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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

#61

Post by jackson1442 »

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…

The _average_ user costs $2.50/mo in API requests. I’m willing to bet people who pay for the “ultra” tier of an app are above average users at best, especially when you consider Apollo also has free users.

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

#62

Post by 888666 »

wmurmann wrote: post #49
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.

What’s so crappy about it? I’ve seen some bad apps and it’s definitely not that bad. Can you elaborate?

The reason why I dislike it is that, compared to 3rd party apps, it's slow and the design is overly busy. I prefer a more minimalistic design. The excessive tracking doesn't help.

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

#63

Post by Pet_Ant »

partiallypro wrote: post #15
mmiliauskas wrote: post #6

Reddit is garbage these days anyways. Even communities that are scientific/technical seem to be toxic these days. If you want to get to a comment that has any substance regarding some topic or article, you have to scroll all the way down.

/r/politics has leaked into virtually every subreddit.

I mean that can be said about society in it's entirety really at this point.

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

#64

Post by rtkwe »

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 would still get a lot of backlash as a lot of users just aren't going to be willing to pay just to use a different app. Turning this around isn't so easy as you make it appear too it's still reddit effectively shutting out 3rd party apps.

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

#66

Post by AlbertCory »

mmiliauskas wrote: post #6

Reddit is garbage these days anyways. Even communities that are scientific/technical seem to be toxic these days. If you want to get to a comment that has any substance regarding some topic or article, you have to scroll all the way down.

I'm a casual user and it's fine. The specific subs I'm on have very few toxic people, and I either ignore them or block them.

It seems heavily made up of very young people, which means a reliable trope is "I'm just getting into -- what are some good artists I should check out?"

But that's pretty harmless; you can just ignore them.

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

#67

Post by mrweasel »

mmiliauskas wrote: post #6

Reddit is garbage these days anyways. Even communities that are scientific/technical seem to be toxic these days. If you want to get to a comment that has any substance regarding some topic or article, you have to scroll all the way down.

Reddit is really mismanaged, the community, contributors and moderators have basically taken over in the past five years or so. People are quick to point out that there are really good subreddit, and I have no doubt that's true, the larger subreddits however have all developed in a pretty toxic direction. There are clearly right and wrong opinions, don't based on fact, "rules" enforced arbitrarily and everyone seems to have some type of diagnosis or social issues.

The lacking management of Reddit have allowed it to become a pretty weird place, not quite as bad as Imgur, but the idea is much the same. The community have been left to it's own devices for many years, and now the owners are trying to get some control back, in an attempt to make a profit. They're a just so far removed from what the community have built that they have no idea how to manage the site anymore.

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

#68

Post by froggertoaster »

mmiliauskas wrote: post #6

Reddit is garbage these days anyways. Even communities that are scientific/technical seem to be toxic these days. If you want to get to a comment that has any substance regarding some topic or article, you have to scroll all the way down.

"Sort by controversial" is mandatory

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

#69

Post by Timpy »

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 boycotting and asking "keeping wasting a lot of money so we can hang out here for free". Am I missing something?

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

#70

Post by digging »

miroljub wrote: post #29
jacooper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this, but how many of reddit users actually use third party apps? If Twitter proved anything, its that its really hard to kill a popular social media network, no matter how badly managed or drama filled it is.

Twitter is not badly managed. It managed to grow to the point of being indispensable, and drama is just one of the reasons why it keeps being popular.

Twitter is badly managed by almost any metric - are you referring to its management pre-acquisition?
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