Disclaimer: I’m at best an infrequent Reddit user at best (I was always more of a Twitter fiend), but I’ve always appreciated it as a healthier thriving place for niche and weird and open internet culture. So I’m in no way, shape, or form an expert on the place or what’s going on. But…
I’ve got some thoughts on Reddit.
If you haven’t heard, Reddit has made the choice to charge for its previously-free API access, which certain third party developers (who make apps and bots that rely on such API access) decide that they can no longer support those tools. Because, money. There’s a lot of coverage on it (especially at The Verge and Techcrunch). But the simple story is that Reddit has taken a hardline stance that a lot of people are really upset about.
Basic premise is that Reddit is successful because of the balanced relationship between the company, the mods, and the users, and this is facilitated by the third party devs and the VC investors
IMHO, Reddit has been successful because it is based in a symbiotic and beneficial relationship between three parties — the company (that runs and provides the website/platform), the moderators (that clean and curate the subreddits on a volunteer basis), and the users (the regular folk that engage in the subreddits). There are three other stakeholders that have also facilitated this relationship — the venture capital investors (who fuel the company with stacks of cash), the third party developers (who built apps and bots on the website/platform), and the power users (who are ultra-high users of the website and have pushed and prodded forward its development). This relationship and the participation of the other stakeholders allows for a largely non-toxic platform where regular and power users can go to “socialize” (post, comment, upvote/downvote, read posts, etc.) in a way that is “healthy” (i.e. not filled with spam, clickbait, undesired explicit content or just unrelated content) because of the curation done by the moderators (i.e. enforcement of rules and norms established top-down or bottom-up by the community) and supported by the third-party developers.
Reddit is a company with investors and they want to see a big return.
Reddit is a business. So it’s looking for profit. It has VC investors that have put in a lot of money and are looking for a huge return. Not just a 5x or 10x return, but an 10000x return. Reddit is at the cusp of providing that return to its investors via an IPO. The best way to have a strong IPO (i.e. a high selling price that steadily goes up) is to show to public investors that the company is wildly profitable and will continue to do so.
Reddit is built on a symbiotic relationship between the company, the moderators, and the users, with third party developers and power users facilitating this relationship.
Reddit really presented itself as a more “open” place.
On a free speech front, it allowed for a wide variety of communities to grow and thrive (including some especially hateful ones for a long while). But this meant that there was a long tail of very niche communities that thrived in addition to larger communities.
On a moderation front, Reddit granted a lot of power to the moderators to curate their subreddits. Rules and norms were established and maintained in a subreddit. The regular user could go to their favorite niche topic and actually find content solely about that topic. No having to wade through spam advertisements, unrelated content, meaningless bot-generated posts, and hateful comments. Just engagement with a community around a passion. Or just an occasional check-in on an interesting subject.
Of course, the moderators were unpaid. Why pay someone when they’ll do it on a volunteer basis? (I do think there’s a point that the moderators may have received other forms of nonmaterial consideration, like prestige, pride, power, sense of belonging/loyalty, increased engagement in a passion, etc.)
On a technological front, it allowed for open access to outside developers. Yelp, Metafilter, and other websites complained and took action to prevent other companies from stealing their user-generated content, but Reddit allowed for free access to its API. I always thought it was because they were committed to early notions of a “free web.”
I never really realized the importance of these third party developers, but I learned that moderators heavily relied on the apps and tools they crated. The moderators and the power users (who IMHO, are conceptually a step below the moderators in terms of control and influence), supported the development of these tools to expand their feature set and make the platform easier to use.
AI is coming.
Remember how I said that Reddit was open? Well they were so open that OpenAI trawled their website and used the user-generated content hosted there to train the large learning models that power ChatGPT. And we all know that ChatGPT is a monstrous prospect of moneymaking. It’s likely that other other companies have done the same. But for Reddit, which is seeking profitability, this represents a huge loss of value.
The Reddit CEO didn’t do any favors by his behaviors.
This guy behaved like a grade-A jerk. He was super strident in ignoring everybody but himself. Despite this being the biggest protest Reddit has had, he sent an internal message that basically said “don’t worry, all this will blow over.” There are accusations that he lied by basically saying that certain third party developers weren’t playing fair, but the evidence has directly contradicted that and they were looking for way for the company to charge without putting them out of business. We’ve got a real role model of trust and negotiation here with this guy.
Protests are an indication of a broken trust.
The protests are an indication of a broken trust between the company and the moderators. First, because they shut down the third party developers and their associated apps and bots, which the moderators needed/wanted. Second, they told the protesting moderators to kick rocks. Don’t feel bad that you’re losing your beloved third party apps and bots. Don’t close your subreddits. Don’t mark them as NSFW in an attempt to strangle advertiser revenue. Don’t flex your moderation powers in protest. Do moderate like we want, and do it with a smile on your face. Or we replace you. It basically feels like an employer-employee relationship, except you don’t get paid… 🥴
Reddit “won” for sure.
The third party apps have largely fallen away with some shifting to a paid model to sustain themselves. Most of the closed subreddits have reopened and have lost their NSFW tag even if they had. Reddit got what it wanted. The devs and the mods have largely given in.
I’m not surprised by this actually. Disparate power is difficult to coordinate, and can be easily overcome by concentrated power in a head-to-head collision. I mean, Twitter is still up and running even if it’s a noticeably worse place.
There is a strong likelihood for accelerated enshittification of Reddit.
Cory Doctorow made a brilliant post about the decline of social media websites. It encapsulates something I’ve observed time and time again. First the website is an amazing and wonderful experience. Then the ads quietly come in, and the website isn’t quite as amazing but still useful. Then the website starts looking for more money. The minimalist social media app you once used to post thoughts and photos to the world is now a catalog of things you maybe but don’t really want or need. So it’s not as pleasant an experience and you post and engage less, but the site continues to squeeze you (and the advertisers) to make more money.
I expect that is what will happen with Reddit.
A lot of the comments on websites that cover Reddit are from power users that are deleting their profiles, or no longer moderating or engaging in subreddits. There definitely may be some cap to this (people are still on Twitter), but it is the definite trend. The individuals that have contributed in an outsized way are leaving. Perhaps some will take their place, perhaps some won’t.
Have you ever worked at a place where processes and knowledge are not recorded? Like a big organization where there’s some guy or gal named “Terry” that has been there for 35 years and knows everything that happened and why. It’s always interesting to see what happens when Terry leaves. All of a sudden nobody knows anything anymore. Whereas Terry would’ve told you that you need that report or file or process step because “back in ’97 the company ground to a halt without it,” there’s nobody there to tell you that. Nobody but Terry knows where to find certain files, or who approves certain decisions, or what actions are definite no-no’s.
I suspect that while there’s a lot of knowledge in Reddit’s archives and there will be people to help figure things out, the loss of power users will hurt the platform. I mean, it was really nice to have Terry around.
Vibrancy of a social media platform is a brittle and fickle thing.
Facebook was awesome until it wasn’t. Instagram was cool, and then it turned into Facebook. Snapchat was brilliant and then it got feature-swiped by Instagram, but apparently the youth still use it. Twitter was very cool, then struggled forever but was still sorta cool while being slightly problematic, and not it’s really turned into an absolute dumpster fire. Pinterest was interesting, and then it wasn’t. Digg was there and then it wasn’t. Tumblr was vibrant, and then it got bought by Verizon…
Things happen. Leadership changes. Design changes (or fails to change). Features are added and lost (and stolen). Interests subside. Trends fall away.
What was once a vibrant community where you think you’ll go everyday in perpetuity just becomes less compelling until you realize that you only consider the social media platform in the past tense.
The federated social media is not as compelling a proposition as centralized social media because of inertia and friction.
This is yet to play out, but I think there hasn’t really been a huge exodus to federated systems because change is hard. It’s easy to just keep doing what you’ve always done. It’s hard to stop, shift to a new platform, learn new userflows and rules and communities/friends. And also, my experience with these federated systems is that they’re just not as polished as the centralized systems. I think that will change in the future, but there’s just no way of simply copying over all your content to a new platform. I mean, Reddit started all this by shutting down their API access.