Reddit to kill third-party apps July 1 with new draconian API pricing and rules

[Bacon]

Even if Reddit dies, it will take a long time for it really. Real forums aren't as popular and Reddit makes it easy to actually partake in a large gaming forum game by game. There is nowhere to go for that kind of interaction anymore.

[johnny]

this whole thing is lame. r/nba is shutting down on the day the nuggets possibly win their first title in franchise history. 

 

i think everything works itself out in the end. 

[Bacon]

The protest is pathetic. Mods are unwilling to do real damage so they can hold onto their mod power. While I'm sure it can be reverted, if they wanted to do damage, they should have deleted the subreddits. This shit is as effective as "thoughts and prayers".

[TwinIon]

57 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

There are some easy and obvious solutions to this that will keep reddits user base happy and also allow Reddit to take their cut. Like charge a percentage of profit to the makers of these apps in exchange for an API access license. The free users of these apps could have a quota. Or hell maybe even don’t have a free tier. They could buy out some of these app makers and make their apps the official Reddit app. Then close down API Access. You know, things that don’t fuck over the people making their user experience a good one and not giving them any ammo to be able to rally an army against Reddit.

 

But the people running Reddit aren’t smart and never have been. They won’t be in the future, either. They built a decent website that lots of users could flock to and have spent their time ever since then coming up with one or two good ideas to make minimal amounts of money instead of building a good UX, which allowed some app maker to build a better app in his down time at work than their entire company could in years. The leadership there is absolutely incompetent. 

They actually did that back in 2014 with Alien Blue, which was the best Reddit app at the time. That was a few CEOs ago.

 

Overall though, yeah, there are any number of solutions that could have brought third party users to ARPU parity if they cared enough. Bottom line is they made these changes and are rushing them through because they don't care.

 

I'd personally argue that they essentially outsourced their design to third parties for most of their existence. Between plugins on the web and third party apps for the phone, Reddit itself has always been a better experience if you didn't use the default portals. I'd guess that it's only a matter of time before they get rid of old.reddit.

 

That said, I'm really curious what percent of users use the default apps or the web without any plugins. I never put any real time on Reddit until I started using those, but I'm assuming the defaults are the most popular, as usual.

[TwinIon]

30 minutes ago, Bacon said:

The protest is pathetic. Mods are unwilling to do real damage so they can hold onto their mod power. While I'm sure it can be reverted, if they wanted to do damage, they should have deleted the subreddits. This shit is as effective as "thoughts and prayers".

I don't like defending Reddit mods in general, but destroying the communities they manage doesn't seem like a useful protest against a worse user experience. Organizing a shift to another platform would be effective, if a similar platform existed.

[Bacon]

16 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Organizing a shift to another platform would be effective, if a similar platform existed.

You aren't wrong but the quote would never happen until after reddit has turned bad, and even then I'm doubtful it would succeed. The only effective protest would be to damage Reddit and shutting down for a few days won't hurt anyone but the users if it hurts anyone at all. It is why I suggested a for sure damaging move. With Reddit, you gotta go with the nuclear option.

[TwinIon]

1 hour ago, Bacon said:

You aren't wrong but the quote would never happen until after reddit has turned bad, and even then I'm doubtful it would succeed. The only effective protest would be to damage Reddit and shutting down for a few days won't hurt anyone but the users if it hurts anyone at all. It is why I suggested a for sure damaging move. With Reddit, you gotta go with the nuclear option.

I'm not optimistic about this protest doing much on this particular topic, but it could well tank traffic for a couple days. It's also kinda a big red flag to investors that Reddit doesn't have sufficient control over itself.

[SuperSpreader]

If reddit dies it's good for the internet 🤷‍♂️

[Jason]

well that didn't take long

 

[Jason]

Reading further where I saw that it might be a special case of AWOL mods.

[ThreePi]

15 hours ago, SuperSpreader said:

If reddit dies it's good for the internet 🤷‍♂️

 

Hard disagree. For now, Reddit feels like the last bastion against AI generated articles and SEO exploitation. If you're looking for real people giving opinions on a good or service, Reddit is usually the best option.

[SuperSpreader]

28 minutes ago, ThreePi said:

 

Hard disagree. For now, Reddit feels like the last bastion against AI generated articles and SEO exploitation. If you're looking for real people giving opinions on a good or service, Reddit is usually the best option.

 

Reddit is why specialized forums (like this one is) have died over time. Power to the people more smaller forums are better than one cesspool. 

[GeneticBlueprint]

13 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

Reddit is why specialized forums (like this one is) have died over time. Power to the people more smaller forums are better than one cesspool. 

The world needs both. I’m not joining a forum for every temporary tangential interest that passes through my brain. 

[SuperSpreader]

10 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

The world needs both. I’m not joining a forum for every temporary tangential interest that passes through my brain. 

 

I don't think they can coexist as they are direct competitors. 

[GeneticBlueprint]

Just now, SuperSpreader said:

 

I don't think they can coexist as they are direct competitors. 

They’re coexisting for me currently shrug gif

[SuperSpreader]

1 minute ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

They’re coexisting for me currently shrug gif

 

Except forums are dying/dead. 

[Spork3245]

People still post on forums?

 

[SuperSpreader]

22 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

People still post on forums?

 

 

 

Here's one 

 

 

 

[Spork3245]

6 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

 

Here's one 

 

 

 

[finaljedi]

Since forums kind of died down reddit has been the best source of answers in Google searches.  It's better than all of that existing on the island that is Discord.  Plus now unfortunately there isn't a replacement waiting in the wings.  When Digg fucked around everyone just left for Reddit.  The Reddit alternatives that came along in the meantime were all responses to racists and pedophiles being shown the door at Reddit.

[Spork3245]

I mean, Discord is what hurt this small forum, not reddit

[CitizenVectron]

1 hour ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

 Power to the people more smaller forums are better than one cesspool. 

 

I agree in theory, but hard disagree in practice. In theory, having the decentralized internet of the mid-2000s is great. The problem is that the search engines of today do not return results from small forums, only from AI-generated blog sites as well as the mega forums like reddit. If reddit disappears, you will not be able to find any real human answers to questions anywhere on the internet through search. Nor will you be able to find communities of interest. Google has killed this.

[Ghost_MH]

3 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

I agree in theory, but hard disagree in practice. In theory, having the decentralized internet of the mid-2000s is great. The problem is that the search engines of today do not return results from small forums, only from AI-generated blog sites as well as the mega forums like reddit. If reddit disappears, you will not be able to find any real human answers to questions anywhere on the internet through search. Nor will you be able to find communities of interest. Google has killed this.

 

Quora looking on like

[Kal-El814]

6 hours ago, finaljedi said:

Since forums kind of died down reddit has been the best source of answers in Google searches.  It's better than all of that existing on the island that is Discord.  Plus now unfortunately there isn't a replacement waiting in the wings.  When Digg fucked around everyone just left for Reddit.  The Reddit alternatives that came along in the meantime were all responses to racists and pedophiles being shown the door at Reddit.

 

Reddit is an island too, it's just a bigger one. 

 

And there are "replacements" in the wings, it's just shit like TikTok. Why would someone want to have to google something like "Tears of the Kingdom dupe glitch" when a TikTok search will get them the exact answer in video, with subtitles, and direct instructions? For something like a deeper dive, a YouTube search is likely going to be just as if not more productive and informative.

 

I think people like us who have been online for decades underestimate the amount of learned knowledge it takes to even google effectively these days, or assume that the majority of modern people online are looking to interact with likeminded strangers. Discoverability and such are inherently MUCH worse on a place like Reddit compared to something like TikTok or even Instagram.

 

That's not to say that Reddit is universally bad or anything, there are some subreddits that are useful, moderated, and helpful.

 

But Reddit as an experience just fucking sucks. It doesn't matter what app you use, if you're new to the game, if what you're looking for isn't in an OP or the top response, it's absolutely fucking brutal to use; people in the system are just conditioned to it and invested to the point where all the alternatives seem worse.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’ - The Verge

WWW.THEVERGE.COM

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“We absolutely must ship what we said we would.”

 

Quote

 

An an internal memo sent Monday afternoon to Reddit staff, CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback directed at the company, telling employees to block out the “noise” and that the ongoing blackout of thousands of subreddits will eventually pass.

 

The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, is in response to popular subreddits going dark this week in protest of the company’s increased API pricing for third-party apps. Some of the most popular Reddit clients say the bill for keeping their apps up and running could cost them millions of dollars a year. More than 8,000 Reddit communities have gone dark in protest, and while many plan to open up again on Wednesday, some have said they’ll stay private indefinitely until Reddit makes changes.

 

Huffman says the blackout hasn’t had “significant revenue impact” and that the company anticipates that many of the subreddits will come back online by Wednesday. “There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well,” the memo reads. “We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.”

 

 

[Air_Delivery]

One thing I think could happen is this blackout shows how much Reddit as is relies on free labor. 

I know if I was an investor I sure as hell wouln't invest in that shit.

[Bacon]

 

Apple scum aren't included, but it does give some idea about how insignificant 3rd party apps are to Reddit's general audience.

[SuperSpreader]

I don't have a problem with this. Everyone else controls the format of their product, you'll have ppl cheering the MS ABK acquisition while complaining about this, makes no sense. 

[GeneticBlueprint]

17 minutes ago, Bacon said:

 

Apple scum aren't included, but it does give some idea about how insignificant 3rd party apps are to Reddit's general audience.

Yeah I was shocked at all my friends on our Discord server who said they’ve only ever used the official app. Only myself and one other guy had ever used any third party app.

[ThreePi]

I personally have only ever used the website via a browser. I generally only read and post comments, I'm not making new topics or posting media.

[CitizenVectron]

2 hours ago, Bacon said:

 

Apple scum aren't included, but it does give some idea about how insignificant 3rd party apps are to Reddit's general audience.

 

I wonder what the chart would look like if you looked at mods.

[Jason]

3 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

I wonder what the chart would look like if you looked at mods.

 

Or where content submissions are coming from.

[Bacon]

5 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

I wonder what the chart would look like if you looked at mods.

I'd be willing to bet it would look similar but for sure more. There are many subreddits and thus many mods. If you polled only the top 1000 subreddits' mods I'd wager you'd see even more 3rd party use, but with all the subreddits it would start looking more like the chart.

 

Course, I'm just guessin' here

[Chris-]

Doesn’t really matter, because either way a minority of users are compromising the experience for the majority, which is fucked up! If they don’t like the changes, don’t be a mod (or don’t post). 

[Jason]

5 minutes ago, Chris- said:

Doesn’t really matter, because either way a minority of users are compromising the experience for the majority, which is fucked up! If they don’t like the changes, don’t be a mod (or don’t post). 

 

If you don't want your site taken hostage, don't go to war with the free labor the entire value of your website is based upon.