YouTube disallowing adblockers, Reddit charging for API usage, Twitter blocking non-registered users. These events happen almost at the same time. Is this one of the effects of the tech bubble burst?

  • Clown_Tempura@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    1 year ago

    The ‘trust thermocline’ occurs when an organization repeatedly takes their customers for granted, and they reach a critical point of ‘no trust return’ and just leave. Essentially, if you gradually provide less quality while charging more money, you erode trust- and if you lose trust, you don’t actually ever get it back. See: Twitter. And possibly now Reddit. Great term, I love it even, but I hate that the lesson these people are learning isn’t ‘hey maybe we should stop pissing people off without good reason’ and is instead is “this is acceptable risk and we should continue playing chicken with dissatisfied users to make our shareholders happy.”

      • _Tom_@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        21
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Reddit only started hosting images and videos a couple years ago. That alone would massively add to costs. It’s self inflicted and seems it was planned in an effort to keep people on the platform instead of linking to imgur to view the picture.

        They brought the added overhead on themselves

      • rookie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        well, they hired thousands of devs in the last few years, only to direct their efforts to self-hosting videos, chat features, customizable snoo avatars you can sell NFTs for, etc. (you know, things people wanted)

        so I can understand the loss potentially growing in recent years, given what they’ve been spending on