It’s honestly really sad what’s been happening recently. Reddit with the API pricing on 3rd party apps, Discord with the new username change, Twitter with the rate limits, and Twitch with their new advertising rules (although that has been reverted because of backlash). Why does it seem like every company is collectively on a common mission of destroying themselves in the past few months?
I know the common answer is something around the lines of “because companies only care about making money”, but I still don’t get why it seems like all these social media companies have suddenly agreed to screw themselves during pretty much the period of March-June. One that sticks out to me especially is Reddit CEO, Huffman’s comment (u/spez), “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive”. Like reading this literally pisses me off on so many levels. I wouldn’t even have to understand the context behind his comment to say, “I am DONE with you, and I am leaving your site”.
Why is it like this? Does everyone feel the same way? I’m not sure if it’s just me but everything seems to be going downhill these days. I really do hope there is a solution out of this mess.
This is a great write up, but what I don’t get is why do these companies stick to these idiotic measures instead of turning to their users for help in an open dialogue.
Like, I get that Reddit needs to make profit, and I actually wouldn’t have minded paying for Reddit premium to use my api key with Apollo. Instead Reddit made me and I’d guess a lot of people like me leave and never want to return. Just left with a lingering bitter aftertaste.
Did they think that they wouldn’t get enough funding that way? Well then how about giving it a test run to see if it works? Didn’t work? Well how about asking your users what they might be missing and what they might want to be more happy to subscribe, and adding features/addressing those issues? Working with developers to establish a revenue sharing agreement? There were so many alternative paths.
No, apparently nfts and shitting on your users is where it’s at.
Have a conversation, run polls, A/B test, etc. And be transparent while you’re doing it. These tools are nothing new when developing a service. Why ignore everything?
I mean, is it really just a competence/arrogance thing alone?
Exactly this. Companies like Reddit these days are so disconnected with their userbase it's insane. Of all the millions of things Reddit could do to make their platform a better place, they choose to basically remove the services that everyone liked (the 3rd party apps) and not only that, lie to their users (as with the case of Apollo "blackmailing Reddit for $10 million") and double down on them. It sickens me how ignorant they can be, but I guess that the hard lesson we can all take away is that with money and power comes corruption.
I mean, based on how dramatic the increasing in price the API was, I wouldn't be surprised if Reddit already knew what the public reaction would be, considering they'll probably also receive considerable hate for even contemplating the decision. Of course they just didn't give a second thought and just went with it.
I stopped using reddit after spez's AmA. If all of this would have been handled in a more mature and open way, I would probably have moved to the reddit app, complained about it for a while, but kept usind reddit. But after what happened in the last weeks, reddit is no longer something I want to be associated with.
For lack of a better description, I simply don't 'like' reddit anymore. It's like a friend who treated you like shit.. Sure, you could still go to a party together and have fun, but it's just not quite the same anymore.
It's not so much about what they did, most people understand reddit has to make money at some point. It's the how that is driving people away imho. At least it is for me.
Honestly, when Christian first brought up “maybe subscriptions for Apollo to offset API costs,” I was fine with that. I get that we were receiving a service for free that cost the company money, and I was fine with paying a reasonable amount for that. I just don’t get why they had to make the costs so unreasonable that even subscription based wouldn’t cut it.
I think it's more of an ego thing. The people with healthy egos probably never end up as execs in companies as big as Reddit, and the people that do are likely driven by something else other than the desire to actually build a platform that respects its users and works well in cooperation with them - "I'm smart, I'm sexy, I know better than these plebs making us money".
Yeah, there seems to be an inflection point in the lifecycle of businesses nowadays where the leadership loses any interest in what the company actually does. The products it makes or services it provides are considered almost irrelevant.
I mean after the whole "spez shadow-edited someone else's comment to put words in their mouth" thing, what you're describing sounds a bit too ethical for reddit as a company.