Reddit updates look after rough 6 months and ahead of reported IPO

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Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨L4s@lemmy.world [bot]⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/reddit-updates-look-after-rough-6-months-and-ahead-of-reported-ipo/

Reddit updates look after rough 6 months and ahead of reported IPO::“Edit: Obligatory ‘F— Spez’ for karma.”

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_number8_@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
reposting one of the worst things i’ve ever heard someone say in the modern age:

“There’s a lot of stuff on the site that you’d only ever say in therapy, or AA, or never at all … But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”

eat my ass spez. anyone thoughtlessly destroying so much deserves to be put in the stockades

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- CIA_Chatbot@normalcity.life ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I hope you aren’t allergic to cats, because spez is a cat lover. https://i.imgur.com/NUl0BwX.png
  
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  - prole@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I have no idea why this exists, but I had to upvote it.
    
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  - satans_crackpipe@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m really happy this exists. Thank you for sharing.
    
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  - Snowpix@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Wtf??? Cringe! Downvote army, assemble!
    
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- gaiussabinus@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yay explicit exploitation of the most vulnerable in a community. Lots of this is cartoonishly evil.
  
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- Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I knew people who needed the help of some of the subreddits he might be going on about, that is absolutely fucking disgusting.
  
  Also I thought this was in the Ars article, but no, this was in an interview with the New York Times during the peak of the API protests!
  
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- batmaniam@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah… I don’t know if the person you’re mentioning meant productive stuff or not, but I was in a pretty niche community there. One where parents were dealing with their kids on operating tables, but not often. It was as exactly the kind of thing internet forums were made for: medical advice from doctors, venting and whatnot from strangers who’d been there. I said a lot of practical helpful things and a lot of meaningless nice platitudes at the right time.
  
  And I was happy to do it the same way I swapped guitar tabs as a kid.
  
  There’s honest money in making in making a community space.
  
  There’s no honest money in monetizing a community.
  
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TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I dont have any direct experience with reddit any longer.

What I can say, is that I think a verrrrrrry significant portion of comments and commenters are actually reddit run bots. My source for this is my experience in the daily thread of a certain degenerate gambling forum. There were maybe like 12-30 posters who would reply, engage, etc… in the daily and day after threads. However, there was a yyyyyuuuuugggge number of accounts that would just comment with no real further engagement. Like you would respond to them, but they wouldnt respond back.

I truly believe that reddits internal business model is predicted on the use of reddit run bots to create synthetic engagement in certain audiences around marketing targets that a selective group of advertisers (read, not buying reddit ads) are given access to. The basics is that reddit astroturfs synthetic engagement until organic engagement takes over. I have no way of proving this and its pure speculation.

This is why I don’t even worry about considering the user numbers on lemmy. Relying on my anectdotal experience, we’ve got about the usership/ engagement numbers from around the 2009-2011 time period, which is actually pretty amazing. Also, the overall lemmy experience is far superior, for example, just the ability to sort by a couple of different ‘hot’ options is a major improvement. I really think if the devs just keep vibing on their plan, lemmy will be more than strong enough to survive and continue for decades to come.

The fact is that reddit stole from us our faith in a ‘good internet’. The users of reddit built reddit, not the company that owns it (they suck). The users of reddit paid for the server time and made the system work. That good faith was utterly exploited by the leadership of reddit and we should never forget how they stole from and exploited their community.

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- SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s not just speculation on your part.
  
  How it started:
  
  www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/
  
  How it’s going:
  
  reddit.com/…/reddit_admins_were_just_caught_using…
  
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  - SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They also started handing out usernames to companies over “trademark infringement.” Someone with the username “FoodNetwork” is losing the username to the real Food Network.
    
    I was on reddit long enough to remember how people used to run corporate stooges out with pitchforks.
    
    “These are fan run forums,” they would say. The idea that you could have your username taken by a corporation was unheard of, because originally, it was considered really bad form to have anyone from the business running the subreddit, because then it wouldn’t be a neutral source of information.
    
    Nope, now they can steal usernames and it’s totes okay for subreddits to be completely controlled by their corporate namesake.
    
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  - 3valc@mujico.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Reading what happened to the german subs, that also happened with newly created spanish subs, many got thousands of subscribers but no engagement, only one or two comments per thread and little content but a lot of subscribers.
    
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- LifeOfChance@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You’re absolutely right about most of it. My only criticism is the first paragraph as I am notorious for just commenting and not responding. Literally if you reply I won’t respond lol but I can’t imagine I’m the only one. A better way to sniff them out would be profiling them and finding things like hobby subs where they would be significantly more likely to comment vs addiction subs where they may feel some shame in interacting or engaging in their addiction.
  
  I’m pretty stupid so I could be talking out my ass but I figured input for data collection and such.
  
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  - StereoTrespasser@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s what caught my eye too. I rarely, if ever, respond to someone who’s responded to a comment I’ve made, especially if they’re arguing or trying to correct me. And that’s if I’ve even bothered to go back and check it.
    
    Not that you’ll ever see my reply to your comment…
    
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- TenderfootGungi@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I am not saying you are wrong, but when I was active on Reddit I rarely checked my mail. I still have like 12k unread messages.
  
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  - TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s quite a weird way to use…any account.
    
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- sarcasticsunrise@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yo you might’ve dropped this, King 👑. This post is the best way of putting into words my thoughts on the matter that I’m too smoothbrained to formulate into creation. Especially the last paragraph, the theft of “good Internet”. Fuckin A, m8
  
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onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Oh oh… can we look forward to another wave of reddit leavers after inevitable changes to the site to please investors?

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- jtk@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Anyone who didn’t leave when old.reddit.com stopped being the default isn’t going to leave over any other redesigns. They couldn’t possibly be worse.
  
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  - Wrench@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The fall of Digg didn’t happen in one single wave.
    
    Lots of people just want to stay with what they’re familiar with, and it takes loss of critical mass of content/interaction before they’ll look at the door.
    
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  - SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think there might be another wave when old.reddit.com stops working, a number of people still access it that way, despite it not being well known by the modern reddit audience.
    
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  - whats_all_this_then@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Honestly, dark theme is how they got me with that one. Haven’t used the site aside from search results since the API changes went live but I like to think I’d leave if a new redesign was worse.
    
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- BleatingZombie@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I mean … that’s almost certainly what’s going to happen to stone degree
  
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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
See, we made the homes in the d’s look like little talking bubbles. We’re not evil. We’re cuuuuuute. Money please! Image

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- MisterChief@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Reddit: I’ve done nothing wrong, ever, in my life.
  
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  - ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    At least Spez said racism and hate speech are allowed on the platform
    
    Which Spez claimed Reddit used to be against so character growth I guess
    
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ilikecoffee@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
At least they didn’t rename themselves to “Y” I guess… Thought that would be mildly hilarious.

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- SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Ironic joke to make considering reddit was spun out from … Y Combinator.
  
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- bdonvr@thelemmy.club ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Spez is some kind of musk fanboy iirc so
  
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  - ilikecoffee@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah that’d check out…
    
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figaro@lemdro.id ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Everyone here is on copium, not gonna lie.

Reddit isn’t going to die. Honestly it has 1000x more content than lemmy.

Lemmy has a place and so does reddit.

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- SLGC@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I still browse reddit, simply because the size of the communities I want to visit is much larger there. My browsing is however confined to the mobile page in Firefox, which is slow, clunky, and breaks frequently, which means my reddit usage is down by something like 99%. Lemmy has the sync app, and without the app I wouldn’t be here. Browsing Lemmy before it was awful.
  
  Also, I kinda like that Lemmy is smaller. There’s much less noise, less of an algorithm feel to browsing. It feels slightly more like the internet I grew up with in the 90s and 00s, and I kinda missed that.
  
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  - CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The throwback feel really is an intangible value add that means it might not catch on for younger folks but damn it does feel good.
    
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  - agitatedpotato@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I go back for sports communities because they’re still active enough on reddit for back and forth during live games, but literally yesterday on the hockey sub people were talking about how there’s less content. API changes meant less autoposted game highlights and it even seems there’s less back and forth on the game day threads. Now it depends a lot on the team these days.
    
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  - Pipoca@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Size has some pretty big advantages.
    
    In particular, it feels like lemmy is mostly memes and news.
    
    While on reddit, you can have productive discussions about the internals of the Haskell compiler, or ask questions to actual historians. Niche subreddits having a quorum of experts to actually have discussions about stuff was always the best part about reddit. And that part has always been sadly lacking from lemmy because of size.
    
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- SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  TIL not supporting businesses you don’t agree with = being on copium.
  
  Guess I better go buy Nestle products again.
  
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  - figaro@lemdro.id ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No I think that’s fine, it’s just I see people thinking that reddit is literally dying, which is just not the case.
    
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- MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Honestly it has 1000x more content than lemmy.
  
  So steal the content and post it here. At least the good stuff.
  
  There aren’t any laws preventing you from doing that.
  
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  - SLGC@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s kinda how these sites function at all nowadays lol. Wasn’t reddit text posts only a long time ago?
    
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  - Pipoca@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The good content on reddit isn’t the shitty-ass memes, it’s the discussion by experts on niche subreddits. Kinda hard to steal that…
    
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- satan@r.nf ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Everyone? Those people who say these companies are sinking ship are probably so addicted to them they have to mention it anytime anything vaguely relates to it. Normal people use both and don’t give a shit where their meme comes from.
  
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SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

New look, same Reddit

I mean, yes and no. It’s the same reddit from six months ago yeah, the vultures hungry for an IPO and who don’t give a fuck about users.

The change in font actually speaks massively to a huge change in how reddit functions, and this has been a slow, gradual change.

Reddit was originally an all text site. The name fucking implies it.

“Oh did you see that link?”

“Yeah, I already read it.”

The pivot to sound and video has been going on for a few years. The logo still referenced the text-heavy nature of the site by being stylized as text you might read on a website. Now it is clearly a logo that has dropped that pretense entirely, as they have said “fuck people who like to read,” we’re here for eyeballs on screens, and video is what makes that happen!

So yeah, it screams a huge change in direction that’s been happening for years now. They’re just updating the branding to match the site direction.

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- prole@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Exactly. I remember going to Reddit as a minimalist alternative to Digg even before 2.0 pushed everyone out.
  
  It was only a matter of time.
  
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- gareppa@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes, reddit has been for a while 2 distinct websites:
  
  old reddit, centered around text and links
  
  new reddit, a pinterest/instagram mashup
  
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LWD@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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- SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Up until day one past IPO.
  
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  - gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    And that’s the day I completely stop using the site.
    
    I’ve still been using it for technical stuff, because there’s a absolute shitload of extremely valuable and informative content on a bunch of engineering- and tech-oriented subs, but a lot of the users who were involved with that seem to be switching here, and a lot of THOSE users have applied scripts to nuke all comments on their account, so it’s steadily becoming less valuable and more out of date. That said, it’s a bummer that that the knowledge base contained in those communities are largely going to seed.
    
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- AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They killed .compact a while ago.
  
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db2@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I looked at reddit today, it looks like ass. Not nice ass either.

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Nipplecreek@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fuck spez I used that reddit for years. However you can only be fucked over so much.

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netchami@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fuck spez

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LainOfTheWired@lemy.lol ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It looks like one of those soulless Apple animoji things.

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- EurekaStockade@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Mouth open, shadow on chin - they turned their logo into a soyjak
  
  Seems fitting tbh
  
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Veneroso@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Has he tried publicly spouting fringe fascist conspiracy theories yet? No? Give it time…

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NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Good riddance to reddit. Haven’t been on it since the API pricing kicked in.

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- shortwavesurfer@monero.town ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Since the API pricing thing happened, I’ve spent a grand total of about 10 minutes on their site.
  
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  - NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Same, I posted something about one of my game jams a few months ago, and that was it.
    
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Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I didn’t leave Reddit and join Lemmy because I want to read about Reddit. Fuck Reddi. it’s yesterday’s news.

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- OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Nobody’s forcing you.
  
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  - ExLisper@linux.community ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    How do you know? Maybe he’s tied up mechanical orange style?
    
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Zummy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
As soon as copious amounts of money are involved, you see the change. I never even used the 3rd party Reddit apps, but when money made OG Reddit act like a dick towards them, I peaced out. Sorry Reddit, but I think you’ll eventually be Digg. And I have no interest in sticking around for that.

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killeronthecorner@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

“Edit: Obligatory ‘Fuck Spez’ for karma.”

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it any more!”

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Mr_nutter_butter@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
i still use reddit a lot of comunities havent left and my god the amout of bots now is insane entire threads are coppied with 1 year 6 month old acounts with zero history and what i think is ai spam from simualr acounts its a mess over there now what brainless idiot is letting this happen

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- Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  A friend of mine was talking about how they had blatant homophobia sent their way on an LGBT subreddit, which was upvoted. Went to check r/ApolloApp and someone critical of Christian was being blatantly and casually homophobic.
  
  Honestly, I’m glad I left that shithole.
  
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  - Mr_nutter_butter@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They did kick out a lot of mods during the protests and moderation has gone to utter shit since the api change
    
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  - sarcasticsunrise@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Had a brief look at r/WorldNews yesterday. Every comment was blatantly disgusting Islamaphobia that I couldn’t believe hadn’t been deleted yet. I don’t ever remember it being that bad over there
    
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- ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  what brainless idiot is letting this happen
  
  I can’t begin to imagine, who could it be, there are so many Spezs* to choose from. I guess we will just never know.
  
  Actually the entire board is rotten. We love to blame Spez (and he’s an incessant liar who deserves every last bit of contempt he gets – all while making comments about “landed gentry” while he profits off free content and moderator labor) but he’s just the public face on the entire board, who ALL just want to push through an IPO and then cash out. They do not care at all that it has destroyed the site, and because bots use API calls, they’ve known about the bots all along, and have openly used bots themselves. Sam Altman was a board member of Reddit for a while, and oh look, Reddit is used for AI training. Or was, until Altman left the board and then decided they wanted cash for that to continue.
  
  The entire board is shit.
  
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cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You can’t polish a turd.

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ramblinguy@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Maybe they should have spent some of the money they used on this questionable design update on improving their app or working with third party app developers.

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- reversebananimals@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  “we cant afford the API costs for 3P clients! we need it for making our own open source font that no one asked for!”
  
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CombatWombat1212@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Oh wow that is bad branding my guy

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argo_yamato@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Well you can put lipstick on a pig …but its still a pig. And that 3D snoo head looked creepy.

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- Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Honestly the past two iterations of Snoo were pretty good. Wish it wasn’t attached to an awful website but, eh.
  
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Erasmus@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Anyone wanna place a bet on how long it will be before the porn on there gets banned for good?

I know what Spez said about keeping it but he has lied before.

My bet is once they nail down the investors for the IPO, Reddit users are going to see a sharp shift in moderating - including what is allowed regarding NSFW/NSFL content.

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originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
do the germans have a word for super schadenfreude? or is that dumb 'cuz if i new german i could just stitch it on to the front or something?

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- DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Überschadenfreude…if that isn’t it, then the Germans are wrong.
  
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  - schmorpel@slrpnk.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Der überfreuteste Schaden den ich je die Freude hatte live mitzuerleben. Der Kapitalismus frisst sich selbst, danke!
    
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smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I still don’t like centralized corpo silo nature of Reddit, but must say the new logo looks far better and alive.

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autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:

Reddit also said the font has “large x-height for readability and disambiguated letterforms for rapid identification” and improved accessibility.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Reddit is “holding talks with potential investors” for a 2024 IPO filing.

The top comment on Acidtwist’s post announcing the branding refresh reads: “My love of old.reddit.com continues to grow.”

Another reply pokes fun at the Reddit marketing video shared that encourages people to “think of something you like or enjoy.”

And after Huffman reportedly warned employees to “be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public,” due to potential backlash in June, maybe a new look was necessary.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.

The original article contains 797 words, the summary contains 117 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They only need one speech bubble in the logo, it’s cheugy to have more.

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