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

92 comments

It's literally not "Reddit's content". Says so in the user agreement:
You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content [...]
Huffman should be careful calling it "Reddit's content" — by claiming ownership, he's arguably taking on liability.
- The [stuff in brackets] is editorial. That's when they add on their own reference to something said elsewhere.
  In this case, huffpig didn't actually say content. He said data.
  It's actually worse, because it dehumanizes everyone on reddit, via that the data is our only value to him.
  So, fuck huffpig
  
  I think the word "data" also supports the theory that this is actually about training data for LLMs rather than ad revenue. If it was actually about 3rd party apps, then why not just require all apps to feed the ads? But according to the Apollo developer, there wasn't even a way to fetch the ads through the API.
  I think spez saw what OpenAI/Microsoft were accomplishing using parsed data and got dollar signs in his eyes. The irony is that OpenAI probably already ripped every comment off Reddit up until now, and don't really need more going forward.
- By that logic I guess he will have to start paying redditors for their content.
  
  I mean, it's only fair.
  
  They really should be paying, all of these data companies should. No other business gets away with not paying for the materials they use to make their product. You can't build and sell a car without paying for the nuts and bolts.
  Data companies like Facebook and Google keep telling us the data we give them has no value, yet they use that data they collect for free and sell for pure profit to become some of the wealthiest businesses in the world.
- Why not post the whole sub-section:
  5. Your Content
  The Services may contain information, text, links, graphics, photos, videos, audio, streams, or other materials (“Content”), including Content created with or submitted to the Services by you or through your Account (“Your Content”). We take no responsibility for and we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, support, or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any of Your Content.
  By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. Because you alone are responsible for Your Content, you may expose yourself to liability if you post or share Content without all necessary rights.
  You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content:
  When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
  Any ideas, suggestions, and feedback about Reddit or our Services that you provide to us are entirely voluntary, and you agree that Reddit may use such ideas, suggestions, and feedback without compensation or obligation to you.
  Although we have no obligation to screen, edit, or monitor Your Content, we may, in our sole discretion, delete or remove Your Content at any time and for any reason, including for violating these Terms, violating our Content Policy, or if you otherwise create or are likely to create liability for us.
  
  I didn't post it all because (1) it's long and most of it isn't directly pertinent, and (2) this is the Web, we have hyperlinks. :)

"There is nothing special about Reddit except its community and the content the community created."
This is the fundamental truth that rules all others.
- It used to just be a regular forum for people to post and discuss. It was special because of the upvote/downvote karma system. The user count got money hungry people's attention, it went corporate and it became a place to take in revenue.
  Now people have learned from it, and used it to create their own forums based on the structure of Reddit.
  The thing that made Reddit special was it was everything you wanted all in one place, instead of having multiple forums on multiple different websites for multiple different interests, it was all on Reddit.
  Now we have the fediverse, it's multiple different websites, that follow the same principles, and they all work harmoniously with one another.
  Just like nature finds a way, genuine humanity finds way too, even on the internet.

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.
  
  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.

I’d hate to see the community I helped build be destroyed. However, I will love watching the folks that made it great join the federation! Here’s to us!
- I feel like Reddit has been teetering for a while.
  It’s been a great move. I have been back to Reddit a couple times since and the anger is striking after being here for a bit.

Great article, except super cringe at the end suggesting Beehaw specifically and not saying "Lemmy" or something to indicate it is part of a wider service.
Unless Reddit reverses course ... a new site, such as the user-funded Beehaw ... will take its place.
- Honestly kind of a hilarious misunderstanding of Lemmy too. Beehaw will never replace reddit because they explicitly do not want to and have already taken aggressive steps to make sure that they don't (i.e. detailed application requirements and defederating multiple instances).
  
  The application requirements are merely a way to manage growth and keep bots out. Defederation is also an essential management tool that all major instances are utilising. Both of these are being used to restrict bots and trolling.
- Because people keep unintentionally hyping up Beehaw, they do not understand that Beehaw is nothing special and that everyone would be better off unsubscribing from its communities to let it be its own island since it doesn't like the whole federation concept anyway (at least not since it finished exploiting it to grow to its current user count). I already unsubscribed from all their communities after their dick move.
  
  I was reading these comments on beehaw yesterday defending the defederation from shitjustworks because of T_D sub with like 10 subscribers and I was already getting a little worried thinking what I've gotten myself into. Glad to see the view on this on other instances seems a bit more balanced and reasonable. Beehaw seems toxic as hell.
  
  I'm kinda out of the loop here, but what happened to beehaw? What did I miss out on?
  
  Defederating is literally a part and feature of the fediverse.
  
  Nothing of value was lost. Let the idiots who think defederation and banning is the answer to everything wall themselves off
  
  The biggest mistake* Mastodon made was that they promoted "Mastodon" instead of a specific instance.
  I think they're absolutely right to just pick an instance and recommend that, or if that instance doesn't work, try this other one. Which instance they pick is not what I care about more than just picking some specific instance. Beehaw may or may not have been the best choice, but I'm glad they picked one.
  *I understand why Mastodon wanted to be neutral, but it was horrible for onboarding people.

I wonder who owns the content posted on Lemmy. I haven’t seen it explicitly called out as Creative Commons or any other license.
- Massively underrated comment. I know legalese isn't going to be super popular around here, but we can still clarify & enshrine some fundamenatl values here to shore off corporate interests, in the same spirit as copy left. Just because creative Commons are common, and GDPR protects things implicitly (albeit completely untested--perhaps even problematic), that doesn't mean they don't warrant mention and protection.
  
  GDPR protects things implicitly (albeit completely untested–perhaps even problematic)
  I will grab my popcorn the first time someone seriously tries to pursue a GDPR erasure request for their fediverse content. I don't think it's even possible to honor such a request in theory, let alone in practice, given that nodes can come and go from the network and when they go, they could easily keep their local copies of everything.
- Technically every instance should have it's own T&C. I believe over on feddit.de they had a disclaimer somewhere.
  
  Speaking of, how are regulators / governments going to deal with Lemmy? Virtually all existing legislation is intended to deal with centralized stuff run by companies, not federalized. By some regards, there may be actual legal issues with the current setup.
  Lemmy by its nature is unlikely to ever face the scrutiny that corporate-owned platforms do, but that doesn't mean we should be unprepared.
  Edit: ...virtually all existing legislation...

Another relevant quote from the article:
There is nothing special about Reddit except its community and the content the community created. Its software is trivial. Unless Reddit reverses course, Reddit will join Digg, MySpace, and LiveJournal in the dustbin of social network history, and a new site, such as the user-funded Beehaw, or an old one, such as Digg, will take its place.
I would actually revise that to "Its software is trivial, and in some respects notably lacking."

the reality that all of Reddit’s content has been given to it for free by its millions of users
Anyone with a moral compass (and business sense) would have devised a token equity plan to appease 3rd parties and mods. Oh well -- thanks for all the new users, spez. see you on myspace.

positively surprised by general news coverage of this whole thing
- To be fair, much of the modern news cycle comes from Reddit. When I worked as a tech journalist years ago, we had half a dozen bots watching relevant subs and alerting us to breaking news. We'd clean it up, fact-check, call sources for comment, and do all the "journalistic" stuff you'd expect, just like with any other story, but Reddit was absolutely part of our workflow. You've got to look for news wherever the news is happening, be that a press release, a leak on twitter, or a convo on Reddit, and frequently it happened to be Reddit.
  These days you even have tictokers cutting out the middleman and straight-up reading r/AmITheAsshole posts over Minecraft footage for views. Is it any surprise that news sites are commenting on their content firehose being turned off?
- It kind of makes sense. Reddit is one of the most visited websites in the world. It has more DAUs than Twitter.

Interesting that they name drop Beehaw. Lemmy.world is much bigger.
- But people on beehaw do bee nice

Oh no... anyways.

I'm here to watch the collapse. And when I see Spez on the side of the street, begging for change because greed cost him his site and his credibility, I'll unzip my pants and top off his alms cup with hot, frothy piss.
- Spez can upvote deez nuts
- He does remind me of Rickety Cricket.
- Don't waste the effort to cross the street. He's probably into water sports and you'd just turn him on.

I just blanked 4200 posts of MY CONTENT.
The fuck is spez trying to do charging me for my own work.
- How did you do it? I've heard of some attempts and people said that their posts were restored shortly after so I'm unsure on how to proceed
  
  The Reddit API has had (for about 2 years now AFAIK) a soft rate limit of 1 edit per 5 seconds.
  Original PowerDeleteSuite doesn't respect that, so most edits get silently dropped.
  I ran this fork, which runs only 1 per 5 seconds. Had to leave a browser tab open for a few hours, but it worked.
  I first did a 'dry run' to capture all my content to a CSV file (no rate limit), then overwrote every single comment with "[ Deleted to protest Reddit API changes ]"

~~in danger of~~
in the middle of
fixed that for you

I don't think the loss of moderators will be a huge problem. I suspect mods actually drove people away from Reddit rather than retaining them.
What is an existential threat for Reddit is the emergence of competing platforms.
- Moderators are just users of reddit. Reddit keeps trying to drive a wedge between users and mods, but really the problem mods were always the powermods that reddit supported and often installed on major subreddits.
  As usual, the problem is class. Mods are middle class, users are working class. These two groups can easily get along just fine. It's the rulers (admin) and upper class (mods) who cause all the problems in reddit society.
  
  Definitely. A lot of Reddit mods, or the “landed gentry”, are mods because they likely made the sun because they had a niche interest they were carving out a forum for.
  In the same groups a found a lot of the mods were people who participated in the community a lot. And then the others that participated were the first to get added to the mod list.
  Most of the time on most of the subreddits that aren’t defaults and don’t regularly hit the front page the mods are just users who love that particular subject, idea, whatever.
- Have you ever visited an unmoderated sub? Without moderators, reddit would turn to shit instantly.

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