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by lotsoweiners
1066 days ago
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> A socially owned organization operated in the same manner would be suffering the same fate right now. The thing is I don’t think a socially owned organization would have operated the same way. The core Reddit product of Reddit, text and links to images, is still valid today and what the long time users want. The expensive part: development/maintenance of new features like live streaming, mobile apps, recommendations algorithms, etc are all driven by profits and IPO hopes. |
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If that is all that drove them, why did they not dig random holes on the Reddit campus instead? I think you will find that there was a belief that these features would provide the missing value. It is likely fair to say that it failed, but such is life.
The socially owned telephone company in my neck of the woods, of which I and the rest of my community are members, once spent big to enter the cell phone market. It too failed to deliver on the necessary value and we eventually had to back away from offering the service. The operations manager has said it was the biggest mistake the organization has ever made. Being socially owned doesn't mean value will magically present itself. After all, beneath it all is still humans and all of their faults.
In a similar vein, the original Reddit, Usenet, may not be strictly socially owned but shares a lot in common with social ownership. It too has, for all intents and purposes, failed. The core product is there: Text, links, and images, but it seems that's not enough. Few are willing to give up anything for those things. They really don't hold much, if any, value. The humans that lie beneath to keep it all working want something in return.
And that something in return is what Reddit is, now desperately, trying to find. They took to try and find it, but one can only hold out on giving back for so long and the clock is ticking.
Again, this is not something of capitalism. People not wanting to keep giving to people who won't give back in return has been around since the dawn of mankind, long before capitalism was invented. The laggard who always sleeps all day, offering nothing to the community, while the rest of the tribe works tirelessly has never been welcome and no economic system can change that fundamental truth.