721–730 of 1001 posts
I think reddit is being naive by charging per API request. Do that, and application developers will try to reduce them - for example, caching popular subreddits or posts (ie. "this is /r/technology as it looked when we last crawled 15 minutes ago"). If Christian added a cache layer on his own server he could easily make the finances work. But... Thats in nobodies interest - Users end up with stale content, Reddit loo…
I have a story to tell, about the demise of one of the largest internet forums in my language. About ten years ago, when smartphones just started appearing, the forum did not have a mobile version, and there are various 3rd party clients on the App Store or Android Market. Later on, one of the largest 3rd party client was blocked, because of they hammering the forum's servers too hard,. Or something about caching and…
This was precisely my first thought when I read this. For the price that Reddit will charge, Apollo's author could easily recreate Reddit and take advantage of Apollo's user base to seed that community.
This feels like it's all priced for AI companies, TBH. This per-request pricing makes a LOT more sense if you assume that one particular piece of content will only be requested once in your company's history, saved on a server somewhere and used for training forever. You're not paying for a request being processed, you're not even paying to offset any advertising cost, you're essentially paying for the ability to use…
Would you use a client where the most popular threads are constantly out of date due to caching? I certainly wouldn't.
Imagine one has 10 request for thread {X} every second (probably a massive under estimation of the actual traffic). If you cache that single thread with a lifetime of a second you have instantly cut out 90% of your API usage for that thread.
Obviously the final benefit depends on what the actual distribution of {users} per {threads} per {time} -- but if your goal is to shave redundant API requests than it definitely makes sense, especially if the alternative is untenable in terms of cost.
Their pricing is just absurd. Reddit's official app and webpage is garbage, and instead of working with amazing developers like Christian to add whatever functionality they need to increase their revenue, they're doubling down on bad decisions and alienating their users. Pure hubris... they've forgotten their own history and why the Digg exodus happened. Seriously, _what_ are they gaining by eliminating access to thi…
They are probably pricing this for people who want to use Reddit data to train their AI.
I have a story to tell, about the demise of one of the largest internet forums in my language. About ten years ago, when smartphones just started appearing, the forum did not have a mobile version, and there are various 3rd party clients on the App Store or Android Market. Later on, one of the largest 3rd party client was blocked, because of they hammering the forum's servers too hard,. Or something about caching and…
The tech isn't the challenge with something like Reddit, even the comically inept Reddit leadership could figure it out after all. The difficult part is finding a few hundred mods willing to work for you for free, filtering all the filth that tries to be posted. Only if they have a solution for that can try going their own way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is really well stated. Sometimes out of morbid curiosity, I’ll read one of the /r/all posts on a topic where I know the discussion is going to be reductive and generally uninformed (the example that comes immediately to mind is anything involving the energy industry - there’s not much to find beyond “hurrr durr Exxon bad thorium good”), and every single time it’s the same type of self-satisfied navel-gazing comm…
Not only that, the posts themselves on /r/popular are mostly Facebook anger bait (/r/LeopardsAtMyFace, /r/IdiotsInCars, /r/whatcouldgowrong) or political anger bait: Reddit leans left so it's all "Look at what the right said." Reddit is one of the largest spreader of US political bullshit unto the rest of the world, turning kids into flag-weaving partisans and fostering a us vs them mentality. It's a low brow dismiss…
I chuckle sometimes to recall the popularity of the “forwardsfromgrandma” subreddit many years back, because the top of /r/all often looks almost exactly like it now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you make more money it's hardly BS. There are supply and demand graphs and you can reasonably calculate how many customers you lose/gain from a price increase/decrease.
Those graphs rely on knowing the price elasticity of demand, which is easy to get for commodities like wheat and next to impossible to get for differentiated products, at least without testing various prices on statistically identical cohorts, which is technically difficult and a PR nightmare.
Eg consumer put up with the increased price for a while, but will switch away over time.
Disappointing. Sad to see such a wonderful app likely meet its end. This is to be expected when you pin your existence on the good graces of a for-profit company. Reddit wants IPO. Badly. They want to show potential investors that they're solvent. To this end, as Google did nearly two decades ago, they will monetize every inch of their user base and application -- that includes access to their data. But Reddit is on…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, please! We need alternatives to the social media giants that are now obviously bent on monetization and other, shadier motives. Moves like this are what caused the huge Digg -> Reddit exodus that significantly boosted Reddit's popularity. People need other places to go when their favorite platform takes this seemingly inevitable path.
I forgot about Digg and just went to look at it. Not a single thing is recognizable about it.