One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. So far, reddit has been very careful raising the temperature so as to not scare the frog before it's dead.
That way you don't give the data freely, you could make each API keys provided to the user with limits that won't impact normal navigation but would cripple automated data capture, and you'd solve the issue where third-party apps aren't fed ads by sustaining the platform through subscription.
I think a critical part of the Digg exodus was that most people already saw Reddit as a clear #2 in the space. When Digg fucked up, there was an obvious place for everyone to migrate to. I don't see that right now. Facebook isn't cool anymore, Twitter has a large number of people who won't use it because of Elon, Mastodon isn't mature enough to gain casual users.
Bascially, the problem I see is that if people leave reddit, there isn't an obvious place for them to go? TikTok maybe? I just don't see an Pepsi to Reddit's Coke.
Obviously Discord is chat focused so not a one-to-one replacement but I am not sure that the younger generations will care.
Plus there is the possibility of discord adding a Reddit/forum like feature, since they already have the mindshare.
That's maybe true as a first-order effect.
But, for the ads that everyone else sees to be worth anything, the site has to be worth visiting at all. If your most dedicated/prolific users mainly post/comment using third party apps, then making their experience worse will reduce the quality of the site overall (even if you start getting revenue on behalf of those dedicated users).
It strikes me as a very shortsighted move.
Reddit is about discovering content. How would you discover anything on Discord? Is there a trending list to see the top messages? Is there a way to list Discord communities so you can discover ones matching your interest?
I'm at a lost to how the two are similar in any way except for the "young generations" use them both.
https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-...
Twitter still maintains a critical mass of users and corporate accounts, but all the most talented creators (at least the ones I followed) have reduced their Twitter usage substantially or moved on completely.
Eventually new readers will stop showing up because there is no worthwhile content.
We already know that the "verification" it provides is functionally worthless.
These days it seems like anyone with a blue checkmark is just asking to get made fun of.
Thats really easy for Reddit to measure. Why are you assuming they haven't?
It strikes me as a very shortsighted move.
If you stop assuming that Reddit is run by idiots, and you consider the likely probability that they've modelled this stuff in some depth, it's easy to believe that your initial assumption is wrong, and that the users are on 1st party apps (or will be if others shut down), and that many will stay and continue to post rather than leave or stop posting.
Your premise is based wholly on the belief that you know more about Reddit users than Reddit does. That seems dubious to me.
This isn't true if they're charging for API access. At best it's a question of whether the lost ad revenue is being compensated for by API revenue.
If you want to attribute an ulterior motive here I'm guessing it's more about control. They want their users to use Reddit as they want them to use Reddit, or at least they'd like to reserve the right to that power.
Considering that I've seen ChatGPT-type comments in various subreddits, I expect paid social media like Twitter Blue, Reddit Premium and Discord Nitro being pushed even more in the future.
Only issue I’m having with it is discoverability of new communities.
Because they aren't having to pay for hosting.
The only way to replace reddit is with a distributed system like aether: https://getaether.net/
Or if you absolutely want a centralized system, something community run like ao3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive_of_Our_Own
But given the absolute hostility and hate _users_ of reddit give those two sites for not banning everything they find offensive a site like reddit is just not possible any more.
It's not working. https://imgur.com/a/6blpTqF
I know that their UI and native application are absolutely bullshit.
Ultimately if you want good discussion you need the same layout that Reddit and HN have, with indented comments and easily branching chains. Otherwise it's just a chat masquerading as a forum thread which is useless.
For me, Reddit and Twitter are simply not worth visiting using mobile web or first party apps because the ratio of crap I don’t want to see (ads and promoted content) is too high vs the content I came to see.
YouTube is going the same way, I use multiple adblock rules to hide “shorts”, “people also searched for”, and “people also watched”. I pay for YouTube premium but feel like a mug for paying for a service which tries to force feed me content I don’t want. I’m on the brink of cancelling the subscription.
I will not be using the Reddit app unless they do something about annoying / intrusive ads on their app.
I'm fine with ads, just stop showing the ones to me I don't want to keep seeing.
Chat is ephemeral and it there's a certain amount of participation expected, where as Reddit content strikes a nice balance of changing frequently, but not instantaneous and, for most users, it's a passive activity. To put it another way, most people aren't doom-scrolling on a discord server.
Try searching for something when you don’t recall where you said it (dc server or DM)
It's a well know historical fact that companies always do the smart move only based on hard facts.
So they are just alienating younger users.
We need to figure out sustainable online communities.
Pick me, I'll build and scale your social media site. I already did it once too hah
Something that so many founders get wrong is the belief that something needs to be good to be valuable. It doesn't. It just needs to be better than not having it. That is often a tremendously low bar.
And I don't think a lot of that value has much to do with the direction Reddit has been going with its redesign. If they viewed their core product as creating high quality rich textual content for input into LLM, they would do many, many things differently and probably spend more time improving the moderator tools to improve curation.
Discord blows for asynchronous conversations. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the replacement.
Personally I rarely use Reddit in a browser and if 3rd party apps were to go away that would be the end of Reddit for me.
As to making fun of someone willing to pay to support a given system, I'm not sure that's at all productive. At that point, should probably not even be using said system in the first place. That doesn't mean I agree with every decision, or every direction, but do find it's a bit better than before overall.