311–320 of 1001 posts
Usually I am anti-internet stunts like this. The vast majority of boycotts are dumb wastes of time. That said, Reddit should have built better mod tools before making their api change. I think people complaining about not having 3rd party apps to browse reddit is "meh". But moderators need to be able to do their jobs.
For the uninitiated, $2.52/month is what it would cost users to browse Reddit with Apollo under the current API pricing. RIF would be just $0.73/month[1]. For comparison, Reddit Premium is $5.99/month[2]. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/comment/... [2] https://www.reddit.com/premium
For me, removing NSFW (what will that even be defined as?) means 3rd party clients will have an incomplete experience.
Flashback to Digg.com... I hope the people currently in charge of Reddit know how that event played out... it was the single most significant stroke of luck a fledgling Reddit could have possibly hoped for.
Not sure what the relation between YC and Reddit is these days, but wouldn't HN be in the prime position to take over? I feel all that is needed is to add sub-hn's. Reddit got Digg's business because Digg gambled away all of it's good will. That was a long time ago, Reddit since been going down the same path. Point is, all these companies are trying to monetize, generate profits, like they somehow responsible for the…
Engagement is a power curve. Most content is created by a small subset of users. I think it is a fair to say that if you use and especially pay for third party tools, whether that be a client or something like RES, you are more than likely a power user. If you moderate a subreddit, you're probably a power user. If those power users go away then you lose a large swath of content and moderation which negatively affects the regular users at other parts of the curve. It is not going to be immediate but this is reddit slowly bleeding itself to death.
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You can, I've already made a modified version of Apollo and sideloaded it onto my phone with a tweak to set my own key instead of Apollo's However there is a line on the developers page now that says all apps need to accept terms and sign up for a developers program, so I have my doubts it will continue to work either
How? Apollo’s dev never released the source code to the app, only the server which sends out push notifications.
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The age of adtech as the dominant technology revenue model is drawing to a close and Reddit missed out on the golden age. Trying to make ads work now, when it’s clear the future is subscriptions and the like, is just dumb.
Only Google and FB figured out ads, and they were planet-scale companies. Twitter pulled in ad revenue but couldn't make a profit. Reddit's audience is extremely hostile to ads, and they've never managed to attract big advertisers anyway.
Once you take away the “grossly illegal activity” dividend neither is nearly as rosy as it seems.
Great! There's a picket line I won't be crossing. Not just for those subs, of course, but for all of Reddit. The reason Reddit is valuable is not the few execs making these (IMHO terrible) decisions. It's the thousands of mods and the millions of people creating and organizing the content that I go there to read. Until those people are happy with things, I'm not going back.
Reddit wanted 2.50/month/app which is like $30 ARPU, Facebook is $200 ARPU in the US. The app they’re burning down Reddit over is already charging $1/month and was ready to sell out and shut down for $10 million. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we usually don’t give out API keys to allow users to wholesale reproduce, redistribute, resell our data for free.
He wasn't literally offering to sell out for $10 million. What he was saying was that if Reddit was being honest with the claim that Apollo was costing them $20 million per year in server costs, the obvious business decision would be to offer to buy him out first, thus bringing in those users with much less friction.
The fact that they're instead choosing to be manipulative (unrealistically short period for apps to adapt, API prices far above what other services charge) indicates that the $20 million number is a lie made to make themselves seem less scummy.
As it stands, Reddit hasn't even tried even simpler solutions like returning ads in the API requests and requiring that the 3rd parties include those for free usage.
For the uninitiated, $2.52/month is what it would cost users to browse Reddit with Apollo under the current API pricing. RIF would be just $0.73/month[1]. For comparison, Reddit Premium is $5.99/month[2]. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/comment/... [2] https://www.reddit.com/premium
Of course it would be doable but Reddit doesn't want this. They rather have complete control over the platform. They can't sell ads or metrics with third party apps.
But why not? It's reddit's choice to not push ads into the API, they could certainly change that. They could also provide a telemetry sdk and mandate that all 3p apps use it.
There's a way to make this all work but given reddit is completely uninterested in maintaining the status quo they must have other directions they want to take the platform.
What's the endgame here? Why even turn the subs back on? The admins have made their intentions clear enough, I think.
The endgame should simply be: 1. Reddit management gets their head out of their asses and negotiates a better change to API fees and structure. Throughout this whole ordeal everyone else (Apollo dev, mods, etc.) has made extremely reasonable points, but Reddit management seems to be gaslighting and arguing in bad faith at every turn. 2. If management doesn't change, Reddit should die. Why should all these mods donate…
Flashback to Digg.com... I hope the people currently in charge of Reddit know how that event played out... it was the single most significant stroke of luck a fledgling Reddit could have possibly hoped for.
They of course know (at the time of the mass Digg exodus Reddit specifically changed their alien icon to welcome Digg refugees), but the difference is that they are betting on the fact that right now there is no immediately obvious alternative, like Reddit was to Digg a decade ago.