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.

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

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

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

He's a big fan of the strawman argument.

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.

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.

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.

Welcome! It’s great here!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

🎉