[nawgz]

I obviously don’t believe in capitalist philosophy but you’re joking if you think the market doesn’t consider ad-free users as a drain regardless of reality.

Which is what I’m trying to say: you’re framing the actions of Reddit’s CSuite in terms or morals and long term outlooks, which is not how the market will look at their ipo. At all.

[wpietri]

Sorry, but "the market" doesn't think anything. That's a category error.

If by that you mean something like "VC investors", sure. They are people whose job is trying to turn money into more money while filling their own pockets to bursting. They are zero-sum people by nature and practice. If they really understood and cared about communities, they'd mostly have different jobs.

But that doesn't make it true. And there's nothing wrong with framing Reddit's execs actions in terms of morals and long-term outlooks. We should generally not concede anything to the world-view of the greedy. Whether or not this will hurt Reddit's IPO is worth discussing, but we shouldn't confuse that with hurting Reddit the community, which it certainly will.

[nawgz]

> “the market” doesn’t think anything

Wow, you’re really going to argue pedantically here?

Let me be clear for the fools in the room then. The behavior exhibited here is perfectly rational and likely to be rewarded from the perspective of a pre IPO company looking to pump its financials wrt user count, engagement, and ad views, and therefore any objections about moral or long term behavior ignore the fact that this playbook has been wildly profitable for many people many times, and thusly explains what the Reddit CEO is doing

Looking forward to when people start panning this system / status quo instead of acting like following the incentives is confusing

[wpietri]

Asking you to be more precise where it matters isn't pedantry.

The behavior is "perfectly rational" only in the economics sense of that term. On a human scale, we often call it things like "sociopathic".

I will also note that companies don't have perspectives either. Which also isn't pedantry, because in analyses where we seek change to a system, we have to understand exactly who is involved and what their motivations are. So in this case it's worth being very specific that the people involved who think this is "rational" are very modest in number. The VCs, probably the rest of the board. To some extent the CEO, but as a founder it's possible he's conflicted enough that he might depart from his short-term economic incentives to protect the think he's spent a major part of his life working on. Maybe some of the execs if they came in to prep in for an IPO.

So now we're not talking about the whole company, which is 2,000 employees, thousands of volunteers, and millions of content creators. We're talking about maybe a dozen greedy people. That's a much more tractable number.

[nawgz]

> Asking you to be more precise where it matters isn't pedantry.

It is when you're about to restate what I've said...

> The behavior is "perfectly rational" only in the economics sense of that term

Do you think a company has non-economic incentives?

> On a human scale, we often call it things like "sociopathic".

Right, and I call these people capitalists. Did you genuinely not glean that?

> I will also note that companies don't have perspectives either

> it's worth being very specific that the people involved who think this is "rational" are very modest in number. The VCs, probably the rest of the board. To some extent the CEO

> We're talking about maybe a dozen greedy people

Right. Thus why I said: "capitalists are propagandists who will position themselves at the top and bully all threats they perceive to their system"

It really reads to me like you took bad-faith readings of all my comments, and then restated them differently, while stating it isn't pedantry. You've delivered exactly 0 insights to me. Maybe you were trying to elucidate others, but I don't really see that.

[kaba0]

If those ad-free users are over represented in content creatin then surely they are no drain. No one comes to reddit so they can browse ads.

[nawgz]

Seems like two big ifs - that they’re over represented, and that they wouldn’t switch to Reddit apps or web

[fsckboy]

I non-obviously do believe in the capitalist reality underpinning the universe (it's value-add all the way down) but you’re smoking if you think the market doesn't recognize ad-free users are relatively cost-less compared to their positive network externalities.

that doesn't mean that some free-to-choose sites won't experiment with paywalls, etc. in an attempt to enhance cost-covering revenue.