Social Media Thread of Social Media Drama

[Venice]

I thought it would be good to have a Reddit thread since it's one of the largest sites on the internet and there's always some kind of industrial scale drama and outrage going on, where hordes of users angrily declare they are going to delete their accounts and never return, only for everything to be back to normal the following week.

The latest involves Reddit's announcement that it's going to be charging third party apps astronomical fees for access to it's API. The most popular app is by far Apollo. Reddit's own app is terrible by comparison. Today, Thursday 8th June 2023, the Apollo app developer posted that he is going to shut down his app at the end of the month. Hundreds of subreddits are going to go 'dark' in protest and support of Apollo (and accomplish jackshit in the process)

https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/

The most tasty part of this thread is where he exposes the Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, aka, spez, of lying about their phone call, which the app developer secretly recorded (apparently totally allowed in Canada).

"About 24 hours after that call with Reddit, I received this odd message on Mastodon:

"Can you please comment publicly about the internal Reddit claim that you tried to “blackmail” them for a $10,000,000 payout to “stay quiet”?"

Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript:

Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million."

Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."

Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat, and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard it. It's very easy to take a single line and make it look bad by removing all the rest of the context, so let's look at the full context.

I can only assume you didn't realize I was recording the call, because there's no way you'd be so blatantly lying if you did."

The entire post has almost 10,000 replies and counting.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman himself is about to do an AMA tomorrow. Should make for good reading.

[Potato]

Reddit is stupid. I deleted my account ages ago. Resetera has somehow managed to attract better mods.

[chronovore]

I disliked Reddit until it became more useful than GameFAQs for games, and for Blender searches, many of the top google hits are for solutions there. 

If Reddit fails to realize that it's their userbase and generally rational work-for-free Moderators, not their brand that has made them great Reddit will be the next Tribe.net, MySpace, or Friendster.

[Uncle]

I disliked Reddit until it became more useful than GameFAQs for games, and for Blender searches, many of the top google hits are for solutions there.

yeah unfortunately google has become absolutely useless for finding help with anything, the top dozen results are shitty probaby-ai-generated sketchy sites with overly verbose useless/wrong advice

you have to search "how to perform X task reddit" in order to get real answers from humans

[benji]

If Reddit fails to realize that it's their userbase and generally rational work-for-free Moderators, not their brand that has made them great Reddit will be the next Tribe.net, MySpace, or Friendster.

What I've read about the company seems to indicate their leadership is massively split between these two theories of their success.

[Red Cyclone]

I just wish I could open a reddit link on my phone's browser without it pestering me to download their shitty app every single time.

[chronovore]

If Reddit fails to realize that it's their userbase and generally rational work-for-free Moderators, not their brand that has made them great Reddit will be the next Tribe.net, MySpace, or Friendster.

What I've read about the company seems to indicate their leadership is massively split between these two theories of their success.

I can tell you which camp is wrong.

[Uncle]

reddit goes dark

https://reddark-digitalocean-7lhfr.ondigitalocean.app/

[BIONIC]

Nothing is more powerful than a fat girl Internet janny that doesn’t give a fuck.

[Uncle]

well, other than I had originally heard most were only officially committing going dark for 2 days which is not much of a protest at all, telling the person you're protesting that they can ignore you and it'll be over soon

and last I heard the assholes in charge are still scoffing and full steam ahead

[Nintex]

[Uncle]

reddit is actually interesting in that their model uniquely allows a situation like this

most protests require much more of a grassroots effort, informing the public, nobody crossing the picket line

only reddit could have a cadre of mods unilaterally shut down major discussion boards for millions of users, and have it not really hurt them personally, since it's not their site

and I'm trying to think of how reddit could "fix" this and stop this behavior and they can't, really

they could say, once your sub passes a certain threshold like 500k subscribers, all your mods can choose to become paid employees (and thus be fire-able and replaceable) or all your mods are forcibly removed and replaced by employed admins

if that were the case, trolls could artificially boost subreddits to make them "official" and un-close-able

even if reddit somehow claimed a bunch of subs and opened them, you still have to have mods, and those mods could just delete every thread and post and ban people at random

they're fucked...if the redditors actually care to continue the protest

[benji]

They should threaten to take away their flair.

[chronovore]

I hope it stays shut down. 

The arrogance of the Reddit staff is just remarkable to me. They have managed to coast in the goodwill of unpaid laborers for so long. 

I’d love to see it fall on its face like MySpace or Friendster for failing to be what the owners thought it was, for overrating their own importance in the picture.

[Uncle]

reddit admins are forcing subreddits back open wherever they feel like they can plausibly get away with it

https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/147ysr6/moderator_support_resources/

"hey all, we heard that some mods might be acting not in accordance with other mods' wishes, if you need help wresting control back of your sub just reach out   "

first casualty:

https://old.reddit.com/r/wholesome/comments/148aw58/radviceanimals_just_had_the_top_mods_permissions/



reports that a scab is trying to take over r/videos also, which the rest of grassroots reddit says they would do their best to retaliate by removing them from any other subs they might be part of

[Uncle]

reddit ceo downplays the whole thing and says it'll be over soon, but also tearfully plays the victim and warns all reddit employees of wearing reddit merch in public because you might get physically assaulted by angry redditors  

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman

Hi Snoos,

Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.

While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.

Again, we’ll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.

[Uncle]

mirroring the great twitter abandonment, some redditors are fleeing for alternatives such as Lemmy, and then discovering  to their dismay that actually it's run by tankies who will not tolerate any ill words about russia or china

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lemmy/comments/143njvy/lemmy_is_run_by_tankies_avoid_it/

[benji]

Why would you wear Reddit gear in public in normal times?

What's next, Reddit logo tattoos?

Oh, wait, I've seen far too many of those already.

[Red Cyclone]

I imagine the Reddit CEO is in his bed with his harem of instagram models laughing at the peasant mods and users who couldn't last 2 days without suffering crippling withdrawal.

[benji]

"Sir! The moderators on the website are..."
"Website? *snorts cocaine fentanyl off IG model* What website?"

[BIONIC]

"Sir! The moderators on the website are..."
"Website? *snorts cocaine fentanyl off IG model* What website?"

You didn’t have to do Demi like that, man.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[benji]

 

[Nintex]

[Tucker's Law]

Awesome, reddit drama about to be lit.  So many subreddit moderators are a perfect encapsulation of tinpot dictators.

[wsippel]

mirroring the great twitter abandonment, some redditors are fleeing for alternatives such as Lemmy, and then discovering  to their dismay that actually it's run by tankies who will not tolerate any ill words about russia or china

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lemmy/comments/143njvy/lemmy_is_run_by_tankies_avoid_it/

Yeah, but Lemmy is open source and federated. Some core Lemmy developers are tankies, and also run the lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml instances AFAIK, but there are many other instances not ran by tankies where you can shit on China and Russia all day long (like lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works). It doesn't really matter which instance you're on, you can still join any federated community. And if somebody really doesn't want to use software developed by tankies, there's kbin (fedia.io, readit.buzz, kbin.social), a completely different implementation of the same protocol, by different developers, written in a different language. And you can still join any community on any federated Lemmy instance if you're on kbin. Problem is that both Lemmy and especially kbin are young and still need a bunch of work and UX polish, but the sudden explosive growth also caused an influx of new developers, so we'll see how things develop.

[Nintex]

No doubt we've got lots of great candidates up and down the subreddits, including anime fans, gamers, thots, members of PMC Wagner, top G's, evangelicals, brave Mujahideen fighters, cyber wariors, hackers, Mike, trolls and shitposters 
 

Apparently the reddit CEO was inspired by Musks handling of Twitter, realizing his platform too was taken over by ESG pushing cucks and activists and should be returned to its rightful owners: the people who post great content.

[PhoenixDark]

So how does this net-benefit Reddit? I don't get it.

[Uncle]

So how does this net-benefit Reddit? I don't get it.

the changes they're making to API access?

third party apps used the API to deliver users a better experience with no ads, so reddit was potentially losing lots of money on the ad impressions they would've gotten if people had used official apps or the regular website

it also opens up revenue streams in case anyone actually is willing to pay for API access

and on some level I'm sure they would argue that API access allows AI to harvest all that raw conversational data to improve its functionality and make them obsolete somehow



they're doing this because venture capital dried up for all of tech so lots of places like reddit are scrambling for money any way they can

they are looking to do an IPO eventually but based on past money they received, they are massively overvalued which would be disastrous for entering that process now

[remy]

don't understand how you can possibly have a site with as much traffic as reddit and be unable to figure out how to make it profitable. almost all content is generated by and moderated by volunteers too.

can't work the api some way that still serves the ads/work with the app developers and split the cash? only reason the apps are so popular is you literally can't browse reddit from a mobile browser and the official app is a piece of shit

to be honest, I think the whole thing is pretty embarassing and a huge own goal from the reddit exec team. absolutely moronic decisionmaking. it just shows how venture capital allows morons to prop up their poorly managed projects with infinite cash injections.

[Nintex]

It's a combination of things. The usual strategy of growing a platform and figuring out the profit model later but as of late a lot of ways to make money have been made more difficult.

- New Privacy laws make it difficult or even illegal to sell user data. The fact that the EU goes after Meta and Google scares the others
- Advertisers better curate where they put up ads and take a closer look at results beyond 'views' and 'likes'. Volkswagen doesn't want to be displayed next to an erotic Keylo fan fic or an argument about the holocaust
- The crypto/NFT markets slowed down so you can't fund your platform selling coins
- The cloud server boom is sort of over so Amazon/Microsoft etc. are no longer competing on price and server costs have greatly increased
- Credit card companies and payment providers don't want to do business with unregulated/unverified NSFW content spaces

Users aren't used to paying for these type of services so subscriptions are a hard sell.