Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit Strike Has Started

reddark.untone.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 1001 posts

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#391

Post by davewritescode »

x86x87 wrote: post #103
davewritescode wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but unless they’re well moderated they’ll turn to crap. There’s a lot of moderators out there moderating by hand and using bots to run some of the bigger subreddits, much like IRC. Without those bots having access to the APIs, that job gets harder and it’s less likely to be done well. Personally I think Steve Huffman is the fall guy here and this is coming from the money people who have zero interest in where Red…

Lol. What IPO? Do you think anyone is buying reddit stock after this clusterfuck?

I'm not saying it's a good idea to IPO but if Reddit shows a 25% increase in ad impressions and minimal loss of users this might end up being better.

Personally, if I were in charge with Reddit I'd go for an approach that required 3rd party clients to show ads that come back from Reddit's APIs and allow users to opt-out of adds for a small monthly fee directly from the user or even from the app developers who choose to incorporate it into their fee structure. Apps who don't comply get banned.

The approach Reddit is going for is stupid and is burning goodwill earned over more than a decade.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#392

Post by wpietri »

latortuga wrote: post #377
istillwritecode wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will continue to use reddit.

Same. Regardless of how they've bumpy the pay increase and related comms have been, it's their platform. Nobody uses third party apps to access Pinterest, tiktok, Facebook, ig, or any other major internet property and I don't see a problem with reddit running their company to make money. Yeah it sucks that Apollo, rif, etc all are getting shut down.

It is really theirs? They have legal ownership, sure, so they can do this without forcible intervention by the state. But laws are things we make up to memorialize our agreements on what we think should happen, so focusing on legal ownership doesn't really answer the question of who Reddit really belongs to.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#393

Post by themagician »

GenerWork wrote: post #359
istillwritecode wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will continue to use reddit.

Same. One thing that I've noticed is that this seems to be a rebellion of power users and not the average Joe, which is why this has gotten so much traction on HN. To the Average Joe, if Apollo shuts down, they'll just download the Reddit app. However, HN users look at the Apollo dev and see themselves, so they're jumping on this out of solidarity. I personally think this will last a few days and then all the default…

Couldn't agree more.

Reddit becomes harder and harder to actually post on. Subs are now ruled by mods and strict automods with ridiculous rules and posting requirements. You post something and it gets automatically removed and then you have to post a dozen more times changing this word or that word to try and figure out how to actually get something through.

In reality there are a few DOZEN mods that basically control all of reddit. Yes, dozens. It's the same mods over and over again.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#394

Post by dahwolf »

This could be Spez's Stalin moment.

Ban these conspiring power mods and take over their subreddits with willing volunteers. Let the free-loading Apollo app expire and persist with the new API pricing.

I bet this seemingly cruel series of actions would actually improve Reddit. Reddit has a whiny upper class of power mods that take a little too much joy in watching something burn.

Show them who's boss. Call the bluff.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#395

Post by wpietri »

yanderekko wrote: post #326
wpietri wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh? Thanks so much for telling me what goes on in my head, bub. The average bit of user-generated content is of very low quality. Which is why pretty much any successful platform, this one included, uses user-generated signals to filter the good stuff to the top. And any social context is prone to vicious circles where dark triad find somewhere successful and ruin it. Preventing that requires active weeding. All of t…

>Thanks so much for telling me what goes on in my head, bub. I mean, if you're going to Reddit to marvel at the sidebar rules or CSS stylings, then I guess you're going there for the mods qua mods. But I would assume that this represents a relatively rare user psychographic. Beyond this, my point is that it's unfair to give the mods credit for indirectly cultivating communities but refuse to extend this same consider…

If you're claiming that the main things Reddit mods do is a bit of rule text and some CSS, then I don't think you know enough about the topic to be worth further discussion.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#396

Post by sealeck »

dahwolf wrote: post #394

This could be Spez's Stalin moment. Ban these conspiring power mods and take over their subreddits with willing volunteers. Let the free-loading Apollo app expire and persist with the new API pricing. I bet this seemingly cruel series of actions would actually improve Reddit. Reddit has a whiny upper class of power mods that take a little too much joy in watching something burn. Show them who's boss. Call the bluff.

The fact that you think a "Stalin moment" would be a good thing says a lot.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#397

Post by not_a_shill »

Someone1234 wrote: post #299
bottlepalm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#398

Post by cedilla »

eksapsy wrote: post #361

Strike you say? That's like, as Louis Rossmann on his yt channel wisely said, "I am so angry, so infuriated that you're abusing me, that ..... I WILL... leave for 3 days and then come back for the rest of my life". Like it's literally like saying "hey I need you in my life". Do you know what message that sends? What would you think if your customers would say "hey Im not gonna come for 3 days but I'm coming for the r…

Rossmann seems to have misunderstood what a strike is. A strike is always between two parties that depend on each other.

"Leaving forever" is the only thing that won't send a message. If you're truly gone forever, Reddit has no shared interest with you any longer.

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#399

Post by nunez »

Kiro wrote: post #174
drumhead wrote: post #105

The cheek of Reddits management is incredible. They've taken hundreds of millions in VC money hired an army of developers and yet delivered nothing to improve the user experience. All we seem to have have got out of is new reddit, a terrible, slow facebook like version of the site and an absolutely terrible mobile app. Where the hell did the money go? They use the time, labour, creativity, stories, humour, talent, wi…

What makes Apollo better than the official app and why is there such a discrepancy? (I haven't used either.) I know the classic take is that the app is made for advertisers and not users, but I'm interested in what the actual difference is.

A number of things. I'm comparing it to the website, though I think a lot of this holds true to the app as well.

1. It loads content significantly more quickly than New Reddit (Reddit has done a lot to improve on this, but for a long time, the New Reddit™ was horrifically slow after scrolling through a few posts.)

2. It doesn't support any of the social media functions that the New Reddit provides, which, for me, is perfect because that's not what I browse Reddit for. (You can turn all of that off in the New Reddit, though.)

3. Way less busy than New Reddit, even if you use "Classic" view inside of "Card" view.

4. You can disable infinite scroll in Apollo, whereas you can't in New Reddit (and it's not even supported in Old Reddit unless you use RES)

5. The Apollo developer was insanely responsive to user feedback and was really, really good about incorporating as much as he could into the app (an iPad-native experience being the biggest exception).

Re: Reddit Strike Has Started

#400

Post by pests »

kbenson wrote: post #142
bottlepalm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't over one app. Many (most?) the app makers have noted the change is unsustainable for them. One way to look at it is that Apollo, the app you're referencing that was able to charge $10 a year, would have to charge 2.5 times as much just to cover the access fees, and not any of their own overhead, much less allow for profit. The issue here is that the ARPU calculation and assumptions are wrong. Is reddit los…

> and not any of their own overhead, much less allow for profit.

Is it fair for a third party app to be profitable before the service itself is?

Reddit has to cover the access fees, its own overhead, and try to make a profit itself too.

Post reply on HN