The way a lot of dot-com startups work, they have high fixed costs -- stuff you pay no matter how many users you have, like programmers -- and low marginal costs, stuff you pay based on how many users you have.
That means that it's good to be big, because you can spread those fixed costs over many, many users. One programmer writing software used by five hundred million users can make a lot more money than software used by five users. The resulting effect is called economy of scale.
So the typical model is to take in a lot of investor money, operate at a loss, and lose money while offering a very compelling service to grow the userbase as quickly as possible.
Once you're big enough, you can spread your costs around many users, so it's easier to make money. You switch from growing your userbase to making money from it. Because you aren't trying as hard as possible to draw in new users, the service is probably gonna get worse from a user standpoint.
If money becomes tight, then it's harder to get investor dollars to operate at a loss with to grow userbase.
My understanding is that due to elevated interest rates in the post-COVID-19 situation, it's more-costly to get investment money. So that will tend to push companies from the "growth" phase to the "monetization" phase.
That affects a bunch of companies, including Reddit.
The VC money is drying up and the current social media funding paradigm is breaking because of it.
It's a bit like witnessing the Dot Com bubble burst again tbh.
It's about time we moved on to a better way of doing things anyway, I'm pretty good with moving away from the old ad-based, exploit your community for profit model, personally.
Attached: 2 images This is hilarious. It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself. The Twitter home feed's been down for most of this morning. Even though nothing loads, the Twitter website never stops trying and trying. In the first video, notice the error message that I'm being rate limited. Then notice the jiggling scrollbar on...
I know it's getting into conspiracy realms, but there seems to be a large right-wing buyout of social media. Reddit and Twitter two of the best Independent News sources in North America I've already been hit and even though people will argue they are not true new sources, they allow smaller groups to be heard globally. Young people don't realize how limited news broadcast were before the 2000s. Almost all media was owned by about 50 people worldwide and good luck getting something published that wasn't in their agenda. You could see it throughout the 50s and 60s as people being labeled radical when their views didn't coincide with the media magnets. I try not to be an alarmist but I think we're heading for another dark ages.
I deleted my posts/comment history, resigned as a mod, and logged out for good. The best protest you can do is leave at this point. Anything short of private, restricted, or NSFW-abuse only serves to drive traffic for them and allows them to continue to serve ads.
The John Oliver idea was clever but should have stopped after he responded. It is now only driving traffic to the site and giving them classic “haha isn’t the internet funny?” free marketing on news outlets. They’ve even explicitly said in interviews they don’t mind it at all. That’s not a protest. No one is upset to see John Oliver memes on one sub and be in on the joke.
Honestly, nobody even looks at other people's Karma. I didn't care much about it. Did people really care so much baout Karma that they mourn about it here, or miss it, or used to farm it?...
I used the top karma holders lists to remove their posts from my feed since it was usually people posting the same thing in multiple subs. I would often have only a few posts before the marker for page 2 would show up.
I really do like KBin and Lemmy and the fediverse on the whole, but development is still young and the userbase still growing. KBin is still basically early access, and Lemmy is buggy. I spent alot of time in reddit and I'm feeling the pain of trying to ween myself from it. Just wanted to here community perspectives and see how...
Reddit was something unique and personal to each user. Some it was new, some it was the only place to find specific tech or other advice that wasn't corrupted by ads and algorithms on goggle and other big corporations.
Reddit was my way of disengaging from world news before I knew about anxiety, and how things could affect me and become personal even though I had no way to help world events. So I used it to personalize my mental diet, if I was creative I could sub to many craft subs like leather or metal etc, it's where I went to get other perspectives on movies and content that I didn't fully understand.
End of the day, is all that possible still on Reddit, kinda, but it's going away, and they pushed me personally to leave as I could see it was becoming google/Facebook, ad algorithms to push what people pay for or get paid for. So time to reset.
Become involved, I'm way more involved and adding to discussions on the new sites I'm on. Everyone adding comments and posts and perspectives and opinions are building this up from bottom up.
You are the future, make your perspective part of the future by helping guide these new sites to something we can be proud of.
Ugh, I need to remember to move over to kbin before commenting on this magazine. My Lemmy (sh.itjust.works) comments never show up here. No idea why, I'll lyk if I figure out.
Anyways, here's my comment:
Very good points, I think people expecting a massive wave of redditors will be disappointed. But it’s not like we need them either, we’ve already got a critical mass of quality users.
I realized I interacted / posted / commented less and less on reddit these last couple of years. Couldn't even tell you why exactly. Now I've been here for a week and, I don't know, I just like interacting again... Hope it stays like this for a while :)
Reddit is too popular and has too much group think, too many of the same types of comments that will get a lot karma, and too many comments that will just be ignored.
NEW is a garbage dump or a pile of duplicates. So why comment on a new post? It will never go anywhere. HOT is already full of comments, so your comment will just be lost.
Is this new to post-blackout reddit is or has it been this way for a while. Top post of r/all is a tweet from like 2 years ago about a "current event" that no one has talked about since then and 100% of the comments are talking about this like this topic is the focus of today's or any recent time's 24 hour news cycle. Nearly 30K...
Most Scifi fans I have ran into can pretty quickly rank the four stars –BattleSTAR Galactica, STAR Trek, STARgate, and STAR wars, but what lesser-known or less-prestigious shows hold a special place in your heart?...
deleted_by_author
Are upvotes counting towards your reputation now? (kbin.social)
Logged in a few minutes ago and noticed that reputation in my account was much higher then before. Guessing it might be counted now.
Why don't upvotes count? (kbin.social)
What is the possible reason why upvotes in Kbin do not add up to the overall Reputation, but downvotes do?
It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself. (sfba.social)
Attached: 2 images This is hilarious. It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself. The Twitter home feed's been down for most of this morning. Even though nothing loads, the Twitter website never stops trying and trying. In the first video, notice the error message that I'm being rate limited. Then notice the jiggling scrollbar on...
'Rate limit exceeded;' Twitter down for thousands of users worldwide (www.cbsnews.com)
Thousands of Twitter users across several countries were unable to access the social media site or faced difficulty and delays Saturday.
PSA: anyone still looking to protest, promote fediverse, any form of rebellion ON REDDIT, the place to do it is r/pics. you can post anything with basically no censorship. as long as you mention John Oliver somehow, the mods aren't going to bother you! (kbin.social)
r/pics is wide open to all kinds of anti reddit posts, calls for spez to resign, whatever you want with the current rules right now....
Did Karma really matter that much in Reddit?
Honestly, nobody even looks at other people's Karma. I didn't care much about it. Did people really care so much baout Karma that they mourn about it here, or miss it, or used to farm it?...
Creatives of all kinds: check out this delightful list with dozens of FOSS creative tools for artists, photographers, film makers, game devs, musicians, and more! (codeberg.org)
A curated list of delightful tools for digital creatives in a variety of mediums.
Welcome Newbies! (vlemmy.net)
cross-posted from: vlemmy.net/post/388759...
Is there any one else who feels like their life has been disrupted by this whole debacle with Reddit. (kbin.social)
I really do like KBin and Lemmy and the fediverse on the whole, but development is still young and the userbase still growing. KBin is still basically early access, and Lemmy is buggy. I spent alot of time in reddit and I'm feeling the pain of trying to ween myself from it. Just wanted to here community perspectives and see how...
Fuck Reddit u̶p̶v̶o̶t̶e̶ boost party! (kbin.social)
The apps have all gone offline, welcome aboard to all the other refugees, fuck /u/spez!
It was fun while it lasted! (kbin.social)
Lemmy and kbin are gonna get all jacked up in the next couple of days. It was a good ride until everything settles down!
It feels a lot nicer here on lemmy / kbin
I realized I interacted / posted / commented less and less on reddit these last couple of years. Couldn't even tell you why exactly. Now I've been here for a week and, I don't know, I just like interacting again... Hope it stays like this for a while :)
Top of r/all (old.reddit.com)
Is this new to post-blackout reddit is or has it been this way for a while. Top post of r/all is a tweet from like 2 years ago about a "current event" that no one has talked about since then and 100% of the comments are talking about this like this topic is the focus of today's or any recent time's 24 hour news cycle. Nearly 30K...
What's your most-loved non-star movie/show? (kbin.social)
Most Scifi fans I have ran into can pretty quickly rank the four stars –BattleSTAR Galactica, STAR Trek, STARgate, and STAR wars, but what lesser-known or less-prestigious shows hold a special place in your heart?...