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TechCrunch shouted out Lemmy and Kbin in their Reddit coverage today: Reddit CEO lashes out on protests, moderators and third-party apps (techcrunch.com)

submitted 2 years ago by dirtmayor@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

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From the article:

In response to Huffman’s comments, moderators are trying to find ways to make blackouts effective. Alternatively, some communities are also setting up servers on alternative sites like Lemmy and Kbin.

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[-] Steeve@lemmy.ca 41 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Everyone's talking about enshitification, but they're also just extremely late to the game. The rest of big tech monetized a long time ago and pissed off their users, but managed to keep a solid amount of their users and the rest went... to Reddit. I guess I understand a corporation's need to monetize, but when you built a platform that was meant to be different than the rest you're definitely going to experience some pain when you decide to be like them.

Reddit will most definitely survive this and maybe even be profitable in a few years, but they'll have completely given up what they originally stood for to do so. Personally, I'm just happy this whole thing gave me a push out the door and a place to migrate to, Reddit was already turning into a place I didn't want to be long before this.

[-] Rentlar@beehaw.org 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I could smell the change in the air as Reddit was gearing up for an IPO, months before. I knew 3rd party apps' days were numbered.

What I didn't expect is how much they undervalued their core audience, power users and the collective trust of Reddit users and volunteers. When they announced the ridiculous pricing and timeline I thought it was one of those "announce something terrible then walk back acting like a hero" kind of deals.

Boy did Redditinc and Huffman ever prove me wrong. They doubled down, made clear they have no intention of listening to anyone, and made lots of shit-slinging and shade-throwing comments. They are squandering all the good-will and trust that they had earned over the years, for bottom dollar at that.

[-] PaigePalisade 36 points 2 years ago

“If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders,” he said.

“And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”

Pro-business people always have the craziest ideas of democracy. Does he really believe that shareholders making decisions is, in any way, democratic??

[-] fuser@quex.cc 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

well, he also believes he's a natural leader - clearly, the delusion runs deep.

[-] Hellebert@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

Rich people always do because society tells them they are great.

Look at Australia's former Prime Minister as a shining example of exactly this for just one.

[-] bear_delune@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

I reckon he knows he’s blowing smoke up his own ass.

It just has to sound good not actually make any sense.

[-] LordofCandy@kbin.social 33 points 2 years ago

I just hate that Spez continues to act like 3rd parties didn't offer or cite reasonable examples and costs for api access. No one was saying cost was not an option but it was a ludicrous cost and an amazingly short timeline that started the whole fiasco.

[-] flybynightpotato@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago

He's a big fan of the strawman argument.

[-] Ruorc@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 years ago

If I recall the Apollo dev's comments, he said someone from Twitter told him that the pricing was designed to kill third party apps in the same way Twitter killed them. The pricing is doing exactly what was intended and has nothing to do with the API costs to Reddit.

[-] pork_slam@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

I like to gues that that person is jack. Since the people he follow are mostly from the FOSS and privacy oriented community.

[-] Spzi@lemmy.click 12 points 2 years ago

No one was saying cost was not an option but it was a ludicrous cost

Yes, the "fuck you price" as a vlogger recently called it. A price you put up if you actually don't want to make business with someone, but can't say that openly without losing face. So you put up a price no one in their right mind is willing to pay to get what you want (they leave), without technically excluding anyone, so you don't lose face. Glad how this backfired.

[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 years ago

As a user, I would have even shouldered my own cost. $2.50/mo for a no ad experience on the app I prefer? Seems reasonable.

[-] LordofCandy@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago

I’ve been a Reddit subscriber since 2014. Hell. Tie in api access to your sub.

On npr he said the api price was the price. Like what a non answer. He then cited the entire running cost for the cite but nothing about how apis use it. Nor how google and MS have had to have their own infrastructures built out for them.

It’s just stupid. I unsubscribed and deleted all my content for 16 years. I may be a minority but I will just abuse their system now with blockers and use them as a one way resource when I’m led there. I did not appreciate his characterization of the users or Christian.

[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago

no ad experience

I suspect this is the real reason spez wants third-party apps gone.

[-] Hellebert@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I think if they just wanted to serve ads to third party apps they would have worked out a deal with them to revenue share at the very least and do this.

My guess is that they want to pitch Reddit as this huge datasource for AI in the upcoming IPO and they can't do that if they're giving it away for free.

[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

What's to stop AI companies from just scraping Reddit's HTML? The two big AI companies—Google and Microsoft—already do that as part of their search engine indexing!

[-] thesanewriter@vlemmy.net 2 points 2 years ago

HTML scraping is standard practice for AI development in most major companies. It's not even actually that difficult, there are tools like Selenium that make it really easy and manageable to completely automate.

[-] Hellebert@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

Shhh don't tell investors when they IPO soon!

[-] darkmugglet@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago

I looked at the reddit premium and balked at the cost. I would have paid $10 or $20, but $60? For what? It's not the ads or the benefits but the experience. Demonstrably, third party apps provide a better experience at a lower price. And when I wanted to put my money where my mouth was, I walked away thinking Reddit is being the unreasonable ass hole.i could care less about Reddit Gold or whatever, Reddit just thinks too highly of itself and it's place on the internet.

[-] LewsTherinTelescope@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I mean, that is a thing apps could have done to resolve the situation, the fact they chose not to take that route wasn't Reddit's decision. (Not that I blame devs for not wanting to play ball after seeing how Reddit's team slandered the Apollo dev, that was inexcusable and likely burned a lot of bridges. I wouldn't want to negotiate with them either.)

[-] shaggygb@kbin.social 26 points 2 years ago

I came here because of the article

[-] TheGentleMen@beehaw.org 10 points 2 years ago

Welcome! It’s great here!

[-] reric88@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

It is great here!

[-] CCatMan@lemmy.one 4 points 2 years ago

I would agree.

[-] whelk@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Relatively recent arrival to Reddit, but this was the nudge I needed to really start diving into the Fediverse (via Lemmy). It's been a ton of fun.

[-] Pwnmode@kbin.social 18 points 2 years ago

He can't be citing real statistics. I don't know 3% of their reported 57 million users but I do know that every person I know that uses reddit uses third party apps.

[-] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 10 points 2 years ago

Someone on data is beautiful found that all third party apps accounted for only 10% of the official app downloads. Taking that into account, it is likely that the vast majority of Reddit users only use the official app and don't know what the fuss is all about.

But then, that mirrors the idea that most people are lurkers on Reddit.

[-] sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org 8 points 2 years ago

The bulk of heavy users are on third party apps, most likely.

[-] exscape@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

I don't know, I think it could be true. 57 million daily users according to the article; older numbers claim 400 million monthly users.
Apollo claims 1.5 million users (monthly, I think) and is one of the biggest (if not the biggest?) third party apps.

[-] Teppic@kbin.social 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That may be true, but it is still presenting a distorted picture. The power users who interact with Reddit most are almost certainly more likely to have at least tried other (i.e. 3rd party) apps - furthermore it doesn't seem to be being debated that the official app is missing key tools moderators find useful which would suggest moderators are are more likely to use 3rd party apps too.

Not all users are equal, some are more equal and others!

[-] GunnarRunnar@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

No doubt most people use official app or browser. Which makes it even stranger that they decided to kill 3rd party apps.

[-] bailey@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago

I think we underestimate how many people just browse reddit on PC.

[-] Frederic@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

True, during the day I'm using old.reddit in FF on my PC. It's only the evening/week-end that I am on Sync. For now.

[-] mustyOrange@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

Most of my friends who use it only every now and then couldnt give two fucks about third party apps and probably didnt know they existed. Most of them have joined in the last two years, so it was when the site became a lot less hard care

[-] KingPyrox@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago

They didn't really give good context to the situation. They really should be talking about how these changes are going to be affecting reddit's sources of information. That the fee's they want to charge are ridiculously high for any developer (essentially pricing out any but the rich). How all content is user generated, maintained and controlled and yet reddit feels they are the owners of it. If they want to make these changes then they need to be taking a serious look at the solutions the community are coming up with.

[-] Kichae@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago

They really should be talking about how these changes are going to be affecting reddit's sources of information.

Don't ever expect for-profit media to highlight how profit motivations affect the availability of different types of information.

[-] Anomander@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

They really should be talking about how these changes are going to be affecting reddit's sources of information.

Yeah. Protest and discourse on reddit about these changes and their impact on the site and its communities has been unfortunately domineered and nearly hijacked by the mods leading the protests. That has meant the average user has a hard time understanding how their experience will be affected - and made it incredibly easy for Reddit Inc to spin the conflict as "between Admin and Moderation, with users being caught in the crossfire" - instead of being about the changes and consequences of cutting API access to all users' experience on the site.

Admin over there has weaponized the userbase' underlying distrust for mods against the protest as a whole, and a large number of mods have fed that perception by acting unilaterally with regards to protest actions.

[-] Hellebert@beehaw.org 11 points 2 years ago

"And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”

I love how this is suddenly only a problem for them now but has been something they defended for years previously.

[-] thesanewriter@vlemmy.net 9 points 2 years ago

Yeah, honestly he seems to have some personal beef with third party apps, like he's personally offended and hurt they're profitable when the main app isn't. I think that all of this has just served to demonstrate two things clearly: CEOs, though incredibly out of touch are still human, and you don't need to be above average intelligence in order to be rich.

[-] worfamerryman@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

Yeah I completely agree. They are just making the platform worse and less profitable for everyone.

They should have just taken a percentage of profits from the apps to allow them api access.

If they were worried about llm they could have restricted api access.

It’s clear they just want to mine and sell your data by you having their app.

There is no way I’ll have their app on my Phone.

[-] petrescatraian@libranet.de 5 points 2 years ago

@dirtmayor ↗️↗️↗️🚀🌝

[-] dirtmayor@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

🎉

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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023

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