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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

#191

Post by sleight42 »

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…

As an until-recently premium Redditor, exactly this. I voluntarily subscribed. I didn't derive value from subscribing. I just didn't want to be a freeloader since I enjoy the site so much.

Because of Reddit's current practices, I've cancelled my premium membership. I'll likely move on from Reddit unless they chart a path where I and others can continue to use our third party clients happily.

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

#192

Post by time0ut »

evandale wrote: post #141

I hope something new comes along. I'm getting sick of reddit. They way they allow moderators to run subreddits nowadays is ridiculous. Especially city subreddits that should be completely unbiased and welcoming to all in the region. The r/Toronto city subreddit is absolute garbage now because of what the mods have done. They decided they would have "no-crime January" as a trial to see what the subreddit looks like if…

I’ve seen this on Reddit and every other online community over the past few years. Zero tolerance for any sort of nuance or thought. It is concerning. HN is the last hold out.

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

#193

Post by jahlove »

dandrew5 wrote: post #185

Has anyone heard if the changes will affect the current JSON API available by appending `.json` to the end of web URLs (i.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/all.json )? I can't find any documentation about it so hopefully not. If anyone is looking for an extension to replace their third-party app, Reddit Theme Studio[1] might be of interest. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-theme-studi...

They said .json is part of their API and is impacted:

https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/_/jgrsf2q/?...

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

#194

Post by BeetleB »

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…

> I will never understand how Reddit bungled this so badly.

Are we living in different universes?

Less than 1% of Reddit users will be impacted by these changes. If all the people who are upset at this leave, it will have almost no impact to Reddit. A few niche subreddits may die, but that's it.

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

#195

Post by lost_tourist »

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…

As per the usual they should have chosen the middle way and forced reasonable charges for subscriptions for those people who want to use 3rd party aps $3-5 a month. Instead they now have a rebellion, that might turn into a movement to ditch reddit like people ditched digg. I'm not sure where they'd go though, I don't know of any platform out there that is similar to reddit that could handle a large influx.

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

#196

Post by lost_tourist »

snide wrote: post #17
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…

Yes! Speaking as a heavy Reddit, but non-sub user, this is exactly what would have gotten me to pay them $50 a year. Not NFTs, stickers and avatars. I think the problem is that the API concerns are more around LLMs having easy access points to their data than anything else. Still, this could have been avoided by providing free-use keys to trusted developers. It's not like there are that many of them. Just seems odd h…

While I have issues with mods of various forums being little hitlers, I can see why they are rebelling, evidently only the 3rd party apps provide a decent way to mod on mobile. They're already working many hours for free, why would they put up with using crappy tools to do a job they do for fun and for free?

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

#197

Post by lost_tourist »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #76
snide wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Speaking as a heavy Reddit, but non-sub user, this is exactly what would have gotten me to pay them $50 a year. Not NFTs, stickers and avatars. I think the problem is that the API concerns are more around LLMs having easy access points to their data than anything else. Still, this could have been avoided by providing free-use keys to trusted developers. It's not like there are that many of them. Just seems odd h…

Can someone explain what value new Reddit data has for LLMs? Presumably the entire 2005-2023 (up to March) dataset which is (was) freely available on Pushshift / torrents is enough? Also, not that Sam Altman is unbiased, but he did say that social media (Reddit, Twitter) were not super important for developing LLMs (But of course, that's exactly what he would say if they were useful!)

I didn't even know it was available on torrents.

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

#198

Post by lost_tourist »

shmatt wrote: post #27
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…

That small time developer who discussed paying millions also said it came out to $2.5/month on average[1]. Which actually isn't that bad for the service Reddit is providing One of the problems mentioned in the many Reddit threads discussing the issue about Apollo, is that its creator was selling ULTRA LIFETIME MEMBERSHIPS[2]. Yes, they were charging people money, taking it, then using a free API to deliver paying mem…

lifetime memberships are useless because a corporation can be dissolved in seconds and you can bet that lifetime for free was bound to the the life of the corporation.

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

#199

Post by lost_tourist »

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.

that's the final nail for me. The second I have to give an email address or can't access it via the web I'm out.

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

#200

Post by Semaphor »

Eisenstein wrote: post #189
Semaphor wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every reddit account gets API access with OAth. No payment needed.

Uh, no, that’s the upcoming change.
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