If you think about it:
- Reddit gives Google access to everything so that Google can train their AI
- Google is now showing AI generated snippets on every search page and is pushing its own AI chatbot everywhere
- Users are getting the answer they want from those AI generated answers Google generated from Reddit comments
- Traffic to Reddit is collapsing
In the meantime, spez totally trashed his site, destroyed valuable communities and pushed away the mods that keep the place clean. Really, really great business strategy there.
Reddit gives Google access to everything so that Google can train their AI
Reddit sold access. For short term gains. Because the quarter needed more money to beat the previous quarter.
If this isn’t a leopard eating their face moment, I don’t know what is.
anyone with a tenth of a percentage of business sense could tell you a business that produces nothing but eyeballs to advertisers will be a massive failure if said business does anything to piss the owners of said eyeballs off.
and experts are confused why traded-on-the-markets social media companies are in freefall.
Except this isn’t 100% true.
- Google continues to add more ads per page, despite people complaining
- Netflix now has ads even in paid tiers. Their subscribers count grew
- YouTube continues to push ads even to the point of aggressive blocking ad blockers
There isn’t a single platform that has reduced the number of ads it serves.
Businesses have learned that the majority of users will take it.
All of those platforms have sources of revenue besides ads.
Capitalism will sell you the rope to hang it.
It’ll be deeply satisfying if spez ends up with nothing. His mismanagement and tolerance for fascism are why I quit using the site.
CEOs rarely end up with nothing, unfortunately
spez has too much money to care.
What’s the point of being Uberwealthy if you can’t just do whatever you want, whenever you want?
People keep quoting that Musk gave DT $250million to support his campaign, like hell… Musk bought Twitter and ran it into the ground to support DT’s campaign, that was far more significant, and far more costly than a mere $250M.
the answer they want from those AI generated answers Google generated from Reddit comments
Basically Reddit has now exported being confidently incorrect.
At least on actual reddit you could scroll down and find the actual answer. Some of those AI summaries are hot garbage.
Yeah that’s exactly it. I no longer use reddit. when I do searches reddit does come up. But I don’t need to go onto reddit because AI summarizes things. And I skip reddit anyways in the search results.
The really amazing thing is that spez’s planet-sized ego created the whole user exodus. People were willing to pay a monthly fee to continue to use the site ad-free via our mobile apps. Hundreds of other companies remove ads when people pay fees, but all of that revenue is just gone along with a big chunk of contributors because spez had a tantrum.
At this point Spez’s idiocy is common knowledge.
The whole 3rd party app debacle cemented it.