Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/science-technology/how-anti-instagram-apps-are-changing-social-media/453915

Many execs or small business owners think social media is complete fluff — and for most businesses, it is.

And when they say fluff, they don’t mean to say it’s pointless. It’s well-documented that social media is a powerful tool. The skepticism with investing in social media is that it can be a coin toss if there is a return on investment (ROI).

https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/kevin-oleary-recommends-this-6-step-social-media-strategy/453954

Over 8,400 subreddits went dark from June 12 through June 14 in protest over new API pricing that is about to shutter many third-party Reddit apps. But now that the biggest uprising in Reddit history is slowing, what’s next for Reddit?

Despite weeks of heated debate, Reddit still plans to begin its API pricing system on July 1. The social media company has until now provided free API access, but—after claiming it didn’t want AI chatbots to profit off Reddit’s content for free—it announced pricing changes so dramatic that popular third-party Reddit app Apollo faced a $20 million annual bill. Apollo now plans to close ahead of the API changes; so do other third-party apps.

With the blackout over on many subreddits, Reddit is banking on the outrage passing. But Reddit—once a thriving, distinct community—has depleted significant communal goodwill in this battle. Volunteer moderators remain apprehensive of a future without third-party apps, and thousands of subreddits still aren’t public again. Reddit will try to grow revenue off a community whose most dedicated members remain anxious.

The war continues

Reddit’s sudden rollout of high prices is a needlessly painful way of reminding the community who makes the rules, but Reddit has always had the right to make money off the platform it built. No one can stop Reddit from charging what it wants or boxing out third-party apps. But because Reddit is built on user-generated content, volunteer moderators, and thousands of unique and almost totally self-governed communities, it doesn’t get to decide when the war is over. The argument will continue indefinitely—and for hundreds of subreddits, so will the blackouts. (Reddit declined to comment about the continuing protests to Ars Technica.)

A post on the r/ModCoord subreddit says that over 300 subreddits will “remain private or otherwise inaccessible indefinitely until Reddit provides an adequate solution.” Included subreddits include high-trafficked communities like r/aww (34.1 million subscribers) and r/music (32.3 million). The number of subreddits still dark as of this writing, though, is much larger. According to the Reddark counter on Twitch, around 5,200 subreddits are still dark (about 60 percent of the number of subreddits that promised to join the original protest). This number is steadily declining, however.

“More is needed for Reddit to act,” the June 13 post on r/ModCoord says. For subreddits with difficulties going private due to the social value of their subject matter (such as r/StopDrinking), the post suggests “a weekly gesture of support” like “a weekly one-day blackout, an automod-posted sticky announcement” or “a changed subreddit rule to encourage participation themed around the protest.”

The same community that built Reddit is now weaponizing its unity in its fight against Reddit. Protestors are using Reddit to organize protests against Reddit. And they’re using Reddit to share images illustrating how bad they think the platform will become.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1947808

Teens will likely soon be losing online privileges in Texas, which this week became the third state to require parental consent for minors under 18 to access social media. Utah passed a similar law in March, and Louisiana followed suit this month.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB 18 into law on Wednesday. It takes effect on September 1, after which platforms will be required to verify the ages of all minors, secure parental consent to register the minor as a user, or risk legal action from the state attorney general or private actions from parents who report violations.

“Online platforms have been collecting data and manipulating our children’s online behavior,” the Texas House Republican Caucus tweeted Thursday after the bill, sponsored by Representative Shelby Slawson (R), was signed into law. Slawson also tweeted, thanking Abbott and Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan for “prioritizing this issue.”

“Texas is leading to empower parents to protect our kids online,” Slawson tweeted.

Slawson did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

The broad law comes with heavy burdens for online platforms. It requires basically any digital services provider that collects an email at sign-up to conduct age verification to identify all minors, verify parents or guardians connected to all minors identified, and secure parental consent for a wide range of account activity.

The expectation is that online platforms must go above and beyond to protect minors from harmful, deceptive, or unfair trade practices.

In addition to the burden of verifying minors and parents, guardians, or caregivers, the law stipulates that online platforms will also be responsible for creating new parental controls, building a portal to communicate with parents about minor activity, and allowing parents to more easily monitor minors’ behaviors and control their activity on online platforms.

Platforms must also take steps to restrict minors from accessing harmful content that “promotes, glorifies, or facilitates” suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, stalking, bullying, harassment, grooming, trafficking, child sexual abuse materials, or other sexual exploitation or abuse. Part of that effort includes developing a strategy to maintain “a comprehensive list of harmful material” to “block from display to a known minor” and hiring actual people to review and verify that filters are working—not just relying on automated content moderation.

Any missteps could lead to additional requirements, including platforms being subjected to periodic independent audits to ensure content filters are functioning optimally to protect kids.

On top of all of that, the Texas law requires online platforms to make their algorithms more transparent to users, clearly disclosing in terms of service or privacy policies precisely how algorithms organize and filter content.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1948255

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Over the past two days, more than 8,000 Reddit communities have restricted user access, making it harder for people to view or contribute content to a particular community, while more are encouraging a boycott of the platform.

These actions are in protest of a new policy that will charge third-party apps for the use of Reddit’s previously free API.

And advertisers, who are paying to reach these eyeballs, have felt knock-on effects, leading to holding campaigns, redirected impressions, softer metrics and more scrutiny of the benefits of the platform.

“After the blackout, we will be closely monitoring user behavior on Reddit and guide clients when we can unpause,” said Freddy Dabaghi, managing director at Stagwell-backed Crispin Porter Bogusky, which has asked clients to stop campaigns, depending on their client goals.

Dabaghi notes this pause will be shorter than more prolonged advertiser boycotts on Twitter and Meta. Still, Reddit has been working on its relationships with advertisers, and any accumulated goodwill could be diminished if the precarious situation continues.

Redirection and soft metrics

Moderators are protesting a new Reddit policy, starting July 1, charging third-party apps to use its API. Some of these apps, which help moderators manage and grow their communities, have said they will have to shut down because these charges make running their businesses prohibitively expensive. Currently, these protests are impacting a small percentage of Reddit’s more than 100,000 active communities.

On Monday, Reddit’s ad manager encountered a brief outage, during which buyers were unable to look at reporting statistics, even while impressions were still delivering, though the impact was fairly minimal, per four sources. (The Verge reported the moderator blackout crashed the site, although it’s unclear whether the crashes are related).

Reddit told advertisers that it was redirecting impressions lost from these blacked-out subreddits to the home page, as there has been an overall spike in traffic to the platform, according to a media buyer who was not authorized to speak on the communication.

“By directing ads that would have gone to the blacked-out [moderated] pages to the homepage is kind of defeating the point,” said Liam Johnson, senior account director at Brainlabs, who hadn’t seen that particular note from Reddit. “The ads would then just be shown to the masses and outside of any of the contextually relevant locations that advertisers are trying to achieve with Reddit.”

Advertisers can still target users according to interests and other contexts when they’re accessing the home page.

Campaigns have notched slightly lower impression delivery and consequently, slightly higher CPMs, over the days of the blackout, Johnson said. If the performance weakness continues for a week or two, the agency would start recommending decreasing spend with Reddit or directing it to other platforms. The moderator blackout is supposed to end Wednesday.

Effective CPMs were up about 1%-2% in the past two days, equivalent to a high-traffic day on the platform, said Darren D’Altorio, vp of paid social at Wpromote. Several other buyers told Adweek that they had not noticed a change in their Reddit CPMs.

Reddit’s CEO said the charge is partly to ensure large language models from firms like OpenAI and Google can’t access Reddit data without paying for it.

Notably, the policy would open up another revenue stream for Reddit, which has been exploring an IPO. Reddit has also been on a campaign to woo more advertisers to the platform, nabbing an exec from Meta to deepen ties with small businesses and international advertisers. It recently announced layoffs of 5% of its employees. Reddit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brands go quiet

The moderator boycott is not only affecting auction dynamics but media strategy, as advertisers don’t want to appear tone-deaf during a contentious period for the platform.

Two Wpromote clients canceled two premium, takeover-style campaigns that were supposed to launch this week, and received make-goods for the impressions that had already been delivered, D’Altorio said.

[Advertisers] didn’t want to become the subject of users’ opinions about Reddit’s decisions.

—Anonymous media buyer

The campaigns will relaunch next week, while other standard campaigns remain unaffected, he said.

D’Altorio asked several clients to reschedule Ask Me Anything activations—where brands chat directly with their customers—as “we shouldn’t muddy the waters with our brand,” he said.

 The anonymous media buyer source said one campaign turned off comments on their ads today.

“They didn’t want to become the subject of users’ opinions about Reddit’s decisions,” the buyer said.

Accumulated goodwill

For years, brands have been wary of the platform due to Redditers’ hostility toward advertisers. But the platform’s recent outreach has helped shift that narrative, with several sources telling Adweek they’ve increased their investment with Reddit in the past few years.

“Where they are in their ads journey is really exciting for brands,” D’Altorio said. “It’s a way you can maintain your overall brand identity but take some cool, calculated risk.”

But if the blackout continues, Reddit’s recently accumulated goodwill with advertisers could quickly dissipate.

“It’s going to be a big turning point,” Johnson said. “They’re hoping for the easy option where everyone quiets down.”

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There are nearly 8,500 subreddits that are private or read-only right now in protest over Reddit’s upcoming API price hike. The protest started on June 12, crashed Reddit for three hours, and is scheduled to continue until June 14. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, according to an internal memo reportedly viewed by The Verge today, isn’t too worried, though, since it hasn’t hurt Reddit’s pockets yet.

According to The Verge (where you can view the full memo), Huffman sent the note to employees on Monday afternoon. It starts by noting the “challenge” from the Reddit API pricing protest.

“We do anticipate many of [the subreddits] will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless, and we have our work cut out for us,” the note reportedly says. “A number of Snoos [Reddit’s nickname for employees] have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout.”

This, too, shall pass

Then, the note seemingly looks to calm employee anxieties or fears around the protests by depicting the blackout as a temporary occurrence that hasn’t yet impacted Reddit’s finances:

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well.

Some subreddits have said they will go dark indefinitely. As of this writing, 8,444 subreddits are protesting, according to the Reddark counter, which says 8,838 subreddits pledged to join.

Similar to how Twitter was accosted when it jacked up its API pricing in February, Reddit has been accused of corporate greed as it seeks to suddenly charge what some argue are exorbitant amounts for something that used to be free.

For its part, Reddit hasn’t been shy about its desire to make money, especially considering many popular third-party Reddit apps don’t run Reddit’s ads, its biggest source of revenue.

“Reddit needs to be fairly paid to continue supporting high-usage third-party apps. Our pricing is based on usage levels that we measure to be comparable to our own costs,” Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said in a statement to Bloomberg on June 6.

News of Reddit’s initial public offering has drawn further attention during this spectacle, as The Information in February reported that Reddit aims to go public in 2023. Additionally, there’s a sense that Reddit is seeking greater control over its platform.

Huffman’s memo reportedly said that the long-term solution to challenges brought on by the protests is to improve Reddit and noted “a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.”

Reddit recently started allowing NSFW image uploads on its desktop app but will remove NSFW content from third-party apps with its API changes, attributing the move to regulatory concerns. Reddit has also refrained from offering any compromise that would see lower API fees for developers that run Reddit’s ads.

Further, Reddit showed interest in growing the use of its apps when it experimented with blocking logged-in mobile browser access earlier this year.

Community consequences

Reddit might not have seen any financial consequences yet. But its announced API fees, the revelation that those fees would cost it $20 million a year for one third-party app, and the backlash from other developers, users, and moderators have shaken the Reddit community. It’s hard to quantify that impact, but a sense of community is why some people visit Reddit in the first place.

Huffman’s note, according to The Verge, said:

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.

In an active Q&A on Friday, someone asked Huffman if he was concerned “that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement,” and his response didn’t foster a sense of community either.

“We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable,” Huffman said.

In Monday’s note, Huffman reportedly mentioned the planned closures of Apollo, Reddit Is Fun, “and a couple others,” and said, “We are still in conversation with some of the others.”

As some might have expected, the protests haven’t yet brought any sign of Reddit relenting on its API pricing. The company has given accessibility-focused apps exemptions, though.

“In this whole saga, I don’t think I’ve seen Reddit offer to give an inch on any of the things,” Apollo developer Christian Selig told The Vergecast podcast this week.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1947571

It took less than 11 hours for Reddit to feel the impact of widespread protests of its API fees. Over 7,000 subreddits became private in order to “go dark” and resist Reddit’s controversial API pricing hike, which caused some instability for the site, and it was down from about 10:25 am ET to 1:26 pm today.

Amid the outage, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt told The Verge:

A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue.

As of this writing, 7,856 subreddits have joined the protest, according to a counter on Twitch, and 8,191 have said they will do so. Some of the subreddits going dark have tens of millions of subscribers. But with the outage, the protests have already affected users who don’t use a protesting subreddit.

During the outage, I couldn’t use Reddit’s site, which showed a main feed with the note, “Something went wrong. Just don’t panic” and a pop-up saying, “Sorry, we couldn’t load posts for this page.” TechCrunch reported that users couldn’t view threads on Reddit’s app either. According to The Verge, “some” subreddits loaded during this time. There were 45,887 reports of outages at the problem’s peak, per Downdetector.

Thousands of subreddits unified in going private or read-only starting June 12 (some began their protests earlier, though, and some say they’ll protest indefinitely) through June 14 to revolt against how much Reddit will charge to access its API, which used to be free. Some believe the changes announced in April are an intentional death knell for third-party Reddit apps, similar to how Twitter virtually eliminated third-party apps with its API price hike in February.

iOS app Apollo, which set the controversy into overdrive when it said the new pricing scheme would require it to pay $20 million a year to keep functioning, said it would shutter on June 30. Apollo is the most popular third-party Reddit app and not the only one preparing for the end.

And while the three-hour outage may feel like a win for the little guy, Reddit has yet to show any signs of relenting.

In an uncomfortable Q&A on the matter on Friday ahead of the protests, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman was unyielding on pricing, saying in his initial post that “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”

“We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable,” Huffman responded when asked about concerns “that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement.”

Reddit is giving a free pass to apps that “address accessibility needs,” Rathschmidt told The Verge last week, and some, like RedReader and Dystopia, confirmed receiving exemptions.
But beyond that, Reddit has insisted it should be “fairly paid” to support third-party apps. The company seems to be on a quest for cash, which included reported layoffs and hiring freezes last week. Reddit filed for an initial public offering in late 2021, and The Information reported in February that it wants to go public this year.

Reddit denied trying to end third-party apps, but skepticism persists, especially considering the pricing scheme. Reddit will charge $0.24 per 1,000 requests or $12,000 for 50 million. For comparison, Imgur charges $500 per month for 7.5 million requests per month or $10,000 monthly for 150 million requests per month, and Twitter charges $42,000 for 50 million tweets.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1947293

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Twitter co-founder Evan “Ev” Williams has broken his silence and joined other co-founders in expressing his dismay at how Elon Musk is running the platform.

In his first public remarks on Musk’s leadership since Musk’s Twitter takeover, Williams told Bloomberg’s “The Circuit” yesterday that after Musk’s purchase went through, he felt “sad.”

Ever since, he hasn’t been encouraged by developments at Twitter. The company’s ongoing financial struggles include most recently recording a five-week period from April to May, where its advertising revenue dropped by 59 percent, compared to ad revenue at the same time last year.

Many believed that Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino, who started this week, would bring advertisers back to the platform. But Twitter’s ad staff thinks that advertisers might still be spooked by shifting Twitter policies leading to more controversial content, like pornography and hate speech, as well as more controversial ads promoting things like gambling and marijuana, The New York Times reported. It seems that many top advertisers are still hesitant to risk brand damage by reinvesting in Musk’s Twitter.

“I don’t think he’s dialed it in quite right yet,” Williams told Bloomberg, warning that Twitter’s potential to recover as a brand is now “much harder” now that “the brand is very linked to Elon.”

Williams said that poor leadership caused once-popular platforms like Yahoo and MySpace to fail, suggesting that it’s appropriate to compare Twitter today to Yahoo. He said that while Yahoo still exists and could be perceived as “thriving,” that “reputationally, it’s very different,” and that’s the path that Musk seems to be taking Twitter down.

Williams’ remarks come just a few months after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted that he didn’t think Musk was an ideal leader for Twitter, The Washington Post reported. When a Twitter user told Dorsey that “it’s pretty sad how it all went down” regarding Musk’s Twitter purchase, Dorsey tweeted in resounding agreement: “Yes.”

Williams and Dorsey had been perhaps the most optimistic about Musk becoming—as Musk described his role at Twitter—Chief Twit. Another co-founder, Biz Stone, stepped up first to express disapproval in a vague December 2022 tweet that never mentioned Musk by name.

“He’s not a serious person,” Stone tweeted. “He does things for sport that have serious consequences for real people. This is an open, global service.”

The only other Twitter co-founder, Noah Glass, rarely speaks about Twitter and is seemingly the only one to decline to share an opinion on Musk’s leadership.

Williams has “weird relationship” with Twitter

Williams was joined on “The Circuit” by former Twitter vice president of product Jason Goldman, who told Bloomberg that Twitter has already survived several attempts by its founding leadership to “kill the product.” Williams agreed that Twitter is a resilient product, calling Twitter “anti-fragile.”

Williams then suggested that emerging Twitter alternatives could easily take Twitter’s place if Musk fails to improve the product or if they simply offer better services or more innovative products.

But Williams also said that he’s had “a weird relationship with Twitter” that seems to exist between appreciation for what it is and disinterest in what it could become.

In 2022, he said that he was “excited” for Musk to take over the platform, while warning that Musk should have “respect for the people who have been shepherding” the company, “especially on the trust and safety side.” Musk did not heed that advice, dissolving Twitter’s trust and safety council, drastically reducing the trust and safety team, and then seemingly driving resignations of trust and safety chief Yoel Roth and Ella Irwin. And that’s seemingly a big part of what’s made Williams “sad” about Twitter these days.

Of Musk, Williams said, “I think he’s brilliant. But no one’s brilliant on everything.”

However, Williams seemingly doesn’t necessarily view social media as relevant today as he used to.

Williams said that in social media’s early beginnings, “We thought, oh, the best would be if we got media from our friends,” but now the growing popularity of TikTok is showing him that, to many users, “showing them media from your friends is probably not as good as the media from some super talented person who you’ve never met before.”

“I actually think there’s tons of interesting things now if we think about how do we use the Internet to help people be more social without consuming or creating media, so maybe the future of social media is the separation of social and media,” Williams suggested, seemingly indicating that Twitter and other traditional social media platforms might not have as prominent a place in that hypothetical version of the future.

For Musk to succeed, Williams said the Twitter owner would likely have to be prepared to continue taking on a huge loss.

“I don’t know how comfortable Elon is with losing billions of dollars,” Williams told Bloomberg. “Maybe he is—fine. Maybe he can get to break even and then just play with it. If a hundred million people in the world share the most interesting idea or thought, and the computers could algorithmically give you the most interesting slice of that, that’s a hell of a media service—but I also think, generally, the new thing does not come from the old thing.”

Williams did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. Twitter does not respond to requests for comment.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1946831