5 ms·

Bad move from Reddit's end. Apollo is one of my most used apps because I absolutely refuse to use the official app. Just like the new Reddit experience on deskt

by nkotov 3y ago

Bad move from Reddit's end. Apollo is one of my most used apps because I absolutely refuse to use the official app. Just like the new Reddit experience on desktop version, the mobile app is just as terrible. Clunky, slow, not user friendly. No thanks.

Ekaros 3y ago
And exactly what are they losing from business perspective? Few users that generate only costs?
- jdhendrickson 3y ago
  I'm sure Digg had the same line of thinking. Worked out great for them.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Power users who generate the content that makes Reddit valuable to begin with.
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    This Is the corporate equivalent of "I can't give you money, but I'll pay you with in exposure on my socials". Reddit prefers to be paid in dollars, not with content. They likely have more than enough content from non-Apollo users. Reddit's free APIs left a lot of uncaptured value on the table. This has become obvious by the sheer number of AI models trained on Reddit data. Free Reddit data goes into the machine, and piles of VC money comes out. Reddit wants in on it, but is unable to stop free API access without the consumer apps being collateral.
    - 1270018080 3y ago
      Their content is going to be porn bots and astroturfed product accounts. Maybe they want that as part of their enshittification process to extract as much value from the brand as possible during their quick death.
    - tshaddox 3y ago
      That doesn’t make sense. It’s not that Reddit the company wants to be paid in content, obviously. It’s that Reddit needs people to want to visit their website. Reddit gets paid for ads, but people don’t want to see ads, so Reddit needs to deliver content that people want so badly that they’re willing to see ads. Driving away content producers to lower costs just doesn’t make any sense at all, unless they actually have a plan to get cheaper content (GPT ain’t gonna be it, sorry).
      - sangnoir 3y ago
        > That doesn’t make sense. It’s not that Reddit the company wants to be paid in content, obviously. It’s that Reddit needs people to want to visit their website We're not disagreeing. The comment I was responding to was saying they are "paying" Reddit with content. As you noted, Reddit doesn't want that, instead, it's asking API users to pay real money so they can see the content without ads. That in itself is pretty reasonable I think - what may not be reasonable is how much Reddit is asking for. > Driving away content producers to lower costs just doesn’t make any sense at all What's the breakdown of content producers on 3rd Party apps vs reddit.com and reddit apps? It is reasonable to assume this is a rational decision being made by Reddit after looking at the numbers and doing some projections. Edit: removed references to ads from parent commenter paraphrasing
        kstrauser 3y ago
        > The comment I was responding to was saying they don't want to see ads, I never said any such thing about ads. I mean, I'd rather not, but that wasn't even part of the discussion.
        sangnoir 3y ago
        I have edited to remove references to ads. However, it's clear to me that you consider content to be the value you're providing to Reddit in exchange for your usage of the API.
    - alpaca128 3y ago
      The vast majority of an online community's content is produced by a small fraction of users. Most are just reading posts. Without user generated content Reddit has zero value. Reddit fighting its most active, invested users is not a smart move. YouTube got away with lots of bad changes because many creators are getting paid to produce content and competing with YouTube is near impossible. But Reddit is one of many primarily text-based online communities and they are currently destroying the only things holding people on their platform. Aside from the userbase Reddit has no redeeming qualities that would make anyone hesitate to leave.
      - sangnoir 3y ago
        Is there a built-in assumption of incompetence at Reddit in your comment? If you assume they know all what you said, and that they have dashboards showing breakdowns of submitters/commenters/voters by client, can you imagine a charitable explanation of what may motivate their current actions? Even if you do not like the reason, do you think it may be rational?
        throw2022110401 3y ago
        The existence of this HN thread and the situation we are discussing is a very clear sign of Reddit's incompetence. Regardless of what their motivation was they have fucked up the execution in a big way.
        Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
        > can you imagine a charitable explanation of what may motivate their current actions? IPO value. This entire scheme, is a last ditch attempt to maximise exit value for the founders. The actions all point in that direction, many fo which are borderline illegal. Let's break it down. Reddit has had a metoric rise in the past 5 years, adding like 200 million mobile users to their official app. This started in 2018 when the first news of the IPO began. Reddit started heavily advertising. They initially redesigned the web version, started giving a worse mobile experience and had a massive, intrusive banner that said "try the official app" on the mobile client. So we have a "friendlier" web experince and an aggresive app marketing push. We now have more users than ever. Should we focus on efficiency, tools for mods etc? Nope, the entire product stack of reddit since 2019 has been releasing Monetasation tools. From badly hidden NFTs as profile pictures, to reddit awards paid with money, to ads hidden as actual content on the front page of the new web and mobile app. So now we have record users, a new set of money making tools what else can we do to maximise exit value? We reduce 3rd party users, this way even if a fraction come to the app we still have new record user numbers. And we generate as much content as possible, preferably in areas that will be considered growth vectors in teh sale. So reddit made a ridiculous API pricing plan, with 0 time to implement to essentially kill 3rd parties but not having to do it officially. Other less verifiable events that seem to be happening is that bots have increased, and some non english subs like the french and german communities are having new content generated by badly translating popular reddit posts with AI. This would benefit reddit as more content (even if by bots) is a higher exit price and communities that do not speak english using reddit more would also be seen as a positive by whoever would buy reddit. This is not attributable to reddit, bt if it was, it is straight up fraud. However the timing of the bot activity increasing and the non english subs seeing increased activity directly benefits the IPO plan therefore it is worth mentioning. In other words, the charitable explanation is that this is the last hurrah in a 5 year plan to make the owners of reddit rich before they off load a website full of bots and angry users to whoever is silly enough to think they can fix this mess.
    - az226 3y ago
      You do know that Reddit doesn’t pay for moderation but uses an army of volunteers?
- robotnikman 3y ago
  Most of the content on reddit is created by power users who are more likely to use 3rd party tools. Most people who use the official app only consume content.
  - itake 3y ago
    Do you have a source for that? I am sure Reddit knows the truth and took that into account in their negotiations.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    So do they really use a phone app to produce this massive number of content? Then again. I hate using my phone in general, so I always think that any content creators would use desktop and maybe old reddit.
    - Kalium 3y ago
      No, but power users are disproportionately to be invested enough to use third-party clients. Further, many power users play key roles as moderators. Community moderators on Reddit rely extensively on API access to enable the moderation tools that Reddit never really built.
      - throwaway462910 3y ago
        On the other hand, you might also expect that being so invested, they won't quit over third-party apps, time will tell.
        Kalium 3y ago
        Mods will definitely have a much more difficult time of it if all the useful moderation tools break.
        zarriak 3y ago
        I don’t think that is as much an issue as all of the potential issues that would be dragged up by discussing any of the questionable or explicitly illegal content hosted on Reddit. The first time anyone ever saw a Reddit mod was seeing an adult man argue it was ok for him to moderate a subreddit consisting solely pictures of underage girls titled jailbait.
- lawn 3y ago
  Reddit's whole value proposition is user generated content (and moderation). Labeling that as "only costs" is extremely shortsighted.
- elabajaba 3y ago
  Mods and other power users.
- erulabs 3y ago
  Others are saying "power users", but... I agree with you. It is just an assumption that the "power users" make the product better, although a reasonable one. However, Reddit was pretty awesome, arguably much better, before there were semi-professional power users and moderators.
  - rumdz 3y ago
    Reddit old is as good as it's always been
- teamspirit 3y ago
  That's the thing, to use an overused adage: it's a feature not a bug. They want these people gone. They calculated their contributions and decided it won't hurt, or hurt badly enough, for them to care. They'll all make millions on the IPO, step away, and sell. None of this makes a difference to that master plan. The sooner everyone accepts this the less time will get wasted on trying to convince Reddit this is a mistake. It's not a bug. Reddit is a shell of what it was when I started on the platform 14+ years ago.
- smodo 3y ago
  The opportunity to stand out from other enshittified platforms. But I guess now we need to find a new thing for VCs to fund for us. Maybe an app that pretends to use AI to create memes or something.
- tshaddox 3y ago
  It’s an ads business, so the game is always “giving away a huge number of requests for free to monetize an extremely tiny portion of those requests.” So as soon as bean counters look at the books, it’s easy to be tempted to just identify cohorts of those requests that are unlikely to convert and cut off those users. It takes someone who is more than just a bean counter to realize that maybe, just maybe, the only reason people are interested in those free requests in the first place is because of the communities on Reddit that bring all the actual value. And who knows, maybe one day everyone will realize that the “free social media monetized by ads” business just totally sucks and can only ever lead to situations like this.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    The 3rd party apps don't have ads which is surely a gigantic part of why they're being banned. I would guess that most Apollo users literally provide zero revenue as they use adblock on desktop and most people never actually give reddit any money. The only argument for their value add is that they're contributing which makes other users likely to join but I suspect reddit has reason to believe they're too adducted to stop even when the app they use is banned,.
- rabuse 3y ago
  Not being able to understand indirect value as a business is seriously why so many businesses fail.
- valine 3y ago
  Those users generate content. They’re literally the ones creating value, reddit doesn’t have a product without them.
- zouhair 3y ago
  Mods. People working for free running the site.
8ig8 3y ago
Where’s Graham’s take on this?

by nkotov 3y ago

Ekaros 3y ago

And exactly what are they losing from business perspective? Few users that generate only costs?

jdhendrickson 3y ago
I'm sure Digg had the same line of thinking. Worked out great for them.
kstrauser 3y ago
Power users who generate the content that makes Reddit valuable to begin with.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  This Is the corporate equivalent of "I can't give you money, but I'll pay you with in exposure on my socials". Reddit prefers to be paid in dollars, not with content. They likely have more than enough content from non-Apollo users. Reddit's free APIs left a lot of uncaptured value on the table. This has become obvious by the sheer number of AI models trained on Reddit data. Free Reddit data goes into the machine, and piles of VC money comes out. Reddit wants in on it, but is unable to stop free API access without the consumer apps being collateral.
  - 1270018080 3y ago
    Their content is going to be porn bots and astroturfed product accounts. Maybe they want that as part of their enshittification process to extract as much value from the brand as possible during their quick death.
  - tshaddox 3y ago
    That doesn’t make sense. It’s not that Reddit the company wants to be paid in content, obviously. It’s that Reddit needs people to want to visit their website. Reddit gets paid for ads, but people don’t want to see ads, so Reddit needs to deliver content that people want so badly that they’re willing to see ads. Driving away content producers to lower costs just doesn’t make any sense at all, unless they actually have a plan to get cheaper content (GPT ain’t gonna be it, sorry).
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      > That doesn’t make sense. It’s not that Reddit the company wants to be paid in content, obviously. It’s that Reddit needs people to want to visit their website We're not disagreeing. The comment I was responding to was saying they are "paying" Reddit with content. As you noted, Reddit doesn't want that, instead, it's asking API users to pay real money so they can see the content without ads. That in itself is pretty reasonable I think - what may not be reasonable is how much Reddit is asking for. > Driving away content producers to lower costs just doesn’t make any sense at all What's the breakdown of content producers on 3rd Party apps vs reddit.com and reddit apps? It is reasonable to assume this is a rational decision being made by Reddit after looking at the numbers and doing some projections. Edit: removed references to ads from parent commenter paraphrasing
      - kstrauser 3y ago
        > The comment I was responding to was saying they don't want to see ads, I never said any such thing about ads. I mean, I'd rather not, but that wasn't even part of the discussion.
        sangnoir 3y ago
        I have edited to remove references to ads. However, it's clear to me that you consider content to be the value you're providing to Reddit in exchange for your usage of the API.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    The vast majority of an online community's content is produced by a small fraction of users. Most are just reading posts. Without user generated content Reddit has zero value. Reddit fighting its most active, invested users is not a smart move. YouTube got away with lots of bad changes because many creators are getting paid to produce content and competing with YouTube is near impossible. But Reddit is one of many primarily text-based online communities and they are currently destroying the only things holding people on their platform. Aside from the userbase Reddit has no redeeming qualities that would make anyone hesitate to leave.
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      Is there a built-in assumption of incompetence at Reddit in your comment? If you assume they know all what you said, and that they have dashboards showing breakdowns of submitters/commenters/voters by client, can you imagine a charitable explanation of what may motivate their current actions? Even if you do not like the reason, do you think it may be rational?
      - throw2022110401 3y ago
        The existence of this HN thread and the situation we are discussing is a very clear sign of Reddit's incompetence. Regardless of what their motivation was they have fucked up the execution in a big way.
      - Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
        > can you imagine a charitable explanation of what may motivate their current actions? IPO value. This entire scheme, is a last ditch attempt to maximise exit value for the founders. The actions all point in that direction, many fo which are borderline illegal. Let's break it down. Reddit has had a metoric rise in the past 5 years, adding like 200 million mobile users to their official app. This started in 2018 when the first news of the IPO began. Reddit started heavily advertising. They initially redesigned the web version, started giving a worse mobile experience and had a massive, intrusive banner that said "try the official app" on the mobile client. So we have a "friendlier" web experince and an aggresive app marketing push. We now have more users than ever. Should we focus on efficiency, tools for mods etc? Nope, the entire product stack of reddit since 2019 has been releasing Monetasation tools. From badly hidden NFTs as profile pictures, to reddit awards paid with money, to ads hidden as actual content on the front page of the new web and mobile app. So now we have record users, a new set of money making tools what else can we do to maximise exit value? We reduce 3rd party users, this way even if a fraction come to the app we still have new record user numbers. And we generate as much content as possible, preferably in areas that will be considered growth vectors in teh sale. So reddit made a ridiculous API pricing plan, with 0 time to implement to essentially kill 3rd parties but not having to do it officially. Other less verifiable events that seem to be happening is that bots have increased, and some non english subs like the french and german communities are having new content generated by badly translating popular reddit posts with AI. This would benefit reddit as more content (even if by bots) is a higher exit price and communities that do not speak english using reddit more would also be seen as a positive by whoever would buy reddit. This is not attributable to reddit, bt if it was, it is straight up fraud. However the timing of the bot activity increasing and the non english subs seeing increased activity directly benefits the IPO plan therefore it is worth mentioning. In other words, the charitable explanation is that this is the last hurrah in a 5 year plan to make the owners of reddit rich before they off load a website full of bots and angry users to whoever is silly enough to think they can fix this mess.
  - az226 3y ago
    You do know that Reddit doesn’t pay for moderation but uses an army of volunteers?
robotnikman 3y ago
Most of the content on reddit is created by power users who are more likely to use 3rd party tools. Most people who use the official app only consume content.
- itake 3y ago
  Do you have a source for that? I am sure Reddit knows the truth and took that into account in their negotiations.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  So do they really use a phone app to produce this massive number of content? Then again. I hate using my phone in general, so I always think that any content creators would use desktop and maybe old reddit.
  - Kalium 3y ago
    No, but power users are disproportionately to be invested enough to use third-party clients. Further, many power users play key roles as moderators. Community moderators on Reddit rely extensively on API access to enable the moderation tools that Reddit never really built.
    - throwaway462910 3y ago
      On the other hand, you might also expect that being so invested, they won't quit over third-party apps, time will tell.
      - Kalium 3y ago
        Mods will definitely have a much more difficult time of it if all the useful moderation tools break.
      - zarriak 3y ago
        I don’t think that is as much an issue as all of the potential issues that would be dragged up by discussing any of the questionable or explicitly illegal content hosted on Reddit. The first time anyone ever saw a Reddit mod was seeing an adult man argue it was ok for him to moderate a subreddit consisting solely pictures of underage girls titled jailbait.
lawn 3y ago
Reddit's whole value proposition is user generated content (and moderation). Labeling that as "only costs" is extremely shortsighted.
elabajaba 3y ago
Mods and other power users.
erulabs 3y ago
Others are saying "power users", but... I agree with you. It is just an assumption that the "power users" make the product better, although a reasonable one. However, Reddit was pretty awesome, arguably much better, before there were semi-professional power users and moderators.
- rumdz 3y ago
  Reddit old is as good as it's always been
teamspirit 3y ago
That's the thing, to use an overused adage: it's a feature not a bug. They want these people gone. They calculated their contributions and decided it won't hurt, or hurt badly enough, for them to care. They'll all make millions on the IPO, step away, and sell. None of this makes a difference to that master plan. The sooner everyone accepts this the less time will get wasted on trying to convince Reddit this is a mistake. It's not a bug. Reddit is a shell of what it was when I started on the platform 14+ years ago.
smodo 3y ago
The opportunity to stand out from other enshittified platforms. But I guess now we need to find a new thing for VCs to fund for us. Maybe an app that pretends to use AI to create memes or something.
tshaddox 3y ago
It’s an ads business, so the game is always “giving away a huge number of requests for free to monetize an extremely tiny portion of those requests.” So as soon as bean counters look at the books, it’s easy to be tempted to just identify cohorts of those requests that are unlikely to convert and cut off those users. It takes someone who is more than just a bean counter to realize that maybe, just maybe, the only reason people are interested in those free requests in the first place is because of the communities on Reddit that bring all the actual value. And who knows, maybe one day everyone will realize that the “free social media monetized by ads” business just totally sucks and can only ever lead to situations like this.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  The 3rd party apps don't have ads which is surely a gigantic part of why they're being banned. I would guess that most Apollo users literally provide zero revenue as they use adblock on desktop and most people never actually give reddit any money. The only argument for their value add is that they're contributing which makes other users likely to join but I suspect reddit has reason to believe they're too adducted to stop even when the app they use is banned,.
rabuse 3y ago
Not being able to understand indirect value as a business is seriously why so many businesses fail.
valine 3y ago
Those users generate content. They’re literally the ones creating value, reddit doesn’t have a product without them.
zouhair 3y ago
Mods. People working for free running the site.

8ig8 3y ago

Where’s Graham’s take on this?