If that gets verified as true it will be exciting to see how many people don’t want to put their personal content on the platform.
Does anyone still go to those other websites that watermark their content like ifunny.com or some place dumb like that?
There were years there when any watermark from another site would get OP lynched in the comments, and now Admin over there is sufficiently out of touch they’re going to start doing it to their own content.
Bets are on that this is a stupid kneejerk test from Reddit, worried that post-migration community hubs are going to “profit from their content” the same way Reddit did to places like ifunny or 9gag during it’s entire growth arc.
They’re also trialing blocking access on mobile if you use a web browser. I swear, they are really trying to run off the old user base.
It can’t be long before they trial actively blocking ad blockers, and then ditching old.reddit.
u/spez insists that old.reddit isn’t going away, but he’s already proven himself to be untrustworthy.
People always talk about sites blocking ad-blockers, and I’m sure sites are trying to, but I’ve genuinely never been to a website where ublock origin failed to work. Like, even if there’s a big banner over the screen you can’t dismiss, just open the ublock zapper tool and block the banner
So what will be left of Reddit? What’s the point of trying to turn it into 9gag? They can’t be that removed from reality.
I think that’s where they’re headed intentional or not, but probably intentional. I think they’re trying to pivot their business model. If I had to guess what will happen going forward in broad strokes.
- Strike will break one way or another (mod removal most likely)
- Huge mod turnover
- Moderation quality takes a nosedive with spam, thinly-veiled ads, porn, and trolling ending up more and more prevalent in regular subs
- Confidence of power-users starts to evaporate once the post quality sucks and niche subs devolve to /pics and discussion turns into the Youtube comments section
- Comments become heavily restricted by Admins to pump their upcoming IPO
- NSFW content either gets eradicated or heavily restricted by admins to pump their upcoming IPO
- Slow diaspora of power-users to nowhere/federated platforms/new centralized platforms/niche forums/discord
- Vast majority that’s left are Tiktok adjacent crowd scrolling though the site upvoting and downvoting (though that’s being gamed even more than currently) with little meaningful discussion or community in subs anymore
so like 9gag.
Bonus-round predictions:
- Google has to re-rank search results because Reddit isn’t a treasure trove of niche knowledge and mostly-real user experiences anymore
- AI firms scraping Reddit for LLM data will cease eventually and most likely start redirecting that to where the real discussion’s are happening
- /spez will have cashed out soon after the IPO, carrying buckets of money off into the sunset
- New leadership and duty to make all the cash will finish strangling the holdout’s of Old Reddit
- Invasive ads and lack of anything resembling good content will make the site a shell of its former self.
I’ll be surprised if this process takes another 5 years, but by year 10 I definitely think the downfall will be complete.
Sounds about right.
THIS! old.reddit is the shit with RES I don’t need that other bullshit. RIP Apollo.
Upvoted for
If that gets verified as true
I have a friend that sends me iFunny pictures every day. I hate it.
Congratulations, Huffman, for finding another way to keep content creators off your site.
I just downloaded (the deleted and left a 1 star review) the official app and downloaded an old image and a new image and a watermark didn’t appear. Neither on the website
They might be trying it on a select subset of users to see how it goes.
Definitely could believe that, just wanted to report my own findings too
Yeah, they’ve been rolling out the worst anti-features to small sets of trial users, that’s what’s happening with the users blocked from accessing the website on mobile
I just checked reddit and it doesn’t seem to have watermarks. I know for a while on mobile they added like the source/attribution of the subreddit at the bottom (but you could disable it). If they force watermarks on everything that’ll just make me use the platform even less…
Ahh, so they’re the new 9gag?
They started doing this a while ago but it was a tab at the bottom of the screen, similar to an iFunny watermark, and it could be toggled off. I think it was an official app thing?
This new watermark seems much more intrusive.
Yeah it was just a “from r/whateversub” along the bottom. Easily cropped out as well.
I am not sure what interface(s) or the conditions are, but apparently every post now has a reddit watermark. Presumably for people trying to repost their work to other sites.
Obligatory “fuck Steve Huffman.”
I know that for a while now saving stuff off the official app has had a banner on it. This is a logical extension.
Dunno if it’s true, and not crossing the picket line to find out.
Fuck u/spez. That’s the new slogan for Reddit now.
It shows that they’re worried.
