This video shows that Reddit refused to delete all comments and posts of its users when they close their account via a CCPA / GDPR request. Posts and comment...

This video shows that Reddit refused to delete all comments and posts of its users when they close their account via a CCPA / GDPR request.

  • admiralteal@kbin.social
    10·
    1 year ago

    Easy question to answer: they aren’t profitable and the free money of years of near 0 or 0% interest rates is over. The constant VC dried up and the website is insolvent. They have a massively bloated staff roster. They’re going to die if they don’t make a major change.

    And at the same time, all “traditional” monetization strategies for websites like these just… don’t work with the way Reddit works. Making the changes they need to make will kill the site.

    They never cooked up a monetization strategy that would work for them. They procrastinated. They felt free money would continue forever and underestimated how reliant their site was on volunteer labor. They got distracted by stupid side projects instead of refining the core product.

    Reddit will absolutely survive all this. I expect it to still exist, at the end of the day. But it’ll be smaller, and what remains will be a soulless shit hole. And it’ll still be borderline insolvent.

    • lemmyvoreEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      There are many ways in which Reddit can continue to be self-sustaining as a platform and even turn a small healthy profit.

      But let’s face it, the owners don’t want that. They see it as an opportunity for them personally to make a few millions. They don’t care if it destroys the platform in the process.

      The catch is that nobody’s interested in Reddit as a social platform. Whoever buys it will do it for legal access to the comment archive, then gut it. And it will most likely be someone with LLM interests.

      But they won’t pay top dollar for that archive because, let’s face it, everybody who wanted it already has it. It was freely accessible to search engines and the world at large for almost 20 years, it’s a bit late to ask money for it now.