We've already seen this backfire. Protests that blocked highways created negative sentiment for those protesting, not sympathy for their cause. Yes, I understand what they're going for. I don't care. They're taking their beef with Reddit out on users. This harms the common user more than Reddit. You need to inconvenience the people with the power to change something, and they have no way to do that, so they're just throwing a tantrum until they get their way.
You're removing the resource because they won't let you run it your way? Fine, I'll find a different resource. And I'll keep using it even when yours comes back up, because you've just shown me you're not reliable. Touch grass Reddit mods.
Last edited by PredatoryCatgirl; 06-19-2023 at 05:29 AM.
Sadly the way the protests are being done is going to go about as well as peasants angry at the king for raising taxes so they destroy their own crops in protest not realizing the king has the funds to just import food from someplace else and watch the others starve themselves.
Yeah that's why nearly all change throughout human history has been accomplished by just asking nicely to the people in power.
Utterly mindless sort of take.
Humans by and large don't care about lofty ideals, they care about what personally benefits their tiny microbial pinhead-sized droplet of day-to-day existence.
If you say, "You should do this, or there will be deleterious long-term consequences", they might at best nod solemnly, if they don't ignore you or throw a tantrum... but deep down inside, they're still wondering, "Okay — but how does it affect me, personally, right now?"
The only way that you accomplish any serious change is with serious pushback; "peaceful protests" are usually just cute photo-ops that people in power absolutely love because it makes everyone feel like they did something without actually requiring anything whatsoever to happen in response.
Then those protests get mythologized and painted as "heroic" by the people who write history, because power structures in human societies would really, reeeeeeeeeeally prefer that everyone view "peaceful resistance" as the ideological ideal, since it means that they don't have to actually do anything, and that anyone upset will throw their tantrum without actually affecting the status quo.
Completely and totally fails to understand the actual details or nuance of the situation, and basically just eagerly-gargles the twisted PR spew that Steve Huffman is marketing to mentally-vulnerable people who don't bother thinking beyond what a single interview claims as fact... like the recorded Apollo App phone conversation that disproves many of the things that Huffman is claiming publicly.
And "freeloaders"? Really?
Reddit is a corporation whose near-entirety of "product" is volunteers creating and fetching content from somewhere else, and then posting it for free in order to be validated by imaginary approval... while other volunteers act as the understaffed guards in an overcrowded Ecuadorian penitentiary.
Reddit is the freeloader — they have nearly no actual product; it's basically nothing but putting out a plinth, and letting other people exhibit their discoveries and creations.
And it's not even a good plinth; it's a dark-pattern infested plinth that's been steadily degrading in quality for a decade as it attempts to squeeze more and more data and control out of its captured audience.
Now, they're ready to publicly offer up their crappy plinth to investors, and desperately trying to stamp out anything that might blemish how much those investors are willing to offer for it — hence the move to drive users out of superiorly-designed 3rd party apps and off the Reddit website, and funnel them all into Reddit's low-quality proprietary app, where they have absolute control over data, advertising, and monetization (of displaying other people's content).
————————————————————————
Every single time you go, "Oof, I cannot endure the pain of an interruption to my compulsively-conditioned daily app habits", you contribute that much more to the — to drop this month's newest overused, yet accurate, buzzword — "enshittification of the Internet".
And when the Internet ends up as yet another version of the corporate-controlled dystopia trope that every sci-fi future always depicts, the human inability to endure inconveniencing itself for 5 seconds is going to be the true root cause.
Corporations and businesses and leadership can invent all kinds of schemes to squeeze, exploit, and degrade the quality of nearly anything in the name of pleasing investors.
But ultimately, they only succeed at it because so many people are unable to say "No" to their comforts and habits long enough to actually scare anyone, and thus, smug controllers can handily rely on their mountains of psychological data telling them: "Don't worry, the masses will begin to go into withdrawal, and start turning on and attacking the protesters attempting to achieve change, long before they ever successfully take a stand on anything. Do whatever you want."
And if that doesn't work — have no fear, Congress will use arcane laws to force you back to work anyway, and then sell it as "tough but necessary" heroism... because once again, the common man has mercifully escaped the dire threat of inconvenience.
Thinking you * need * the reddit / discord is so cringe.
My Island Sanctuary won't financially recover from this. I'm ruined, RUINED!!
We've already seen this backfire. Protests that blocked highways created negative sentiment for those protesting, not sympathy for their cause. Yes, I understand what they're going for. I don't care. They're taking their beef with Reddit out on users. This harms the common user more than Reddit. You need to inconvenience the people with the power to change something, and they have no way to do that, so they're just throwing a tantrum until they get their way.
You're removing the resource because they won't let you run it your way? Fine, I'll find a different resource. And I'll keep using it even when yours comes back up, because you've just shown me you're not reliable. Touch grass Reddit mods.
They asked the community first. Overwhelmingly was in support. Of course, if you don't use reddit, you probably didn't answer.
and @Ransu The strike isn't against monetization of the API, the APP creators are willing to pay. Reddit priced them out of competition, thats the issue. They made the costs so exorbitant that no one can pay. Someone did the math and Reddit just took their yearly revenue and divided it by number of total Monthly users. It comes to a cost of $0.12 per user, and they are charging $2.50 per user for the API calls.
Last edited by Valkyrie_Lenneth; 06-19-2023 at 06:12 AM.
Oh no! The FFXIV reddit is down! Where are miqo players going to post their commissioned cat girl artwork now?!
Indeed. It is also worth adding that this is an ongoing process; the next vote on whether the blackout will continue is June 19, and if it is decided that the blackout will continue, votes will also continue until either the API pricing is made reasonable or the local denizens yield. This wasn't decided by a handful of mods, but rather is a policy that had popular consensus among the subreddit users - the so-called "common users" in that quote.
Give an Eorzean a fish, and they'll be well-fed for 30 minutes. Teach an Eorzean to fish, and they will chase fishing windows for 30 months.
They are asking the community again tomorrow and apparently will host polls weekly. If you care enough - go vote.They asked the community first. Overwhelmingly was in support. Of course, if you don't use reddit, you probably didn't answer.
and @Ransu The strike isn't against monetization of the API, the APP creators are willing to pay. Reddit priced them out of competition, thats the issue. They made the costs so exorbitant that no one can pay. Someone did the math and Reddit just took their yearly revenue and divided it by number of total Monthly users. It comes to a cost of $0.12 per user, and they are charging $2.50 per user for the API calls.
Or you can open up a new subreddit that isn't following the blackout I guess.
Elsewise Reddit is free to change it's policies to deal with the blackout if they want. Probably weighing those options now vs. potential backlash and loss of market value. *shrug*
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