Reddit’s crisis is a warning for all social platforms: when you trade community for profits, everyone loses. Will Reddit fix its mes...

Money, Mods, and Mayhem

The Turning Point

In 2024, Reddit is a far cry from its scrappy startup roots. With over 430 million monthly active users and more than 100,000 active communities, it’s a social media giant. But with great power comes great responsibility, and Reddit is learning this lesson the hard way.

The turning point came in June 2023 when Reddit announced changes to its API pricing. For the uninitiated, API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it’s basically the secret sauce that allows third-party apps to interact with Reddit. The new pricing model threatened to kill off popular third-party apps like Apollo, whose developer Christian Selig didn’t mince words: “Reddit’s API changes are not just unfair, they’re unsustainable for third-party apps.”

Over 8,000 subreddits went dark in protest.

The blackout should have reminded Reddit’s overlords of a crucial fact: Reddit’s success was built on the backs of its users. The platform had cultivated a sense of ownership among its community, and now that community was biting back.

One moderator summed it up perfectly: “We’re the ones who keep this site running, and we’re being ignored.”

  • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    4 months ago

    i suggest having multiple accounts in many instances especially since i see you are on .world.

    if you don’t have one, do it now! :)

    my guess (100% vibes-based) is .world might consume another couple comms and split off to its own thing. If i’m even right, how much that split affects lemmy depends on how many and how well we users are spread out over the other comms.

    • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
      5·
      4 months ago

      Why create accounts now? If .world splits off, you can just create an account on another instance at that point.

      • can@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        4 months ago

        If you intend on creating any communities it would really be better to make them elsewhere, otherwise it doesn’t really matter.

      • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
        15·
        4 months ago

        Well i like jumping between instances constantly so i never feel a connection to any of them. I have an account in any instance defedded from another so i don’t miss the yummy content and get as many different perspectives flooding my brains busted dopamine receptors as i can, but that’s just me.

        I kept about 5 running accounts at any given time on Reddit too, because i didn’t want to be a karma whore. Maybe i just like lots of accounts and i don’t even have a good reason.