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I'm not a user of Apollo, and honestly have been perfectly fine using old.reddit.com on both mobile and desktop. That said, while I realize it's just his side

I'm not a user of Apollo, and honestly have been perfectly fine using old.reddit.com on both mobile and desktop. That said, while I realize it's just his side of the story, the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and rational (and he apparently has the receipts to back it up), while Reddit comes across as embodying typical corporate greed. On a related note, I think everyone should understand that, in the long term, "Don't be evil" is simply impossible for large corporations - the incentives are just too strong to prioritize short/medium term revenue growth over user experience. In any case, while I don't think the people shouting "I'm done with Reddit" will make much of a dent in Reddit's overall usage numbers, I personally am deleting my account and blocking reddit on my devices. If anything I think this drama gave me a nice little push to take more control over my time that will make me happier in the long run.

d1str0 3y ago
I turned on my 1Blocker app for ios to block Reddit for the first time in months after this drama. I only name drop the app because it has served me well for ad blocking and custom rules (like blocking Reddit).
falcolas 3y ago
> "Don't be evil" is simply impossible for large corporations I see Patagonia as the antithesis of this broadly accepted assertion. It's possible, it just takes having a goal for your company that's more than greed.
- Invictus0 3y ago
  Patagonia didn't take VC money, and reddit wouldn't have even survived this long if they hadn't
  - moomoo11 3y ago
    How true is that honestly? The more I talk to people the more I feel like people just like to party/waste money more than work.
    - mulmen 3y ago
      > The more I talk to people the more I feel like people just like to party/waste money more than work. Is... that a surprise to you?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - paxys 3y ago
    > and reddit wouldn't have even survived this long if they hadn't The parts of Reddit that people actually like – a single lightweight web app (old.reddit.com) minus all the fluff (constant redesigns, broken video player, live streaming service, overengineered mobile apps, avatars, NFTs, coins/gifts, social networking, chat, clubhouse competitor, expensive acquisitions) – would have survived perfectly well without VC money.
    - srverma 3y ago
      How so? It costs money to store & retrieve this content, at reddit scale (100m active monthly?). Ads clearly weren't paying enough of the bills, so what's the next best option?
      - 11101010001100 3y ago
        You know: solving the engineering problem you just described...
      - paxys 3y ago
        Reddit made $500M in revenue last year, yet is unprofitable. The reason isn't its AWS bill, but the "must 5x every year no matter what" mentality of their VCs who are looking for their exit. This pushes companies to overhire, add useless features and waste money on user acquisition just to chase that growth chart and have a successful IPO roadshow.
- rednalexa 3y ago
  Isn’t Patagonia privately owned though?
  - nocoiner 3y ago
    I don’t know the details of Patagonia’s ownership either now or before they put it in the trust, but Reddit is also privately owned (for now, anyway).
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Not just privately owned, but given away irrevocably by said owner to charity, and done in a way that intentionally incurred a large tax bill. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate...
    - unsupp0rted 3y ago
      I didn’t know this before and now I’m inclined to buy Patagonia items at every opportunity. Seriously- I’ve had my eye on a Patagonia black hole duffle and now I’ll pull the trigger.
      - chimerasaurus 3y ago
        If you are an REI member, they often have stuff in the used (Garage) site that is in excellent quality and also less expensive. Patagonia also has worn wear that does the same thing. Win-win - awesome stuff, no need to make a new one for you, and less expensive! - The guy who now has too many nanopuff jackets, but I will die on this hill.
        nocoiner 3y ago
        I found out about worn ware a couple weeks ago. I am now accruing nanopuff jackets at a dangerous clip.
    - ravitation 3y ago
- pphysch 3y ago
  Fashion companies like Patagonia and online social platforms like Reddit are radically different with how they interact with network effects. Fashion benefits from exclusivity and brand identity. It behooves Patagonia to brand itself as "not evil" or "not capitalist" or whatever, it's ultimately a fashion statement. Social networks suffer from exclusivity, and brand identity is an afterthought. I'd wager that most Reddit users have a neutral/negative view of the Reddit brand, but they use Reddit anyways because of network effects (everyone is there) and the brand doesn't really impact their favorite subreddits. There have been many attempts at "exclusive" social networks with carefully crafted brand identity, and they always fail. There's a theory that social media also has fashion phases, but I don't think we have enough data to back that up. MySpace lasted about 6 years. Facebook is 19 and Twitter is 17 and both are going strong.
- mpalczewski 3y ago
  Patagonia is pushing polyester with its associated micro-plastics, instead of the renewable natural fibers that they were using before like wool. Good, evil, depends on who is counting.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    Patagonia is clear about that decision though [1]. Microplastics are bad but not the whole story. They still offer natural fibers which have their own problems. I don't think this is Patagonia chasing short term profits, I think they are trying to remain true to their corporate goals. [1]: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/an-update-on-microfiber-pollution/story-31370.html https://www.patagonia.com/stories/an-update-on-microfiber-po...
    - tweetle_beetle 3y ago
      Their statement sounds and looks good at first, but the actions amount to: you should keep buying our products, you should buy a new washing machine, you should buy a filter and we will keep thinking about it. Patagonia do make high performance plastic products for activities where performance matters and in a better way than most, but have not been a performance focused company for decades. The original breakthrough of using plastic fleece in the wilderness due to it's non water absorbing properties doesn't really justify the size of their production with those materials today. They make most of their money selling plastic fleeces for people to wear to coffee shops. This segment of the market didn't realy exist before brands like Patagonia so they while they may offer a better alternative today, they are helped to create this particular problem. And if you've ever seen their clearance lists, they're as bad as other fashion companies for overproduction - new colours every season which need to make way the following season. Replacing plastics in their casual ranges and extending the lifecycles of the colours alone would make a bigger difference than a couple of research grants, but is risky for sales and less sexy. So take those statements with a pinch of salt.
      - mulmen 3y ago
        I'm confused on what you think Patagonia should do differently. Should I boycott them for some reason? Should I feel bad about wearing their products? How bad are they environmentally on the scale of all apparel manufacturers from worst to best? Is Cotopaxi ok?
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  You are right, but as others have noted, I should have put a caveat on my assertion that the incentive mismatch is really there for companies with "outside owners", either in the form of a publicly traded company or large VC/PE investors. If you keep a company private, and you don't take sizable outside funding, you can pretty much do whatever you want with your company.
mayormcmatt 3y ago
For most corporations -- particularly the large ones -- I agree with you; however, there is also the B corporation route. Now, I have no idea if Reddit ever considered this path back in their earlier fund-seeking days, but it would have been an intriguing path had they done so.
VHRanger 3y ago
you must be aware that old.reddit.com is on the chopping block in the next few months/years, right?
- joemi 3y ago
  Is that official, or just an assumption?
  - post-it 3y ago
    Just an assumption, but i.reddit.com was recently binned.
  - esskay 3y ago
    There's been a great deal of talk about it on reddit after they closed i.reddit.com (Despite saying they wouldn't). It wont get announced officially, it will just vanish at some point.
    - zymhan 3y ago
      I'm probably rationalizing here, but i.reddit.com was exceeeeeeeedingly old. It was an iOS 3.x era mobile web design that had never been updated.
      - lethologica 3y ago
        And yet it was infinitely better than the monstrosity of the “modern” Reddit front end on mobile.
      - BoxOfRain 3y ago
        It was still far more usable than the enshittified ‘proper’ version of the mobile web that does nothing but nag you to use the even more aggressively enshittified app.
- bhtru 3y ago
  Honestly, I'd rather they do it sooner so I have a greater impetus to leave Reddit; to go outside and touch the grass for once.
iLoveOncall 3y ago
I'm sorry but how exactly is it being evil to shut down 3rd party clients that use your content and your bandwidth to make (huge amounts of) money off of you? Reddit owes absolutely nothing to those developers. This guy has to reimburse 250K of subscriptions, meaning he made millions, if not tens of millions, off of exploiting the API while not displaying Reddit's ads. Poor Apollo developer, he's going to have to wipe his tears with Benjamins and blow his nose with his silk disposable tissue.
- treesknees 3y ago
  If you read his post, he presents all the information you need to know that this isn't true. Reddit themselves admitted that the cost isn't about server/bandwidth usage but opportunity cost per user on 3rd party apps. And it's not exploiting the API if you are using the API within the terms of service agreed to when registering the API token. Apollo wasn't exploiting or abusing anything.
- notaustinpowers 3y ago
  1) Apollo exploited nothing. Reddit offered their API for free for years. 2) Sure, he made a ton of money running Apollo, doesn't make what Reddit did less scummy. 3) No requirement, but it's largely accepted as courtesy to notify developers of any changes to the API policy, especially when it comes to pricing. Giving the developer only 30 days to rework their business model, change app architecture/design/code, pass App Store Reviews with Apple/Google, migrate subscribers to a higher-priced tier to afford the increase in pricing, and more is tantamount to spitting in their face. Especially when it's a drastic change from 8+ years of more or less the same. 4) Even if the developer did update pricing to be able to afford the new API rates, the developer himself stated he would have to be $50,000/month in the red for months while he waits for current subscription holders to have their subscription terms expire and renew at the increase rate, and that doesn't count lost subscribers who just decide to not renew. 5) Reddit admins and their CEO slandered the developer in interviews, outright lied, and got caught as the developer recorded the audio of all of their calls proving those lies. Reddit has done this stuff before (Back in 2016 the CEO was caught editing comments critical of him in the production database). 6) Reddit has every right to do what their doing, as Apollo has every right to call them out on how shit this whole thing is, when just back in January they said they had no plans to change their APIs in the short or medium term. Bad situation all around, but Reddit knows they're doing this to kill third-party apps. They just have to lie that they're being reasonable to save face so investors will buy them up when they go public in a few months.
cryptoegorophy 3y ago
Yeah. I old.Reddit into specifics subs. Other than that it is too radicalized nowadays. Once you are starting out you care about user experience, but once you are too big to fail then you pretty much don’t care - see Facebook, Twitter, YouTube they all designed UI around how THEY want the user to use the platform instead of how user would actually want to use it.
foreverobama 3y ago
[dead]
PettingRabbits 3y ago
I enjoyed the .compact version of old.reddit.com until they recently got rid of it. Since then my engagement has plummeted, which is probably a good thing...
dandellion 3y ago
I'm hoping at least we'll start to see some alternative communities to reddit pop up. I've been on the lookout for new smaller communities for a few years now, but the only interesting things I've found are a couple of Discord servers. While they are nice, Discord has a very different vibe from public anonymous forums.
- IgorPartola 3y ago
  There are plenty of old school forums. Example: I recently got into leatherworking. There are a couple of subreddits for it but also a large and active forum at https://leatherworker.net/forum/ https://leatherworker.net/forum/. Reddit has discoverability and single sign on for a bunch of forums. It also has some fun nice to haves like a mixed feed of all your interests. But old school forums tend to be less commercial and sometimes can be a lot more tightly knit.
  - spott 3y ago
    The biggest annoyance I have with old school forums is the single threaded nature of them. Reading through an entire 200 post thread to see if anyone actually responded to the one question that was asked in the third post is just incredibly inefficient and annoying.
bhtru 3y ago
Reading the transcripts and listening to the audio and seeing how Reddit is behaving is a fucking wild ride. I use old.reddit.com on mobile and desktop so I'm not directly effected by these changes aside from the likely steep decline in moderation quality as longstanding mods lose their tools. I feel compelled to migrate from reddit and only utilize it as a resource for knowledge when it's the only resource for some obscure niche thing or sub-culture. That last statement alone speaks volumes about the danger of centralizing communities as reddit has done. Maybe a federated internet is back on the table for the future. Reddit for amusement is a blackhole. For the best really to leave.
- an-allen 3y ago
  I second this. I’ve deleted all the social media, except Reddit. When I see an organisation acting like this - its toxicity. Deleting reddit. I look forward tothe hours of my life back. Bye bye.
  - bhtru 3y ago
    Two quotes come to my mind. 1. From Marcus Aurelius, "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts." There's a lot of toxicity to the comments and opinions within the userbase of reddit. I remove that pool of thought from my lived life and arguably my happiness ought to increase. 2. From Epictetus, "It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them." I'll admit do a lot of mindless browsing on reddit. In the past I've used site blockers to block loading reddit for me and I'd have the muscle memory of cmd+t then typing in "old" to load reddit. That all too common doomscroll of post after post, reading comment after comment, still has a pronounced grip on me. It would serve me well to reclaim that time and my unconscious self away from reddit. This APIgate honestly, in an entirely self-serving way I'm thankful for it. For it to give pause to reflect on my own relationship with reddit. If they're doing this, old.reddit.com is on the chopping block too, might as well get ahead of that sooner than later. I know this whole situation is doing a lot of harm and there's a lot hurt over for folks, especially financially, but I'll take this as an opportunity to grow.
briffle 3y ago
How long do you expect old.reddit.com to stick around after they force everyone to use their own app for mobile?
orangea 3y ago
"Imminently" reasonable and rational? What does that mean?
- re 3y ago
  They mean "eminently" (i.e. "very")
  - zymhan 3y ago
    Homophones strike again
    - martopix 3y ago
      They are not homophones, the first vowel is very different.
      - zymhan 3y ago
        Well that's just like your opinion man
        martopix 3y ago
        Uhm no, I checked the IPA transcriptions given by dictionaries.
- toby- 3y ago
  Eminently.
esskay 3y ago
FWIW there is suggestions that old.reddit.com is next on the chopping block. If that happens I dont think I could use the site anymore. The redesign is outright hostile.
- m681 3y ago
  I suspect as much too. Third party mobile clients dying saddens me for sure, but most of my usage is on old.reddit.com. When that inevitably goes away it'll be the true end for me. While I don't exactly look forward to the day, I'm oddly excited about the opportunity to put my time elsewhere. Maybe I'll finally start reading books again.
e40 3y ago
I just logged into old.reddit.com w/Safari on iOS. The difference between that and Apollo is the difference between using reddit on my phone and not. That said, I have to think something is wrong: I seem to have been served the desktop version in Safari. I do have 1Blocker and AdGuard running in Safari.
- Majromax 3y ago
  old.reddit no longer has a mobile version. The mobile interface was redirected to the new-style quite a while ago.
mock-possum 3y ago
> the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and rational honestly that's why Apollo is one of the rare apps I've actually fully paid for - iamthatis aka Christian is such a solid dude, always keeps his cool, no drama, gets his work done, cares about his users, like - it's a tragedy that Reddit is killing off his masterwork. They ought to be hiring him to do their mobile apps for them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
willis936 3y ago
I think the users that will be leaving reddit are worth 100 normal reddit users in terms of content value. Drain them and the rest will swirl down quickly.
- wand3r 3y ago
  This is an interesting point. I use free Apollo, and realized when I tried to post, that its a paid feature. So you have to figure that all the revenue is largely from contributing users and the dynamics on social media go something like 5-10% of people post all the content. Also, i heard it has great tooling for mods as well. We'll see how big of a blow this is but yeah, you're right, a lot of Apollo users are probably high value reddit users.
- Arn_Thor 3y ago
  That’s an often overlooked factor. The mods that do all that free work for Reddit especially need good tools—which the official app is not.
Aeolun 3y ago
It’s why I like working for privately owned companies. They’re mostly about enriching the owner, but for that to happen optimally the company has to actually be functional.
Arn_Thor 3y ago
I’m certain old.reddit will be next on it chopping block

d1str0 3y ago

I turned on my 1Blocker app for ios to block Reddit for the first time in months after this drama. I only name drop the app because it has served me well for ad blocking and custom rules (like blocking Reddit).

falcolas 3y ago

> "Don't be evil" is simply impossible for large corporations I see Patagonia as the antithesis of this broadly accepted assertion. It's possible, it just takes having a goal for your company that's more than greed.

Invictus0 3y ago
Patagonia didn't take VC money, and reddit wouldn't have even survived this long if they hadn't
- moomoo11 3y ago
  How true is that honestly? The more I talk to people the more I feel like people just like to party/waste money more than work.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    > The more I talk to people the more I feel like people just like to party/waste money more than work. Is... that a surprise to you?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- paxys 3y ago
  > and reddit wouldn't have even survived this long if they hadn't The parts of Reddit that people actually like – a single lightweight web app (old.reddit.com) minus all the fluff (constant redesigns, broken video player, live streaming service, overengineered mobile apps, avatars, NFTs, coins/gifts, social networking, chat, clubhouse competitor, expensive acquisitions) – would have survived perfectly well without VC money.
  - srverma 3y ago
    How so? It costs money to store & retrieve this content, at reddit scale (100m active monthly?). Ads clearly weren't paying enough of the bills, so what's the next best option?
    - 11101010001100 3y ago
      You know: solving the engineering problem you just described...
    - paxys 3y ago
      Reddit made $500M in revenue last year, yet is unprofitable. The reason isn't its AWS bill, but the "must 5x every year no matter what" mentality of their VCs who are looking for their exit. This pushes companies to overhire, add useless features and waste money on user acquisition just to chase that growth chart and have a successful IPO roadshow.
rednalexa 3y ago
Isn’t Patagonia privately owned though?
- nocoiner 3y ago
  I don’t know the details of Patagonia’s ownership either now or before they put it in the trust, but Reddit is also privately owned (for now, anyway).
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Not just privately owned, but given away irrevocably by said owner to charity, and done in a way that intentionally incurred a large tax bill. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate...
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    I didn’t know this before and now I’m inclined to buy Patagonia items at every opportunity. Seriously- I’ve had my eye on a Patagonia black hole duffle and now I’ll pull the trigger.
    - chimerasaurus 3y ago
      If you are an REI member, they often have stuff in the used (Garage) site that is in excellent quality and also less expensive. Patagonia also has worn wear that does the same thing. Win-win - awesome stuff, no need to make a new one for you, and less expensive! - The guy who now has too many nanopuff jackets, but I will die on this hill.
      - nocoiner 3y ago
        I found out about worn ware a couple weeks ago. I am now accruing nanopuff jackets at a dangerous clip.
  - ravitation 3y ago
pphysch 3y ago
Fashion companies like Patagonia and online social platforms like Reddit are radically different with how they interact with network effects. Fashion benefits from exclusivity and brand identity. It behooves Patagonia to brand itself as "not evil" or "not capitalist" or whatever, it's ultimately a fashion statement. Social networks suffer from exclusivity, and brand identity is an afterthought. I'd wager that most Reddit users have a neutral/negative view of the Reddit brand, but they use Reddit anyways because of network effects (everyone is there) and the brand doesn't really impact their favorite subreddits. There have been many attempts at "exclusive" social networks with carefully crafted brand identity, and they always fail. There's a theory that social media also has fashion phases, but I don't think we have enough data to back that up. MySpace lasted about 6 years. Facebook is 19 and Twitter is 17 and both are going strong.
mpalczewski 3y ago
Patagonia is pushing polyester with its associated micro-plastics, instead of the renewable natural fibers that they were using before like wool. Good, evil, depends on who is counting.
- mulmen 3y ago
  Patagonia is clear about that decision though [1]. Microplastics are bad but not the whole story. They still offer natural fibers which have their own problems. I don't think this is Patagonia chasing short term profits, I think they are trying to remain true to their corporate goals. [1]: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/an-update-on-microfiber-pollution/story-31370.html https://www.patagonia.com/stories/an-update-on-microfiber-po...
  - tweetle_beetle 3y ago
    Their statement sounds and looks good at first, but the actions amount to: you should keep buying our products, you should buy a new washing machine, you should buy a filter and we will keep thinking about it. Patagonia do make high performance plastic products for activities where performance matters and in a better way than most, but have not been a performance focused company for decades. The original breakthrough of using plastic fleece in the wilderness due to it's non water absorbing properties doesn't really justify the size of their production with those materials today. They make most of their money selling plastic fleeces for people to wear to coffee shops. This segment of the market didn't realy exist before brands like Patagonia so they while they may offer a better alternative today, they are helped to create this particular problem. And if you've ever seen their clearance lists, they're as bad as other fashion companies for overproduction - new colours every season which need to make way the following season. Replacing plastics in their casual ranges and extending the lifecycles of the colours alone would make a bigger difference than a couple of research grants, but is risky for sales and less sexy. So take those statements with a pinch of salt.
    - mulmen 3y ago
      I'm confused on what you think Patagonia should do differently. Should I boycott them for some reason? Should I feel bad about wearing their products? How bad are they environmentally on the scale of all apparel manufacturers from worst to best? Is Cotopaxi ok?
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
You are right, but as others have noted, I should have put a caveat on my assertion that the incentive mismatch is really there for companies with "outside owners", either in the form of a publicly traded company or large VC/PE investors. If you keep a company private, and you don't take sizable outside funding, you can pretty much do whatever you want with your company.

mayormcmatt 3y ago

For most corporations -- particularly the large ones -- I agree with you; however, there is also the B corporation route. Now, I have no idea if Reddit ever considered this path back in their earlier fund-seeking days, but it would have been an intriguing path had they done so.

VHRanger 3y ago

you must be aware that old.reddit.com is on the chopping block in the next few months/years, right?

joemi 3y ago
Is that official, or just an assumption?
- post-it 3y ago
  Just an assumption, but i.reddit.com was recently binned.
- esskay 3y ago
  There's been a great deal of talk about it on reddit after they closed i.reddit.com (Despite saying they wouldn't). It wont get announced officially, it will just vanish at some point.
  - zymhan 3y ago
    I'm probably rationalizing here, but i.reddit.com was exceeeeeeeedingly old. It was an iOS 3.x era mobile web design that had never been updated.
    - lethologica 3y ago
      And yet it was infinitely better than the monstrosity of the “modern” Reddit front end on mobile.
    - BoxOfRain 3y ago
      It was still far more usable than the enshittified ‘proper’ version of the mobile web that does nothing but nag you to use the even more aggressively enshittified app.
bhtru 3y ago
Honestly, I'd rather they do it sooner so I have a greater impetus to leave Reddit; to go outside and touch the grass for once.

iLoveOncall 3y ago

I'm sorry but how exactly is it being evil to shut down 3rd party clients that use your content and your bandwidth to make (huge amounts of) money off of you? Reddit owes absolutely nothing to those developers. This guy has to reimburse 250K of subscriptions, meaning he made millions, if not tens of millions, off of exploiting the API while not displaying Reddit's ads. Poor Apollo developer, he's going to have to wipe his tears with Benjamins and blow his nose with his silk disposable tissue.

treesknees 3y ago
If you read his post, he presents all the information you need to know that this isn't true. Reddit themselves admitted that the cost isn't about server/bandwidth usage but opportunity cost per user on 3rd party apps. And it's not exploiting the API if you are using the API within the terms of service agreed to when registering the API token. Apollo wasn't exploiting or abusing anything.
notaustinpowers 3y ago
1) Apollo exploited nothing. Reddit offered their API for free for years. 2) Sure, he made a ton of money running Apollo, doesn't make what Reddit did less scummy. 3) No requirement, but it's largely accepted as courtesy to notify developers of any changes to the API policy, especially when it comes to pricing. Giving the developer only 30 days to rework their business model, change app architecture/design/code, pass App Store Reviews with Apple/Google, migrate subscribers to a higher-priced tier to afford the increase in pricing, and more is tantamount to spitting in their face. Especially when it's a drastic change from 8+ years of more or less the same. 4) Even if the developer did update pricing to be able to afford the new API rates, the developer himself stated he would have to be $50,000/month in the red for months while he waits for current subscription holders to have their subscription terms expire and renew at the increase rate, and that doesn't count lost subscribers who just decide to not renew. 5) Reddit admins and their CEO slandered the developer in interviews, outright lied, and got caught as the developer recorded the audio of all of their calls proving those lies. Reddit has done this stuff before (Back in 2016 the CEO was caught editing comments critical of him in the production database). 6) Reddit has every right to do what their doing, as Apollo has every right to call them out on how shit this whole thing is, when just back in January they said they had no plans to change their APIs in the short or medium term. Bad situation all around, but Reddit knows they're doing this to kill third-party apps. They just have to lie that they're being reasonable to save face so investors will buy them up when they go public in a few months.

cryptoegorophy 3y ago

Yeah. I old.Reddit into specifics subs. Other than that it is too radicalized nowadays. Once you are starting out you care about user experience, but once you are too big to fail then you pretty much don’t care - see Facebook, Twitter, YouTube they all designed UI around how THEY want the user to use the platform instead of how user would actually want to use it.

foreverobama 3y ago

[dead]

PettingRabbits 3y ago

I enjoyed the .compact version of old.reddit.com until they recently got rid of it. Since then my engagement has plummeted, which is probably a good thing...

dandellion 3y ago

I'm hoping at least we'll start to see some alternative communities to reddit pop up. I've been on the lookout for new smaller communities for a few years now, but the only interesting things I've found are a couple of Discord servers. While they are nice, Discord has a very different vibe from public anonymous forums.

IgorPartola 3y ago
There are plenty of old school forums. Example: I recently got into leatherworking. There are a couple of subreddits for it but also a large and active forum at https://leatherworker.net/forum/ https://leatherworker.net/forum/. Reddit has discoverability and single sign on for a bunch of forums. It also has some fun nice to haves like a mixed feed of all your interests. But old school forums tend to be less commercial and sometimes can be a lot more tightly knit.
- spott 3y ago
  The biggest annoyance I have with old school forums is the single threaded nature of them. Reading through an entire 200 post thread to see if anyone actually responded to the one question that was asked in the third post is just incredibly inefficient and annoying.

bhtru 3y ago

Reading the transcripts and listening to the audio and seeing how Reddit is behaving is a fucking wild ride. I use old.reddit.com on mobile and desktop so I'm not directly effected by these changes aside from the likely steep decline in moderation quality as longstanding mods lose their tools. I feel compelled to migrate from reddit and only utilize it as a resource for knowledge when it's the only resource for some obscure niche thing or sub-culture. That last statement alone speaks volumes about the danger of centralizing communities as reddit has done. Maybe a federated internet is back on the table for the future. Reddit for amusement is a blackhole. For the best really to leave.

an-allen 3y ago
I second this. I’ve deleted all the social media, except Reddit. When I see an organisation acting like this - its toxicity. Deleting reddit. I look forward tothe hours of my life back. Bye bye.
- bhtru 3y ago
  Two quotes come to my mind. 1. From Marcus Aurelius, "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts." There's a lot of toxicity to the comments and opinions within the userbase of reddit. I remove that pool of thought from my lived life and arguably my happiness ought to increase. 2. From Epictetus, "It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them." I'll admit do a lot of mindless browsing on reddit. In the past I've used site blockers to block loading reddit for me and I'd have the muscle memory of cmd+t then typing in "old" to load reddit. That all too common doomscroll of post after post, reading comment after comment, still has a pronounced grip on me. It would serve me well to reclaim that time and my unconscious self away from reddit. This APIgate honestly, in an entirely self-serving way I'm thankful for it. For it to give pause to reflect on my own relationship with reddit. If they're doing this, old.reddit.com is on the chopping block too, might as well get ahead of that sooner than later. I know this whole situation is doing a lot of harm and there's a lot hurt over for folks, especially financially, but I'll take this as an opportunity to grow.

briffle 3y ago

How long do you expect old.reddit.com to stick around after they force everyone to use their own app for mobile?

orangea 3y ago

"Imminently" reasonable and rational? What does that mean?

re 3y ago
They mean "eminently" (i.e. "very")
- zymhan 3y ago
  Homophones strike again
  - martopix 3y ago
    They are not homophones, the first vowel is very different.
    - zymhan 3y ago
      Well that's just like your opinion man
      - martopix 3y ago
        Uhm no, I checked the IPA transcriptions given by dictionaries.
toby- 3y ago
Eminently.

esskay 3y ago

FWIW there is suggestions that old.reddit.com is next on the chopping block. If that happens I dont think I could use the site anymore. The redesign is outright hostile.

m681 3y ago
I suspect as much too. Third party mobile clients dying saddens me for sure, but most of my usage is on old.reddit.com. When that inevitably goes away it'll be the true end for me. While I don't exactly look forward to the day, I'm oddly excited about the opportunity to put my time elsewhere. Maybe I'll finally start reading books again.

e40 3y ago

I just logged into old.reddit.com w/Safari on iOS. The difference between that and Apollo is the difference between using reddit on my phone and not. That said, I have to think something is wrong: I seem to have been served the desktop version in Safari. I do have 1Blocker and AdGuard running in Safari.

Majromax 3y ago
old.reddit no longer has a mobile version. The mobile interface was redirected to the new-style quite a while ago.

mock-possum 3y ago

> the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and rational honestly that's why Apollo is one of the rare apps I've actually fully paid for - iamthatis aka Christian is such a solid dude, always keeps his cool, no drama, gets his work done, cares about his users, like - it's a tragedy that Reddit is killing off his masterwork. They ought to be hiring him to do their mobile apps for them.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

willis936 3y ago

I think the users that will be leaving reddit are worth 100 normal reddit users in terms of content value. Drain them and the rest will swirl down quickly.

wand3r 3y ago
This is an interesting point. I use free Apollo, and realized when I tried to post, that its a paid feature. So you have to figure that all the revenue is largely from contributing users and the dynamics on social media go something like 5-10% of people post all the content. Also, i heard it has great tooling for mods as well. We'll see how big of a blow this is but yeah, you're right, a lot of Apollo users are probably high value reddit users.
Arn_Thor 3y ago
That’s an often overlooked factor. The mods that do all that free work for Reddit especially need good tools—which the official app is not.

Aeolun 3y ago

It’s why I like working for privately owned companies. They’re mostly about enriching the owner, but for that to happen optimally the company has to actually be functional.

Arn_Thor 3y ago

I’m certain old.reddit will be next on it chopping block