Reddit is now blocking major search engines and AI bots — except the ones that pay

moe90 ( @moe90@feddit.nl ) · 2 months ago

Reddit is now blocking major search engines and AI bots — except the ones that pay

mozz ( @mozz@mbin.grits.dev ) · 2 months ago

The cycle continues:

Hey you guys can have everything for free
WTF this is expensive to provide, I think I’m gonna start taking advantage of you guys which someone will pay me to do
WTF where’s everyone going
WTF I’m still losing money and always have been
Screw you guys, screw everybody, I didn’t want y’all anyway
(fades into irrelevance, gets bought by someone and stripped for parts)

Idk it’s not as pithy as Cory Doctorow’s version I guess

Anyway we’re at step 5 at this point

xavier666 ( @xavier666@lemm.ee ) · 2 months ago

The key capitalistic trick is to time your step 2 just when you have a critical mass on your platform. Upper management has understood that our shitty paywall will remove x% of our users from our platform. But if (100-x)% of our users can pay $y annually, we can sustain our business model and make $z of profit each year. PR will take care of all the backlash but it’s all calculated.