The curious thing is that Reddit is as valuable as it is because of what it gets from its users (free moderation, free user-submitted content.)
There's always been a sort of implicit agreement that it's a symbiotic relationship -- reddit provides the house/utilities, users provide the stuff, and mods do the clean up. Third-party devs were an extension of that -- making it easier to connect the parties.
Yeah but that symbiosis community stuff is for when you're still growing. Once you're big, it's time to pull up that ladder, put on the corporate mask, and start cranking that ad revenue at all costs. You've got a million rubes doomscrolling past your homogenous r/funny - i mean, r/all - slurry who don't know the difference between an ad and a real post. People who care about things like UX and quality posts are a minority who you are free to exploit for as long as you're useful, and then crush once you're done with them.
I seriously think this is just reddit finally thinking "yup - we've won - time to start acting with impunity for anything that cuts costs (like not maintaining a public API) or increases even the smallest bit of revenue (like managing to convert 1% of apollo users to first-party-app users while alienating (no pun intended) the rest).
Every social network goes through this. You used to be able to access Facebook via other front-ends as well, same with Twitter.
This will cut down drastically on my reddit usage, and for that I am thankful. I don't have the Facebook or Twitter apps on my phone, and only use them from Firefox in Private mode when I do get the urge to check them.
> I don't have the Facebook or Twitter apps on my phone, and only use them from Firefox in Private mode when I do get the urge to check them.
How do you open your messages with Facebook on mobile? Everytime I try it wants to redirect me to the app that of course I don't have. The desktop mode is just horrible to use on my Pixel 6 (I find the screen too small).
Reddit is past its expiration date anyway and I'm surprised no one has created a challenger site. Perhaps this was due to Reddit's friendliness toward programmatic access but it seems they are taking that away.
This is a good opportunity to create a new community, and essentially take back messaging from the corporations (let's be real about what reddit is) and put it back into the hands of the people.
I think the problem is really that we need platforms such as reddit on the internet, they are kind of part of its essential infrastructure. But running any infrastructure under the profit maximization scheme will always end up in self destruction. They are making enough money, they can easily go on keeping the API open, but there is no such thing as a sustainable business, they are forced to make more profit than they made more last year.
But I think in truth they can do a lot before really destroying themselves, closing 3rd party apps is going to be barely noticable. In theory we could have some sort of decentralized dApp alternative, but since everyone working on that sort of stuff is a borderline criminal scam artist I don't see anything real will ever come out of this grift.
Let's be clear though: this is exactly what happened.
Digg was the place to go, and then they fucked it up and everyone migrated to Reddit. Now Reddit is fucking it up, and even if everyone migrates somewhere else, that new somewhere else is going to fuck it up too once they get to the point of "we need to be profitable at all costs".
What we actually need is some way to convince users to pay for the services they use so that they don't start mining us for ad clicks as soon as they think they can get away with it, because as long as users are going to insist on everything being free companies are going to need to do shit like this to us at every opportunity.
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily past it’s expiration date. It’s ranked 6th most trafficked sites in the US.
I do think that Reddit could do with a massive overhaul.
If I was ceo tomorrow I would;
- Install a bunch of new teams to focus on solving real problems for users
- understand user pain points with the UX. why were people using third party apps? And fix the experience. Invest in better mobile apps
- invest in some PR or similar to change peoples view of what Reddit is. Most people think it’s just a place for memes
- (random wild idea) try to understand why users like Twitter how Reddit could attract those users over to Reddit to post content
I think with some targeted investment Reddit could do so much better for itself
I think the toothpaste is out of the tube on creating good communities like the Reddit of yesteryear.
Between lowering the barrier to entry (and average age) with phones, astroturfing and bots, and the overall impossibility of moderation, I just don't see it happening anymore.
We need to go back to purposely small communities.
Communities used to be on specialised forums and blogs. I've watched my favourite specialised blogs turn off comments because of bot spam, and I've watched forums raise the sign up bar and browsing restrictions for similar reasons. Reddit's anti-spam measures plus moderation makes it a much more decent experience.
There was a little website called ruqqus that emerged for a while. It was mostly people fleeing reddit so it quickly filled with "far right" and "far left" extremes, but that kinda made it interesting. However after only a few months of having to moderate the creator noped out because no human should have to see the things a moderator of a public web forum would have to see.
Its going to be a tough road for anyone who wants to create a public web forum at any scale especially if they get brigaded.
Coding a reddit-like website must not be too difficult, even if you need mobile apps, but if you're expected to host images and videos while combating GPT bots the infrastructure needs and cost are at a high level right from the start.
It is a similar problem to YT. Coding the site would not be that hard, but running it at scale is. Moreover, it's expensive. That is what reddit has struggled with itself, because the platform doesn't monetise their users as heavily as Google or Meta, and has always had more open and laissez-faire approach.
The only way to launch a competitor that is profitable is by going the Google/Meta way, but then users will just stay on reddit. Otherwise you need deep pockets or lots of VC money, but why would they invest in reddit clone that will just end up in the same place that the original finds itself in?
As for the corporations, you need them and their ad money, unless you want to run a subscription model. But that doesn't work either, because the majority of users will just stick to the free sites if you try.
There has been alternatives sites even some working with ActivityPub as Lemmy or some in development in Nostr, there is a sub r/redditalternatives which was created since the Ellen Pao fiasco.
It would be good for users - not sure it would make sense for a company though. The third party apps stripped ads. You have to be able to make money. I think the actual mistake was having it open in the first place. You can't give away things for free from the start and then take it away.
A better model might be to start out with a small cost from the outset. Manage expectations.
Ironically, I think Google has by far the most to gain from spinning up a non-profit-seeking Reddit clone in house, as it implicitly benefits search advertising by increasing the value of search.
Why should the apps have to pay? Why can't reddit provide a paid version that allows you to access the APIs, which the external apps can then use? You already have to log in to them anyhow so it's not like you'd need an extra API key or anything. $20/year is probably an order of magnitude more then they make on ads served to me.
The weirdest thing about the ad economy to me isn't that it exists, but as I've banged on before, that the companies will cling to it even when people are begging to pay money to get rid of them. These companies make virtually nothing per year in ads and make up for it in scale.
Latest easy stat I can find [1] is $350 million of ad revenue in 2021. Certainly this is less than $2/year from most active users. I'm willing to outbid them by an order of magnitude easily. If even 1% of the user base follows along that's a lot of money.
I don't understand why these companies are so insistent on bending their entire platforms around ad revenue to the exclusion of all else, when "all else" is so much money for someone already scraping pennies from people. Besides, a lot of ad spend was tied to ZIRP; I would think that while the ad business as a whole is certainly in no danger of disappearing, now is a great time for any ad-focused business to be diversifying because spends are very likely to go down in the medium-term, if not the short term. A lot of economic signals are flashing "recession" and ad spend tends to get hit pretty hard in that context. A solid base of subscribers paying real money for your service is a better foundation to go into that sort of economic environment than being solely dependent on ads. (Obviously, a recession will hit your subscriber base too, but that's stickier than ad spend I expect.)
(And an obligatory observation that they are shoving ads in your face, tracking your every move, crafting something you spend hours a week on to increase your advertiser profile value in your every interaction, deploying every addictive psychological trick they can think of to keep you active, and fundamentally polluting at a deep and profound level the entire social sphere of damned near the entire species... for pennies a month. That's all. Pennies a month. They're not even making the money you think they are. They're doing all this to you and the collective social sphere for a few pennies a month.)
> I'm willing to outbid them by an order of magnitude easily. If even 1% of the user base follows along that's a lot of money.
They already have monetization in the form of Reddit Gold and awards. You can pay for premium right now. Also, people are _really_ reluctant to pay for services they get for free; take a look at the recent thread about YouTube ads [0] and the lengths some people go to in order to justify watching the content for free (while blocking ads, no less).
I don't necessarily disagree with your take, but I'm pretty sure you're overestimating how much people are willing to pay Reddit directly.
That idea came up in the massive thread created by the author of the iOS app Apollo. A compelling reason it wouldn't work is it creates confusion and tension between Reddit, Apollo and the user when things don't work, as well as with regards to who's paying for what. If I have to pay Reddit $10/mo to use it, why do I also have to pay this app developer $1 to use their app? When it fails, is it Reddit who owes me support or Apollo? What about outages? Just a lot of moving parts. Not that I don't think it's worth it, but it does get confusing for average users.
Reddit likely needs ads to justify its VC valuation. That means no apps that can bypass ads or change the display and (likely) more heavily redacted brand unsafe content (esp porn). Hoping they learned from Tumbr and others though. There are some niche subreddits I really enjoy and don’t want to go back to a world of disparate vBulletin sites.
I think it's too risky for them. The people with the disposable income to pay say $20-50 per year for Reddit are also the most interesting to advertisers. So, if you move to an ad-free subscription model, you'd better be sure that the fees can replace a substantial chunk of the ad revenue.
It was much easier for Google to try this with YouTube because they had plenty of revenue outside YouTube.
I’m a bit hesitant to admit that I use the official app for Reddit and have used for years. I’ve used the browser extensions before and have tried Apollo app but I never got hooked.
I don’t understand all the hate the official app gets. I understand there is telemetry but i have pi hole to block most of that.
It has ads sure but I don’t really see them anymore, your adjust adjust around them.
One thing that annoys me is that notifications can be buggy. Sometimes you have to reload to see the activity in your inbox.
The only app I use to browse Reddit is old.reddit.com. It's still great on mobile if you have a browser with proper text reflow (ie. Opera on Android, since all others can't be bothered). But everytime I end up seeing the "new" design it's instantly repelling, I can't browse it even once. This is Digg all over again!
Back to USENET (which Reddit is a weird copy of) again, I suppose. The best part about Reddit are the small, topically-focused communities — those are going to have a hard time finding new homes, given how anti-community, anti-user-generated-content, & resistant to discovery (and much of that is on the search engines) most sites are these days.
Serious question, possibly naive: how many of Reddit’s UX decisions come back to pressure from investors to make good on the $1.3B they’ve raised? Is every web product with users and influence obligated to raise as much as possible and grow to a size where they start chasing ad revenue no matter what it does to their product and its users? I’m sure that running a product at Reddit’s scale requires serious money, money must come from somewhere, investment capital gets you there… But was this really the only path?
So, basically any kind of customization to the Reddit experience is now limited to browser extensions and userscripts that scrape and modify the website itself. On Android, this means using Firefox. On iOS, I don’t think there’s much choice. Unless someone creates a Reddit app that is actually just a web view wrapper bundled with the necessary client-side scripts.
The app is complete garbage, and the dark patterns on their mobile webpage are insidious.
If I have to wait to go to my desktop to see something on reddit, most likely I’ll forget about it and not visit at all. Or I’ll go through the old.reddit on mobile which isn’t great.
But it’s only a matter of time until they remove old.reddit.
Perhaps web scrapers can come to the rescue in some way? Maybe a self-hosted instance of a scraper that pulls the data for each page you’d like to see, kind of like a proxy between your client and reddit? Would be a fun project to try out.
You can append .rss to any sub e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/popular.rss you’ll never need to reskim over headlines to find things you haven’t seen and by using the “old” subdomain every item will open it a useable UI. I’m sure they’ll kill this too eventually but I don’t think I’ll miss Reddit much once it goes full Digg.
The Apollo app lets me use Reddit while signed out. I can favorite some subreddits and browse through them with no fuss. The official Reddit app won't do anything until you sign in. Apollo also has a bunch of life improvement features that the Reddit app will never see such as auto collapsing pinned / auto mod comments, icons that identify newer accounts, and showing who deleted posts.
It is so disheartening that Musk's callous and destructive management of Twitter is becoming a template/excuse for shitty choices at other companies. We exist in a culture and Twitter has lurched the Overton window in a direction that makes everything worse for all of us.
> It’s being brought in to crush third-party alternatives, driving every mobile user to the official app where they’ll either have to watch ads or pay for Reddit Premium.
Given how aggressively they push you to use the app when you visit the site, this is likely accurate. However, I have Firefox (and therefore proper ad-blocking) on my phone, so nah, I'm still good, thanks.
Despite my doubts about Mastodon being able to become popular Twitter alternative, I wish there was the same wave of migrating to the Fediverse-based open source Reddit alternative. So far I don't see them very popular.
It never ceases to amaze me how much people actually like using these godawful passive consumption / walled garden devices, to say nothing of all the apps over simply using a browser. I truly hate the direction all this is going (electron apps, mobile first/only, vertical videos, TikTok, social media, ...) and seemingly everyone else just can't get enough of it :(
Unsurprising, but as with twitter, the idea of a corporation running these kinds of sites always eventually fails.
People "don't want to deal with" the messy world of open standards, of different web forums for different things, federation... I mean, I get it, but that just ends up meaning they fall for the same twitter/myspace/facebook/walmart.com trick again, over and over and over.
Somebody else posted the enshittification link — that's what is happening here. Like it always does.
The AI thing is an obvious red herring anyway. Plenty of ways they could address that without harming third party clients for human readers, but they want to strangle those clients. As twitter did before them, as they all do eventually.
They tend to do it as soon as they feel they've tricked enough people to investing enough of their attention in them that the users won't just leave. Which in reddit's case they probably have, considering how often search engines propose adding "reddit" to whatever my search string is.
> but that Reddit is also implementing a change where third-party apps would lose access to NSFW subreddits, while the official site would not
What's the official public rationale for that move?
And what's the corporate-internal rationale, if anyone who knows can say?
(I can imagine a few reasons other than simply to take away more user base of third-party apps, but I'm curious what the truth is.)
(Aside: Both openness and NSFW seemed to be significant parts of Reddit from early on. I recall very early on, briefly looking at Reddit, and I noted with amusement that they seemed to be slying using NSFW to help boost adoption. That might've even been before subreddits, or maybe it was an early subreddit.)
[+] [-] interestica|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atomicnumber3|2 years ago|reply
I seriously think this is just reddit finally thinking "yup - we've won - time to start acting with impunity for anything that cuts costs (like not maintaining a public API) or increases even the smallest bit of revenue (like managing to convert 1% of apollo users to first-party-app users while alienating (no pun intended) the rest).
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] llampx|2 years ago|reply
This will cut down drastically on my reddit usage, and for that I am thankful. I don't have the Facebook or Twitter apps on my phone, and only use them from Firefox in Private mode when I do get the urge to check them.
[+] [-] slantaclaus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywacaday|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RMPR|2 years ago|reply
How do you open your messages with Facebook on mobile? Everytime I try it wants to redirect me to the app that of course I don't have. The desktop mode is just horrible to use on my Pixel 6 (I find the screen too small).
[+] [-] tremere|2 years ago|reply
This is a good opportunity to create a new community, and essentially take back messaging from the corporations (let's be real about what reddit is) and put it back into the hands of the people.
[+] [-] lyu07282|2 years ago|reply
But I think in truth they can do a lot before really destroying themselves, closing 3rd party apps is going to be barely noticable. In theory we could have some sort of decentralized dApp alternative, but since everyone working on that sort of stuff is a borderline criminal scam artist I don't see anything real will ever come out of this grift.
[+] [-] danudey|2 years ago|reply
Digg was the place to go, and then they fucked it up and everyone migrated to Reddit. Now Reddit is fucking it up, and even if everyone migrates somewhere else, that new somewhere else is going to fuck it up too once they get to the point of "we need to be profitable at all costs".
What we actually need is some way to convince users to pay for the services they use so that they don't start mining us for ad clicks as soon as they think they can get away with it, because as long as users are going to insist on everything being free companies are going to need to do shit like this to us at every opportunity.
[+] [-] c7DJTLrn|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bazmattaz|2 years ago|reply
I do think that Reddit could do with a massive overhaul.
If I was ceo tomorrow I would; - Install a bunch of new teams to focus on solving real problems for users - understand user pain points with the UX. why were people using third party apps? And fix the experience. Invest in better mobile apps - invest in some PR or similar to change peoples view of what Reddit is. Most people think it’s just a place for memes - (random wild idea) try to understand why users like Twitter how Reddit could attract those users over to Reddit to post content
I think with some targeted investment Reddit could do so much better for itself
[+] [-] vehemenz|2 years ago|reply
Between lowering the barrier to entry (and average age) with phones, astroturfing and bots, and the overall impossibility of moderation, I just don't see it happening anymore.
We need to go back to purposely small communities.
[+] [-] randunel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nazgulsenpai|2 years ago|reply
Its going to be a tough road for anyone who wants to create a public web forum at any scale especially if they get brigaded.
[+] [-] conradfr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] this_user|2 years ago|reply
The only way to launch a competitor that is profitable is by going the Google/Meta way, but then users will just stay on reddit. Otherwise you need deep pockets or lots of VC money, but why would they invest in reddit clone that will just end up in the same place that the original finds itself in?
As for the corporations, you need them and their ad money, unless you want to run a subscription model. But that doesn't work either, because the majority of users will just stick to the free sites if you try.
[+] [-] stiltzkin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amykhar|2 years ago|reply
A better model might be to start out with a small cost from the outset. Manage expectations.
[+] [-] babypuncher|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suddenexample|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roflyear|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] holler|2 years ago|reply
Have been building an alternative at https://sqwok.im, the twist is that it uses realtime chat instead of comments, and no voting currently.
[+] [-] jerf|2 years ago|reply
The weirdest thing about the ad economy to me isn't that it exists, but as I've banged on before, that the companies will cling to it even when people are begging to pay money to get rid of them. These companies make virtually nothing per year in ads and make up for it in scale.
Latest easy stat I can find [1] is $350 million of ad revenue in 2021. Certainly this is less than $2/year from most active users. I'm willing to outbid them by an order of magnitude easily. If even 1% of the user base follows along that's a lot of money.
I don't understand why these companies are so insistent on bending their entire platforms around ad revenue to the exclusion of all else, when "all else" is so much money for someone already scraping pennies from people. Besides, a lot of ad spend was tied to ZIRP; I would think that while the ad business as a whole is certainly in no danger of disappearing, now is a great time for any ad-focused business to be diversifying because spends are very likely to go down in the medium-term, if not the short term. A lot of economic signals are flashing "recession" and ad spend tends to get hit pretty hard in that context. A solid base of subscribers paying real money for your service is a better foundation to go into that sort of economic environment than being solely dependent on ads. (Obviously, a recession will hit your subscriber base too, but that's stickier than ad spend I expect.)
(And an obligatory observation that they are shoving ads in your face, tracking your every move, crafting something you spend hours a week on to increase your advertiser profile value in your every interaction, deploying every addictive psychological trick they can think of to keep you active, and fundamentally polluting at a deep and profound level the entire social sphere of damned near the entire species... for pennies a month. That's all. Pennies a month. They're not even making the money you think they are. They're doing all this to you and the collective social sphere for a few pennies a month.)
[1]: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/reddit-statistics/
[+] [-] Sebb767|2 years ago|reply
They already have monetization in the form of Reddit Gold and awards. You can pay for premium right now. Also, people are _really_ reluctant to pay for services they get for free; take a look at the recent thread about YouTube ads [0] and the lengths some people go to in order to justify watching the content for free (while blocking ads, no less).
I don't necessarily disagree with your take, but I'm pretty sure you're overestimating how much people are willing to pay Reddit directly.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35892512
[+] [-] eddieroger|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellow_postit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtonal|2 years ago|reply
It was much easier for Google to try this with YouTube because they had plenty of revenue outside YouTube.
[+] [-] shmatt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bazmattaz|2 years ago|reply
I don’t understand all the hate the official app gets. I understand there is telemetry but i have pi hole to block most of that.
It has ads sure but I don’t really see them anymore, your adjust adjust around them.
One thing that annoys me is that notifications can be buggy. Sometimes you have to reload to see the activity in your inbox.
[+] [-] phreack|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flenserboy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sickcodebruh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Narushia|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spacephysics|2 years ago|reply
If I have to wait to go to my desktop to see something on reddit, most likely I’ll forget about it and not visit at all. Or I’ll go through the old.reddit on mobile which isn’t great.
But it’s only a matter of time until they remove old.reddit.
Perhaps web scrapers can come to the rescue in some way? Maybe a self-hosted instance of a scraper that pulls the data for each page you’d like to see, kind of like a proxy between your client and reddit? Would be a fun project to try out.
[+] [-] kgwxd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sevenf0ur|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macrael|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghusto|2 years ago|reply
Given how aggressively they push you to use the app when you visit the site, this is likely accurate. However, I have Firefox (and therefore proper ad-blocking) on my phone, so nah, I'm still good, thanks.
[+] [-] nottorp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xvilka|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4ggr0|2 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(software)
[+] [-] PenguinCoder|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanmercer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pixelpoet|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] p_j_w|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcraven|2 years ago|reply
This HN thread a few months ago about the removal of i.reddit feels prophetic.
[+] [-] veidr|2 years ago|reply
People "don't want to deal with" the messy world of open standards, of different web forums for different things, federation... I mean, I get it, but that just ends up meaning they fall for the same twitter/myspace/facebook/walmart.com trick again, over and over and over.
Somebody else posted the enshittification link — that's what is happening here. Like it always does.
The AI thing is an obvious red herring anyway. Plenty of ways they could address that without harming third party clients for human readers, but they want to strangle those clients. As twitter did before them, as they all do eventually.
They tend to do it as soon as they feel they've tricked enough people to investing enough of their attention in them that the users won't just leave. Which in reddit's case they probably have, considering how often search engines propose adding "reddit" to whatever my search string is.
[+] [-] neilv|2 years ago|reply
What's the official public rationale for that move?
And what's the corporate-internal rationale, if anyone who knows can say?
(I can imagine a few reasons other than simply to take away more user base of third-party apps, but I'm curious what the truth is.)
(Aside: Both openness and NSFW seemed to be significant parts of Reddit from early on. I recall very early on, briefly looking at Reddit, and I noted with amusement that they seemed to be slying using NSFW to help boost adoption. That might've even been before subreddits, or maybe it was an early subreddit.)