can clearly see from the Q+A that Spez gets how upset people are and just doesn't care, they still will not change course and are even doubling down on killing the mobile website etc to further drive traffic to the native app. Very clearly they are making the decision that it's better to retain 75% or even 50% of their users and get them all on the app than to maintain the existing experience and not monetize the users effectively.
In this vein I 100% expect them to crack open any subreddits still closed after 48 hours and get the money moving again. Most people will come back. Or at least Reddit thinks most people will come back.
But generally, people value the content of their posting quite highly, because of the emotional connection. It's like a pawnshop, to you they're priceless heirlooms, to the guy behind the counter it's junk. It doesn't matter to Spez if you keep posting or not, and in the aggregate the odds are that you will.
And that's the emotional disconnect, users see a community they built and don't want to change or go away, and Spez sees a big 'ol cash pinata if he can turn it into Reddit-Shaped Tiktok. People feel they built something and contributed something value, and Spez feels that there are more cat-picture-uploaders and movie-quote-comment-chain posters where you came from. Your posts aren't an heirloom to him, they're junk.
Redditors think Spez can’t live without them - and he’s just not that into you. Making a big dramatic ultimatum is not gonna work.
This is Ycombinator we're posting on, and Spez/Reddit are the very first, the model YC alum. They're chasing money, not building a community, they don't care about you the way you care about them.
It sucks to get dumped but it’s over, and people are just making a scene because they can. At some point Reddit will get tired of it and call the cops (insert mods/reopen subreddits) and move on with their life.
https://www.google.com/search?q=She's+not+that+into+you%2C+b...
"Reddit doesn't care about hobbyists as long as they get eyeballs scrolling their tiktok content" just isn't as catchy.
Anyway, that's the case here. There are a lot of people who are very emotionally attached to their posting, and it's a personal disaster for them to lose that. It is not, however, a disaster to Reddit - you can clearly see from the Q+A that Spez gets how upset people are and just doesn't care, they still will not change course and are even doubling down on killing the mobile website etc to further drive traffic to the native app. Very clearly they are making the decision that it's better to retain 75% or even 50% of their users and get them all on the app than to maintain the existing experience and not monetize the users effectively.
In this vein I 100% expect them to crack open any subreddits still closed after 48 hours and get the money moving again. Most people will come back. Or at least Reddit thinks most people will come back.
But generally, people value the content of their posting quite highly, because of the emotional connection. It's like a pawnshop, to you they're priceless heirlooms, to the guy behind the counter it's junk. It doesn't matter to Spez if you keep posting or not, and in the aggregate the odds are that you will.
And that's the emotional disconnect, users see a community they built and don't want to change or go away, and Spez sees a big 'ol cash pinata if he can turn it into Reddit-Shaped Tiktok. People feel they built something and contributed something value, and Spez feels that there are more cat-picture-uploaders and movie-quote-comment-chain posters where you came from. Your posts aren't an heirloom to him, they're junk.
Redditors think Spez can’t live without them - and he’s just not that into you. Making a big dramatic ultimatum is not gonna work.
This is Ycombinator we're posting on, and Spez/Reddit are the very first, the model YC alum. They're chasing money, not building a community, they don't care about you the way you care about them.
It sucks to get dumped but it’s over, and people are just making a scene because they can. At some point Reddit will get tired of it and call the cops (insert mods/reopen subreddits) and move on with their life.
God what a mess.
If anyone else is interested I made a browser extension you can use to batch delete your Reddit posts and comments: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit...
Let me know how it works for you if you try it! Still fixing bugs.
If anyone else is interested I made a browser extension you can use to batch delete your Reddit posts and comments: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit...
Let me know how it works for you if you try it! Still fixing bugs.
Anecdotally - Reddit is not really useable for me today. More than half of the communities I frequent are offline so the home feed is just the odd ones that are.
Even if we see effects, it could be very short term. People also walked out during the Facebook and IG timeline redesigns, and yet they moved on and user engagement even increased. They will move on from this one, and I’m sure Reddit will find a way to increase engagement despite this.
I think the comparisons are often misplaced. Imagine if Facebook groups were the core experience of Facebook. Groups (subs) on reddit for most people _are reddit_. Plus, reddit is a nerdier crowd which likely cares more about this kind of stuff.
Well obiously there is not much left to see on the website
The worst is that reddit search is so bad that they make it impossible to find an alternative subreddit. I disagree with the whole "strike" idea, but reddit is really a terribly terribly ran website
The worst is that reddit search is so bad that they make it impossible to find an alternative subreddit. I disagree with the whole "strike" idea, but reddit is really a terribly terribly ran website
I'm out.
I was on today. It seems... better.
Are Reddit GDPR request getting processed slower than usual? Previous time I tried it was within a few minutes, but this time it's half a day and still nothing.
How many gdpr requests are you involved in?
This Reddit strike is the most Reddit thing I’ve seen.
I don’t even understand the issue in the first place, you can either use the official app for free with ads, or use a third party app for something like $2 a month.
I don’t even understand the issue in the first place, you can either use the official app for free with ads, or use a third party app for something like $2 a month.
Bean counter moment.
So, yes ~$2-3/user/month. The 3p app has to charge the user and then pay reddit. In the case of Apollo, it is to the tune of $20M a year. Apollo (the app) is developed by 1 person and so are most other 3p apps. Suddenly (with months notice) they are going to be billed millions.
Even after the user pays to use a 3p app, they cannot access any NSFW content through it.
This isn't a case of opportunity cost or lost revenue, reddit simply wants 3p apps gone.
So, yes ~$2-3/user/month. The 3p app has to charge the user and then pay reddit. In the case of Apollo, it is to the tune of $20M a year. Apollo (the app) is developed by 1 person and so are most other 3p apps. Suddenly (with months notice) they are going to be billed millions.
Even after the user pays to use a 3p app, they cannot access any NSFW content through it.
This isn't a case of opportunity cost or lost revenue, reddit simply wants 3p apps gone.
This is a lazy comment, but just for completeness if others without context read the comments, I'll engage.
There have already been multiple analysis done that no 3rd party client can survive this given the new pricing for the API. $2 a month won't cut it.
There were many options Reddit had to improve its API, define a contract with API callers, etc. but, Reddit didn't do enough.
There have already been multiple analysis done that no 3rd party client can survive this given the new pricing for the API. $2 a month won't cut it.
There were many options Reddit had to improve its API, define a contract with API callers, etc. but, Reddit didn't do enough.
I'd pay <10€ a month if I could keep using Apollo and old.reddit.
/u/spez doesn't want my money, he wants to drive out 3rd party clients so he can (try to) make even more money by limiting and controlling the ways people can use the site.
/u/spez doesn't want my money, he wants to drive out 3rd party clients so he can (try to) make even more money by limiting and controlling the ways people can use the site.
The issue is the third party apps were given a short amount of time to implement anything. Not enough time to make code changes, test, submit to app store for approval, release, etc.
All the unofficial apps are shutting down
reddit intentionally ignored commercialization requests from 3rd party apps, so the latter isn't an option.