Discussion Should reddit be considered a monolopy, and against the antitrust act?

[Amol S.]

Reddit does have a source of income, which is getting the tokens to award medals. Reddit has been moving traffic from forum sites away to reddit. In fact, it can be said that Reddit is the only forum site that is still alive. It can be agreed that Facebook and other social media platforms have decreased traffic to forum sites, however for forum purposes users would still have to go to a forum site. If one compares the number of forum users in AnandTech forums or any other forum site, between now and before Reddit existed, it will be clearly seen that the active number of users have had a higher decline rate after the introduction of Reddit.

 

[Paladin3]

Could you go open up a forum site of your own tomorrow to compete again Reddit? If the answer is yes then the answer to your question is no.

 

[BoomerD]

Whachoo got against monolopies? Are they illegal in the same way monopolies are?

 

[lxskllr]

Reddit wasn't even the first to have the format they use. Slashdot, and another has been whose name escapes me atm did something similar. Also, other services have opened that use reddit's software(it's open source). Being popular isn't the same as being a monopoly.

edit:
digg.com was the other service I was thinking of.

 

[BudAshes]

Wat?

 

[ponyo]

Not every forum is dead like Anandtech. Sites like Tesla Motor Club are thriving. It's like full time job for me to keep up with the investor thread over there. That single thread probably gets like 50+ pages of new replies every single day. Some days, it's like 100 pages just on that single thread.

 

[sdifox]

Reddit does have a source of income, which is getting the tokens to award medals. Reddit has been moving traffic from forum sites away to reddit. In fact, it can be said that Reddit is the only forum site that is still alive. It can be agreed that Facebook and other social media platforms have decreased traffic to forum sites, however for forum purposes users would still have to go to a forum site. If one compares the number of forum users in AnandTech forums or any other forum site, between now and before Reddit existed, it will be clearly seen that the active number of users have had a higher decline rate after the introduction of Reddit.

Err no.

 

[snoopy7548]

IMO, Anandtech has a monopoly on cool forum members.

 

[sdifox]

IMO, Anandtech has a monopoly on cool forum members.

It doesn't even have monopoly on the Bell of Annoyance

 

[randay]

some might argue that some posters here have a monopoly on STUPID

 

[Red Squirrel]

I think it would only be a monopoly if they were doing stuff to prevent other forums from existing. Like if they would be buying out all the forums, or if the patented the concept of a forum so no one else is allowed to make one etc.

 

[DigDog]

digg.com was the other service I was thinking of.

ermagherd what obscure memory did you dig this out of.
i swear i was a internet user in the days and never once opened a digg page.



and, in reply to everyone else, internet forums are subject to the Law Of Conservation Of Ninjutsu (the more ninjas in 1 scene, the less powerful they are). Each user only has X amount of attention they can give to internet forums as a whole, and if you got too many forums, they dont get much traffic.

Reddit is popular because people like the format; but, also consider: it's not just numbers of users you want, but active users. And i mean, that it' snot just a clicks or views issue (although the money is important), but are those users interacting?

I say this because i see your typical threa don reddit is like this:

Q: hey type-of-person of reddit (e.g. doctors of reddit), what is the most type-of-situation you have had?
A: 2400 answers in 30 minutes (mostly just the first 2-3 replies get threaded)

Most people just typs stuff because they feel like it, but hardly ever does a thread extend for more than 2-3 individual replies.
And, assuming you got something really, really insightful to say, do you think anyone is going to notice you reply among a thousand other ones? (with the horrible formatting reddit has, too)

Reddit does have a ton, i mean, seriously a ton of communities in them. Like, a porn fetish that's so obscure and weirdly specific would still ahve like, six or a dozen different subreddits for them. The communities are heavily fractured, and they come and go like the wind, beause realistically, there's very little persistence of users.

I am *very* old fashioned when it comes to thse things. My old forum buddies in the 2000s, we would meet IRL for beer and pizza, like, every other week. The forum was an add-on to real life. Today, it's a breach of etiquette to want to meet anyone outside of the anonymity of the forum.

Plus, people talk a lot of shit.

Forums today are just a place where people make a lot of noise but do very little communicating, and reddit is the king of white noise.

 

[lxskllr]

i swear i was a internet user in the days and never once opened a digg page.

I never used it either, but I was aware of its existence, and remember seeing the icon on news articles and stuff so you could link to digg.

 

[KeithP]

Should reddit be considered a monolopy, and against the antitrust act?

So, let me guess…public education?

Monopolies are not inherently illegal. LMGTFY

-KeithP

 

[Brainonska511]

Could you go open up a forum site of your own tomorrow to compete again Reddit? If the answer is yes then the answer to your question is no.

A legal monopoly means it has effective control over the entire market space, not that it is the sole company to exist in that market space.

 

[LikeLinus]

Forums as a whole are down, but I don't blame Reddit for that. Do you still want AOL? Do you still want Flash? Do you want Standard Definition AVI files? You realize things evolve and it has nothing to do with being a monopoly. I'm pretty convinced that you don't even understand the term. I'm on several other forums with good traffic.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The thing I hate about Reddit is there is no real conversation that lasts, everything is "topic du jour" then after that it's gone. You can't really bump a thread, or even know if someone else replied. You reply, might get a few direct replies, but after that you never really hear of it again. Forums are a much better format I don't really get why they're dying.

 

[snoopy7548]

The thing I hate about Reddit is there is no real conversation that lasts, everything is "topic du jour" then after that it's gone. You can't really bump a thread, or even know if someone else replied. You reply, might get a few direct replies, but after that you never really hear of it again. Forums are a much better format I don't really get why they're dying.

I think they're dying for the reason you stated above - people don't want to put any time and effort into discussions, they just want something they can quickly look at and move on. Attention spans have gotten pretty short.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Attention spans have gotten pretty short.

Tell me about it, as I get older. I might do a web search for something, find an ATF thread about it, and I'd be, "hey, that sounds like something I might say"... and then I find out, I'm the author of the thread, like 10 years earlier, and I forgot.

Edit: The Internet never forgets, though.

 

[WelshBloke]

A legal monopoly means it has effective control over the entire market space, not that it is the sole company to exist in that market space.

Reddit has no control over the forum "market place". There is very little barrier to entry.

 

[Brainonska511]

Reddit has no control over the forum "market place". There is very little barrier to entry.

I'm not saying they are or are not. I'm just pointing out that you don't have to be the only player in the market to be a monopoly.

 

[KMFJD]

digg used to be ok as an aggregate but they changed something just before reddit started to explode and died

 

[jameny5]

You can thank Apple and Android phones along with the outlandish amounts of social media sites on the World Wide Web.<---- My attention span has shortened because of them but not for Tapatalk forums.

 

[OccamsToothbrush]

Tell me about it, as I get older. I might do a web search for something, find an ATF thread about it, and I'd be, "hey, that sounds like something I might say"... and then I find out, I'm the author of the thread, like 10 years earlier, and I forgot.

Edit: The Internet never forgets, though.

No, we forget everything you say almost immediately

 

[nakedfrog]

ermagherd what obscure memory did you dig this out of.
i swear i was a internet user in the days and never once opened a digg page.

I also remember digg, but never used it myself. Had a friend that was a fan and talked about it.

Reddit is popular because people like the format; but, also consider: it's not just numbers of users you want, but active users. And i mean, that it' snot just a clicks or views issue (although the money is important), but are those users interacting?

Is it? I hate the format, and avoided it for a long time because of that. The only thing that gets me there is the huge volume of content.