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Reddit is now blocking major search engines and AI bots — except the ones that pay
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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Technology
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The cycle continues:
Idk it’s not as pithy as Cory Doctorow’s version I guess
Anyway we’re at step 5 at this point
Yeah, Reddit is Digging its own grave.
It's getting Fark'd
honestly I'm not convinced step 6 is inevitable. I think enough people are okay with whatever reddit does.
Enough consumers are okay with it, but the core geeks and nerds that created, curated, and moderated the content have jumped ship.
The cruise line is still sailing and there are still drinks and snacks so nobody has noticed the staff have jumped ship. There's management, low level volunteers, and thousands of kids, moms, and dads.
But sooner or later people are gonna get tired of snacks and flip their shit when management tells them the people who know how to make the steaks have just all fuckin ✨ inexplicably disappeared✨
That's a fantasy we all hold here because we don't like Reddit. Reddit doesn't care that nerds have gone and normies are left behind. People keep using the site and throwing money at "super upvotes". They've floated on the stock market and are doing well. The site is nowhere near dying like Digg. Deep, cerebral, meaningful content might have suffered; but hardly anyone cares as long as they get to see recycled memes, making judgemental comments on other people's relationships, porn and politics. Their main content is lowest common denominator shit, and it always has been. Facebook is far more shitty and is still going strong. I'm sure Reddit will be fine without us and with their ongoing enshitification, no matter how much we fantasise about their demise.
https://imgur.com/a/aLhmJSE.jpg
People don't realize how much of reddit content is made by bot farms and advertising agencies, propaganda outlets with bots to spare. Which is what's keeping the normies entertained, not the nerds, not the niche community of a few thousand people.
People like the one you're replying to always are so sure their echo chamber is right when reality is like complete opposite. Most people on reddit are lurkers and not terminally online people. They just want to scroll and fucking waste time. Community, subs and their mods or rules be damned.
They don't care if the cat videos are on a banana sub. they'll happily upvote and scroll away while the terminally online will start complaining why the post is not fit, a repost, or against the rules for 100s of time. And as always, once they leave, they think it is dead.
I don't know why but I can't stop laughing at this
Content curated by "the core geeks and nerds" might appeal to "geeks and nerds", not to those consumers.
They want "consumer" content. And if one day they get tired of it then I doubt any amount of "steak" would have stopped them leaving anyway, since that was never what they were looking for. It's not like reddit has to be the only place they visit in the internet, nor is the internet their only source of consumption. Just because you go to a snack bar does not mean that's the only place you go for meals.
it's been over a year since the main exodus. if they haven't noticed the "core geeks" are gone by now, they never will. pure arrogance imo.
The key capitalistic trick is to time your step 2 just when you have a critical mass on your platform. Upper management has understood that our shitty paywall will remove x% of our users from our platform. But if (100-x)% of our users can pay $y annually, we can sustain our business model and make $z of profit each year. PR will take care of all the backlash but it's all calculated.
I freaking wish..