this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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46
Reddit Ramps Up Its Threats To Protesting Mods, As Ad Buyers Leave (www.techdirt.com)
submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful…

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[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.

I'm glad Reddit is feeling something from this, however, at the same time. I kinda don't care. It's a shame it went the way that it did. But spez can't take back his terrible attitude and decision making on what happened. Most people were sympathetic and wanting Reddit to be profitable and rooting for Reddit. However, spez just decided to come out swinging from nowhere hitting his allies in the face.

[–] bkmps3@aussie.zone 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeh I’m in the same boat. The day the internal memo came out about how everything will blow over, I deleted Apollo. I haven’t been back to reddit since and after the first week, I don’t even miss it now.

I wish lemmy was a bit busier, but outside of that the general atmosphere and quality here is better. Even if everything was reversed and Spez was booted, I won’t return now.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Actually, I like the small community vibe of Lemmy. It’s the dead sub vibe I have a problem with. There are lots of really interesting communities, but you don’t see people posting anything yet.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like a lot of the tiny vibe but I miss girl Reddit. It was such a unique social media atmosphere and I haven’t managed to find it here. I hope more of the women from Reddit come here

[–] rookie@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I miss GirlGamers, honestly. It was such a refreshing perspective compared to the constantly angry/circlejerky dudebro vibe of 90% of gaming communities

[–] ThinlySlicedGlizzy@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just wait till the third party apps shut down tomorrow, loads of people will be rolling in here. Then when the RIF and Sync developers release their Lemmy apps (with the same names) even more people will come. If you want there to be content right now though just keep contributing to posts you see. The more content we make right now, the more likely it is for new users to stay,

[–] VubDapple@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where did you see an announcement about RIF for Lemmy? That's awesome!

[–] bobbysq@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As far as I know, talklittle is focused on making a Tildes app called Three Cheers for now, and had been working it even before the announcement from Reddit. As much as it would be nice to have a Lemmy successor to RIF, the closest we'll probably get any time soon is an app that's just inspired by the RIF design.

[–] VubDapple@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the info!

[–] Deemo@bookwormstory.social 1 points 1 year ago

The only thing reddit can do is improve the first party app and mod tools. The rest is lost.

That being said I doubt the protests are reddits biggest priority. Even if reddit ipo's perfectly and gets a injection of capitol (which might itself be difficult since investors don't seem to care about userbase growth anymore) they are going to need to find ways to increase profits each year (like every other publicly traded tech company).

Advertising revenue is also limited given trend to cut "unnecessary expenses".

[–] Rancid_squirts@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well we’re here basically figuring it out. Time to show them they aren’t needed anymore.

[–] toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

reddit is just a frame. it always was and will always be, despite the efforts of a few dumb cunts.

the content is the people. that's the secret sauce. just provide people with a framework, and they'll fill the empty space. try to monetize that, and you're just a dick.

i have faith in defederisation. my autocorrect says that isn't a word. let's make it a word.

[–] poopgood@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Cant see reactions Fixed it!

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Imagine that once upon a time (5-15 years ago), I actually had addblocker disabled on reddit, because I considered it worth supporting. lol

[–] penisthightrap@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Proof that people will gladly support a good product.

[–] original_reader@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Same curve with Netflix. Pirating went down when they started. They themselves, but all the other Streamers as well have gone so greedy that the good product is no longer supported. Reputation ruined, war with customers ensues.

[–] jcg@halubilo.social 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

These guys aren't happy with some support. They want all the support i.e. money. Feels like no tech corporation thinks about its products long term anymore. Just the most readily available cash grabs possible, even if it means possibly losing future revenue.

[–] catwhowalksbyhimself@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, as other people have said, it looks like they were preparing to sell Reddit, or take it public, or whatever, and they wanted to make it look as profitable and purchaseable as possible.

The end result is the same, but the reasoning is a bit different.

Anyhow, if that's true, I dare say they've achieved the opposite result now.

[–] alaphic@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So, shall we start calling this 'the Reddit Effect?' We haven't had anything new to supplant the Streisand Effect for awhile, I feel like something like this is overdue

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Might be the digg effect ;)

[–] yrmitz@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I am glad that this happened because Lemmy is very interesting platform.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I’ve barely been back to Reddit recently and with Apollo gone, I’ll only ever duck my head in when I really have to. I find it a lot easier to leave Reddit behind than Facebook. On FB I’m connected to real world relatives and friends who I just would lose contact with otherwise. On Reddit I converse with strangers and that’s easy to replace. Lemmy has already done it. Is there anything unique about the hobby forums on Reddit? No. They can be reassembled or restarted elsewhere. In some ways it’s probably good to dump the old structures and shake things up. Some subs were better managed and some really just coasted on their name.

[–] majere@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

WE made the content. The community. No doubt the majority of level-headed folk would have accepted ad requirements in 3rd party apps. Hosting isn't free, something needs to be monetized.

But that's not what it's about. It's about locking down content from the new wave of AI models and charging for it. Charging for content we created freely to be shared.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Ads? No, I would not accept ads. What I would have accepted was a subscription payment. Hell, I went so far as to purchase Apollo lifetime ultimate.

I am more than willing to support things I use. I am not willing to deal with ads though. Especially when they sneak in like they are posts, and take up entire scroll widths.

[–] mo_ztt@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I literally made a reddit account a few days before the hullabaloo started, specifically to buy advertising on reddit.

  1. The ad interface is terrible. Most of my experience is with Google Ads, but in general, platforms try to be super-nice to their advertisers and give them a good experience. Not reddit. The same overall shittiness the infests the rest of the site is also in their ad portal.
  2. Most of the clicks were fairly poor quality (high bounce rate).
  3. Whatever I tried to configure to limit geographic reach to US+Canada either wasn't set up right or was just ignored. I got plenty of clicks from all over world.

I stopped advertising on blackout day for moral reasons regardless, but it also seemed like it just overall wasn't worth it in general. And, my observation of the ads I see as a user has been that they aren't at all tuned to what I would be likely to want, or constructed so I'd be likely to click on them. Some platforms I have to consciously avoid clicking on ads or scroll past them deliberately when my natural tendency is to click on them. On reddit it's just weird nonsense that I want to scroll past anyway.

In short, my brief experience with reddit ads made me conclude that it's probably a waste of money anyway.

[–] ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would assume that almost all clicks are from people on the mobile app accidentally tapping ads while they try to scroll past them, because they're in the main feed. So click quality being garbage doesn't surprise me.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This was my experience. Almost every ad I clicked on was a mistake; either I thought it was a real post and wasn't paying close attention, only to navigate away in disgust, or I clicked on it purely by accident. I had like 50k+ karma (to give you some idea of much I used reddit) and might have honestly clicked an ad once.

[–] BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit ad targeting is a joke and I dont even understand how. How can they not tell what my interests are when I've literally subbed to them? It's the easiest targeting set up in the world and they still can't make it work.

[–] mo_ztt@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

(1) Because the more irrelevant ads they show, the more accidental clicks they can collect, and the more ad revenue. There will be individual clients (e.g. Adobe) who probably have some measurable results, but my guess is that most of their advertisers show pretty good metrics in terms of "cost per click" etc, and aren't paying close enough attention to realize that their real return on ad spend is extremely low.

(2) Reddit's just as incapable / uncaring about writing good ad targeting as they are about constructing the rest of the site.

Pick one. Aaron Schwartz would be furious at the current state of reddit.