I had a job interview with Reddit last year for a modeling related position and it was one of the strangest and most user-hostile interviews I've ever had, even as someone who's spent many years working for SV adtech companies. All product interviews were laser focused on maximizing a few specific advertiser revenue metrics, anytime I brought up effects on the consumer it would immediately get dismissed and I'd be asked to refocus on advertiser effects. My guess is their leadership is pressuring the company hard to boost their numbers, no matter the long term cost.
Reddit, making a blatantly obvious case for why third party apps are necessary on a post about stopping third party apps: <a href="https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg</a>
Like many of us I’ve been using Reddit for a very long time (over 10 years) and am saddened by how much worse it’s got since the beginning. I also think they’ve greatly enshittified their default clients to push people to worse clients and hate that - they could have just given people a reason to want to use the new clients.<p>But I have an unpopular opinion: it’s totally ok, and I mean morally ok, for Reddit to charge for API access to this extent. 3rd party app usage incurs direct operational costs on Reddit, requires them to support an API with clients outside their control (and further, if a client uses the API inefficiently, Reddit has a lot more overhead in working to reduce that), and prevents supporting those efforts through advertising monetization. The actual API cost is not wholly unreasonable. Reddit shouldn’t be expected to work for free.<p>That is not to excuse all the other terrible dark patterns they’ve implemented. This wouldn’t even really be a problem at all if they had incentivized their own clients by <i>making them better</i>, what with all the funding and employees they have, and the ability to make backend changes to accommodate client changes. They’ve been using entirely “stick” tactics to encourage their crap clients instead of “carrot”. Even for people like me who don’t want to use the app at all, if they hadn’t made the default mobile web client (which I still use) so annoying and restrictive, probably Apollo would have much fewer users.<p>Basically, this is only a problem because they have given users no reason to use their official clients besides artificial annoyances
I'd like to offer a different perspective: let reddit kill 3rd party apps.<p>reddit has only gotten worse in the past years and even if we manage to somehow "coerce" them into supporting 3rd party apps, the core issues will remain and will re-appear under a different form.<p>We've had forums before and centralising *all* into one place never seemed like a good idea.<p>Let's simply stop supporting user-hostile companies.<p>(yes, I know my comment might be perceived as "simplistic" or "narrow", but we, the users, made reddit what it is today - we also have the power and duty to undo that)
Considering the company's apparent lack of concern over the intense backlash from moderators, I suspect that they're not just planning to kill third-party apps, they're planning to eventually kill user-managed subreddits as well, i.e. bringing ownership/moderation of the most popular / highest revenue subreddits in-house (employee mods able to use some of the internal admin tools) and making the rest some mixture of read-only and quarantined.
I haven’t found reddit to be a reliable source of information for years. Go ahead and price themselves out.<p>Even stack overflow doesn’t make me click “read more comments” to show full content of the thing I’m looking for.<p>How many times have I read a comment about a library error, quick scrolled, and found myself now reading some crap about Harry Potter?<p>Reddit is digg is slashdot (and even slashdot kept niche quality standards over time)
Reddit was my last hope for a non-user-hostile social network.<p>The biggest problem with the media's complete abandoment of all principle in continuing to treat Twitter as a high integrity platform is the message it reflects to all other social media platforms : your users are captives. They <i>can't</i> leave. Once you have enough of a network effect going, no amount of disreputable behaviour or abuse is too much.<p>In my view, it's becoming imperative that Twitter (and now Reddit) actually fail to save the internet. (You could put Facebook there too but I think these days it's actually lately been more benign than the other two).
Interesting interview with the developer of the most popular 3rd part app about the issue.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypwgu1BpaO0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypwgu1BpaO0</a>
I'm guessing I'm not the only one who just uses the web and the official Reddit app, and basically is happy with it - no issues, no complaints. And so maybe only sees this as a business decision (good or bad) that's up to Reddit to make that will really not impact me at all.
I know I'm in the minority here on HN, but....look: I feel bad for the developers of the various 3rd-party apps that this is happening. Having the rug pulled from your livlihood just absolutely sucks.<p>Having said that: Can you <i>really</i> blame Reddit here? Reddit is company which is trying to make money. One of the ways it does that is by building its own app and selling its own ads and showing those ads on its app which it controls and in the way it wants.<p>Whether or not we agree, and whether or not we think it's the right move, you can't honestly be surprised by this can you? Facebook doesn't have a 3rd-party client. Twitter stopped having 3rd party clients. This is how the game is played.<p>The mobile app is fine. I use it every day. Is Apollo better? Maybe? Will most of Reddit's users care about this? Doubtful.
Reddit is trying everything it can to salvage its IPO and rescue investors from being underwater.<p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/01/fidelity-reddit-valuation/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/01/fidelity-reddit-valuation/</a>
Why is it such a problem to create a reddit clone?<p>I’m assuming it’s the user base; most attempts I’ve seen are either empty or focus on non-mainstream and often controversial content.<p>Are there ways to address that? Or is there something else?
This will fuck over a bunch of blind people. Using the site is just not doable with a screen reader. There has bin aps made for blind people to use and these will all stop working.
Here's a list of subreddits that have gone private or have announced plans to do so on June 12. (self.ModCoord):<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/13zr68f" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/13zr68f</a>
Since this is a thing with VC-lead platforms, how could this be done different, while 'almost' maximising revenue? Something that pays for cost + healthy extra margin.<p>What is a path for something like Reddit<i>, supporting 3rd party apps, obviously showing ads in whatever feed gets served, but also being able change where and how ads are shown, or change monetisation strategy? I see a lot of handwavey and simplistic remarks, but how exactly, then?<p>Would a user subscription work? How much would you pay for an ad-free reddit per month? Probably can't be less than $20. Would it be viable? If not, how are these platforms ever going to exist?<p>Or is it never going to work and do we have to go back to crappy forums and discords and check 15 separate places? (RSS? never heard of her)<p></i> replace Reddit with whatever comes next that shows your favourite niche content you can't find elsewhere, all in one place.
How am I supposed to stop them? Reddit is not a public resource. The suggested method of “complaining” is unlikely to work since it’s not like they don’t know that users of third-party applications don’t like the change; they’re just betting not many will leave over it (probably correctly).
I think Reddit's executives are implementing these changes to create amazing revenue forecasts out of thin air and sell the company for the next sucker.
Maybe Meta or Microsoft will buy Reddit out and ruin it further.
I'll just add to the comments here that various apps or using .old don't support reddit nfts, which reddit has repeatedly said is a current business priority.
No, please, let Reddit kill itself. We have better options now, like Lemmy (at least if you stay away from the commie and nazi servers).<p>The biggest thing they're lacking is users, and every time the big ones do something dumb, Lemmy servers get a bunch of new users.
They don't stand a chance in competition against cheaper ways of getting data from them. In the end, they still give all the data for free in the form of HTML pages.
They've had it coming for some time now and I will have great enjoyment in seeing them finally self-destruct when their time comes.<p>They've been making mistake after mistake in the public free-speech sphere and nothing more than crumbs is left over from their inital base platform values.<p>I do get that they need to adhere to the advertisement companies to earn money, but I have to say that I am immensely disgusted by their lack of integrity and virtues.<p>Aaron Swartz will be happy to see them disappear from the public eye at last. And this will surely be in the right direction in that regard. I left that platform 7 years ago, haven't looked back.
I don't care what happens to Reddit. The platform has been riddled by insane people since the great Tumblr Exodus and has been a strictly political space since Trump won the presidency.<p>What I do care about is a possible Reddit Exodus and them coming to Hackernews to censor the living hell outside of their world view. Not every comment section has to spiral into "republicans bad", "boomers bad", "cars bad", etc.