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People have been using third-party clients to access Reddit for more than 13 years. When you have that kind of history, a change like this is difficult to seem

by ink_13 3y ago

People have been using third-party clients to access Reddit for more than 13 years. When you have that kind of history, a change like this is difficult to seem like anything but a rug-pull.

wldcordeiro 3y ago
The third-party apps predate the first-party even. Reddit had been a website only for years then bought the most popular iOS third-party client as a starting point so like you said it's very much a rug-pull.
- majormajor 3y ago
  > then bought the most popular iOS third-party client as a starting point If you're ever in a situation where this happens, consider it you're big flashing warning sign about trying to run a competing offering! (Mac users of a certain age will remember Apple buying SoundJam MP.)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - plorkyeran 3y ago
    Alien Blue was bought out nearly 9 years ago, so that wasn't actually a sign that bad things were coming soon for other third-party clients.
  - alasarmas 3y ago
    I remember SoundJam MP very well, I still have the box somewhere. The box that I bought from some store in a strip mall on Route 1, maybe CompUSA? Circuit City? The Wiz? It came with a stereo RCA to 1/8th inch adapter cable, for digitizing audio files straight from your record player / cassette player. I also remember being bummed that iTunes never properly supported aliases [0] when running under Mac OS 9. And I remember Audion [1]. Heady days indeed! 0. https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/ReferenceFilesandFolders.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La... 1. https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/
  - garbagecoder 3y ago
    Mac users of a certain age will remember this happening several times and it almost always ended up being better when it was just built in. Reddit's app is garbo.
- csallen 3y ago
  This is why you don't build a business on top of someone else's rug.
  - matwood 3y ago
    Businesses are almost always built on top of someone else. What you need to make sure of is that your financial interests are aligned.
    - User23 3y ago
      Which is to say have a contract that your counterparty can’t redefine freely.
      - rs999gti 3y ago
        Was there a contract or SLA for the free Reddit API? If not, then there isn't much to complain about
        User23 3y ago
        The terms of service are the default contract. Presumably it has a we-can-screw-you-whenever clause, but sometimes the corporate lawyers screw up and you can actually get them for violating their own ToS.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Build your own rug before the rug pull comes.
    - djbusby 3y ago
      Its rugs all the way down!
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Indeed, Courtland, and even on IndieHackers you see a lot of stories about platform risk, platforms which indie hackers often use to build a good product but always seem surprised that they got rugged, as if the previous X stories didn't show that it inevitably happens.
haswell 3y ago
To me, this is the biggest thing that makes the Facebook/Instagram comparison problematic. Reddit's history is built on the backs of 3rd party apps, and they've long been part of the core ethos of the community. The same can't be said for the Meta properties, and so I'd argue we're seeing something different/worse here.
User23 3y ago
There’s a reason nobody has any sympathy for Charlie Brown. How many times does the football have to get pulled away for the lesson to sink in I wonder? Edit: As many metaphors do, it works on multiple levels, but the fundamental message is don’t be a chump.
- exodontist 3y ago
  I've always felt incredibly sympathetic toward Charlie Brown and often pondered what message Charles Schultz was trying to convey with that trope. What made Lucy like that?! I often think of the trope in the context of US politics, and specifically progressive capitulation to capital. I find it one of the darkest and yet prescient parts of Schultzes lore.. (Snoopy being an adult with a long, colorful history yet still treated as a dog, being another)
crazygringo 3y ago
No, because it's still a for-profit corporation, and one that's taken lots of VC funding and has also been looking to IPO. Owners change, management changes, priorities change, that's what happens in the business world. If you don't think you're taking a major risk, then you're just being naive. (I'm not defending Reddit here, but I am saying anyone should have been planning for this highly probable outcome.)
- hakfoo 3y ago
  It's weird how we see the business people making this same sort of mistake on community after community. It's like there's a blind spot surgically implanted in them during the MBA programme. It's well known that most online communities are 1% super-contributors, 9% modest contributors, and 90% lurkers/occasional contributors. "Third party app users" are far more likely to be 1% and 9% users. They're committed to the platform enough that they're willing to seek out or even make software to improve their experience on it. The lurkers will just download the official app if it's the top match in the App Store and deal with the inconveniences. So if you take that away, you disproportionately punish your most valuable users. Note I say "valuable" not in terms of "they click a lot of ads", but rather "they bring the content that makes the other 90% of users stick around and click ads." It feels like a bar cancelling "Free Drinks Ladies' Night" because they figure that the 10 female patrons will buy 20 bottles of beer, then acting surprised when the 50 men who would come in to hit on them (and buy four beers each) don't show.
  - gretch 3y ago
    > Third party app users are far more likely to be 1% and 9% users. They're committed to the platform enough that they're willing to seek out or even make software to improve their experience on it. You’re speculating at this while the Reddit team just has all of the data and knows exactly where traffic comes from. Also maybe the 3p app user, while being the most prolific poster, is simultaneously a high % of toxicity.
    - chongli 3y ago
      Reddit has a long track record of incompetence. The site has historically been very unstable and their attempts to replace the front-end UX for both the browser and mobile apps have been widely panned. Therefore, it's reasonable to suspect that they be making a mistake with this decision as well, despite having access to all of the relevant data.
satvikpendem 3y ago
Platform risk always exists, no matter the timeframe.

by ink_13 3y ago

People have been using third-party clients to access Reddit for more than 13 years. When you have that kind of history, a change like this is difficult to seem like anything but a rug-pull.

wldcordeiro 3y ago

The third-party apps predate the first-party even. Reddit had been a website only for years then bought the most popular iOS third-party client as a starting point so like you said it's very much a rug-pull.

majormajor 3y ago
> then bought the most popular iOS third-party client as a starting point If you're ever in a situation where this happens, consider it you're big flashing warning sign about trying to run a competing offering! (Mac users of a certain age will remember Apple buying SoundJam MP.)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- plorkyeran 3y ago
  Alien Blue was bought out nearly 9 years ago, so that wasn't actually a sign that bad things were coming soon for other third-party clients.
- alasarmas 3y ago
  I remember SoundJam MP very well, I still have the box somewhere. The box that I bought from some store in a strip mall on Route 1, maybe CompUSA? Circuit City? The Wiz? It came with a stereo RCA to 1/8th inch adapter cable, for digitizing audio files straight from your record player / cassette player. I also remember being bummed that iTunes never properly supported aliases [0] when running under Mac OS 9. And I remember Audion [1]. Heady days indeed! 0. https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/ReferenceFilesandFolders.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La... 1. https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/
- garbagecoder 3y ago
  Mac users of a certain age will remember this happening several times and it almost always ended up being better when it was just built in. Reddit's app is garbo.
csallen 3y ago
This is why you don't build a business on top of someone else's rug.
- matwood 3y ago
  Businesses are almost always built on top of someone else. What you need to make sure of is that your financial interests are aligned.
  - User23 3y ago
    Which is to say have a contract that your counterparty can’t redefine freely.
    - rs999gti 3y ago
      Was there a contract or SLA for the free Reddit API? If not, then there isn't much to complain about
      - User23 3y ago
        The terms of service are the default contract. Presumably it has a we-can-screw-you-whenever clause, but sometimes the corporate lawyers screw up and you can actually get them for violating their own ToS.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Build your own rug before the rug pull comes.
  - djbusby 3y ago
    Its rugs all the way down!
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Indeed, Courtland, and even on IndieHackers you see a lot of stories about platform risk, platforms which indie hackers often use to build a good product but always seem surprised that they got rugged, as if the previous X stories didn't show that it inevitably happens.

haswell 3y ago

To me, this is the biggest thing that makes the Facebook/Instagram comparison problematic. Reddit's history is built on the backs of 3rd party apps, and they've long been part of the core ethos of the community. The same can't be said for the Meta properties, and so I'd argue we're seeing something different/worse here.

User23 3y ago

There’s a reason nobody has any sympathy for Charlie Brown. How many times does the football have to get pulled away for the lesson to sink in I wonder? Edit: As many metaphors do, it works on multiple levels, but the fundamental message is don’t be a chump.

exodontist 3y ago
I've always felt incredibly sympathetic toward Charlie Brown and often pondered what message Charles Schultz was trying to convey with that trope. What made Lucy like that?! I often think of the trope in the context of US politics, and specifically progressive capitulation to capital. I find it one of the darkest and yet prescient parts of Schultzes lore.. (Snoopy being an adult with a long, colorful history yet still treated as a dog, being another)

crazygringo 3y ago

No, because it's still a for-profit corporation, and one that's taken lots of VC funding and has also been looking to IPO. Owners change, management changes, priorities change, that's what happens in the business world. If you don't think you're taking a major risk, then you're just being naive. (I'm not defending Reddit here, but I am saying anyone should have been planning for this highly probable outcome.)

hakfoo 3y ago
It's weird how we see the business people making this same sort of mistake on community after community. It's like there's a blind spot surgically implanted in them during the MBA programme. It's well known that most online communities are 1% super-contributors, 9% modest contributors, and 90% lurkers/occasional contributors. "Third party app users" are far more likely to be 1% and 9% users. They're committed to the platform enough that they're willing to seek out or even make software to improve their experience on it. The lurkers will just download the official app if it's the top match in the App Store and deal with the inconveniences. So if you take that away, you disproportionately punish your most valuable users. Note I say "valuable" not in terms of "they click a lot of ads", but rather "they bring the content that makes the other 90% of users stick around and click ads." It feels like a bar cancelling "Free Drinks Ladies' Night" because they figure that the 10 female patrons will buy 20 bottles of beer, then acting surprised when the 50 men who would come in to hit on them (and buy four beers each) don't show.
- gretch 3y ago
  > Third party app users are far more likely to be 1% and 9% users. They're committed to the platform enough that they're willing to seek out or even make software to improve their experience on it. You’re speculating at this while the Reddit team just has all of the data and knows exactly where traffic comes from. Also maybe the 3p app user, while being the most prolific poster, is simultaneously a high % of toxicity.
  - chongli 3y ago
    Reddit has a long track record of incompetence. The site has historically been very unstable and their attempts to replace the front-end UX for both the browser and mobile apps have been widely panned. Therefore, it's reasonable to suspect that they be making a mistake with this decision as well, despite having access to all of the relevant data.

satvikpendem 3y ago

Platform risk always exists, no matter the timeframe.