Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

Note that the Relay dev says that there's no way for him to offer a free version of Relay and make it financially viable. That means that user acquisition is going to tank, hard, because no one is going to be able to try the app before paying for it.

> Apollo has 1.5 MILLION monthly active users. With a 10% conversion rate and charging $2.00 a month

In other words, if he's willing to tell 1.35 million people to get fucked, he could turn his app that's widely beloved by many into an app that barely anyone knows about and new users are barely willing to consider trying.

These apps live and die by the same model: the paid users subsidize the free users. Who knows, maybe Christian could just tell those 1.35m people to get lost and it would be instantly profitable, but maybe that's not the app he wants to make. That seems entirely fair.

> To me it sounds like Christian just doesn't want to do the work.

Or, alternately, Christian feels betrayed by Reddit, because even though he's worked very closely with them for years, Reddit suddenly decided that yanking the carpet out from under third-party devs with thirty days' notice is the best way forward for them, and then the CEO turned around and slandered him all over the place, criticized Christian for having receipts, and then just continued to trash talk him everywhere.

Reddit has shown repeatedly through this ordeal that they don't actually want to work with people. Tons of other devs have reported that their e-mails are going unanswered. Christian asked about extensions or some other way to make things work and got no response. Reddit's goal here isn't to be profitable by charging 3p clients for API calls, it's to kill 3p clients and force them into their own terrible app.

Why would Christian want to jump through hoops to work with a company that's gone out of their way repeatedly to treat him like shit?

That 3% probably consists of a majority of the 1% who post content, and the .1% who moderate content.

Without either of those, the site becomes stale and overrun by trash content.

I don't think there are many claiming that the API needs to remain free - it just needs to not be so prohibitively expensive for the developers. Pretty much all third-party apps are run by individuals who are passionate about wanting to create a better Reddit experience, and not by some megacorp trying to fleece Reddit.

Under the proposed API rules I would have had to pay twice for accessing both Apollo on iOS and Sync on Android, which makes no sense.

To me, the most logical thing to do is make third-party app access a Reddit Premium feature.

Reddit wins as they would make far more money from me as a paid user than a free user, third-party devs win as they no longer have the burden of coming up with the money to pay a potential $1.7 million bill a month [1], and I win as I get to use the app I want on whichever platforms I want.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...

There's a fork in the road. IRL socialization is selective, since someone needs to want to talk to you specifically; you decide who you talk to, instead of listening to random people.

For a minority, online socializing is mostly selective. One-on-one chats on WhatsApp, group chats, or small, selective online communities like tiny Discord servers among friends. Only venturing out to "the masses' social media" to promote a product or a brand (or out of boredom), but mostly staying away from the riff-raff and idiocy.

Then there's the people who lack IRL friends, and who can't get in these group chats or friends-only Discord servers, who have nothing but the riff-raff and idiocy for company. There's more and more of these people, as people get lonelier.

I guess the only thing you can do is make sure your kids are in the first group.

> Is this a management strategy where the end game is: win or no longer exist.

I've seen a lot of speculation that Reddit could be close to running out of funds. If (big if) this were the case, then it truly is a win or die scenario for them.