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Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

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Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#931

Post by sschueller »

anonred wrote: post #921
sschueller wrote: post #917

I guess these clients just need to scrape the websites and make post request via website with fake user agents etc. It's a lot of work but for a small fraction of 20m a year you can hire a team who only work on that. Didn't Digg primarily die from a redesign? Why has the web become so forgiving these days? People don't seem to give a shit anymore. "Oh OK, I'll use the official reddit app filled with ads, OK I will wa…

Good luck releasing a client like that on the App Store.

On what grounds is Apple or Google going to block it? You're using the website wrong?

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#932

Post by npteljes »

Euphorbium wrote: post #573
superfrank wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. I think a critical part of the Digg exodus was that most people already saw Reddit as a clear #2 in the space. When Digg fucked up, there was an obvious place for everyone to migrate to. I don't see that right now. Facebook isn't cool anymore, Twitter has a large number of people who won't use it because of Elon, Mastodon isn't mature e…

Reddit is just a backend to apolo, if they make their own backend, a lot of people would switch.

Now while that's nice, who's going to pay for that? Certainly not Apollo / other third party reddit users. And so, at most you'd get a honeymoon period out of this, while burning someone else's money, until they get fed up, and monetize or close the service. Similar to what happened to Imgur.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#933

Post by floundy »

haswell wrote: post #911
OccamsMirror wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, if Apollo goes, I will stop visiting Reddit. Especially if old.reddit.com goes too, which is likely. To be honest, I'll be happy to cut Reddit out of my digital habits. There's a few things I'll miss but HN, Slashdot and e-books will easily replace that gap.

I’m in the same boat. I’ve been on Reddit since the early days, and I think the thing that keeps me going back is habit more than enjoyment these days. Comment threads for any even moderately larger sub have turned into cesspools of sniping ad hominem attacks and every form of fallacious argument under the sun. And that same mindset is slowly creeping into the smaller niches that are the primary reasons I go there. T…

>Comment threads for any even moderately larger sub have turned into cesspools of sniping ad hominem attacks and every form of fallacious argument under the sun.

>And that same mindset is slowly creeping into the smaller niches that are the primary reasons I go there. This growing ooze invariably puts me in a worse state of mind

These and other glaring flaws of Reddit, tracing the degradation of the site's user experience in recent years is the premise of the book "You Should Quit Reddit." It's a self-published book that's been discussed several times on Reddit's /r/NoSurf community. I found it intelligently written and sourced, as the author described his same experience of addiction to Reddit, going back to the site out of habit despite not enjoying it.

I was a daily Redditor since the early days and haven't been on the site in a month. I blocked all DNS requests to Reddit from resolving to break the habit of going on the site. Been lurking here instead and find this place more pleasant and reminiscent of Reddit's early days.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#934

Post by dham »

faeriechangling wrote: post #895
DiscourseFan wrote: post #851

Someone in the thread where the OP linked directly to the Reddit post[0] suggested that perhaps Apollo would just create its own Reddit-like website under the name Apollo, republish it on the app store and then all the users would flock to the new social-media app instead of Reddit. The whole thing is really Reddit's fault: instead of offering to buy-out Apollo and make it official, they are relying on their ultra-sh…

I have to think a fairly small slice of users are using 3rd party clients. I know almost nobody uses old.reddit.com anymore. I don't see any of the moves Reddit is making as unsustainable, they just have a lock on their niche. Sure Apollo could clone Reddit, but why continue to use their app that that point when it would be better to switch to the official app which will see maybe 100x+ more usage?

I still use old.reddit.com. Anytime I can opt out of "next gen" React interfaces I'm going to do it, so my M1 Pro processor doesn't melt.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#935

Post by Kranar »

sschueller wrote: post #917

I guess these clients just need to scrape the websites and make post request via website with fake user agents etc. It's a lot of work but for a small fraction of 20m a year you can hire a team who only work on that. Didn't Digg primarily die from a redesign? Why has the web become so forgiving these days? People don't seem to give a shit anymore. "Oh OK, I'll use the official reddit app filled with ads, OK I will wa…

>It's a lot of work but for a small fraction of 20m a year you can hire a team who only work on that.

I tried doing something like this for scraping corporate profiles. It's a lot harder than it seems. Most websites try to block bots that do this kind of scraping (unless you're Google/Facebook/etc...), so you end up having to setup a boatload of VPNs to make it seem like the bot is coming from multiple sources, but the VPNs end up being very unreliable and they too get banned as well.

For my own small scale it did manage to work but it was very challenging. I'd imagine doing it at the scale of Apollo would be all but impossible to get away with.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#936

Post by KptMarchewa »

anonred wrote: post #914
DiscourseFan wrote: post #851

Someone in the thread where the OP linked directly to the Reddit post[0] suggested that perhaps Apollo would just create its own Reddit-like website under the name Apollo, republish it on the app store and then all the users would flock to the new social-media app instead of Reddit. The whole thing is really Reddit's fault: instead of offering to buy-out Apollo and make it official, they are relying on their ultra-sh…

> ultra-shitty interface that nobody wants to use I don’t want to sound dramatic, but the official Reddit app works just fine and is much more popular than any third party client in terms of usage.

It is more popular because it's extremely heavy pushed.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#937

Post by altairprime »

CharlesW wrote: post #434
altairprime wrote: post #359

I'm looking forward to this outcome. Reddit and Apollo both need to get paid, on a recurring basis, for their recurring services that require recurring maintenance and updates. Reddit gets paid either through ad revenue displayed to non-paying visitors to the website, or through API calls for access to their dataset. Apps that enable user access via the API will need to pass along this charge to their users. Apollo m…

> There are no good free outcomes that are not advertising-supported, and the API is incompatible with advertising… I'm curious why you'd think that. If anything, an API access agreement allows Reddit to compel Apollo to meet advertising requirements.

If you or anyone can identify a free outcome for users that I haven’t considered, that pays the bills at both Reddit and Apollo, then please do share it!

Reddit did not choose to compel ad display in their agreement update. I expect this is because it conflicts with getting paid by search engines and AI training corporations.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#938

Post by dogleash »

superfrank wrote: post #393
api_or_ipa wrote: post #346

The reality is that Apollo doesn't serve intrusive ads, and thus, every user using Apollo instead of their own first party apps is lost revenue. Unfortunately, reddit is in that late stage monetization step where they need to prove they are capable of big revenue to justify a high IPO share price. One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. So far, reddit has been very careful rais…

> One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. I think a critical part of the Digg exodus was that most people already saw Reddit as a clear #2 in the space. When Digg fucked up, there was an obvious place for everyone to migrate to. I don't see that right now. Facebook isn't cool anymore, Twitter has a large number of people who won't use it because of Elon, Mastodon isn't mature e…

It’s already moving to discord.

Discord blows for asynchronous conversations. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the replacement.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#939

Post by projektfu »

I primarily use the regular web interface. That's because I barely use Reddit anymore after using it a ton before. More and more, I found that things that shouldn't be nsfw were marked so, the interesting people have mostly already left, and the site optimizes for "engagement" like everything else, meaning it's full of catchy junk.

I joke that if this guy (pointing at myself) is doing your thing, it's probably jumped the shark. What does it mean when this guy has already grown tired of your platform?

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#940

Post by Remmy »

deafpolygon wrote: post #927

Did it actually result in a bill, or is that just a click-baity title? > Selig estimates it would cost $20 million a year to keep Apollo running. No, not a bill. Arstechnica is getting worse every year with these type of titles.

Apollo had 30 billion requests last month. It's not clickbait. It's math.
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