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by toyg 1114 days ago
> Mostly ads

3rd-party apps, including RIF, do display ads already - I have a vague recollection of it becoming compulsory at one point. The difference is that they tend to be less intrusive than on the Reddit app.

Apart from that, I agree that it's a hard act - but it's also true that trying to be something they're not (i.e. Twitter) will inevitably produce a damp squid which loses what made Reddit unique (and it's happening a bit more every day) while not quite managing to be the other thing.

The social space is obsessed with "competition by copycat", instead of focusing on their core strenghts. Maybe because they all fear to be destroyed by this or that novelty feature, they all end up looking the same, regardless of whether it makes sense.

2 comments

The app I use is "Now for Reddit", and their ads (Google Ads) were very unobtrusive, a tiny strip of pixels at the bottom of the viewport. Reddit's ads are right there in the feed as you scroll, like Twitter or Instagram.

I paid $5 to get rid of the ads anyway.

ITYM Damp squib.

All squids are already damp.