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submitted 2 months ago by Blaze@sopuli.xyz to c/reddit@lemmy.world

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19466667

Money, Mods, and Mayhem

The Turning Point

In 2024, Reddit is a far cry from its scrappy startup roots. With over 430 million monthly active users and more than 100,000 active communities, it's a social media giant. But with great power comes great responsibility, and Reddit is learning this lesson the hard way.

The turning point came in June 2023 when Reddit announced changes to its API pricing. For the uninitiated, API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it's basically the secret sauce that allows third-party apps to interact with Reddit. The new pricing model threatened to kill off popular third-party apps like Apollo, whose developer Christian Selig didn't mince words: "Reddit's API changes are not just unfair, they're unsustainable for third-party apps."

Over 8,000 subreddits went dark in protest.

The blackout should have reminded Reddit’s overlords of a crucial fact: Reddit’s success was built on the backs of its users. The platform had cultivated a sense of ownership among its community, and now that community was biting back.

One moderator summed it up perfectly: “We’re the ones who keep this site running, and we’re being ignored.” 

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[-] Beaver@lemmy.ca 58 points 2 months ago

I’m trying to upvote as many Lemmy posts as I can find on the Reddit search function to hasten the demise of the pet project of Spez since the third party apps are up to snuff now!

[-] MarkalAlvarez@lemmy.world 22 points 2 months ago

Let’s hope more people will join the fediverse so we can all stop feeding our data to these greedy companies.

[-] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Tbh I doubt companies would stop scraping data. They wouldn't care to respect the ToS (they never did) and feed in their AI models all the Lemmy posts and comments they can find. Still better than Reddit willfully selling these info

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

They still can't game it for engagement optimization to that extreme, not like the closed loops of monolithic sites.

[-] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

True. Let's drive away from them as much as possible

[-] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 months ago

You don't think once Lemmy hits mainstream, companies won't start polluting Lemmy and harvest data here?

[-] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

As Lemmy users we always have the freedom to jump ship to a different Lemmy instance if the admins of the ones we're on decide to sell the site out and/or let the polluters take over, or we can even start up our own Lemmy instance (with blackjack, etc.)

[-] Beaver@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago

I like my transparency, third-party apps, community and open source nature of Lemmy.

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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
677 points (98.3% liked)

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