this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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While this is funny, it drives traffic to the site so it's the equivalent of people buying Nike shoes to then burn as protest. The company is still making money and they're getting free advertising.
A better protest would be to delete Reddit accounts, uninstall the apps, and see how long you can go without hearing or thinking about reddit.
In the short term, sure
But in the long term, the novelty will wear thin and people will find the content they want elsewhere
As another commenter said elsewhere, it's more nuanced than that. It drives a bit of traffic in the short term, but people interested in the original content are forced to create new subreddits (which take significant time to gain momentum again). And the gag will eventually taper off and engagement will be lower. Overall, it's a decent form of protest (given the blackout is being forcibly overturned), as it will likely lower the value of Reddit overall, hopefully nuking the potential IPO.
Though that doesn't invalidate your second point. Kinda fun to watch a dumpster fire for a little while, though.
Not exactly. I think the advertisers will start to ask some uncomfortable questions, as will any inverstors for the IPO.
Reddit's CEO outright admitted that their own app was "never profitable", while also complaining third party's apps were making money from the same content.
If I was an investor, I'd absolutely want a good explanation for why Reddit isn't able to make their own app profitable, while other Reddit apps can do just that.
3rd party reddit apps aren't bogged down resource hogs meant solely to preload videos of "he gets us" propaganda. Do the investors even use the default reddit app? Of course not!
I started learning to use photoshop instead of braindeadly scrolling Reddit. It’s more peaceful and enjoyable.
It depends, how long until it will not be fun anymore to see every sub turned into a meme?
I give it 2 days. After that people will stop tuning in as regularly.
Also traffic != money in regards of advertisers.
If traffic increases but the engagement lowers then that is a death blow to reddit.
The metric that got posted 1-2 days ago that engagement was cut down from 31 to 17 seconds during/after the blackout is huge and a metric the advertisers will look at.
This. If they insist on doing it make it so all of the posts have to be the same. It would be boring and pwolw would stop visiting.. The sub is open but there is no reason for people to visit it. It makes it easier to ween people off of reddit too
This is what I did after the disastrous AMA.
Deleted my history with reddact.
Uninstalled Reddit.
Uninstalled Apollo (crying).
I won't go on this platform anymore.
Although I'm missing some 'niche' communities such as antkeeping or those about specific incremental games..
Now I'm trying to filter all the communities that are on this topic.
Even if it's on the fediverse, speaking about Reddit gives them more visibility.
Fellow former tearful Apollo addict here
Screen time was down 72% last week
Blocking reddit in /etc/hosts works well too.