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Comment by gtsteve | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it will. It'll IPO just fine, make their shareholders wealthy and become another millquetoast advertiser friendly walled garden for your average internet user while the jilted original users go and find another platform, which will in turn IPO just fine, make their shareholders wealthy and the cycle repeats forever.

The average internet user by the way, is statistically not you reading this, doesn't really care too much about APIs and finds the current Reddit client just fine really and as a recent registration, doesn't understand that the developer community basically built the interest in reddit and without third-party moderation tools, clients and a community that deeply cared about their special website, flawed though it was.

All platforms go through this cycle, but Reddit felt special to me and it hurts to find that wasn't true.

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I think this captures how I feel, which is an odd sense of mourning.

It's not that I haven't known for a long time now that reddit isn't the site it used to be, it's that this episode in particular has put that in such focus I can't ignore it.

So now I feel a sense of loss for the reddit of old, even if it hasn't really been such for a long time anyway.

Reddit itself will carry on fine, and perhaps get even stronger with a tighter control over content. Efforts to make a federated alternative are doomed.

I’d be pretty wary to join in on the IPO if they are taking actions like this, which seem likely to scare off all their moderators. If the volunteer moderators leave, they are going to have to change their business model to actually pay people to work, right?

But I’m not an investor, maybe Reddit has some numbers that make this make sense, or something. Or maybe they are just hoping to rip off some investors who don’t know how the site works.

Same. Last night I felt a sense of grief that all this immense knowledge & the tools to aggregate it have been fully captured by the bland sanitized values of ad networks.

Even today I can’t find answers on Google to my daily inquiries, but will find it on Reddit.

If there is an internet worth building, it’s not on ads.

But we all knew that from the start.

Here’s to those working on the federated web, maybe the outcome can be different.

I'm beginning to explore the fediverse more and have resolved to find an appropriate place to become part of it somehow. I don't think the fediverse as we know it today is the solution but instinctively I feel it's our best way right now to find our way there.

I share your view - good luck on your adventure!

> All platforms go through this cycle, but Reddit felt special to me and it hurts to find that wasn't true.

This is not always true and there’s an important correction to this: all VC-funded platforms go through this, especially monetized by ads.

There are examples of privately owned platforms with subscriptions that are doing great and show no sign of quality decline. Telegram most notably being one of those.

This chase for constant high returns and also the focus on an audience very ortogonal to your actual users (ads buyers) are what seriously misaligns the incentives of users and platform owners.

I don't think it will because there's no solid alternative. If/when there is, and the most active users - the ones contributing the content and moderating the comments - start leaving, then it will turn into an empty husk of itself and die like Digg did, even if it does have millions of readers.

My argument against parallels drawn Digg is simply current users of the internet. In 2010-2011 people were more likely to experiment with different social forums, websites, and etc. Also the age of the users were always on the younger side. Nowadays it’s fairly different, and seems like users are more sticky and will only flock to an already established websites, so unless Reddit becomes genuinely unusable (broken native client, dead infrastructure and etc.), majority of the users will stay on and contribute. It’s similar to “Twitter exodus”, which didn’t happen. Obviously things might go downhill for the company, but people go in for their quick dopamine hits, not for some dramatic battle between evil (Reddit corp) and good (Apollo).

Not to sound too pessimistic, but most of the mods of the bigger subreddits aren’t going to give up either, since it’s a part of their life, and not really their battle.

I really hope I am wrong though, since it’s about time we have something new and shiny.

This is what will happen, and generally the people who would leave over these changes are the ones who make worthwhile content, and now they will move elsewhere. But where?

People (statistically on average, not you) come to reddit for ragebait and plagiarism and priacy, not worthwhile content.

Exactly my point

Reddit will go the way of Twitter. By that I mean business as usual.

Money always corrupts in the end.

> It'll IPO just fine

There is nothing inevitable about that.

So where are the "OG" users going?

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