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Reddit Strike Has Started

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Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#591

Post by squeaky-clean »

stryan wrote: post #583
goostavos wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site linked in this very post sorta disagrees with you, though. The subs not taking part in the strike vastly outnumber those who are. Outside of a few (relatively speaking) small circles, the Reddit strike boils down to "Reddit is striking?" The revolt goes unnoticed. Lurkers are happily scrolling the front page right now.

To be clear, the strike isn't supposed to start until June 12th, which hasn't happened in North America yet. This headline seems to be jumping the gun a little as only a few subreddits went dark immediately.

A lot of subreddits have begun in the past hour because it's already the 12th in Europe. Formula1 and FormulaE just went dark in the past hour for example.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#592

Post by crazygringo »

OldManRyan wrote: post #314

There's a good number of people saying this strike is meaningless and reddit's API change will only affect a tiny % of users. I want to explain why I believe they are wrong. 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 powe…

> 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.

I've seen this repeated elsewhere but I've seen zero actual evidence of it.

And the counterpoint is quite easy: that people use these apps/extensions for a better viewing experience. Because on the creation side, typing into a text box or pasting a link is just typing into a text box. The apps/extensions are great for consuming.

Quick Google searches reveal that Reddit has something between 0.5 and 1.5 billion monthly users, while the Apollo app has 1.5 million monthly users. That's nothing.

The bigger question seems to be around moderators who use power moderation tools. Will Reddit keep allowing moderation tools? If not, will they improve their own? If they lose moderators, are there other moderators willing to take their place, or will they start investing in more ML-based moderation, etc.?

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#593

Post by nebula8804 »

wpietri wrote: post #87
jcims wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is basically successful despite itself. It's wild.

Twitter too! When I worked there they jokingly referred to the head of product as the defense against the dark arts teacher, in that every year or so they'd disappear mysteriously and there'd be a new one. Most of Twitter's successes came from watching what users were actually doing and supporting that (e.g., at mentions, retweets, quote tweets). Many of their failures have been trying to graft on something irrelevan…

Wait a second, I could be totally wrong on this but I thought Twitter nearing bankruptcy was the real reason they sunset Vine?

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#594

Post by OldManRyan »

yanderekko wrote: post #566
OldManRyan wrote: post #314

There's a good number of people saying this strike is meaningless and reddit's API change will only affect a tiny % of users. I want to explain why I believe they are wrong. 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 powe…

>Engagement is a power curve Sure, but the degradation of the UX based on these changes seems to be pretty exaggerated in my view. How many of these powerusers are only using Reddit through a 3rd party client and would quit the site over having it closed? My guess is that the answer is "not many", and Reddit is clearly banking on this... and why would I trust angry activists over Reddit's own internal analysis? More…

The developer of RES said they do not know if the changes will hit them and it is up in the air.

> Reddit's public statements have been limited on this method, however we have been told we should see minimal impact via this route. However we are still not 100% sure on potential impact and are being cautious going forwards.[0]

Developers behind third-party clients were also told they should be fine with the new changes so reddit's word isn't worth anything. This is not just about clients but tools and bots as well.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Enhancement/comments/141hzqj/announ...

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#596

Post by [deleted] »

OldManRyan wrote: post #586
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now I want to explain why you're wrong. The vast majority of people who are visiting subreddits are doing so because they're actively seeking out the material being presented to them. These people are subscribers to the subreddits. Subreddits that "go dark" are not blocked for everyone. Their access is restricted ONLY for those who have not yet subscribed to the subreddit. So this giant display of enlightened ass…

> The vast majority of people who are visiting subreddits are doing so because they're actively seeking out the material being presented to them. These people are subscribers to the subreddits. Subreddits that "go dark" are not blocked for everyone. Their access is restricted ONLY for those who have not yet subscribed to the subreddit. I don't believe this is true but I'm willing to test it out. I'll subscribe to a b…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#597

Post by giantrobot »

jachee wrote: post #271
jcims wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is basically successful despite itself. It's wild.

It’s popular despite itself… but It’s not successful. One of the things Spez is whining about is that they’re not profitable.

They decided to chase TikTok and host a shitload of video content. Video storage and delivery is way more expensive than text-only or even text and images.

Congratulations Reddit! You pulled in users with no good way to cover the costs of those users.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#598

Post by kemotep »

not_a_shill wrote: post #397
Someone1234 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit announced this price 30-days before they planned to enforce/charge it. If there was any doubt at all that Reddit wasn't trying to ban third-party apps with deniability, then that should settle it. That isn't reasonable. Plus $2.5 to Reddit, means that apps need to charge $3.60 before 30% App-Store fees. But the app developer also needs new infrastructure to handle the billing, payment, and tracking, between en…

People would pay $5 a month. They do on discord for...animated emoticons. It's actually hard to believe people are throwing this big a fit over something they don't deem worthy of $5 a month.

The trick is the end user of the third party app doesn’t have to pay. The app developer is the one being charged by Reddit.

If you have 10,000 users that Reddit in 30 days is going to charge you $250,000 per month to continue allowing your third party app to operate and you only had 5-10% of your users paying for a premium version you could see how that becomes somewhat unreasonable.

A bit more of a heads up is all the Apollo developer wanted. He understood that the API no longer being free is reasonable. The timing is what he objects. No assistance in allowing premium Reddit accounts that use Third Party Apps to cover API costs, etc.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#599

Post by _dan »

moomoo11 wrote: post #498

Hopefully this starts a "battery" approach to dealing with APIs, 3rd party apps, keys and a way for end users to quickly and seamlessly sign up to use services via 3rd party apps. Why not.. 1. User installs 3rd party app 2. You accept reddit TOS, an API key is attached to your account. It could even be integrated into apple/android keys or user subscription models. You pay either directly to reddit or via your paymen…

That doesn’t sound very far away from how Apollo/etc work today - you authenticate the app with Reddit via oauth and it accesses the api as you.

Reddit already implements some features only when you’ve paid (eg you get access to the lounge when you have gold active), so I don’t imagine it would be a massive stretch to just prevent all access to the api to users without gold.

Though it does prompt the question of why they took the path they have, instead of trying to charge users. I guess their goal is really to get rid of 3rd party clients.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#600

Post by capableweb »

EscapeFromNY wrote: post #26

They put an impressive amount of work into that site. There are notifications and an autoupdating counter, and even a livestream. https://www.twitch.tv/reddark_247

There is a IRC channel for the same effect (useful as it uses less cpu, ram and bandwidth), #reddark at irc.hackint.org:6697, hanging out with the people from Archive Team too, who are achieving reddit at the moment (in #shreddit, same server)

https://webirc.hackint.org/#irc://irc.hackint.org/reddark for a webclient

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