Hacker News: Reddit experiments on users, forcing them to install app or else not use Reddit (old.reddit.com)

submitted 1 year ago by IcyPractice@sh.itjust.works to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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Reddit experiments on users, forcing them to install app or else not use Reddit (🔥 Score: 152+ in 2 hours)

Link: https://readhacker.news/s/5GDfv Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/5GDfv

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[-] Bautznersenf@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

Honestly, I don't believe that in order to be profitable, the system needs to suck. What if reddit built a really great app and offered subscription tiers that remove ads and give you some extra gold?

[-] SickIcarus@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Shit, all they had to do was offer the api to paid subscribers to use any 3rd-party app the user wanted. They could also offer two apis to developers - one that’s free with injected ads, and one that’s paid with no ads. Everybody wins, everybody gets “a piece of the pie.” But noooooo, they wanted it all-or-nothing.

[-] billwashere@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah they could have just moved the api costs down to the user level, charged like $3 a month, and while I would have bitched a bit, I would have just paid it and carried on. They just really handled this about as poorly as they could have.

[-] IcyPractice@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There is some theory circulating that this is related to LLMs scraping reddit data. They say the absurd API pricing is B2B pricing targeting companies like Microsoft to use reddit as training data (not just threads but voting, voting habits, etc.)

Makes sense why so much stupidity and inability to get to a reasonable agreement with 3rd parties. Basically the logic is that if they left a lower pricing for 3rd parties, the big players would be much less eager to accept paying more.