17 ms·

Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps

372 points by netfortius 3y ago

ouraf 3y ago
I think Reddit's executives are implementing these changes to create amazing revenue forecasts out of thin air and sell the company for the next sucker. Maybe Meta or Microsoft will buy Reddit out and ruin it further.
dimmke 3y ago
Reddit, making a blatantly obvious case for why third party apps are necessary on a post about stopping third party apps: https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg
- ok_dad 3y ago
  Yep, nearly any important posts seem to be labeled as NSFW so you won’t be able to see them other than how Reddit wants to have you see them. This is the future we paid for with enormous amounts of VC money.
  - dimmke 3y ago
    I have Reddit posts auto open in Apollo but specifically went to this one in browser to see how bad it’s gotten. It’s not just an annoying pop up. You literally cannot use most of Reddit in a mobile browser now. And I came from the link in this post which was supposed to go to old.reddit That’s how dire things are. I have been a reddit user since 2009, almost 15 years. But I’m not a nostalgic person. As awful as it has gotten it’s still the place where most discussion on the internet happens (and has happened for over a decade.) That can’t just be replaced overnight. They’re sitting on a huuuuge amount of content that is fully indexed by search engines too. This would be a huge blow to the internet in general I think. All so they can have a Groupon style IPO.
    - andrewflnr 3y ago
      old.reddit.com is tolerable on mobile.
- puppable 3y ago
  I believe I encountered a situation like this before, and what it really means is that you just have to log in to see it, and Reddit is just lying to you. I may be wrong in this case, though.
  - ehPReth 3y ago
    seems to work when being logged in on the mobile site. they're just really really damn pushy for that stupid app
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      i.reddit.com in that case Edit: oh no, that seems to just point to the desktop old interface now. Weird.
      - squeaky-clean 3y ago
        About 2 months ago they killed the i and .compact versions of the site.
        wkat4242 3y ago
        Sad :( I rarely use it on mobile and I didn't know this yet. I bet it's only a matter of time before old goes
      - sbmthakur 3y ago
        I get the (new) mobile site with it.
  - jwalton 3y ago
    What it really means is that you accidentally went to www.reddit.com, and you should have gone to old.reddit.com.
    - redeux 3y ago
      You can also request the desktop version of the site.
- batch12 3y ago
  I have bypassed that in the past on mobile by switching to desktop view (ugh).
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Switching to old.reddit works for me.
    - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
      It works for now; I wouldn't bet on it still working in 6 months. They've already killed i.reddit (the old non-shittified mobile web layout) "in an effort to streamline the experience and reduce the number of ways you can access Reddit on the web" [1]. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/11zso11/an_improved_web_experience/jdeicso/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/11zso11/an_improved...
- mindslight 3y ago
  The image "https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg" cannot be displayed because it contains errors. imgur has gone to shit as well. I'd imagine the trend is happening across most sites with surveillance as their business model. I also don't understand why discussion of this topic rarely touches on adversarial interoperability? Explicitly published and versioned APIs are a nicety. If companies are going to choke them, then why not just use the same API the web interface uses rather than paying the Danegeld?
  - guraf 3y ago
    That error happens because your browser is broken. I had the same issue because my image viewer assumed i.imgur would always serve images but they've recently been serving redirections and html (presumably to force people to see ads).
    - mindslight 3y ago
      The obtuse message seems to be Firefox's fault, but even with Chromium or wget I just get an HTTP 429. "Too many requests" from an IP I have exclusive use of, which hasn't tried to access imgur in days. No, the site is just broken because some business knob decided that breaking the site might help revenue.
- Zak 3y ago
  It's obvious they're trying to push the app as hard as they can get away with, but I'm confused as to how "unreviewed" content relates to the viewer using the web or the app. If anything, I'd expect the opposite; app stores sometimes object to spicy content.
- everdrive 3y ago
  >If you're seeing this message, that means JavaScript has been disabled on your browser, please enable JS to make Imgur work. But why would I need javascript to view a JPG?
  - arcanemachiner 3y ago
    1. Because their design is bad. 2. Because the number of people who disable JavaScript is a rounding error.
    - superkuh 3y ago
      Reddit's image hosting implemented blocking direct linking to image files and started substituting an HTML-ish page like imgur does a few months back. After much complaint they actually fixed it so that the image in the hijacked URL's HTML is a real image tag (<img src="ht..) with a real URL to the image file. For a while it had been a javascript defined custom html element (web components) instead of an <img>. So at least they did that right. imgur has been failing hard at this for ~5+ years.
    - sublinear 3y ago
      Their design is to control how the uploaded images are accessed and minimize the load on the backend. They don't want hotlinking so the image data doesn't have a permanent url. They only want the backend to be responsible for sending image data. This then requires an image viewer written in javascript. This is not a bad design. This is fulfilling business requirements successfully and efficiently. EDIT: efficient for the business not for your browser
      - Amezarak 3y ago
        It doesn't just require Javascript to load the image, it requires Javascript from 13 different domains (thanks, NoScript.) - imgur.com - btloader.com - ccgateway.net - cloudflare - facebook - google analytics - media-lab.ai - sascdn.com - scorecardresearch - stretchsquirrel - amazon adsystem - assembly exchange - run.app 3 of these, imgur, cloudflare, and medialab appear to be the minimum to load the image, and also seems to make everything on the page work (upvoting, commenting, etc.) I don't think it's efficiency even on their end they're looking for, its tracking and revenue maximization. Which is the reason I block Javascript. EDIT: actually it seems like you just need imgur and medialab unblocked, so just 2 of the 13.
- grishka 3y ago
  It's not the first time I'm seeing this and, having worked at places that have mobile apps and a ton of UGC, this is as illogical as things get. Mobile apps go into stores. App stores (especially the Apple app store) have many rules about UGC in apps. Including rules that may be incompatible with ToS of your service. Like the rule saying that NSFW content must not exist. On your website, on the other hand, you're the king. You set your own rules. There's no one to tell you what can and can't be done unless you're breaking laws so hard some government notices. So by virtue of that, there's usually LESS content available in the app than on the website. This, though? You have to look at this content in the app BECAUSE it is unreviewed? This is bonkers. This is completely backwards to everything my own experience tells me. This is just a lame excuse to make you install the app.
  - dimmke 3y ago
    I had this exact thought. I believe Reddit is the #1 app/service people point to when discussing how inconsistently this rule is applied (Reddit is simply too big to impose that kind of sanction on, even for Apple.)
- 93po 3y ago
  Reddit is making the case for why social media platforms need to be decentralized.
  - cellularmitosis 3y ago
    Or maybe just a non-venture-backed, privately owned company who isn’t beholden to shareholders and isn’t greedy? A “man and pop shop” but as a social media company.
    - 93po 3y ago
      Any owned platform is going to eventually transition to what you describe. Even nonprofits like Wikipedia wind up there.
davidktr 3y ago
Interesting interview with the developer of the most popular 3rd part app about the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypwgu1BpaO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypwgu1BpaO0
- itake 3y ago
  I am confused why he is upset. He has built a big business for himself on the back of Reddit. Reddit realizes that he is extracting value from their platform, since they aren’t able to harvest ad review, discourages registers, etc. Now Reddit wants rent to compensate for the lost ads. My guess Reddit also noticed most people using Apollo doesn’t create content, so Apollo users are just extracting value from Reddit. I’d like to see the hard numbers before having an opinion about who yo be upset with.
  - aneryx 3y ago
    > My guess Reddit also noticed most people using Apollo doesn’t create content How did you come to that conclusion?
    - itake 3y ago
      The two things that add value to Reddit platform is Content and cash. His app is not providing cash in the form of direct payments or advertisements. His app removes the aggressive account creation, the official app has. What value does this create for Reddit?
  - zhte415 3y ago
    ...or, has facilitated a large number of contributions to the site in terms of posts, comments, votes, views, community building and fluidity, and user stickiness. I can't see the relationship between Apollo and Reddit as singularly one sided.
    - anonred 3y ago
      Third party app users make up a tiny fraction of all Redditors, even assuming they’re more predisposed to posting or commenting.
acheron 3y ago
I think we've beaten this horse to death now.
- ehPReth 3y ago
  Apollo et al. are still under threat
  - bmarquez 3y ago
    Also, this article talks about a protest (which is new information, unlike previous HN submissions which only reported the changes.)
  - paulcole 3y ago
    Can’t they just charge an amount sufficient to cover their costs plus whatever profit they want and find out if they have a viable business?
  - anonred 3y ago
    The devs could spend more time optimizing their apps to make fewer requests rather than coordinating a strike and running to the press.
    - jyxent 3y ago
      It is not entirely clear how they can change to make less requests, or if the Reddit employee even compared apps fairly. There is a floor count of API calls needed. The Apollo developer tested the official Reddit app, and it makes a similar amount of API calls: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_update_enterprise_level_tier_for_large_scale/jmnj9xc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_upda...
      - anonred 3y ago
        Caching requests for feeds and comments would probably work. Reddit already does this at the server level with a low TTL. Benchmarking Apollo against the official app is not that useful since we don’t know for certain what APIs they use.
MarcoZavala 3y ago
[dead]
echelon 3y ago
Reddit is trying everything it can to salvage its IPO and rescue investors from being underwater. https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/01/fidelity-reddit-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/01/fidelity-reddit-valuation/
- ep103 3y ago
  The enshitification continues
- futhey 3y ago
  Ironically, Reddit doesn't have any interesting technology or a novel product design; it fails to compete as an ad-tech platform. They are just a community. Its value is the goodwill of the Reddit members, and that's it. Their revenue is Reddit awards and premium memberships. Acting against the interests of their own users will make the platform less valuable in the long-term if moderators and users lose trust in the platform.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    I think you've described all social media
- Magnusmaster 3y ago
  Reddit shouldn't even try to go IPO. It's basically a collection of forums. They should be a private company that makes a small profit hosting the forums instead of trying to be like Facebook
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Yeah but Conde Nast paid a bunch of money for it and now they want to cash in.
- primax 3y ago
  If they're doing that then why are they following the Tumblr playbook? Reducing access to pornography, making user hostile changes. Next thing they'll hire Marissa Meyer probably.
jhart 3y ago
[dead]
thih9 3y ago
Why is it such a problem to create a reddit clone? I’m assuming it’s the user base; most attempts I’ve seen are either empty or focus on non-mainstream and often controversial content. Are there ways to address that? Or is there something else?
- regecks 3y ago
  There is years and years and years of amazing content and community on Reddit. Rallying people around a replacement looks challenging. I am hopeful that it happens.
- hkt 3y ago
  Lemmy is pretty good, and is working towards full activitypub federation: https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ As for the usage.. there's some, but it is niche. The average user just won't move unless something goes from so-so-satisfactory to offensive. This is how mastodon got its (seemingly brief) user spike.
  - DoItToMe81 3y ago
    Lemmy's community is one of the worst I've seen. I'd stay away.
    - thih9 3y ago
      I’m not familiar with it. What’s bad about it?
    - nitia 3y ago
      I would have agreed in the past, but try it again now
- holler 3y ago
  There are dozens of Reddit clones, many have come and gone. In my eyes they don't work because they aren't novel or innovative. There's no reason to switch for the average user.
dubcee349 3y ago
[flagged]
- greggsy 3y ago
  With shitpost comments like this, perhaps, but I sure do hope it doesn’t. I’m genuinely interested to hear any views from HN’s admins around traffic observations, and what their plans might be to maintain the current level of sanity with respect to post and comment quality.
fallat 3y ago
Yes, let the Big Tech eat themselves. This is how progress is made.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  I can't see Reddit as "Big Tech". It's absolutely not in the same weight class as Google, Facebook/Meta, et al. Which is not to say it shouldn't be allowed to die, but if nothing else we should keep the true scale in mind.
  - mansion7 3y ago
    For not being in the same leagues as the big boys, they have outsized power to twist and shape political narratives, they know it and they gleefully exercise it. Consider the fact that their CEO (admittedly!) abused his admin privileges to fraudulently impersonate users, posting fake messages AS them, expressly to frame them. We would not know about it, and he might still be doing it today if not for some observant moderators. But nothing happened to him, at all - in fact the people and subreddit he hacked were themselves banned. THAT is power. THAT is what is meant by "big tech".
    - andrewflnr 3y ago
      It's power, but it's not what people mean by "big tech". That is still a lower tier of power than Google, Meta, or Microsoft. It's just not close. Consider how many congressional lobbyists they command, for instance, if not their effects on speech.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    Twitter market cap is $40B. Reddit's was $10B in their most recent funding round. It's "big" And even bigger if you look at user base/reach
    - guraf 3y ago
      > Twitter market cap is $40B. That might be what Elon paid for it but, if all the recent news articles are to be believed, it's now worth less than 1/4 that.
tapper 3y ago
This will fuck over a bunch of blind people. Using the site is just not doable with a screen reader. There has bin aps made for blind people to use and these will all stop working.
- xigoi 3y ago
  Could that be used as a case for a lawsuit?
  - tezgon 3y ago
    It'd be tough. Private websites are not required to comply to the ADA to the same extent as government domains or public-facing businesses. Maybe a case could be raised after their IPO.
29athrowaway 3y ago
Reddit is incredibly easy to clone. If they make it hard to build communities then those communities will flee overnight.
trevioustrouble 3y ago
They've had it coming for some time now and I will have great enjoyment in seeing them finally self-destruct when their time comes. They've been making mistake after mistake in the public free-speech sphere and nothing more than crumbs is left over from their inital base platform values. I do get that they need to adhere to the advertisement companies to earn money, but I have to say that I am immensely disgusted by their lack of integrity and virtues. Aaron Swartz will be happy to see them disappear from the public eye at last. And this will surely be in the right direction in that regard. I left that platform 7 years ago, haven't looked back.
- barkerja 3y ago
  I'm no fan of Reddit's management and the choices they've made in recent times, but I've yet to find anywhere else where I feel a true sense of community and source of knowledge. Reddit is one of the first places I search for almost anything; if I'm using a search engine, it's almost always to "site:reddit.com <my query>".
  - barkerja 3y ago
    I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted, but if you have a better source for reading and discussing: - TV/Movies - Gaming - Sports - Technology - Politics - Mixology - Lawncare - Home DYI Please tell me, because I am genuinely interested.
    - AJ007 3y ago
      I didn't downvote you, but one thing that surprises me that for all of the expert communities I follow and participate in, there are basically never links to Reddit threads. I do hear complaints from a few friends about how misleading/non-factual some of the comments are.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      No, you’re right, for a lot of topics it’s Reddit or Discord now and I don’t really care for the latter.
b33j0r 3y ago
I haven’t found reddit to be a reliable source of information for years. Go ahead and price themselves out. Even stack overflow doesn’t make me click “read more comments” to show full content of the thing I’m looking for. How many times have I read a comment about a library error, quick scrolled, and found myself now reading some crap about Harry Potter? Reddit is digg is slashdot (and even slashdot kept niche quality standards over time)
- hnick 3y ago
  I miss Slashdot's 2-dimensional voting system, and meta-moderation system. It seemed to work fairly well, it's just that the submissions got stale over time and the community smaller which is all that matters in the end for this kind of site.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    > it's just that the submissions got stale over time and the community smaller In my experience, the people in that community want to keep it small, and private. They don't want folks not like them, around. A good way to ensure that happens, is treat anyone that raises issues about the way they are treated, like crap. We won't stick around for abuse. The people that are gaming the system, will endure it as "cost of doing business," but the folks that want to get something from the community, won't stick around. I hardly ever ask any questions, anymore, and have absolutely no interest in visiting, just to answer them. At one time, I was quite enthusiastic about SO, but no more. The shine wore off that knob, long ago. They got the community they wanted.
  - AJ007 3y ago
    hn really ended up replacing Slashdot for me. Disappointingly, I took a look at /. in the past month and realized I hadn't even loaded it out in 4+ years. Ideal would be hn style sites, decentralized like forums, and managed by individual communities. Then, stick to a standard, unlike the old phpBB, vBulletin, etc, so there can be some level of access by API.
    - 3y ago
james_pm 3y ago
You know what? Screw Reddit. Let them kill the apps. It's the push we all need to realize that open platforms are what is needed.
- michelb 3y ago
  Where can we find these magical open platforms?
europeanNyan 3y ago
I don't care what happens to Reddit. The platform has been riddled by insane people since the great Tumblr Exodus and has been a strictly political space since Trump won the presidency. What I do care about is a possible Reddit Exodus and them coming to Hackernews to censor the living hell outside of their world view. Not every comment section has to spiral into "republicans bad", "boomers bad", "cars bad", etc.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Is it really that hard not to go into subreddits that are toxic? I never see any of this on Reddit because I stick to sci fi, Tech, and other non political subs
  - Karsteski 3y ago
    Yea I only stick to small gaming and programming related subreddits. Been doing this for years now, so my reddit experience has been reasonably pleasant. Every now and then I end up in a default or several million user subreddit. They are all cesspools.
pugworthy 3y ago
I'm guessing I'm not the only one who just uses the web and the official Reddit app, and basically is happy with it - no issues, no complaints. And so maybe only sees this as a business decision (good or bad) that's up to Reddit to make that will really not impact me at all.
- lawgimenez 3y ago
  I'm a Reddit Mod and no issues with their web and app. It's basically very hard to moderate with third party clients, so there is no choice but to use their official platforms.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - gandalfgreybeer 3y ago
    I've found Apollo's integration for moderation tools to be very well implemented.
- anonred 3y ago
  Third party apps are just missing too many features that I use like chat, voting in polls, live threads, etc. No idea whether that’s Reddit’s fault or the dev’s, but it’s a deal breaker regardless.
  - kitsunesoba 3y ago
    The APIs for those features were never made available to devs outside of Reddit, no doubt also a decision to drive users to the official site/app. If they had been made available, clients like Apollo would've been using them somewhere between a week and month after release.
- barkerja 3y ago
  I am the same, but I often find I am a purist. I prefer the native apps for most all services (Reddit, Twitter, etc.).
technion 3y ago
I'll just add to the comments here that various apps or using .old don't support reddit nfts, which reddit has repeatedly said is a current business priority.
jahlove 3y ago
Here's a list of subreddits that have gone private or have announced plans to do so on June 12. (self.ModCoord): https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/13zr68f https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/13zr68f
poomer 3y ago
I had a job interview with Reddit last year for a modeling related position and it was one of the strangest and most user-hostile interviews I've ever had, even as someone who's spent many years working for SV adtech companies. All product interviews were laser focused on maximizing a few specific advertiser revenue metrics, anytime I brought up effects on the consumer it would immediately get dismissed and I'd be asked to refocus on advertiser effects. My guess is their leadership is pressuring the company hard to boost their numbers, no matter the long term cost.
- throw_m239339 3y ago
  > a few specific advertiser revenue metrics, Can you you be specific about the metrics you were asked to boost? > My guess is their leadership is pressuring the company hard to boost their numbers, no matter the long term cost. The leadership just want to cash out quickly with the IPO, then it will be someone else's problem.
  - poomer 3y ago
    I do not remember the specific metrics, but there was a big focus on the fact that their CPC/CPM/etc was lower than alternative social media, meaning advertisers put less value on clicks/views from Reddit than other platforms. And they believed this was because their ads were not targeted enough since there was (is?) no fancy ML models behind it, advertisers could just chose some basic rules for what subreddits they want to target. To solve this they were building out a huge ad relevancy team to target ads at users using posting history, similar to Meta/LinkedIn/etc.
    - dclowd9901 3y ago
      This jibes with my experience. I was looking to come in on a web platform team there but they tried to shift me over to an ad focused team. I said “no dice” and parted ways. Ironically I now work for an email marketing platform company, but it’s great work and we just provide the tools to annoy people. It’s our customers that actually do it (I know, I know).
    - 3y ago
0xcde4c3db 3y ago
Considering the company's apparent lack of concern over the intense backlash from moderators, I suspect that they're not just planning to kill third-party apps, they're planning to eventually kill user-managed subreddits as well, i.e. bringing ownership/moderation of the most popular / highest revenue subreddits in-house (employee mods able to use some of the internal admin tools) and making the rest some mixture of read-only and quarantined.
- Banditoz 3y ago
  Could they realistically do this? Aren't user-modded niche subs a big thing? If all that's left is a handful of subreddits curated by reddit themselves is the site even the same? Why would anyone want to visit at that point?
  - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
    I'm not suggesting at all that Reddit as we know it would survive the transformation, rather that Reddit management probably has reasons to think that the transformation is worth the fallout. At this point, I think their "ideal user" is basically the opposite of people who cut their teeth on classic Reddit: the person who doesn't use ad blockers, scrolls the default subs for hours, rarely posts problematic content, and never gets angry at the admins.
  - atomicnumber3 3y ago
    I would wager that 90% or more of their revenue comes from the generic TikTok meme slurry of r/all and the front page. I think some big % of their users aren't even signed in. So the long tail of hobby subs are probably just noise and operational burden. So if they're wanting to IPO, they probably want to cut costs and focus hard on ad revenue. I'm guessing banning nsfw stuff is probably in the works too.
    - russelg 3y ago
      Yep, their API won't be serving NSFW content anymore.
sublinear 3y ago
Oh I wish Reddit killed itself to be honest. Maybe this is the first step.
- altisome 3y ago
  I agree 100%
mvdtnz 3y ago
Stop tending other peoples' gardens.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  I'd agree if it weren't so difficult to cultivate a garden of your own nice enough for others to want to inhabit and help tend.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Running a forum is mainly tedious not hard I believe.
zmmmmm 3y ago
Reddit was my last hope for a non-user-hostile social network. The biggest problem with the media's complete abandoment of all principle in continuing to treat Twitter as a high integrity platform is the message it reflects to all other social media platforms : your users are captives. They can't leave. Once you have enough of a network effect going, no amount of disreputable behaviour or abuse is too much. In my view, it's becoming imperative that Twitter (and now Reddit) actually fail to save the internet. (You could put Facebook there too but I think these days it's actually lately been more benign than the other two).
- Zak 3y ago
  It may be impossible to have a situation where a for-profit company makes a service where the users are not the paying customers and users are treated well indefinitely. Reddit has experimented with a paid premium service, but they couldn't paywall any core functionality because having as many users as they can get is critical to their success. It's probably a mistake to rely on things like that for socialization, communication, or creating communities. I would like to see federated technologies take off; there are at least two Reddit-alikes using ActivityPub, Kbin and Lemmy, which seem to federate with each other smoothly. They're currently much farther from critical mass than Mastodon (though they sort of federate with that too).
  - imiric 3y ago
    > Reddit has experimented with a paid premium service, but they couldn't paywall any core functionality because having as many users as they can get is critical to their success. Businesses can certainly be "successful" with premium services, especially at Reddit's scale. What's happening there is textbook greed, where leadership chases hockey stick growth. At this point they must understand that this will be the downfall of the service, yet they're intentionally willing to make that sacrifice for short-term gains. Good riddance. There are plenty of other services that can replace Reddit. The circle of the web.
- jacooper 3y ago
  That's why the digital markets act will be devastating when it will apply to social media apps, the first target is chat apps, next social media platforms.
emodendroket 3y ago
How am I supposed to stop them? Reddit is not a public resource. The suggested method of “complaining” is unlikely to work since it’s not like they don’t know that users of third-party applications don’t like the change; they’re just betting not many will leave over it (probably correctly).
opportune 3y ago
Like many of us I’ve been using Reddit for a very long time (over 10 years) and am saddened by how much worse it’s got since the beginning. I also think they’ve greatly enshittified their default clients to push people to worse clients and hate that - they could have just given people a reason to want to use the new clients. But I have an unpopular opinion: it’s totally ok, and I mean morally ok, for Reddit to charge for API access to this extent. 3rd party app usage incurs direct operational costs on Reddit, requires them to support an API with clients outside their control (and further, if a client uses the API inefficiently, Reddit has a lot more overhead in working to reduce that), and prevents supporting those efforts through advertising monetization. The actual API cost is not wholly unreasonable. Reddit shouldn’t be expected to work for free. That is not to excuse all the other terrible dark patterns they’ve implemented. This wouldn’t even really be a problem at all if they had incentivized their own clients by making them better, what with all the funding and employees they have, and the ability to make backend changes to accommodate client changes. They’ve been using entirely “stick” tactics to encourage their crap clients instead of “carrot”. Even for people like me who don’t want to use the app at all, if they hadn’t made the default mobile web client (which I still use) so annoying and restrictive, probably Apollo would have much fewer users. Basically, this is only a problem because they have given users no reason to use their official clients besides artificial annoyances
- emodendroket 3y ago
  I agree with much of what you say here, but what could they really do to make the app that appealing without the Web site sucking?
  - opportune 3y ago
    For starters they could display media like videos in ways that aren’t possible (or much harder) to do on the Web, that alone could be huge for the core user base that just wants to look at pictures and videos. Presumably some users would prefer the app because you’re always signed in. You could configure it to send you push notifications for replies or something. They could probably figure out a better way to render deeply nested comment threads too - basically make the experience smoother without pageloads or visual clutter, which some users might like. Any sort of game or seasonal “interesting” thing like /r/place could very well be mobile-only At the very least, they can get the default mobile version to a good state, remove all the artificial blockers and nags they’ve put in place, set it to maintenance mode from a product perspective, then only add UX improvements and new features to the mobile apps. The problem is they don’t even seem to make UX improvements most of the time… just UX annoyances
hattmall 3y ago
So can we go ahead and make a backup of Reddit now, does this exist?
tagyro 3y ago
I'd like to offer a different perspective: let reddit kill 3rd party apps. reddit has only gotten worse in the past years and even if we manage to somehow "coerce" them into supporting 3rd party apps, the core issues will remain and will re-appear under a different form. We've had forums before and centralising *all* into one place never seemed like a good idea. Let's simply stop supporting user-hostile companies. (yes, I know my comment might be perceived as "simplistic" or "narrow", but we, the users, made reddit what it is today - we also have the power and duty to undo that)
- lannisterstark 3y ago
  >yes, I know my comment might be perceived as "simplistic" or "narrow" Not really. Sometimes 'simplistic' comments contain the most bluntly valuable insights :)
gloosx 3y ago
They don't stand a chance in competition against cheaper ways of getting data from them. In the end, they still give all the data for free in the form of HTML pages.
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
Please let reddit go. This needs to happen.
darthrupert 3y ago
No, please, let Reddit kill itself. We have better options now, like Lemmy (at least if you stay away from the commie and nazi servers). The biggest thing they're lacking is users, and every time the big ones do something dumb, Lemmy servers get a bunch of new users.
nlh 3y ago
I know I'm in the minority here on HN, but....look: I feel bad for the developers of the various 3rd-party apps that this is happening. Having the rug pulled from your livlihood just absolutely sucks. Having said that: Can you really blame Reddit here? Reddit is company which is trying to make money. One of the ways it does that is by building its own app and selling its own ads and showing those ads on its app which it controls and in the way it wants. Whether or not we agree, and whether or not we think it's the right move, you can't honestly be surprised by this can you? Facebook doesn't have a 3rd-party client. Twitter stopped having 3rd party clients. This is how the game is played. The mobile app is fine. I use it every day. Is Apollo better? Maybe? Will most of Reddit's users care about this? Doubtful.
- x86x87 3y ago
  > This is how the game is played Is it? Twitter had a golden opportunity in its early stages to become the message bus of social media before it killed 3rd party apps. Looking at twitter today I can say for a fact that stunned their growth and now they are just a zombie. Monetizing your service doesn't have to mean killimg 3rd party app. Also, keep in mind that the users of Reddit are what makes Reddit Reddit. You fuck with them and you'll end up with a ghost town. How are you going to monetize a ghost town?
- doctaj 3y ago
  Couldn’t they just send their ads to the third party app feed APIs and require that third party apps show them and link to buy rewards?
- ryandrake 3y ago
  You could have written the same thing to explain Microsoft bundling IE and crushing competing 3rd parties back in 1999. Can you really blame Microsoft here? Microsoft is company which is trying to make money. One of the ways it does that is by building its own browser and locking users into its platform which it controls and in the way it wants. EDIT: And sorry, I know you're not defending or excusing Reddit here. My comment is just about how we sometimes mistake "what a company obviously will do" for "what standard a company should be held to"
michelb 3y ago
Since this is a thing with VC-lead platforms, how could this be done different, while 'almost' maximising revenue? Something that pays for cost + healthy extra margin. What is a path for something like Reddit, supporting 3rd party apps, obviously showing ads in whatever feed gets served, but also being able change where and how ads are shown, or change monetisation strategy? I see a lot of handwavey and simplistic remarks, but how exactly, then? Would a user subscription work? How much would you pay for an ad-free reddit per month? Probably can't be less than $20. Would it be viable? If not, how are these platforms ever going to exist? Or is it never going to work and do we have to go back to crappy forums and discords and check 15 separate places? (RSS? never heard of her) replace Reddit with whatever comes next that shows your favourite niche content you can't find elsewhere, all in one place.

372 points by netfortius 3y ago

I think Reddit's executives are implementing these changes to create amazing revenue forecasts out of thin air and sell the company for the next sucker. Maybe Meta or Microsoft will buy Reddit out and ruin it further.

dimmke 3y ago

Reddit, making a blatantly obvious case for why third party apps are necessary on a post about stopping third party apps: https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg

ok_dad 3y ago
Yep, nearly any important posts seem to be labeled as NSFW so you won’t be able to see them other than how Reddit wants to have you see them. This is the future we paid for with enormous amounts of VC money.
- dimmke 3y ago
  I have Reddit posts auto open in Apollo but specifically went to this one in browser to see how bad it’s gotten. It’s not just an annoying pop up. You literally cannot use most of Reddit in a mobile browser now. And I came from the link in this post which was supposed to go to old.reddit That’s how dire things are. I have been a reddit user since 2009, almost 15 years. But I’m not a nostalgic person. As awful as it has gotten it’s still the place where most discussion on the internet happens (and has happened for over a decade.) That can’t just be replaced overnight. They’re sitting on a huuuuge amount of content that is fully indexed by search engines too. This would be a huge blow to the internet in general I think. All so they can have a Groupon style IPO.
  - andrewflnr 3y ago
    old.reddit.com is tolerable on mobile.
puppable 3y ago
I believe I encountered a situation like this before, and what it really means is that you just have to log in to see it, and Reddit is just lying to you. I may be wrong in this case, though.
- ehPReth 3y ago
  seems to work when being logged in on the mobile site. they're just really really damn pushy for that stupid app
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    i.reddit.com in that case Edit: oh no, that seems to just point to the desktop old interface now. Weird.
    - squeaky-clean 3y ago
      About 2 months ago they killed the i and .compact versions of the site.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        Sad :( I rarely use it on mobile and I didn't know this yet. I bet it's only a matter of time before old goes
    - sbmthakur 3y ago
      I get the (new) mobile site with it.
- jwalton 3y ago
  What it really means is that you accidentally went to www.reddit.com, and you should have gone to old.reddit.com.
  - redeux 3y ago
    You can also request the desktop version of the site.
batch12 3y ago
I have bypassed that in the past on mobile by switching to desktop view (ugh).
- Spivak 3y ago
  Switching to old.reddit works for me.
  - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
    It works for now; I wouldn't bet on it still working in 6 months. They've already killed i.reddit (the old non-shittified mobile web layout) "in an effort to streamline the experience and reduce the number of ways you can access Reddit on the web" [1]. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/11zso11/an_improved_web_experience/jdeicso/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/11zso11/an_improved...
mindslight 3y ago
The image "https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/3yEJ4oX.jpg" cannot be displayed because it contains errors. imgur has gone to shit as well. I'd imagine the trend is happening across most sites with surveillance as their business model. I also don't understand why discussion of this topic rarely touches on adversarial interoperability? Explicitly published and versioned APIs are a nicety. If companies are going to choke them, then why not just use the same API the web interface uses rather than paying the Danegeld?
- guraf 3y ago
  That error happens because your browser is broken. I had the same issue because my image viewer assumed i.imgur would always serve images but they've recently been serving redirections and html (presumably to force people to see ads).
  - mindslight 3y ago
    The obtuse message seems to be Firefox's fault, but even with Chromium or wget I just get an HTTP 429. "Too many requests" from an IP I have exclusive use of, which hasn't tried to access imgur in days. No, the site is just broken because some business knob decided that breaking the site might help revenue.
Zak 3y ago
It's obvious they're trying to push the app as hard as they can get away with, but I'm confused as to how "unreviewed" content relates to the viewer using the web or the app. If anything, I'd expect the opposite; app stores sometimes object to spicy content.
everdrive 3y ago
>If you're seeing this message, that means JavaScript has been disabled on your browser, please enable JS to make Imgur work. But why would I need javascript to view a JPG?
- arcanemachiner 3y ago
  1. Because their design is bad. 2. Because the number of people who disable JavaScript is a rounding error.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Reddit's image hosting implemented blocking direct linking to image files and started substituting an HTML-ish page like imgur does a few months back. After much complaint they actually fixed it so that the image in the hijacked URL's HTML is a real image tag (<img src="ht..) with a real URL to the image file. For a while it had been a javascript defined custom html element (web components) instead of an <img>. So at least they did that right. imgur has been failing hard at this for ~5+ years.
  - sublinear 3y ago
    Their design is to control how the uploaded images are accessed and minimize the load on the backend. They don't want hotlinking so the image data doesn't have a permanent url. They only want the backend to be responsible for sending image data. This then requires an image viewer written in javascript. This is not a bad design. This is fulfilling business requirements successfully and efficiently. EDIT: efficient for the business not for your browser
    - Amezarak 3y ago
      It doesn't just require Javascript to load the image, it requires Javascript from 13 different domains (thanks, NoScript.) - imgur.com - btloader.com - ccgateway.net - cloudflare - facebook - google analytics - media-lab.ai - sascdn.com - scorecardresearch - stretchsquirrel - amazon adsystem - assembly exchange - run.app 3 of these, imgur, cloudflare, and medialab appear to be the minimum to load the image, and also seems to make everything on the page work (upvoting, commenting, etc.) I don't think it's efficiency even on their end they're looking for, its tracking and revenue maximization. Which is the reason I block Javascript. EDIT: actually it seems like you just need imgur and medialab unblocked, so just 2 of the 13.
grishka 3y ago
It's not the first time I'm seeing this and, having worked at places that have mobile apps and a ton of UGC, this is as illogical as things get. Mobile apps go into stores. App stores (especially the Apple app store) have many rules about UGC in apps. Including rules that may be incompatible with ToS of your service. Like the rule saying that NSFW content must not exist. On your website, on the other hand, you're the king. You set your own rules. There's no one to tell you what can and can't be done unless you're breaking laws so hard some government notices. So by virtue of that, there's usually LESS content available in the app than on the website. This, though? You have to look at this content in the app BECAUSE it is unreviewed? This is bonkers. This is completely backwards to everything my own experience tells me. This is just a lame excuse to make you install the app.
- dimmke 3y ago
  I had this exact thought. I believe Reddit is the #1 app/service people point to when discussing how inconsistently this rule is applied (Reddit is simply too big to impose that kind of sanction on, even for Apple.)
93po 3y ago
Reddit is making the case for why social media platforms need to be decentralized.
- cellularmitosis 3y ago
  Or maybe just a non-venture-backed, privately owned company who isn’t beholden to shareholders and isn’t greedy? A “man and pop shop” but as a social media company.
  - 93po 3y ago
    Any owned platform is going to eventually transition to what you describe. Even nonprofits like Wikipedia wind up there.

davidktr 3y ago

Interesting interview with the developer of the most popular 3rd part app about the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypwgu1BpaO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypwgu1BpaO0

itake 3y ago
I am confused why he is upset. He has built a big business for himself on the back of Reddit. Reddit realizes that he is extracting value from their platform, since they aren’t able to harvest ad review, discourages registers, etc. Now Reddit wants rent to compensate for the lost ads. My guess Reddit also noticed most people using Apollo doesn’t create content, so Apollo users are just extracting value from Reddit. I’d like to see the hard numbers before having an opinion about who yo be upset with.
- aneryx 3y ago
  > My guess Reddit also noticed most people using Apollo doesn’t create content How did you come to that conclusion?
  - itake 3y ago
    The two things that add value to Reddit platform is Content and cash. His app is not providing cash in the form of direct payments or advertisements. His app removes the aggressive account creation, the official app has. What value does this create for Reddit?
- zhte415 3y ago
  ...or, has facilitated a large number of contributions to the site in terms of posts, comments, votes, views, community building and fluidity, and user stickiness. I can't see the relationship between Apollo and Reddit as singularly one sided.
  - anonred 3y ago
    Third party app users make up a tiny fraction of all Redditors, even assuming they’re more predisposed to posting or commenting.

acheron 3y ago

I think we've beaten this horse to death now.

ehPReth 3y ago
Apollo et al. are still under threat
- bmarquez 3y ago
  Also, this article talks about a protest (which is new information, unlike previous HN submissions which only reported the changes.)
- paulcole 3y ago
  Can’t they just charge an amount sufficient to cover their costs plus whatever profit they want and find out if they have a viable business?
- anonred 3y ago
  The devs could spend more time optimizing their apps to make fewer requests rather than coordinating a strike and running to the press.
  - jyxent 3y ago
    It is not entirely clear how they can change to make less requests, or if the Reddit employee even compared apps fairly. There is a floor count of API calls needed. The Apollo developer tested the official Reddit app, and it makes a similar amount of API calls: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_update_enterprise_level_tier_for_large_scale/jmnj9xc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_upda...
    - anonred 3y ago
      Caching requests for feeds and comments would probably work. Reddit already does this at the server level with a low TTL. Benchmarking Apollo against the official app is not that useful since we don’t know for certain what APIs they use.

MarcoZavala 3y ago

[dead]

echelon 3y ago

Reddit is trying everything it can to salvage its IPO and rescue investors from being underwater. https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/01/fidelity-reddit-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/01/fidelity-reddit-valuation/

ep103 3y ago
The enshitification continues
futhey 3y ago
Ironically, Reddit doesn't have any interesting technology or a novel product design; it fails to compete as an ad-tech platform. They are just a community. Its value is the goodwill of the Reddit members, and that's it. Their revenue is Reddit awards and premium memberships. Acting against the interests of their own users will make the platform less valuable in the long-term if moderators and users lose trust in the platform.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  I think you've described all social media
Magnusmaster 3y ago
Reddit shouldn't even try to go IPO. It's basically a collection of forums. They should be a private company that makes a small profit hosting the forums instead of trying to be like Facebook
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Yeah but Conde Nast paid a bunch of money for it and now they want to cash in.
primax 3y ago
If they're doing that then why are they following the Tumblr playbook? Reducing access to pornography, making user hostile changes. Next thing they'll hire Marissa Meyer probably.

jhart 3y ago

[dead]

thih9 3y ago

Why is it such a problem to create a reddit clone? I’m assuming it’s the user base; most attempts I’ve seen are either empty or focus on non-mainstream and often controversial content. Are there ways to address that? Or is there something else?

regecks 3y ago
There is years and years and years of amazing content and community on Reddit. Rallying people around a replacement looks challenging. I am hopeful that it happens.
hkt 3y ago
Lemmy is pretty good, and is working towards full activitypub federation: https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ As for the usage.. there's some, but it is niche. The average user just won't move unless something goes from so-so-satisfactory to offensive. This is how mastodon got its (seemingly brief) user spike.
- DoItToMe81 3y ago
  Lemmy's community is one of the worst I've seen. I'd stay away.
  - thih9 3y ago
    I’m not familiar with it. What’s bad about it?
  - nitia 3y ago
    I would have agreed in the past, but try it again now
holler 3y ago
There are dozens of Reddit clones, many have come and gone. In my eyes they don't work because they aren't novel or innovative. There's no reason to switch for the average user.

dubcee349 3y ago

[flagged]

greggsy 3y ago
With shitpost comments like this, perhaps, but I sure do hope it doesn’t. I’m genuinely interested to hear any views from HN’s admins around traffic observations, and what their plans might be to maintain the current level of sanity with respect to post and comment quality.

fallat 3y ago

Yes, let the Big Tech eat themselves. This is how progress is made.

andrewflnr 3y ago
I can't see Reddit as "Big Tech". It's absolutely not in the same weight class as Google, Facebook/Meta, et al. Which is not to say it shouldn't be allowed to die, but if nothing else we should keep the true scale in mind.
- mansion7 3y ago
  For not being in the same leagues as the big boys, they have outsized power to twist and shape political narratives, they know it and they gleefully exercise it. Consider the fact that their CEO (admittedly!) abused his admin privileges to fraudulently impersonate users, posting fake messages AS them, expressly to frame them. We would not know about it, and he might still be doing it today if not for some observant moderators. But nothing happened to him, at all - in fact the people and subreddit he hacked were themselves banned. THAT is power. THAT is what is meant by "big tech".
  - andrewflnr 3y ago
    It's power, but it's not what people mean by "big tech". That is still a lower tier of power than Google, Meta, or Microsoft. It's just not close. Consider how many congressional lobbyists they command, for instance, if not their effects on speech.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Twitter market cap is $40B. Reddit's was $10B in their most recent funding round. It's "big" And even bigger if you look at user base/reach
  - guraf 3y ago
    > Twitter market cap is $40B. That might be what Elon paid for it but, if all the recent news articles are to be believed, it's now worth less than 1/4 that.

tapper 3y ago

This will fuck over a bunch of blind people. Using the site is just not doable with a screen reader. There has bin aps made for blind people to use and these will all stop working.

xigoi 3y ago
Could that be used as a case for a lawsuit?
- tezgon 3y ago
  It'd be tough. Private websites are not required to comply to the ADA to the same extent as government domains or public-facing businesses. Maybe a case could be raised after their IPO.

29athrowaway 3y ago

Reddit is incredibly easy to clone. If they make it hard to build communities then those communities will flee overnight.

trevioustrouble 3y ago

They've had it coming for some time now and I will have great enjoyment in seeing them finally self-destruct when their time comes. They've been making mistake after mistake in the public free-speech sphere and nothing more than crumbs is left over from their inital base platform values. I do get that they need to adhere to the advertisement companies to earn money, but I have to say that I am immensely disgusted by their lack of integrity and virtues. Aaron Swartz will be happy to see them disappear from the public eye at last. And this will surely be in the right direction in that regard. I left that platform 7 years ago, haven't looked back.

barkerja 3y ago
I'm no fan of Reddit's management and the choices they've made in recent times, but I've yet to find anywhere else where I feel a true sense of community and source of knowledge. Reddit is one of the first places I search for almost anything; if I'm using a search engine, it's almost always to "site:reddit.com <my query>".
- barkerja 3y ago
  I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted, but if you have a better source for reading and discussing: - TV/Movies - Gaming - Sports - Technology - Politics - Mixology - Lawncare - Home DYI Please tell me, because I am genuinely interested.
  - AJ007 3y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but one thing that surprises me that for all of the expert communities I follow and participate in, there are basically never links to Reddit threads. I do hear complaints from a few friends about how misleading/non-factual some of the comments are.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    No, you’re right, for a lot of topics it’s Reddit or Discord now and I don’t really care for the latter.

b33j0r 3y ago

I haven’t found reddit to be a reliable source of information for years. Go ahead and price themselves out. Even stack overflow doesn’t make me click “read more comments” to show full content of the thing I’m looking for. How many times have I read a comment about a library error, quick scrolled, and found myself now reading some crap about Harry Potter? Reddit is digg is slashdot (and even slashdot kept niche quality standards over time)

hnick 3y ago
I miss Slashdot's 2-dimensional voting system, and meta-moderation system. It seemed to work fairly well, it's just that the submissions got stale over time and the community smaller which is all that matters in the end for this kind of site.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  > it's just that the submissions got stale over time and the community smaller In my experience, the people in that community want to keep it small, and private. They don't want folks not like them, around. A good way to ensure that happens, is treat anyone that raises issues about the way they are treated, like crap. We won't stick around for abuse. The people that are gaming the system, will endure it as "cost of doing business," but the folks that want to get something from the community, won't stick around. I hardly ever ask any questions, anymore, and have absolutely no interest in visiting, just to answer them. At one time, I was quite enthusiastic about SO, but no more. The shine wore off that knob, long ago. They got the community they wanted.
- AJ007 3y ago
  hn really ended up replacing Slashdot for me. Disappointingly, I took a look at /. in the past month and realized I hadn't even loaded it out in 4+ years. Ideal would be hn style sites, decentralized like forums, and managed by individual communities. Then, stick to a standard, unlike the old phpBB, vBulletin, etc, so there can be some level of access by API.
  - 3y ago

james_pm 3y ago

You know what? Screw Reddit. Let them kill the apps. It's the push we all need to realize that open platforms are what is needed.

michelb 3y ago
Where can we find these magical open platforms?

europeanNyan 3y ago

I don't care what happens to Reddit. The platform has been riddled by insane people since the great Tumblr Exodus and has been a strictly political space since Trump won the presidency. What I do care about is a possible Reddit Exodus and them coming to Hackernews to censor the living hell outside of their world view. Not every comment section has to spiral into "republicans bad", "boomers bad", "cars bad", etc.

scarface_74 3y ago
Is it really that hard not to go into subreddits that are toxic? I never see any of this on Reddit because I stick to sci fi, Tech, and other non political subs
- Karsteski 3y ago
  Yea I only stick to small gaming and programming related subreddits. Been doing this for years now, so my reddit experience has been reasonably pleasant. Every now and then I end up in a default or several million user subreddit. They are all cesspools.

pugworthy 3y ago

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who just uses the web and the official Reddit app, and basically is happy with it - no issues, no complaints. And so maybe only sees this as a business decision (good or bad) that's up to Reddit to make that will really not impact me at all.

lawgimenez 3y ago
I'm a Reddit Mod and no issues with their web and app. It's basically very hard to moderate with third party clients, so there is no choice but to use their official platforms.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gandalfgreybeer 3y ago
  I've found Apollo's integration for moderation tools to be very well implemented.
anonred 3y ago
Third party apps are just missing too many features that I use like chat, voting in polls, live threads, etc. No idea whether that’s Reddit’s fault or the dev’s, but it’s a deal breaker regardless.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  The APIs for those features were never made available to devs outside of Reddit, no doubt also a decision to drive users to the official site/app. If they had been made available, clients like Apollo would've been using them somewhere between a week and month after release.
barkerja 3y ago
I am the same, but I often find I am a purist. I prefer the native apps for most all services (Reddit, Twitter, etc.).

technion 3y ago

I'll just add to the comments here that various apps or using .old don't support reddit nfts, which reddit has repeatedly said is a current business priority.

jahlove 3y ago

Here's a list of subreddits that have gone private or have announced plans to do so on June 12. (self.ModCoord): https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/13zr68f https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/13zr68f

poomer 3y ago

I had a job interview with Reddit last year for a modeling related position and it was one of the strangest and most user-hostile interviews I've ever had, even as someone who's spent many years working for SV adtech companies. All product interviews were laser focused on maximizing a few specific advertiser revenue metrics, anytime I brought up effects on the consumer it would immediately get dismissed and I'd be asked to refocus on advertiser effects. My guess is their leadership is pressuring the company hard to boost their numbers, no matter the long term cost.

throw_m239339 3y ago
> a few specific advertiser revenue metrics, Can you you be specific about the metrics you were asked to boost? > My guess is their leadership is pressuring the company hard to boost their numbers, no matter the long term cost. The leadership just want to cash out quickly with the IPO, then it will be someone else's problem.
- poomer 3y ago
  I do not remember the specific metrics, but there was a big focus on the fact that their CPC/CPM/etc was lower than alternative social media, meaning advertisers put less value on clicks/views from Reddit than other platforms. And they believed this was because their ads were not targeted enough since there was (is?) no fancy ML models behind it, advertisers could just chose some basic rules for what subreddits they want to target. To solve this they were building out a huge ad relevancy team to target ads at users using posting history, similar to Meta/LinkedIn/etc.
  - dclowd9901 3y ago
    This jibes with my experience. I was looking to come in on a web platform team there but they tried to shift me over to an ad focused team. I said “no dice” and parted ways. Ironically I now work for an email marketing platform company, but it’s great work and we just provide the tools to annoy people. It’s our customers that actually do it (I know, I know).
  - 3y ago

0xcde4c3db 3y ago

Considering the company's apparent lack of concern over the intense backlash from moderators, I suspect that they're not just planning to kill third-party apps, they're planning to eventually kill user-managed subreddits as well, i.e. bringing ownership/moderation of the most popular / highest revenue subreddits in-house (employee mods able to use some of the internal admin tools) and making the rest some mixture of read-only and quarantined.

Banditoz 3y ago
Could they realistically do this? Aren't user-modded niche subs a big thing? If all that's left is a handful of subreddits curated by reddit themselves is the site even the same? Why would anyone want to visit at that point?
- 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  I'm not suggesting at all that Reddit as we know it would survive the transformation, rather that Reddit management probably has reasons to think that the transformation is worth the fallout. At this point, I think their "ideal user" is basically the opposite of people who cut their teeth on classic Reddit: the person who doesn't use ad blockers, scrolls the default subs for hours, rarely posts problematic content, and never gets angry at the admins.
- atomicnumber3 3y ago
  I would wager that 90% or more of their revenue comes from the generic TikTok meme slurry of r/all and the front page. I think some big % of their users aren't even signed in. So the long tail of hobby subs are probably just noise and operational burden. So if they're wanting to IPO, they probably want to cut costs and focus hard on ad revenue. I'm guessing banning nsfw stuff is probably in the works too.
  - russelg 3y ago
    Yep, their API won't be serving NSFW content anymore.

sublinear 3y ago

Oh I wish Reddit killed itself to be honest. Maybe this is the first step.

altisome 3y ago
I agree 100%

mvdtnz 3y ago

Stop tending other peoples' gardens.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
I'd agree if it weren't so difficult to cultivate a garden of your own nice enough for others to want to inhabit and help tend.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Running a forum is mainly tedious not hard I believe.

zmmmmm 3y ago

Reddit was my last hope for a non-user-hostile social network. The biggest problem with the media's complete abandoment of all principle in continuing to treat Twitter as a high integrity platform is the message it reflects to all other social media platforms : your users are captives. They can't leave. Once you have enough of a network effect going, no amount of disreputable behaviour or abuse is too much. In my view, it's becoming imperative that Twitter (and now Reddit) actually fail to save the internet. (You could put Facebook there too but I think these days it's actually lately been more benign than the other two).

Zak 3y ago
It may be impossible to have a situation where a for-profit company makes a service where the users are not the paying customers and users are treated well indefinitely. Reddit has experimented with a paid premium service, but they couldn't paywall any core functionality because having as many users as they can get is critical to their success. It's probably a mistake to rely on things like that for socialization, communication, or creating communities. I would like to see federated technologies take off; there are at least two Reddit-alikes using ActivityPub, Kbin and Lemmy, which seem to federate with each other smoothly. They're currently much farther from critical mass than Mastodon (though they sort of federate with that too).
- imiric 3y ago
  > Reddit has experimented with a paid premium service, but they couldn't paywall any core functionality because having as many users as they can get is critical to their success. Businesses can certainly be "successful" with premium services, especially at Reddit's scale. What's happening there is textbook greed, where leadership chases hockey stick growth. At this point they must understand that this will be the downfall of the service, yet they're intentionally willing to make that sacrifice for short-term gains. Good riddance. There are plenty of other services that can replace Reddit. The circle of the web.
jacooper 3y ago
That's why the digital markets act will be devastating when it will apply to social media apps, the first target is chat apps, next social media platforms.

emodendroket 3y ago

How am I supposed to stop them? Reddit is not a public resource. The suggested method of “complaining” is unlikely to work since it’s not like they don’t know that users of third-party applications don’t like the change; they’re just betting not many will leave over it (probably correctly).

opportune 3y ago

Like many of us I’ve been using Reddit for a very long time (over 10 years) and am saddened by how much worse it’s got since the beginning. I also think they’ve greatly enshittified their default clients to push people to worse clients and hate that - they could have just given people a reason to want to use the new clients. But I have an unpopular opinion: it’s totally ok, and I mean morally ok, for Reddit to charge for API access to this extent. 3rd party app usage incurs direct operational costs on Reddit, requires them to support an API with clients outside their control (and further, if a client uses the API inefficiently, Reddit has a lot more overhead in working to reduce that), and prevents supporting those efforts through advertising monetization. The actual API cost is not wholly unreasonable. Reddit shouldn’t be expected to work for free. That is not to excuse all the other terrible dark patterns they’ve implemented. This wouldn’t even really be a problem at all if they had incentivized their own clients by making them better, what with all the funding and employees they have, and the ability to make backend changes to accommodate client changes. They’ve been using entirely “stick” tactics to encourage their crap clients instead of “carrot”. Even for people like me who don’t want to use the app at all, if they hadn’t made the default mobile web client (which I still use) so annoying and restrictive, probably Apollo would have much fewer users. Basically, this is only a problem because they have given users no reason to use their official clients besides artificial annoyances

emodendroket 3y ago
I agree with much of what you say here, but what could they really do to make the app that appealing without the Web site sucking?
- opportune 3y ago
  For starters they could display media like videos in ways that aren’t possible (or much harder) to do on the Web, that alone could be huge for the core user base that just wants to look at pictures and videos. Presumably some users would prefer the app because you’re always signed in. You could configure it to send you push notifications for replies or something. They could probably figure out a better way to render deeply nested comment threads too - basically make the experience smoother without pageloads or visual clutter, which some users might like. Any sort of game or seasonal “interesting” thing like /r/place could very well be mobile-only At the very least, they can get the default mobile version to a good state, remove all the artificial blockers and nags they’ve put in place, set it to maintenance mode from a product perspective, then only add UX improvements and new features to the mobile apps. The problem is they don’t even seem to make UX improvements most of the time… just UX annoyances

hattmall 3y ago

So can we go ahead and make a backup of Reddit now, does this exist?

tagyro 3y ago

I'd like to offer a different perspective: let reddit kill 3rd party apps. reddit has only gotten worse in the past years and even if we manage to somehow "coerce" them into supporting 3rd party apps, the core issues will remain and will re-appear under a different form. We've had forums before and centralising *all* into one place never seemed like a good idea. Let's simply stop supporting user-hostile companies. (yes, I know my comment might be perceived as "simplistic" or "narrow", but we, the users, made reddit what it is today - we also have the power and duty to undo that)

lannisterstark 3y ago
>yes, I know my comment might be perceived as "simplistic" or "narrow" Not really. Sometimes 'simplistic' comments contain the most bluntly valuable insights :)

gloosx 3y ago

They don't stand a chance in competition against cheaper ways of getting data from them. In the end, they still give all the data for free in the form of HTML pages.

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

Please let reddit go. This needs to happen.

darthrupert 3y ago

No, please, let Reddit kill itself. We have better options now, like Lemmy (at least if you stay away from the commie and nazi servers). The biggest thing they're lacking is users, and every time the big ones do something dumb, Lemmy servers get a bunch of new users.

nlh 3y ago

I know I'm in the minority here on HN, but....look: I feel bad for the developers of the various 3rd-party apps that this is happening. Having the rug pulled from your livlihood just absolutely sucks. Having said that: Can you really blame Reddit here? Reddit is company which is trying to make money. One of the ways it does that is by building its own app and selling its own ads and showing those ads on its app which it controls and in the way it wants. Whether or not we agree, and whether or not we think it's the right move, you can't honestly be surprised by this can you? Facebook doesn't have a 3rd-party client. Twitter stopped having 3rd party clients. This is how the game is played. The mobile app is fine. I use it every day. Is Apollo better? Maybe? Will most of Reddit's users care about this? Doubtful.

x86x87 3y ago
> This is how the game is played Is it? Twitter had a golden opportunity in its early stages to become the message bus of social media before it killed 3rd party apps. Looking at twitter today I can say for a fact that stunned their growth and now they are just a zombie. Monetizing your service doesn't have to mean killimg 3rd party app. Also, keep in mind that the users of Reddit are what makes Reddit Reddit. You fuck with them and you'll end up with a ghost town. How are you going to monetize a ghost town?
doctaj 3y ago
Couldn’t they just send their ads to the third party app feed APIs and require that third party apps show them and link to buy rewards?
ryandrake 3y ago
You could have written the same thing to explain Microsoft bundling IE and crushing competing 3rd parties back in 1999. Can you really blame Microsoft here? Microsoft is company which is trying to make money. One of the ways it does that is by building its own browser and locking users into its platform which it controls and in the way it wants. EDIT: And sorry, I know you're not defending or excusing Reddit here. My comment is just about how we sometimes mistake "what a company obviously will do" for "what standard a company should be held to"

michelb 3y ago

Since this is a thing with VC-lead platforms, how could this be done different, while 'almost' maximising revenue? Something that pays for cost + healthy extra margin. What is a path for something like Reddit, supporting 3rd party apps, obviously showing ads in whatever feed gets served, but also being able change where and how ads are shown, or change monetisation strategy? I see a lot of handwavey and simplistic remarks, but how exactly, then? Would a user subscription work? How much would you pay for an ad-free reddit per month? Probably can't be less than $20. Would it be viable? If not, how are these platforms ever going to exist? Or is it never going to work and do we have to go back to crappy forums and discords and check 15 separate places? (RSS? never heard of her) replace Reddit with whatever comes next that shows your favourite niche content you can't find elsewhere, all in one place.