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Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases

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

#341

Post by diablerouge »

danudey wrote: post #316
tremere wrote: post #8

Reddit is past its expiration date anyway and I'm surprised no one has created a challenger site. Perhaps this was due to Reddit's friendliness toward programmatic access but it seems they are taking that away. This is a good opportunity to create a new community, and essentially take back messaging from the corporations (let's be real about what reddit is) and put it back into the hands of the people.

Let's be clear though: this is exactly what happened. Digg was the place to go, and then they fucked it up and everyone migrated to Reddit. Now Reddit is fucking it up, and even if everyone migrates somewhere else, that new somewhere else is going to fuck it up too once they get to the point of "we need to be profitable at all costs". What we actually need is some way to convince users to pay for the services they us…

Everyone says "users need to pay" but there's a second alternative that is, imo, much better: technical folk run servers for their friends and families.

This is how the fediverse works, and it's _vastly_ better than any subscription service (not least because it means that anyone, regardless of financial situation, can find a server to be a part of.)

There's a fedi version of Reddit (lemmy) but it seems to have been a bit of a half-cooked design, rather than something that could truly take over for Reddit anytime soon.

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

#342

Post by babypuncher »

microtonal wrote: post #338
jerf wrote: post #159

Why should the apps have to pay? Why can't reddit provide a paid version that allows you to access the APIs, which the external apps can then use? You already have to log in to them anyhow so it's not like you'd need an extra API key or anything. $20/year is probably an order of magnitude more then they make on ads served to me. The weirdest thing about the ad economy to me isn't that it exists, but as I've banged on…

I think it's too risky for them. The people with the disposable income to pay say $20-50 per year for Reddit are also the most interesting to advertisers. So, if you move to an ad-free subscription model, you'd better be sure that the fees can replace a substantial chunk of the ad revenue. It was much easier for Google to try this with YouTube because they had plenty of revenue outside YouTube.

Reddit already has an ad-free subscription model.

The problem is that their app is awful. Why would a power user pay Reddit to remove ads when Apollo can remove ads and provide a user experience that doesn't make you want to rip off your own fingernails?

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

#343

Post by z3c0 »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #303
slantaclaus wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has become toxic. Deleting the app off my phone has really helped with my emotional health

Reddit is sprawling. There are thousands of non-political subreddits. Yeah, if you are following the default feed and reading r/politics, or any of the drama subreddits, you are going to have a bad time. Are you curious about what information is being sent through your house between 10KHz and 6GHz? Curious what your water meter is broadcasting to the neighborhood? https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/ Feel like some short…

I see this response every time somebody criticizes reddit, and I think it matters little. Even when you get off the defaults, many of the niche interests are segmented into multiple subreddits due to infighting and conflicts. And beyond that, even if you find a peaceful sub, the whole site is overflowing in bot-driven karma farming that reposts the same things every few months, and of course, my least favorite: armchair experts. I participated in many subreddits on subjects that I'm a professional in and saw repeatedly how often speaking confidently was heralded more than speaking factually.

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

#344

Post by downWidOutaFite »

neilv wrote: post #333

> but that Reddit is also implementing a change where third-party apps would lose access to NSFW subreddits, while the official site would not What's the official public rationale for that move? And what's the corporate-internal rationale, if anyone who knows can say? (I can imagine a few reasons other than simply to take away more user base of third-party apps, but I'm curious what the truth is.) (Aside: Both openne…

another aside: the nsfw subreddits that I enjoyed have all been recently banned

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

#345

Post by smolder »

danudey wrote: post #316
tremere wrote: post #8

Reddit is past its expiration date anyway and I'm surprised no one has created a challenger site. Perhaps this was due to Reddit's friendliness toward programmatic access but it seems they are taking that away. This is a good opportunity to create a new community, and essentially take back messaging from the corporations (let's be real about what reddit is) and put it back into the hands of the people.

Let's be clear though: this is exactly what happened. Digg was the place to go, and then they fucked it up and everyone migrated to Reddit. Now Reddit is fucking it up, and even if everyone migrates somewhere else, that new somewhere else is going to fuck it up too once they get to the point of "we need to be profitable at all costs". What we actually need is some way to convince users to pay for the services they us…

I agree that we should be better off in a world where people paid for things with money and not their privacy. But paying with privacy happens even for paid-for products, e.g. "smart TVs" and phones, Windows, internet connections, driving your car in public, digital cable.

First they said no one had to pay, and they subjected us to ads... Then, they said, well, you'll have to pay, if you don't want to see our increasingly annoying ads... Then, they got our money. Then, they decided to subject us to ads, again...

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

#347

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #47
lyu07282 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is really that we need platforms such as reddit on the internet, they are kind of part of its essential infrastructure. But running any infrastructure under the profit maximization scheme will always end up in self destruction. They are making enough money, they can easily go on keeping the API open, but there is no such thing as a sustainable business, they are forced to make more profit than the…

I don’t think you need to go full Reddit to replace it, just an interest in a niche and a desire to host a website. The struggle is that it takes more than love of a subject to bootstrap a community. I could see someone broadly succeeding by building modern forum software alongside an optional discovery platform that links forums together. I know there are federated platforms out there, but I think a large portion of…

Reddit's charm is that you can easily discover brand new communities and it's zero friction to get involved, you find a new subreddit and start interacting. No need to remember the new site or set up new credentials. A bunch of different communities adds all that friction back in.

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

#348

Post by concordDance »

pierat wrote: post #320
danudey wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why they don't either mandate ad display on third-party apps, or waive API fees for third-party apps that show ads in an approved manner. I'm sure there's a reason, but I'd rather be able to use Apollo even if it shows ads as well than to use the official app.

Control of the narrative is worth more than just money. So instead of just removing it, they just set the price to be laughable high so few, if any actually pay. Reddit is also betting that the 'sticky' users who contribute won't leave. And I think they grossly underestimated just how fast content creators can abandon your platform for a more friendly one. I also surmise that the API charging is to claw money back fr…

Reddit doesn't really have content creators, just content reposters.

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

#349

Post by kalupa »

pierat wrote: post #320
danudey wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why they don't either mandate ad display on third-party apps, or waive API fees for third-party apps that show ads in an approved manner. I'm sure there's a reason, but I'd rather be able to use Apollo even if it shows ads as well than to use the official app.

Control of the narrative is worth more than just money. So instead of just removing it, they just set the price to be laughable high so few, if any actually pay. Reddit is also betting that the 'sticky' users who contribute won't leave. And I think they grossly underestimated just how fast content creators can abandon your platform for a more friendly one. I also surmise that the API charging is to claw money back fr…

ironically, these aggregators are just going to switch to using scraping instead ...

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

#350

Post by nazgulsenpai »

tremere wrote: post #8

Reddit is past its expiration date anyway and I'm surprised no one has created a challenger site. Perhaps this was due to Reddit's friendliness toward programmatic access but it seems they are taking that away. This is a good opportunity to create a new community, and essentially take back messaging from the corporations (let's be real about what reddit is) and put it back into the hands of the people.

There was a little website called ruqqus that emerged for a while. It was mostly people fleeing reddit so it quickly filled with "far right" and "far left" extremes, but that kinda made it interesting. However after only a few months of having to moderate the creator noped out because no human should have to see the things a moderator of a public web forum would have to see.

Its going to be a tough road for anyone who wants to create a public web forum at any scale especially if they get brigaded.

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