Reddit has previously made promises to add features that were never followed through on. The fact is, Reddit admin has no credibility with the user base.
Reddit protest
- Thread starter simply1
- Start date
It's capitalism. Every major tech company wants to control the experience end to end, especially one that right now relies so heavily on ads and selling content access.
By owning the only app and interface, they can enforce ads or subscriptions to specific features. They absolutely want that more than the API revenue - as evident by the price of API access/utilization. What they should have done is heavily invest in their app prior to making this move. While it works perfectly fine for me as a casual reader and poster on a handful of subreddits, I understand where it would be lacking for many.
Yes, ingress, egress, and compute for the volume of API requests they get would add up extremely fast, but the price they're demanding is simply to shut off any viability of a third party app without saying as much.
But I still don't see it hurting them in the long-run. Addicts will return after their protest and casual users are largely unimpacted. They'll lose some traffic, but more than make up for it by the increased ad revenue, premium app tiers eventually, and the API access by the large AI modelers.
3rd party apps have been the only way I've ever consumed and created reddit content. The default subs have become more and more rage baiting and doom scrolling over the past few years and this feels like a good excuse to ditch it. The small, niche communities are what reddit does best and there isn't an equal alternative, so it will roll on fine.
Worth noting, this was a bit misleading. The reports that were blasted out on this on this go back to basically one blog post from a firm that has only been tracking netflix 'daily signups' since 2019.
Yes, there of course would be signups as people got forced onto there. That would be a short term impact. They omit the number of cancels, and also cut off the graph right when those signups come crashing back down. They claim the 'ratio of signups to cancels' increased, but that tells us nothing without underlying numbers, and a lot of the cancel numbers would be more spread out vs an immediate impact of netflix applying its block
While I do think this can be true in some senses, when people have their way of interfacing with the site taken away, I think that has a larger potential impact than simply if people were protesting over other changes (as they have over prior issues in the past).
Like, for me the apps aren't a big issue. I tend to view reddit on my phone in a browser on desktop mode. However, I absolutely can't stand the 'new reddit' interface. I use the old reddit design. The minute they kill old.reddit and force everyone onto the new interface (which they probably will at some point for the same reason they're killing 3rd party apps) , i'm out.
The Reddit app is just terrible. I’ll use the browser on my phone until something better comes along.
Out of curiosity, what don’t people like about their app? I’ve yet to see anybody say they like it, however I’ve never had a problem with it. Granted I only follow a handful of subreddits and post casually so am anything but a heavy user.
I know it supposedly sucks for accessibility purposes, but what else besides seeing ads?
Just an honest question, not second guessing anyone or defending the app.
I know it supposedly sucks for accessibility purposes, but what else besides seeing ads?
Just an honest question, not second guessing anyone or defending the app.
A lot of moderator tools are only available via third party, spam suppression and such.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
Apollo is just awesome. No ads, easy to use, simple interface.
I went to the official Reddit app last week as a kind of preview for when Apollo closes up at the end of the month. Like you said, it wasn’t terrible - the ads are annoying, but no more so than in my Twitter feed (and probably less annoying than Facebook). It’s not as good of an experience as Apollo but it’s, ehhh, okay, I guess. I have heard, as mentioned above, that the moderator tools on the official app are awful, but I don’t have any experience with that.
Another complaint is the amount of tracking and data usage the official app uses.
I’ve never personally used it, so my frustration isn’t really tied to the app itself. And honestly I wonder how much of the consternation over Reddit’s app is just an avatar for people frustrated with their transparent shift towards the type of capital maximalism that we’re constantly battered over the head with in every other part of our lives and throughout the internet.
Reddit was a place on the internet where people could interact with other people and keep up with what’s going on, generally speaking, that wasn’t just a giant ad platform, utilizing AI to constantly attempt to sell us something. The change to the API I think probably feels like a betrayal, in a sense, pulling the rug out from under them on what made Reddit unique in today’s modern internet, and instead doing the same thing that seems every other popular service on the internet does. But I suppose at some point, the VC piper’s gotta be paid, and this is what we get. Unless something new comes around.
Ah the circle of life. Netflix becomes the cable companies. College sports become the Pro's, and Reddit becomes Digg.
I think there is some truth to this. Everybody accuses people of being sellouts if they make a big financial decision, but the people complaining aren't the people paying the bills.
Most people have a price, even if they aren't willing to admit it.