Some Reddit users have noticed that they can’t sign-in to their accounts anymore on mobile, as the option to do so has been removed for them. Reddit has made it difficult in the past for users to access the site on mobile in browsers. The company’s main intention is to get users to use the official Reddit application instead.
Honestly seems like a lot of major sites are imploding. Stackoverflow’s mods are striking, Twitter is on a downward spiral and likely to go bankrupt this year, Reddit is axing itself, etc.
It’ll be interesting to see what ends up happening to the internet after. I think a return to more niche forums or community-run things like lemmy is unlikely to be fully mainstream, but I think enough folks will shake off the major platforms onto these to get them really active.
Perhaps this will mark the end of an era. Running a social media company requires lots of money, and making it profitable is very hard unless you leach data off everyone. Perhaps investors will learn that there are better ways to make money.
I’m just not really sure what those other ways to make money could be. Other than monetizing a service outright via a subscription or selling a product to the users, I don’t really see a good way for online social media to be revenue neutral or positive.
The best way in the modern capital environment is to pivot to algorithm-driven content like TikTok-- I think we’re seeing the decline of traditional social media in general in favor of platforms that follow the TikTok formula.
I was mainly thinking that investors should consider dumping their money on companies that have nothing to do with the social media. Making an online platform like this profitable has been proven to be very difficult, and investors should have learned that by now.
Profit ruins everything. Heck I don’t even enjoy producing art or figurines or whatever if it’s for profit. I’d rather be part of something driven by passion and interest in doing something for others than profit. Infinite growth is a really bad model… if humans grew indefinitely it wild be catastrophic, and claustrophobic…
Maybe the problem lies in the expectations. Normally, an investor wants the investment to grow forever, but that’s not realistic in the long run. There used to be lots of family businesses that only wanted a sustainable income. For instance, a bakery like that wasn’t supposed to branch out and spread to other cities. If they just keep on selling bread every morning to the locals, the family in question survives with that money, that’s enough. They just expect things to be sustainable, not exponential.
What’s going on at SO?
This is a good summary of whats going on and why the mods are striking.
Huh I hadn’t heard about Stack Overflow’s protest. Found these articles:
“Stack Overflow strives to protect community content from AI firms, striking mods say “re-enable the data dumps””
“Stack Overflow Moderators Stop Work in Protest of Lax AI-Generated Content Guidelines”
I like that idea. I miss just participating in niche forums. Keeps me from being tempted to watch something grotesque or read rage bait.
My experience with Lemmy so far is that it could totally be a stand-in. The content is still centralised even if the content delivery isn’t, and I think that’s the key.
NewTumbl shut down last week as well, something not really covered. It’s where all the NSFW content from Tumblr went.