I want to debunk Reddit's claims, and talk about their unwillingness to work with developers, moderators, and the larger community, as well as say thank you for all the support
I want to debunk Reddit's claims, and talk about their unwillingness to work with developers, moderators, and the larger community, as well as say thank you for all the support
Christian Selig is a great developer and has been proven honest throughout this entire ordeal.
I hope Reddit loses a significant part of its userbase when the API changes are implemented on July 1st. Hopefully it loses the rest of them over the next couple years...
Well, they're losing one advertiser - me. I was about to start an advertising campaign on Reddit when this all went down. Just pulled the plug on it. At this point, keeping my Reddit ad will be bad for business with my client base.
Not sure where I'll advertise instead, but definitely not there.
I’m at Cannes Lions rn. There’s a ton of of the Reddit marketing team here overhearing their conversations with advertisers.
Lemme tell you, that place was doomed to start with.
They just have no idea what value the site brings to their actual users.
Essentially, pushing a Reddit as a recommendation engine for “organic brand evangelists” instead of organic community communication.
I’m gonna swing by their booth tomorrow and report back.
I think I'd say that's consistent with a direction they're trying to send Reddit, for all that it's inconsistent with where Reddit is now.
I think some of the current fire over there is actually aimed at winnowing the hyper-engaged members of the community who are hobbyists and niche interest specialists - and then exchanging them for 'influencers' who are not amateurs, but who have an external financial incentive to maintain spaces, continue engagement, and to toe Reddit's line.
An ongoing remark during the blackouts noted that a whole ton of niche google searches went dull after the reddit portions of the results subsequently bricked. Reddit's niche communities are where people online are going for organic product and service recommendations - people needing advice on products don't search for review sites anymore, they go to reddit discussions. And I think they've realized that the influencer space on IG or similar is exceedingly lucrative.
If they can leverage their own platform's prominence to either boost-for-fees organic influencers or seed dialogue via AI-piloted accounts, that turns into an alternative way of monetizing their placement and niche online.
If they manage to drive off the hyper-engaged community members who might counteract those seeded recommendations, or recapture communities from real organic hobbyists and similar - they can offer key spaces in niche communities with retail importance to both the companies and the influencers ("organic brand evangelists") as a monetization angle down the road.
If you have any way of getting their pitch to prospective partners on record somehow, that would be absolutely fantastic.