wtf is going on over there

  • RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Reddit crushed its biggest protest ? They’ve never been in a worse position in the websites history. They’ve betrayed the community and made it clear that the only thing that matters is they get their bag. Fuck that. Reddit started with a community this size and blew up. Nothing is more telling than those YouTube videos showing the rise and fall of website popularity from the birth of the internet to now. The websites that were the titans of yesterday are ghost towns right now. Companies that at one time commanded near total control are barely fragments of their former glory if they even continue to exist at all.

    What’s the long term plan you rejects, continue to shit on people and ignore their wishes? On a long enough timeline that will see your golden goose fall off the page and cease to be relevant.

    Will Reddit go away? No. But I think you’ll see it’s market share continue to fall as people shift away to better options provided by people that aren’t douche bags.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Well, more specifically, they pissed off their community, and then infuriated their mods, community developers, and enthusiasts, and basically pushed them away. That’s the part of the community that more or less makes Reddit what it is. It’s dying - or at the very least, what it once was is gone for good, and it’s becoming something… less.

      • AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Exactly. Reddit was great because of an bunch of people doing heavy lifting in the background. Reddit Enhancement Suite is still needed after almost two decades because Reddit devs can’t make a good website

        • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Lol still it blows my mind that, at least on desktop, you are FORCED to use a 3rd party tool suite to make the interface not be complete ass… and that it’s been this way for YEARS.

    • can@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      1 year ago

      The users at large don’t care, they will, but it will take time. From reddit inc’s pov they won. Were here now, and I love it, but it’s a small victory (for now)

      • RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        People never stopped using digg. I’ve got uncles that still use their aol account. You’ll never see a site like Reddit disappear but there’s a small group of power users that keep places like that interesting and valuable. Piss them off and they will dip quickly.

        The bottom line is the community exists for its users, not the other way around. Literally every other major social media site sees their users as a way to make money. So far I’ve seen none of that here and as long as that’s the case I’m here for the long haul.

        • joebob@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          People stopped using Digg after v4 and it died. Digg sold for $500k in 2012–down from a valuation of $175M+ only a couple years prior. The buyers kept the name but changed it to a curated content aggregator without community comments, etc.

          • RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            My point is that the site still exists and people continue to use it. It didn’t die completely and even if most people bailed on Reddit it would continue to exist and have a user base

          • Boz (he/him)
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            1 year ago

            I would be extremely surprised if it goes well, if they do. Huffman said something in an interview suggesting that they are no longer in any hurry, and investors are likely to recognize this particular dumpster fire for what it is. The financial community has its delusions, but they’re usually not the ones techbros like Huffman have.

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.mlM
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    1 year ago

    wtf is going on over there

    Odds are that Reddit noticed that the overall quality and diversity of its content decreased, since almost nobody with a functional brain contributes with it nowadays. That’s what I believe to be the reason for the AI porn carveout - to explicitly tell people “hey, it’s fine to post AI porn here~ please post it~ as long as it doesn’t depict real humans, it’s fine~”.

    I think that it’ll backfire; SFW AI pics are often crap and extremely generic, and odds are that the porn AI pics are the same. They’ll just further bury the content that people actually want to see.

    What I’m interested the most is however on the side note of the article:

    Speaking of Rule 4, it got an adjustment today as well: “Do not share content depicting or promoting neglect, physical, or emotional abuse against minors.” Minor abuse is a brand-new category of depiction that Reddit doesn’t tolerate.

    Rules in Reddit are almost never enforced for their own sake. There’s only Rule Zero (“don’t prevent our profit”), everything else is just an excuse for that that may or may not be enforced depending on Reddit Inc.'s goals. It gets worse because those rules are often evoked in situations that have jack shit to do with them; like, a poster says “Alice told Bob to kill himself” and the poster gets banned for encouraging harm. (Yup, it’s that dumb.)

    So this carveout makes me ask, which demographic is Reddit trying to get rid of, and how do they conflict with Reddit Inc.'s profit? I have no idea.

    • Boz (he/him)
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      1 year ago

      Regarding the new rule against abuse content, I suspect they’re either trying to boost their wholesome image to advertisers, or it’s in response to complaints about specific things on the site. I don’t think they’d prohibit content unless someone is posting it, horrible as that sounds.

      To put it in your terms: they’re trying to drive away some creeps that might scare advertisers.

      Regarding allowing AI porn… since advertisers don’t like porn, these new policies should cancel each other out, lol. I suspect neither of these changes is directly related to any of the recent drama.

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.mlM
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        1 year ago

        To put it in your terms: they’re trying to drive away some creeps that might scare advertisers.

        This makes sense.

        Regarding porn: advertisers hate it but it’s a low-hanging fruit to attract users. r/GoneWild is now reposting on Mastodon and r/hentai joined the protests; odds are that the platform knows that they won’t hang around for too long.

  • words_number@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    The only thing that has been crushed is reddits credibility. Soon it’s gonna be the new facebook. Entirely irrelevant for any kind of recent internet culture or informational content.

    • AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      They’ve already tweaked the algorithm in the phone app. Instead of showing my Frontpage, it shows me its own recommendations from my subscriptions. Any post I engage with causes it to prioritize more from that subreddit. It’s quite annoying.

      It also makes inane recommendations for subreddits I might like. I have no problem with hip-hop but I’m not a devoted fan and I’ve never talked about it in any comments or posts in 12 years, yet it keeps saying I should be in /r/hiphopmusic. Based on what?!

      This is exactly like Facebook and Instagram. I miss posts from my family because I clicked like one time on a Far Side meme, so my feed is mostly Far Side memes and comic strips, rarely anything posted by humans that I actually know and love.