21 ms·

Reddit Doubles Down

• nickstinemates 3y ago
  Original report is available on the verge[1], which contains the full message sent by reddit CEO. 1: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...
  • TX81Z 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • sdmike1 3y ago
    Damn, that's a hell of a message. it'll be interesting to see if it starts to go dark again, if slacktavism takes over and there is no follow through.
    • bshipp 3y ago
      Even if subreddits don't go dark, the impact will be rapidly observable in August as moderation becomes extremely difficult and subreddit support bots that eliminate spam and maintain post quality stop working.
      • yanderekko 3y ago
        >the impact will be rapidly observable in August as moderation becomes extremely difficult Is there a market out there where I can bet all my money against this claim? The idea that this will lead to a spam wave destroying Reddit is wishful thinking on the part of aggrieved moderators who see themselves as forming a Thin Blue Line against a tide of chaos.
        • bshipp 3y ago
          I'm not an aggrieved moderator, but I am someone who has moderated in the past and used the third-party tools and bots that allowed a subreddit to remain focused on a specific topic. I don't think you recognize how much random spam and troll submissions are caught by filters and cleaned up automatically in even small subreddits. Having given up moderation ages ago, I have no dog in this fight. I'm sitting on the sidelines watching the drama with a bowl of popcorn, just like everyone else.
          • yanderekko 3y ago
            Well, there will still be some anti-spam tools, right? If there's a detailed argument saying that basic moderation (eg. obvious spam removal and not "I want to ban everyone who's ever said anything nice about Trump") will take say an order of magnitude more human effort without 3rd party tools I'd be curious to see it. If there's a persuasive claim along these lines I'd shift my beliefs, but I haven't seen it so far.
            • bshipp 3y ago
              For sure, and I haven't moderated in a few years so perhaps the internal reddit tools have improved since I last used them. They used to be pretty basic and cruddy. The moderation team I was a part of relied pretty heavily on the moderator toolbox: https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox I don't know if the proposed API changes will affect this specific tool, but I doubt moderators would be nearly as up in arms if their tools were going to keep working the way they had in the past.
        • EamonnMR 3y ago
          You can buy reddit stock when they IPO I suppose.
  • jsemrau 3y ago
    "I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.” Overreaction much ? Are we really become that desensitized as a society? I find that hard to believe.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • afavour 3y ago
      Feels like projection. I don’t know anyone that blames Reddit employees for what’s happening, just the CEO.
    • swalling 3y ago
      There are a lot of unhinged people on any major Internet platform. In 2018, a YouTuber shot three people at HQ because she blamed the company for downranking her videos. It’s actually quite lucky this kind of thing hasn’t happened more.
      • OldManRyan 3y ago
        Is it lucky or was that situation an anomaly? Some people are unhinged but they are also keyboard warriors. I doubt even the unhinged redditors are going to go out and start assaulting people over this.
      • aesyondu 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting FYR
    • mesh 3y ago
      It feels like he trying to create the sense among Reddit employees that they are the victims, probably with the hope that it will temper internal criticism and create a sense that they are in this together (as opposed to its basically execs against everyone else).
    • 3y ago
  • badtension 3y ago
    Over 8k subreddits went dark, not just 1k. https://reddark.untone.uk/ https://reddark.untone.uk/
    • JKCalhoun 3y ago
      Noticed r/indiegaming "gone". Good for them.
  • Terr_ 3y ago
    "My executive decisions were perfect, and do not need to be questioned, because I am a vic--I mean, we are all victims of unfair treatment by our regular users who have collectively gone insane and dislike all of us for no reason, a problem we must overcome as a team, right?" /s
• tananaev 3y ago
  Usual bait and switch from Reddit. Pretty much all investor funded companies follow this path sooner or later. Lock the platform, squeeze the profit. Sad, but not much can be done about it.
  • givemeethekeys 3y ago
    Anyone else remember the giant exodus from Digg.com to Reddit? No one I know talks about Digg.com any more. But hey, maybe it is profitable.
    • anoonmoose 3y ago
      Due to some quirk of when and how I used the Internet, I not only never used Digg but have only really heard of it in relation to the exodus you mentioned. So, interestingly, I don't remember the exodus but I also feel like people talk about Digg.com all the time (as a cautionary tale).
      • notRobot 3y ago
        Yes agreed, I'm in the same boat as you. I hear about the Digg Exodus all the time, have for many years. It's often mentioned when talking about the origins of Reddit too.
        • hipsterstal1n 3y ago
          [flagged]
      • giantrobot 3y ago
        Digg was a social bookmarking site like Reddit. It originally ran on user submission of links, user voting, and then user comments on those links. It had a separate slew of problems than Reddit does today but it did have a similarity in laughably myopic and user despising management. Digg decided that taking user submissions didn't make them enough money so they changed the model to letting sites pay to submit links. Digg basically turned into PRWire with a comment section. This and other issues pissed off a lot of users. Then there was a massive protest where all the submissions and comments said go over to Reddit. Reddit's user base ballooned with former Digg users. Digg went forward with its stupid submission changes and a significant percentage of users stayed on Reddit and Digg became a ghost town of PR submissions and astroturf comments. Like Reddit the value of Digg existed almost entirely in its user base. Once the users left there was no utility left in the site. It was a darling of "crowd sourced" content so without the crowd there was no content.
• candiddevmike 3y ago
  I wonder how long until Google delists them in search results.
  • fallat 3y ago
    Why would they?
    • candiddevmike 3y ago
      A lot of the Google search results for reddit lead to a error page or subreddit is now private, not the content Google originally indexed.
      • emikulic 3y ago
        Wow, Reddit is going to lose a lot of pagerank.
    • teruakohatu 3y ago
      Because when you visit a search result you get a page saying the page is private instead of content.
      • djbusby 3y ago
        But are they serving a 410 (or other eeror code?) ? Looks like no to me. The algo may not respond as fast
        • gizmo686 3y ago
          Google knows if you follow a search result, then quickly go back to the search page.
      • technion 3y ago
        Which has always been the case for anything tagged NSFW, or anything at all in a mobile browser. Every piece of SEO advice says this will get downranked from Google, but Reddit demonstrates this isn't true.
• monero-xmr 3y ago
  I’m just annoyed the local community group I primarily use Reddit for is dark. I don’t see why this helps anyone. Reddit is a private company, go someplace else. I think 99% of users don’t care, or don’t care enough to do anything substantial. Just move on.
  • over_bridge 3y ago
    This point has been discussed to death already. Reddit is extremely reliant on a small percentage of users who moderate and post content. Those are the ones being impacted and complaining the loudest. The majority of users just passively absorb the work of the few.
    • theossuary 3y ago
      Not to mention most all subreddits had votes beforehand that were overwhelming in favor of going private or read only. This isn't a small group unilaterally deciding to take reddit down. This is akin to a union holding a vote and overwhelmingly deciding to strike.
      • goykasi 3y ago
        But do we actually know that it isnt a small group unilaterally deciding to take reddit down? From all of these threads about reddit recently there is a lot speculatively statements pointing to heavy support of this boycott. But there is never proof provided to support these statements when requested. What percentage of users actually voted in the polls? If its not a significant portion of the sub-reddit population, was the poll even valid? But a sub-reddit may have still taken action: "90% voted yes... but less than 5% voted" hmm? I personally dont like the official apps or new.reddit, but I think Im part of the minority. It wouldnt surprise me to find out that most users dont actually care about the API price increase, because they use the default homepage and mobile apps. In that case, this boycott would actually be creating a degraded experience for them and negatively impacting their opinions of the moderators that are complaining and making polls to shut it down.
    • TX81Z 3y ago
• vioii 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • JshWright 3y ago
    Do you believe reddit’s API pricing is reasonable?
    • vioii 3y ago
      Yes, it's very reasonable, especially when you consider how many hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, these third-party client apps like Apollo have been raking in each year, for so many years. It's only fair that Reddit prices their API to get the lion's share of that revenue, regardless of whatever sob stories these wealthy app developers are trying to manipulate the angry mob with.
      • richbell 3y ago
        If people are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to use third-party clients, doesn't that suggest that the first-party experience is awful? Let's not forget that Reddit's content is generated by its users. Perhaps a significant number of these users wouldn't be on Reddit in the first place if not for apps like Apollo.
      • linuxftw 3y ago
        The Apollo guy is a real head scratcher. He probably could have charged $10/month to more than cover his costs, and had 10's of thousands of paying subscribers. Or, you know, implement a caching layer.
      • JayPalm 3y ago
        Dang, TurfGPT has gotten really good!
      • joshstrange 3y ago
        Dear god, bitter much? Who cares how much they are making? Apollo was $13/year (years ago it was $9/year). That absurdly low for the value Apollo provided. It provided a living for ~1-1.5+ developers/others (backend dev has a day job IIRC). They had server costs and various other costs (backend, icon art work, etc). If we were talking about a manipulative/scummy app it would be different but Apollo was top of the line. One of the best/better apps I’ve used on iOS. If anyone deserved to be “wealthy” then it was this dev for the time and effort he put into the app. Even so, can you not see how it’s untenable to pay for the API even he wanted to? At rough estimates he was making $650,00 a year (~50K yearly subs IIRC). That’s 552,500 after apple’s tax, and then he has to pay the backend developer, the servers, icon designers, himself and the business has other costs/expenses. Yes, he is probably doing quite well for himself but this is a case where I really don’t see a problem with that. At $20M a year he would have to jack up his prices and drop the free tier (or jack up prices further) and a lot of those people are only halfway through their subscription at best, how does he afford them? Remember Reddit told him this year that they had no plans to change the API this year. You want to make it out as if he is wealthy beyond compare and rallying a mob against poor, old, non-profitable reddit. Reddit chooses to be non-profitable. Their headcount is high, they’ve made increasingly unpopular/anti-community changes, and they refuse to provide decent tools to moderators after years of promising to and failing to deliver. Reddit primed the pump then took away one of few places where reddit can still shine, 3rd party apps, reddit did this to themselves. They have ignored every single off-ramp afforded to them after making this bad decision and have now been caught lying multiple times. Reddit has but to look in the mirror to know who to blame for this.
• 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  I hope this unleashes a wave of tools that allow you to exfiltrate content from these systems and put them in longer lasting storage that can be searched even when the original goes down. Then we can just let all these services die every few years.
  • nocoiner 3y ago
    I actually think I would have been pretty bummed by this week’s events if my long-time Reddit account hadn’t been banned last year for literally no reason. (I know everyone always says that - and then it turns out that they’re inevitably extremely enthusiastic posters about, like, early/mid 20th century German highway engineering or something similarly Hitler adjacent. The only not-nice thing I ever wrote on there was in an AMA by a westerner who ran a North Korean travel agency to ask him how it felt to literally be one of Communism’s “useful idiots.” He never answered. But that was also years ago, so presuming that probably wasn’t the cause of my ban.) I thought, ah, surely this error will be cleared up upon appeal. I submitted my appeal, and nope, ban remains. It was actually kind of upsetting (I guess due to the seeming arbitrariness? certainly no content of any value was lost), but it was good to have that nice, clean break. Anyway, I mention any of this not because I care about getting that account back, but because it occurred to me that I’d really like to get back on that account and delete all my messages, but with the way their ban seems to work, I don’t think I can do that. And while I’m sure their 2023 TOS makes it purely my problem if I got myself banned and thus lost any ability to control the content I contributed, I do wonder if their TOS was as robust (it was a pretty, pretty informal place when I started posting, and rights to contributed content can be pretty nuanced based on how the license/TOS is worded), or how their stance interacts with any of the privacy laws passed in the last 10-12 years. Oh well. This is why my default rule is “never post” (as I elect to override that default at this very moment).
    • CommitSyn 3y ago
      On Reddit, you can say things that would be normal anywhere else, but make a small group of terminally-online individuals very upset. Something as simple as asking 1 question in 1 subreddit. That's how I got my first ban. It's what made me completely apathetic to reddit. The other bans were my fault (as in, I knew it was likely at that point) but I was apathetic at that point. Still, I appealed because they were silly bans, and my account was reinstated each time.
• monkpit 3y ago
  It seems to me like they could pass this cost to users instead of developers and just have API access an option on some subscription tier. Then allow third party apps to auth with users credentials. And then everyone would be happy? Maybe.
  • tensor 3y ago
    Yes, I've no doubt they know this and have opted for the "more control" route. They seem to fully expect to weather the storm and be able to do whatever they want with the API and anything else. I guess it remains to be seen if that is true, but unlike Twitter and Mastodon, where I didn't think Mastodon was a good alternative, I actually could see https://kbin.social https://kbin.social being a good alternative for reddit. The longer this protest goes on the more the alternatives will grow and be viable. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
• ta8645 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • wahnfrieden 3y ago
    I don’t think that’s interesting. I regret reading it and wish you hadn't shared it Reddit will have moderators and will provide them more tools
    • ta8645 3y ago
      The theory being that it will revert to more manual, hands on moderation, rather than automated and more sweeping (eg. instantly banning people for simply posting in an unrelated but disfavored sub).
      • bshipp 3y ago
        I have only moderated relatively small subreddits with hundreds of users and even that was an exhausting slog that was only made feasible with third party subreddit tools. if you think it's difficult to maintain moderator consistency now, just wait until subreddits are forced to bring on hundreds of moderators to handle the workload. Reddit admin and users have no idea how much free labour they are benefitting from and how much subreddit quality will decline with this move. Even things like porn subreddits will instantly be hit. There are bots that evaluate every submission and compare them against illegal content to instantly remove those posts. Without those bots, subreddits will get closed as they lose control over submitted content and bring the ire of admin and public media.
        • ta8645 3y ago
          That makes sense. Although, it goes against the dismissive post to which I was replying, that said Reddit will provide all the missing functionality without a problem.
          • bshipp 3y ago
• pcurve 3y ago
  Of course, the two day blackout will not have huge revenue impact, but two week one will. And if it goes on beyond that, those who will have the most to lose will blink (i.e. Spez and investors) If Spez doesn't blink, the investors will make him. I don't think he's' going to win this one without making concession.
  • unstatusthequo 3y ago
    I do hope the mods have the balls to continue the blackout as long as it takes. This couple days is a joke. A longer strike will be noticed, especially by would be IPO investors. As it is, if this IPOs, I’ll be selling short via put options on this. Management is incompetent. Will not succeed with this anti visionary leadership.
    • willis936 3y ago
      I wouldn't say it takes balls to not click the "public" button and instead touch grass. Everyone will be just fine without their feed crank fix.
    • pacetherace 3y ago
      If anything, the mods are getting a break from their stressful lives as Reddit mods.
  • whyenot 3y ago
    I wonder what Reddit's owner (Advance Media / Condé Nast) think of all this. I assume there is a point where (from Advance's POV) the API changes hurt the IPO more than they help. There may also be a point where having (Reddit co-founder) Huffman as CEO is more of a hindrance than a benefit.
    • Macha 3y ago
      Note that while Advance Media is still a large shareholder, they haven't been the majority shareholder since some point in 2017-2019 as they got diluted by various investment waves
• extr 3y ago
  I don't really understand why it had to be this way. It's so easy to think of other ways this could have been handled. Even just announcing the same change with 6 months of lead time rather than 1 month would have gone over better. Or boil the frog and gradually introduce API restrictions. It's as if the CEO is purposefully being as belligerent as possible to rile people up.
  • CommitSyn 3y ago
    Or they're broke and reddit is soon to be bankrupt. But even so, if they had just said that, the outcome would be so much different. Because as of now it seems like they're fucking people over for the sake of fucking them over.
    • lokar 3y ago
      Neither the cost of allowing these apps or the revenue the charge would produce could possibly matter.
      • pclmulqdq 3y ago
        I'm not so sure - I assume the hyper-valuable users are actually generally using 3rd party apps, so forcing them back on the platform could raise their CPI enough to look good at an IPO rather than terrible.
        • lokar 3y ago
          They have to be much less than 1%, I don’t t see how the math works. Views (and ad clicks) are what matter, not posts and comments. They only need the posts and comments to have something to stick an ad next to.
          • smileysteve 3y ago
            But the api doesn't deliver ads and the clients don't pay Reddit.
• whatsuphotdog 3y ago
  I love that the CEO calls the users voicing their displeasure "noise". When those users voice opinions on other things, it's called content. When those users voice their opinions against reddit, it's noise. Hoffman continues to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reddit is. The very people that give your platform its value are revolting against you, and you think it's noise. What's your product? What do you create? In what way will Reddit thrive only with what you put into it? Where do you think the content you lace your ads between comes from?
  • slater 3y ago
    "Windows users"...?
    • CommitSyn 3y ago
      When those.
    • 22c 3y ago
      Probably "When those".. Maybe GP is using dictaton?
      • brookst 3y ago
        When does oozers dun flown da coop…
  • raincole 3y ago
    My personal (cynical) bet is that Huffman actually understands what Reddit is better than us, and Reddit will be just fine after this. To be completely honest, if a two-day blackout is proven to be the most serious "protest" the community can do, I'll buy Reddit stock when it IPO.
    • afavour 3y ago
      I agree. I think that this is a turning point for Reddit but not towards failure: they’re ditching the hardcore nerd audience that made them. But they’ve long since outgrown that audience and will likely (as a company) do just fine without them. As a community there will be a notable loss.
• white_dragon88 3y ago
  [flagged]
• p1necone 3y ago
  Imo the boycott isn't going far enough. The communities affected by this should just pool resources and either migrate to an existing clone or build one. If it sticks to only hosting text, and handles images/videos via external links hosting costs would be very manageable. There's no reason something like Reddit needs to be privately owned, or commercial at all.
  • JKCalhoun 3y ago
    As a user I deleted my entire comment history. About the best I could think of to do.
• paxys 3y ago
  It will be interesting to see the eventual outcome of this saga. I have already seen backlash against the backlash in many subs. /r/NBA, which was mentioned in the article, had a poll one day before the blackout and made the decision based on 8000 votes (out of a total 8+ million members). Casual users were not happy to find out that they would have nowhere to discuss the most important game of the season, and the mod announcements were very heavily downvoted (the blackout happened nonetheless). Will a chunk of users stay off the site permanently? Maybe. Will Reddit as a business be better off without these users? Also maybe. There's definitely a case to be made that the community would benefit from more casual participation minus power tripping and over moderation from the top 0.01%.
  • whatsuphotdog 3y ago
    >Will Reddit as a business be better off without these users? Also maybe. There's definitely a case to be made that the community would benefit from more casual participation minus power tripping and over moderation from the top 0.01%. Casual participation doesn't get the job done. The idea that reddit would benefit without these users is just a complete misunderstanding of what reddit is and what creates reddit's value.
  • thr_low_latency 3y ago
    Moderators _seriously_ underestimate how hated they are. At this point I'd rather the admins just take back the subs and let the voting system sort it out. Like how it did for the first 10 years of the site's life.
    • lokar 3y ago
      It will be overrun by nazis pretty fast. A lot as changed in 10 years.
      • thr_low_latency 3y ago
        Yes, like the definition of Nazi and the fact that Goodwin's law no longer means you lose the argument.
• CSMastermind 3y ago
  > A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout I find a CEO referring to their employees as 'Snoos' to be offputting personally. I'm sure it's meant to be a fun and inclusive term but the guy is sending out a pretty serious email that ends in, "I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations." The tone strikes me as weird for this message and I feel like the term 'Snoo' is infantizing at best? Maybe I'm alone, it just feels super weird to hear that coming from someone with the title of CEO at a company of more than 100 people
  • xatax 3y ago
    Snoo is the name of the reddit alien. I believe it was going to be the original name of the site (what's new - what'S NOO). Since "redditor" is a community name, it makes sense there would be a different internal/employee demonym and Snoo fits the site as good as any other name might.
    • mulmen 3y ago
      Here’s an idea, call them employees.
      • xatax 3y ago
        Every company I've ever worked for has had some sort of name for their employees. It's probably supposed to foster some sense of community/belonging. You're welcome to take the cynical approach to that, sure, but I've never felt it to be a particularly harmful thing. It's good to have some semblance of a friendly culture, if only to break up the day. Some people will like it and I'm sure some people hate it. I've never given it a second thought though.
        • throwaway742 3y ago
          I always hated it. It feels infantilizing.
• ent101 3y ago
  I highly suspect anything critical of Reddit is being flagged to death on HN. This post was #1 with more than 100 upvotes in 39 minutes. Now it keeps going lower and lower.
  • ent101 3y ago
    Now it's #6. How's this even possible?!
    • arcanemachiner 3y ago
      I've noticed this place seems to have a really high churn rate. I often find myself replying to comments that are only 5 minutes old. :P
    • CamelCaseName 3y ago
      Inciteful posts rank lower. Incitefulness being ranked as some function where upvotes increase the score and number of comments decreases it.
      • Jtsummers 3y ago
        Yeah, dang's discussed that in the past. Among other factors for ranking is the comment:upvote ratio. And I think quality of comments and discussion, they have a flamewar detector (speed of replies and depth of comment thread nesting) which can also impact ranking.
  • dredmorbius 3y ago
    That's most probably based on member flags, not moderator action. Note that HN also deprecates stale stories, where "stale" includes "ongoing discussion of some present drama", e.g., bitcoin and NFCs last year, or GPT currently. dang's discussed this occasionally, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463948> HN specifically doesn't moderate posts critical of YC company down, though Reddit's so long out of the gate I'm not sure that still applies. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463948> There've been 116 stories mentioning "Reddit" with > 20 votes between 2023-5-13 and 2023-6-14. <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1686720501&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1684022400&page=0&prefix=true&query=reddit%20points%3E20&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1686720501&dateRange=custom&...> I'm doing analysis based on HN front page listings and could update that to see what the actual surviving front-page story count is. It's been ... fairly substantial. Fewer than 3% of submissions make the front page, and that's exclusive of spammed or moderated content. Update / Edit: There've been 16 front-page stories on Reddit since 31 May beginning with "Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing" (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083>). As compared with prior years, the 2023 mention rate is well above both the 5- and 10-year history (showing year and HN front-page mentions of "Reddit"): 2007 41 2008 31 2009 15 2010 44 2011 41 2012 46 2013 28 2014 27 2015 27 2016 19 2017 15 2018 15 2019 12 2020 24 2021 12 2022 13 2023 21 (Source: own data & analysis based on a crawl of all HN front-pages through 2023-06-13.)
• ChildOfChaos 3y ago
  I am a bit confused about this, do a lot of people access Reddit through a service that uses the API? To me Reddit is a website, people keep referring to it as an app, but I have never used an app for it. It works best in the browser.
  • brogrammernot 3y ago
    From what I’ve read, they’ve been running an A/B test blocking the mobile web surface from working so would not be a leap to suggest they want to drop to be an app only product.
  • alexgrover 3y ago
    Yes, there’s a large group of users that use 3rd party apps like Apollo
  • ajorgensen 3y ago
    Really? Maybe I'm in an A/B test but on mobile for me every page load pops up a dialog that says "this looks better in the app" and they only load a limited number of comments and gate the rest behind the app. Apollo was by far the best reddit browsing experience on mobile and it seems like the API price was a direct action to shut these third party experiences down knowing their experience was sub par. Are you using old.reddit.com by chance? If so I have a sneaking suspicious that's going to go away in due time.
  • 9gagceo 3y ago
    You're right, but a lot of people do use third-party apps on their mobile phones since the official Reddit app is crap. From what I've read, third-party apps are also the only way for moderators to perform while they're away from their desktops since the official app is extremely limited in that regard. Even on desktop, a lot users and mods use Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) [0] because the "default" Reddit is crap too, lol. I'm sure other HN users would also be using the "old" version of reddit, old.reddit.com [1] since it still performs better somehow. RES has also mentioned that it should continue working fine, but they're not entirely sure about it either. [2] [0]: https://redditenhancementsuite.com/ https://redditenhancementsuite.com/ [1]: https://old.reddit.com/ https://old.reddit.com/ [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/RESAnnouncements/comments/141hyv3/announcement_res_reddits_upcoming_api_changes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RESAnnouncements/comments/141hyv3/a...
• Aeolun 3y ago
  Isn’t there a centralized alternative to Reddit somewhere? This decentralized stuff just doesn’t seem to work.
  • Freebytes 3y ago
    There was Voat previously. I think you can actually download the source code and spin up an alternative if you wanted. The issue is getting people to switch.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• latenightcoding 3y ago
  I hope I’m wrong, but I do not believe the blackout will be effective. Mainly because there is not a clear alternative to Reddit.
  • x86x87 3y ago
    If there was a clear alternative they would have not had the balls to try this. For me the blackout was effective. I'm done with reddit. Fuck em
  • bshipp 3y ago
    Reddit was not a clear alternative to Digg, but it only took a short while for the transition to occur. it's not the consuming user base that needs to transition, but the moderators who are willing to manage subreddits and users who spend the time find and share content. If they move somewhere else because Reddit becomes too difficult to use, the rest will eventually follow. Reddit itself isn't a terribly complex site to implement as is shown with the relatively small staff they have for a very large user base. Until relatively recently you could download the source code from Github and spin up an instance yourself. The actual "work" is being done by the unpaid moderators and contributors.
• Balvarez 3y ago
  I always thought reddit was smarter than this. They were really born out of the ashes of digg and for a long time they remembered that. At this point they're in decline I don't think the bleeding will stop. Lots of young people already had a negative view of reddit and now redditors have a negative view of reddit too. I hope we can make a home in the fediverse I'm tired of giving my data to large corps with no recourse.
  • scubadude 3y ago
    I believe the plain theme put a lot of the shitmunchers off for a long time. But we can't have nice things, so the reddit owners had to try to make it like all other shitty social media (starting with the redesign - echoes of Digg there).
• roody15 3y ago
  It seems that the end game of corporate controlled social media is for corporate interests to control what you read or watch. Happened with the feed of Facebook. originally was a true social network where you scrolled through what your family and friends posted. Now it is a algorithm designed to maximize attention and sell influence, Happened with YouTube. Used to be really pro independent user … now the search functionality is barebones giving you maybe one or two results… the rest promoted content. TikTok just straight up controls what you consume from the get go Reddit wants to join in the same model. Heavily corporate moderated content masquerading as “use content. Sadly I am not too hopeful for a new platform. Any true open forum upvote downvote platform will be torpedoed before it can get going …
  • gardnr 3y ago
    Have you checked out lemmy yet? https://join-lemmy.org/instances https://join-lemmy.org/instances
    • drdaeman 3y ago
      What's to see there? I hate to admit, but this comment pretty much sums it up: https://sopuli.xyz/comment/209870 https://sopuli.xyz/comment/209870 (first part talks about communities in general, the rest is about r/Dota2 in particular - but can mostly be applied to most other subreddits) I really don't want it to be like this, but it sums up perfectly how I feel about it. I'm not on Reddit to make posts - about 99.999% of time I don't have anything to post, and those five minutes a year when I possibly do aren't today. I'm lurking around, then maybe participating in comments, chatting with people or just expressing My Importantly Worthless Opinions(tm). I've checked out Fediverse and it's essentially empty. Those who make all the posts I was commenting on haven't moved there. If they will, I will visit, for sure. But if they won't (and seems that they won't) - I won't stick around simply because there's nothing to do there for me, personally (I'm no content producer). Blackout doesn't address this. Neither are all those "check out Lemmy/Kbin/... posts" I've seen. Reddit knows this and that's why they call users like me "noise". I guess, moderators included (as I get it, most mods don't post - they have a different role)?
• ammut 3y ago
  The post by the Apollo dev made it sound like they had gone back and forth for a while before the final pricing was laid out. I wonder why reddit didn't come up with a price that worked for all parties. Isn't some money better than none + ill will from the community?
  • wingworks 3y ago
    They don't want the money, they want the 3rd party apps gone, and for users to use the offical app.
  • pacetherace 3y ago
    In the recent AMA, they claimed that the average cost per user would be around $1/month. Apollo dev believes it will be much more than. I feel Reddit could have easily come up with a model where the API usage gets tied to premium account and that decouples apps from API charges. Reddit has now created a new problem for itself which is that a huge user base that previously didn't bother to look at third-party apps has suddenly become aware of third-party apps. So now, they will start bypassing Reddit's official apps that generate revenue for Reddit in favor of third-party apps that seemingly have a better UX and are ad-free.
    • nocoiner 3y ago
      Well, maybe, but the API is free only until the end of the month, so… seems like a very temporary problem for Reddit (assuming that the mods generally fold, as I assume they likely will).
  • paxys 3y ago
    I highly doubt a different dollar amount would have changed the outcome. Reddit wanted $2.50 per user from the Apollo dev. Would $2 have been more palatable? Or $1.50? Would the extra few cents per month really make the difference between a user subscribing or not? The conversation is really only about free vs not free. Everything else is a smokescreen.
    • nocoiner 3y ago
• TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
  If Reddit continues to double down on their mistakes, I wonder if they'll go as far as to forcibly reassign control of major subreddits in order to reopen them. They certainly have the technical capability to do so, although I'd expect such an action to result in a mass exodus from Reddit and a massive loss of trust. At the end of the day, Reddit has the final say over what goes on in their website, but playing that card seems risky.
  • AmericanChopper 3y ago
    They can easily do that to the major subreddits without losing much trust at all. How many users do you think really care about the mods of /r/videos? I doubt very many. They should probably make the generic default ones like that admin moderated anyway. The amount of users who actually care about this is shockingly low. Something like 0.5% of users use third party apps? I saw surveys on subreddits with millions of subscribers about participating in this getting ~1000 votes in total. The number of users currently having their Reddit experience ruined by moderators far exceeds the number having their experience ruined by Reddit api changes.
    • bshipp 3y ago
      I've only moderated small subreddits and even I know the chaos that results from not having bot-driven subreddit management tools. You may hate Automoderator when it deletes your carefully crafted post for whatever reason, but I guarantee you will hate Reddit itself when your favorite subs become overrun with illegal and off-topic spam. The race will be between Reddit admins recognizing the degradation of the user experience and the outflow of users who don't want to visit their favorite subreddit because they keep seeing decapitated heads and underage pornography and every conversation is off topic.
      • AmericanChopper 3y ago
        This is really tangential to the core issue of charging for API access, as it’s essentially just an implementation detail. Losing moderation functionality is a valid complaint, but Reddit doesn’t need a free API for that to exist. There’s no reason to think that the required functionality won’t be implemented into the service. Your complaint here is also, rather obviously, massively overblown. The free API never enabled a moderation tool that automatically detected and removed gore or child porn, so there’s really no reason to think your claims about that content have any credibility.
• senectus1 3y ago
  Its interesting because I'd say the Endarkening only affected the members of those communities that went dark. I've gone back to reddit during the dark period and there is still plenty of new tidbits to read. I barely noticed anything unless I specifically went to a community that went dark. All in all I'd say it was very ineffectual on the face of it. But these things tend to snowball so I'll keep watching this space.
• a2tech 3y ago
  All they had to do was make API access require Premium. $4/month and all the pieces were laying there. Thats twice as much monthly profit as their current super inflated API pricing would bring them for the same users. Reddit made themselves a real mess here and it's all SO stupid.
  • alecthomas 3y ago
    I'd pay that to not have to use their awful mobile app or new.reddit
    • andsoitis 3y ago
      > I'd pay that to not have to use their awful mobile app or new.reddit How much are you willing to pay?
  • ec109685 3y ago
    You don’t think there would still be a huge outcry from folks who are paying $10 a year for Apollo and now have to pay $58?
    • dvngnt_ 3y ago
      not enough to cause an entire blackout
  • Riffz 3y ago
    No shit hey. Fucking rocket appliances apparently. Charge me $4 for premium and give devs 3 months to implement the changes or something. It feels so blindingly simple that this who mess is mind numbingly stupid.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • giantrobot 3y ago
      It's stupid but you have to keep in mind Reddit's execs are liars. The API users aren't costing Reddit money and they're not the reason they have profitability problems. Reddit wants to wrap all their content in a mobile app. There they can force ads without the option to blocking, they can force (paid for) "suggestions", and they can vacuum up all that sweet personalized data from every user.
• chefandy 3y ago
  >a commenter let me know that some members had already set up shop on Kbin, a decentralized Reddit alternative that is interoperable with Mastodon and other services on the ActivityPub standard. While the interface is rough even by the standards of Reddit, it works just fine. Works just fine for who, though? Not for non-technical people. The FOSS community, especially the Fediverse community continually disappoint me by being so dismissive of, or even hostile to design critique. Nearly universally, trying to engage a project community in rethinking an interface is received like unsolicited criticism of someone's physique. Even as a software developer who's put many thousands of hours into FOSS development, AND a professional designer, And making it clear I'd be willing to research, design, test, and implement myself, the results are usually just as discouraging. I've stopped trying. Without significant designer input, FOSS social media initiatives will always be two steps ahead technically but 10 steps behind in UX. After the November bump, Mastodon had lost the majority of the active users it had gained by February. I think that if something even comes close to a commercial social media UX, they stand a chance at being a real turning point the world's conception of how social media 'works.'
  • tensor 3y ago
    I am very critical of mastodon when it comes to UX. Kbin on the other hand was no harder to sign up for than Reddit, and it was equally as easy to find subreddit equivalents. Your post cites no specific reasons why Kbin is worse than Reddit from a UX perspective. Have you even tried it?
    • chefandy 3y ago
      Nope. I was basing what I said entirely on the article. Based on my extensive experience in open source projects, I think that's entirely reasonable. If a tech blogger thinks the experience is 'rough'— which includes a whole lot more than user flows in sign up and resource discovery— you can be quite sure it's going to look a whole lot worse to your average person.
      • George83728 3y ago
        Is it common for professional designers to bash a design before even looking at it? Maybe this is why FOSS projects aren't very interested in your feedback.
• sli 3y ago
  I think it's tripling down at this point. Announcement, maintaining it during the AMA, and not saying it's going to pass.
• userbinator 3y ago
  Every website, including Reddit, already has an API you don't need to pay extra for. It's called HTTP and HTML. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that you need permission to choose what user-agent to access a site with; that's what the truly open Web is about.
  • greiskul 3y ago
    Reddit was literally running an experiment on disabling their mobile web site for some users: https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/135tly1/comment/jim40zg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/135tly1/comment/jim40... I would not be surprised if there are people on reddit who are thinking of closing down the garden and removing reddit from the open web.
  • modshatereality 3y ago
    reddit hides a ton of data unless you also run javascript.
• dbtc 3y ago
  Is it possible that the quick spread generative AI is forcing reddit (and twitter) to batten down the hatches?
• clvx 3y ago
  I hope Apollo is talking to several reddit competitors with a sustainable business model and working on integrations. At the end of the month, when they get shut down, they just rebrand the app with the new backend and everyone is happy. All users migrated to a new platform with new communities.
• DimmieMan 3y ago
  "There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well." (https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...) Unfortunately dead on... It would take a lot more than 2 days to see a response, and even then there was enough subreddits still active that /r/all honestly looked about the same.
• jmyeet 3y ago
  It's almost like we have a problem with the workers (producing the UGC) being separated from the means of production where the owners of reddit are simply trying to extract more and more money from the users who produce the content. I, for one, am shocked and surprised. I'm not a big fan of boycotts generally. Most of the time they're performative. But this one seems to have teeth. I hope this goes on indefinitely rather than than having an end date that the owners can simply wait out. Reddit should not be an expensive site to maintain. It's text and some CDN media, basically. There's no reason it can't run profitably but the owners simply want to extract as much value in the short term to increase the IPO price. Short-term profits.
• mattmcknight 3y ago
  He's reading it totally backwards. Most general subs I look at are hating on the mods for blacking out. People are creating alternative communities, but on reddit.
  • data-ottawa 3y ago
    There’s also a filter where lots of users in favour of the blackout are not commenting during the blackout, so you’re only seeing one opinion amplify itself. Numbers are probably closer to 20% care than 50%, but the effect would be visible regardless.
• Calamitous 3y ago
  FTA: > the number of Reddits that have gone dark expanded from around 7,000 to more than 8,400 Annoyingly, there's no context for these numbers. Is this 10% of all subreddits? 90%? Does it cover half of all users? They're meaningless numbers that "sound big."
  • internetter 3y ago
    There are millions of subreddits, but with the volume of subreddits "dark" and some of the largest ones joining in, it's likely to have had a significant effect on a majority of Reddit users, and a decent part of the wider internet. Cumulatively (adding up the member counts), 3 billion "accounts"/subscriptions have been effected. 8k is very significant
  • scubadude 3y ago
    All I know is that the home page for me suddenly showed subreddits I didn't even know I was subscribed to lol so I can only assume a lot were and still are absent.
• po 3y ago
  Signaling that the blackout would only last 2 days for most subs, was bad strategy. Similarly, signaling that you think you can wait out the blackout is bad strategy.
• andsoitis 3y ago
  > More than 8,000 Reddit communities have gone dark in protest, and while many plan to open up again on Wednesday Why open again on Wednesday?
• replwoacause 3y ago
  I gladly quit using Reddit over this. The site and its CEO are a mess anyway.
• bane 3y ago
  Man....I remember when reddit was fun. A while ago, I was moderator for a small community of subreddits and decided that the leadership shenanigans had gotten to me, so I left all those subs behind and just became a lurker. Nothing reddit leadership has done has made me regret that choice. But it's sad, anybody remember Team Periwinkle? Cake day? Getting trophies? Reddit used to distribute their source code, and have real hackers running it. Now it's just another shitty business model looking to be exploited. I get it, Reddit isn't a charity and isn't free to run, it is a business, but now it's just going to be a shit one. You know what would have still sucked but still ended up working? "Hey 3rd party app makers, you're part of the Reddit community. Running this site and service is expensive, so here's what's going to happen. In 12 months we're going to be reworking our revenue model and it will impact how you connect to us. Let's start to chat about it now and decide what's best for this part of our community. Be prepared, we're going to have to figure out how to make money but we want you to be part of the solution. Anything is on the table but here's what we're thinking today: 1. Limit free API access to a cap per day - easier to implement, but will not create revenue for anybody and will cause us to have to build anti-abuse systems. 2. Run more ads. We think we'd probably have to figure out a way for your apps to be part of our ad network. So possible terms of service (TOS) for you might be that you'll have to pass ads through according to some yet to be decided display standard. You won't get any money from it, and it might make your user experience worse. We might consider extending our TOS to also let you run ads in your own apps and mix them in with ours. It's your app, and it would be your decision. 3. Charge for API access. We want to target making $x/million API calls. You would have to figure out how to pay for this. One options is to charge your users a monthly fee and pass it through. Our experience say that while this would reduce your user count, it would also reduce your support load. We'd be open to letting you charge $x+y/million and you keep the $y or perhaps we charge some fee like $x+y and you keep z% percent. On our free site we'd probably still run ads, which would encourage users to your apps for a "premium" experience. There's several models here and we haven't decided yet -- but it could be win-win for everybody who acts as a "portal" into our service. As a show of good faith, we'd probably kill our own organic mobile app to further let you differentiate yours. 4. Some mix of the above, maybe with tiers. Contact us, we're going to start setting up discussions for the next 2-3 months, make a decision within 6, and then give you 6 months to modify your apps and work out payment methods and so on."
• dann0 3y ago
  I deleted my account and my contributions. I'm very curious to see the change in user numbers from this as well. If the number isn't very large, I'll concede that I either over-reacted or the total number of bots is way larger than I imagined. If the number of bots is large, this affects their valuation. If the number is large, it shows that the primary asset, the user base, has reduced and this also affects their valuation. I can't see how they can come out of this looking as valuable as before. I wouldn't like to be an investor.
• modshatereality 3y ago
  I'm confused by this whole thing, do the mods not realize how easily they can be replaced? Without any leadership or strategy moving forward this "movement" is doomed. Who decided the winning strategy was to basically quit? What are they hoping happens here, reddit opens up negotiations? LOL, you're handing them the keys to your subreddits DERP. Pretty much par for reddit mods though so why am i expecting some kind of cohesive plan? I'll see myself out now.
  • scubadude 3y ago
    You forgot to recommend an alternative approach
  • bugfix 3y ago
    The thing is, the mods work for free. If reddit wants to replace them, they'll have to hire people moderate these communities (no chance).
• oilchange 3y ago
  > and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. Exactly. Reddit holds all the cards. Time after time, no great migration after a "revolt". > Even r/nba committed to an indefinite timeframe at arguably the most important time of the NBA season. The NBA championship just ended and the season is over. It's the least important time of the NBA season. This is nothing but an annoyance at best for reddit. If things got serious, they'll just take ban the revolt leaders and take over the subs. Frankly, I despise the "power" mods as much as the reddit admins. Hope there is a mass culling of the mods on reddit as these privileged mods are who made reddit unbearable and turned it into a propaganda cesspool.
• abhayhegde 3y ago
  I used to spend a lot of time on Reddit. This blackout has helped me realize there is more to life. I used to be pretty active averaging a post a day and 10+ comments. But, Reddit lost me now. Of course, not a big deal for them given how little impact the blackout is making in terms of revenue and so on, but this one was necessary for me.