Where Reddit differs among its tech peers is in its striking dependence on its user base to keep things operational. Reddit must keep its users satisfied and its efforts to expand its limited (and already unpopular) advertising formats could send users packing. 98% of Reddit’s revenue is made up of advertising income. And of that, 26% came from just 10 ad clients in 2023. Investors will be watching this closely and expect more diversity sooner rather than later
The wild thing about last summer was it revealing how remarkably stable their unpaid labor pool is. Take away their tools, mock them in the national press and on the site, and the worst most of them will do is participate in a perfunctory protest. They weren’t willing to go to war or even organize in a meaningful manner.
It makes me think of how nationalism has sent millions to their deaths. Who needs money? People will put themselves through hell just to protect an identity.
The users haven’t left, that’s for sure, but didn’t the mods of most of the larger subs (something like 48/50 I thought?) leave? Some unwillingly actually…
But if you mean the enormously long tail of smaller subs, then yeah, that happened, fo sho.
Yeah, mostly in terms of the day-to-day operations of the site remaining largely business as usual, at least in terms of what matters to corporate. Plenty of impotent response abounded, too. For example, one of the largest subreddits, /r/games, never even joined the 48-hour blackout.
There’s an argument to be made that content quality is down, but that’s a subjective measure, and I’m not even going to try to unpack my own personal bias on that front given I moved here because of this in the first place.
I stayed awhile longer, but prepped for the worse that came yesterday.
Honestly, I think it did impact the content objectively for the worse. Now that I’m fully moved into Lemmy I’m recognizing that a bunch of subreddits basically declined into irrelevance after the blackout (and I’m only remembering them as I try to recreate my subscription list here).
And it kinda affected the vibe of the front page. As of now, I’d describe current reddit as very meta-naval gazing. So many of the posts are basically rival subreddits going “nuh-uh” and “yuh-huh” to each other. There may also be a new algo in use that’s basically encouraging fights between subreddits?
Edit: I should clarify, I think there’s objectively less actual content with now the literal same content being posted multiple times but with different takes on it.
I was mostly in the niche subreddits anyway, and it’s frustrating that Reddit is essentially still the only searchable website for non-sponsored content in hundreds (if not thousands) of niches. Quality in my niches is still the same ebb and flow that it was.
There still are questions of validity, though. Message boards like Reddit haven’t really had their payola/Gamergate/astroturfed-FCC-comments moment yet.
I’m not sure how much moderators could even do.
I was actually there so my view of events is pretty biased, but watching mods get removed from their position and replaced with more complying people made me think that the power dynamic was insurmountable. Regardless of how much free labor they perform, moderators don’t actually get bargaining power in return, Reddit employees untimately are above them to defend the company’s interests. Realistically, the function of a Reddit mod is to spare admins the grunt work of ground-level moderation decisions.