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

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19466667

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.”

  • Annoyed_🦀
    53•3 months ago

    It’s a sign. Spez will now milk the company and make himself billionaires for the next few years, then sell the company for tens of billions, and new owner will run it into the ground, milking whatever left of it. Then it will become the blandest, soulless socmed.

    • @mudmaniac
      34•3 months ago

      Sounds like a job for Elon Musk.

      • @Veneroso
        18•3 months ago

        Please let this happen.

        No one can ruin a company quite like him.

        Or sell it to Trump Media Group.

      • @brucethemoose
        2•3 months ago

        TBH that would ddos lemmy with new users, lol.