Some of these include: emojis in comments, gifs in comments, special "membership only" threads with more features to come in the future. Yeah... Edit, an admin replied...
Some of these include: emojis in comments, gifs in comments, special "membership only" threads with more features to come in the future.
This is an experiment we're running within r/fortnitebr only. It is currently not available in other subreddits. While the URL is editable to make it appear like this experiment is available in other subreddits, that is not intended and we're working on a fix. This is an experiment only in r/fortnitebr and has not been expanded to other subreddits.
Existing features of flair, emojis, and other customizations are still free and are not behind any paywalls. Subscribers to the experiment will receive special badges and emojis in comments, but access to flair and other emojis remain open to everyone, subscriber or no.
EDIT: The fix to the subscription page is rolled out. It only works for the FortniteBR URL now.
Didn't really answer anything or help ease anything.
The Facebookization continues... Yeesh. Embedded gifs in comments is just a terrible idea. I'd much rather they adopted something similar to RES's expandable link option for photos/gifs/vids.
The Facebookization continues... Yeesh. Embedded gifs in comments is just a terrible idea. I'd much rather they adopted something similar to RES's expandable link option for photos/gifs/vids.
So the customer service for a paid subscription is outsourced to unpaid volunteers who are under no obligation to honor the contract agreement, who have the unilateral power to cancel it at any time, and who are completely unaccountable to anyone except the people who volunteered earlier than they did.
This website has been operating on unpaid labor for far too long and now the admins have taken this volunteer labor for granted to the extent that they're charging money for it. Reddit's days are numbered.
Agreed. The change is incredibly asinine especially when Reddit themselves won't intervene in any matters of moderators abusing their power. In fact, the last and only time I recall Reddit's...
Agreed. The change is incredibly asinine especially when Reddit themselves won't intervene in any matters of moderators abusing their power. In fact, the last and only time I recall Reddit's admins demodding someone was when Nitesmoke went on a temper tantrum over five years ago because he couldn't play WoW due to expansion launch related server issues, then locked down r/wow in protest. And I'm sure that part of this was due to Blizzard themselves intervening - perhaps by threatening to pull ads from the site.
Over on Reddit, all you have to do is merely contribute to a controversial subreddit like KotakuInAction, the_donald or TheRedPill and you will be labelled a racist bigot and permanently banned from dozens of subreddits by an account trawling bot. Some of the subs that enforce such an autoban system are default subs too.
because they will. reddit is one of the largest websites in the world, so there are plenty of people who will absolutely part with their money for this in the same way that people used to part...
If Reddit can't even be bothered to hold their own unpaid volunteer mods accountable and enforce their own mod guidelines, how the actual crap do they expect their users to pay $5 per subreddit for emoji and gif support?
because they will. reddit is one of the largest websites in the world, so there are plenty of people who will absolutely part with their money for this in the same way that people used to part with their money for discord nitro when the only perks for $5/mo were changing your tag and getting global access to emotes and not access to a fairly large game store.
Reading all those things and seeing the features felt so surreal. It's like reddit turning into twitch chat. With these emotes and icons. I wonder what they'll use that money for.
Reading all those things and seeing the features felt so surreal. It's like reddit turning into twitch chat. With these emotes and icons. I wonder what they'll use that money for.
They don't have the actual gifs available yet, but you can see the large, animated emoji already in the announcement thread in /r/FortniteBR (you have to be on the redesign):...
Seems they are 110% committed to destroying the Reddit platform. I sent out a couple of my invites to old timers on Reddit today. Does anyone know how long until Tildes drops the invitation...
Seems they are 110% committed to destroying the Reddit platform. I sent out a couple of my invites to old timers on Reddit today. Does anyone know how long until Tildes drops the invitation requirement to join
It's been discussed a lot, I believe the most recent thread is here. Short version: not anytime soon, because we want to have the trust system in place and working before the floodgates open.
Does anyone know how long until Tildes drops the invitation requirement to join
It's been discussed a lot, I believe the most recent thread is here.
Short version: not anytime soon, because we want to have the trust system in place and working before the floodgates open.
To add to the fact that I've never seen a sudden influx of users be a good thing. I was on reddit before the Digg invasion and been there for every sudden surge of users since and while there are...
To add to the fact that I've never seen a sudden influx of users be a good thing. I was on reddit before the Digg invasion and been there for every sudden surge of users since and while there are certainly some better areas of reddit that didn't exist prior, I've yet to witness any migration of users that was a net positive.
There's a thread about this in /r/ModSupport, not exactly getting a warm reception: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/c3sdnj/reddit_has_added_a_special_membership_for/
What's the point in Tildes being a lifeboat from Reddit if people are going to regress to Reddit-style comments? The best thing Tildes can do as a platform is ignore Reddit.
What's the point in Tildes being a lifeboat from Reddit if people are going to regress to Reddit-style comments? The best thing Tildes can do as a platform is ignore Reddit.
But Tildes isn't intended to be a lifeboat from Reddit. That's not Tildes' goal. We're an internet forum with a different vision than Reddit. That might attract some people from Reddit, but that's...
But Tildes isn't intended to be a lifeboat from Reddit. That's not Tildes' goal. We're an internet forum with a different vision than Reddit. That might attract some people from Reddit, but that's not the primary goal here.
As for people "regressing to Reddit-style comments", that should be handled by Tildes' future moderation system - which is why Tildes is likely to remain invite-only until after that moderation system is in place.
I mostly lurk these days, but I just wanted to drop a note here to echo this. Tildes isn't really set up just yet for the scale that a full-scale influx from reddit could provide. Getting the...
I mostly lurk these days, but I just wanted to drop a note here to echo this. Tildes isn't really set up just yet for the scale that a full-scale influx from reddit could provide. Getting the place more attention because reddit decided to do something absolutely at odds with its users' expectations is fine, but serving as a replacement isn't really the goal here.
Bit late here but that thread lead me here: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/c3kgck/reddit_is_moving_forward_with_a_monetizing_of/ Monetisation of voting. Now there's a financial...
Yup. Especially since they chose to test it on a gaming sub with the youngest demographic possible. That has to be the easiest group of people to convince this is worth spending money on.
Worst thing is that it's going to be successful.
Yup. Especially since they chose to test it on a gaming sub with the youngest demographic possible. That has to be the easiest group of people to convince this is worth spending money on.
Yep. If it isn't successful or well received there, it probably won't be anywhere. So if we're not really concerned with the ethics of preying on more impressionable redditors, it makes sense as a...
Yep. If it isn't successful or well received there, it probably won't be anywhere. So if we're not really concerned with the ethics of preying on more impressionable redditors, it makes sense as a proof of concept.
Meanwhile, it'll look good to investors, because it will show growth potential.
I love how the line about exclusive threads says something to the effect of "enjoy high quality discussion with other members as dedicated as you" but all the features are about GIFs, memes and...
I love how the line about exclusive threads says something to the effect of "enjoy high quality discussion with other members as dedicated as you" but all the features are about GIFs, memes and emoji. I wonder if we're going to start seeing a big influx of users into Tildes...
Ooooh, wow, Reddit is going downhill fast. This bit in particular is a shame, because it could've been done in an effort to move away from an ad-based monetization model and the issues that model...
Ooooh, wow, Reddit is going downhill fast. This bit in particular is a shame, because it could've been done in an effort to move away from an ad-based monetization model and the issues that model brought, but I think it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll keep the ads anyway, especially seeing how badly implemented this is looking.
They definitely won't be moving away from ads. They've hired a ton of ad sales people and most of their recent blog posts focus on something ad-related, like this one about hiring a lot of...
“We’re in the ads business. It’s funny because when we started Reddit, we didn’t want to be in the ads business.
They're tinkering around with some other experiments, but it's clear that advertising is their main plan. User-funded just isn't feasible any more when you've taken over $500M in VC that you've got to show those investors a return on.
They should have moved away from ads and went for donations and subscriptions (donate to subreddit's favorite charity and Reddit keeps a 1% cut to keep the site running or whatever). With their...
They should have moved away from ads and went for donations and subscriptions (donate to subreddit's favorite charity and Reddit keeps a 1% cut to keep the site running or whatever). With their terrible redesign I now regret buying Reddit Gold.
Wait, I just realised, I've not seen anything about this subscription removing ads. If anything, it would make sense. Less chance advertisers will be placed next to content they don't want to be...
Wait, I just realised, I've not seen anything about this subscription removing ads.
If anything, it would make sense. Less chance advertisers will be placed next to content they don't want to be seen as supporting - we've seen what happened on YouTube. Clearly all they consider is maximum possible profit at any cost
Reddit sure seems to be throwing a lot of monetization ideas against the wall here. This sub membership, the weird karma to crypto thing, the special nba gildings, the user tip jar. None of which...
Reddit sure seems to be throwing a lot of monetization ideas against the wall here. This sub membership, the weird karma to crypto thing, the special nba gildings, the user tip jar. None of which have been deployed at a large scale.
Reddit doesn't want that because it would be very costly and they probably aren't financially sustainable as it is. Also, they have gotten away with it this long for free. Reddit isn't like other...
Reddit doesn't want that because it would be very costly and they probably aren't financially sustainable as it is. Also, they have gotten away with it this long for free.
Reddit isn't like other social media, because Reddit has strong sub communities. Reddit is sub communities. The hobbyist mods that customize subs, enforce sub rules, and hand out invites are also the ones that enforce site rules. Other sites couldn't begin to do this because most consist mainly of user posts that are not in a sub community.
Bringing in these hobbyist mods as professional mods is, as far as I know, unprecedented. It would be full of issues that businesses haven't even encountered before to just start hiring people off a social media site in large numbers. Even if it worked, now you are paying people to enforce weird community rules. How would even bring a new hire into that? Oh this is /r/chairsunderwater, if the chair isn't full in the water it needs to be marked NSFW. Oh this /r/me_irl, the rules say no upvote memes, but they are completely okay.
This post barely scratches the tip of this iceberg of issues.
Reddit could have a team of site moderators that only enforce site rules, but even that would struggle to understand the context of different subs and likely crush many subs and cause much uproar.
Compare it to non tech based businesses. They absolutely hire people who are very involved in their communities. If you go to a gym, it's not usually not run by people who know nothing about...
Compare it to non tech based businesses. They absolutely hire people who are very involved in their communities. If you go to a gym, it's not usually not run by people who know nothing about fitness. This approach may be unprecedented in silicon valley, but not in business as a whole.
And maybe I wasn't clear, you don't hire random people to mod /r/chairsunderwater. You hire people who are already involved in that community, so they are familiar with how it should be run. That's pretty much how volunteer mods are currently chosen anyway.
There are tons of ways they could hire mods and still keep the communities.
Paying people hasn’t worked out great either. They farm the role out to low wage countries and it’s being done by people who aren’t always native English speakers and may not have the full...
Paying people hasn’t worked out great either. They farm the role out to low wage countries and it’s being done by people who aren’t always native English speakers and may not have the full cultural context necessary to properly identify things like harassment, threats, racism, misogyny, etc. This is one of the big reasons, among many, that moderation on Twitter sucks so much.
The NBA gildings thing really confused me when I first encountered it, then I realized how genius it is. I suppose that the silver/gold/platinum system worked super well, and Reddit decided to...
The NBA gildings thing really confused me when I first encountered it, then I realized how genius it is. I suppose that the silver/gold/platinum system worked super well, and Reddit decided to push it a little bit more.
Who would use the redesign ever until they kill old reddit? All the subreddits look exactly the same in the redesign, it really feels like they want it to be more like Facebook. The moment they...
Who would use the redesign ever until they kill old reddit? All the subreddits look exactly the same in the redesign, it really feels like they want it to be more like Facebook. The moment they kill old reddit I am leaving for good, I know that I am probably in the minority, because most people will just roll with it.... I hope I will actually follow through with it when it happens haha.
Outside of r/apple, I have no use for Reddit anymore. Tildes has been surprisingly effective at replacing my need to keep up with news, stories, and community. It's great! More people should try it.
Outside of r/apple, I have no use for Reddit anymore. Tildes has been surprisingly effective at replacing my need to keep up with news, stories, and community. It's great! More people should try it.
I gave up on reddit before I even found Tildes. The hobbyist subs are full of extremely generic advice that gets repeated over and over again. The political subs are absolute trash where anything...
I gave up on reddit before I even found Tildes. The hobbyist subs are full of extremely generic advice that gets repeated over and over again. The political subs are absolute trash where anything contrary to the hivemind is downvoted and everyone is trying to propagandize to everyone else. The meme subs are just meta-commentary on being a meme sub. Nothing is actually edifying anymore. It used to have some balance of low effort “candy” and more interesting “nutrition.” It’s all out of whack now where it’s entirely candy and thinly veiled ads.
I've uninstalled my Reddit app from my phone. I sometimes miss some of the niche subreddits I subscribed to so I'll sometimes use the mobile site but otherwise Tildes scratches that news and...
I've uninstalled my Reddit app from my phone. I sometimes miss some of the niche subreddits I subscribed to so I'll sometimes use the mobile site but otherwise Tildes scratches that news and community itch!
Not everyone sees that as a bad thing. I don't use the redesign for other reasons, but I've had custom subreddit styles disabled for the vast majority of the time I've had a reddit account.
All the subreddits look exactly the same in the redesign...
Not everyone sees that as a bad thing. I don't use the redesign for other reasons, but I've had custom subreddit styles disabled for the vast majority of the time I've had a reddit account.
Weeks/months of work poured into old.reddit can be instantly bought by shelling out $$$. What a fucking joke. And the Redesign still looks shit except for it's mobile app integration. Also btw,...
Weeks/months of work poured into old.reddit can be instantly bought by shelling out $$$. What a fucking joke. And the Redesign still looks shit except for it's mobile app integration. Also btw, there is still no copy paste feature for text-based post one the official mobile app.
I left reddit thinking it would go downhill, but holy fuck not this fast. And the worst part is while we say reddit is "dying" its growing at an alarming rate, into a monster. The sort of monster...
I left reddit thinking it would go downhill, but holy fuck not this fast.
And the worst part is while we say reddit is "dying" its growing at an alarming rate, into a monster. The sort of monster that at one point reddit was firmly against.
Reddit has learned the harsh reality that it is in fact subservient to its shareholders and advertisers. Advertisers had clearly threatened to pull their support from Reddit in the past based on...
Reddit has learned the harsh reality that it is in fact subservient to its shareholders and advertisers. Advertisers had clearly threatened to pull their support from Reddit in the past based on the site's habit of quarantining and banning entire swathes of subreddits, whereas shareholders want to shed Reddit's image for hosting shady and questionable content.
So why is Reddit now making a heavy push to pander towards advertisers? I wouldn't be surprised if it was because the site wasn't making money. Thing is I can't verify this because despite Reddit's size and popularity, I cannot find any figures on Reddit Inc's actual financial performance. The problem is that monetisation done wrong (as with this case) could very well risk driving Reddit into a Digg 4.0 situation.
I also wouldn't be surprised if their shift was due to shareholder pressure. One of Reddit's ex-CEOs, Yishan Wong previously commented that he felt his successor Ellen Pao was thrown under a bus by management. If what he says is true, this would explain a lot of things like Victoria's unfair firing and Reddit's later waves of censorship under Steve Huffman. The huge irony in all of this is that the community hated on 'Chairman Pao' (as she was called) for censorship when she actually tried to resist shareholder pressure to sanitise the site. In fact, the only two major subs she really closed were r/thefappening (because involuntary porn) and r/fatpeoplehate.
Also, not to go offtopic but is that username a Katawa Shoujo reference?
"Upgrade to SILVER level and you can reduce your posting wait time from thirty minutes to a mere five, or upgrade to GOLD to remove the wait time completely! And remember, SILVER tier subscribers...
"Upgrade to SILVER level and you can reduce your posting wait time from thirty minutes to a mere five, or upgrade to GOLD to remove the wait time completely! And remember, SILVER tier subscribers get one Oblivion Vote™ per month, while GOLD tier subscribers get three!"
This seems like the end of days, but I think this will only impact a handful of subs. They still need traffic to view their ads, etc. With my subs, there's no way in hell I'll ever have any...
This seems like the end of days, but I think this will only impact a handful of subs. They still need traffic to view their ads, etc. With my subs, there's no way in hell I'll ever have any special tiers. It just sounds like more mod-work (organizing special content, etc.)
I can't blame them for trying something like this out. Maybe they'll eventually take a stab at a Patreon-like setup for subs where content creators can actually make a buck.
I never subscribed to Reddit Gold back in the old days because the subscription service barely offered any new features. But with Reddit's further descent into censorship and now with the owners...
I never subscribed to Reddit Gold back in the old days because the subscription service barely offered any new features. But with Reddit's further descent into censorship and now with the owners billing users $5 per account per subreddit for access to exclusive gifs, emojis and flairs, I definitely don't want to financially support Reddit now.
They could have given Reddit Premium users more useful features like being able to search/browse beyond 1,000 results, being able to change your username, being able to post anonymously, etc. Instead we're being packaged and sold features that users have hacked into the site with custom CSS scripts that the admins are now undoing with their site redesign.
If anything, depending on how they roll out some of these new features, I can see this leading to the demise of Reddit. The question is what will replace it: Voat? Tildes? Snapzu? Gab? Something new entirely that is both decentralised and run as a complete anarchy?
I wouldn't be too surprised if something based on matrix/mastodon (more likely the latter) pops up - for example, a subreddit mod could spin up a mastodon server, and invite their community to...
I wouldn't be too surprised if something based on matrix/mastodon (more likely the latter) pops up - for example, a subreddit mod could spin up a mastodon server, and invite their community to come join them there. If enough communities do this, someone could create a central instance that aggregates posts from all other instances like an /r/all surrogate (disclaimer: I don't know much about mastodon and have no idea if this is possible).
As an afterthought, this could also create some separate/competing 'central' instances, i.e. one that doesn't include the former /r/t_d's content and one that does. Could also lead to some good things though, with certain instances with topics grouped together for people just interested in that topic (just books, just news, just gaming, etc.).
This has already been happening, just not with Matrix or Mastodon in particular. r/TheRedPill already host subreddit content on an external site in the event that Reddit ever shut down the...
This has already been happening, just not with Matrix or Mastodon in particular. r/TheRedPill already host subreddit content on an external site in the event that Reddit ever shut down the subreddit, which is increasingly likely given the subreddit's quarantine.
Also, the mods of the now banned r/WatchPeopleDie migrated over to SaidIt temporarily while they work on creating a new website dedicated solely to showcasing morbid content.
Decentralised social networking platforms like Matrix, Mastodon and Diaspora could certainly make this easier to pull off.
Huh, interesting to know. I hadn't heard of saidit before, but a quick glance shows it seems to be similar to early voat (in that the UI is old reddit, possibly derived from older source code?),...
Huh, interesting to know. I hadn't heard of saidit before, but a quick glance shows it seems to be similar to early voat (in that the UI is old reddit, possibly derived from older source code?), and the content doesn't look as overtly, for lack of a better word, 'unappealing' voat's front page does. Is it a recent creation or has it been around for a while?
This is especially egregious given that they're rolling it out on the Fortnite subreddit. That subreddit is almost certainly made up mostly of children, and was probably chosen because of how...
This is especially egregious given that they're rolling it out on the Fortnite subreddit. That subreddit is almost certainly made up mostly of children, and was probably chosen because of how infamous Fortnite is for its microtransactions.
I would just slap a yearly $5 fee for having an account and be done with it (with a 3 months trial period). I don't know if that would be enough revenue though.
I would just slap a yearly $5 fee for having an account and be done with it (with a 3 months trial period). I don't know if that would be enough revenue though.
Flashy icons next to usernames. Might make people pay more attention to these comments even if they don't realise - could be bad for discussion if people prejudge a comment by these icons....
Flashy icons next to usernames. Might make people pay more attention to these comments even if they don't realise - could be bad for discussion if people prejudge a comment by these icons. Effectively users can pay to make their viewpoint more visible - almost as if it's an endorsement. Locking discussions behind a paywall as well. Don't like it - and it's on a per subreddit basis!
I get they have to make money somehow - that's how the company works - but everything about this is just bad. Perfect choice of audience for the test though.
Something that's interesting to me about that thread is that goldf1sh is, as always, spamming it with comments that are so close, but miss the mark by just a bit of crazy.
Something that's interesting to me about that thread is that goldf1sh is, as always, spamming it with comments that are so close, but miss the mark by just a bit of crazy.
Some of these include: emojis in comments, gifs in comments, special "membership only" threads with more features to come in the future.
Yeah...
Edit, an admin replied
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/c3sdnj/reddit_has_added_a_special_membership_for/
Didn't really answer anything or help ease anything.
The Facebookization continues... Yeesh. Embedded gifs in comments is just a terrible idea. I'd much rather they adopted something similar to RES's expandable link option for photos/gifs/vids.
Off topic: What's RES?
Reddit Enhancement Suite (aka the only way to make reddit tolerable)
This comment pretty much summarized it up for me:
Agreed. The change is incredibly asinine especially when Reddit themselves won't intervene in any matters of moderators abusing their power. In fact, the last and only time I recall Reddit's admins demodding someone was when Nitesmoke went on a temper tantrum over five years ago because he couldn't play WoW due to expansion launch related server issues, then locked down r/wow in protest. And I'm sure that part of this was due to Blizzard themselves intervening - perhaps by threatening to pull ads from the site.
Over on Reddit, all you have to do is merely contribute to a controversial subreddit like KotakuInAction, the_donald or TheRedPill and you will be labelled a racist bigot and permanently banned from dozens of subreddits by an account trawling bot. Some of the subs that enforce such an autoban system are default subs too.
And don't even get me started on the cavalcade of mod power abuses that get posted to r/SubredditCancer on a near daily basis. On the subject of r/FortniteBR specifically, here is an ex-mod's account of corruption within the mod team that made the SRC frontpage earlier this week. Y'know, ten years ago Reddit wouldn't have stood for paid shills to be top mods and would have done something about this. Now it feels like mods are free to do shady business ventures on the side.
If Reddit can't even be bothered to hold their own unpaid volunteer mods accountable and enforce their own mod guidelines, how the actual crap do they expect their users to pay $5 per subreddit for emoji and gif support?
because they will. reddit is one of the largest websites in the world, so there are plenty of people who will absolutely part with their money for this in the same way that people used to part with their money for discord nitro when the only perks for $5/mo were changing your tag and getting global access to emotes and not access to a fairly large game store.
I completely agree with the sentiment that Reddit's days are numbered.. or rather that it should be numbered.
That is sad tho. I really like subs like r/languagelearning or r/emacs. But, frankly, shit leaks even into them. Weird trolls appear even in r/emacs.
Reading all those things and seeing the features felt so surreal. It's like reddit turning into twitch chat. With these emotes and icons. I wonder what they'll use that money for.
Golden parachutes for a select few employees after the ReDiggification.
They don't have the actual gifs available yet, but you can see the large, animated emoji already in the announcement thread in /r/FortniteBR (you have to be on the redesign): https://new.reddit.com/r/FortNiteBR/comments/bdiwaa/something_new_for_rfortnitebr/?sort=new#t1_ernzp79
It's going to be awful to have comment threads full of that kind of shit.
Yeah, I hope RES introduces some way to minimise them by default, just like it currently handles gifs.
Seems they are 110% committed to destroying the Reddit platform. I sent out a couple of my invites to old timers on Reddit today. Does anyone know how long until Tildes drops the invitation requirement to join
It's been discussed a lot, I believe the most recent thread is here.
Short version: not anytime soon, because we want to have the trust system in place and working before the floodgates open.
To add to the fact that I've never seen a sudden influx of users be a good thing. I was on reddit before the Digg invasion and been there for every sudden surge of users since and while there are certainly some better areas of reddit that didn't exist prior, I've yet to witness any migration of users that was a net positive.
There's a thread about this in /r/ModSupport, not exactly getting a warm reception: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/c3sdnj/reddit_has_added_a_special_membership_for/
I imagine we'll be getting an influx of users here again. I already spotted a few others promoting tildes. I did that too.
What's the point in Tildes being a lifeboat from Reddit if people are going to regress to Reddit-style comments? The best thing Tildes can do as a platform is ignore Reddit.
But Tildes isn't intended to be a lifeboat from Reddit. That's not Tildes' goal. We're an internet forum with a different vision than Reddit. That might attract some people from Reddit, but that's not the primary goal here.
As for people "regressing to Reddit-style comments", that should be handled by Tildes' future moderation system - which is why Tildes is likely to remain invite-only until after that moderation system is in place.
I never said it was intended to be that. I'm taking on that hypothetical position to gripe about some of the comments in this thread.
I missed that you were talking hypothetically.
I mostly lurk these days, but I just wanted to drop a note here to echo this. Tildes isn't really set up just yet for the scale that a full-scale influx from reddit could provide. Getting the place more attention because reddit decided to do something absolutely at odds with its users' expectations is fine, but serving as a replacement isn't really the goal here.
Bit late here but that thread lead me here: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/c3kgck/reddit_is_moving_forward_with_a_monetizing_of/
Monetisation of voting. Now there's a financial incentive to farm karma using bots! Fantastic!
Also apparently they took loads of money, cancelled some project and kept the money https://reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/c3sdnj/reddit_has_added_a_special_membership_for/erxhe2j?context=3
Remove features by doing a redesign then make people pay for them. Genius.
Worst thing is that it's going to be successful.
Yup. Especially since they chose to test it on a gaming sub with the youngest demographic possible. That has to be the easiest group of people to convince this is worth spending money on.
Yep. If it isn't successful or well received there, it probably won't be anywhere. So if we're not really concerned with the ethics of preying on more impressionable redditors, it makes sense as a proof of concept.
Meanwhile, it'll look good to investors, because it will show growth potential.
Nope. Reddit has made it crystal clear they have zero morals and could not care less about using children for profit.
I love how the line about exclusive threads says something to the effect of "enjoy high quality discussion with other members as dedicated as you" but all the features are about GIFs, memes and emoji. I wonder if we're going to start seeing a big influx of users into Tildes...
Thankfully no since it's still invite only.
Ooooh, wow, Reddit is going downhill fast. This bit in particular is a shame, because it could've been done in an effort to move away from an ad-based monetization model and the issues that model brought, but I think it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll keep the ads anyway, especially seeing how badly implemented this is looking.
They definitely won't be moving away from ads. They've hired a ton of ad sales people and most of their recent blog posts focus on something ad-related, like this one about hiring a lot of advertising-related people in NYC.
Someone on reddit linked to this interview with Steve from last week too, where he's explicit about it:
They're tinkering around with some other experiments, but it's clear that advertising is their main plan. User-funded just isn't feasible any more when you've taken over $500M in VC that you've got to show those investors a return on.
They should have moved away from ads and went for donations and subscriptions (donate to subreddit's favorite charity and Reddit keeps a 1% cut to keep the site running or whatever). With their terrible redesign I now regret buying Reddit Gold.
Wait, I just realised, I've not seen anything about this subscription removing ads.
If anything, it would make sense. Less chance advertisers will be placed next to content they don't want to be seen as supporting - we've seen what happened on YouTube. Clearly all they consider is maximum possible profit at any cost
Reddit sure seems to be throwing a lot of monetization ideas against the wall here. This sub membership, the weird karma to crypto thing, the special nba gildings, the user tip jar. None of which have been deployed at a large scale.
That sounds like a way to pay moderators.
If you really want to pay mods, how about you just hire them as actual employees, like every other social media site does?
Reddit doesn't want that because it would be very costly and they probably aren't financially sustainable as it is. Also, they have gotten away with it this long for free.
Reddit isn't like other social media, because Reddit has strong sub communities. Reddit is sub communities. The hobbyist mods that customize subs, enforce sub rules, and hand out invites are also the ones that enforce site rules. Other sites couldn't begin to do this because most consist mainly of user posts that are not in a sub community.
Bringing in these hobbyist mods as professional mods is, as far as I know, unprecedented. It would be full of issues that businesses haven't even encountered before to just start hiring people off a social media site in large numbers. Even if it worked, now you are paying people to enforce weird community rules. How would even bring a new hire into that? Oh this is /r/chairsunderwater, if the chair isn't full in the water it needs to be marked NSFW. Oh this /r/me_irl, the rules say no upvote memes, but they are completely okay.
This post barely scratches the tip of this iceberg of issues.
Reddit could have a team of site moderators that only enforce site rules, but even that would struggle to understand the context of different subs and likely crush many subs and cause much uproar.
Compare it to non tech based businesses. They absolutely hire people who are very involved in their communities. If you go to a gym, it's not usually not run by people who know nothing about fitness. This approach may be unprecedented in silicon valley, but not in business as a whole.
And maybe I wasn't clear, you don't hire random people to mod /r/chairsunderwater. You hire people who are already involved in that community, so they are familiar with how it should be run. That's pretty much how volunteer mods are currently chosen anyway.
There are tons of ways they could hire mods and still keep the communities.
Paying people hasn’t worked out great either. They farm the role out to low wage countries and it’s being done by people who aren’t always native English speakers and may not have the full cultural context necessary to properly identify things like harassment, threats, racism, misogyny, etc. This is one of the big reasons, among many, that moderation on Twitter sucks so much.
Interesting. I hadn't thought of that, but it explains a lot. Thanks.
Reddit's argument seems to be that mods are being paid under the table now with Ehereum so this is simply using an existing method.
Have you seen this being argued or are you just inferring this?
I should have made that sound more speculative since its just an inferences from the Admin thread in r/ethtrader
The NBA gildings thing really confused me when I first encountered it, then I realized how genius it is. I suppose that the silver/gold/platinum system worked super well, and Reddit decided to push it a little bit more.
Who would use the redesign ever until they kill old reddit? All the subreddits look exactly the same in the redesign, it really feels like they want it to be more like Facebook. The moment they kill old reddit I am leaving for good, I know that I am probably in the minority, because most people will just roll with it.... I hope I will actually follow through with it when it happens haha.
Outside of r/apple, I have no use for Reddit anymore. Tildes has been surprisingly effective at replacing my need to keep up with news, stories, and community. It's great! More people should try it.
I gave up on reddit before I even found Tildes. The hobbyist subs are full of extremely generic advice that gets repeated over and over again. The political subs are absolute trash where anything contrary to the hivemind is downvoted and everyone is trying to propagandize to everyone else. The meme subs are just meta-commentary on being a meme sub. Nothing is actually edifying anymore. It used to have some balance of low effort “candy” and more interesting “nutrition.” It’s all out of whack now where it’s entirely candy and thinly veiled ads.
Geographic subs can still be fun, as can well targeted niche subs like r/excel. Well, maybe excel is more useful than fun, but you get the idea.
Useful can be fun!
I've uninstalled my Reddit app from my phone. I sometimes miss some of the niche subreddits I subscribed to so I'll sometimes use the mobile site but otherwise Tildes scratches that news and community itch!
Not everyone sees that as a bad thing. I don't use the redesign for other reasons, but I've had custom subreddit styles disabled for the vast majority of the time I've had a reddit account.
Me too. I could actually see Reddit charging users to have the "old" design vs using their new shitshow platform...
Weeks/months of work poured into old.reddit can be instantly bought by shelling out $$$. What a fucking joke. And the Redesign still looks shit except for it's mobile app integration. Also btw, there is still no copy paste feature for text-based post one the official mobile app.
Click the comment box like your going to comment > click the down arrow next to the snippet of the op > hold to select what you want
it's not there tiz. I have tried it a lot before. I am using ios btw.
Huh weird. iOS is usually ahead in updates and features like that. I'm on Android.
I left reddit thinking it would go downhill, but holy fuck not this fast.
And the worst part is while we say reddit is "dying" its growing at an alarming rate, into a monster. The sort of monster that at one point reddit was firmly against.
Who remembers when reddit gave out this sticker?
Reddit has learned the harsh reality that it is in fact subservient to its shareholders and advertisers. Advertisers had clearly threatened to pull their support from Reddit in the past based on the site's habit of quarantining and banning entire swathes of subreddits, whereas shareholders want to shed Reddit's image for hosting shady and questionable content.
So why is Reddit now making a heavy push to pander towards advertisers? I wouldn't be surprised if it was because the site wasn't making money. Thing is I can't verify this because despite Reddit's size and popularity, I cannot find any figures on Reddit Inc's actual financial performance. The problem is that monetisation done wrong (as with this case) could very well risk driving Reddit into a Digg 4.0 situation.
I also wouldn't be surprised if their shift was due to shareholder pressure. One of Reddit's ex-CEOs, Yishan Wong previously commented that he felt his successor Ellen Pao was thrown under a bus by management. If what he says is true, this would explain a lot of things like Victoria's unfair firing and Reddit's later waves of censorship under Steve Huffman. The huge irony in all of this is that the community hated on 'Chairman Pao' (as she was called) for censorship when she actually tried to resist shareholder pressure to sanitise the site. In fact, the only two major subs she really closed were r/thefappening (because involuntary porn) and r/fatpeoplehate.
Also, not to go offtopic but is that username a Katawa Shoujo reference?
Hell yeah its a Katawa Shoujo reference!
Also,
I almost want this to happen, just out of spite and hating what reddit once was and has become.
"Upgrade to SILVER level and you can reduce your posting wait time from thirty minutes to a mere five, or upgrade to GOLD to remove the wait time completely! And remember, SILVER tier subscribers get one Oblivion Vote™ per month, while GOLD tier subscribers get three!"
Holy shit, is that real? That would effectively kill any and all game threads in sports subs.
It's not real... but it's scary how real it sounds, isn't it?
This seems like the end of days, but I think this will only impact a handful of subs. They still need traffic to view their ads, etc. With my subs, there's no way in hell I'll ever have any special tiers. It just sounds like more mod-work (organizing special content, etc.)
I can't blame them for trying something like this out. Maybe they'll eventually take a stab at a Patreon-like setup for subs where content creators can actually make a buck.
I never subscribed to Reddit Gold back in the old days because the subscription service barely offered any new features. But with Reddit's further descent into censorship and now with the owners billing users $5 per account per subreddit for access to exclusive gifs, emojis and flairs, I definitely don't want to financially support Reddit now.
They could have given Reddit Premium users more useful features like being able to search/browse beyond 1,000 results, being able to change your username, being able to post anonymously, etc. Instead we're being packaged and sold features that users have hacked into the site with custom CSS scripts that the admins are now undoing with their site redesign.
If anything, depending on how they roll out some of these new features, I can see this leading to the demise of Reddit. The question is what will replace it: Voat? Tildes? Snapzu? Gab? Something new entirely that is both decentralised and run as a complete anarchy?
That would require fixing search, which is still completely useless.
I wouldn't be too surprised if something based on matrix/mastodon (more likely the latter) pops up - for example, a subreddit mod could spin up a mastodon server, and invite their community to come join them there. If enough communities do this, someone could create a central instance that aggregates posts from all other instances like an /r/all surrogate (disclaimer: I don't know much about mastodon and have no idea if this is possible).
As an afterthought, this could also create some separate/competing 'central' instances, i.e. one that doesn't include the former /r/t_d's content and one that does. Could also lead to some good things though, with certain instances with topics grouped together for people just interested in that topic (just books, just news, just gaming, etc.).
This has already been happening, just not with Matrix or Mastodon in particular. r/TheRedPill already host subreddit content on an external site in the event that Reddit ever shut down the subreddit, which is increasingly likely given the subreddit's quarantine.
Also, the mods of the now banned r/WatchPeopleDie migrated over to SaidIt temporarily while they work on creating a new website dedicated solely to showcasing morbid content.
Decentralised social networking platforms like Matrix, Mastodon and Diaspora could certainly make this easier to pull off.
Huh, interesting to know. I hadn't heard of saidit before, but a quick glance shows it seems to be similar to early voat (in that the UI is old reddit, possibly derived from older source code?), and the content doesn't look as overtly, for lack of a better word, 'unappealing' voat's front page does. Is it a recent creation or has it been around for a while?
Seeing as this is restricted to the new redesign and official mobile apps, looks like the third-party mobile apps' days are numbered.
This is especially egregious given that they're rolling it out on the Fortnite subreddit. That subreddit is almost certainly made up mostly of children, and was probably chosen because of how infamous Fortnite is for its microtransactions.
I would just slap a yearly $5 fee for having an account and be done with it (with a 3 months trial period). I don't know if that would be enough revenue though.
Flashy icons next to usernames. Might make people pay more attention to these comments even if they don't realise - could be bad for discussion if people prejudge a comment by these icons. Effectively users can pay to make their viewpoint more visible - almost as if it's an endorsement. Locking discussions behind a paywall as well. Don't like it - and it's on a per subreddit basis!
I get they have to make money somehow - that's how the company works - but everything about this is just bad. Perfect choice of audience for the test though.
Something that's interesting to me about that thread is that goldf1sh is, as always, spamming it with comments that are so close, but miss the mark by just a bit of crazy.
I don't think I wanna go back to reddit.. it's getting too meh, subs like teenagers are normie trash, android is just a circlejerk...
I miss when reddit was on par with fivethirtyeight, arxiv, and the Economist for "nerdiest site to be browsing in public." Now it's just normie trash.