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it's a ploy so reddit has another datapoint regarding "user engagement"
they use these "user engagement" datapoints to boast to advertisers about how "engaged" users are so that they can charge more for ad placement and/or offer more tools for segmenting audiences or building "lookalike" audiences. most likely this will be used in two ways:
here's a general rule of thumb to keep in mind whenever you see a new "feature" added to a free app/service/platform: it wasn't an idea inspired by asking the question, "how can we improve the user experience?" it was inspired by asking, "how can we collect more data for advertisers to use in their targeted ads so that we can sell more ads or charge more $$ for placement?"
and once they have an idea about that, they'll try to come up with ways to spin it as an improvement for users like they give a shit us as human beings. they don't.
EDIT: here's my take on how this new "feature" came to be:
We are the product.
Never forget that, folks.
And Reddit's customers wanted to know when their product was online so here we are.
What ever happened to "Here is a cool idea that people would enjoy" and just doing it without transforming it into a product to continually commodify and exploit more and more until the "cool idea" is a shell of what it used to be?
And before anyone says that's impossible in our world, I direct you to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia's a charity rather than a for-profit business, relying on an annual donation drive to boost its funds. It also has a very small contingent of paid staff, while the overwhelming majority of users don't have accounts (and I dare say many registered Wikipedians only very occasionally log in).
Reddit is a business, so makes money through Premium memberships and (inevitably) advertising. It's had several rounds of investor funding, but apparently hasn't turned a profit yet. The investors are no doubt getting hungry for a return, so while Reddit HQ may be reticent to admit it, they're unsurprisingly going to concentrate on boosting their advertising revenue. Key to that, as with pretty much every other ad-supported platform, is targeting - the advertisers believe that if their ads are targeted towards people who've shown an interest in the kind of products or services they sell, they'll get a higher click-through rate, so more bang for their buck.
Theoretically, it should be possible to organise the database of ad personalisation so that usernames are replaced with salted hashes, so making it difficult to disaggregate data down to user level then find the user (but easy for the user to find what information is stored about them for compliance with GDPR and any similar legislation enacted elsewhere in the world), but I'd hazard a guess no-one does that. It should also be possible to ask a company to delete all the information it has on you, but of course many will only do that if you terminate your account (the legislation doesn't appear to have the nuance of allowing them to keep your username, password, email, personal preferences, communities you're a member of etc, but prevent any of that being shared with third parties (with the possible exception of allowing app developers a limited subset to make their app work) and delete any nonessential information they hold about you). Some will allow you to opt out of personalisation, but of course it's in their (and their advertisers) interest to hide the option somewhere obscure or present you with a wall of text to discourage you.
I wonder how Quora's faring on the data slurping and sharing front, given they're also based on communities rather than individuals, and advertising rather than paying users...
I’ve always wondered why Reddit’s ads suck so badly. Surely even with basic data on users subreddit subscriptions you’d already have incredibly targeted ads.
Like: User A is subscribed to /r/Germany and /r/woodworking and /r/discgolf and /r/programming
You can’t probably start to build a decent profile of what they’re like as a person. What kind of products they might buy.
But Reddit ads fucking suck. Like random shit like Online Therapy or some shit mobile game. I can only assume the click through rates are terrible and there’s genuinely no money to be made advertising on Reddit. So advertisers just astroturf instead to make it organic and Reddit Inc doesn’t get a cut.
Looks at routine Wikipedia admin abuse and biases... Are we sure Wikipedia is a good example?
If something is free, you're the product
Yes, that was obviously the reference
Yeah, that's obviously bullshit. But what I can believe (and the admins stated) is that they're trying to drive those engagement curves. They want more posts, because more posts is more engagement is more money. Doesn't matter if they're good posts, or users are actually happier, just that they're posting more.
So that's how r/[censored] works. And I just wanted a good sub...
Bunch of conspiracists lmao, you can literally see how many people are active in a sub at the top
Lmfao I'm rolling at how much tinfoil people put on instead of thinking for 2 seconds.
there's a difference between being able to track activity at a point-in-time (page load) versus perpetual/live tracking. advertisers are always wanting more data points and granular control over bidding, especially ones that are spending the kind of coin to get millions of daily impressions.
They were perfectly capable of collecting the user data without creating a feature that displays it to other users.
It's good to be skeptical of big corporations and prudent about what personal information you reveal, but nowadays people just assume the worst without any thinking at all, or understanding how these systems work. And then proclaim their misguided beliefs with completely unwarranted confidence.
Assuming the evil intent behind every action a company takes is just as naive as being oblivious and assuming everything they do is good. We need to understand what's true and what isn't, otherwise, the complaints about actually evil company behavior lose all credibility and meaning.
The real shame here, as someone whose career involves a lot of data entry, etc., is that metadata and demographics info is so fucking cool. Maybe it’s bc in my field we don’t sell that data, but it’s kind of disheartening for someone like me, who has a big focus on, “how can we use this data to better assist our local community?”
You’re absolutely right. (Sigh). Is using Firefox Focus the only (or best) way to prevent a site from tracking?
depends on the site.
but in general, if you want to minimize the data collected on you, you’re gonna have to take a multi-faceted approach. there’s no single silver bullet.
but at a minimum, firefox is an excellent start. you should also be running a few browser-level blocking tools and extensions like ublock origin, privacy badger, container tabs/facebook container, HTTPS everywhere, and decentraleyes.
if you’re even slightly technically inclined (read: youve typed
sudointo a command line once or twice), adding a pi-hole to your home network and setting it as the primary DNS is a no-brainer. it blocks ads and other trackers at the router level, so it works on mobile devices and even stops windows pcs from constantly phoning home and sending your telemetry data to microsoft’s servers.bottom line is that complete privacy is impossible if you want to use the modern web. but you can take a few easy steps that go a long way toward preserving some of your privacy.
source: dayjob in digital marketing for a SaaS provider. i hate everything that i do for work, but at least i learn how it all works so i can fight it.
Ty, so very much! I believe I smell fascist fear!
I get that it's another datapoint they can sell to advertisers, but it's one they already had. Adding an "online button" doesn't change anything about what Reddit (and their advertisers) already knows.
It's weird that they think it's something we'd want.
Here’s what I don’t get, they have tracked “active users here right now“ or whatever the wording is for as long as I can remember on Reddit. You can see it on the desktop version. So why do they need this online status if they already have the number of active users on a given sub publicly listed?
Reddit executives will watch your career with great interest.