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I was watching the stream earlier. It was an exciting feeling to have 10,000 people viewing, and cheering on the chat whenever a new subreddit went dark. I don

I was watching the stream earlier. It was an exciting feeling to have 10,000 people viewing, and cheering on the chat whenever a new subreddit went dark. I don't know if I should be excited or sad. Reddit is dying, but I'm seeing it live on Twitch with the community cheering on in a festive atmosphere.

valine 3y ago
I’ve never seen Reddit the company as valuable. People are valuable, and they just happen to gather on Reddit. If Reddit goes away they will gather somewhere else.
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  What makes reddit valuable are 1. The communities 2. The data that the communities havegenerated in the past It seems like reddit is trying to monetize #2 to the point of alienating #1. It's bizarre how large the disconnect is between Reddit the corporation and Reddit the collection of communities
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    Isn't #2 freely available for anyone to scrape? And even if they shut down access now, presumably everyone training LLMs already has a mostly complete dump of reddit comments/links.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      Yes, but actually scrapping it is a hard work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254485.
- chrischen 3y ago
  What would be funny is if as a result of this everyone moved back to Digg (where the Reddit users initially came from).
  - Kye 3y ago
    There's no Digg-that-was to move back to. Digg in 2023 is only connected to old Digg by a $500k check and domain transfer. They eventually added comments, but it seems sparse. edit: apparently an ad company bought it in 2018. Doesn't seem to have affected the quality of links.
giantrobot 3y ago
The stupidest part of all of this is all Reddit's problems are self inflicted. Reddit the company produces almost nothing. Reddit the users make the site what it is. The users submit all the content, make all the comments, and moderate the site. Reddit's executives however seem to think they are somehow critical to Reddit's existence and utility. If they all got replaced tomorrow with competent people no one would fucking notice. Everyone would notice if all of Reddit's users disappeared tomorrow. Reddit is making the same stupid value estimation Digg made.
- dorkwood 3y ago
  Well to be fair, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else for all these users to go, right? So the executives do provide something.
  - d4mi3n 3y ago
    Reddit has about as much technical complexity in its core product as Twitter—both can be trivially cloned. Alternatives exist. It’s the network effects that made Reddit valuable: the people, communities, 3rd-party clients, platform integrations, etc. Most of these things are fairly portable, so I think Reddit execs are mainly gambling in users not wanting to bother with finding a new place to gather. I have to wonder why they didn’t just start off charging reasonable prices for the API and dial things up over time. Crummy either way, but less likely to alienate literally everyone they depend on to make the system work.
    - dorkwood 3y ago
      I’ll admit I don’t know much about the back end. I’m not that sort of dev. Is anyone working on a reddit clone to deploy, then? If there was ever a time, it’s now.
      - TheAnachronism 3y ago
        There exists Lemmy, which is a fediverse alternative. From what I've heard, the development of it, is a bit messy, but it seems to work well enough and has potential.
Gigachad 3y ago
I remember a time when when people actually liked reddit. And would buy reddit gold with the intention of helping out host the site. Seems like Ellen Pao and the IAMA drama was the turning point that soured the users against the company.

valine 3y ago

I’ve never seen Reddit the company as valuable. People are valuable, and they just happen to gather on Reddit. If Reddit goes away they will gather somewhere else.

Rebelgecko 3y ago
What makes reddit valuable are 1. The communities 2. The data that the communities havegenerated in the past It seems like reddit is trying to monetize #2 to the point of alienating #1. It's bizarre how large the disconnect is between Reddit the corporation and Reddit the collection of communities
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  Isn't #2 freely available for anyone to scrape? And even if they shut down access now, presumably everyone training LLMs already has a mostly complete dump of reddit comments/links.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    Yes, but actually scrapping it is a hard work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254485.
chrischen 3y ago
What would be funny is if as a result of this everyone moved back to Digg (where the Reddit users initially came from).
- Kye 3y ago
  There's no Digg-that-was to move back to. Digg in 2023 is only connected to old Digg by a $500k check and domain transfer. They eventually added comments, but it seems sparse. edit: apparently an ad company bought it in 2018. Doesn't seem to have affected the quality of links.

giantrobot 3y ago

The stupidest part of all of this is all Reddit's problems are self inflicted. Reddit the company produces almost nothing. Reddit the users make the site what it is. The users submit all the content, make all the comments, and moderate the site. Reddit's executives however seem to think they are somehow critical to Reddit's existence and utility. If they all got replaced tomorrow with competent people no one would fucking notice. Everyone would notice if all of Reddit's users disappeared tomorrow. Reddit is making the same stupid value estimation Digg made.

dorkwood 3y ago
Well to be fair, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else for all these users to go, right? So the executives do provide something.
- d4mi3n 3y ago
  Reddit has about as much technical complexity in its core product as Twitter—both can be trivially cloned. Alternatives exist. It’s the network effects that made Reddit valuable: the people, communities, 3rd-party clients, platform integrations, etc. Most of these things are fairly portable, so I think Reddit execs are mainly gambling in users not wanting to bother with finding a new place to gather. I have to wonder why they didn’t just start off charging reasonable prices for the API and dial things up over time. Crummy either way, but less likely to alienate literally everyone they depend on to make the system work.
  - dorkwood 3y ago
    I’ll admit I don’t know much about the back end. I’m not that sort of dev. Is anyone working on a reddit clone to deploy, then? If there was ever a time, it’s now.
    - TheAnachronism 3y ago
      There exists Lemmy, which is a fediverse alternative. From what I've heard, the development of it, is a bit messy, but it seems to work well enough and has potential.

Gigachad 3y ago

I remember a time when when people actually liked reddit. And would buy reddit gold with the intention of helping out host the site. Seems like Ellen Pao and the IAMA drama was the turning point that soured the users against the company.