Reddit’s crisis is a warning for all social platforms: when you trade community for profits, everyone loses. Will Reddit fix its mes...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19466667

Money, Mods, and Mayhem

The Turning Point

In 2024, Reddit is a far cry from its scrappy startup roots. With over 430 million monthly active users and more than 100,000 active communities, it’s a social media giant. But with great power comes great responsibility, and Reddit is learning this lesson the hard way.

The turning point came in June 2023 when Reddit announced changes to its API pricing. For the uninitiated, API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it’s basically the secret sauce that allows third-party apps to interact with Reddit. The new pricing model threatened to kill off popular third-party apps like Apollo, whose developer Christian Selig didn’t mince words: “Reddit’s API changes are not just unfair, they’re unsustainable for third-party apps.”

Over 8,000 subreddits went dark in protest.

The blackout should have reminded Reddit’s overlords of a crucial fact: Reddit’s success was built on the backs of its users. The platform had cultivated a sense of ownership among its community, and now that community was biting back.

One moderator summed it up perfectly: “We’re the ones who keep this site running, and we’re being ignored.”

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
    119·
    2 months ago

    I think that this article is accurate and sensible.

    There’s a point that I’d like to add, that the author doesn’t mention: user trust.

    The main value of an online platform is the user trust, as it dictates the users’ willingness to help building it instead of vandalising it. In Reddit’s case it means people writing well-thought posts, moderating communities, reporting content, using the voting system, etc.

    And user trust is violated every time that a platform takes user-hostile decisions. Like Reddit has been taking for almost a decade; with 2023’s APIcalypse being a big example of that, but only one among many.

    And when user trust is violated, it’s almost impossible to come back. John Bull explains this well, with the Trust Thermocline; but the basic idea is that those violations pile up invisibly upon a certain point, when they suddenly become a big deal and the platform bleeds users like there’s no tomorrow. And once it reaches that point it’s practically impossible to come back.

    So perhaps we aren’t watching Reddit die. Nor we will, in the future - because Reddit is already dead. What we’re watching instead, with morbid curiosity, is a headless chicken running around, while we place some bets on when it will stop moving - so venture capital can have its dinner.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
      45·
      2 months ago

      So perhaps we aren’t watching Reddit die. Nor we will, in the future - because Reddit is already dead. What we’re watching instead, with morbid curiosity, is a headless chicken running around, while we place some bets on when it will stop moving - so venture capital can have its dinner.

      Well put

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          2 months ago

          And AI. AI is a wet dream to a company like Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter. They can keep the appearance of an active and popular site indefinitely, stealing money from advertisers years before they catch on.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
        5·
        2 months ago

        I remember reading your text back then. It’s great, and it shows something that neither the article in the OP nor my comment show - the role of network effect in the process.

      • Vilian@lemmy.ca
        5·
        2 months ago

        That das a nice read, but the site is weird to read on mobile i had to switch to the desktop mode lol

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      2 months ago

      Very well said, and it was the trust violation which finally pushed me off of Facebook and Reddit. Reddit as we know it is dead, it’s obvious to anyone who used to use it. But AI is here, and it’s going to continue pumping semi-believable posts and replies for years, making it look as if the site is still booming. But the posts are vapid, devoid of soul, and almost always written with an ulterior motive to sell something or some idea. The Dead Internet is here.

    • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
      11·
      2 months ago

      Yeah that’s my main problem with the article, it argues “as if” it was all but inevitable. As if something could be done. As soon as you have for profit motivation of social media, it’s all but inevitable that enshittification ensues. That obscures the real problem.

      You want a website that is run non-profit for users and somewhat democratically. But they shy away from that conclusion.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
        8·
        2 months ago

        Reddit could’ve become a non-profit for users, financed by them. So the outcome was avoidable, at least years and years in the past.

        But for that Pigboy and kn0thing would need to give up the pretension of drinking champagne in an IPO. kn0thing gave up too late; Pigboy never did.

        A good “dividing line” where the outcome became fixed was the introduction of Reddit Gold.

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 months ago

        Also, I think the unaccountable moderators really are a problem. You end up with major subs like r/politics or /worldnews getting camped by people who just happened to get there first, and then being forever unaccountable for bias or stupidity. And then you get sitewide bans if you subvert the bans from the tinpot dictators camping on what should be community-led spaces.

        • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
          4·
          2 months ago

          Yeah. Worst offender is r/climatechange which is still moderated by a “both sides” climate skeptic. It’s practically aiding genocide / omnicide.
          Unfortunately lemmy doesn’t have good solution to fracturing and default instances either.