Dropped Reddit due the API changes and dumsterfire after that with the CEO. I get they need to make money, but this was simply aimed at taking down third party apps and services.
The worst thing about it is that they could have accomplished all their goals if they didn't shove it on people with a months notice and then Spaz going on a media tour shitting on mods and users
This is what gets me. Christian Selig pointed out in a number of interviews that Reddit could have easily made this work without alienating a huge segment of their user base. I get this vague feeling lately like CEOs are intentionally trying to tank their products, because no one so well paid could actually act so dumb.
It's people like Spez and Elon who would be the first to die off in a post-apocalyptic scenario. Their "Smarts" won't do shit if they don't know how to survive. Not to mention high profile people will likely be the first on the chopping blocks.
Also being "smart" in an apocalypse likely means building allies and connections. Which can only happen if people can trust your word and don't think you're a dick. Something that describes neither of them.
I think he was blinded by the thought of money. When the media reported that ChatGPT trained it’s models using Reddit comments, he flipped out and rushed to slam the gates shut immediately, while telling investors he had potentially billions of dollars worth of data to sell. When he found out that Apollo app and others sell subscriptions, it’s clear from his comments that he got angry and called them all parasites. He wants to be the gatekeeper of Reddit and become a billionaire with it, but his actions fundamentally misunderstand Reddit and will trigger a mass exodus. The content creators are leaving, and while Reddit will still get traffic the content will become stale and it will be another 9gag.
Borrowing money isn’t cheap any more. The venture capital’s that have been propping up these platforms have decided the risk is now too high, and they’re trying to extract as much of their investment as they can, by any means necessary. I think the venture capitalists see a major recession in or near future, and our battening down the hatches.
Exactly this. Most people would have caved if they had given a 1yr update period and spez had kept his mouth shut. This move screams of a knee jerk reaction to try bd suddenly raise the profit margins, and spez had no idea how the users would revolt.
I think they really expected the 1 month timeline to blow over too
If they just made third party apps a premium feature, they would have seen a much smaller revolt and a significant increase in the number of premium subscribers. Seems like that would have been the obvious approach.
I really like Lemmy better than new reddit because scrolling the front page reminds me of 2010-2016 Reddit. I hated when they added ADS and removed the NSFW subs from the front page. Everything about NEW Reddit sucked.
That's what the 3rd party apps did best: didn't show ads, let me filter posts with keywords in their titles, and let me use /r/frontpage as my default (NSFW posts show in that feed)
Man, it's a damned good thing my posts and comments never add any value to the conversation.
Seriously though, while I haven't deleted my account yet, in the hope that maybe thing could shift, if/when I do I would like to remove my content.
Is there a known way to remove posts and comments from reddit? I guess they can always just restore from backups. Maybe instead of replacing with "." or gibberish, making a simple copy pasta to replace them with so it isn't so obvious.
That's my dilemma too - on the one hand, I want to delete my stuff (not that much of it is worth anything anyway), because fuck the way Reddit has acted and will monetise it.
On the other hand, if anything I ever posted was good/useful/helpful/amusing to other people, then I don't want to remove that just for the sake of spiting Spez.
Haven't been back to Reddit since the blackout, except once when I accidentally clicked a google search result to a post there (illustrating my point about potentially helping other people). Don't really miss it either. Lemmy is great, and I'm glad to see that so far it has lasted beyond the initial rush.