I’ve been a long time Redditor and an Apollo user for about a year. I even paid for it. The main draw for me was the lack of advertising. In the back of my head I kept thinking that it couldn’t last. Reddit is losing revenue from the lack of advertising views. It didn’t
To me, Reddit’s sky high pricing for the use of the API is intended to kill off apps like Apollo and for its users to move to the advertising filled web site or its own app, which I’ve never used.
If Huffman came out and said this was a revenue move right off would everyone be as upset as they are? Are people upset because Huffman completely mishandled the move or because they got their ad free experience turned off? If Reddit had an app the same quality as Apollo only with ads, would they be OK with it. I’ve only used Apollo so I can’t speak to the other apps.
I can’t blame Reddit for wanting to make money. It doesn’t make a profit. Investors have to keep pouring in money to keep it going. They’re going to want to see a return on their investment at some point. Usually they cash in on an IPO, but IPO’s are generally only successful if the corporation looks like it will be profitable or at least the stock price continues to go up. That’s how capitalism works.
In my case, I probably would have left regardless. I can’t stand adds in my feed. I probably wouldn’t have heard of lemmy or kbin if there hadn’t been such an uproar. So I’m glad it went the way it did.
The controversy started when their API fees were astronomically high as to constructively end all 3rd party apps.
I think the real anger started when Steve Huffman lied about the Apollo developer and the dev started posting the recordings to prove that Huffman was lying through his teeth.
After that, Huffman stepped onto multiple rakes as he does a poor job of crisis management. They don’t know where the value from their product comes from.
The protest is not about the fact that they are charging for it. The protest is about the fact of how much they are charging for it. When compared to imgur the rates are absolutely insane.
I keep seeing this incorrectly reported and it drives me crazy. No developer is upset about Reddit charging for the API access. What they are upset about is the fact that Reddit has jacked the price of that API access up so high that no third party apps could ever afford to use it.
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I understand that, but framing it as “reddit users are mad because reddit wants to charge for API access” paints reddit users as entitled, when what is actually happening is “reddit users are mad because reddit decided to charge for API access with only 30 days notice and set the prices so high that third party app developers would have to pay potentially millions of dollars per year in order to access it”.
There is a massive difference between those two statements. One makes reddit users look like a bunch of entitled assholes, and the other frames the situation correctly and truthfully.
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If Reddit just charged the AI people for API access and left 3rd party apps alone I doubt anyone would have given a shit, but they had to go and two-birds-with-one-stone it. Then they insisted on digging their hole deeper by running their mouths and making the situation worse.
I suspect they have signed an exclusivity deal with some kind of third party to use the API. It could be for “AI” or it could be for more nefarious purposes.
There would have been no outrage if Reddit valued its users. If they came out and said they were going to start charging (a reasonable amount) for API access but were giving developers until the end of the year to prepare no one would have batted an eye.
Most would probably migrate to the Reddit app for free. Some would just start paying to use the app of their choice and we’d have moved on.
Reddit showed their true colors which was a big f you to the free labor and free content producers of their platform.
I would’ve paid $5-$10 a month to Apollo had this all been handled professionally. Instead I’ve deleted Reddit , fired up an rss feed app and I’m also here now. There’s a handful of communities I haven’t found a suitable replacement for but I’ll live.
All the drama and pisspoor management by spez aside, ultimately the way I used reddit is through RiF. To me, that’s reddit. I can’t stand their official app and their official website is horrendous.
They forced my app to close down so I guess that’s that.
I stopped using RiF and consequently reddit in protest. I held out hope this was a shitty negotiation tactic by Reddit and they’d eventually back off somewhat. But they’ve tripled down on it.
This forced me to reevaluate my relationship with the platform and I decided to check out Lemmy kbin and mastodon. I also checked out some old forums I frequented before reddit took over.
I reinstalled a newsreader and set up RSS feeds for my favorite things.
Basically, I’m realizing I don’t need reddit as much as I thought I did. I actually have enjoyed the fediverse,beehaw in particular, more. I never used Twitter but mastodon has really great content and engagement as well.
I’m not saying I’d never go back to Reddit. I probably would if RiF somehow survived, but reddits lost its luster for me and I don’t trust it anymore. So why waste time actively participating there so I can have the rug pulled from under me again?
Reddit may not see a mass exodus like Digg or Myspace, but it’s been poisoned and over time the rot will set in and it will fester. This will be the moment people point to as the turning point.
I am almost a mirror-image of you regarding Reddit, except to me Reddit was Apollo rather than RIF. I too have cancelled Reddit Premium, which I paid to support a platform I used a lot. LIke you I am trying out the fediverse via lemmy, kbin, and mastadon; and, like you, I am enjoying mastodon and using it much more than I ever used Twitter. Finally, like you, I have gone back to RSS feeds and old forums I used before my Reddit habit overshadowed them. And other people I know are doing the same, albeit they tend to be the more techy inclined.
I used to use Tweetbot to read my Twitter feed. I would read the latest 100 tweets every day. When the plug got pulled on the app, I just stopped reading Twitter at all and don’t miss it. In the case of Apollo, I scroll through my feed for an hour or more if I’m bored with nothing else to do. I mostly looked at funny, wtf, and photos. It was mostly a waste of time, however entertaining it might be. So when Apollo shuts down, like you, I may not need Reddit as much as I thought.
What this is really about and people are just starting to realize is: the interests of the shareholders and CEO who want to get rich is not compatible with a volunteer created and volunteer modded site. People aren’t eager to do unpaid work just so the CEO can get rich. This API stuff is just exposing it.
While essentially killing off 3rd party apps is disappointing, I could’ve understood and been willing to switch to the official app and maybe even pay monthly for no ads and more features.
What made me leave is how poorly Huffman and the company treated the developers, moderators, and users.
For developers:
- Reddit went back on their word about no API cost changes this year
- Lied about making the API cost reasonable
- Gave developers very little time to adjust
- Treated developers and their apps as freeloaders instead of as a source of growth for Reddit when they didn’t even have an app yet
- Blatantly slandered Apollo’s developer
For moderators:
- Reddit treated moderators as if their input didn’t matter despite providing free labor for the site
- Framed them as being power hungry for disagreeing and protesting Reddit’s decisions
For users:
- Reddit treated users as if their input didn’t matter despite Reddit being a user-generated content site
- Treated their contributions to the site as Reddit’s property, not their own
- Essentially said users are just a bunch of whiney babies who are powerless, have no willpower, and will visit the site no matter what we do
Also, even besides Huffman showing his true colors as being a total asshole, it just makes Reddit’s poor leadership SO evident. How do you become such a popular site with free content and free moderators, and still can’t make money? How do you manage to turn a great Reddit third-party app into a buggy mess of an official app? Why are you constantly prioritizing what you think users want instead of just listening to them? And now you essentially just told all of us: “fuck you, I own you and your content, and I am entitled to to make money off of you.”
And to pile on top, Reddit has been around since 2005. Why is there a SUDDEN and sloppy push towards profitability? It’s like someone clued them in just recently that an IPO means you’ll have to publicly show profit/loss. The way they’ve gone about it suddenly and sloppily doesn’t scream long term plan, but instead a crash change.
For me, it didn’t have to do with ads at all. It was about Reddit charging exorbitant fees for the APIs needed for tools required to make moderation fun enough to actually do, combined with his actions related to 3PA devs and moderators after the fact.
Reddit could have invested in their API and made it an ad distribution platform; instead they invested in NFTs and let the API system remain a mess.
I think there’s a lot they could have done better. They could have injected ads into the API feeds directly so they could still get revenue and make it part of the terms that a client can’t remove them, and offer a paid version of the API that doesn’t have ads. That could work with the clients who could then continue to offer a free ad supported version or a subscription that removes them with Reddit getting a cut. I would have been totally understanding of that and reddit could have gotten a ton of subscription revenue by leveraging the existing distribution channels.
They’re a company, they have to pay the bills, I get that, but they went over the line with their deception, greed, and hunger for power. This wasn’t just about making money, it’s also about control. This was all just an underhanded move to kill 3rd party apps without outright banning them. They want total control so they can continue to make ui decisions that make then more money at the expense of the user experience with their users not having an alternative client to go to. They clearly don’t have any respect for their users so why would I use them?
What I actually want is to be able to pay Reddit or Google or whoever it is a fair amount of money, say the amount they’d make by showing me a reasonable number of ads, plus a bit more. Say 10% more. In exchange for making more money from me than they would with ads, they would let me use old.reddit.com, or a third party app and not show me any ads.
I get an ad free service, Reddit gets more money than they would have before.
I figure that the amount would be easily less than $10 per year.
They would have to show something like this: at the end of each month, they tell me that I consumed so much of Reddit. They would have shown an ad every 25 posts, at $0.0005 per ad impression. So my payment for the month will be $x.
But then you’d be a premium user and in a demographic even more likely to spend money so you’d get “catered purchase opportunities” from advertisers that paid even more for your special eyes…
Hence why I pay for YouTube.
I have as blockers up the wazoo, but they provide a very solid service. I’m happy to pay to get something I value without ads.
Digital ads are a time tax on the poor and technologically illiterate.
If their official app and “new” reddit layout ain’t shit there won’t be so many users using paid 3rd party apps to begin with. Fix your product instead of force killing competitors.
As of 3 weeks ago, I would’ve been willing to:
- Pay for reddit premium in order to use a third party app.
- Stuck around even without a third party app, using only the old.reddit interface for as long as that was going to work with Reddit Enhancement Suite.
- Allowed ads to get through my ad blocker on Reddit.
- Kept my old comment/link history accessible on the site.
- Continue to use reddit.
Now I’m basically unwilling to do any of those things. The interviews they gave up through the first 2 days of the blackout made me pledge not to actually pay reddit any money (and I’ve paid for gold from when it was first announced, as a “charter member,” till when they decided to dramatically increase the price in exchange for a complicated “premium” offering).
And since then, the hamfisted way they’ve dealt with mods and protests are getting me to leave the site early, too, and going out of my way to delete my old comments and posts that actually added information to the site, plus deleting or otherwise breaking the URLs of my content that have been linked from anywhere on reddit (whether in a post by me or reposted by someone else).
I can’t blame reddit for wanting to be profitable,either. They just went about it in the worst, most confrontational way possible. They insulted the people who gave reddit all of its content, and alienated their core users.
Even if Huffman had been nicer about it, though, no amount of diplomacy would make up for the fact that their API pricing is ridiculous. Nor would it make their complete inflexibility and stubbornness more palatable. The arrogance and disrespect they’ve shown is astounding. Trying to “fix” that with pretty words, but without actually changing anything, would be like trying to polish a turd.
I think there would still be a massive protest. The only difference would be the tone.
Didn’t reddit used to be profitable? I think we should start by asking what decisions they made that reduced their profitability. Is it the video player that nobody asked for? Deciding to self-host images? Developing an app that nobody wants to use? It seems to me like they put themselves in this position.
I can’t stand ads, but ad blocking is easy enough. I decided to leave because Reddit is only leaving me with terrible interfaces to use. The official app is painfully slow and bloated. I browse reddit to pass time on my phone, I’m not about to lug out my whole laptop or move over to a desktop to keep using the site with old Reddit + RES. All the terrible CEO comments since the announcement just make it easier because the tiny, niche non-Nazi alternatives are suddenly large and bustling platforms.
