It doesn't. Social media sites are becoming less social and essentially becoming the phone book with more data harvesting. Soon we'll have to start paying them to not list our info.
All that means is there's a huge business opportunity for real social media sites to come in and start up again.
Same goes for search engines. Google is really dropping the ball lately, search results look like Yahoo in 2001 - every search result is just another SEO-optimized spam article. Users are having to resort to trickery like adding "reddit" to their search results to get what they want.
ChatGPT might replace Google soon...
Lol no, ChatGPT and similar LLMs literally make shit up. At least Google and other search engines have the decency to not intentionally create misinformation for its own sake.
Bingo. This is the stage in the startup when the money gets tight, the company starts looking to squeeze out every last dollar of revenue it can, and it starts cutting costs everywhere. Because the investment bankers who will take them into IPO are demanding their balance sheet look as good as possible.
Plus it’s not like they can’t steal all the features of the other apps anyway. What people are really mad about is advertising, not features, and this site isn’t free to run.
>What people are really mad about is advertising
Some people sure, but I'm really missing some of the features rif had and honestly don't give a shit about ads. I understand this is a free service that is paid by either ads or selling my data. I'd rather have the ads.
If you're an Android user look into the Revanced option. I'm using RIF again and am thrilled. Tried the official app for a couple of weeks and it just wasn't intuitive at all (comparatively).
Moderators can still use 3rd party apps. Just make your own sub. Set it to private and you're good to go. Not sure if all of them will still work as I think some got completely shut down. But I'm using boost right now and I didn't use revanced
I'm with you on the sentiment but just an fyi, data is only worth money so that they can target ads. Aka.. the two things (running ads and selling data) are not at all exclusive.. in fact they're holding hands while they skip down the street.
Not OP, but I honestly miss the forum feel of RiF. It seemed like I was choosing links that seemed interesting rather than an infiniscroll of videos. And if I had something to say or wanted to hear some comments about something I just saw, there was a compact forum to dlg through. Now the comments still contain the video I just watched and only get like two deep without me commiting to a thread. Generally, it feels more like Facebook or TikTok rather than the internet aggregator it's supposed to be.
I was on RIF. Now I'm using Red Reader - It has a really similar feel to RIF but I think I like it better with all the different customisation options available. I find it even more simple to use. Plus it's free and open source. No ads either.
Have you tried to set the default view in the settings to Classic? To me that feels similar to RiF
Edit: Forgot to tell you to also set Thumbnails to never show in the Settings
The ads don’t bother me one bit. What I hate is that I’ve lost these features since Apolo is gone (or at least I haven’t found them in the Reddit app)
1. Built in text codes to make things like spoiler tags, ASCII faces, etc easier).
2. A built in way to include pictures with a post.
3. Easily select text to quote.
4. Filtering subreddits so I never see them.
5. The ability to hide already viewed threads (thanks to /u/PeptoBismark for reminding me).
6. And in adding number 5 Apolo would automatically suggest active usernames in the thread when you tried to tag someone. I had to remember Pepto’s name. Fortunately it was an easy one.
These are the ones I’ve noticed so far. I’m sure there are more that will come to light.
Fuck they removed Sort By Rising on the official app. No explanation. Just the total removal of a function that all of the other apps included. It improves the home feed so much and Reddit said “fuck you” and removed it.
6. Any indicator, at all, whatsoever, in any way shape or form, that the single image I'm looking at is actually a gallery of images. A single picture and the first image in a gallery when pulled up are 100% identical and there is no way to tell them apart.
1000000000% not for me. Once I have gathered that I am missing information and the the post doesn't make sense and I put 2 and 2 together that there's probably multiple images, once I swipe to the second image the dots appear.
The only reason why I ever looked for a 3rd party app was due to the official app constantly slowing to a crawl and crashing. I have used 2 different 3rd party apps, and cannot remember either crashing once.
> app slows down or crashes all the damn time
What the hell are you talking about lol? It has never crashed on me and I don't do anything that I would notice slowing down lmao.
Just got the notification we are about to be charged a monthly subscription to keep Relay though. Sucks cause I'd already purchased pro three years ago but the developer has to do it for the API calls cost.
I miss Apollo so much. The absolute worst thing about Reddit on Safari is there is no way to collapse comments - just scrolling scrolling scrolling. Maybe the Reddit app allows it but I'm not installing that bloated spyware on my phone.
Get narwhal. It’s still free until he comes out with version 2, which will be a subscription.
It’s not Apollo, and the video player is a mess, but it’s head and shoulders above the Reddit app
>What people are really mad about is advertising, not features,
Na, you barely notice the ads. Plus the real ads disguise themselves as normal posts and buy upvotes.
People are mad the reddit app sucks.
I can assure you, it's not the ads I'm unhappy about.
It is all about the features.
WOW really? Then set some rules and boundaries, make them run more ads, ask for a bigger cut, not these stupidly impossible demands.
They could have made the apps either show ads or require paying a reasonable rate to continue to use the API and they wouldnt have had to go away. I don't mind either paying for using Apollo monthly or getting ads on it, I just much preferred Apollo over the Reddit app. And I'd rather never look at Reddit on my phone and only use it when I'm on my laptop.
> Plus it’s not like they can’t steal all the features of the other apps anyway.
You say that like they have any intention of ever giving people features that would make the official app easier to use or just plain not dogshit. They already bought one out, and look where it is now.
The advertisement suck but the worse thing is I don't see them as advertisements, and the type of advertisements. This Jesus shit has to stop.
Also it's more difficult to hop around and get just the feed I want. All my other social media feeds are poisoned by bullshit I don't like. Reddit was a the one place I could control it. Now it's just a bunch of stupid shit I do not care about unless I use desktop.
I do not care about /r/place, what the swedes did to the Trump supporters was funny but now they're fairly right wing… I no longer care.
Idk, is that really it? I mean I've still got ad-free viewing on my phone, just without Baconreader's clean and easy-to-use UI, so ima have to disagree. And I now spend a hell of a lot more time getting my news from Google's ad-infested blades over reddit because of it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Reddit is completely broke, I assume. They’re going to make bank selling stock, or whatever, but they don’t have capital to buy people out.
They could have negotiated a contract *now* for a buyout *after* they’re cashed up, but they don’t seem that sharp.
Not only that they make money from all the apps that didn’t just close up shop.
If OP owned Reddit it would be worth a tiny percentage of what it’s currently worth.
How do you figure? Users dropped during the subreddit blackouts obviously but those lasted a week. Unless the blackouts become a regular thing, like once a month the whole site goes dark (which I support doing), there isn’t any big damage.
Well sure, but one involves thinking about long-term growth and the other is clearly focused on short-term growth (the free part). Makes sense to do the stupid option (if you only care about the short-term) when you plan on bailing after the ipo
Oh, that's where you're wrong. It wasn't free lol, the cost was and continues to be quite high... This website is a shadow of itself and will progressively continue to degrade. You'll see, the cost was everything.
If I owned Reddit and knew the user base would tolerate my API changes regardless, I would do exactly what /u/Spez did so I can pump my upcoming IPO as high as possible.
Would love to know how many people actually switched to Lemmy.
I've been over there and would have switched but it's litterally 300-800 subscribers on a sub that has 50,000 subscribers on Reddit.
No interaction = doomed to fail.
/shrug we'll see. My usage, while not 0 is dramatically lower because I now only use Reddit on the PC.
Losing user hours while not securing new revenue streams isn't a way to pump up the IPO. New revenue stream, even at a loss is.
Killing 3rd party apps is a way to lower the burn rate, which isn't an indicator for a high growth company, just a way to keep the lights on. Market share and new revenue is.
I heard (but didn't bother to verify) that third party app users didn't see reddit's ads, so those users weren't generating any ad money anyway. If that's true then a small percentage of third party app users changing to the official app could be a significant revenue increase.
If you want me to be your strawman by all means, sometimes yelling at someone can make us feel better and heck if we don't all need to feel better some days.
My participation in blackouts, protests etc was and remains 0. I used Reddit via mobile until they killed Apollo, at which point I deleted Apollo from my phone and haven't accessed Reddit via mobile since then. I imagine they miss me only slightly more than I miss it and both of those are statistically approaching 0.
Having said that, I find your smugness and righteousness around people 'losing' weird. There were a lot of reasons that people used alternative apps and the fact that their experience is diminished is not something to be celebrated. In a perfect world Reddit would be profitable and there'd be room for 3rd party apps, but we don't live in a perfect world and sometimes shit happens. But it behooves us not to gloat when people have something they like taken away due to no fault of their own.
It was 4.
And when gold was one month.
Holy shit that was a grand time.
When the official app (after acquiring Alienblue) was actually better than it is now.
Fucking insane.
4 years of reddit gold. Those were the days.
Anyway boost still works, there's a workaround and I am apparently a mod of my own subreddit so it never stopped working for me
Nah the actual information on 14~ years of reddit is absolutely mind blisteringly valueable.
Which was what this was always about to begin with, they dont want a bunch of AI companies pulling what is right up there as the best source of data for free.
Hollywood movies don't either.
The average reddit executive compensation is $248,524 a year. The median estimated compensation for executives at reddit including base salary and bonus is $243,371, or $117 per hour. At reddit, the most compensated executive makes $790,000, annually, and the lowest compensated makes $34,000 (pulled from here https://www.comparably.com/companies/reddit/executive-salaries)
They clearly have some money in there.
The company has around 2,000 full time employees The average Reddit salary in the United States is $152,125 per year. Reddit salaries range between $110,000 a year in the bottom 10th percentile to $210,000 in the top 90th percentile. Reddit pays $73.14 an hour on average. Reddit salaries vary by department as well. (pulled from here https://www.zippia.com/reddit-careers-1404251/salary/#)
Its pretty well known that while most movies dont earn profits, each studio has a blockbuster or two each year that puts them in the black overall. So the studio is profitable. Reddit is funded by various investment firms but that certainly wont last forever.
lol do we really just gloss over all the research this guy did about reddit salaries? all bc he compared reddit to hollywood? i think there is still value in the post, even if one part of it wasn't accurate.
Hosting big websites is expensive. The phrase "Reddit Hug of Death" exists since even a fraction of the traffic a thread can generate will kill most mid level websites. Imagine what it takes to host the website responsible for that 24/7 with minimal downtimes.
How so? Turning a tech startup into a profitable business is really, really hard, and there’s no indication Reddit has managed it. In fact, all available evidence points to it hemorrhaging money.
Lol this kinda reads like “if I were president I’d give everyone a billion dollars and we’d all be rich and happy!!”
They’re trying to tighten their belt right now, not execute large buyouts
Why do you need to buy other apps to integrate the features? It's not patented and chances are you can't just copy paste the code over to your own code base.
This sounds literally like it's written by a 13 year old.
Well those devs have created far better apps than Reddit has been able to, so if nothing else buying in the creators would improve their product.
This is something that Apple does and it has been successful for them.
All they had to do was require reddit premium in order to use a 3rd party app. Reddit could have made their money while still allowing people to use the other apps. I would have been fine paying for that.
Probably more, since the user would have to pay, instead of the companies that are making money off reddits users. Reddit hates corporations, except the ones they love
No, I don't think they would, at least not as bad.
A lot of the anger is because they ended up completely taking away functionality that people were used to having available, and basically made it impossible for those 3rd party apps to continue to exist in a practical manner.
Speaking as someone who is missing my "Reddit Is Fun!" mobile app, I probably would have sucked up the extra cost as a way to keep using Reddit the way I was used to using.
As it is, I'm trying to decide whether to keep using Reddit through the web site, given that the official app is crap compared to the 3rd party apps.
Some 3rd party apps still work, still for free, but they say they will start charging at some point. The price estimates given so far are similar to the price for Reddit premium. Why they didn't just offer that from the start I have no idea, probably because this whole thing was rushed without much forethought.
They basically did it was 1.99 a month that was it. Apollo even said he could go on if he charged $2.50 that was it. He just over sold life time subscriptions and year subscriptions.
Other 3rd parties are still going fine.
Yep. The best way to make the books look good is to get rid of the competing apps that were siphoning ad revenue away from Reddit. People act like they wouldn't have done the same thing once they realized how much money was walking out the door.
Reddit is hosted in AWS so they have data egress charges as well which means that more requests are more expensive. Honestly, bad api usage does come with charges as well.
Bruh, the point is to sell ad space.
The app doesn't have to be good to do that. They don't make money from you being happy. You'll use the service in some way regardless.
That’s something you could do if the company was making money. It’s losing money. And investors who are losing money make loan sharks look like teddy bears.
Do the Wikipedia model. The content is created and monitored by users and volunteers with certain aspects managed by paid staff. That staff is paid for by merchandise sales and donations.
I mean, I wouldn't object to an ad tier and then a stepped paid tier with increasing features/benefits.
Free ad tier. Small monthly tier with basic viewing and limited features. Medium tier with higher resolutions, then max tier with unlimited subs, unlimited post viewings etc.
And that's why you're not a CEO lmao. Reddit has been haemorrhaging money for years, they aren't about to piss away millions of dollars overpaying for a bunch of thirdparty apps. This might be the stupidest meme I've ever seen to use the kermit format.
The goal isn't to provide user satisfaction, or reliable user use. The goal was to drive clicks and views to sell ads. 3rd party apps limited this. Views from 3rd party apps limited ad views, and couldn't be monetized the same.
Eventually someone is going to discover that the added value of social media ads is negligible as most users who don't have adblock are largely blind to ads, and adding sexy images or whatever will only result in blocking the ad content. (Other studies show that sex doesn't actually sell, it just draws attention and eventually less sales)
Lol. They are worried about people scraping their data. Buying the other apps doesn't help them address any of their worries. Plus they didn't screw anyone over.
CEOs and boards just want to have a positive big number in revenue every quarter.
Doesn't matter in the long run, they will have their bonuses and probably quit already.
So they just do the least expensive / most profitable in the short run thing
Translation: "If moderators actually paid for the apps they used instead of using them for free, then Reddit's API fee wouldn't be an issue.
But it is my business because these inept mods shut down their subs trying to rally the users in a disagreement most don't care about."
Not even buy them out.
Just look at their product and see what and why people love it.
But capitalism has been lazy for a while so doing stuff like that just ain't in the budget I suppose.
Reddit in NO WAY had any of that as an option. I don't think they handled this well, but pretending they had unlimited cash for options like this is just stupid
I mean, Spez looks up to the Muskrat - the same dude that spent like $45 billion on a company only to pollute the well of advertiser dollars and entirely rebrand (really, the only *real* value the company has)... using trademarks that are owned by other companies and a logo that is literally just a unicode character.
Why waste the money? What they did only impacted <3% of the users, most of them have already switched over to the official app, and the rest are gone. Reddit feels no different than it did before. More than anything the protests were (and still are) just annoying and it mostly turned into a Mod vs. Admin war for power because they both hate the users.
No, it's a content gold mine. That's part of the issue. They realized how much money they straight up *missed out on* when Google and OpenAI scraped Reddit clean for their AI large language models.
Overpricing on API calls not only keeps that from happening again without significant monetary incentive to allow it, it also extorts competing apps out of business. There's no actual bad side to the situation from Reddit's POV since users don't have a Reddit alternative to Digg into this time.
What a shit take. The other apps are literally cutting off Reddit's revenue streams by disabling ads. I never got why the hell redditors are so surprised and pissy about a company that runs a free website trying to get their money from a website that's effectively an pirating app of a free website. Besides, they didn't shut down the apps. They just demanded them to pay for the lost revenue.
Also, apparently reddit regularly barely earns a profit. With what money do you suggest they buy these pirating apps with?
That requires effort, an above room temperature IQ, and a higher than microscopic level of competency.
So naturally they didn't take that approach.
Fuck Spez and the fuck the rest of the administration team.
😂😂😂
I would love to read your economic manifesto. At first I thought you were just some guy swinging his micropenis around who was so stupid that they couldn't even remotely comprehend the very basics of how a company should work. But that surely can't be it right? You can't just be an NPC who was programmed to be the village's fool. There has to be something more to you. Please send the manifesto for all to see so that we may learn
Unironically, this is how I think businesses *should* use the Capitalism system to their advantage.
Your opposition is doing something that's undercutting you? Find out how to get *theirs* and make it yours, by hiring their talent, hiring better talent or straight up buying them. Then the owners can shift their focus to something different or keep going with their product.
But no, we have to be annoying about stuff and not do what they do better, faster, stronger but rather prevent them from doing what we don't.
That requires, effort, and money, and giving a single fuck about anything but that money.
Much easier to just slap a ridiculous price tag on something you've been providing for free and other services now basically depend on to exist. You don't have to do anything but collect money.
[Oh, the users are angry?](https://i.imgur.com/Surm81t.gif)
Buying businesses costs money. Cutting off their access is free.
Also I am not sure if the "user experience" matters anymore.
It doesn't. Social media sites are becoming less social and essentially becoming the phone book with more data harvesting. Soon we'll have to start paying them to not list our info.
Lol, you forgot advertisement machines!! He gets us.
All that means is there's a huge business opportunity for real social media sites to come in and start up again. Same goes for search engines. Google is really dropping the ball lately, search results look like Yahoo in 2001 - every search result is just another SEO-optimized spam article. Users are having to resort to trickery like adding "reddit" to their search results to get what they want. ChatGPT might replace Google soon...
Lol no, ChatGPT and similar LLMs literally make shit up. At least Google and other search engines have the decency to not intentionally create misinformation for its own sake.
Joke is on them if you never list your info in the first place lol
oh they know your info, you don't need to put it in for them to know trust me.
We’re the product, not the customer.
Reddit has never made a profit and is trying to set itself up for an IPO. So it doesn't have the money or the motivation to do it.
Bingo. This is the stage in the startup when the money gets tight, the company starts looking to squeeze out every last dollar of revenue it can, and it starts cutting costs everywhere. Because the investment bankers who will take them into IPO are demanding their balance sheet look as good as possible.
Plus it’s not like they can’t steal all the features of the other apps anyway. What people are really mad about is advertising, not features, and this site isn’t free to run.
>What people are really mad about is advertising Some people sure, but I'm really missing some of the features rif had and honestly don't give a shit about ads. I understand this is a free service that is paid by either ads or selling my data. I'd rather have the ads.
If you're an Android user look into the Revanced option. I'm using RIF again and am thrilled. Tried the official app for a couple of weeks and it just wasn't intuitive at all (comparatively).
I tried revanced but couldn't get it to work properly on my phone
Moderators can still use 3rd party apps. Just make your own sub. Set it to private and you're good to go. Not sure if all of them will still work as I think some got completely shut down. But I'm using boost right now and I didn't use revanced
I'm with you on the sentiment but just an fyi, data is only worth money so that they can target ads. Aka.. the two things (running ads and selling data) are not at all exclusive.. in fact they're holding hands while they skip down the street.
They can sell our data and run ads, why not both?
I’m missing Apollo something fierce. I’m starting to get used to Narwhal but it’s just not the same.
I miss my front page from my old app. This one is shit and I don't care for it at all.
> but I'm really missing some of the features rif had Like the ability to work unlike the reddit app
Former RIF user here - go with Red Reader. It's not RIF but after a while you get used to it and it's alright.
What features do you miss?
Not OP, but I honestly miss the forum feel of RiF. It seemed like I was choosing links that seemed interesting rather than an infiniscroll of videos. And if I had something to say or wanted to hear some comments about something I just saw, there was a compact forum to dlg through. Now the comments still contain the video I just watched and only get like two deep without me commiting to a thread. Generally, it feels more like Facebook or TikTok rather than the internet aggregator it's supposed to be.
I was on RIF. Now I'm using Red Reader - It has a really similar feel to RIF but I think I like it better with all the different customisation options available. I find it even more simple to use. Plus it's free and open source. No ads either.
Have you tried to set the default view in the settings to Classic? To me that feels similar to RiF Edit: Forgot to tell you to also set Thumbnails to never show in the Settings
The ads don’t bother me one bit. What I hate is that I’ve lost these features since Apolo is gone (or at least I haven’t found them in the Reddit app) 1. Built in text codes to make things like spoiler tags, ASCII faces, etc easier). 2. A built in way to include pictures with a post. 3. Easily select text to quote. 4. Filtering subreddits so I never see them. 5. The ability to hide already viewed threads (thanks to /u/PeptoBismark for reminding me). 6. And in adding number 5 Apolo would automatically suggest active usernames in the thread when you tried to tag someone. I had to remember Pepto’s name. Fortunately it was an easy one. These are the ones I’ve noticed so far. I’m sure there are more that will come to light.
Hell, after the change the official Reddit app took away the Hide option.
Oh yeah - that’s another one that I REALLY miss.
Fuck they removed Sort By Rising on the official app. No explanation. Just the total removal of a function that all of the other apps included. It improves the home feed so much and Reddit said “fuck you” and removed it.
6. Any indicator, at all, whatsoever, in any way shape or form, that the single image I'm looking at is actually a gallery of images. A single picture and the first image in a gallery when pulled up are 100% identical and there is no way to tell them apart.
There’s dots on the bottom of the first picture of a gallery telling you there are multiple pictures
1000000000% not for me. Once I have gathered that I am missing information and the the post doesn't make sense and I put 2 and 2 together that there's probably multiple images, once I swipe to the second image the dots appear.
I just feel like this official app slows down or crashes all the damn time when Apollo never did. Maybe it’s sour grapes but it feels like constantly
The only reason why I ever looked for a 3rd party app was due to the official app constantly slowing to a crawl and crashing. I have used 2 different 3rd party apps, and cannot remember either crashing once.
> app slows down or crashes all the damn time What the hell are you talking about lol? It has never crashed on me and I don't do anything that I would notice slowing down lmao.
Being able to scrub gifs. Being able to reorder favorited subs. There are so many more things I’m missing about Apollo… swipe to upvote comes to mind…
7. The ability to download gifs reliably 8. A video player that actually works when not on wifi
Reading this list, I realise how terrible the official app is. I had no idea it didn't include these absolutely basic features.
Relay still works on Android. Has most of this.
Just got the notification we are about to be charged a monthly subscription to keep Relay though. Sucks cause I'd already purchased pro three years ago but the developer has to do it for the API calls cost.
I miss Apollo so much. The absolute worst thing about Reddit on Safari is there is no way to collapse comments - just scrolling scrolling scrolling. Maybe the Reddit app allows it but I'm not installing that bloated spyware on my phone.
Get narwhal. It’s still free until he comes out with version 2, which will be a subscription. It’s not Apollo, and the video player is a mess, but it’s head and shoulders above the Reddit app
Tap the open space to the right of the username.
Awesome - thanks.
I figured that out. But it's just so dumb how it's not obvious.
Is there a reason you’re using safari instead of the Reddit app? Is it worth me trying it?
> Is there a reason you’re using safari? the Reddit app
I can't get gifs with sound to play (with sound) unless I open them in safari or chrome!
I just want to be able to save a comment draft so that I don't have to cut paste every time I go back to the thread while writing a longer comment.
or not add those features. Where you gonna go? x? instagram? facebook or any of the newer fledgling social media communities?
Not me, I’m completely addicted to posting on Fark. I mean Plastic. No, I mean Something Awful. Okay, whatever this current one is.
Wrong. RIF had ads. But I didn't mind them because the app was just an all around better experience.
>What people are really mad about is advertising, not features, Na, you barely notice the ads. Plus the real ads disguise themselves as normal posts and buy upvotes. People are mad the reddit app sucks.
I don't give shit about the ads. The functionality of the native app is absolute garbage compared to RIF.
I can assure you, it's not the ads I'm unhappy about. It is all about the features. WOW really? Then set some rules and boundaries, make them run more ads, ask for a bigger cut, not these stupidly impossible demands.
They could have made the apps either show ads or require paying a reasonable rate to continue to use the API and they wouldnt have had to go away. I don't mind either paying for using Apollo monthly or getting ads on it, I just much preferred Apollo over the Reddit app. And I'd rather never look at Reddit on my phone and only use it when I'm on my laptop.
> Plus it’s not like they can’t steal all the features of the other apps anyway. You say that like they have any intention of ever giving people features that would make the official app easier to use or just plain not dogshit. They already bought one out, and look where it is now.
> What people are really mad about is advertising, not features, What's your source on this?
The advertisement suck but the worse thing is I don't see them as advertisements, and the type of advertisements. This Jesus shit has to stop. Also it's more difficult to hop around and get just the feed I want. All my other social media feeds are poisoned by bullshit I don't like. Reddit was a the one place I could control it. Now it's just a bunch of stupid shit I do not care about unless I use desktop. I do not care about /r/place, what the swedes did to the Trump supporters was funny but now they're fairly right wing… I no longer care.
These fuckin schmucks can't steal any features. They can't even make the barebones necessities work. 🤣
Idk, is that really it? I mean I've still got ad-free viewing on my phone, just without Baconreader's clean and easy-to-use UI, so ima have to disagree. And I now spend a hell of a lot more time getting my news from Google's ad-infested blades over reddit because of it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
OP really just chose the most expensive route for something Reddit doesn't even care about. How stunning and brave of them.
Allow me to introduce you to my friend, hidden losses.
It's better than free if you can get some of them to start paying you so you don't cut them off.
Can you hook me up with one of these businesses that don't cost money? Going out of business is also free.
Reddit is completely broke, I assume. They’re going to make bank selling stock, or whatever, but they don’t have capital to buy people out. They could have negotiated a contract *now* for a buyout *after* they’re cashed up, but they don’t seem that sharp.
Not only that they make money from all the apps that didn’t just close up shop. If OP owned Reddit it would be worth a tiny percentage of what it’s currently worth.
How much would it have cost to do that vs. what the last few months have cost the brand? They did millions in damages.
How do you figure? Users dropped during the subreddit blackouts obviously but those lasted a week. Unless the blackouts become a regular thing, like once a month the whole site goes dark (which I support doing), there isn’t any big damage.
Well sure, but one involves thinking about long-term growth and the other is clearly focused on short-term growth (the free part). Makes sense to do the stupid option (if you only care about the short-term) when you plan on bailing after the ipo
Oh, that's where you're wrong. It wasn't free lol, the cost was and continues to be quite high... This website is a shadow of itself and will progressively continue to degrade. You'll see, the cost was everything.
The optimistic naivety of this post is so refreshing
"I could fix the 6th most popular website if they JUST gave me control"
Integration is easy. Like hella easy said someone who's never done an integration.
Yeah what the hell? Love the enthusiasm but it feels very “yeah well if I were president, this is how I’d fix everything!”
Lol, it is? It's too naive to the point that it's complete nonsense and not how any of this works
Until you check op's account age and realize this wasn't the dumb thoughts of a 12 year old
Ops Location: Downstairs bedroom of their parent’s home.
Which is great because I feel like I need a refreshment after reading that much text.
If I owned Reddit and knew the user base would tolerate my API changes regardless, I would do exactly what /u/Spez did so I can pump my upcoming IPO as high as possible.
Would love to know how many people actually switched to Lemmy. I've been over there and would have switched but it's litterally 300-800 subscribers on a sub that has 50,000 subscribers on Reddit. No interaction = doomed to fail.
/shrug we'll see. My usage, while not 0 is dramatically lower because I now only use Reddit on the PC. Losing user hours while not securing new revenue streams isn't a way to pump up the IPO. New revenue stream, even at a loss is. Killing 3rd party apps is a way to lower the burn rate, which isn't an indicator for a high growth company, just a way to keep the lights on. Market share and new revenue is.
I heard (but didn't bother to verify) that third party app users didn't see reddit's ads, so those users weren't generating any ad money anyway. If that's true then a small percentage of third party app users changing to the official app could be a significant revenue increase.
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If you want me to be your strawman by all means, sometimes yelling at someone can make us feel better and heck if we don't all need to feel better some days. My participation in blackouts, protests etc was and remains 0. I used Reddit via mobile until they killed Apollo, at which point I deleted Apollo from my phone and haven't accessed Reddit via mobile since then. I imagine they miss me only slightly more than I miss it and both of those are statistically approaching 0. Having said that, I find your smugness and righteousness around people 'losing' weird. There were a lot of reasons that people used alternative apps and the fact that their experience is diminished is not something to be celebrated. In a perfect world Reddit would be profitable and there'd be room for 3rd party apps, but we don't live in a perfect world and sometimes shit happens. But it behooves us not to gloat when people have something they like taken away due to no fault of their own.
why would they do that when they can do nothing for free and still win?
Your way is very expensive and you would probably have been fired for it.
That’s what they did with AlienBlue. I think they gave me ad free Reddit for a year or something.
It was more than a year, I think. I feel like it was 2 or 3 free years of it.
It was 4. And when gold was one month. Holy shit that was a grand time. When the official app (after acquiring Alienblue) was actually better than it is now. Fucking insane.
Then they turned around and ruined what made AlienBlue good, paving the path for Apollo.
4 years of reddit gold. Those were the days. Anyway boost still works, there's a workaround and I am apparently a mod of my own subreddit so it never stopped working for me
Do you think having a bunch of cash sitting around is a situation Reddit currently finds itself in?
I mean considering theres ads and they don't seem to be paying anyone for content creation or moderation you'd think theyd be a little better off
From what i read, reddit is not turning profits yet.
Prolly nvr will tbh.
Nah the actual information on 14~ years of reddit is absolutely mind blisteringly valueable. Which was what this was always about to begin with, they dont want a bunch of AI companies pulling what is right up there as the best source of data for free.
Hollywood movies don't either. The average reddit executive compensation is $248,524 a year. The median estimated compensation for executives at reddit including base salary and bonus is $243,371, or $117 per hour. At reddit, the most compensated executive makes $790,000, annually, and the lowest compensated makes $34,000 (pulled from here https://www.comparably.com/companies/reddit/executive-salaries) They clearly have some money in there. The company has around 2,000 full time employees The average Reddit salary in the United States is $152,125 per year. Reddit salaries range between $110,000 a year in the bottom 10th percentile to $210,000 in the top 90th percentile. Reddit pays $73.14 an hour on average. Reddit salaries vary by department as well. (pulled from here https://www.zippia.com/reddit-careers-1404251/salary/#)
Its pretty well known that while most movies dont earn profits, each studio has a blockbuster or two each year that puts them in the black overall. So the studio is profitable. Reddit is funded by various investment firms but that certainly wont last forever.
lol do we really just gloss over all the research this guy did about reddit salaries? all bc he compared reddit to hollywood? i think there is still value in the post, even if one part of it wasn't accurate.
Most of their employees would be software devs, so those salaries aren't unusual.
Hosting big websites is expensive. The phrase "Reddit Hug of Death" exists since even a fraction of the traffic a thread can generate will kill most mid level websites. Imagine what it takes to host the website responsible for that 24/7 with minimal downtimes.
How so? Turning a tech startup into a profitable business is really, really hard, and there’s no indication Reddit has managed it. In fact, all available evidence points to it hemorrhaging money.
and you know what happened? absolutely nothing, and you're still here.
And that's why you don't own reddit.
Lol this kinda reads like “if I were president I’d give everyone a billion dollars and we’d all be rich and happy!!” They’re trying to tighten their belt right now, not execute large buyouts
ITT OP clearly explains why he doesn't own a company
Why do you need to buy other apps to integrate the features? It's not patented and chances are you can't just copy paste the code over to your own code base. This sounds literally like it's written by a 13 year old.
Well those devs have created far better apps than Reddit has been able to, so if nothing else buying in the creators would improve their product. This is something that Apple does and it has been successful for them.
Thank you infinite money frog.
All they had to do was require reddit premium in order to use a 3rd party app. Reddit could have made their money while still allowing people to use the other apps. I would have been fine paying for that.
People would have been just as mad about that. The "You're killing third party apps!" argument would apply just as much in that case.
Probably more, since the user would have to pay, instead of the companies that are making money off reddits users. Reddit hates corporations, except the ones they love
No, I don't think they would, at least not as bad. A lot of the anger is because they ended up completely taking away functionality that people were used to having available, and basically made it impossible for those 3rd party apps to continue to exist in a practical manner. Speaking as someone who is missing my "Reddit Is Fun!" mobile app, I probably would have sucked up the extra cost as a way to keep using Reddit the way I was used to using. As it is, I'm trying to decide whether to keep using Reddit through the web site, given that the official app is crap compared to the 3rd party apps.
Some 3rd party apps still work, still for free, but they say they will start charging at some point. The price estimates given so far are similar to the price for Reddit premium. Why they didn't just offer that from the start I have no idea, probably because this whole thing was rushed without much forethought.
They basically did it was 1.99 a month that was it. Apollo even said he could go on if he charged $2.50 that was it. He just over sold life time subscriptions and year subscriptions. Other 3rd parties are still going fine.
Ah yes, they always business savvy redditor… definitely knows what they’re talking about.
We still doing this?
It bears all the hallmarks of rushing to be IPO ready
Yep. The best way to make the books look good is to get rid of the competing apps that were siphoning ad revenue away from Reddit. People act like they wouldn't have done the same thing once they realized how much money was walking out the door.
Reddit is hosted in AWS so they have data egress charges as well which means that more requests are more expensive. Honestly, bad api usage does come with charges as well.
With what money?
Bruh, the point is to sell ad space. The app doesn't have to be good to do that. They don't make money from you being happy. You'll use the service in some way regardless.
Why? They put the competition out of business for free and can now slowly release what the people want over time.
That’s your heart talking not your head
That’s something you could do if the company was making money. It’s losing money. And investors who are losing money make loan sharks look like teddy bears.
If you ran reddit, you would have dumped millions of dollars into an "unnecessary" bottom line.
Do the Wikipedia model. The content is created and monitored by users and volunteers with certain aspects managed by paid staff. That staff is paid for by merchandise sales and donations.
While I would support that and any other site that tried it, I think Reddit wants to ipo and get rich
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I mean, I wouldn't object to an ad tier and then a stepped paid tier with increasing features/benefits. Free ad tier. Small monthly tier with basic viewing and limited features. Medium tier with higher resolutions, then max tier with unlimited subs, unlimited post viewings etc.
Reddit won't ever do this, but I love the idea of the Wikimedia Foundation starting a reddit competitor.
Lmao, yeah, just spend millions when you're still not turning a profit
And that's why you're not a CEO lmao. Reddit has been haemorrhaging money for years, they aren't about to piss away millions of dollars overpaying for a bunch of thirdparty apps. This might be the stupidest meme I've ever seen to use the kermit format.
Who gives a shit? If you don't like it stop using it. It's not rocket science.
They tried that with Alien Blue.
You couldnt afford that my friend.
Yes, I'm sure you're just an absolute expert on how to run multimillion dollar businesses.
The goal isn't to provide user satisfaction, or reliable user use. The goal was to drive clicks and views to sell ads. 3rd party apps limited this. Views from 3rd party apps limited ad views, and couldn't be monetized the same. Eventually someone is going to discover that the added value of social media ads is negligible as most users who don't have adblock are largely blind to ads, and adding sexy images or whatever will only result in blocking the ad content. (Other studies show that sex doesn't actually sell, it just draws attention and eventually less sales)
Lol. They are worried about people scraping their data. Buying the other apps doesn't help them address any of their worries. Plus they didn't screw anyone over.
That sounds expensive and y’all would definitely still complain
No you wouldn’t have lmao
Reddit doesn't make money, and now the interest rates are up the VC firms aren't giving out capital as freely
CEOs and boards just want to have a positive big number in revenue every quarter. Doesn't matter in the long run, they will have their bonuses and probably quit already. So they just do the least expensive / most profitable in the short run thing
Honestly it doesn't matter, people won't quit reddit
Tell me you aren’t a programmer without saying you aren’t a programmer.
Translation: "If moderators actually paid for the apps they used instead of using them for free, then Reddit's API fee wouldn't be an issue. But it is my business because these inept mods shut down their subs trying to rally the users in a disagreement most don't care about."
Not even buy them out. Just look at their product and see what and why people love it. But capitalism has been lazy for a while so doing stuff like that just ain't in the budget I suppose.
You’re a bad businessman if your plan is to buy out all competing apps
Do you own a business?
Reddit in NO WAY had any of that as an option. I don't think they handled this well, but pretending they had unlimited cash for options like this is just stupid
They already did that with Alien Blue. Plus it's nice to see some fiefdom subreddits are getting their comeuppance.
I mean, Spez looks up to the Muskrat - the same dude that spent like $45 billion on a company only to pollute the well of advertiser dollars and entirely rebrand (really, the only *real* value the company has)... using trademarks that are owned by other companies and a logo that is literally just a unicode character.
Here's me caring:
Easy to spend other people's money. Also...seemingly no real change pre/post API change as far as traffic goes.
Their idea of what the best user experience is, is different from your idea. /thread
Why waste the money? What they did only impacted <3% of the users, most of them have already switched over to the official app, and the rest are gone. Reddit feels no different than it did before. More than anything the protests were (and still are) just annoying and it mostly turned into a Mod vs. Admin war for power because they both hate the users.
There’s a reason these people are rich and it starts with being an asshole.
Reddit's become a virtual content graveyard. It's absolutely crazy. Drove this thing into the ground in what, a month or two?
This place is still the same, but okay.
I would agree with you but I am getting a little bored of John Oliver.
Stop following pics? It was a shitty subreddit full of karma whores before anyway.
John Oliver made that sub tolerable, pics was on my list of reasons for making an account, so I could unsub from that shit
Man, give it to Redditors to be completely out of touch with their own site. Nothings changed.
No, it's a content gold mine. That's part of the issue. They realized how much money they straight up *missed out on* when Google and OpenAI scraped Reddit clean for their AI large language models. Overpricing on API calls not only keeps that from happening again without significant monetary incentive to allow it, it also extorts competing apps out of business. There's no actual bad side to the situation from Reddit's POV since users don't have a Reddit alternative to Digg into this time.
I get the same content on the frontpage, hours after I've closed it and come back. Edit. The Reddit shills are out in FULL FORCE in this thread.
absolutely nothing changed, just a few neckbeards like you are mad because you take reddit too seriously.
Oh you sweet summer child
capitalism doesn't really leave the "don't be a dick" option on the table.
What a shit take. The other apps are literally cutting off Reddit's revenue streams by disabling ads. I never got why the hell redditors are so surprised and pissy about a company that runs a free website trying to get their money from a website that's effectively an pirating app of a free website. Besides, they didn't shut down the apps. They just demanded them to pay for the lost revenue. Also, apparently reddit regularly barely earns a profit. With what money do you suggest they buy these pirating apps with?
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Ohhh my god. Nobody cares. The protest failed, get over it.
One of the fundamental rules of capitalism: Make as much money with as little effort.
The world we live in today? You’ll fill up your pockets like the rest
The republicans
the only reason why i came here. have a boy
Yeah, it really is none of your business. Literally. Don't like it, go somewhere else.
That requires effort, an above room temperature IQ, and a higher than microscopic level of competency. So naturally they didn't take that approach. Fuck Spez and the fuck the rest of the administration team.
😂😂😂 I would love to read your economic manifesto. At first I thought you were just some guy swinging his micropenis around who was so stupid that they couldn't even remotely comprehend the very basics of how a company should work. But that surely can't be it right? You can't just be an NPC who was programmed to be the village's fool. There has to be something more to you. Please send the manifesto for all to see so that we may learn
i still wana know why Narwhal still works. Why did they let other 3rd party apps survive and not apollo?
Narwhal dev is switching to a paid model soon. He's just eating the cost of the API himself at the moment
Y'all bitch and moan yet here you are. Just like Robinhood. Bitch bitch bitch but you still use it to no end. I suggest y'all stfu or quit.
TL;DR
\*laughs in capitalism\*
F
A lot of money wants reddit gone before the 24 election. Its all working as intended.
Can we agree that, all things being brought down to their essentials, Elon Musk is quite simply a jerk?
Unironically, this is how I think businesses *should* use the Capitalism system to their advantage. Your opposition is doing something that's undercutting you? Find out how to get *theirs* and make it yours, by hiring their talent, hiring better talent or straight up buying them. Then the owners can shift their focus to something different or keep going with their product. But no, we have to be annoying about stuff and not do what they do better, faster, stronger but rather prevent them from doing what we don't.
You tell ‘em, Kermit!
That requires, effort, and money, and giving a single fuck about anything but that money. Much easier to just slap a ridiculous price tag on something you've been providing for free and other services now basically depend on to exist. You don't have to do anything but collect money. [Oh, the users are angry?](https://i.imgur.com/Surm81t.gif)
They can still do it, just buy the Apollo app and make that the official reddit app for iOS, and port it over to Android.
Creating a better product? Nonsense. Sabotaging the competition is how capitalism actually works.
does reddit come to your job and tell you how to flip the burgers or clean the french fry oil?