this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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Well, Reddit did shell out money for a third party client. They bought the iOS app Alien Blue in 2014 and turned that into an official app before quickly abandoning it for their client in 2016.
They bought the app , and then destroyed it.
They should have learned for their second try, and just bought the app, then not destroyed it.
That would never happen though. The icentives of Christian Selig and the incentives of Reddit are very different. People like it because it's not made by Reddit
That is the crux of the issue, yeah. Reddit needs to make money, which requires enshittifying their app to serve more ads...which drives people away from using their app.
Lemmy's lack of profit motive is probably the best thing going for it. The decentralization is good too, but I still think it's secondary to the fact that it doesn't need to try to make a profit
If your core offering can be recreated by a bunch of hobbyists in the their spare time, and your value is 100% the content your users create and moderate then perhaps you're not the great product company you thought you were and you should leave product creation to others.
But hey, perhaps it's a good idea to take the reasons for using your site away and see what happens.
After all, your friends take their private planes everywhere while you're forced to fly first class occasionally - and you want that money.