I will never understand how Reddit bungled this so badly. I'm no Harvard MBA, but here's an easier way out – instead of asking small-time app developers to pay millions, put API access contingent on the account subscribing to Reddit Premium. That way users get to keep the experience they enjoy, independent developers can keep doing their thing, Reddit gets to make up for the lost ad revenue in the form of subscriptions, and if people complain about it <i>they</i> are the ones being cheap.
Related:<p>Tell HN: My Reddit account was banned after adding my subs to the protest: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36192312" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36192312</a> (411 points/10 hours ago/174 comments)<p>Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36179853" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36179853</a> (361 points/1 day ago/254 comments)<p>How Reddit became the enemy: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36177876" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36177876</a> (172 points/1 day ago/154 comments)<p>Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235</a> (406 points/3 days ago/421 comments)<p>Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083</a> (1969 points/4 days ago/1310 comments)
Reddit is garbage these days anyways. Even communities that are scientific/technical seem to be toxic these days. If you want to get to a comment that has any substance regarding some topic or article, you have to scroll all the way down.
In another thread about this, someone mentioned Lemmy, a federated alternative to Reddit:<p><a href="https://lemmy.one/communities/listing_type/All/page/1" rel="nofollow">https://lemmy.one/communities/listing_type/All/page/1</a><p>Looks like an interesting approach.
If I had an app with 1.5 million monthly active users and the platform I piggy- backed off asked me to pay them $20 million yearly for the privilege, I would start asking VCs for money to pay the bill and hire a couple folks to build the platform my users are going to migrate to before someone else does.<p>Reddit the company has shown to completely misunderstand the userbase that created their website and they're slaughtering it to make a buck to payoff their own investors. So why not prove them wrong and do it yourself?
A large portion of reddit contributors use 3rd party apps. Will reddit even be worth using if those people leave? That’s a huge risk, and I’m not confident Reddit has fully evaluated the second order effects of this API change.
I hope something new comes along. I'm getting sick of reddit. They way they allow moderators to run subreddits nowadays is ridiculous. Especially city subreddits that should be completely unbiased and welcoming to all in the region.<p>The r/Toronto city subreddit is absolute garbage now because of what the mods have done. They decided they would have "no-crime January" as a trial to see what the subreddit looks like if users weren't allowed to post articles about petty crime throughout the city. When someone gets stabbed in a high-profile area it couldn't be posted under the no-crime January rules. They said they would run it as a trial and offer a survey to see what people thought. They didn't run the survey and the rule is now in place permanently. Of course, when a white guy or incel commits a crime it's allowed, but if it's a BIPOC? Deleted.<p>Now the mods are trying to astroturf the municipal election we have coming up and push one of the candidates. It's the "progressive" candidate and in true Canadian fashion, if you don't vote for the progressive the reddit mob wants you to vote for you might as well be a Conservative because you're handing them the election. The mods allow people to make posts that say nonsense such as:<p>> To all Progressives - we need to consolidate behind [redacted] now. [He/she] might not be my first choice but this is finally an election where we can put a people-first person in. We can't screw this up by splitting the vote.<p>To suggest you can be a progressive but want another candidate will result in downvotes and insults. Funny enough, those insults would get you banned under their famous Rule 2 which basically allows them to delete or ban anything they deem as "not excellent" but when directed at someone who is seen as "conservative" they are allowed. The subreddit has been like this for about 5-6 years, it's only the political polarization that's got more extreme lately.
Has anyone heard if the changes will affect the current JSON API available by appending `.json` to the end of web URLs (i.e. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/all.json" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/all.json</a>)? I can't find any documentation about it so hopefully not. If anyone is looking for an extension to replace their third-party app, Reddit Theme Studio[1] might be of interest.<p>[1] <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-theme-studio/fkjkklmekbggnhjjldbcpbdcijcmbmoi" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-theme-studi...</a>
If I understand this correctly, these third party apps are drawing tons of ad money away from Reddit while at the same time increasing their hosting costs and dev costs for maintaining the API, right? How is this not a win-win for Reddit? They lower the traffic that was costing them money. I know it's user-hostile and that's the crux of the complaints, but it seems a little naive that these communities are basically boycotting and asking "keeping wasting a lot of money so we can hang out here for free". Am I missing something?
I see this kind of thing over and over. It’s a symptom of a larger problem:<p>We are building communities on closed platforms that we don’t control. We need to move from Feudalism to a Free Market:<p><a href="https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/" rel="nofollow">https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/</a><p>When you choose where to host your Wordpress or whatever, you don’t worry about someone shutting off the API keys. On this page is a video explaining how that would work:<p><a href="https://qbix.com/platform" rel="nofollow">https://qbix.com/platform</a><p>On the other hand we see this all the time:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nk1tz/status/1197347554201133056?s=46&t=Zz0nAwCHEPYpfIHcldbqWQ" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/nk1tz/status/1197347554201133056?s=46&t=...</a><p>Isn’t that lovely? The screenshot of HN complaining bitterly about someone controlling their own giant platform that we have all come to rely on. And the only solution is “switch to {{their competitor}}” as if that will solve it. This is just one of thousands of examples.
Private for two days is pretty hilariously ineffective, the mods don't want to close the subs permanently and give up control.<p>Well not that anything would be effective. They really do need to funnel people to their app, their revenue per user is awful.
While I’m sure Reddit has some wonderful woodworking or music discussions, its main function is to be the shit that attracts flys and keeps them away from sites like this.
In this day and age, after fiasco of the likes of Twitter, I wonder how developers choose to spend their time to develop apps for companies that own the content.<p>It is going to be a bumpy ride, and the content owners dont give a damn about third party apps.<p>I solely blame the developers of the apps, for trusting a mega corporation that is set on path of profiteering and data secrecy.
I don't understand the point of a protest like this without some sort of concrete demand. If you're going to take down most of a popular site, you should:<p>1. Articulate the reason for your action<p>2. Explain what specific things need to happen to redress the problem<p>I haven't seen any clear statement of (2). Am I missing something?
I don't follow reddit too closely. But I remember there was another big fiasco a while ago and a bunch of clones/spinoff sites were started. Have any of those survived? (and not been completely overrun with fringe political content that's banned everywhere else)
Seems that if there is a way to unlink social networks (users, friends, etc) and content networks, we would have a better time keeping the goals of users and end corporations aligned.<p>With the networks separated, users should, theoretically, be able to switch content networks at will.
I presume that going dark means that there will be less traffic on the site, which ostensibly would put pressure on the ad revenue. How long would this have to go on before it was a noticeable effect on read its balance sheet?