a lot of comments are dismissive of these generated convos because of out how obvious it is that these convos are generated. i feel like that's a high bar. you can tell that GTA5 is generated, but it's close enough to be fun. i imagine that's as close as we'll get with conversational AI
most start-ups I've worked for have been transparent about operating budgets and runway, but I can't think of any that would open up the books to a random employee, let alone a candidate.
I believe so. and while it's not significantly worse, it is worse. thumbnails don't populate as consistently, the menu has me full screening a chat sometimes, it's just not as nice.
he's literally doing exactly what the board wants. reddit's investors are more than happy to sacrifices users and the user experience for profitability.
Spez... then Yishan Wong... then Ellen Pao... Then Spez.
Not sure if I recall Wong or Pao did things that seemed overtly business / investor motivated? I know there was the controversial firing of Victoria Taylor by Pao that eventually led to her demise.
This is not the path to profitability. This is how you lose the mods and power users who provide and moderate the content of the site leading to it's downfall. That's not profitable.
Mods can be replaced. Do the actual valuable users rely heavily on Reddit's API or 3rd party apps? I doubt they'd leave over pure moral outrage on this issue, although a large amount of generic brand damage could cause some attrition.
The (relatively small) percentage of people that generate the bulk of the content on Reddit do rely on third party apps (and therefore indirectly on the API). A lot of the mods crucial to the site also rely heavily on the API or tools which are built on the API. Reddit has shown no signs of improving the mod tools, and without the ability to moderate NSFW content using the new API, Reddit will get objectively worse. It doesn’t matter if leadership remods subreddits and forces them open; mods and content creators now objectively have a worse experience and will produce worse content/decisions.
There's no evidence for that whatsoever, it's just bullshit conjecture stemming from hope and a tenuous idea that third party app users are "power users" and therefore must be eminently important.
I’d love to see a source for “people that generate the bulk of the content on Reddit do rely on third party apps” because that seems categorically impossible when you consider the number of users able to post (i.e. subscribed) using these third party apps.
Lol. People will definetly leave. Once I cannot use my fav 3rd party app I'm done. That's the end of reddit for me. We'll see if after the purge reddit will still have enough critical mass to keep going but acting like this before an ipo is nuts.
People who use third party apps are power users, most users simply don't care. I also highly doubt power users will leave, they say that but they're the ones that use Reddit the most, so it's very likely they might take a break for a while but begrudgingly come back in a month or so.
I guess we'll see. Anecdotally, I will stop using it and have been using it since the beginnings. Same sentiment from all long term users. We'll juat see
But where will they go? If there was a good alternative, it would make sense, but there isn't. You don't "just quit" heroin, people who like reddit and use it a lot will continue using it.
I left when Twitter killed off Tweetbot and I‘m happy I did it. Colleagues of mine don‘t want to go without their dev bubble though. It‘s time for a better tool to catch-up to the newest stuff.
I also left Twitter when Tweetbot died, but only because I can’t use Twitter without a chronological timeline and keyword filtering. My impression is that third party Reddit apps had some nice quality of life features, but their main purpose wasn’t to literally alter the underlying content. Happy to be proven wrong though.
There will still be mods doing free labor after whatever purges. Less effectively, sure. But I think Reddit clearly believes that they can be replaced with nearly zero negative impact, or even a positive impact if some particularly toxic powermods can be erased.
I don't think you realize how much mods/power users, who act like a funnel for a lot of content, rely on third party apps and api access. The built in mod tools are hot garbage, with critical features going years without development or progress.
I have heard numbers in the realm of 10% of users make content and only 1% ever submit things. What happens when your users aren't getting that constant dopamine drip of new content when a decent portion the people submitting stuff use third party apps stop submitting content. Or even worse, they head to another platform and submit stuff there, which is how Reddit got its big start from digg.
For folks who were around during that time, things like lemmy or the fediverse are in a similar state that Reddit was in when the digg exodus happened.
Reddit needs to realize they aren't just losing users, but adding users to a competing platform, which is arguably a worse sin.
agreed. but as long as the investors are to move their shares during the IPO before a complete exodus occurs, they are perfectly happy with that outcome.
uh ya no shit. start-ups froth over having devs with experience at big tech co's so they can throw the logos on their decks. thank the lord the WSJ is performing society-driving journalism like this.
I mean, I do agree, but isn't this what journalism is? Reporting on the facts? It's a thing that's happening, ergo it's news.
If there's a shooting and shootings have happened before, is that not still news? It happened after all. It's got to be better than just ignoring things because it's status quo.
There is so much stuff happening that to come to the tiny selection you can stack the filters to the roof. The first one would be: What would the people paying our bills like to see? What does our network like? What is our political affiliation? Who and which companies do we like or not like? How much drama or feel good stories does our current audience need?
It's so refined there is pretty much no meat left in the sausage. It is an engineering project and you are the raw materials.
How many people since have reached adulthood and entered employment who might not have been aware of what came before though? What about the trends that you and others weren't aware of that happened prior to you reaching adulthood and caring about the news?
Just because something is a continuation of a trend doesn't mean it isn't somehow "news-worthy". The weather is entirely based on continuing trends over x periods—is there still value in knowing the weather? Of course. This is the weather of business. It's a "sunny day" in Startupville even if it's raining in Fortune500land, which is the counterpoint to the doom-peddling in other headlines.
Could this contribute to people's nostalgia that the past was so much better? Because they were not really getting all the news. My grandparents will swear kidnappings never happened in the 50s when they were kids. The reality is, they happened but were not reported as they are today. Does this contribute to their view of, "the wold is so much worst today!" Is the reality that, the world only seems worst, but in reality isn't much different? Do we really prefer a world where kidnappings are hardly reported and not have much of a far reaching effect?
Statistically speaking, in the US, high school students were much more likely to be murdered in the 1980s than now. But just try to convince today's parents of that.
I think it is notable if it’s happening in bulk. Now, it’s not a new phenomenon; it has happened before with major waves of tech layoffs. But not often enough that it should be treated as a law of nature.
