Basically, title, here is a link to the Reddit thread for people curious: https://archive.ph/6mObB
I’m quite surprised with the neutral to positive reactions, which also show that some people will probably never leave Reddit.
Imagine paying for mobile access to nazi digg.
I’m honestly impressed that Reddit has gone through with their decision despite the uproar. I’m surprised and disappointed they are weathering it so well though.
It’s not about the money, though. If it was, they would have just said “third-party API access now requires Reddit Gold”, and a bunch of us would still have stayed there, giving them more money (and content) than they are making now.
Instead, it’s about fundamentally remaking the site to actively drive conversations toward things people pay to hype, and not have those conversations spring up organically. Steering traffic is much harder to do when it can be accessed through third parties.
They don’t want users creating content around what interests them. They want to charge users to interact with content that advertisers pay to host.
That, and Reddit was being used to train AI. They saw that and decided they should shut off the API unless companies paid, and the hell with all the users harmed by the change.
It’s funny that you say they’re driving conversations. Whenever I end up on Reddit because of a search I notice that only the top level comments and very rarely first responses to them are visible.
I was a very heavy Apollo user. I was ALREADY paying monthly for it and if Reddit would have released a reasonable API charge structure and worked with devs, I’d have been happy to pay more for it because I used it every day.
They shot themselves in the foot trying to create a walled garden, now it’s just bots complementing each other in weirdly verbose comments back and forth.
so if there was an oxygen tax, would you be happy to pay for that? i think this is the problem, the reason why those who can keep the system for the balls (Pay me ten cents for this comment).
This is an odd take.
I don’t mind paying for services that I use that give me information and fun, especially one that I used daily (I pay $10/mo for streaming services I use maybe once or twice weekly).
I DO mind when they decide to gouge and disrespect the user base. IMO, THAT’S the issue in today’s market - profits above all else, including your customers.
Services aren’t free. Servers cost money. I get it. If I am a heavy user, I don’t mind paying a reasonable price for it (that reasonable price being close to the 2-5 a month I was already giving to the developer at the time.)
Yeah, I was ready to pay 5 or 10 bucks a month, but the way they handled the situation is not acceptable. I just hope lemmy (or some other platform) gets enough of a critical mass that it becomes a viable alternative.
They don’t want users creating content around what interests them. They want to charge users to interact with content that advertisers pay to host.
Digg 3.0
Definitely.
I’m the “Doc” version of you.
"if you’re confused, read my name)
Oh nice, maybe there’s a Captain Blaze somewhere too
What does that make me?
A text file
Son! My son! I thought I’d never find you!
Former Relay user here.
Willing to bet the comments in that thread are positive because survivorship bias, at least in part. Folks like me who deleted the app probably wouldn’t have commented, after all. I’m also sure I wasn’t the only one to see the subscription prompt come up and just delete the app.
knew it was coming and decided ahead of time that when I was forced to pay, I’d just delete the app.
Makes sense!
Only reason I still have a patched app is to be able to open the answer to questions on Google where Reddit is the only sensible answer
How did you patch it?
Revanced.
Same thought process. Uninstalled as soon as the subscription showed.
I haven’t brought myself to delete it yet, but I did replace it on my home screen with Connect for Lemmy
I don’t keep any app that I’m not using on the phone. Uses up resources for no reason. If nothing else play store constantly updates the app with each new version. It could be updating apps that I am using instead.
I did the exact same thing, but I gotta say even in the months leading up to the subscription the quality and traffic in my subs had diminished to almost nothing, there were so many subs that were already gone or inaccessible from mobile. There was a time when I think I would’ve been ok with paying $2-3/month for the previous content but never in the current state.
I totally agree. I wasn’t decided on quitting Reddit just because of the 3rd party apps fiasco, but the overall quality of the content took a nosedive which only further reinforced my decision to uninstall Relay once the subs finally came.
At a cost of free it was still like of worth checking out but not if I have to pay.
Tom is still on mySpace
Narwhal just recently released Narwhal2, basically a revamped version of their app with some Apollo features. They are also going to be moving to a subscription service and will have 3 tiers based on api usage
I got shouted down pretty intensely when relay announced they’d be doing this, and I mentioned it’d been a good run but I was jumping ship, especially vitriolic against the mention of hexbear lol
i’d used relay for a decade, was a bit sad
Same. Bought pro the day it released. Was a great interface but once Reddit announced they were digging out, I settled into Lemmy.
Reddit cucks deserve this for cucking out to paying for a trash 3rd party app
Same with Narwhal. They released some days ago their 2.0 App and already mentioned that in a couple of weeks the payment will start. The crazy part (besides the astronomical price) is that you pay for each API request. So every time you upvote, you make an API request and have to pay for it. YOU, the user, gonna pay for GIVING Reddit your engagement. That is crazy. Every Social Media plattform is trying too squeeze out as much engagement as possible from their userbase and now the user has to pay for it too. At this point, the best thing would be to deactive your your up/downvote buttons and comment buttons, to ease on the API requests. The the exact contrary of what the plattforms wants you for. I deleted the App after a decade of usage the same day. Reddit got everything from me. Engagement, Comments and my whole leaning on political and cultural topics based on my votes and comments to build a profile. Now they get nothing out of me. Fuck you Spez.
I’ve used Relay for years, first tried it when it was still called Reddit News.
I’ll admit that I’ve been browsing Reddit a bit with the official app and it’s a garbage experience. Like, there’s no /r/all? Wtf.
Anyway, it’s just pushing me more onto Lemmy. It’s slowly turning into a viable alternative as engagement grows.
Fellow reddit news user here. It’s pretty sad, I wonder how many hours I’ve spent on that app. All things come to an end, I suppose.
I’m another user escaping from Reddit and I hope more users will come in Lemmy too. I understand that patching apps may allow to use Reddit for more, but it’s just to extend life of dead man and mostly wasting time.
Welcome!
Well, I guess once relay forces the update, I’m out again.
There’s a couple subreddits with troves of info I frequent which makes it a hella pain in the ass to access on mobile.
I found just switching my browser to desktop mode was enough to get past the mobile blocks.
That was my plan but they just cut api access soon after pushing the update. Only updated cause I thought it still had a free option
Lameee
I had auto update for relay pro disabled in anticipation of the change, but just tried to open it now, and it forces the update to continue. So I uninstalled. Crazy I’ve used it since the beginning when it was called Reddit News.
14 years on Reddit was long enough though. I tried to stop scrolling it for years, so I’m happy the changes were more than enough to make my quitting stick.
$5 a month to spend your time with the neck beards and power tripping mods? 🤢
At least on this side most people here aren’t addicted to social media imo
It wasn’t until I started having conversations on reddit in something I was an actual expert in they I realised most people on reddit have very strong opinions but not much actually knowledge on the subject.
Hopefully less bots and fluff here and more quality content. All I know is after 10+ years on reddit its the end of an era. It was slow when reddit started, and I expect things to be a bit slower here for a bit.
There were many small subs with genuinely knowledgeable people but many have shut down after the API change.
I’ve been on Reddit pretty much every day in the past five years. The one thing that I’ve noticed over the years is that the amount of reposts has skyrocketed over the years. I’ve left multiple large subs because it’s the same thing across multiple subs or just general shitposting. Nostalgia, 90s, and FuckImOld all just became “Who remembers this?” with a picture of a common thing.
It’s going to get a lot worse with the recent pay to post scheme they copied from Twitter 🥴
Everything eventually meets it’s demise.
Man, I was using a patched version of Boost for $0.00/month lol
The unpatched version of Boost is still working for me on all my units
You didn’t have to do anything?
I rode it out as long as I could, but the day came where the only post in my feed was a reddit post about the API changes
Still works for me, just had to create an empty subreddit so I counted as a moderator.
Luckily Boost has moved over to Lemmy now, feels right at home
Yeah man! I just made the jump, so I’m still trying to find my way around. It’s pretty close to a 1:1 replacement for Reddit, though.
Yeah I still have to use reddit for r/Godot until this community gets a bit bigger, but other than that I don’t go to reddit much anymore.
I was a Relay user. Now I use Connect for Lemmy. 🤷♂️
I wish dbrady would make a fediverse app. I love Relay’s GUI.
Just the fucking freshness and clean colours made me use it
Same
Connect is the closest I’ve found to Relay’s functionality and look
