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...
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.
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.
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.
