Comment by h0nest_Bender on 03/03/2021 at 18:28 UTC

138 upvotes, 10 direct replies (showing 10)

View submission: Announcing Online Presence Indicators

Because the feature would never get any traction otherwise. There's zero demand for this feature. Which makes me wonder why they're pushing it so aggressively.

Replies

Comment by scarabic at 04/03/2021 at 00:26 UTC

13 upvotes, 1 direct replies

It probably will increase posting activity a little bit, because in some situations people will choose to answer a comment if the author is online, because they think they have a better chance of getting heard by that person *right now.* This in turn might lead to a speedy reply, and so on.

When features like this are evaluated, it’s in aggregate. Across millions of people, is there a statistical improvement in posting activity of 1%? If so that is a big win. One percent may not sound like much but Reddit is a huge site so 1% is meaningful. And then on to the next feature. This is how you grow your activity numbers by 10-20% from one year to the next.

But no individual ever wants to hear that a feature will make them use the site more. I’m in charge of my own usage level! I’m not going to dance for some little green dot! This perspective is also completely valid.

But the two points of view just talk past each other. Reddit believes, and will be able to prove, that the green dot makes a small difference. You might say “not to me!” and you could be completely correct. But they would also be correct.

This is the difficulty with making user engagement your goal. Suddenly you are telling them how engaged to be, when they should be driving that. Yes, we need developers to remove friction and make things work, but a change like this one... that’s going beyond that. Nothing was broken here.

Comment by BecauseWeCan at 03/03/2021 at 18:40 UTC

83 upvotes, 3 direct replies

Probably because one board member saw it on his Slack account and wanted to say something "useful" during the board meeting.

Comment by MoralMidgetry at 03/03/2021 at 18:33 UTC

29 upvotes, 3 direct replies

How much do you want to bet they were having a meeting to discuss why users hate chat and their great epiphany was that it was missing presence?

Comment by [deleted] at 03/03/2021 at 18:56 UTC*

19 upvotes, 1 direct replies

u/spez is a NAZI

Comment by make_fascists_afraid at 04/03/2021 at 03:05 UTC

4 upvotes, 0 direct replies

There's zero demand for this feature. Which makes me wonder why they're pushing it so aggressively.

do you really wonder tho? it's advertiser $$. it's always advertiser $$.

"drive greater engagement" is *always* code for "generate more ad revenue"

Comment by intensely_human at 04/03/2021 at 04:12 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

The worst case scenario is China's trying to ever-so-gently pressure people to move away from anonymity and privacy.

Comment by africanohobo at 04/03/2021 at 09:29 UTC

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I can't even think of a nefarious tracking type reason tbh, at least for displaying it publicly.

Just a weird addition nobody wants.

They're trying to be more like FB, Twitter etc I think, one of the big dogs, but I feel Reddit (10 years back or so) was so great because it wasn't like those sites.

Comment by iBrarian at 04/03/2021 at 07:26 UTC

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

So they can boost their ad revenue by "proving" how many potential online members can see the ads at a given time period (run an ad from 7-8PM and you'll have 780,000 males between 18-25 in the US view your targeted ad campaign).