“It’s time we grow up,” says former moderator of jailbait subreddit.
It’s probably even more expensive to piss off any investors right before an IPO.
As CEO, I always like to go online and tell the whole world “we’re not profitable” right before my IPO. Big brain stuff, ya know.
I think this is exactly why. It’s to make sure that Reddit is “shored up” from any profits leaking out, and making sure that NSFW content is locked down so that investors actually invest.
It sucks because it’s our posts, our comments, our information that makes Reddit what it is. This is simply preparation for advertising and other for-profit opportunities. Greedy.
We can only hope.
I just commented on another similar article! His reasoning for this move contradicts itself! How can he claim that the overwhelming majority of users (97%) use the official Reddit app, but the use of 3rd party apps is destroying their bottom line? That means that that the lost profit from 3% of users are the reason for the API price change?
And… if there are only 4-5 big 3rd party apps (like Apollo, RIF), why force them out of the market? If only 3% of users use them, are they really that big of a deal? Why are the prices so astronomically high?
This is Reddit consolidating their empire. I hope that folks are prepared for future roll-outs of new subscriptions and reasons that Reddit users need to pay.
I’m honestly shocked the redditors are so blind to this. Do they actually think it’ll just be plain sailing from here on out?
Maybe in just to old skool and remember a time when Reddit would have really stood up.
It absolutely will not be plain sailing - I think that the protest is an early warning sign. People that stick to Reddit are going to be bombarded with ads, Premium features, and new programs after Reddit goes public.
I am an Apollo user until the end - I think that after having such a good experience under Christian, I forgot how scummy a big corporation can be. Times are changing - we just saw some similar things with Musk taking over twitter.
Well I had hoped, naiively that Reddit would respect the developer community that had helped make their website so popular. A community of developers provided apps and services for them for the simple price of a free API. I thought the APIpocolypse might happen, but I thought reddit was special somehow and they would see how beautiful and vibrant that community was and not damage it for fear of damaging the soul of the website. Yeah, that was pretty fucking naiive.
Ah well, I’ll put my energy into Lemmy and Fediverse projects instead.
Ah well, I’ll put my energy into Lemmy and Fediverse projects instead.
I think this is a better place than Reddit already. It’s fairly new and people are excited about creating content. But I think in reality, sooner or later every sub will be forced to open, and everything will go back to normal. Of course some of the users would’ve completely migrated to the Fediverse or other platforms, and it’s up to us whether the Fediverse survives or not.
Reddit felt like it was going downhill for a long time. I think I just started scrolling it out of habit, only participating in a few subs for hobbies and games. This shitshow was the kick in the ass I needed to shreddit and delete my account.
Also. I think more users need to do that. Make sure you shreddit your comments and posts so reddit can’t keep your content.
It’s been pretty bad for a while now.
I used to go to reddit to learn something new, to see the news for the day, to find a cool new hobby or interest, to read deep discussions about topics that I didn’t know that much about.
But that was like 8 or 9 years ago.
Lately the entire front page is doom bait, vaguely disguised racism, political trolling, violence, memes, and reposts.
I used to browse /r/all about half of the time and my subscribed subs the other half.
I muted serial reposters / content farmers whenever I noticed them, but this past year I hit a breaking point and I changed my default feed to subs only and intentionally chose to avoid /r/all.
Sucks that I’m going to lose my niche communities on reddit, but I’ve been a lot happier here so far.
Exactly. For guys like me who joined 16 years ago, it’s felt like a steady decline for a decade already. This is just a convenient time to jump to another platform because others will join me.
It makes so little sense to me. They could have charged a reasonable amount and made some money off of the apps, but instead, they chose to kill them and lose their users. Some might migrate to the official app, but this uproar may have caused even more to leave the platform entirely.
😂 fuck u/spez
I like the Fediverse and I think I’ll stay.
This is why the fediverse is so great. It really is really expensive to run a social media company. By spreading the cost over many actors and encouraging competition, this allows us to host content without being beholden to billionares.
*Chinese billionaires
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I am asking this in full earnestness: is any critique of the Chinese government assumed to be rooted in xenophobia?
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I feel that maybe you’re reading my question as ‘critique of China is inherently support for the west/US/etc’ which I absolutely do not mean. I think that it’s possible that painting all critique with a broad ‘xenophobia’ brush (while undoubtedly warranted at times) can prevent discussion in good faith.
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If this is the thinking I can expect on this instance, perhaps this is not the instance for me.
It’s well known and accepted that the Chinese government has significant control of Chinese companies, and Reddit is partially owned by Tencent. That’s not xenophobic.
The fact that it’s something like a 5% stake is more relevant.
I think he’s referring to how Reddit used to operate on Tencent funding.
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I’m actually somewhat happy all this happened now. I’m sad for the 3rd party app devs and everyone who suffers from these decisions. And for the wonderful communities and knowledge bases that were shattered.
But I think it caused me, and many others, to realize that great community and discussions could still be had on the internet, and that we hadn’t been having those for quite a while over on reddit.
There’s a lot of value in smaller scale too. Not everything needs to be mega-platform level for the mass market. We can have great communities in smaller spaces online too — sometimes even better as a result.
Some of my favorite places on the internet are smaller communities that still run webforums.
It’s great. There’s people I’ve been talking to and friends with for fifteen years on there.
It’s been boosting discovery of fediverse and causing an explosion of both traffic and hopefully donations.
How have you going about this? I’m interested in the same. I see real potential for this type of accessible decentralized platform.
“It’s expensive to run a company into the ground” - u/spez
“But I think the greater Reddit community just want to participate with their fellow community members.”
One way to find out right.
Yes, it is expensive to hire engineers to build an NFT Marketplace, Steve.
“We’re 18 years old,” Huffman said. “I think it’s time we grow up and behave like an adult company.”
Who the hell is this even directed to?
The 16 year olds defending their actions?
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Fine, let the people who apparently have no concept of foresight turn Reddit into a cesspool.
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This is clearly about cashing in on machine learning at the expense of your users. Maybe you should self reflect a bit before your entire website is produced and consumed entirely by machine learning.
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I really hope July 1st destroys reddit as we know it.
The more he speaks, the easier it is for me to break my Reddit addiction.
I was on the fence about what I would do when the API changes go live on July 1st. Seeing his comments over the last few days has made that decision a whole lot easier.
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really went off the rails there lol. I could tell when you mentioned Snowden/Assange.
I enjoy how he’s still talking about this as if it’s purely about having 3rd party apps pay a fee, not about his incredibly piss-poor handling of it.
All the numbers don’t add up. He says only 3 % of users use apps but then also there is a significant cost to not serve that 3 % ads? They also only make pennies per user. They must count any hit from Google as a user or something wild to boost their numbers.
