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
#2What 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 posts by users who signed their posts via their Hacker News accounts. Aka they sign their post with a private key and publish the public key on their HN profile. This way, a new Reddit alternative could benefit from the karma distribution of the best community on the web today.
Hosting the content could maybe be done via one of the new decentralized systems like Mastodon, Nostr or Bluesky? Those inherently have open APIs, so it would be easy to build a frontend which aggregates the content into one simple UI.
Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices
#3What 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.
Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices
#4I 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 reduction but overall, the writing is on the wall: Reddits corporate priorities are no longer aligned with the community’s.
Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices
#5What 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 hardest part is going to be the community itself. Reddit (the board and shareholders) are betting that the community is too large to migrate to a better alternative.
Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices
#6I 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…
I'm not sure how a "one-day anything" is supposed to get anyone to cave. This seems like those performative one-day big-tech "walkouts" where it's just people waving signs over an extended lunch break and then getting right back to work as usual. How does that practically have any effect?
"Go dark indefinitely until change happens" might get someone's attention. This is barely a blip on the radar, and even if there's a minor revenue impact, Reddit knows it'll be over in a day so they can obviously weather it.
Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices
#7What 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…
Bootstrapping an alternative. Growing it from nothingness, being easily welcoming but not overrun by spam and malicious content. Getting to a critical mass before losing the goodwill with users and runway with whoever pays for this. This is a very significant moat, one that makes Reddit's leadership believe they can turn the screw without worrying about competition for now.
Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices
#8What 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…
There are many reddit clones. The value is completely in the communities and not in the technology.
r/all subs like r/pics are completely replaceable, but something like r/personalfinance is an institution that is not easy to replicate elsewhere.
Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices
#9What 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 hardest part is going to be the community itself. Reddit (the board and shareholders) are betting that the community is too large to migrate to a better alternative.
Do we really need a big part of the community to have a good "forums for everything" site?
To me it seems, that 99% of Reddit is just "content fast food" and low quality comments.
If we would get just 1000 HN users to use an alternative, that could already be something.
Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices
#10What 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 hardest part is going to be the community itself. Reddit (the board and shareholders) are betting that the community is too large to migrate to a better alternative.
Every time you upset your user base, you give them an opportunity to leave. Or, you turn your advocates into neutral. They stop being willing to do free work for you.
Reddit is dependent on free work. Moderators are a significant portion of that process, and they are the ones who depend on the API the most. If your moderators decide to do less work, your community starts going down in quality. If the community goes down in quality, they will make the decision that a smaller community is better than a poorly run community and someone else will capture that use case.
The question is if that will happen before an IPO. Given the climate, that IPO may be two years away.