AttackBunny

Yup. Apple Watch for me. It works mostly seamlessly with the rest of my Apple stuff. I don’t think any others do.

Work on/build racecars. Some of it’s very technical, but probably not the type you’re asking about. Also a woman. I’m checking off all the abnormal demographics here. Right?

@ryathal back in the day, when most wireless mice and keyboards had those little dongles, and people used to keep their computer tower either on the corner of their desk or under it, I used to have a prank war going with a coworker. We used to do dumb shit like fill a shit load of little cups up with water and set them everywhere in their office, or glitter/confetti in things that when you opened them it went everywhere. Or wrap everything on the desk in foil or saran wrap type things.

Coworker was older than me, and not the most computer literate guy. I’d go into his office, and disconnect the dongle, while he was away from his desk. Watching him rage about his piece of shit computer was always great amusement.

I’m pretty sure everything you need to understand the answer to your questions can be summed up in two words. Elon Musk.

IDK, I think there are enough people, like me, that just left, and didn’t go back (at least intentionally) after the 11th. Then there are the casual users that have left/reduced usage because of the bullshit (see all the malicious compliance and blackouts) to other similar sites like tiktok or meta that they can get their dopamine from.

The numbers I have seen have been daily users, and engagement time. I’m curious to see, a week out, what those numbers look like. I can say that I accidentally logged in a few times on the 12th. Either muscle memory, or clicking a link, not realizing it was going to reddit. Those two things count toward daily users AFAIK, and I know I’m not the only one (I think the numbers are inflated because of that). I also think that 8 min average (or whatever it was) will plummet as the bigger users (like me, or the mods) stop going there.

We also haven’t see what happens when the 3rd party apps shut down. I feel like even more of the casual users will leave, to avoid ads, and the bigger users, that see Apollo as reddit will stop altogether. Then, with the mods, core users, contributors split/gone it’ll be even more overrun with spam/porn bots. The user experience will continue to do what all the rest of the social medias have already done before them.

All that is to say, I agree that Reddit isn’t going away, like facebook hasn’t gone away, BUT I think this whole thing has done a lot more damage to reddit than a lot of people seem to realize. And I think once we get into July, we will see the real toll it’s taken. The longer the fight goes on, and the more maliciously compliant people get, the more it’s going to hurt reddit.

I mean, it didn’t go well for the monkeys. Maybe if they are fucking people up, someone will stop them, but I doubt it.

Firstly, if Christian’s numbers are accurate, and a user costs Reddit $0.12 (doing this from memory so my numbers might be off), and Reddit is proposing each user costing third party apps $2.50 then that’s the first place to start. You could charge the 3rd party apps $0.50 and everyone would be happy. $0.38 doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you factor in the volume, then it’s a lot. Even if they needed to be greedy, $1 per user. FFS CEO asshat praise Elon musk’s cost cutting/business sense. I’m pretty sure we all know what that means by now (the trump approach. Just never pay anyone what you owe them, contract be dammed).

Third party apps don’t have ads. Or at least not reddits ads. Ok. Fair enough. I am pretty sure there’s a way to pass that onto the 3rd party apps too. And then the third party apps can charge a premium fee to remove ads. That said I’m not a programmer so I don’t know how it works well enough to say unequivocally.

Those two things would have curried a lot of good will with users. The thing that Reddit, and all the other apps/forums before them, have failed to realize is that yes, you’re a business, but that business is built on people WANTING to engage with your servers in the first place. If there’s Jo good content, because all the real content creators left, you don’t have shit, no matter how much you charged (twitter looks like a good modern example). Also like to point out that Reddit is as much guilty as he’s accusing the 3rd party apps of using api to make a profit. All those news articles, videos, pics that come from other places probably aren’t being paid for my Reddit. That’s easily 1/3 of their content or more (probably more like 1/2-3/4).

The issue is that what Reddit isn’t saying out loud, yet, is that YOU are the product. Your info IS the product. They don’t give a shit about user experience, or content creation or that third party apps exist, frankly. It’s that THEY don’t have control of, and sometimes don’t have any of, your info. That’s the real money maker.

Reddits reaction tells us a lot. First it was that we are noise, and it’s a storm, and it’ll pass. Now it’s fuck you I’m in charge. You’re going to do what I say and like it. Even discussing removing mods is a losing proposition. Not immediately but Reddit is going to change for even worse. The user experience that ceo is claiming he’s trying to improve is going to take a VERY sharp nose dive very soon.

While I appreciate that businesses are in existence to make money, things like Reddit aren’t strictly a business, like your local grocery store, for instance.

The grocery store has employees, products, and creates its own products (bakery, deli, etc) by paying its employees to do so. They do NOT rely on non paid, non employees to generate the ENTIRETY of the “product” that makes them exist. They pay taxes, employees, rents, vendors, etc. in other words, overhead.

Reddit relies solely on non paid, non employees to create, maintain, and expand things that, while intangible, make Reddit exist. Reddit itself doesn’t create anything people go there to see. They just provide the infrastructure.

So all that being said, yeah, sure, Reddit should be able to at least cover their limited costs, without issue. That’s not what Reddit is talking about though. Reddit it talking about destroying the things (3rd party apps) and people (mods and users) strictly for, what they see as huge profit (IPO).

This is like when there were a bunch of really great forums, and then IB started buying them all. Immediately they went to shit, and have pretty much all been left to rot, if they are even still hosted. A lot of magazines went through the same thing too, at least in the car community. Profit over everything, and then inevitable failure.

Unsurprising. The immediate effects are big, but the long term effects are going to hit the bottom line a lot more. If nothing else, Reddit has lost a lot of faith in the business itself, because the “product” (us, the user) has all the control.