“It’s time we grow up,” says former moderator of jailbait subreddit.
This is why the fediverse is so great. It really is really expensive to run a social media company. By spreading the cost over many actors and encouraging competition, this allows us to host content without being beholden to billionares.
*Chinese billionaires
Are you trying to bring your Reddit = Chinese government xenophobic r/conspiracy Reddit nonsense here? Would you like to provide proof? Because this is violating a rule.
I think he’s referring to how Reddit used to operate on Tencent funding.
Tencent is partially owned by the Chinese government.5% stake is not relevant if you looked at other shareholders of Reddit. It is a xenophobic conspiracy theory if we looked at the largest shareholders of Reddit (https://web.archive.org/web/20230108005443/https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/who-owns-reddit-a-breakdown-of-the-type-and-nationality-of-shareholders/):
- Conde Nast (AP): 100% * 0.72 = 72%
- American VCs: (5% + 1/3 * 5%) * 0.8 + (1/2 * 11.1% + 7/18 * 11.1%) * 0.9 + 5% * 1.0 = 19.21%
- American individuals: (2/3 * 5%) * 0.8 + (1/18 * 11.1%) * 0.91 = 3.23%
- Dubai VC: (1/18 * 11.1%) * 0.9 = 0.56%
- Tencent: 5% * 1.0 = 5%
Breakdown of Series A VC, Condé Nast: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/business/media/reddit-thrives-after-advance-publications-let-it-sink-or-swim.html
Breakdown of Series B VCs being all Americans: https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/reddit-series-b--662ba273
Breakdown of Series C VCs being 8 Americans and 1 Dubai VC: https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/reddit-series-c--168f04d0
Breakdown of Series D VCs with 3 American VCs and China’s Tencent: https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/reddit-series-d--c9282e50
Condé Nast and one American VC hold more shares than Tencent, plus Reddit is astroturfed by US military, as seen during 2015. https://old.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/ Reddit, if anything, is a literal US military arm to spread propaganda in media, and not controlled by Chinese government.
The root of “Tencent CCP own Reddit” conspiracy literally lies in r/conspiracy to spread xenophobic sentiments against China. Anyone perpetuating this nonsense will face a ban after this.
I am asking this in full earnestness: is any critique of the Chinese government assumed to be rooted in xenophobia?
Most of it has its roots in xenophobia and crushing the “near-peer competitors”, yes. You can ask US government about Cold War McCarthyist propaganda which is spread by NATO (US/Europe) media. You can even go back as far as 1940 to find a short film series Drums of Fu Manchu (check YouTube), which is before NATO’s creation, or the Opium War I by Britain in 1856 and British Raj on India for 2 centuries.
Orientalism, xenophobia and imperialist looting/plundering against East are historically well known evil deeds of Westerners.
I feel that maybe you’re reading my question as ‘critique of China is inherently support for the west/US/etc’ which I absolutely do not mean. I think that it’s possible that painting all critique with a broad ‘xenophobia’ brush (while undoubtedly warranted at times) can prevent discussion in good faith.
The above poster specifically “corrected” parent commenter, knowing very well the conspiratorial xenophobic notions he was propagating. Most Anglo people never talk about China/Russia (or any country that is NOT a “western neoliberal democracy” or its vassal state) in good faith, because Cold War McCarthyist poison is filled in their heads, resulting in a knee jerk reaction whenever they see the words “China” or “Russia”. There is no reason why Anglosphere participants should be given benefit of doubt, when instead of following by example, they continue to get more vitriolic everyday. I am happy that Russians cannot be dehumanised on Lemmy, considering how much of a cesspool Reddit is.
If this is the thinking I can expect on this instance, perhaps this is not the instance for me.
It’s well known and accepted that the Chinese government has significant control of Chinese companies, and Reddit is partially owned by Tencent. That’s not xenophobic.
The fact that it’s something like a 5% stake is more relevant.
Read the below response. https://lemmy.ml/comment/750332
Condé Nast and one American VC hold more shares than Tencent, plus Reddit is astroturfed by US military, as seen during 2015. https://old.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/
The root of “Tencent CCP own Reddit” conspiracy literally lies in r/conspiracy to spread xenophobic sentiments against China. Anyone perpetuating this nonsense will face a ban after this.
“a literal US military arm” is just as ridiculous. It’s neither.
3% is bullshit. About 20% users use third party apps. Source: r/privatelife founder, and these are 12 month usage statistics.
However, this is also the most favourable scenario, being the largest authentic privacy subreddit not filled with Snowden/Assange dismissive mods. But it is around 20% rather than 3%.
Spez is now making up self contradictory nonsense and even attempting to create infighting between moderators from yesterday’s statement he gave. Spez simply wants to leech off all the great content made by “guest bloggers” (a term old timers use) and all the unpaid moderation people have done. He is simply saying that the old relationship is over, and that all old users can fuck off, because new users are ready to consume an Instagram-ified official Reddit app with doomscrolling, chock filled with ads, a bloated UI and load of spying and tracking. Reddit also is astroturfed by US military teams, so that is tied into the reason why all Big Tech platforms are suddenly going hostile – to invent a new reality, devoid of any criticism against Western empire.
really went off the rails there lol. I could tell when you mentioned Snowden/Assange.
you don’t think it’s nuts for snowden critics to mod privacy subreddits when snowden is the guy behind the main leak that showed how fucked our privacy is?
At this point this seems intentional. This has definitely pushed me away from Reddit and I’m already seeing a lot more meaningful conversations on Lemmy. All I ever saw on Reddit anyways is people just trying to one up each other on the comment threads for upvotes. Took a lot of scrolling to even get to people actually talking about the topic.
Agree it’s intentional. Normies don’t care about any of this and will just follow the memes. Most of us here are the users that had ad blockers and probably didn’t care about giving gold.
Giving and receiving gold was surprisingly, one of my least favourite things. Someone gave me gold once and i felt beholden to say thank you? I didnt ask for it, i didnt comment in hopes of getting given “gold”. I never gave anyone else gold. Why would i give a shit about getting it myself? Its a fucking forum.
Reactions are common in lots of forums though, gold is just a special reaction.
A special upvote if you will, its not really that deep.Waste of money.
I just commented on another similar article! His reasoning for this move contradicts itself! How can he claim that the overwhelming majority of users (97%) use the official Reddit app, but the use of 3rd party apps is destroying their bottom line? That means that that the lost profit from 3% of users are the reason for the API price change?
And… if there are only 4-5 big 3rd party apps (like Apollo, RIF), why force them out of the market? If only 3% of users use them, are they really that big of a deal? Why are the prices so astronomically high?
This is Reddit consolidating their empire. I hope that folks are prepared for future roll-outs of new subscriptions and reasons that Reddit users need to pay.
It makes so little sense to me. They could have charged a reasonable amount and made some money off of the apps, but instead, they chose to kill them and lose their users. Some might migrate to the official app, but this uproar may have caused even more to leave the platform entirely.
I’m honestly shocked the redditors are so blind to this. Do they actually think it’ll just be plain sailing from here on out?
Maybe in just to old skool and remember a time when Reddit would have really stood up.
It absolutely will not be plain sailing - I think that the protest is an early warning sign. People that stick to Reddit are going to be bombarded with ads, Premium features, and new programs after Reddit goes public.
I am an Apollo user until the end - I think that after having such a good experience under Christian, I forgot how scummy a big corporation can be. Times are changing - we just saw some similar things with Musk taking over twitter.
Well I had hoped, naiively that Reddit would respect the developer community that had helped make their website so popular. A community of developers provided apps and services for them for the simple price of a free API. I thought the APIpocolypse might happen, but I thought reddit was special somehow and they would see how beautiful and vibrant that community was and not damage it for fear of damaging the soul of the website. Yeah, that was pretty fucking naiive.
Ah well, I’ll put my energy into Lemmy and Fediverse projects instead.
Ah well, I’ll put my energy into Lemmy and Fediverse projects instead.
I think this is a better place than Reddit already. It’s fairly new and people are excited about creating content. But I think in reality, sooner or later every sub will be forced to open, and everything will go back to normal. Of course some of the users would’ve completely migrated to the Fediverse or other platforms, and it’s up to us whether the Fediverse survives or not.
