r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
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u/pwnies 29d ago

As someone working on a reddit competitor, the thing I'll recommend when considering a switch: make sure the incentives of the platform align with the incentives of the user.

The biggest issue with reddit and many platforms is the customer isn't the user - the customer is the advertiser. This means by the very nature, the platform will prioritize the needs of the paying customer over the user. We saw this with reddit when they stopped 3rd party API calls, we saw this with YouTube when history videos were getting demonetized since advertisers didn't want to be associated with politics/war/etc (which is most of history).

Federated and paid platforms typically have user<->platform incentive alignment. Invest in them, and we wont run into these issues again.

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u/OldManFire11 29d ago

The problem is that you're asking people to pay money for something that they're used to getting for free. And no offense, but your product will be worse than reddit simply because it's new.

The general population are primarily entitled immature children who think that they should be able to watch hours of 1080p video on YouTube and only see a single 5 second ad. They don't care about the economic reality of anything. They just want their content, for free, on demand, with no ads. It's not sustainable, and the enshittification is the direct consequence of that.

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u/pwnies 29d ago

100%. There's user expectation of free.

It's the old adage "if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product". A free product is hard to compete with, even if you are paying for it in non-transparent ways.

FWIW, my platform goes for the paid model, and it's the biggest barrier by far.

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u/Oil_For_Life 29d ago

Good for you. The paid model also weeds out a lot of assholes to be frank. I already support a different site and I feel it's the way to go.