this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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I keep thinking this would have been a much better sell to devs and to users. I have always used Sync, and Boost. I tried the official app a few times, but really only used it for the chat feature. I didn't want to pay for it, but (I am embarrassed to admit it) I would pay premium to keep my app. I think this would have worked out better for Reddit than the garbage they are pulling right now.

Would that have been a more reasonable solution in your opinion as well?

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[–] BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I would have IF it had been the solution Reddit had came up with in the first place AND they hadn't destroyed my trust in them with their handling of the protests.

I have an issue with your proposed solution though: it does not address the use case of moderation / accessibility / utility tools and bots.

[–] thehatfox@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

I'm not sure I would accept Reddit paying me to go back, let alone me paying to use Reddit. The API debacle has laid bare the problem with centralised, proprietary social media - the users who create the value of the platform ultimately have no control over the platform. If it wasn't APIs and third party apps it could by anything else.

Why invest time (and money) contributing to something that could be pulled out from our feet at any point, with no recourse?

[–] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago
[–] cheeseOnBread@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I had reddit premium although I used a third party app. I wanted to support the platform. I spent so much time on it and really liked the way reddit worked.. being centered around communities and giving them the power to have their own rules.

I canceled my subscription a week ago and will not go back. Needless to say, this isn't a company I want to have any of my money.

[–] m-p-3@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

I felt the same, cancelling my subscription after 10 years on a 16 years account.

[–] meejle@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's funny, because that was the obvious solution from the start.

"Third-party apps don't sell our Awards or include any of the NFT/Vault stuff^1^, and we're not making money. So from June 30th we'll only be allowing Reddit Premium subscribers to use third-party apps. The official Reddit app will continue to be free for everyone."

I honestly think people would've understood.

But if they announced it now, it'd just make people even angrier. 🙃

--
^1^ As far as I know

[–] Thanks4Nothing@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

You're right, it would be too late...

But it would have allowed users access to awards and coins and chat features without stepping on the toes of Reddit. It's crazy that they didn't come up with that rather than this.

[–] reversebananimals@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

I might have a week ago, but after hearing Huffman say he hopes to run reddit like Elon Musk runs Twitter - no.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 years ago

Maybe before spez dug his heels in the ground. But now he's said too much. He admires Elon? Fuck off.

[–] cocolopez@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

No, once they showed what they're up to, this could happen again in some new kind of paywall. Really hope Lemmy continue it's ascension

[–] tsp@feddit.de 0 points 2 years ago

Those are big ifs, but: if the API prices would have been reasonable and if the Reddit leadership hadn’t acted as they have, I think I might have been willing to pay for Premium. As it stands, Reddit leadership has destroyed a lot of trust, so for me that ship has sailed.

[–] dvdnet90@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If Reddit want to settle this conflict peacefully. I want to do that. But, with recent news today I don't think so

[–] lixus98@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Not anymore, they lost me with all these interviews, spez showed his true colors, he is a piece of shit and doesn't deserve my money. I rather support kbin or lemmy, I've always been a FOSS enthusiast.

[–] CoderKat@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

If we never had all this drama where reddit showed its true colours, I think I probably would have (as an alternative to the API being paid). It is fine by me that reddit has to pay the bills in some way.

But lol, holy shit has reddit been awful in the past few weeks. The way they went about with their changes has been completely disrespectful towards reddit users, third party devs, etc. I don't want to give them any money now. It's almost comical how dumb their actions were in that regard. This isn't the first or only thing I've disliked about reddit, but wow did it blow the others out of the water.

By comparison, I've already donated $20 to kbin, the instance I use. If reddit had treated its users nice, they could have had that money. I have no qualms about paying for my usage. But instead reddit makes me almost want to pay money to see them fail.

[–] empyrean@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

No, bridge is already burnt.

[–] Fickle_Ferret@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Hah, no. Are you asking if I want to pay for access to a platform that is already dependant on its users to create or aggregate content, while they are already making ad money off my eyeballs? Heck, no, never. If that site cannot make enough money on ads alone, while being one /were of the most visited non-porn sites on the internet, then maybe they should reconsider their other expenses. E.x. Is it really necessary to have a downtown office in an expensive us city, or pay out high CEO wages. I can only really conclude that they are being stupid about this. If they want me back, they are going to have to beg.

[–] EtherealMongrel@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

We are literally the product that Reddit offers. It’s not like they produce content like Netflix etc.

They’re literally trying to sell the product to the product.

[–] Thanks4Nothing@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (6 children)

But that is exactly the problem with third party apps ..they don't show ads so they make no add revenue on people using apps like Sync and Apollo or RIF.. The official app does. I understand why they are trying to push people to their app, but the route they took was worst case scenario.

[–] arquebus_x@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's not a problem with third party apps, that's a problem with Reddit's API that doesn't send ads to third party apps. It's entirely a problem of their own making, which they could have fixed years ago, but chose not to, and are now using as a fallacious excuse to shut off access.

[–] amotoohno@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago

Uhh … if I were developing a Reddit reader app, and if their API periodically shit ads into my user’s feed, you KNOW that feature #1 in my third-party app would be simply to ignore those blobs of crap.

[–] 1chemistdown@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Third party app users generate content that make adds possible. Get out of here with this pitty reddit problems.

[–] ShadowRunner@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You're ignoring the other effects of third party apps - which is to have significantly added to the number of users they have to show ads to in the first place.

Making their API free encouraged active development which increased user engagement. So it absolutely did increase their revenue because it helped to increase the popularity of their site in the first place.

[–] DreamerofDays@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This.

Put more explicitly:

  • 3rd party apps bring more people to the site, or keep them there longer.

  • Those people create content in the forms of posts proper and comments— hell, even down to just voting— that feeds the site engagement for users through 1st party interfaces(the ones getting ads), keeping them there longer, and seeing more ads.

  • Better moderation tools help mods keep online communities healthy, and the kinds of places we are happy to spend unhealthy amounts of time on.

[–] whofearsthenight@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Lest we forget how dumb reddit is, they didn't have a mobile strategy in 2014, which necessitated buying Alien Blue.

If you look at the history of reddit, it has succeeded entirely in spite of management decision. Gotta say, even being on the site since 07-08, even I got this wrong. I expected reddit to do something dumb, I just didn't expect them to do the most dumb thing.

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[–] Thanks4Nothing@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

Users that likely will never see an ad of they only use the 3rd party app

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[–] whofearsthenight@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

They took a 250m funding round and used it to build an nft site. reddit's problems are 100% self created. Think about how ama's used to be and how they managed to kill that. They could have had several revenue streams just based on ama's.

[–] heartlessevil@lemmy.one 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I would have considered that at the start, but at this point they've damaged their ecosystem so much, and correspondingly Lemmy has grown a lot, so I don't see why I would go back either way.

[–] HERRAX@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Yeah, the fact that he seems devoted to following musk's business practices leaves litte faith for Reddit to ever get back on the right track again. Besides, I'm loving my time here at the fediverse and will probably start selfhosting my own private Lemmy server soon!

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[–] FrickAndMortar@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Three weeks ago, I totally would have… Apollo was life! Now, I don’t think anything could lure me back…

With Spez’s comments about how Reddit has all this data, and “we’re not going to just give that away for free”, I think anyone left on that platform is going to get sold so hard to anyone with two nickels to rub together, that they will effectively have zero privacy or anonymity… no thanks, Spez.

[–] Alto@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Had they come out and said "hey guys, we really need to actually be making money here. We know it's not ideal, but itll allow us to further invest in the site and its community", there really wouldn't have been a fuss. Sure people would have been upset, but most would've gotten it.

Instead they have to act like petulant children throwing a temper tantrum when they don't get exactly what they want exactly when they want it.

[–] lrabbt@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Yeah, the problem rn is that Reddit is shitting on its users, sometime ago, I'd pay, but now I'm gone for good, even if they revert everything

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[–] Burndown@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No, the reason I left Reddit last week has little to do with with third party app issue. I left because the CEO has shown he isn't interested in listening or addressing community concerns.

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[–] greg@lemm.ee 0 points 2 years ago

I absolutely would have if things were handled differently, but at this point my only goal is to see spez get his ass fired.

[–] Ataraxia@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago
[–] Onii-Chan@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

lmao fuck no. I was on reddit for 12 years until recently, but at this point, there's nothing they can do to win back my trust. Reddit is just another corporate giant these days, and has been for a long time. Huffman is the reason I no longer wish to support reddit in any form, and they can make promises all they want - I've happily jumped ship and will be staying here.

[–] Cyder@lemmy.one 0 points 2 years ago

I personally don't think the API pricing was ever meant to be reasonable or cover their true costs. Between the absurd pricing, the short timing, their test that blocked mobile web browsers, and refusal to even negotiate, it's clear to me that they just want to kill 3rd party apps and force everyone on mobile into the official mobile app where they can enforce their monetization schemes.

[–] phlemmy@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

They've showed extremely bad faith. That's hard to recover from.

[–] MetricExpansion@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think before (say) a week or two ago, before Huffman showed us all what he really thinks of the people using his platform, I would have said yes to paying for Premium in order to use 3rd party apps. But now I don’t want to give him a single dime.

[–] lightingnerd@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Yeah, especially since he's not trying to stop AI-related scraping from using API calls, he's just trying to turn them into an additional revenue stream. That's my content he's selling...

[–] JRepin@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

Absolutely not. If I learned something from Twitter and Facebook and Reddit fiascos then it is to never ever let youself be trapped into a closed-source, centralized for-profit platform. So NO, unless they make it completely open source and decentralised so anyone can setup their own instance. But then again we already have Fediverse and Mastodon and Lemmy... so why bother with that, let's improve what treasure we already have.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It would depend on the price, and also we would need to live in a hypothetical world where Reddit hasn't done any of the stupid shit they've done in the past month. As of right now, I can't imagine giving Reddit my money knowing what a PoS spez is

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[–] AttackBunny@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

If you had asked me a month ago, I’d have said absolutely, as long as it keep Reddit alive.

Now? Absofuckinglutely not. I’m a firm believer in putting my money where my mouth is. I haven’t accessed Reddit (intentionally) since the 11th. And my original plan was to see how it all played out, and still probably browse only when I’m at my desk, on my laptop. Watching it all unfold, I’m absolutely disgusted with the choices they are making, and more so with how they are treating everyone, privately, and publicly.

I won’t be going back to Reddit. And I’m ok with that. It was honestly already a bit too……money-grubbing anyhow, and all this last week just solidified that for me.

[–] millions@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

With how spez is handling this? No.

[–] ulu_mulu@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I wouldn't go back to reddit even if they paid me to do it.

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[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Back at the beginning of all this I would have been willing to spend $1-2 a month or so. But at this point it's become clear that Reddit is completely untrustworthy, I wouldn't give them a dime.

[–] m-p-3@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

That was my initial suggestion and IMO the change wouldn't be the PR nightmare that it currently is. It would have been a fair middle ground: you don't make it financially devastating for the 3PA devs, the Premium users don't get ads so that would be fair that 3PA don't get shown ads through the API and Reddit gets financially compensated for it.

At this point I kinda lost faith in Reddit. I don't expect them to honor whatever they say, so I won't be subscribing anymore.

[–] Thanks4Nothing@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago
[–] Aurix@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

No, because the sudden API lockout of third party apps with yearly subscriptions shows they do not care about contractual obligations.

[–] kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago
[–] WorldieBoi@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No way. I've lost all faith in Reddit as a company.

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