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> Starting high, creating a lot of negative reactions and almost killing any real market for profitable apps on your platform seems to be the opposite of smart

by joecot 3y ago

> Starting high, creating a lot of negative reactions and almost killing any real market for profitable apps on your platform seems to be the opposite of smart It's really dumb if the point is to keep all the third party applications that made your platform popular. It's much smarter if the point is to kill them all in favor of your first party app, that you are promising your VC investors will have tremendous growth leading up to an IPO, and you don't want your site to look like the bad guy by killing all the third party apps. They just handled it poorly. If the reddit app actually had the moderation tools they've been promising for years, I doubt the moderator outcry would be anywhere near this bad. And if you watch you'll notice, even during the blackout, reddit's messaging is all about the things you can still do besides use the third party apps. They're making the API still free for moderation bots. They're working with apps that provide accessibility tools for reddit. They're working with the services moderators use for moderation. They're appealing to the moderators. They've made no mentions of working with: Apollo, BaconReader, or RedditIsFun. The point was to kill the third party apps.

skrtskrt 3y ago
Ding ding ding The real reddit app doesn’t even have an option to block a particular ad account so when they serve you evangelical right wing ads all day you just have to swallow it.
- nikole9696 3y ago
  The inability to block ads I personally find offensive is the #1 reason I'll use a browser with ad block over a native app. Reddit and Tumblr are my two biggest offenders that do not let me properly block particular ads - notably gambling and religion, but also those scam mobile games and other scammy nonsense. I get that they need to pay the bills, but I should have some level of control over what I see.
  - joecot 3y ago
    Which is the real reason that reddit is killing both the third party apps and the mobile site. Same reason that Facebook, Twitter, and Tiktok make the mobile site as painful as possible. If you're using a website in a browser, the user has control. If you're using their app, the company has control.
    - graphe 3y ago
      Twitter and TikTok are pretty pleasant to use for me. Just AdBlock and move on.
  - SantalBlush 3y ago
    >The inability to block ads I personally find offensive is the #1 reason I'll use a browser with ad block over a native app. This is the main reason why apps exist in the first place. They remove the user agency that browsers provide.
phire 3y ago
It seems like the plan was always to kill the 3rd party apps, but not until their own app was feature competitive with the 3rd party ones. But they ran into time limitations. They plan to IPO later this year and they want the 3rd party apps to be dead before then.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Isn't this always the way. Crowd source development and ideas to see what gains popularity, and then build those features into your thing or buy the 3rd party thing to rebrand as your thing. That's like startup culture 101
  - theturtletalks 3y ago
    Another thing that probably irked Reddit was that Apollo, RedditIsFun, and the other popular clients were monetizing their apps by including their own ads, charging a one-time or monthly fee. I'm surprised that wasn't against their API terms.
    - shagie 3y ago
      It's not. It's similar to how Imgur does it. Imgur serves advertisements when you go to their page. But you don't get them through the API. https://api.imgur.com/#commercial https://api.imgur.com/#commercial > Your application is commercial if you're making any money with it (which includes in-app advertising), if you plan on making any money with it, or if it belongs to a commercial organization. Calling an API and monetizing the front end it is fine. The money that Imgur loses from ads is made up in the API call monetization. The Reddit APIs don't prohibit serving advertisements or any other form of monetization of the use of the APIs and mention it as something that your app would need to do. https://www.redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms https://www.redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms You will disclose in your App through a privacy policy how you collect, use, store, and disclose data collected from your App Users and other visitors, including, where applicable, that third parties (e.g., advertisers) may serve content or advertisements and collect information directly from your App Users and other visitors that may include the use of cookies. In addition, by using the Data APIs, Reddit may use submitted information in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Note that sending data to 3rd parties from a front end (e.g., advertisers) is something that is allowed provided that it is properly disclosed to the App Users or other visitors and that it may serve content or advertisements from the application.
bigmattystyles 3y ago
Surprised growth is measured in terms of app installs versus active users by VCs. It’s probably both I suppose.
willis936 3y ago
Being blinded by hubris and taking a hard left off a cliff on a potentially profitable venture are not things I would consider "smart". Saying it was "smart but handled poorly" is an excuse. It was a series of dumb moves because they did not see the actions they needed to take and in what order and on what timeframe to not capsize.
- joecot 3y ago
  Correct. In general it's a good capitalist scheme. Start with a mostly open platform, court third parties into making tools that make it significantly better, get your user base. Then kill the third parties to consolidate power. It worked for Facebook. It worked for Google Chat. It's failing for Twitter, and for reddit, for the same reasons. They did it too quickly and without the finesse needed to prevent a revolt. Instead of cranking the pricing, they needed to do what Facebook and Google did -- slowly degrade the integration system until it was unusable, start restricting features, add features incompatible with third parties, etc, until the third parties all give up and the API dies a seemingly natural death. reddit just doesn't have the foresight or planning to pull off most plans, including nefarious ones. But it didn't work for Gmail. Despite Google's best efforts, email still exists outside Google. If we want to avoid playing this Fark->Digg->Reddit game again, we need an open standard that doesn't rely on a single company, like email.
  - importantbrian 3y ago
    I don't think it's so much about consolidating power as it is that this is the natural choice for companies that primarily monetize through ads. I've always felt that it would be better for these platform companies to instead try to monetize the app ecosystem. Start by charging for the API with a generous free tier instead of going down the ad supported route.
  - lightbritefight 3y ago
    Embrace, extend, extinguish. Microsoft used it like a scalpel and a hammer for decades.
slivanes 3y ago
I wonder why Reddit didn't buy the app?
- joecot 3y ago
  Because it hasn't worked before. They bought Alien Blue, made it the official app, failed to iterate on it, and eventually gave up on it. Now they've made a new reddit app, which is also not good. No reddit official app is going to look good compared to the the third party ones, partly because their profit making attempts are at odds with good user experience, and if they buy the third party ones they've already shown they can't improve them. So they want the comparison to go away so reddit stops being embarrassed by third parties.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    > made it the official app They did not. They bought it and killed it. Their home-grown application is built from scratch.
    - dayedh 3y ago
      I’m still incredibly bitter about this. The Alien Blue iPad app was fantastic, nothing that has been released since can hold a candle to it.
marcosdumay 3y ago
> If the reddit app actually had the moderation tools they've been promising for years, I doubt the moderator outcry would be anywhere near this bad. If the reddit app was any good, the 3rd party ones wouldn't even exist. All their problems are because their users prefer to pay a 3rd party than to use the recommended, official app they keep pushing into them. Instead of all this confusion, if they just made their app work on the high-latency that is common on mobile networks, they would get much better results. (No need to even make their video work.)
- hooverd 3y ago
  I think the problem is that third apps get in the way of ads. Reddits users and content and "community" get in the way of ads too.

by joecot 3y ago

skrtskrt 3y ago

Ding ding ding The real reddit app doesn’t even have an option to block a particular ad account so when they serve you evangelical right wing ads all day you just have to swallow it.

nikole9696 3y ago
The inability to block ads I personally find offensive is the #1 reason I'll use a browser with ad block over a native app. Reddit and Tumblr are my two biggest offenders that do not let me properly block particular ads - notably gambling and religion, but also those scam mobile games and other scammy nonsense. I get that they need to pay the bills, but I should have some level of control over what I see.
- joecot 3y ago
  Which is the real reason that reddit is killing both the third party apps and the mobile site. Same reason that Facebook, Twitter, and Tiktok make the mobile site as painful as possible. If you're using a website in a browser, the user has control. If you're using their app, the company has control.
  - graphe 3y ago
    Twitter and TikTok are pretty pleasant to use for me. Just AdBlock and move on.
- SantalBlush 3y ago
  >The inability to block ads I personally find offensive is the #1 reason I'll use a browser with ad block over a native app. This is the main reason why apps exist in the first place. They remove the user agency that browsers provide.

phire 3y ago

It seems like the plan was always to kill the 3rd party apps, but not until their own app was feature competitive with the 3rd party ones. But they ran into time limitations. They plan to IPO later this year and they want the 3rd party apps to be dead before then.

dylan604 3y ago
Isn't this always the way. Crowd source development and ideas to see what gains popularity, and then build those features into your thing or buy the 3rd party thing to rebrand as your thing. That's like startup culture 101
- theturtletalks 3y ago
  Another thing that probably irked Reddit was that Apollo, RedditIsFun, and the other popular clients were monetizing their apps by including their own ads, charging a one-time or monthly fee. I'm surprised that wasn't against their API terms.
  - shagie 3y ago
    It's not. It's similar to how Imgur does it. Imgur serves advertisements when you go to their page. But you don't get them through the API. https://api.imgur.com/#commercial https://api.imgur.com/#commercial > Your application is commercial if you're making any money with it (which includes in-app advertising), if you plan on making any money with it, or if it belongs to a commercial organization. Calling an API and monetizing the front end it is fine. The money that Imgur loses from ads is made up in the API call monetization. The Reddit APIs don't prohibit serving advertisements or any other form of monetization of the use of the APIs and mention it as something that your app would need to do. https://www.redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms https://www.redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms You will disclose in your App through a privacy policy how you collect, use, store, and disclose data collected from your App Users and other visitors, including, where applicable, that third parties (e.g., advertisers) may serve content or advertisements and collect information directly from your App Users and other visitors that may include the use of cookies. In addition, by using the Data APIs, Reddit may use submitted information in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Note that sending data to 3rd parties from a front end (e.g., advertisers) is something that is allowed provided that it is properly disclosed to the App Users or other visitors and that it may serve content or advertisements from the application.

bigmattystyles 3y ago

Surprised growth is measured in terms of app installs versus active users by VCs. It’s probably both I suppose.

willis936 3y ago

Being blinded by hubris and taking a hard left off a cliff on a potentially profitable venture are not things I would consider "smart". Saying it was "smart but handled poorly" is an excuse. It was a series of dumb moves because they did not see the actions they needed to take and in what order and on what timeframe to not capsize.

joecot 3y ago
Correct. In general it's a good capitalist scheme. Start with a mostly open platform, court third parties into making tools that make it significantly better, get your user base. Then kill the third parties to consolidate power. It worked for Facebook. It worked for Google Chat. It's failing for Twitter, and for reddit, for the same reasons. They did it too quickly and without the finesse needed to prevent a revolt. Instead of cranking the pricing, they needed to do what Facebook and Google did -- slowly degrade the integration system until it was unusable, start restricting features, add features incompatible with third parties, etc, until the third parties all give up and the API dies a seemingly natural death. reddit just doesn't have the foresight or planning to pull off most plans, including nefarious ones. But it didn't work for Gmail. Despite Google's best efforts, email still exists outside Google. If we want to avoid playing this Fark->Digg->Reddit game again, we need an open standard that doesn't rely on a single company, like email.
- importantbrian 3y ago
  I don't think it's so much about consolidating power as it is that this is the natural choice for companies that primarily monetize through ads. I've always felt that it would be better for these platform companies to instead try to monetize the app ecosystem. Start by charging for the API with a generous free tier instead of going down the ad supported route.
- lightbritefight 3y ago
  Embrace, extend, extinguish. Microsoft used it like a scalpel and a hammer for decades.

slivanes 3y ago

I wonder why Reddit didn't buy the app?

joecot 3y ago
Because it hasn't worked before. They bought Alien Blue, made it the official app, failed to iterate on it, and eventually gave up on it. Now they've made a new reddit app, which is also not good. No reddit official app is going to look good compared to the the third party ones, partly because their profit making attempts are at odds with good user experience, and if they buy the third party ones they've already shown they can't improve them. So they want the comparison to go away so reddit stops being embarrassed by third parties.
- wvenable 3y ago
  > made it the official app They did not. They bought it and killed it. Their home-grown application is built from scratch.
  - dayedh 3y ago
    I’m still incredibly bitter about this. The Alien Blue iPad app was fantastic, nothing that has been released since can hold a candle to it.

marcosdumay 3y ago

> If the reddit app actually had the moderation tools they've been promising for years, I doubt the moderator outcry would be anywhere near this bad. If the reddit app was any good, the 3rd party ones wouldn't even exist. All their problems are because their users prefer to pay a 3rd party than to use the recommended, official app they keep pushing into them. Instead of all this confusion, if they just made their app work on the high-latency that is common on mobile networks, they would get much better results. (No need to even make their video work.)

hooverd 3y ago
I think the problem is that third apps get in the way of ads. Reddits users and content and "community" get in the way of ads too.