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Comment by axaxs | Hacker News Reader

I honestly wonder what goes on behind Reddit. It's been pretty terrible since the beginning. I don't mean to be insulting to anyone in particular, I know how projects go, and I love the site. But speedy or well done, it is not.

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There's no question they've sabotaged their webapp in favor of the app where there's no adblock and they can send push notifications for profit. Been a user since 2009 and still use a ton for everything, but it's quickly grown more painful by the day.

I find this logic quite interesting.

Why should Reddit not make money?

No one is saying they shouldn't make money. It is our right to gripe about it when they do so in an annoying or obnoxious manner. We might even abandon the platform if the advertising push becomes too obnoxious. If that happens and they fold, apparently they did not have a viable business model. There is no "should" about any of it.

> There is no "should" about any of it.

Of course there is. Objective functions can be utilitarian or deeply selfish, but "should" pushes them in someone's desired direction. Relativism is tautological and intentionally or not, condescending.

Yup. See Digg.

Ideally they would make money by making a better product, not neuter their existing good product to force users to use the worse but more lucrative product

There's just one robust metric for "better," and that's market cap, which is generally tied to current and future profits.

If you're an investor, sure. If you're a user there is unquestionably situations where a product gets worse as it gets more market cap

Their method of making money has directly contributed to a nosedive in the quality of their products. I frankly consider this a kind of rarely documented market failure.

There's just one robust metric for "quality," and that's market cap, which is generally tied to current and future profits.

By what reasoning?

Brainwashed capitalism reasoning :D

(America at least) conditioned to think market caps and stock markets and GDP are the only meaningful metric.

What do you see in the parent comment that says they _shouldn't_ do this? It's just laying out that they _are_ doing it, in direct response to a comment wondering why their site is so terrible.

One of my favorite quotes because it is so hard for me to swallow

> People will choose convenience over quality any day

- CEO of iHeart Media

I am neither a fan of iHeart Media nor that idea, but I think it may be correct. If true, an explanation for Reddit's poor quality is that they made media consumption convenient, and user hostile behavior goes unpunished because there is nowhere else as convenient as reddit.

That's how I and many others felt with Digg over a decade ago. People like to use what they are familiar, but if you push hard enough people will abandon the platform. I guess reddit isn't pushing hard enough yet, although I suppose I would be gone if the old version wasn't available.

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