I find myself remoting to desktop chrome+userscript more and more to get any semblance of enjoyable experience in last few years.
Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
121–130 of 1001 posts
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit seems to want NSFW content gone altogether. At this point you can only see it anonymously if you go to old.reddit.com, if you go to the regular UI it requires you to authenticate before you can see any kind of questionable content.
It looks like it's currently blocked on "new Reddit" only for mobile user agents. If I try opening https://www.reddit.com/r/boobs/ in a desktop browser (or with a desktop agent on mobile) I get an option to just click on an "I'm over 18" button to see the content.
Browse a little farther. Last time I found myself in that position, I could say I was over 18 and it let me go. For another click or too, then it interrupted again and insisted I sign in.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#123Reddit has posted their own announcements now https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_upda... and https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/13wshdp/api_update...
> As of July 1, 2023, we will enforce two different rate limits for the free access tier: > If you are using OAuth for authentication: 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id > If you are not using OAuth for authentication: 10 queries per minute So... doesn't this mean that each logged in Apollo/3rd party client user can make 100 requests per minute for free? The Apollo developer says his average user makes less t…
No. That's the limit of how many queries can be made per minute on the free tier, but it doesn't state what the free tier entails or what it can be used for. My guess, based on Christian's post, is that third-party clients would not be eligible for the free tier and that the free tier is for uses like bots.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#124I don't know how many employees Apollo App has, but I wonder if a viable solution is just to build their own Reddit? I realize that's a massive task, but if the only other option is shut the company down, it might be worth exploring. They've already got the interface built and if you remove a lot of the bells and whistles, Reddit is a pretty simple app other than the scale at which they operate (which is obviously a…
Honestly not a bad idea. Apollo has such a dedicated fanbase that if you get them to adopt a new community, then the quality of posts will start out pretty high. So much of Reddit is crap anyway so drop in quantity from lack of network effect wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Focus on Apollo’s strengths: great UX and bring it to the web.
Ofc the major issue is how to avoid enshittification. Having a good monetization strategy from the start is key. Hardest part besides attracting large user count is to attack some of Reddit’s failings: terrible arbitrary moderation. That’s the tricky part.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As of July 1, 2023, we will enforce two different rate limits for the free access tier: > If you are using OAuth for authentication: 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id > If you are not using OAuth for authentication: 10 queries per minute So... doesn't this mean that each logged in Apollo/3rd party client user can make 100 requests per minute for free? The Apollo developer says his average user makes less t…
No. That's the limit of how many queries can be made per minute on the free tier, but it doesn't state what the free tier entails or what it can be used for. My guess, based on Christian's post, is that third-party clients would not be eligible for the free tier and that the free tier is for uses like bots.
Maybe open source clients would be eligible to use the free tier and it's that Apollo is a commercial actor.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit has seemed rudderless for a long time. Their ads platform is damned near useless compared to their competitors. It's a wonder they have any revenue at all. Their moderation is wildly broken, frequently leading to blanket account bans of anyone participating in a thread close to content deemed inappropriate.
> Their moderation is wildly broken, frequently leading to blanket account bans of anyone participating in a thread close to content deemed inappropriate. I reported someone in the news sub. Paraphrasing but apparently reporting someone for saying "they should all burn to death" (talking about govt officials) 1: isn't ban worthy, and 2: is "abuse of the report button" and led to me getting a 3 day ban. I'm out.
I used to have a (long) list of posts/comments that they refused to remove after I reported them. Most of these were (at least to me) _very_ obvious cases of being against the TOS (and the law).
I messaged this list to the admins. I emailed it to their support team. Never got a reply. Not even support answered my email.
I truly believe they just don't care.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing that you work in the tech industry in the US and makes $100k+ per year? $5 is not an insignificant amount to a lot of people all over the world, including Europe and maybe the US. Especially when every single app and service wants you to subscribe to them now, I've heard plenty of people saying they're going to cancel their Netflix subscription when password sharing stops working. 344 requests per day is…
There’s no reason for $5/month to be what the average user pays. It’s for power users who spend way more time on the app. Netflix has introduced ad-supported tiers where you pay less. That’s the same here, those users can use the website or first-party app.
My comment was mostly about the comment about developers underpricing their apps. If all apps would charge a minimum of $5 there would be a lot fewer app users.
According to Apollo's developer 80% of the users make less than 500 requests per day, so I'm guessing the proportion of power users making a lot of requests are in the single digits. I doubt enough of them want's to pay enough to subsidize the others.
There's also the point that using Reddit is a two way street. Reddit is made up of user created (or user stolen) content, and moderators are working for free. Reddit's whole value is made up of user interactions, allowing users to make those interactions is not just a cost.
Why should the app developer pay anything at all? The users are also Reddit's users, they authenticate and can use Reddit's resources in a number of ways, why not charge them directly? Will Reddit be sending a bill to Mozilla for my page loads?
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's funny is that Reddit's pricing is indeed more reasonable than Twitter's, but it's still too high to be make cheap third party clients feasible.
It's probably the point, they want the official app to be the only choice, so they can control everything and show you more unblockable ads.
Wonder if they'll be sensible enough to acquire some apps after they become worthless to replace official app.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's funny is that Reddit's pricing is indeed more reasonable than Twitter's, but it's still too high to be make cheap third party clients feasible.
It doesn't matter. It is their service and the API terms are subject to change at any time. So either the API gets blocked for third-party clients, or you purchase access for a high price. Discord, Instagram, Snapchat, Clubhouse and TikTok have decided to ban third-party apps. Twitter and Reddit decided to charge for it. In this case with the developer of the third party Reddit client, unless he is making enough to c…
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Discord, Instagram, Snapchat, Clubhouse, and TikTok all launched with first party apps.
Twitter and Reddit both allowed a thriving third party ecosystem to develop before they made apps. (And in both cases they just bought the most popular apps.) Hell, the word tweet was invented by Twitterific, a third party twitter app.
While it certainly is completely up to the platform to allow whatever they want, it's shitty to make a change that big and alienate many of your original most dedicated users.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#130It's clearly intended to weed out third party apps, same as Twitter. I have a pet theory that all the companies doing this are converging on the same long term plan - kill third party apps, have premium subscriptions (Facebook recently launched one too), and then give the users the choice - use the service for free, with forced opt-in into personalized marketing, sharing data with 3rd parties, or pay for premium.
There's legal precedent already in Europe that this is fine by GDPR rules, as long as the price of the subscription is "reasonable".
That way they get to preserve (or even improve) their ad targeting business, on the assumption that most users will just choose selling their data over a subscription. And if they go for a subscription, even better. In a sense, let the market decide the value of privacy.
The first step in this would obviously be killing any third party alternatives that would be the first place of refuge when they make that move.
In any case, a pet theory, but there's been a strange convergence by these big companies and the way they're changing their business models.