I honestly think the article should have given a little more focus to the fact the API pricing isn't something disagreed upon, but the main backlash is due to the pricing out of 3rd party apps by making it outrageously expensive. Give at least an extra paragraph describing what happened between Selig and Reddit.
As well as an unrealistic time table for change (30 days). Selig even offered to discuss giving more time to adapt the apps to what Reddit was wanting, and that's when the lies from Huffman started.
All of this PR probably could have been fixed very easily if they gave a 6 months notice and were going to charge a reasonable fee. I would have paid 3rd party a small fee to use their app to not see ads, but spez had other IPO plans.
...and if they'd sent the CEO on a corporate-paid submarine trip to the Titanic wreckage. Seriously, I felt for the app developers a lot, but honestly, it was 100% Huffman's interviews that pushed me to delete my account and bid reddit farewell. What an asshat.
The solution is right there in the article and in front of (fuck) /u/spez...make it a part of Reddit Premium. I was on Reddit almost every single day for a decade and not only did I never even think about subbing, most of the time I forgot it even existed. The ridiculously low number of subscribers is Reddit's fault entirely. They could have killed two birds with one stone by saying "members will get an ad-free experience in our app and can try these other apps as well". Win for Reddit (actually gaining subs for their Premium service), for the apps (they stay working), and the users (more options).
But I guess just destroying everything you spent your life building is a tempting option as well.
I would have subscribed to Reddit for RiF access. That seems totally reasonable since I block all ads.
Also if they're so concerned about AI training data, why don't they just require only AI to pay big sums for API access. It's not like AI companies who'd ignore that wouldn't just scrape the site anyway.
What's so sad about the death of Reddit, is that all this was totally unnecessary, and nobody is really winning here.
All they needed to do was change how they handled the API for third party apps. Charging for it isn't the issue, it's the prohibitive cost they decided to attach to essentially ALL API access regardless of use, as a response to Large Language Models scrapping the site.
They could have introduced separate pricing for confirmed 3rd party app usage for individuals. Or they could have introduced individual API tokens for 3rd party app use, and locked it behind something like a reddit gold subscription. Even that would be better than effectively killing all of it off.
It's clear they did absolutely no brainstorming about other options before deciding to nuke it all.
Fully agree. I'm cautiously going to assume (they have 2000 employees) that they did enough analysis to assume that they would come out of this on the right side. The problem is, they didn't expect spez to be a complete jack off and Apollo to release info that this whole thing was bullshit.
That's what's most mindblowing to me. Like, I would gladly (well, maybe not gladly. There would be grumbling, but still) pay for Reddit Premium if it meant I could still use third party apps. A LOT of people would, even if it's a relatively small percent overall. And the rest would be in the exact situation they are now. Instead of the most dedicated users potentially leaving the platform entirely, they'd be earning Reddit wayyyyy more money than before.
Considering how hungry the industry is for recurring revenue, it's mind boggling the reddit premium route wasn't chosen. They've left so many opportunities to recoup some revenue I'm convinced this was just a ploy to kill of 3PA.
as a response to Large Language Models scrapping the site.
This might be Reddit's argument, but it doesn't hold much weight. You don't need API access to read a website, a scrapper does that. The 3rd party apps were always the target, since 1) they attack their ad revenue and 2) show the lacks of the official app, which is a liability before the IPO. Also, don't forget that spez went to the media with the "threats" of Selig before he made any public comment.
Reddit is gonna burn and we all will witness it. A. Reddit Hangs up its boots and goes Dark. B. u/spez resigns and all third party apps come back. It's already to late. Long live the #fediverse , Kbin, Lemmy, Mastodon
Yeah, honestly I just realized today that I haven’t been on Reddit at all for anything all week. I’ve been on Lemmy (on a few different instances ever since this all started, but I’m finally feeling comfortable and not tempted to check Reddit at all.
I still check Reddit for updates on how the protests and the mods over there are doing, but other than that I'm quite comfortable with Kbin, Lemmy and Discord for discussions.
Same here. I open it to check on protest developments and that's it. Early on I was tempted by other posts, but now it just looks dull. I think the exodus is already having an impact on the quality of posts, though it's subtle.
Random question... I dumped reddit and jumped on to Lemmy. But I keep seeing things about mastadon and kbin also. What the difference between all of them? Are they all federated and sharing the same servers?
I set up accounts on all three and tried them all out before deciding where I wanted to 'live', it's quite easy, might be worth a go to see what you like.
Lemmy, kbin, and Mastodon are all different ways to view content posted to "the fediverse" which is basically a bunch of different small servers communicating with each other. They're basically different ways to do view and interact with the same posts, kinda like how you use different services (gmail, etc) for email, and then access that still with different software (browsers, or thunderbird, or what have you). For instance, right now I'm responding to your comment from kbin on my desktop browser.
They federate. So imagine using your Reddit account to reply to a tweet. And vice versa.
They don’t share the same servers - they just communicate with each other. Kind of like how I can use Gmail to write to a friend that uses a Yahoo Mail.
Everyone already mentioned that they’re federated and running on small servers. From a user perspective, Kbin is most similar to Lemmy as they are both similar to Reddit, but they are different in that they are completely different projects. Kbin seems to have fewer instances running right now, so everything on Kbin is a little more concentrated among the instances that do exist. But since you can access both Lemmy and Kbin from either, I’d stick with whichever one has the interface that you prefer.
Mastodon is similar to Twitter in how it looks and how people use it.
Huffman’s public reactions to Redditors’ outrage haven’t helped. While he once appeared even-keeled yet decisive while dealing with online mobs, he appears to have alienated a far wider swath of users by coming off as hard-nosed, condescending, and stubborn.
This is the big thing that is different this time around, to me. His behavior, towards the community and towards developers, has become more aggressive amd openly hostile. I don’t know if his earlier “saving Reddit” moments emboldened him to the point of arrogance, or what.
Hasn't he almost always been like that? It just helped that it wasn't aimed at users before, but either controversial people, or something that could at least be excused.
His database-editing negative comments talking about him wasn't anything less controversial, or indicative of a thick skin.
It might be less his "saving Reddit", and more Elon Musk and Twitter that might be doing it. He basically proved that as a billionaire CEO, you can waltz in and do whatever you like. Even if it's unpopular, a big platform (like Twitter) isn't going to implode immediately, so he can just squeeze out what money he can, and make out reasonably wealthy (or at least, that's the idea), in spite of user unpopularity. "Saving Reddit" seems more like a flimsy justification.
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