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Folks, as fun as it is to harp on Reddit, much of the web has felt a sharp decline due to the intermediaries either scanning content and presenting it at their

by mpfh 2mo ago

Folks, as fun as it is to harp on Reddit, much of the web has felt a sharp decline due to the intermediaries either scanning content and presenting it at their shopfront, or in the case of something like YouTube and other creative spaces, outright stealing the voice, look, and other features of the people involved. There is a problem, but pointing at Reddit and laughing as some kind of schadenfreude at this point means it’s a matter of time before it is pointed at you.

acdha 2mo ago
I agree to some extent—the bulk of the real damage came from Google declaring war on the open web and companies like Facebook manipulating the ad market to harm publishers (pivot to video fraud)—but Reddit saw that happening and decided to join in. They torched one of the best and most loyal communities rather than pushing back against the scrapers, and that really caps the amount of sympathy I have for them.
- mpfh 2mo ago
  I get that. All the stupid things that Reddit did along the way, the redesign, the login/app wall, the Pao thing, now requiring login when using ‘old.’, and the lack of the actual community standing up, points to the leadership that it is acceptable to do these things if it means more money for shareholders. So did they torch it if everyone stayed and continued? Hard to say. Having said that, let’s suppose Reddit did everything right. They would still be overwhelmed by bots. Their inventory of comments and threads would still be copied over to LLMs just like how all the books and movies and music has been copied over. So ultimately this call that occurred where they cite numbers are down would still happen. Not 100% guaranteed of course, but highly likely. This was flagrant disregard for copyright by all these AI firms, done much around the same time. It was a coordinated move in private, meanwhile the public face they give of being competitors, not speaking to each other, not shaking hands, is pure play. It’s theatrics because it helps them as a group if they’re seen to be enemies.
  - acdha 2mo ago
    They’d still be going down paths like mandatory logins and aggressive bot blocking, but I think it’d be different if they still had the trust of most users. The moderator community was something rare and special — a ton of skilled people working pro bono to make their site a community — and I don’t think it will ever come back short of a C-level sea change. Most of those people were the front line of defense against slop.

by mpfh 2mo ago

acdha 2mo ago

I agree to some extent—the bulk of the real damage came from Google declaring war on the open web and companies like Facebook manipulating the ad market to harm publishers (pivot to video fraud)—but Reddit saw that happening and decided to join in. They torched one of the best and most loyal communities rather than pushing back against the scrapers, and that really caps the amount of sympathy I have for them.

mpfh 2mo ago
I get that. All the stupid things that Reddit did along the way, the redesign, the login/app wall, the Pao thing, now requiring login when using ‘old.’, and the lack of the actual community standing up, points to the leadership that it is acceptable to do these things if it means more money for shareholders. So did they torch it if everyone stayed and continued? Hard to say. Having said that, let’s suppose Reddit did everything right. They would still be overwhelmed by bots. Their inventory of comments and threads would still be copied over to LLMs just like how all the books and movies and music has been copied over. So ultimately this call that occurred where they cite numbers are down would still happen. Not 100% guaranteed of course, but highly likely. This was flagrant disregard for copyright by all these AI firms, done much around the same time. It was a coordinated move in private, meanwhile the public face they give of being competitors, not speaking to each other, not shaking hands, is pure play. It’s theatrics because it helps them as a group if they’re seen to be enemies.
- acdha 2mo ago
  They’d still be going down paths like mandatory logins and aggressive bot blocking, but I think it’d be different if they still had the trust of most users. The moderator community was something rare and special — a ton of skilled people working pro bono to make their site a community — and I don’t think it will ever come back short of a C-level sea change. Most of those people were the front line of defense against slop.