Huffman claims it’s about things like LLM training that uses the API, as if it isn’t possible to validate apps that want to use the API and only issue keys for approved apps. This could save third party apps while preventing bad actors from gaining access to the data without scraping the site.
No, if bad actors were the problem then the solution would be much different.
A better comparison is formerly popular social news/link aggregators such as Digg and StumbleUpon. Digg dominated just like Reddit for a while, and then it died when users flocked to Reddit after an unpopular change. The similarities are uncanny.
In that nfl thread, is it an old mod or a new one who re-opened it? Reddit is replacing the mods who shut down their subreddits with people who will re-open them.
There was always a substantial number of people who didn’t care about the API. They probably only used the official app and are newer Reddit users. They were also probably not around for other mass migrations, such as from Digg to Reddit, so they don’t treat Reddit any different than Facebook, where they put up with whatever bad changes are made because they see it as the only option, as if it will always be the internet’s main news aggregator.
Anyone who’s been around for a long time knows that Internet communities are ephemeral, so what’s really popular today won’t be in 10 years. It’s more than people moving from Slashdot to Digg to Reddit. Search engines used to aggregate news on their home page, and lots of people used RSS feeds or StumbleUpon. The history of the Internet is splashed with sites like Reddit, and every time one dies, another pops up that is more popular.
I’m amazed that Reddit has lasted as long as it has. Whether this is its death or not, I cannot tell, but it seems clear that its days of dominance are waning.
It’s laughable that Huffman thinks people don’t realize how much smaller Reddit is than Google or Facebook.
Most of what Huffman said here is about cost-cutting. If Reddit had 1800 employees before the layoffs, then yes, it’s probably bloated and laying off another 800 employees probably wouldn’t affect the end-user experience.
The problem remains that Huffman sees how users want to use Reddit as bad for the company. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why Reddit couldn’t have monetized their API through ads, making third party apps similarly profitable as their own app. And if their own app isn’t profitable through ads, then what’s their plan? Moving all those users to their first party app doesn’t fix anything.
You should print one in TPU so it’s soft, then put it in a glass container with a safe to handle liquid so it looks like a real brain preserved in formaldehyde. Then you can reach in and pull out the brain and ask who wants to hold it.
inability to advertise to 3P users
And this isn’t even strictly true. Reddit could have given 3P apps the option to pay a reasonable price for the API, or they had to serve Reddit’s ads to avoid paying the fee, it would be a fair compromise.
It sounds to me like Reddit can’t profit from ads, even if the 3P apps served them. If that’s true, Reddit is doomed, and investors will see that as they approach the IPO.
It costs $20m /yr to access the kbin API
It’s at a gay bar, but it’s also an official employee event, which is weird. I wonder what the expectations are for employees to attend official events. For me, whether it’s a drag show or bowling, I don’t attend most after-hours work events.
Google is still sponsoring the event, it’s just not an employee event anymore. That’s probably how it should have been planned from the beginning.
That said, thin-skinned Christians can not attend if it’s an optional event. The bible is silent about drag shows.