2y ago

Reddit is in danger of a death spiral

www.zdnet.com Reddit is in danger of a death spiral

Can Reddit survive as its volunteer workforce close down subreddits and walk away from the site in protest at the management's new policies?

Huffman has said, "We are not in the business of giving that [Reddit's content] away for free." That stance makes sense. But it also ignores the reality that all of Reddit's content has been given to it for free by its millions of users. Further, it leaves aside the fact that the content has been orchestrated by its thousands of volunteer moderators.

touché

You're viewing a single thread.

92 comments

Sure - only people who create content give it away for free.
Reddit is in the business of taking that free labor and telling people they own that data and set rules for it. Got it.
- Personally I've left it for good. Lemmy is so active and diverse I don't miss reddit at all. I'm still sometimes looking at it through Boost, but come July 1st I'll be gone forever
  
  I'm also using Boost until July 1st and then if it stops working, I'm out of there for good. Lemmy is quite good already and I don't want to support Steve and the other dousches over at reddit.
  Lemmy is hopefully just the beginning of fediverse growing more and more with new platforms and services.
  
  It's so funny. I have bounced between Boost and Sync for years. I really love them both. I think I tend to gravitate to boost for more graphical or visual subs, and I like Sync for commenting or reading more text focused content. I have paid for pro lifetime on both. I miss them, and am excited that Sync is trying to make the jump.
  Has the Boost dev(Ruben?) Officially said the app is shutting down? Ppl keep saying it, but I haven't seen an official post or announcement. Reddit keeps saying "we are still working with some devs"...
  
  I'm using an open source client on an open source tablet to connect to an open source server instance with federation. It's not a coincidence, though it took some time for it to happen.
  
  The real secret is that a smaller community is generally a better quality experience if you're looking to interact with other members of the community.
  Reddit isn't trying to foster communities, it is trying to foster content farming so that the masses of casual users can just scroll and look at ads.
  
  I'm planning to stay active on Lemmy, but I am a bit worried. I feel like the engagement on here has dropped the last few days as Reddit's traffic mostly recovered.
  July will be another big test, so we'll see.
  
  It feels like engagement is increasing to me, even in a few days. I think you're right, though, Jul 1 will be the test.

92 comments