Finally found a decent analysis of why Reddit should care very much about the blackout. Reddit CEO forgot how much money those pesky tire party apps saved him in free labor by mods and redditors. Time to go somewhere no one is looking just for his own pockets.
The most frustrating part is I’m sure they are well aware of what will happen to the site but why care when you can make so so so much money at the expense of others ? 🥲
Yep. But here is the snag: even though regular users generate traffic, power users (such as mods, people who want to have a better user experience through third party apps, people who engage in fights about usability) are those who generate and moderate content.
So driving them away will drive revenue away in short, medium and long term.
Tons of marketing sites have already recommended advertisers to stop advertising on Reddit, at least until this whole thing has settled.
The best part is the Spez guy never thought open source alternatives already existed, so he will actually speed up the end of his platform. I would bet that there won’t be an IPO any time soon, and the Spez guy is the main culprit.
I’m convinced spez is almost in too deep at this point. No doubt he has extreme VC pressure on him for a successful IPO, and the worst thing that can happen to him if reddit suffers is a few million dollars and some extra free time.
Meanwhile, there could be actual money he misses out on making if he admits he’s screwing over his users. Money like that is difficult to resist, especially with the kind of executive power over reddit’s direction he has.
He is running on ego at this point. And he let things get to the point of no return. People are moving away from Reddit, and even if the Spez guy undoes everything, third party apps won’t return, because they know they are one hissy fit, one stock offering, one bad CEO away from having to shut down again.
It may have started this way, but now we’ll have o see what Reddit will become. I have my Lemmy account and my popcorn ready.