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Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

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Re: Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

#121

Post by idlewords »

not_a_shill wrote: post #116
idlewords wrote: post #84

I don't understand the point of a protest like this without some sort of concrete demand. If you're going to take down most of a popular site, you should: 1. Articulate the reason for your action 2. Explain what specific things need to happen to redress the problem I haven't seen any clear statement of (2). Am I missing something?

I feel like it's obvious? They want 3rd party apps to stay in some reasonable capacity. The definition of reasonable can vary, (free - low cost API usage), but it's not that important.

Articulating a clear demand is extremely important; it demonstrates that you have some organizational capacity beyond saying no.

Re: Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

#122

Post by rootusrootus »

Eisenstein wrote: post #90
Timpy wrote: post #69

If I understand this correctly, these third party apps are drawing tons of ad money away from Reddit while at the same time increasing their hosting costs and dev costs for maintaining the API, right? How is this not a win-win for Reddit? They lower the traffic that was costing them money. I know it's user-hostile and that's the crux of the complaints, but it seems a little naive that these communities are basically…

Reddit is built on free labor from mods. Without the mods they would have to pay people to moderate thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of communities. Most mods use old reddit on desktop or third party apps on mobile because their app and new site suck for modding. Alienating the mods means their subreddits go to shit, and reddit exists for content. Doesn't sounds like a 'win' to me.

It seems inevitable that Reddit is going to need to start hiring professional moderators. But given the difficulties in making that work economically, it would only be for the very largest subreddits. And perhaps even then, it would just be a professional lead moderator, with some volunteer help.

As it is, the only people who really want to be moderators, especially of a large subreddit, tend to be motivated by reasons other than "build a thriving community of diverse, good faith discussion."

Every big subreddit needs a dang.

Re: Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

#123

Post by paxys »

Semaphor wrote: post #100
paxys wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says who? They are only pushing the "official experience" to make up for lost ad revenue. If I pay Reddit $50/yr why would they care what app I use? YouTube does the same thing with Premium, and it is working out great.

> If I pay Reddit $50/yr why would they care what app I use? Then why is that not an option? The narrative that they want more tracking and control makes sense with the facts we have.

That is an option, considering Reddit is charging third party developers the equivalent of ~$2.5/mo per user for API access, so the tracking argument already goes out of the window. They are already giving up control, for a very low price too, but just implementing it in the most brain dead way possible.

Re: Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

#124

Post by unethical_ban »

idlewords wrote: post #102
newaccount74 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about Reddit is that you can scroll down. Even if the top voted comments are garbage, you can just continue reading, and read answers from a very diverse audience, even if they are downvoted. It's a lot more diverse than Twitter, where it seems that only right wing bullshit is shown any more, or HN, where 90% of posters are men aged 20-40.

There is a great deal of diversity in thought on Reddit that is just banned outright by moderators. To pick a non-inflammatory example, a lot of dog subreddits will not allow any references to aversive training methods, which in their eyes include things like snapping your fingers or saying "no" in a sharp voice. What this means is you get a bunch of rival subreddits with different dogmatic beliefs, and people are ba…

Telling a dog "no" is controversial? Wow.

Re: Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

#125

Post by ToniCipriani »

bastawhiz wrote: post #79
chillbill wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The aim is not _just_ to make money, but to force users to use their crappy app so they can track users better. Sort of like what Twitter did. It’s also why they had like one dude working on their mobile website one hour a month for the last few years.

> but to force users to use their crappy app so they can track users better That's the point: let the users pay you to make up for the (potential?) revenue you're not making from tracking them. Estimates put reddit at something like $0.25 per user. Pushing them to the official app might _generously_ triple that number. Versus the user paying $5/mo? It's a braindead business case to say that users in your official app…

Sounds to me they want to double dip: charge you AND track you.

Re: Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

#127

Post by thomastjeffery »

idlewords wrote: post #84

I don't understand the point of a protest like this without some sort of concrete demand. If you're going to take down most of a popular site, you should: 1. Articulate the reason for your action 2. Explain what specific things need to happen to redress the problem I haven't seen any clear statement of (2). Am I missing something?

It seems pretty clear to me, given the context:

Dear Reddit, You are about to do a bad thing. Don't do that thing, or I will leave your platform. kthnxbai

Re: Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

#128

Post by princevegeta89 »

chillbill wrote: post #34
paxys wrote: post #5

I will never understand how Reddit bungled this so badly. I'm no Harvard MBA, but here's an easier way out – instead of asking small-time app developers to pay millions, put API access contingent on the account subscribing to Reddit Premium. That way users get to keep the experience they enjoy, independent developers can keep doing their thing, Reddit gets to make up for the lost ad revenue in the form of subscriptio…

The aim is not _just_ to make money, but to force users to use their crappy app so they can track users better. Sort of like what Twitter did. It’s also why they had like one dude working on their mobile website one hour a month for the last few years.

And the official Reddit apps sucks big ass in my opinion. Combine this with the way Reddit nags and misleads you to install it, and that gave me enough reason to never use their fucking app.

Re: Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

#129

Post by Semaphor »

paxys wrote: post #123
Semaphor wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I pay Reddit $50/yr why would they care what app I use? Then why is that not an option? The narrative that they want more tracking and control makes sense with the facts we have.

That is an option, considering Reddit is charging third party developers the equivalent of ~$2.5/mo per user for API access, so the tracking argument already goes out of the window. They are already giving up control, for a very low price too, but just implementing it in the most brain dead way possible.

That is what the 3rd party dev has to implement, Reddit already has a premium feature, but there is no api-unlock, there is just dev payments. That’s a big part of the issue. If people paying Reddit would unlock api access, most issues would disappear.

Re: Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

#130

Post by xtracto »

mg wrote: post #2

In another thread about this, someone mentioned Lemmy, a federated alternative to Reddit: https://lemmy.one/communities/listing_type/All/page/1 Looks like an interesting approach.

The problem I see with lemmy, mastodon and similar services (anybody remember the also open source "Facebook killer" from like 10 years ago?) is that they are confusing: is it one service or a bunch of servers? Which server is the good one?

The average is lost on the first page, and you need her for these social based apps. You need the non tech savvy people to get communities like r/medicine.

Otherwise you get shat you see on IRC LiberaChat nowadays: the channels with people are mainly technical or technically related ones. ... which like, is good for people like us. But I come to HN for quality tech related discussions... I want a place for quality InstantPot talk, or quality ChildFree chat.

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