Reddit Communities Go Private in Protest Over Policy Adjustments

[chrcoluk]

Problem here is, the 3rd party apps want their cake and don't want to share.

Apollo dev said he makes $500,000 from subscriptions, and was giving $0 to Reddit.
That is not fair, a API does cost to build and upkeep and all the extra stuff.

What Reddit has done is put a price tag that is a bit higher than other companies charge (Google / AWS / Microsoft and so on).

Though, they do say it still is free for open source apps or apps that don't charge people money, and that seems pretty fair does it not?
Those devs aren't making money, so Reddit gives them a pass.

It is only the 3rd party apps that are commercial (for profit) is where this is targeted, and yes, those 3rd party people SHOULD pay something for Reddit's API usage

The only question is, how much should they pay, and that is the part both sides should get together on and talk about it.


Oh, and also, 7K subreddits out of 3,125,000 total subreddits is a joke, barely a blip.

I think Reddit's mobile app is trash, and their new layout on the desktop is also trash, they should hire one of those 3rd party people to fix it, otherwise, when old.reddit goes down, then adios.

This does put a new perspective on it, if the new conditions make it free for non profit, and its only targeted at revenue making mods, thats reasonable I think.

As you said there needs to be an agreeable number agreed on by both parties, % share aka twitch model might be the way forward.

 

[R-T-B]

Oh, and also, 7K subreddits out of 3,125,000 total subreddits is a joke, barely a blip.

Not when those subreddits are the ones people actually use, which they largely are.

 

[Imouto]

Oh, and also, 7K subreddits out of 3,125,000 total subreddits is a joke, barely a blip.

I provided a link with which subs are down and you can check that most (as in +95%) of the ones that are actually populated with +1k subscribers have gone private. So you better go and service your standards because I bet Reddit's higher ups are shitting bricks.

 

[Bomby569]

Spez is an idiot, he is going after the 3rd party apps because they make money with reddit, something that he can't do.
The content is exclusively the work of the users, they use the users data to sell and even serve the users ads. These companies should pay us to be on their platforms

No users, no reddit. I hope some alternative comes along, because reddit is a shadow of what it was in the past.

 

[thesmokingman]

Spez is an idiot, he is going after the 3rd party apps because they make money with reddit, something that he can't do.
The content is exclusively the work of the users, they use the users data to sell and even serve the users ads. These companies should pay us to be on their platforms

No users, no reddit. I hope some alternative comes along, because reddit is a shadow of what it was in the past.

Welcome to the internets?

 

[R-T-B]

Welcome to the internets?

No, not every internet company CEO is that dumb. It's really impressive how badly spez has driven reddit into the ground.

I hope some alternative comes along

There are already MANY alternatives, people just need to decide.

 

[tpa-pr]

Honestly if reddit collapses because of this I won't shed a tear. I think it's been incredibly detrimental and toxic to online discourse (which it's not alone in, all social media is). There's a reason why "reddit moment" is a meme everywhere after all.

If it was up to me we'd go back to more tighter-knit, focused communities like TechPowerUp and the forums of old. I doubt that'll happen, but one less social media platform polluting the public sphere is a positive.

 

[trsttte]

Jeez so many bad uninformed takes...

They'll all come crawling back in a week. They already do it for free, the actual paid mods can simply remove the free ones and find replacements from the rest of reddit.

Let's wait and see, it's impossible to moderate a platform the size of reddit without volunteers willing to do it, reddit can automate stuff to replace them but it will destroy the platform so game on...

Meh they can go function with the built in tools. Its there fault they got used to using third party shit. I just dont see the issue, and I dont see how people can be this invested. If it costs these companies millions its because there app is beating the shit our of reddits endpoints. Not because a single API call is $99,999,998.98

First off, reddit mods are volunteers, they aren't getting paid to deal with the cesspool internet forums often turn into, if someone is to blame it's reddit for not devoloping proper moderation tools. Now someone went and made it for them and they were super happy about it while the platform was growing with them just reaping the profit of other volunteers, but now they decide it's time to go public to make even more money and go after what allowed them to grow into what they are!?

It's not like reddit is not turning a profit, they are making money, they just want to make more because capitalism. Yes, API calls cost money and apps are willing to pay a reasonable ammount, what happens is that they went the way of twitter - after saying they wouldn't - and just set an unreasable value by a lot.

On mobile reddit is unusable without an app, the default website is absolutely horrific.

I think that's won't be as big an issue, though it's easier if a mobile app can use the API directly, it's also frequent for mobile apps to just wrap the web front end.

Apollo dev said he makes $500,000 from subscriptions, and was giving $0 to Reddit.
That is not fair, a API does cost to build and upkeep and all the extra stuff.

What Reddit has done is put a price tag that is a bit higher than other companies charge (Google / AWS / Microsoft and so on).

Though, they do say it still is free for open source apps or apps that don't charge people money, and that seems pretty fair does it not?
Those devs aren't making money, so Reddit gives them a pass.

It is only the 3rd party apps that are commercial (for profit) is where this is targeted, and yes, those 3rd party people SHOULD pay something for Reddit's API usage

That makes perfect sense, the problem is the values involved. Apollo wouldn't need to pay just 500k$ - for building a proper app that reddit wasn't interested in doing mind you - they would need to pay something like 20 million! After putting in the work to build something that allows for better moderation of reddit that is a main benefit for **ding ding ding** reddit itself. There needing to be some profit sharing is totally understandable but reddit is not doing that, they just decided to put 3rd party apps out of business clear and simple without even offering an alternative solution (not that just sherlocking the work of 3rd party apps would be really acceptable but it would be something!)

If it was up to me we'd go back to more tighter-knit, focused communities like TechPowerUp and the forums of old. I doubt that'll happen, but one less social media platform polluting the public sphere is a positive.

I don't particularly disagree but there are several advantages to having a one stop shop for everything, it's much easier to find information or to discover new things.

 

[caroline!]

We're witnessing the first ever neckbeard protest on the internet.

 

[thesmokingman]

they just decided to put 3rd party apps out of business clear and simple without even offering an alternative solution (not that just sherlocking the work of 3rd party apps would be really acceptable but it would be something!)

Sometimes this is exactly the point by pricing it out of reach, instead of telling them to gtfo, price it so it dies a natural death.

 

[trsttte]

Sometimes this is exactly the point by pricing it out of reach, instead of telling them to gtfo, price it so it dies a natural death.

That is certainly the case, it just so happens it backfired, some pretty large subreddits like r/iPhone are going dark for good, not just for the 48h protest. If user metrics start going down and the toxicity starts going up (as it does when there's less moderation) and they start getting a hit on the ad revenue they'll have to change course, that's the goal anyway

 

[R-T-B]

It's not like reddit is not turning a profit,

It isn't, IIRC. Not that that makes this course of action intelligent.

 

[wolf]

I hope there are good outcomes from this, I enjoy discussions on reddit - most of the time. I also find the social balancing aspect to work considerably better than it does on forums, much higher amount of users and the upvote downvote system tend to make for a more balanced overall discussion imo. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, we've all seen people that were actually correct get downvoted into oblivion for example, because the sub didn't want to hear it, or despite being wrong the other person argued 'better' on the day, and so on. Even with those occurrences, it's more far more balanced than most tech forums I am a part of, that have relatively low counts of very active, engaged and motivated users that can steer the narrative and feel of the entire forum, where threads often become echo chambers. Again, can happen on reddit too, but my experience has shown me it's far less common, and self-corrects much more.

 

[R-T-B]

We're witnessing the first ever neckbeard protest on the internet.

You must be new.

 

[Athena]

Honestly if reddit collapses because of this I won't shed a tear. I think it's been incredibly detrimental and toxic to online discourse (which it's not alone in, all social media is). There's a reason why "reddit moment" is a meme everywhere after all.

If it was up to me we'd go back to more tighter-knit, focused communities like TechPowerUp and the forums of old. I doubt that'll happen, but one less social media platform polluting the public sphere is a positive.

Unfortunately, TPU or any other site is not immune to the $ pressure.
There have been so many old sites that had huge communities die off and lots of great information was lost because of a variety of things, but it still boils down to, everyone needs to make $ to stay alive, nothing is really free, no matter where you live

Maybe Usenet and the old 'news groups' can make a comeback, but, the problem is more and more ISPs have dropped them and there is only paid access now

 

[tpa-pr]

Unfortunately, TPU or any other site is not immune to the $ pressure.
There have been so many old sites that had huge communities die off and lots of great information was lost because of a variety of things, but it still boils down to, everyone needs to make $ to stay alive, nothing is really free, no matter where you live

Maybe Usenet and the old 'news groups' can make a comeback, but, the problem is more and more ISPs have dropped them and there is only paid access now

Agreed, absolutely. I'm not necessarily suggesting that the forums of old are immune to such problems, moreso I prefer them because having a single centralised repository of "everything" makes it easier for bad apples to control the flow of discourse and information. Which is done on reddit and other sites such as Twitter, quite heavy-handedly.

I also find that more focused forums tend to allow for less inflammatory discussion (less, not none ). The smaller scope means everyone tends to know everyone and treat them like humans. It's not perfect, but it's far more preferable to reddit and Twitter where opponents dig up dirt and publicly shame each other in attempt to "gotcha" the "enemy" because they're just another face in the crowd.

 

[arandomguy]

I provided a link with which subs are down and you can check that most (as in +95%) of the ones that are actually populated with +1k subscribers have gone private. So you better go and service your standards because I bet Reddit's higher ups are shitting bricks.

Is a sub going private really all that representative of how the community of even that subreddit feels about this issue? At least my understanding is that the power for a subreddit to go dark lies solely with the head moderator. A subreddit going private is not reflective of how the other moderators, much less the broader user base of said subreddit feel about this issue. The subreddit's I've seen did not even poll the user base at all regarding this.

I'm skeptical of whether or not the broader userbase of the subreddits, especially the larger ones, actually supports this action, especially for any prolonged period of time. If not I would wonder if reddit ultimately exercises control and simply prunes moderators.

This to me seems like another situation in which the vast majority of people are being dragged into an issue that they don't actually care about.

 

[trparky]

If Reddit's own app wasn't such a hot steaming pile of dog shit, I wouldn't really mind third-party apps like Apollo going dark but it is. Reddit's own app is a hot steaming pile of dog shit that more often than not barely even works. And with the size of Reddit's own mobile app development team, you'd think that they'd be able to put something together that actually works. Meanwhile, you have one guy who's behind Apollo and it's one of the best Reddit apps ever made and has won multiple awards and has been showcased on the front page of Apple's Appstore multiple times. Talk about putting Reddit's own mobile app development team to absolute shame.

I mean it’s just API access. Mods still have controls on the sub reddits and this doesn’t affect normal users other than.

The bad part is that with the size of Reddit's development team, you'd think that they'd be able to put together a suite of tools that moderators need to properly moderate their respective communities, but they haven't. Apollo and other apps like it came to be because of a need that wasn't being fulfilled by Reddit themselves.

Again, we're going back to the fact that Reddit's own app is a hot steaming pile of dog shit.

Does anyone remember Alien Blue? Reddit bought it and took what was one of the best Reddit apps at the time and threw it into the woodchipper. What came out is what the Reddit app is today. A hot steaming pile of... well, you get it.

 

[Icon Charlie]

You must be new.

Hhahaha! Good one.

 

[R-T-B]

Is a sub going private really all that representative of how the community of even that subreddit feels about this issue?

Well it affects moderation efforts far more than the average users effort to use the site, so that may even be appropriate if your point is true.

 

[Bomby569]

No, not every internet company CEO is that dumb. It's really impressive how badly spez has driven reddit into the ground.


There are already MANY alternatives, people just need to decide.

sure there are alternatives for people to use, but if the people/content isn't there they aren't really alternatives. We go for the content, not the website address.
They made this protest, reddit is full of people and subreddits, hard to kill the beast

 

[R-T-B]

sure there are alternatives for people to use, but if the people/content isn't there they aren't really alternatives. We go for the content, not the website address.

So? Communities migrate all the time.

 

[Bomby569]

So? Communities migrate all the time.

do they! Most didn't even went dark, and the ones that did will do so for 2 days.

Subreddits are also a business for the ones managing them, if the people are there, they will be there. If the subreddits are there people will be there. It's the chicken and the egg thing
And there is even the google thing, so many searches end there.

 

[R-T-B]

do they!

Yes, most of reddit came from the failure of tumblr, so that's a given.

Most didn't even went dark, and the ones that did will do so for 2 days.

See earlier posts. Nearly every sub that has any meaningful subscription numbers is dead right now. Don't believe me? Check some of your bookmarks.

Subreddits are also a business for the ones managing them

I think you massively overestimate how often that happens, if ever.

 

[Bomby569]

I think you massively overestimate how often that happens, if ever.

maybe its my bias, but i know personally (on the internet, not in person) 2 that make money/nice perks of it. And i only know 2 subreddit owners.