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I don’t think that’s 100% true. In an alternate universe I might be paying Reddit $5-10 a month to use a third party app like Apollo and would have been a happy

by dangus 2y ago

I don’t think that’s 100% true. In an alternate universe I might be paying Reddit $5-10 a month to use a third party app like Apollo and would have been a happy camper. In another alternate universe, the Reddit app is made so well that third party apps can’t compete. Consumer sentiment is high and everyone in the community strongly recommends their premium subscription with their amazing app through word of mouth, and I happily convert to a paid customer. But in the status quo I am certainly a low-value or potentially negative-value user. I don’t comment, post content, or click on ads. I don’t pay them for premium features. I mostly leech off their content delivery network, and Reddit can’t monetize people like me in the way that Meta can. The proof is in their financial statements. I’m mostly there for certain subreddits that just aren’t replicated elsewhere and my screen time on the app is dramatically lower than it was with Apollo. My foot is already 3/4 out the door.

m-p-3 2y ago
I stand that they could have solved this 3rd-party apps and profitability controversy by requiring a Reddit Gold/Premium subscription. But it was just easier to kill them altogether. I was a regular user for 17 years and I quit the platform on July 2023.
- nehal3m 2y ago
  That is the month I made my Lemmy account. It’s smaller and quiet, not as many niche communities, but I’ll take that over rot economy platforms any day. I left Reddit after 10 years specifically because of the API debacle and how it affected Apollo.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    Same. Lemmy is smaller and quieter, as you said, but the conversations are generally less toxic (unless you seek out the corners of the fediverse where people like to argue) and there's certainly more of a sense of community there
- dangus 2y ago
  I agree. But to be clear they didn’t kill them altogether. There are still their party apps that use a subscription to pay for the API. The problem is that the best app on iOS, Apollo, had its developer chased away. And really it was about communication and trust rather than an unwillingness to sell a paid app. He also expressed dismay over the short timeline to adapt his business since he already sold his customers paid versions of his app, so changing everything abruptly or forking the app to being something like “Apollo 2” would be screwing his own customers over. But if Reddit had communicated the changes more clearly and had treated him better in general I think he would have kept the app. Instead Reddit basically burned the bridge and the dev didn’t need the bullshit anymore.

by dangus 2y ago

m-p-3 2y ago

I stand that they could have solved this 3rd-party apps and profitability controversy by requiring a Reddit Gold/Premium subscription. But it was just easier to kill them altogether. I was a regular user for 17 years and I quit the platform on July 2023.

nehal3m 2y ago
That is the month I made my Lemmy account. It’s smaller and quiet, not as many niche communities, but I’ll take that over rot economy platforms any day. I left Reddit after 10 years specifically because of the API debacle and how it affected Apollo.
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  Same. Lemmy is smaller and quieter, as you said, but the conversations are generally less toxic (unless you seek out the corners of the fediverse where people like to argue) and there's certainly more of a sense of community there
dangus 2y ago
I agree. But to be clear they didn’t kill them altogether. There are still their party apps that use a subscription to pay for the API. The problem is that the best app on iOS, Apollo, had its developer chased away. And really it was about communication and trust rather than an unwillingness to sell a paid app. He also expressed dismay over the short timeline to adapt his business since he already sold his customers paid versions of his app, so changing everything abruptly or forking the app to being something like “Apollo 2” would be screwing his own customers over. But if Reddit had communicated the changes more clearly and had treated him better in general I think he would have kept the app. Instead Reddit basically burned the bridge and the dev didn’t need the bullshit anymore.