I’m posting this here because it’s often helpful to see things from a third point of view.
For context: Reddit decided to kill off third party apps that are used to access its platform, by demanding unreasonable prices off those apps’ developers, while claiming that it is not trying to kill said third party apps. As a reaction, a lot of moderators in Reddit are coordinating for a blackout, where they make their subreddits inaccessible from the 12th to the 14th of June.
On Hacker News:
- It amazes me how little Reddit’s leadership understand about their own history. // Reddit essentially took off because Digg screwed the pooch so hard with their redesign and just general mismanagement of their community.
- Ask HN: Reddit alternatives (that aren’t Mastodon) - spoilers, you’re already in the alternative suggested across that thread, Lemmy.
- I wish they would just let Reddit die. // I hate it so much. I’m tired of ecosystems. // We need to get away from content farms. […] Part of me wants this to happen to Hacker News too. This community sucks, but for different reasons.
- I said something akin to this on a 4chan post a little while ago and people hated me for it, but I stand by it. People need to 1) get more in touch with the technology they’re using and 2) take back control of their content.
- [On issues associated with the creation of a Reddit alternative] Hosting costs […], moderation […], network effects
Personal note: it’s rather interesting for me that the userbase of Reddit is getting it right, people outside Reddit are also getting it right, but only the Reddit administration is getting it wrong (way to go, vulture capital!). In special, I think that the comment about how people need to take back control of their content is specially sensible.
Greed and arrogance, I guess. They feel as if they’re too big and there’s no viable replacement for them that rivals in scope. They also want $$$ so they’re willing to alienate some user users because they believe A) most of those users won’t leave and just switch over to browser/official app, and B) even if they emigrated it will still leave a sizable percentage that would net them profits.
Honestly, I don’t think they’re wrong which is why (imho) a good reddit alternative is desperately needed - they won’t stop here. I know we have lemmy (and others), but as I’ve said before it’s a bit complicated for the average user and it’s nowhere are huge as reddit in terms of the variety of subs/communities. I don’t think the amount of people leaving will be significant enough to make them think twice about future decisions.
