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The option they should have gone for was to put the onus of 3PA on users: Either you pay for reddit premium or you use the app. This would have worked out more and I absolutely would pay a fair price to keep using Boost. This is what they should have done.
But, they didn't. And then offered a tight window, and that's why we're here.
I wouldn't have even hesitated to buy Premium if it was the only way to use third party apps. That seems reasonable. I paid more for a completely pointless Snoo bobblehead like a decade ago, at least Premium in that context would provide some actual benefit!
Venture Capital isn’t compatible with asking people to pay what something is worth. You might find a fair price that keeps enough users to make the business sustainable, but that’s what they derisively refer to as a "lifestyle business". VCs are looking for 100x profits in a couple of years, and that necessitates slimy revenue models. Nothing else works.
I would be just as disappointed as I am now. I am never using their dogshit app, ever. How they killed my beloved 3rd party app makes no difference at all. I'm gone just the same, and sabotaging the subreddits I mod just the same.
Well, that might have helped, but Paint Hufferman decided to insult us all and treat us as useless, even parasitic freeloaders when WE are the ones who, in concert, built that goddamned site. He was never going to show any respect for us or what we've accomplished... to him, we're livestock. Fuck him with a hot lead pipe.
I have not heard anyone, other than articles trying to lead the narrative, say that it should be free.
It was always how much and how long they had to adapt.
Plus all the lies
The app devs, including Selig, often, said they were perfectly fine and found it quite reasonable that Reddit wanted to charge for API access-- they even looked forward to it because the y believed it would. open up access to previously walled-off parts of the API such as chat, polls, and other features only available in the native app and the website. This was public info, and users also looked forward to this.
The problem came with both he outrageous pricing and the absurd 30-day timeframe. Then, further with spez's refusal to be flexible by listening to the reasonable complaints of the devs, slanderous accusations against Selig, profound and entitled disrespect towards the mods, and shitshow parade which started with his mind-boggling AMA and then continuing by taking interviews with any news agency that would talk to him, further spreading the lies, slander, disrespect, and disinformation-- ending by praising the king turd of tech: Elon Musk.
THAT is what provoked the outrage, protests, and overall "uprising". THAT is what is killing Reddit.
If it wasn't for the amount being much higher than most other companies charge, and what it costs Reddit itself to do the same, and a 30-day timeframe with which to get around those changes on top of it, I think that they would have been much better received. The third-party app developers didn't any problems with paying for things like Imgur APIs, and would have happily paid up for Reddit's, if they had the time to implement it, and didn't have to deal with the exorbitant cost.
However, I do think that Spez made things much, much worse. If Reddit didn't make a discussion, and just put out the announcement, people would have shrugged, and moved on. His AMA, and everything else after was just throwing fuel onto the fire, which was further boosted by Reddit admins suddenly wading into the fray, something that they had not done previously, even rom the perspective of moderator tyranny. The previous response tended to always be "we're sorry to hear that, but you can just go and create your own community if you have an issue with them", unless the problem was bad enough it got press attention.
Reddit killed internet fora. By being easier and cheaper, while making no profit.
If they suddenly do want to make profit?
The terms change, there are alternatives.
Nobody is against them making money, but personally it was just the iicong omn the cake. The censorship was my biggest issue, then they started requiring emails, etc....losing my apps and then threatening mods was it.
It wasn't what they did it was how they did it. If they wanted to I'm sure they could have worked out a comprise where everyone stayed happy.
A good way to foster resentment is to profit off a bunch of mods and devs donating time for love of community and then spit in their face by forcing them out. I think it's one the most blatantly asshole things I've ever seen a corporation do, one for the history books.
I do wonder if it will really make a difference. I think it might be their undoing. Social media users are a somewhat fickle bunch and can move on to the next big thing, that's historically been the case.
I was the founder of a 73k sub API the API rules changed I used Apollo and rif the AMA came decided to protest from the 12th to the 14th came back after the day of the 14th my subscribers said shut it down. I shut it down then u/spez did that leaked memo then I decided to delete my 350k 6 years front page 5x account. It was tuff but I got kbin, Lemmy and Mastodon to help me fill the void. Yes I know I only need one account but it's a personal preference l!
I used the main Reddit app and was planning on going back after the protests were over but everything spez had done since then has made me uninstall the app
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.
In a nutshell:
Imagine if you own a nice Jaguar - keep it in your garage and let the neighbours borrow it to go to the shops. Now you need to do some maintenance, and make up for losses in your taxi service (which might cost $2 per km) so you wanna price this as a premium service. ... so you could charge them $5 takeout fee plus $1 per km, or (if you're greedy) just go for $5 per km.
What Reddit did is say 'Fuck you, you want to use it, you pay $100 per km or fuck off - we don't care'.
The amount of money Reddit makes for you getting advertisements is actually less than $1 per km... The same occurs with YouTube. If you actually click to donate, then you can pay enough to cover thousands of hours of advertisements in one small swipe.
What we need is MICROpayments spread across a wider user-base to balance the ad-supported platform, and then people will accept that small payments are better.
A few years ago when I could afford it I bought a lot of Reddit coins to award posts. At the end of the day, this is the thanks I get.