We're joining the Reddit blackout from June 12th to 14th(old.reddit.com) |
We're joining the Reddit blackout from June 12th to 14th(old.reddit.com) |
Imagine pour hundreds of hours for the sake of enjoyment, sharing or nurturing a community and due to some market circumstances not having a saying in any decision.
To be honest, seeing those movements from those companies makes me feel that the future of open communities (but some how walled) it’s bleak.
But yea, that's why I never did any real "passion work" up to this point, even if I've been interested. If I'm going out of my way for that, it has to at the bare minimum be portfolio work for a job, or to garner community reputation to leverage for a future project that is paid.
It's a cynical way to look at what should just be done for the sake of others. Some would call it "clout chasing" and they aren't entirely wrong (not entirely right either, but there's similarities). But you always gotta look out for yourself first. From my decades here, the Internet sure won't. Quite the contrary; it's extraordinary how quickly communities can turn on something if you brush it the wrong way.
There is a lot of talk of these apps being forced to shutdown due to the overhead of $2.50 a user per month. That is an extremely low overhead so low that a $5 a month subscription solves the entire drama very quickly.
This isn't about Reddit being greedy. This is about Reddit users being too cheap to pay for something they want and used on a daily basis. There are free ways to use the site if you want to use an API that avoids monetizing then it seem fair you pay. This isn't like Twitter where apps charging $20-99 a month had trouble paying. This is apps charging $1.50 to very few users and relying on another company to foot the bill for their freemium model - while directly competing with them.
>This isn't about Reddit being greedy.
This is Reddit being greedy. They are asking $2.50 a user per month, while the revenue they make from someone using the first party reddit app on average is just $0.12 per month. [0] Add this the restriction on NSFW content served from the API, and it's clear reddit is just straight up trying to kill 3rd party apps.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
Ideally we all would have realized Twitter and Reddit aren't worth our time, but if it's facing that they're not worth our money that gets us to break our habit of settling for them as time wasters, that's cool too.
1. I'm not entirely sure if that's allowed in the Reddit API TOS to begin with (before this change).
2. There's too many alternative ways to browse reddit to really make headway as a subscription app. Including Reddit's official app and simply opening up the mobile website (even if Reddit does everything in its power to ruin the website experience on mobile. They REALLY want you using the app). I don't mind and have paid for ad-free versions of several 3rd party apps, but that's a single small payment.
3. this brings up a much larger issue forums have been going through for decades; is it really "right" to continually charge or content that is mostly user generated? I don't think people mind a one time payment for a stable release of what is ultimately a nicely designed web viewer. But beyond that?
There's many reasons why no app dev has thought of this. Legally, logistically, and even ethically. Personally, I'd just feel weird asking people to pay me money every month when the overhead maintenance of my app (which I imagine is minimal. bug fixes and some small feature requests while MAYBE doing a bigger request every 6-12 months) isn't what's keeping them there, it's the ability to keep reading posts/comments submitted by users. How do I justify my price as a middleman unless I am delivery major releases every month or two?
>This is about Reddit users being too cheap to pay for something they want and used on a daily basis
I don't entirely disagree. But app/mobile has long since raced to the bottom, so that's an inevitable consequence.
Put it this way; if Reddit itself charged even 1$/month to comment/post, do you think people would stay? I think they'd flee off to Tiktok personally. Older users would try and rekindle older forums,but overall I don't think many would stay, even if $1/month is almost objectively a good deal for the content provided. There's too much other popular platforms that are "free". And if enough of the community gets pushed, they can migrate elsewhere. They ultimately hold the value.
I don't think this is the push, but it's always possible.
The best move is to not play with corporations and to move towards well-run nonprofits and social ventures that can deliver a useful utility. There aren't many existent examples of this.
Be happy while it lasted is the good approach. Cover contracts are bad in general but in this case this would just be insane
Reddit essentially took off because Digg screwed the pooch so hard with their redesign and just general mismanagement of their community.
Personally for me, Reddit lost the human touch several years ago and with the cancelling of Secret Santa that was one of the most fun activities on the internet, I've stopped using the site almost completely.
Personally, I'm looking forward to Reddit going the way of Digg.
Let's be honest: even if we agree it's a waste of time and it then becomes financially unviable; you just find another time waster. Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube, 4chan, etc. Heck, some would just go and watch porn. There's no end of sites (new and old) with oodles of user generated content to waste time on.
People aren't brainwashed and magically become productive when the brainwashing stops. Or you can interpret it less generously and say that they are so brainwashed that they will see other means if one of them stops.
People can use those open source tools on the free level that doesn't require the higher level of use.
> This is Reddit being greedy. They are asking $2.50 a user per month, while the revenue they make from someone using the first party reddit app on average is just $0.12 per month. [0] Add this the restriction on NSFW content served from the API, and it's clear reddit is just straight up trying to kill 3rd party apps.
$2.50 a user. You're mad they're trying to make money. Most businesses wouldn't survive if they only got $2.50 per user. Not only that realistically, the infrastucture probably costs about that to run. We're not talking some static website or simple infrastucture here. Seriously, it's pretty entitled to be mad at company is trying to generate $2.50 per user per month. Like really entitled.
It's really a poor way to look at it "Sorry but you've only been making $0.12 so trying to make $2.50 is far too much, how dare you try to generate money."
Fair enough.
> You're mad they're trying to make money.
I'm not mad they're trying to make money, I absolutely understand that. But again, why do they want $2.50/user from a 3rd party client, while keeping the revenue from their first party app unchanged?
The excuse for API changes was fairness (3rd party client using the API for free while making a profit isn't fair), but charging this much just shows that they don't want 3rd party clients to compete in the first place. Which is also fine, if only they admitted it.
I already spend way more browsing time here than Reddit these days. That said, it does lack focused topic discussion for things like, your favorite band for instance.
I guess we will all just use a million fragmented discords most likely
That was always the greatest thing about Reddit IMO: there's some really unique and highly-focused subs there. However, the fact that you have to use a single account across all the subreddits (you can use different accounts, but it's a pain) makes you very vulnerable to some crazy mod in one sub banning you and then getting you banned from the entire site. Completely separate discussion forum sites, as were common 10-20 years ago, didn't have this problem.
There are complaints that the offical app isn't accessible. Ok, pay for accessible software or complain enough to Reddit to fix their app. There are laws I believe to force them to have an accessible app.
Mods use tools to moderate. Ok. You want to have a little hobby of moderating a community. Fair enough, pay for your hobby. If not. Let Reddit fix the spam problem when it becomes a problem, because it will become a problem and Reddit will be forced to fix it because the users will hate it and it'll harm growth. If not, pay for the software to do your little hobby.
Just because someone has a different opinion doesn't mean they haven't read into it. It's that they have a different opinion than you.
I think software should cost money. Because I write software for a living and I think people should value what I do to the point they pay money for it. I know a lot of techies like to make our work worthless but I don't.
What an odd opinion to have about software, but not about labor or content. Perhaps reddit should have to pay every moderator for the work that they do. Perhaps they should pay ever user who upvotes or downvotes since they're sorting content for reddit and not getting paid. Maybe reddit should pay for everyone who posts or leaves comments since the only reason reddit is worth anything at all is the content provided by those "cheap users" you think are freeloading.
If reddit wants to have a hobby where they run a website collecting the labor of others they should pay for it right?
The internet is a better place when everyone who uses a website isn't required for fork over hard cash. Not every means of displaying web content or interacting with websites should require someone to fork over money to those websites either. Worst of all though is how dumb reddit is being to cut off these third party tools and interfaces which have features that are in high demand. Reddit will lose users if those users are forced to use their shitty interface, but worse reddit will lose a ton of data on what sorts of features their users desire but which reddit has never considered offering.
One of the great things about having a bunch of third parties writing software (mostly for free) that interacts with reddit is that reddit can (as they have in the past) poach ideas from those apps and improve their service which will only make them more successful.
The people who work for reddit (by which I mean the people who are currently paid to work for reddit since most of the people doing work for reddit are entirely unpaid) are not impoverished. No one is suggesting that they deserve nothing at all. It's perfectly fine for them to make money, it's not fine for them to try to make money by screwing over others (including themselves). This is shortsighted greed on reddit's part that will ultimately result in reddit being worse. It's no wonder so many people are against it.
> What an odd opinion to have about software, but not about labor or content.
At what point have I promoted slavery? I think paying content creators is great and has done wonders for YouTube for example.
> Perhaps reddit should have to pay every moderator for the work that they do.
I would much prefer that. That way we would stop having such annoying power trippy moderators. We would also see a more consistant approach to moderating. But that would deny these moderators their little hobby.
> If reddit wants to have a hobby where they run a website collecting the labor of others they should pay for it right?
Do they collect? They don't. Collecting would mean they go out and get it. Even in such a simple position like that your logic falls part very simply. They allow others to use their services.
I wasn't againist Reddit providing a free API just like I am not againist others providing free things. If people wish to charge for their content or charge for moderating then I fully support them and would speak out against any nay-sayers.
> The internet is a better place when everyone who uses a website isn't required for fork over hard cash.
There are no plans to charge for the website. Just plans to charge for an API. These are two very separate things. As pointed out, some of the users of the API are direct competitors of Reddit.
not sure I agree with this angle. If anything it's the opposite. just like how software dev is a job, so is community management. Reddit already has what amounts to free custodial labor, growing and fostering the site for them. They should be paying people to moderate that if they don't want their admins/internal Community Managers to bother with anything more than legally threatening content.
But just like software development, people do community management for a hobby.
Mods use tools to moderate. Ok. You want to have a little hobby of moderating a community. Fair enough, pay for your hobby. If not. Let Reddit fix the spam problem when it becomes a problem, because it will become a problem and Reddit will be forced to fix it because the users will hate it and it'll harm growth. If not, pay for the software to do your little hobby.