I do wonder if Reddit will pass the torch to a third platform or will this type of site die off. I don’t see the community surviving a very profit driven site which the IPO will force on them. I’m not sure what their moat is exactly other than the large userbase

Fully supporting the blackout would mean continuing the blackout on your own subs, would it not? Just say you're "partially" supporting the blackout - like in ways that don't directly effect your direct, current use of the platform. I don't care either way, just be honest with yourself.

My couple thousand subscribers simply are not that effective in getting Reddit to listen, I feel like. Definitely if moderating those subs becomes actually burdensome in the future, I will reconsider.

I am older than you, and I don't agree.

"Waaah I can't say edgy things everywhere I want" is such a weak complaint against community-led moderation.

There are thousands of reddit moderators, most of whom have never met each other. You cannot possibly generalize across all of them.

See also: Comments about "black people", "white people", "tech bros", or any other large group of humans.

You lead with this:

> If anyone is thinking they are bigger than they are it's these mods.

This is a textbook generalization, a "blanket statement". The next few sentences attempt to reinforce this generalization. A one-sentence disclaimer at the end doesn't change that.

If you want to talk about your experience with <some members of large group X> then do that. But please don't project that across <all members of large group X>.

I don't mean Kanye's public antics and statements. I meant his questionable design/musical/performance choices.

Mark has lost over $30B on Metaverse supported by a stagnating ad business. Apple just launched an AR product that seems quite a bit better than the Meta options. John Carmack publicly complained about the reasons he left work at Meta which demonstrate a lack of vision at the leadership levels. It's unclear how the Metaverse will play out at this point but it feels like a solution looking from a problem rather than something people really want.

Digital consumerism is a potential lifeline, as digital products are close to cost free to produce compared to real luxury goods or travel, allowing much higher numbers of people to own them. As people generally become poorer and real consumption grows out of reach, the metaverse potentially serves as a second level of prosperity and success for the have nots in the real world.

Some early examples of this are Second Life, valuation of digital items like skins in games and travel and dining POV YouTubers. I think most would prefer the real deal, but if it's unavailable a fake version can be made good enough.

[1]https://cup.columbia.edu/book/an-all-consuming-century/97802...

Also Carmack is a great programmer, but there’s no reason to think he knows a thing about the market and business strategy.

Sure there’s the whole metaverse thing, but even without that, people are getting value out of the Quest right now, playing Beat Saber etc.

> How much money do you think Apple spent on their VR product vs Meta? Sure Apple’s is better, but it also costs SEVEN times more. Do you really think Apple’s will sell more units any time soon? Meta has already sold tens of millions of quests.

Oculus Quest has sold almost 20M units over 4 years of existence across all products in the line. The original iPhone was priced at a point at that point considered absurd. Note that oculus started off with the rift at $600 but requiring a multi-thousand dollar computer. I'm not an Apple fanboy/apologist but this is a straw man argument.

> Also Carmack is a great programmer, but there’s no reason to think he knows a thing about the market and business strategy.

This is disingenuous. John Carmack founded id which produced modern 3d and FPS as we know it today. He's not just a great programmer but he was a successful businessman before Facebook existed. One, he understands the market and business strategy at least as well as Mark given he spends more time on the matter as his primary focus. Two, his complaints were not about market and business strategy but about inefficiencies in development processes that no one in the company besides C-levels are empowered to resolve.

> Sure there’s the whole metaverse thing, but even without that, people are getting value out of the Quest right now, playing Beat Saber etc.

Let's be clear here: even if each quest was $500 and had zero CoGS that would be $10B revenue spread over 4 years when Mark spent >$30B in less than that. I'll eat a humble pie if he makes this make sense but it was not a sound decision given the way he structured the approach.

We must live in different worlds. They invested $30B in research, have a clear advantage now that Apple is trying to enter the market, and is still printing money like there's no tomorrow via their ad business.

Bobby Fischer is just one example of a bright mind corrupted by ideology. There are countless.

Concerns about lack of global moderation and enforcement were well known before the massacre. Mark and leadership made a choice akin to what the major oil producers did regarding global warming: kick the can until it's a problem.

Is that what happened? ISTR there was something else tanking the stock (Cambridge analytica? TikTok? Headlines become forgotten so quickly these days) and the metaverse thing was a saving throw.

Even if my explanation is correct, it was an overreaction (didn't need to rename the company) and didn't work.

Is it possible that he's right? That the damage done to reddit by these boycotts or the reaction to them isn't as bad as the media hype would have you believe?

Is it possible that parent is right? That the damage done to reddit by these boycotts or the reaction to them is as bad if not worse as the media hype make it seems ?

(just pointing out how your message using a personnal connection appeal and chosen adjective to indicate good and bad sides essentially brings nothing factual nor argumentative besides trying to orient the conversation)

meta stock today is at $280.

If you can lower your cost basis while keeping revenues unchanged it will juke the stock price. Mark has been laying people off trying to get the stock back up from his major mistake.

Give me calm and stability over growth any day.

I tell my company all of the time, that paying bills and wages IS success. But it gets a lot of grimaces from investors etc. They can shove off in my opinion.

That's incorrect revisionist history.

Reddit was a large part of the cause for Digg to implode. users had been flooding from Digg to reddit for years before Digg finally imploded. There was an entire series of "digg vs reddit" comics.

Both sites launched within a year of each-other. Digg always had the prettier website, which did a better job at looking professional and attracting users. But reddit had better algorithms for promoting content to the front page and the threaded comment system that attracted in-depth discussions. Digg's algorithms sucked so much that their front page always seemed to be links that had reached Reddit's front page 6 hours earlier.

Though, you might be right about the "trying to prove he's special" thing.

I think the lesson Huffman is missing is that quality content from your 2% contributors makes the site worth visiting.

From this inside perspective, it's very clear that Digg was already dying long before the launch of Digg v4; They explictly state that Digg v4 was pushed out the door early, as a gamble, because they only had so much runway before the remaining VC cash ran out.

They knew it was a disaster and decided to launch it anyway.

I'll admit, that from the perspective of the average Digg user in 2010 it would seem like Digg was perfectly healthy, then suddenly shat the bed by pushing out digg v4. But really, the digg v4 launch only served to communicate to the users that the site was dying.

[1] https://lethain.com/digg-v4/