These new ideas are exactly why they had to kill 3rd party apps. If they hadn’t, this sort of change would just push more people to adopt them.

Technically you can use Shortcuts to set whatever icon you want but it takes some effort to set up. And I don’t think it can use transparency so it’d have to take up the whole square (or out more effort into making the background of the icon match your background). And it’ll take a second longer to load the app as it goes through Shortcuts first

Same. I used to pay for premium even though I was an Apollo user. I paid because I liked Reddit and thought it brought me value.

Now I’m only keeping my account to ensure my posts and comments stay dead as best as I can.

Seriously, what the fuck are they thinking here? It’s like branding 101 to not mess with it unless you’re looking at rebranding

Yes.

They are most likely running out of runway with investors refusing to keep lighting more money on fire. And since their burn rate is still more than their revenue, they are pulling out all the stops looking for any new revenue stream.

When you’re that desperate, no idea is a bad idea, and there’s no time to think anything through fully, so they are going to just keep rolling out half-assed new “features” in attempt generate more revenue. It’s sad, but it blows my mind that they’ve never been able to generate more than $350m/year with one of the largest sites on the internet (for comparison, Twitter maxed out with 20x more revenue or $7b/year), so I don’t think there’s any chance spez & co are going to figure it out in time.

I say this with all seriousness: This, and the API pricing fiasco (not the price change itself but the gratuitously insulting and dishonest way it was handled), and firing Victoria which still strikes me as a sad thing, and "fighting back" by removing moderators who were doing a "protest" instead of just shrugging and ignoring it all, and removing reddit coins even from the tiny fraction of people who were actually paying for them, are all totally nonsensical and self-defeating actions from a strict business perspective. Anyone who runs so much as a corner pizza shop and has to interact with the real world could see how counter to reddit's interests they are. So, why did they do it?

I genuinely think that the motivation stems on an individual personal level from the psychology of "Well you're disobeying me, so I'll punish you." The users are being disobedient on my platform? Fuck them, I'll show them what I think of them, and unless they get in line, I'll do it even worse. Your icon's pixellated now. How do you like that?

I'm sure it works on a personal level, for some definition of "works." On a corporate level though, I think the results so far pretty much speak for themselves.

How do you like the smell of despair in the morning?

I find it... Exquisite

Unhappy with the direction investors were taking Reddit, Spez secretly started working on an alternative to the website that he lovingly named the fediverse. However, he couldn't figure out a way to drive traffic to the Fediverse - at least not without publically breaching his contract in a major way.

His distress grew and grew. His own company was a disappointment. He had the solution, but no way out.

On top of that, his favorite activity - doomscrolling twitter in bed for hours - had become a less and less satisfying experience, as well, since Elon Musk bought the company.

It was for that reason he typed into DuckDuckGo: "twitter alternatives" - and immediately, it dawned on him. He couldn't help but say it out loud:

"Elon, you beautiful son of a bitch, you might have just saved the internet".

You know, I kind of agree. It's almost like they're trying to make people stop using it. They're copying things from other companies that are already known to cause backlash in a community.

Suddenly end all outside developer access after years of allowing it? Check.

Removing things that users have already paid for the use of? Check.

Heavy content moderation? Check.

Poor treatment of mods and staff? Check.

Heavy amounts of ads mixed in with the rest of the posts/content? Check.

Powertripping admins doling out random site-wide bans? Check.

Creating and spreading easily disproved lies about a potential competitor to try to make them shut up about you screwing them over? Check.

I'm curious as to whether or not your theory about someone bribing managers from the inside is accurate. It could maybe be something political, or maybe someone is trying to innovate a new social media. It could also be someone who has no experience making these calls, or it could be someone just doing it for shits and giggles.

Part of me kind of wonders if this might be a scorned employee who worked their way up to the level of company decision-making. Spite and anger can cause a person to do and endure crazy things for a long time. Hypothetically, that person could be angry at Reddit, Spez, or another high-ranking person.

It could even be someone who has hated reddit for years. A lot of people have gone though hard times because of reddit. Situations like "We did it reddit!" come to mind, where people harassed the family of an innocent guy who was killed during the Boston bombings. That type of behaviour wasn't a one-off, either. Multiple people have lost their jobs and/or families (justified or not) after people tracked them down online and doxxed them.

As you can see it’s only free for a limited time.

Your first hit of doge is free.

The CEO likely wants to cash out his job and is making moves that only look good for the short amount of time he has arbitrarily set for when he decides to step down. His bonus is likely dependent on how much the IPO goes for and he doesn't care long term since he's one foot out the door.

They copied the same feature from Apollo