They wasted half a decade not building promised moderation tools for the people who create value on Reddit.

Instead they were busy running cost/benefit analyses on how aggressive the dark patterns to drive users to the maligned mobile app should be.

I still feel bad for whatever web developer had to check in the "this page looks better in the app" banner.

great levels of empathy. and I'm not sarcastic

Pull request description: "Does it really, though?"

It's a job. Some people are paid to shoot rockets into cities, some people are paid to deny healthcare coverage, some people are paid to lie on television, and some people are paid to lie on dark pattern banners.

They should be hunted down.

That's a bit extreme. Your job is to do the right thing for the business your work for, no the users.

If they tell you to implement a banner or dark pattern you do it.

No, you resign, if you are a decent human being.

It’s a lot easier to be a decent human being with a big bank account, no sick family members and housing that you own, not rent.

Everything is easier with resources. But if you only have standards when you can easily afford to, you have no standards.

Normal people have to feed themselves and their families. They aren’t going to quit over something so trivial.

That you think it trivial is a big difference between us.

> It’s their space. Changing anything is like someone’s snuck into their house at night and remodelled their lounge.

This reminds me a discussion with a landscaper. He was wary of landscapers who wanted to go against the flow and who view themselves as painter artists. He explained the fundamental difference between his work and the work of a painter as follows : "a painter makes a work of art for people to see, and a landscaper makes a work of art for people to live in". It's not the same to see disruptive art from time to time, and to live in a city with a disruptive landscape.

A stable environment can also allow people to build other art on top of it. Such as painter artists inspired by a sustainable landscape to create disruptive paintings.

Could say the same for architects. It’s why many people hate modern towers.

> It’ll be interesting to see whether this is Reddit’s Digg moment or it’s more like the Facebook newsfeed where everyone kicked up a fuss for a bit and then carried on as before.

In order for this to be Reddit's "Digg moment", there needs to be a viable candidate to switch to.

There isn't, as far as I can tell.

I don't think it's the viability itself. The many options also play a role: back at the digg exodus reddit was the only alternative to a large extend or at least the only alternative most people were aware of. But a new platform technology paradigm entirely might be better (decentralized).

The theory seems correct. Social media like stock markets is a collection of lots streams of random user behavior. It's difficult to pin down what users value except the fact that controversial stuff, scam artists etc are always a hit followed by a long long tail of small niches.

Yes and: One of the hosts of Accidental Tech Podcast, who has also worked in social media, had a long deep dive into why casual efforts would ultimately fail, once the trogs invaded, for entirely non-product reasons. Moderation, DDoS, lawyers, etc. IIRC, they were explaining why they'd never host a mastdon instance themselves. Or maybe it was a viral app of the week with two young founders, who accidentally caught the tiger by the tail. Or both.

As a moderate, new > old Twitter. A lot of progressives left because they're not favored and lost their echo chamber.