How Reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history
www.theverge.com
Users were outraged, but Reddit mostly won.

How is reddit post protest, did it really win over protesters? Did the ones who left make a dent? Or like all things before, did it ultimately do nothing?

  • Sideral@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    The big reveal on the impact from this will be in the aftermath from the future IPO. I believe the damage on the brand certainly had a big impact on the target price Reddit can ask.

    Also, it showed how fragile its ecosystem is to a bunch of unpaid volunteers which may not have the shareholders interest at heart.

    • AttackBunny@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      It did a lot of things already. Their valuation was halved (maybe not that bad, but it’s wasn’t good) after it was already not that great.

      It made the “important” people take a step back and question whether they should spend their advertising dollars on Reddit. At least a handful of the bigger advertising companies paused their ads on Reddit.

      It put a bug in investors ears. The last thing you want, from a newly acquired asset, is shit tons of bad press and drama, along with a public devaluation.

      Google publicly commenting on Reddit protests screwing up search results got into the minds of people that may have never even paid attention.

      During the blackouts user time spent on Reddit decreased, and overall traffic decreased slightly. The first matters more. If less people are engaging with the site, for less time each use, that’s less ads they will see. I haven’t seen too many stats about usage a month later.

      The user side is what will take time to see what happens. As content quality goes down, some people will be less interested. Then again, look at the rest of social media. Most people don’t really seem to care much about actual content, so maybe I’m wrong on that one.