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This should be interesting as it will inevitably increase pressure on reddit's leadership to monetise their users better. But it has always been part of that site's DNA to avoid the kind of extreme data mining that Google and FB are performing. This, on the other hand, has led to a situation where reddit, despite its size, is consistently underperforming financially relative to what would be possible. How are they going to balance that?

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It seems like that has been changing lately. One random example: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/lqtecn/update_to...

Removing privacy opt-outs to "reduce confusion"

Reddit has been forcing the app on users for a while.

Now you need to login or use the app to even read most threads unless you use old.reddit or a 3rd party site.

So they're going to get more and more aggressive here.

What would be possible with less monetization of users and a decent-sized support staff?

Or are we talking the bullshit SV-style possibilities where you monetize the living shit out of everyone and everything and give a big middle finger to your customers with a skeleton human support crew?

> give a big middle finger to your customers with a skeleton human support crew?

I mean that describes the situation today. The management involvement in Reddit is for the CEO to support ivermectin conspiracy and GamerGate subs.

'Management involvement' has always been heavily free-speech at all costs. Reddit is one of the last bastions of this style of management and have yet to succumb to zoomers' whimsical emotional fragility.

They were ground zero for The Fappening, remember? And all sorts of other nasty stuff that they only cracked down on because of intense pressure.

People need to remember that they are calling for CENSORSHIP, and reddit's policy for the longest time was to avoid that at all costs.

If there's one thing I respected about Reddit it was their ability to stand up to those whiners.

I am so ashamed of the latest generation -- for all our differences that I have no choice but to accept, the one thing I cannot forgive is how they seem to have forgotten what free speech means.

This is a fantasy. Reddit management has always paid lip service to "free speech at all costs", until reddit itself has to bear even the smallest of those costs at which point the principle is rapidly jettisoned. There are so many examples I don't even know where to start, from the perverted (jailbait) to the political (the_donald) to the offended zoomers (fatpeoplehate).

Before Ellen Chao and gamergate they had a really hands-off policy on content moderation, but it was that controversy that seems to have changed their course

They changed their course when they decided they needed some ad revenue. As I said, the moment "free speech at any cost" has literally any cost.

> zoomers' whimsical emotional fragility

I don't see how not wanting people to be radicalized is emotional fragility. It's extremely paternalistic, but idk about fragile. Reddit's community has never really been interested in cancelling.

I'm not sure this argument really has any weight. You could say the same thing about using neopronouns is a low-cost, simple, and "kind" thing to do... but then completely disregard the centuries (if not millenia) of social convention and programming that has to be unwound for many before such a thing feels natural and simple.

Does gen Z not want people to be radicalized? Or do they just want people to be radicalized to their dogma?

And Reddit is a big community. For certain there are factions that are all about cancelling those that offend them.

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