I keep thinking this would have been a much better sell to devs and to users. I have always used Sync, and Boost. I tried the official app a few times, but really only used it for the chat feature. I didn’t want to pay for it, but (I am embarrassed to admit it) I would pay premium to keep my app. I think this would have worked out better for Reddit than the garbage they are pulling right now.
Would that have been a more reasonable solution in your opinion as well?
I would have considered that at the start, but at this point they’ve damaged their ecosystem so much, and correspondingly Lemmy has grown a lot, so I don’t see why I would go back either way.
Yeah, the fact that he seems devoted to following musk’s business practices leaves litte faith for Reddit to ever get back on the right track again. Besides, I’m loving my time here at the fediverse and will probably start selfhosting my own private Lemmy server soon!
Yeah exactly. My trust and relationship with reddit has been damaged. Even if they roll back all the API pricing changes the damage is already done.
At the very least they would need to fire spez for me to think anything has changed or is going to get better.
Three weeks ago, I totally would have… Apollo was life! Now, I don’t think anything could lure me back…
With Spez’s comments about how Reddit has all this data, and “we’re not going to just give that away for free”, I think anyone left on that platform is going to get sold so hard to anyone with two nickels to rub together, that they will effectively have zero privacy or anonymity… no thanks, Spez.
Had they come out and said “hey guys, we really need to actually be making money here. We know it’s not ideal, but itll allow us to further invest in the site and its community”, there really wouldn’t have been a fuss. Sure people would have been upset, but most would’ve gotten it.
Instead they have to act like petulant children throwing a temper tantrum when they don’t get exactly what they want exactly when they want it.
Yeah, the problem rn is that Reddit is shitting on its users, sometime ago, I’d pay, but now I’m gone for good, even if they revert everything
If they had given us a heads up that we would need a subscription, early enough in advance.
If they didnt limit the content we could access.
If the price wasnt ridiculous - Im not paying Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Game Pass money to access a web forum.
Then sure.
But Spez fucked it up. Hes shown that he really doesnt care about the communities, the people that make it up, or even reddit itself. Hes too bent on making that IPO and bailing out as soon as he can.
Lol, not anymore.
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13 year old account, 13k post, 101k comment karma.
Before this disaster? Yes. Easily. I pay for search, I pay for my tv show tracker (because paying adds API access). Reddit made many questionable changes (like new), so I stopped paying years ago, but paying for API access is fine. (Despite me rarely using sync, I mainly use old on desktop)
Now? Go fuck yourself spez, you fucking piece of shit. I went ahead, downloaded the official app just to rate it one star, and unmodded myself from all my subs.
Waiting for my GDPR data dump to delete all my comments and posts.
I went ahead, downloaded the official app just to rate it one star, and unmodded myself from all my subs.
Ooo now there’s an idea. You’re an inspiration.
They’ve showed extremely bad faith. That’s hard to recover from.
Hah, no. Are you asking if I want to pay for access to a platform that is already dependant on its users to create or aggregate content, while they are already making ad money off my eyeballs? Heck, no, never. If that site cannot make enough money on ads alone, while being one /were of the most visited non-porn sites on the internet, then maybe they should reconsider their other expenses. E.x. Is it really necessary to have a downtown office in an expensive us city, or pay out high CEO wages. I can only really conclude that they are being stupid about this. If they want me back, they are going to have to beg.
They took a 250m funding round and used it to build an nft site. reddit’s problems are 100% self created. Think about how ama’s used to be and how they managed to kill that. They could have had several revenue streams just based on ama’s.
But that is exactly the problem with third party apps …they don’t show ads so they make no add revenue on people using apps like Sync and Apollo or RIF… The official app does. I understand why they are trying to push people to their app, but the route they took was worst case scenario.
You’re ignoring the other effects of third party apps - which is to have significantly added to the number of users they have to show ads to in the first place.
Making their API free encouraged active development which increased user engagement. So it absolutely did increase their revenue because it helped to increase the popularity of their site in the first place.
Users that likely will never see an ad of they only use the 3rd party app
Doesn’t matter. The more people who use reddit, the more additional people who will be attracted to reddit. Not only will a percentage of those people use platforms that do support ads, but both groups increase the engagement with reddit, which means more content being added, more discussions being had, more subreddits being created covering new topics.
Ultimately, it still contributes to reddit.
Third party app users generate content that make adds possible. Get out of here with this pitty reddit problems.
That’s not a problem with third party apps, that’s a problem with Reddit’s API that doesn’t send ads to third party apps. It’s entirely a problem of their own making, which they could have fixed years ago, but chose not to, and are now using as a fallacious excuse to shut off access.
Uhh … if I were developing a Reddit reader app, and if their API periodically shit ads into my user’s feed, you KNOW that feature #1 in my third-party app would be simply to ignore those blobs of crap.
Why didn’t Reddit try to buy out these third party apps, then? They’d have had the superior functionality AND they could have added ads.
They did years ago. AlienBlue was the unofficial “official” app. It was the most popular Reddit app on the App Store. Reddit bought it and at first it was fine, but then Reddit decided it didn’t like supporting AB and its official app, so they shut AB down and forced everyone to their official app.
If this was an option, Reddit would have done it.
But, their goal here is to completely deplatform 3rd party apps, and my assumption is that they are doing this so that their number of active users can’t be verified and those numbers can be pumped up–by counting bots and all sorts of crap.
This is the same tactic Twitter used when they were negotiating with Elon. More “users” is more money.
I wouldn’t have paid for, but i would have accepted much better. “API usage is ad free hence only premium users can access it” is much better than “API users are freeloaders that take more than they are giving, fuck them!”
No way. I’ve lost all faith in Reddit as a company.
I can’t wait to see the market show this during their IPO.
If Reddit want to settle this conflict peacefully. I want to do that. But, with the crackdown news today I don’t think so
No
It would depend on the price, and also we would need to live in a hypothetical world where Reddit hasn’t done any of the stupid shit they’ve done in the past month. As of right now, I can’t imagine giving Reddit my money knowing what a PoS spez is
Yeah this is the thing. I would have happily paid it before spez revealed himself to be an irredeemable piece of shit. Now, I’ve no interest in filling his coffers. Policy needs to change and he needs to go, no negotiation, I don’t trust him and I don’t think he’s a good steward for the site.
No, bridge is already burnt.
