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Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

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Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#91

Post by nicce »

croes wrote: post #90
samtho wrote: post #4

I understand the purpose of this and that if they raise a sufficient enough stink, it will likely get them to cave for the time being. However the problem is that they have already showed their true intentions. The business of Reddit is not beholden to users, it’s beholden to its investors. They have an obligation to provide value to them and they decided this is a way to do so. There might be a temporary price reduc…

Investors hate a shrinking user base, so this move can massively backfire.

It does not matter much if the value of the remaining users also increase

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#92

Post by sowbug »

femboy wrote: post #3
UpToTheSky wrote: post #2

What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? Hosting the posts shouldn't be that hard. Storage is so cheap these days. Is it the legal aspects of handling user generated content? Ranking the posts is another issue. Is that where the value of Reddit lies? Maybe one could build some hybrid thing which capitalizes on existing structures? I could imagine a frontend which only shows pos…

The Network Effect.

This is the point critics are missing when they argue about Bitcoin's intrinsic value. Bitcoin has no value other than its network effects. Facebook, Reddit, Bitcoin, etc. are valuable because of their usage. Which makes them hard to replace even if they're not perfect.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#93

Post by bastawhiz »

ninth_ant wrote: post #52

Can someone explain why this is such a big deal to some people? I legitimately don’t understand why this matters. Third party clients seem to be fairly niche with limited usage, I’m not sure why inexpensive access to an API is a required right for forum software. I don’t expect this to affect my usage of Reddit at all, and wondering who and what it does affect aside from a small number of third party client users. To…

Imagine if Google started charging for POP3 and IMAP access. Either use the official Gmail clients or pay ridiculous client costs.

Sure, there's no inherent right to free third party client access. And you can obviously switch to any service you want, or start your own. The point is that Reddit is taking away features and workflows from users which have been available for longer than most users have been on the service. Moreover, the cost is specifically being put on clients rather than users: you can't pay for Reddit through your favorite client, the client itself is being forced to pay.

If you've been using Gmail with Thunderbird exclusively for the last decade, and Mozilla is suddenly faced with paying a billion dollar API bill or shut down Gmail access, imagine how shitty that situation is for the end user.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#94

Post by candiddevmike »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #18

The days of MySpace losing to Facebook or Digg losing to Reddit are over. We reached a phase where the biggest networks are too big to die quickly. It no longer seems possible to replace these sites wholesale. Their decline will look like Craigslist's. They'll still be around a decade from now, but having slowly and steadily lost traffic and cultural relevance. I fully welcome Twitter and Reddit suddenly sacrificing…

What killed Craigslist more, Facebook marketplace or the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act?

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#95

Post by suddenclarity »

nicoburns wrote: post #87
transcriptase wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those can be replaced with what has to be an infinite pool of people willing to volunteer as thought-police for a public company.

But will the users stay if they do that? I'm not convinced I would.

I reckon most people wouldn't care, they aren't there for the mods. Others, although far fewer, would celebrate due to the power mod situation mentioned above. /r/all is just awful nowadays so it might be an improvement.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#96

Post by Macha »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #88
londons_explore wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they'd have enough replacements ready quick enough. They'd have to decide between an influx of spam from having no moderation and upset users, massive disruption from upset disruptive moderators, or stale content by freezing all submissions to the site. If I were in their position, I would have trained for this scenario, and already prepared a way to put entire subreddits into 'read only' mode which jus…

>I don't think they'd have enough replacements ready quick enough. There is never a shortage of losers desperate for a crumb of power.

Sure, there would be no shortage of applicants, and they'd all largely fall foul of the Douglas Adams rule about those who seek power. But they need not just people who'd put their hand up and do the moderation, but wouldn't drive all the users away (whether immediately or long term), which would be the hard part.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#97

Post by mtmail »

jimnotgym wrote: post #83
tiedieconderoga wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three big issues off the top of my head: * Hosting costs. Reddit was very lucky to have imgur pick up a lot of its bandwidth in its early days, but free image/video hosting sites are cyclical: absent a benevolent billionaire, the costs will rise with popularity, and the site will eventually need a source of revenue, which will introduce friction and start its inevitable decline in popularity. * Moderation. Always a h…

> Personally, I like places like HN What are those places?

"Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34302827) lists a couple. There's regular "what is the HN of " Ask HN questions, somebody would make a list.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#98

Post by 3np »

Levitz wrote: post #28
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #18

The days of MySpace losing to Facebook or Digg losing to Reddit are over. We reached a phase where the biggest networks are too big to die quickly. It no longer seems possible to replace these sites wholesale. Their decline will look like Craigslist's. They'll still be around a decade from now, but having slowly and steadily lost traffic and cultural relevance. I fully welcome Twitter and Reddit suddenly sacrificing…

>And instead of replacing them with new single winners like Mastodon, I'm hopeful the new trend will be to spread our activity to multiple sites, and to be a bit less online in general. I, too, want to be hopeful, but how do you think this can possibly happen? Metcalfe's law is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law?useskin=vecto... TLDR: The more people share a method of communication, the more valu…

Specifically on Metcalfe's law, consider that just like with the internet, e-mail, the phone grid, and p2p protocols, it is possible to have a common network without centralized control.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#99

Post by SecretDracula »

nicoburns wrote: post #87
transcriptase wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those can be replaced with what has to be an infinite pool of people willing to volunteer as thought-police for a public company.

But will the users stay if they do that? I'm not convinced I would.

Users don't care about the moderators. Users care about the content.

Most people hate the mods. "Mods are gay" is a common refrain on reddit. The mods are the killjoys that removed your post that didn't conform to their hyper specific subreddit rules, or locked a fun post before you got there.

Mods aren't leaders, they're hall monitors.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#100

Post by Macha »

hfkwer wrote: post #75
bezier-curve wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mods can set the subreddit to private.

And reddit staff can reverse that immediately. I'd be amazed if they didn't prevent huge subreddits from going private altogether without someone from the staff giving the go ahead.

And then the mods can program auto moderator just remove every new post or comment.

And then reddit can remove the mods, but then who will run the community events, common threads, and do the actual moderation that many of the subreddits use heavily?

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