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Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

kotaku.com

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Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#171

Post by lawn »

zeroego wrote: post #156
lawn wrote: post #17

I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI. The site itself is just garbage and the difference between the redesign and old.reddit is just so jarring, and the Android client is also garbage. Are there people who even thinks these designs are good? How do you even end up with something like this? Is it just garbage requirements thrown out by clueless managers? There must be some for…

I know the person who was in charge of the redesign. This may sound unbelievable, but she was not a reddit user prior to working at reddit or being put in charge of the redesign. Really nice person, but they did a terrible job.

Unfortunately it's not that unbelievable...

At work a newly hired (and newly graduated) developer got the responsibility to completely redesign some core functionality in our application. Of course he had no experience with the system or how it was being used, but he was still rewriting it and designing future use-cases.

This was also done with as far as I can tell no code reviews, tests or supervision, only vague directions of "this sounds good, do it!".

It's been years since he left for greener pastures, and we're still reeling from the consequences.

Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#172

Post by bee_rider »

doublerabbit wrote: post #110
xdavidliu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ahem, the original link is here: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Could you apply this to Discord currently? As in they are in the beginning phase of the enshittifcation metamorphism? With the new soundboards, change of usernames and the likes, it's feels like it's starting the cycle.

Maybe I’m just old, but I don’t know what the inevitable pre-enshittified competition to Discord is. Do they exist yet?

Discord is still at the beginning of the endhittification path so I guess it is not a super pressing issue.

Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#173

Post by interestica »

lapcat wrote: post #136
interestica wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok? That's the point though. It collects a bunch of external sources in one spot that are all related to the same issue -- and provides the context. A really great way to get a handle on the wider implications. And the initial HN submission you linked to, "Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing" -- does that in any way allude to its content?

> That's the point though. It collects a bunch of external sources in one spot that are all related to the same issue -- and provides the context. You're missing the point, which is that this submission is just the latest in a long string of duplicate submissions, some of which have already been marked [dupe] by the moderators. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36142285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3614241…

> It's literally the link quoted by "The creator of Apollo has done the math, and says"

So? The headline of the submission lacks meaning and provides no information. You would have to click into the link to realize wha the discussion is about.

> You're missing the point, which is that this submission is just the latest in a long string of duplicate submissions, some of which have already been marked [dupe] by the moderators.

My point is that this article sets up a different (and valid) discussion, provides wider context, and has a submission headline that gives human-readable context to the topic. (And the HN title has since been updated to use the article secondary heading to be even clearer).

The link you posted had a big discussion yesterday, but it has already been bumped way down from the front page. Other discussions on subsequent days (especially if new information comes out -- or when other developers affected by the change speak up) are useful and should also be encouraged.

Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#174

Post by FinnKuhn »

Terretta wrote: post #128
ape4 wrote: post #101

As a compromise reddit could require that 3rd party apps to show ads from reddit (so they get the money from clicks)

Or they could have users be members of Gold to use third party apps. It's ridiculous to claim that "Apollo" generates reddit traffic. Reddit users generate traffic, via web client of choice.

this feels like a fair middle ground. Reddit doesn't loose out on ad revenue and the App developer doesn't have to pay anything directly. I assume they calculated their current price at least somewhat on how many Gold members they loose to these Apps that don't show any adds...

Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#175

Post by chapium »

fumar wrote: post #139
retube wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recently killed the .compact view on mobile. The default is unreadable, i don't spend much time on the site anymore.

What is an alternative?

old. Is fine. You do need to zoom in a bit and then its not noticeable.

Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#176

Post by dageshi »

justaman wrote: post #148
Pxtl wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> insane moderation policies and narrow ideology What, did you prefer the site in the days of the Chimpire? Jailbait? Reddit's history has been the perfect case-study in the downsides of a libertarian approach to moderation. They've come to where they are now because every other approach resulted in horrifying racism, sexual exploitation, disinformation, and abuse.

The moderators of major subreddits are extremely authoritarian. There must be a middle ground between free-for-all and thought police.

I imagine that requires a level of effort that volunteer mods just don't have the time or inclination for.

Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#177

Post by rchaud »

pantulis wrote: post #9
andrewstuart wrote: post #2

Probably they should have found a way to require third party apps to display their ads.

The solution is only allowing 3rd party access to Reddit subscribers, to avoid the need to monetize through ads. If Reddit is asking 12000$ for 50M requests, then a regular Reddit user (344 reqs/day) would be paying around 2,5$/month, which seems more reasonable than putting the burden on the 3rd party developer.

It never works like that in practice. It is cheaper and easier to deal with one customer paying $10,000 than 1000 customers paying $10.

In any case, Reddit has no interest in pivoting their business model away from ads to paid subscriptions. This is a dog and pony show they're holding prior to "making the difficult decision" to eliminate 3rd party competitors.

Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#178

Post by josephg »

rchaud wrote: post #138
paradoxyl wrote: post #81

As long as old.reddit.com still exists for desktop, the site is semi-usable, although the insane moderation policies and narrow ideology makes the site basically useless except for niche reddits. Though I have gone from a daily user years back to maybe once a month. It's that bad. On mobile, I can still read direct links to reddit posts that crop up on HN using Firefox for Android. Can't say same for the Twitter, whi…

On the contrary, Reddit is one of the most useful sites out there. With Google search nearing total uselessness for local information, using "site:reddit.com" is almost obligatory. None of the real value of Reddit is coming from the parts of it that resemble Twitter or 4Chan.

On mobile you can’t read reddit comment threads unless you install their official app. I hate that Google surfaces reddit threads since the site itself often doesn’t contain the information indexed by the search.

Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#179

Post by RGamma »

ransom1538 wrote: post #96
paradoxyl wrote: post #81

As long as old.reddit.com still exists for desktop, the site is semi-usable, although the insane moderation policies and narrow ideology makes the site basically useless except for niche reddits. Though I have gone from a daily user years back to maybe once a month. It's that bad. On mobile, I can still read direct links to reddit posts that crop up on HN using Firefox for Android. Can't say same for the Twitter, whi…

This post seriously changed my life. I had no idea old was working. Thanks.

For now. They disabled i.reddit some months ago (was better on mobile)

Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

#180

Post by ghusto »

> It’s being brought in to crush third-party alternatives, driving every mobile user to the official app where they’ll either have to watch ads or pay for Reddit Premium.

Given how aggressively they push you to use the app when you visit the site, this is likely accurate. However, I have Firefox (and therefore proper ad-blocking) on my phone, so nah, I'm still good, thanks.

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