Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing • Hacker News Board

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#471

Post by SSLy » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

julienb_sea wrote: post #364

alfalfasprout wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really agree. The curation on reddit just far, far better outside of the super generic frontpage subreddits. Tik tok is 99% garbage content.

My experience is the opposite. TikTok curation is incredibly efficient at honing in on the content niches that appeal to you. My TikTok feed feels very personal, I regularly interact in the comments and find some truly insightful discussions there. Reddit is a totally random mess of crap that I used to like. The manual curation of subreddits feels outdated and a pain compared to TikTok's ability to "organically" brin…

How do you initially train the tiktok algo? I don't have the willpower to wade through videos of children crying or dancing, acapella singers, people having small accidents, and so on.

And I swipe next as soon as I realize it's this kind of content.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#472

Post by yreg » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

I think the devs of Apollo, RIF and the other major 3rd party clients should spin up an alternative reddit backend. They can let their users chose whether they want to connect to reddit proper (and purchase API tokens) or to the new custom one.

I imagine that with the userbase these apps have they could succeed and perhaps do some less greedy/intrusive monetization.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#473

Post by jeron » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #13

Their pricing is just absurd. Reddit's official app and webpage is garbage, and instead of working with amazing developers like Christian to add whatever functionality they need to increase their revenue, they're doubling down on bad decisions and alienating their users. Pure hubris... they've forgotten their own history and why the Digg exodus happened. Seriously, _what_ are they gaining by eliminating access to thi…

I don’t know if they’re trying to eliminate access but rather make more money/push people towards their own client

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#474

Post by lolinder » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

> So at generous estimates of $600M and 430M monthly active users, that's $1.40 per user per year, or $0.12 monthly. ... With the proposed API pricing, the average user in Apollo would cost $2.50, which is is 20x higher than a generous estimate of what each users brings Reddit in revenue.

This is 20x higher than what each user currently brings Reddit in revenue, but I'm betting that Reddit is going to be cranking up the monetization hard in the next few months.

Reddit Premium is currently $5.99/mo, so the bean counters probably see $2.50/mo for API access for a competing app as long overdue rent. I'd be very surprised if we didn't also see a big push to drive up the ad revenue on free accounts (more pushes to get on the app, ad-blocker-blockers, etc.)

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#475

Post by quacked » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

davesmylie wrote: post #469

quacked wrote: post #441

Someone else in this thread mentioned the "boiling frog" effect. Personally, I'll keep using Reddit until they remove support for old.reddit.com. Then this frog is out of the pot!

I feel much the same way. Looking at one of the subs I run though - old.reddit.com accounts for 5% of total traffic. Whilst 5% is not nothing, it's also not really all that much. I doubt they'd notice much impact even if half of the old.reddit.com users left.

Wow, I wonder if the 95% of reddit users for your sub that use the new format are net new to the site, or if there actually are a lot of old-reddit users that happily converted to the new UI.

Don't get me wrong, the old UI was awful, but it was much more information-dense, so I prefer it. I think it's unlikely that anyone that's not already a turbo-nerd would come as a completely new Reddit user, compare the two, and pick the old UI.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#476

Post by rjh29 » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #448

rozab wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tragedy, because reddit is the last source of publicly available truth on the internet. I can search for anything with site:reddit.com and see actual human beings' opinions on the matter. All other truth is locked down in unindexed chats, and all other search results are SEO'd AI written articles shilling referral links.

truth Hah. Reddit "truth" is sold and bought at every level for anything popular enough. It's just the illusion of truth. Your site:reddit.com strategy stopped making sense 2-3 years ago. I will not be sad when reddit essentially dies in a few years from now. Good riddance.

It's hilariously easy to spot astroturfing comments and posts on reddit vs. actual opinions. Real posters don't spend years frequenting the same niche subs writing multiple paragraph comments about the same topic. Sure those opinions may be influenced and biased in their own way, but if you read enough of them you can form a pretty good summary.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#477

Post by elpool2 » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

sen wrote: post #435

slipshady wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The browser is turtle slow. Are you using old reddit? [1] Do you find that slow as well?? [1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/o67vzg/how_tro_get_ba...

They’ve recently killed i.Reddit and /.compact (the mobile versions of old.reddit) and have also gimped old.reddit immensely over the last year, with things like images being force-embedded into the new layout even if you access the raw image path (!!), among other things. There’s absolutely no way old.reddit lasts much longer.

I use the old.reddit desktop mode on my phone. I can see 20 stories at once compared to 4 on the normal mobile layout (The text is small but still pretty readable). The minute they get rid of old reddit I'll probably just stop using the site.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#478

Post by yreg » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

mjr00 wrote: post #367

IAmGraydon wrote: post #343

Without a doubt, this is another step in Reddit's demise. It will really go into freefall when they go public later this year, after which I'm certain you'll start seeing more intrusive monetization. The window just opened for someone to develop the replacement. It will rip itself apart over the next few years and all 52 million users will be looking for a new home. Reddit's product is authenticity. Monetization is t…

> It will really go into freefall when they go public later this year, after which I'm certain you'll start seeing more intrusive monetization. Yep, and with more intrusive monetization comes stricter content controls. Once Reddit bans NSFW content -- which is "when" not "if" at this point -- it's going to lose its relevance as a platform.

What's up with the markets disliking NSFW content? I thought sex sells…

I would rather invest in reddit with NSFW content allowed than in reddit with NSFW content banned.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#479

Post by rjh29 » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

jlmorton wrote: post #198

Here's a much more informative post [1] from Apollo developer Christian on Reddit last month, along with an older post [2] with some additional info. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12ram0f/had_a_fe...

I'm confused as your first link is the same link as this HN post - unless mods have changed it.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#480

Post by gaudat » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

I have a story to tell, about the demise of one of the largest internet forums in my language.

About ten years ago, when smartphones just started appearing, the forum did not have a mobile version, and there are various 3rd party clients on the App Store or Android Market.

Later on, one of the largest 3rd party client was blocked, because of they hammering the forum's servers too hard,. Or something about caching and stealing ad revenue.

Then a couple years later, in 2017, the 3rd party client's devs launched its own forum reusing the client's name. It exploded in popularity and quickly took over as the most popular message board among the youth.

The old forum now has a sort of boomer or mentally ill stigma to it.

I hope to see Apollo go down this route.

Oh, and I think both forums in the story did not monetize as hard as reddit going to paid awards and memberships.

One more thought: Keep the Apollo UI or whatever thing the users are most familiar with. Most of them do not care if it is fediverse or open source or backed by web-scale k8s, they only want it to just work (tm) good enough to post things on it. Eat the lunch you prepared yourself.