Love your article here. Particularly the bullet points summarizing enshittification.
I moderate a very very very small subreddit, but it is fairly active. The API changes don't affect me. I'm torn between not wanting to contribute to reddit at all (I can't stand the CEO, admins, and what the site's turning into. I primarily use desktop and the new desktop UI they plan to put out is a FB dupe, so the writing's on the wall) and wanting to continue engaging with the few subs I enjoy. There's a larger subreddit on a broader topic that houses my main audience. None of the subs I enjoy, including this larger one, show signs of planning to move.
I'm curious, if you were in my shoes, what would you do?
Also, do you have a recommendation for learning about the Fediverse? Like Fediverse for dummies? For example... How does it operate? Who actually runs it? What are the pros and cons? I've read about it a lot in the past weeks, even seen the infographic someone made on Lemmy about it, but still can't fully wrap my head around it.
Thank you for this very interesting article. I believe it is even possible to push the comparison with the shopping center further and observe that the model of centralizing consumer goods is tending to disappear in favor of the return of small local shops. More specialized, less ambitious, but above all much more suited to the local population.
The fediverse indeed offers this return to highly localized communities, with their own cultural baggage and language. Perhaps finally a way to consume tailored content and expand the realm of possibilities to the communities in the neighboring village.
I’m one of those Redditors who was one for more than 12 years, but two weeks ago I stopped using Reddit completely. I haven’t deleted my accounts yet but maybe I should. I used Apollo and subscribed to it, but since this whole debacle, I’ve lost interest in Reddit entirely. And I’ve literally felt more freedom and focus in my brain. I don’t think I’ll ever go back. Steve’s AMA was horrible, the way he went about blaming Christian from Apollo, among other things he said.
I'm actually not convinced that "recreate social media, but decentralized and censorship resistant" solves any of the real problems I have with social media: its feed/temporal design and optimization for engagement instead of the old spatial structure of classic forums and bulletin boards or designs that promote longform writing, or the very fact that we're trying to socialize online rather than socializing and doing things in real life then sharing the fruits online. It also isn't necessary for decentralization: you can throw five bucks at a server, write a page in mostly plain text (styling and markup only have to be learned to the extent you want to make it fancier; and you could find or purchase a template for those too), and presto, you can post your own web page. The fediverse concept addresses some of the reasons the decentralized internet was replaced with a corporate, centralized one to begin with, but not all and only indirectly; I'd like to see a direct solution without the social media baggage.
If you want another case study to look at that's more in the Wiki/Reddit mode, check out Stack Exchange and the conversations about the site and company happening on its "meta" section the past few years. One distinction to be made there is that Stack Exchange has three moderator-like roles:
- Community managers who are sort of like the company's liaisons to the sites.
- Moderators who deal with abuse, objectionable content and so forth.
- Ordinary users are expected to curate content for quality and gain greater privileges to do so based on how well they prove themselves, which is why (for computer programming if not for other topics sometimes too) Stack Overflow shows up near the top of google results, usually with questions that are actually relevant and answers that are actually correct.
"Seriously can somebody explain to me how a business can lose money for 18 years and still exist? is silicon valley even real?"
Not profitable does't mean they're loosing money. It means that after paid wages, hosting costs, 3rd party bills, etc. they're left with either a small profit, or no profit. Basically, it means that the business can't grow, which is what investors like to see if a company goes public. They like to see that the company has a business plan for growth. In any other case, they don't invest, thus the stock plummets. This is why Reddit is still not gonna go public. Cuz they know, if their IPO takes a dive, there is nothing bringing them back in the game, so they wanna be prepared, have a sustainable business growth plan before they go public, which is what the API pricing is all about - eliminating tools that can't serve ads, which leaves only their app as a viable alternative, which does serve ads.
Bottom line, they wanna be like FB. They don't actually care about the users, they only care about the profits... as is with any social network.
Excellent! As someone who has dozens of posts demolished by Reddit moderators I'm not 100% sad to see them experience some pain. But I do realize how stupid Reddit's decision is in this case. You have a bunch of people volunteering to keep your website afloat, and your response is to wage war on them? Huh....
I can't believe this. I came across your picture of the woman under #2 today by chance lol. I looked up Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber) & his wife called him a Luddite. Under Luddite there's a picture 'Leader of the Luddites'. This is the same picture. I can't believe the coincidence.
Reddit is a Dying Mall
Love your article here. Particularly the bullet points summarizing enshittification.
I moderate a very very very small subreddit, but it is fairly active. The API changes don't affect me. I'm torn between not wanting to contribute to reddit at all (I can't stand the CEO, admins, and what the site's turning into. I primarily use desktop and the new desktop UI they plan to put out is a FB dupe, so the writing's on the wall) and wanting to continue engaging with the few subs I enjoy. There's a larger subreddit on a broader topic that houses my main audience. None of the subs I enjoy, including this larger one, show signs of planning to move.
I'm curious, if you were in my shoes, what would you do?
Also, do you have a recommendation for learning about the Fediverse? Like Fediverse for dummies? For example... How does it operate? Who actually runs it? What are the pros and cons? I've read about it a lot in the past weeks, even seen the infographic someone made on Lemmy about it, but still can't fully wrap my head around it.
Thank you for this very interesting article. I believe it is even possible to push the comparison with the shopping center further and observe that the model of centralizing consumer goods is tending to disappear in favor of the return of small local shops. More specialized, less ambitious, but above all much more suited to the local population.
The fediverse indeed offers this return to highly localized communities, with their own cultural baggage and language. Perhaps finally a way to consume tailored content and expand the realm of possibilities to the communities in the neighboring village.
I’m one of those Redditors who was one for more than 12 years, but two weeks ago I stopped using Reddit completely. I haven’t deleted my accounts yet but maybe I should. I used Apollo and subscribed to it, but since this whole debacle, I’ve lost interest in Reddit entirely. And I’ve literally felt more freedom and focus in my brain. I don’t think I’ll ever go back. Steve’s AMA was horrible, the way he went about blaming Christian from Apollo, among other things he said.
I'm actually not convinced that "recreate social media, but decentralized and censorship resistant" solves any of the real problems I have with social media: its feed/temporal design and optimization for engagement instead of the old spatial structure of classic forums and bulletin boards or designs that promote longform writing, or the very fact that we're trying to socialize online rather than socializing and doing things in real life then sharing the fruits online. It also isn't necessary for decentralization: you can throw five bucks at a server, write a page in mostly plain text (styling and markup only have to be learned to the extent you want to make it fancier; and you could find or purchase a template for those too), and presto, you can post your own web page. The fediverse concept addresses some of the reasons the decentralized internet was replaced with a corporate, centralized one to begin with, but not all and only indirectly; I'd like to see a direct solution without the social media baggage.
If you want another case study to look at that's more in the Wiki/Reddit mode, check out Stack Exchange and the conversations about the site and company happening on its "meta" section the past few years. One distinction to be made there is that Stack Exchange has three moderator-like roles:
- Community managers who are sort of like the company's liaisons to the sites.
- Moderators who deal with abuse, objectionable content and so forth.
- Ordinary users are expected to curate content for quality and gain greater privileges to do so based on how well they prove themselves, which is why (for computer programming if not for other topics sometimes too) Stack Overflow shows up near the top of google results, usually with questions that are actually relevant and answers that are actually correct.
"Seriously can somebody explain to me how a business can lose money for 18 years and still exist? is silicon valley even real?"
Not profitable does't mean they're loosing money. It means that after paid wages, hosting costs, 3rd party bills, etc. they're left with either a small profit, or no profit. Basically, it means that the business can't grow, which is what investors like to see if a company goes public. They like to see that the company has a business plan for growth. In any other case, they don't invest, thus the stock plummets. This is why Reddit is still not gonna go public. Cuz they know, if their IPO takes a dive, there is nothing bringing them back in the game, so they wanna be prepared, have a sustainable business growth plan before they go public, which is what the API pricing is all about - eliminating tools that can't serve ads, which leaves only their app as a viable alternative, which does serve ads.
Bottom line, they wanna be like FB. They don't actually care about the users, they only care about the profits... as is with any social network.
Amazon was not profitable for so many years that it was literally a Silicon Valley charity case.
Excellent! As someone who has dozens of posts demolished by Reddit moderators I'm not 100% sad to see them experience some pain. But I do realize how stupid Reddit's decision is in this case. You have a bunch of people volunteering to keep your website afloat, and your response is to wage war on them? Huh....
I can't believe this. I came across your picture of the woman under #2 today by chance lol. I looked up Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber) & his wife called him a Luddite. Under Luddite there's a picture 'Leader of the Luddites'. This is the same picture. I can't believe the coincidence.