Imagine pour hundreds of hours for the sake of enjoyment, sharing or nurturing a community and due to some market circumstances not having a saying in any decision.
To be honest, seeing those movements from those companies makes me feel that the future of open communities (but some how walled) it’s bleak.
But yea, that's why I never did any real "passion work" up to this point, even if I've been interested. If I'm going out of my way for that, it has to at the bare minimum be portfolio work for a job, or to garner community reputation to leverage for a future project that is paid.
It's a cynical way to look at what should just be done for the sake of others. Some would call it "clout chasing" and they aren't entirely wrong (not entirely right either, but there's similarities). But you always gotta look out for yourself first. From my decades here, the Internet sure won't. Quite the contrary; it's extraordinary how quickly communities can turn on something if you brush it the wrong way.
There is a lot of talk of these apps being forced to shutdown due to the overhead of $2.50 a user per month. That is an extremely low overhead so low that a $5 a month subscription solves the entire drama very quickly.
This isn't about Reddit being greedy. This is about Reddit users being too cheap to pay for something they want and used on a daily basis. There are free ways to use the site if you want to use an API that avoids monetizing then it seem fair you pay. This isn't like Twitter where apps charging $20-99 a month had trouble paying. This is apps charging $1.50 to very few users and relying on another company to foot the bill for their freemium model - while directly competing with them.
>This isn't about Reddit being greedy.
This is Reddit being greedy. They are asking $2.50 a user per month, while the revenue they make from someone using the first party reddit app on average is just $0.12 per month. [0] Add this the restriction on NSFW content served from the API, and it's clear reddit is just straight up trying to kill 3rd party apps.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
People can use those open source tools on the free level that doesn't require the higher level of use.
> This is Reddit being greedy. They are asking $2.50 a user per month, while the revenue they make from someone using the first party reddit app on average is just $0.12 per month. [0] Add this the restriction on NSFW content served from the API, and it's clear reddit is just straight up trying to kill 3rd party apps.
$2.50 a user. You're mad they're trying to make money. Most businesses wouldn't survive if they only got $2.50 per user. Not only that realistically, the infrastucture probably costs about that to run. We're not talking some static website or simple infrastucture here. Seriously, it's pretty entitled to be mad at company is trying to generate $2.50 per user per month. Like really entitled.
It's really a poor way to look at it "Sorry but you've only been making $0.12 so trying to make $2.50 is far too much, how dare you try to generate money."
Ideally we all would have realized Twitter and Reddit aren't worth our time, but if it's facing that they're not worth our money that gets us to break our habit of settling for them as time wasters, that's cool too.
Let's be honest: even if we agree it's a waste of time and it then becomes financially unviable; you just find another time waster. Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube, 4chan, etc. Heck, some would just go and watch porn. There's no end of sites (new and old) with oodles of user generated content to waste time on.
People aren't brainwashed and magically become productive when the brainwashing stops. Or you can interpret it less generously and say that they are so brainwashed that they will see other means if one of them stops.
1. I'm not entirely sure if that's allowed in the Reddit API TOS to begin with (before this change).
2. There's too many alternative ways to browse reddit to really make headway as a subscription app. Including Reddit's official app and simply opening up the mobile website (even if Reddit does everything in its power to ruin the website experience on mobile. They REALLY want you using the app). I don't mind and have paid for ad-free versions of several 3rd party apps, but that's a single small payment.
3. this brings up a much larger issue forums have been going through for decades; is it really "right" to continually charge or content that is mostly user generated? I don't think people mind a one time payment for a stable release of what is ultimately a nicely designed web viewer. But beyond that?
There's many reasons why no app dev has thought of this. Legally, logistically, and even ethically. Personally, I'd just feel weird asking people to pay me money every month when the overhead maintenance of my app (which I imagine is minimal. bug fixes and some small feature requests while MAYBE doing a bigger request every 6-12 months) isn't what's keeping them there, it's the ability to keep reading posts/comments submitted by users. How do I justify my price as a middleman unless I am delivery major releases every month or two?
>This is about Reddit users being too cheap to pay for something they want and used on a daily basis
I don't entirely disagree. But app/mobile has long since raced to the bottom, so that's an inevitable consequence.
Put it this way; if Reddit itself charged even 1$/month to comment/post, do you think people would stay? I think they'd flee off to Tiktok personally. Older users would try and rekindle older forums,but overall I don't think many would stay, even if $1/month is almost objectively a good deal for the content provided. There's too much other popular platforms that are "free". And if enough of the community gets pushed, they can migrate elsewhere. They ultimately hold the value.
I don't think this is the push, but it's always possible.
There are complaints that the offical app isn't accessible. Ok, pay for accessible software or complain enough to Reddit to fix their app. There are laws I believe to force them to have an accessible app.
Mods use tools to moderate. Ok. You want to have a little hobby of moderating a community. Fair enough, pay for your hobby. If not. Let Reddit fix the spam problem when it becomes a problem, because it will become a problem and Reddit will be forced to fix it because the users will hate it and it'll harm growth. If not, pay for the software to do your little hobby.
Just because someone has a different opinion doesn't mean they haven't read into it. It's that they have a different opinion than you.
I think software should cost money. Because I write software for a living and I think people should value what I do to the point they pay money for it. I know a lot of techies like to make our work worthless but I don't.
The best move is to not play with corporations and to move towards well-run nonprofits and social ventures that can deliver a useful utility. There aren't many existent examples of this.
Be happy while it lasted is the good approach. Cover contracts are bad in general but in this case this would just be insane
Reddit essentially took off because Digg screwed the pooch so hard with their redesign and just general mismanagement of their community.
Personally for me, Reddit lost the human touch several years ago and with the cancelling of Secret Santa that was one of the most fun activities on the internet, I've stopped using the site almost completely.
Personally, I'm looking forward to Reddit going the way of Digg.
I already spend way more browsing time here than Reddit these days. That said, it does lack focused topic discussion for things like, your favorite band for instance.
I guess we will all just use a million fragmented discords most likely
