this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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As Reddit protests turn to porn-bombing, advertisers face increasing brand safety concerns (www.thedrum.com)
submitted 1 year ago by L4s to c/technology
40 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Protests on the social platform have entered a new phase, with users shirking the platform’s NSFW content rules en masse. The development has some media buyers on high alert, experts say.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

“My number one concern right now as an advertiser would be that Reddit seems to be losing rapport with and control over their users. Reddit needs to talk to their community members now and work to regain their trust and support or risk losing brand advertisers long term.”

Lmao

I can see why she focused on the risk to advertisers, but it sucks she glossed over the shittier parts from Reddit, e.g. that the change isn't just inconvenient, it makes reddit nigh unusable for mods and the visually impaired with nothing that even sounds like a credible plan in the works.

That, and the more inventive responses. Porn is typical. Demanding every post in r/DebateReligion be held in Latin was funny. Giving every one of r/Political Humor's 1.5M+ users mod powers was beyond hilarious and genuinely original. No mention, though, I guess. Just someone posted a boob.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The story seems to be from a marketing-focused website, so it makes sense that the author is addressing advertisers, and how the events with Reddit will affect them.

Also, surely this story proves that the protests absolutely have had an effect. It's causing advertisers to think twice about spending money with Reddit. And as stated in this TechCrunch article, fewer advertisers are visiting the ad-buying part of Reddit's site.

So, the people who complained that these protests are pointless, that they won't change anything, have been proven wrong. The protests are effective. So if people want change in this situation then they should continue with MORE protests. My protest is that I'm not using Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, they make it sound like the problem is the 3rd party app users will have to pay. That's not the issue. Probably most of those users would be happy to pay some monthly fee to keep their app running. It's how much they are charging for the API that is the problem, and the lack of time to actually implement it.

That and the abhorrent behavior of the reddit team, the last weeks.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The craziest part of that to me is that they could have just charged the users directly without putting the onus for payment on the app developers.

You want your account to be able to use the data API? You have to subscribe to Reddit+. Once you do, that account can use any Oauth App it wants to access the site.

The fact that they put something as complicated as payment flow on third party developers is just obscene.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I think they have some sort of long-term goal that we're not considering, and that's why they're so desperate to kill competition and channel users into an ecosystem controlled by reddit.

In 3rd party apps they can't control things like ads and "experience".
Perhaps reddit+ IS coming and the main draw they're setting up will be "ad free browsing" and "premium UI elements".

Still a brainless way of doing things, but it's reddit we're talking about...

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

@Nepenthe @L4s That's hilarious.

Advertisers actually thought that Reddit had rapport with and control over their users? Only someone who spends company money on advertising could be that misguided.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

The author appears to have a poor understanding of the full scope of what the protests are about, let alone the variety of creative actions being taken. This seems to be a marketing media publication, so that's their focus. I guess what's most important is that advertisers and others in the industry are noticing that Reddit has lost control of it's user-base and has become a risky investment. That's a pretty good result for the protests. The finer details don't matter so much.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To recover potential skepticism among advertisers, Reddit should start with winning back its loyal user base, suggests Agorapulse’s Allton. “My number one concern right now as an advertiser would be that Reddit seems to be losing rapport with and control over their users. Reddit needs to talk to their community members now and work to regain their trust and support or risk losing brand advertisers long term.”

Wish they would but it seems unlikely.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

They've permanently lost their trust with a lot of users. They've lost my trust, that's for sure. Even if they go back to free API or more reasonable prices, I'm not going back.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I guess there's the idea that all press is good press. People who didn't know reddit existed now likely do and they might just check it out to see what the hullabaloo is about. They might not even be internet savvy enough to suspect bot conversations are a real thing.

It's a website that gets paid in traffic, and we're giving people a reason to continue being traffic, and potentially increasing their traffic. We just fed the machine.

The best thing we can do is just stop using it. Making the protests fun is only going to help reddit. They're not negotiating, they've made their decision already, they're not going to back down on it and even if they did some decisions have consequences.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit is stubborn, it's kinda funny.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think there team has a "too big to fail" complex. Now let's sit back and eat some popcorn

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Schadenfreude is real with this one but I have to wonder will it last. No doubt Reddit will be smaller after this (as it already is from like 55M to 52M users) but they'll eventually get their shit somewhat together, maybe it'll demand admins to be more hands-on by changing mods etc. (since the ones picked in a rush won't be all winners).

Either way it'll probably a lot more straining on corporate end when for now Reddit itself has been pretty hands off. I don't think it'll die over night or a year even. It'll slowly dwindle until there's nothing but wasteland with few stubborn users.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

A significant fraction of those 52M "users" are either abandoned accounts or bots. And there are also quite a few semi-abandoned ones like mine, that are only kept alive until they're completely purged of any content Reddit might derive value from (since you can't edit or delete comments/posts in subreddits still set to private).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

reddit will eventually suffer a meltdown like tumblr.
Can I offer you some spicy butter on that popcorn? :)

[–] vixven_random 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What subreddits are porn-bombing?

Asking for a friend...

[–] Tavarin 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

r/interestingasfuck porn bombed for a bit, now it's just an unmoderated community.

[–] watcher 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Has there been any new posts? Everything looks one week old on my end

[–] Langoddsen 6 points 1 year ago

Since it's unmoderated it seems like it's in some sort of locked state.

[–] _number8_ 17 points 1 year ago

'advertisers' are the scum of the earth and they can **** * **** for all i fucking care

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

This is informative and not surprising

[–] Aceticon 5 points 1 year ago

There is no philia like necrophilia!

[–] rr7 4 points 1 year ago

Volonteer brigadier here up for some stinky dick posting!

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