25 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Testing a new concept with select subreddit partners
So, I'm old. I remember when web forums meant individual sites running phpBB or things like it, and you had discussions with text and maybe some pictures occasionally, and everybody was happy and didn't expect anything more. Of course those are still around, but I'm saying back then you had no choice but to go to different unrelated web sites to discuss different unrelated topics.
I'm not quite Usenet old, when you were completely limited to text but discussions about a wide range of topics were organized under one location.
Reddit's a lot like a modern Usenet, BTW.
It's also got the same problem that Twitter and Facebook and Youtube and even those independent sites with a busy phpBB forum have: how to pay for all this shit. Even just the hosting and bandwidth alone, much less development of new features. The social web has never had a particularly sound business model.
Other than selling ads, which most people these days are blocking anyway, how to entice the users to pay money for stupid digital trinkets that don't interfere with the normal operations of the platform for everybody else? There's probably not a good way. The fellow that compared this to mobile game premiums[1] had the right of it, it's well known that those are supported by "whales", a small number of players that spend a whole lot of money (a term, BTW, borrowed from the casino industry).
Meanwhile moderators probably just feel harassed by all the changes, large and small, that keep getting dumped in their laps, when all they want to do is run some communities related to their personal interests.
I guess what I'm saying is I certainly sympathize with Reddit's financial problem, but I don't consider their problem to be my problem. I think the lesson is don't run a website unless you're willing to pay for it out of pocket, or if it's an advertising expense for a business that makes its income elsewhere.
Comment by Clayh5 at 29/08/2020 at 05:22 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
don't run a website unless you're willing to pay for it out of pocket
you would have the internet be stuck in the 90s