To lose 95.8% of your site (judged by the 8467 out of 8838 subreddits gone dark) and not have a revenue impact at all raises some questions, primarily if there are any revenue streams based on usage, or only on monthly subscriptions and non-view-based ad contracts?
That's out of the 8838 that made a pledge to go dark. Those ~400 are just the ones that went "restricted" (read-only) instead of private, or flaked on the pledge.
There are over a million subreddits, the blackout doesn't even reach one percent of them.
I think if what I read is true that ~ 1/2 of the top subreddits went dark that is a big outage. FWIW my reddit is not really usable except for 1 sub that I read.
Yeah... I don't know the tradeoffs at play but 2 days is... extremely insignificant / probably a bad decision by all of the moderators? It sends a message sure but, it's a bunch of "whiny reddit mods" versus C-level executives in a "help us make API more affordable versus help us not lose a ton of money offering generous free API hosting/usage" negotiation.
How does the CEO + team not just ignore this two day spat? They are in the business of making money. Why should they foot the bill for the API calls? So they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off. Sucks but at the end of the day, will it really matter in 6 months?
Now, blackout for a week or two weeks to really hurt their ad revenue traffic, sure
But 2 days?... lol
This would be all fine and well if their official app weren't garbage. They do everything in their power to push you to the mobile app, but they seemingly haven't improved it since its inception.
It's not garbage. I've used it for years. It's fine. Try not being dramatic online / feeding into the narrative that so and so app is garbage or not / parroting other things people say / being picky.
It may have been a "fine" experience for you, but that does not give you the right to attack ad-hominem others who did not have the same experience. If you want to attack their position, attack their arguments. Show us how the official app is at least barely usable. Or how navigation and search aren't like children's toys. Or how the iOS app actually got better instead of worse after Reddit Inc. bought it. Or how the Android app got any of the features the iOS app deigned to retain post-acquisition. Or how the YouTube-esque ad-pushing makes for a good UX. Or how comment scores and user karma aren't totally infuriating to look for.
If you can't argue on merits, you cannot participate in discussions of any kind except primary school 'no u'.
Needless to say, there are many people (such as myself) who enjoy what Reddit is/was, and would prefer it to stay that way. Emphasis was not placed on posts themselves, but rather the discussion surrounding the posts. This design goal is clear in the layout of the old.reddit.com layout, which is optimized for information density, back and forth conversation, and parallel conversational threads (quite unique compared with modern social media apps).
So long as third-party apps and the old.reddit front-end exist, Reddit can still exist as a discussion-board focused site that (in the minds of some users) keeps the site unique. With the death of third-party apps, we are forced into the vision that Reddit has for the site instead. I'm sure that model gets more "engagement" (the skinner-box formula certainly makes a lot of money for other social media), but it also ruins what makes Reddit, Reddit.
Therefore for older users, it's not a matter of being "picky" that the app is "garbage". It's actually much worse than that. If the app was merely "garbage" there would be a holdout that the app could improve. Instead it's a fear that Reddit is changing the site dramatically to be more in line with modern social media. Those who like Reddit for being Reddit, and would rather Reddit stay Reddit than try to be Instagram/TikTok are obviously not happy with what they see as what Reddit is all about changing. There will be a similar outcry when old.reddit.com is inevitably sunsetted.
As a user who likes the old discussion board format of Reddit, I am obviously going to be unhappy when my personal favourite third party app (Sync in my case) dies. I don't need to doomscroll through skinner-box style feeds, getting a dopamine hit everytime a Twitter screenshot confirms my political biases, or strawmans opinions of those who believe differently than myself. Maybe I'll just go "touch grass" as the kids say these days.
I don't think 2 days is significant enough for that slash I don't think an alternative to reddit exists given the fact that it has millions of users and millions of different niche subreddits
Which will be when all the third party apps stops working and people realize what hot garbage the official app is.
I believe they aim for selling API access to AI companies, for (re)training data. Third party apps are just taking collateral damage.
Now, you can't entirely extrapolate from there to an indefinite blackout, but statements like this from the CEO seem like one of the best ways to make it more likely—especially given the average orneriness level of the stereotypical Redditor.
You have a serious misunderstanding of how this works. They are footing the bill for API calls regardless. All reddit access by users is to external public facing API's. We are not on their internal network. They MUST have accessible servers + data costs. In all honesty the 3rd parties are probably more efficient as they are a lot less bloated which means LESS costs.
A major selling point of API's is to lighten the load.
Right now the new "Dev Platform" (API) is waitlisted so hard to tell.
Sounds like they're pretty bad at it, then. 4 days ago, their CEO claimed that Reddit is not profitable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
If he kept headcount low like craigslist, wikipedia, etc. They would probably be profitable
Reddit has investors who clearly want their money back with a nice return on top.
They will however need to do it carefully, probably after most others have folded and reopened, so as not to cause another blackout.
But ultimately it's their platform, they can do what they want. Maybe they will just have to start actually employing the mods, which may actually end up a net positive from this fiasco.
Yeah, reddit can reopen those subreddits if they want to and kick the mods. But who are they going to get to moderate it? They can't afford to hire staff to moderate themselves, reddit is already unprofitable. Are they going to do an application process for scab mods? That will be an extremely unpopular fiasco.
The end result is either reddit capitulating, or becoming an absolute shell of its former self. Most likely they will compromise, charging third party apps for API access but an amount that is feasible. That is capitulation, because the entire point was to kill the third party apps entirely.
That board never had no moderation, it just managed it in a way where most people either didn't realize, or appreciated it. Then if someone crossed one of the few lines they would start screeching about how for X years there's been no moderation and the boar has gone to shit.
Is this an actual question?
Also a large chunk of the people who complain about moderators are actually upset that moderators stop their subreddits from being overtaken by Nazis. If you want completely unmoderated anonymous public discourse, go to 4Chan and see how it goes there. Though even that is moderated.
Losing the most motivated mods may be a big loss, or extremely active users who post and/or make content. Hard to know right now but I think we'll get an early glimpse when some reopen.
I can see things going very sour if they choose to replace long standing mods.
As opposed to the current state of affairs, where it is someone you didn't pick, also with zero vetting.
The current set of volunteer mods are by far Reddit's largest asset - especially on the major subs.
That means they'll let these subs go dark, claim they're unmoderated (even though they could take over them right now), and expand their internal moderation team.
/s
Just because you don't appreciate the work that other human beings do doesn't mean that they deserve to be treated like shit, nor does it mean that when they stand up against greedy bastards who care neither about them, you, nor the product or service they're selling you should throw them to the wolves just because it inconveniences your life.
The answer overwhelmingly is mods and content creators, the most important people to Reddit's success.
Reddit may have found a way to end the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September