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submitted 1 year ago by tvbusy@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/news@beehaw.org
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[-] MuskX@kbin.social 62 points 1 year ago

Yes, Reddit is a big dataset and yes, Reddit deserves to make some money off that if other organisations are going to scrape that data, for AI or anything else.

That's what they should be blocking and monetizing. Not those few users using 3rd party apps. Those folks (posters, mods) are amongst the ones creating that data set for Reddit, free of charge.

They are right about needing to make money to continue as a successful business. But they are doing it the wrong way and alienating their key assets.

Which is why I'm here :)

[-] tryptaminev@feddit.de 19 points 1 year ago

It was never truly about them not making money though was it?

The whole thing would not have escalated, if they'd actually reacted to the problems raised, e.g. the astronomical API fees and the situation of mod tools and accessability tools.

Only when shit was already hitting the fan they responded to 3rd party devs, who tried to reach out to them for a month already.

Even if they'd postpone the changes and start listening to the raised problems now, they scorched a lot of earth and very well knew that would happen.

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[-] gapbetweenus@feddit.de 16 points 1 year ago

Why does reddit deserve to make profit from content made by others? They are service provider - they are not entitled to the work of people who used their service.

[-] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 21 points 1 year ago

Ok. I'm about to abandon an account that's 17.5 years old. I despise what reddit is proposing.

But, honestly, how do you propose they turn (some) profit so it could last forever? Losing money isn't a long-term recipe for success. I've got no problem with reddit seeking to profit. I've got a problem with their short notice and their refusal to let third party clients be part of the ecosystem they wish to create.

[-] gapbetweenus@feddit.de 13 points 1 year ago

First I don't see why reddit has to be a for profit organisation in the first place, since that's kind of the rout of the problem. Users becoming a product that reddit is trying to sell to advertisers. At the same time if reddit would be respectful to users, creators and mods it would be a different story. But they are clearly not, they don't respect the people who are making reddit work - but feel entitled to the fruits of their labor. That just irks me on a deeply personal level.

My main problem is not even with the API decision but with the way the CEO communicated with the community.

[-] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 13 points 1 year ago

COMPLETELY agree that reddit shouldn't have developed in a commercial direction, but rather as a non-profit. That would avoided so many problems. That said, even as a non-profit losing money is not tenable.

I also agree that how the CEO communicated is a big part of the problem.

[-] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Do we know they are losing money? Do we even know they are not making money? It is more likely that they are not making enough money to satisfy the stock holders and give big payouts to the principles.

Generally an organuzation does not need to make money to stay in business. They do however need a positive cash flow and assets need to exceed liabilities generally or at least by enough creditors will not force bankrupcy. So profit is entirely optional. However for a typical stockholder company the profit expectations are unlimited.

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[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

If they want organizations not to scrape their content, tough toenails; stopping them is impossible.

It's especially impossible to stop Google and Microsoft from doing it, because they already have a search index full of said content.

Spez is alienating his loyal user base for nothing.

[-] pushka@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah they could have left current large 3rd party apps alone and said any new API connections from AI companies and etc will be charged 20 million dollars a year..

[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

That wouldn't work either. They'd just scrape the HTML, feed that to the AI, and not pay Reddit one rusty cent. Even I could implement that, let alone a billion-dollar AI company with an army of top-notch programmers.

[-] Plus_a_Grain_of_Salt@beehaw.org 42 points 1 year ago

"Huffman said in an interview that he plans to institute rules changes that would allow Reddit users to vote out moderators who have overseen the protest, comparing them to a “landed gentry.”"

I had to google Landed Gentry, it still don't make sense; "The landed gentry, or the gentry, is a largely historical British social class of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate." That's a weird way to describe an unpaid moderator. Either way, there's no reddit to return to if they're going scorched earth on the moderators anyways. This is home now.

[-] caleb_allen@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

It only makes sense if Huffman considers himself King; the moderators are a threat to his land!

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[-] bspar@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I saw somewhere that the analogy was supposed to be "whoever got there first owned the land." The idea I guess is that the landed gentry settled down on the land (subreddits) first, and now the subreddit is a dictatorship because the users could never vote on who their "landlords" are.

Yes, that analogy is also terrible, and it also goes to show that spez has no idea why people hate landlords.

Edit: everyone that's replied to me has provided more reasons why it's a stupid analogy, and that makes me happy :)

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[-] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago

Sure sounds like an apt description of reddit admins. I wonder how the users would vote against Spez and these changes if he's so interested in democracy all the sudden.

[-] shufflerofrocks@beehaw.org 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Genuinely don't understand how reddit has failed to make money.

Reddit's entire value is based upon the unpaid contributions of its users- they generate and moderate all the content on the site for free, and these are the things that bring people to the site.

How entitled must one be to think they can ignore all this and be fine?

Also how tf is reddit not able to break bank?

The functionality of their website was relatively simple - not underming the reddit devs here. The costs must've been minimal before the redesign and the dumb ass decision to host their own images and videos. Did they burn up all their money for the redesign and the shitty app?

[-] JZshark@beehaw.org 20 points 1 year ago

They’re bloated. Thousands of employees. Tons of developers. Marketing people. And in the end? The real product is like you said, it’s the users and volunteer mods.

Those developers? Produced an absolutely terrible mobile app and mobile website.

The marketing people? They’re more focused on NYC time square ads than fixing sponsored posts on Reddit.

It’s an absolute shitshow but that’s what happens with these extremely bloated companies…

[-] Cylinsier@beehaw.org 19 points 1 year ago

It's amazing how much of this fallout could have been avoided if Reddit had just developed a competent mobile app at literally any point over THE LAST TEN YEARS. You had plenty of time Reddit. Posted from Jerboa, a mobile app which already works better for Lemmy than the official app for Reddit works for Reddit and was developed by one tankie in his spare time for peanuts.

And yes I know I am talking from a regular user perspective and not a moderator perspective and I can't speak to the mod capabilities of Jerboa, but I work in IT and have developed apps, it's not that hard to pay someone to make a decent one or just buy out an existing one and don't shit it up. The solution to this problem has been available for Reddit for literally years. Almost like if Huffman was a legitimate businessman instead of a tech bro who fell ass backwards into internet relevance, he would understand the concept of investing in the future rather than just doing nothing until a few months before IPO and then flinging shit directly into the fan in front of him.

[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

AlienBlue was reportedly good before Reddit bought it, so I'd say the official mobile app is intentionally bad.

[-] hotwarioinyourarea@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah, back in the day Alien Blue was better than almost any other app. It was the first place I ever used Reddit before I moved to Android. The official app is nothing like Alien Blue used to be. It's been gutted and smeared in shit.

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[-] spamfajitas@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago

Can't forget about https://nft.reddit.com/, the real moneymaker. Nothing says value-adding like nfts, the dumbfucks.

[-] darkmugglet@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

An NFT as your avatar? Wow, it's dumber than I thought.

[-] Gork@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Ah but it's exclusive you see. Your avatar can be a glowy, animated Snoo, whereas everyone else just has free peasant avatars.

For the low price of 105 ETH $(227,389.05). Makes about as much sense as the really high priced ships in Star Citizen.

[-] ClammyMantis488@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

I hate how much effort they put into this.

[-] artemisia@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

The real landed gentry.

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[-] Sokkahhplayah@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago

Holy shit, I totally forgot about how stupid that was lol

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[-] Kuroneko@beehaw.org 23 points 1 year ago

This man just does not know when to shut up.

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[-] patchymoose@rammy.site 22 points 1 year ago

“Reddit represents one of the largest data sets of just human beings talking about interesting things,” Huffman said. “We are not in the business of giving that away for free.”

Wow. Clearly Reddit now believes that they own all of the conversations that people have had on the site. That explains why they've also been restoring comments that people have deleted when leaving the site. That has major implications for data security, privacy, and even safety in some situations.

This episode has revealed Reddit's true colors, and they're not pretty.

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[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 1 year ago

Imagine looking at what Elon is doing to Twitter and thinking "that's a great idea".

[-] Grimlo9ic@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Joke's on us, that's exactly what he thinks.

[-] poctz@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just saw a comment regarding Twitter:

Last time I checked, if a company has more than 12 creditors — as Twitter does — then any three of them can join together to put a company into an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding. And Elon is in danger here. At some point, the creditors he is mindlessly stiffing on a regular basis are going to get sufficiently pissed to throw Twitter into bankruptcy.

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[-] heartlessevil@lemmy.one 15 points 1 year ago

Lol I love how brutal these headlines are getting

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 15 points 1 year ago

Why isn't he paying users for their content?

[-] JiminyPicket@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago

They want to make money while turning reddit into another right wing shit hole.

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[-] walkingears@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

Amazing that he can't think of a way to make money that doesn't involve alienating the unpaid people who keep the place running.

I haven't abandoned Reddit entirely, but I'll never use the app...downloaded it once a year or two again and deleted it within an hour because it was ugly and confusing. I honestly think maybe the next phase of the protests, for those who still are active on Reddit, should be mass deletion of the app and using only the desktop site/mobile browser version. The API thing was meant to force people onto the app, so mass organizing to delete the app would hit them where it hurts.

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[-] BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

“Reddit represents one of the largest data sets of just human beings talking about interesting things,” Huffman said. “We are not in the business of giving that away for free.”

I mean holy shit dude. Do you listen to yourself? Where did that “data set of just human beings talking about interesting things” come from? It came from millions of people who gave you that content for free. And many of them used the site through third party apps because those apps made your site much more useful without charging you a dime.

The entitlement of Huffman is astounding.

He got free content and free app development work and now he’s going around whining about how “we’re not in the business of giving that away for free.”

Yikes.

🤣

also:

Huffman is engaging in the cardinal sin of the internet: trying to charge for something that has always been free. And acting as if he’s entitled to that money, and it’s the people who don’t want to pay who are the problem.

And, again, Huffman seems like all entitlement all the time:

“They need to pay for this. That is fair.”

I mean… the users of Reddit could just as easily turn around and say the same thing to Huffman for all the free labor, content, and data they’ve provided to him.

Reddit is dead

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[-] superfes@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

I don't get it, if 3PA is only 1% of the traffic, why even bother murdering them?

[-] BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

from Umberto Eco's list of 14 common features of fascism:

  1. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

It's no surprise spez worships elon musk

[-] ono@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's possible that this is not about collecting money for third party app use, but instead about forcing people to use Reddit's apps (both mobile and web), which are designed for data extraction and tracking.

[-] Souvlaki@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago

Absolutely, if they wanted money from 3rd party apps, they'd have sane prices. The ridiculous API cost was done to effectively kill all other apps without saying they are killing all other apps.

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[-] ElysiumXII@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Deleted my Reddit account today, not gonna let Huffman use my content to make money and his attitude is very concerning tbh

[-] Jimbob0i0@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

Waiting on them to fulfil my GDPR data request.

One I've got all my data (since there was some useful stuff there over the years) I'll follow up with the "right to be forgotten" request as well.

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[-] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 7 points 1 year ago

The craziest part is these people are volunteers and were the entire reason his stupid site worked to begin with. Why go to war with them? They can just walk away, they never got anything out of this to begin with. And why would anyone new join up if the previous generation is being treated this way? Just super mysterious behavior overall.

[-] Cube6392@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

Just another CEO who is out of touch with his product and his customers

[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Unusually, however, this one has been involved with the product and customers since the beginning.

It's common to hear of a CEO being brought in and promptly running the company into the ground, but for one of the founders to do it after over a decade of operation? That's different.

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this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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