this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Well stop doing your part. Stop interacting with Reddit. They are almost certainly doing Place right now just to boost their numbers and you’re falling for it
Yeah, but in exchange for a brief flurry of engagement they have to put up with another wave of articles about angry reddit user protests:
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/20/redditors-are-already-using-r-place-to-address-api-controversy/
“Oh no, anyways…”
Says the Reddit execs as they show off their numbers to VCs as they prepare for their IPO
Investors care about the potential for future growth and thus future increased profits. They don't give a shit about what a company is doing today, except to the extent it is predictive of the future. Investors look at this and see lots of activity of users who actively hate the company, that's not future growth.
To take an unfortunate example, imagine if Bud Light had a bump in sales because a bunch of right wing lunatics were buying extra just so they could make videos of them throwing away, shooting, blowing up, or otherwise destroying the beer while vowing never to drink it again. Does an investor look at that bump in sales and say "oh neat, look how well Bud Light is doing, I should invest!" or do they say "A lot of Bud Light's core consumer base is pissed as hell and probably not going to be buying this product in the future, there is limited potential for future growth, I'm out"?
Yes. And if you look at Reddit today, it's still alive and full of buzz.
The third-party app userbase was a small percentage of the site.
Most people are indifferent and so they keep using it.
it is legit nothing but bots and reposts. there's more oc here on Lemmy in my experience
There are magnitudes more OC on Reddit than Lemmy just by nature of their user base size. There are bots and reposts, sure, but Lemmy pales in comparison to the amount of OC on Reddit
There's actually plenty of user activity there.
Enough to make the outrage negligble.
You say investors see lots of active users who actively hate the site and don’t see future growth.
I think they see a lot of users who say they hate the site but despite that they still use the site and the numbers continue to grow. To me that sounds like a dependent user base that even through hard times continues to grow.
People hate CEOs but can be so dumb...
I think VCs are idiots… so yes.
Precisely this.
C-suite cares about one thing: “Number go up”
They do not give a shit why people are still on reddit. They look at the site traffic analytics and as long as the numbers are going up, they think they’re doing the right thing. Your mere presence on the site is only seen as opportunity for them to squeeze out more ad revenue.
“But I don’t click on the ads!”
They don’t care about that either! Every time an ad appears on your screen, that gets recorded as a data point in their analytics, regardless of whether or not you interact with it.
They just want to see the numbers go up. They don’t care how it happens, as long as it happens.
If you want to hit them where it hurts, stop engaging with the site.