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Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

old.reddit.com

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Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#321
post #220

Reddit is a website. Just make normal browser requests. You don't have to use their "sanctioned" "API."

Unfortunately, that turns your app from "load consistent data" to "parse HTML that could change daily and try to keep up with a perpetually moving shit pie". Not the greatest of experience, both for devs and users.

In theory, maybe. In practice, I've not found that to be the case.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#322

Can someone give me a couple reasons why it does not make sense to buy Apollo out, and make it the default iOS app? It is currently maintained by one excellent developer, is featured by the Apple App Store for design... what's the downside?

First, they will kill Apollo by squeezing it out of API costs. Once it's dead, they will buy it for cheap.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#323

Yeah, I'm out. I'm not using Reddit on its own app nor the browser. The app is huge and clunky. The browser is turtle slow. Neither gives me the granularity that Apollo gives me. The swipe controls are slick and so are the filters. If I can't consume it with Apollo then it ain't worth it to me. And I already paid for the app. I refuse to pay more for something that is not a necessity. Apollo would have to become a su…

> The browser is turtle slow.

Are you using old reddit? [1] Do you find that slow as well??

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/o67vzg/how_tro_get_ba...

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#324

Yeah, I'm out. I'm not using Reddit on its own app nor the browser. The app is huge and clunky. The browser is turtle slow. Neither gives me the granularity that Apollo gives me. The swipe controls are slick and so are the filters. If I can't consume it with Apollo then it ain't worth it to me. And I already paid for the app. I refuse to pay more for something that is not a necessity. Apollo would have to become a su…

Old.reddit.com isn't too bad

Another option is firefox with ublock origin.

Reddit subscription is $60 a year. That removes ads.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#325

Can someone give me a couple reasons why it does not make sense to buy Apollo out, and make it the default iOS app? It is currently maintained by one excellent developer, is featured by the Apple App Store for design... what's the downside?

They already did that once. They bought Alien Blue which was the top iOS client for reddit.

Proceeded to shut it down and basically fire the developer. They don't want anything but their reddit mobile app they have had top minds figuring out how to data mine you harder and show you ads. That's it. That's their goal.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#326

Seems to me like they priced the API to cash in on the LLM training data gold rush, and as a side-effect it makes third-party user apps infeasible. Oops.

They priced the API for LLM training and killing third-party apps is just a great bonus. If they wanted to retain third-party apps while protecting their revenue stream they could have simply created a new free API including all the ads. They deliberately chose to kill these apps.

Why wouldn’t people then just scrape using the free API?

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#327
The web went in the wrong direction when we abandoned the initial concepts of user agents, which was that the browser has the ultimate choice of what to render and how. That concept, transferred to today's world of apps would simply mean that any client like Apollo is essentially a browser locked on Reddit's website, parsing HTML (which has the role of an API) and rendering the content in a native interface. As long as the user can access the HTML for free, they should be able to use any application (a browser or a special app) and render the content however they wish.

Unfortunately with today's SPA apps we don't even get the HTML directly, but with the recent resurgence of server-side rendering we may soon be able to get rendered HTML with one HTTP request. And then the only hurdles will be legal.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#328
I definitely see Reddit going the way of Yahoo!

A slow spiral into irrelevance because of lots of small bad decisions. At one point, Reddit felt like a lone champion of free speech and conversation in a sea of buzzfeeds.

I think they've moderated the website into ruin. They've put a lot of energy into silencing certain kinds of voices/opinions while promoting others. What's left is a very liberal echo chamber. All of the seemingly worst ideas from the left are stated as fact and voicing a dissenting opinion can quite literally get you banned.

r/antiwork and r/latestagecapitalism are the most egregious examples of this that I can think of. But the attitudes held there have leaked into 99% of the other subreddits to some degree.

For the record, I lean left. But it really sucks to no longer have a town hall where both sides of the aisle can discuss things as adults.

If there's one takeaway, I think it's some flavor of: Don't overmoderate/show favoritism. You can't have yin without yang, or salt without pepper.

What made Reddit awesome was the discourse. Maybe they never realized that this was the secret sauce. That is, the clashing of ideas. And so they didn't cultivate that. Today, outside of a handful of niche/hobby subreddits, it no longer has anything close to educated discussions.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#329
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly a Reddit admins response, and I can't even begin to process how irresponsible, unprofessional and downright moronic of a take that is. Other apps are around that ballpark, and that's every before considering that Apollo users tend to be heavily power users. Over 7000 moderators of 20k+ users subs for starters, means a lot of requests.

Sorry if you think this take is "moronic" but I've gone through the exercise of cutting back usage on chatty APIs several times and it's real, meaningful work that makes a difference. I'm not a reddit admin. Please try to engage in good faith on this website. I'd suggest reading the "In Comments" section of the hacker news guidelines if you're unsure. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[flagged]

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#330
I don’t see the issue. Apollo should charge a subscription fee that equals (cost of “reasonable API access + desired profit)/.70 and cap the number of request per user so it remains profitable.

Users should understand and I would gladly pay for Apollo per month.

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