> Starting high, creating a lot of negative reactions and almost killing any real market for profitable apps on your platform seems to be the opposite of smart
It's really dumb if the point is to keep all the third party applications that made your platform popular. It's much smarter if the point is to kill them all in favor of your first party app, that you are promising your VC investors will have tremendous growth leading up to an IPO, and you don't want your site to look like the bad guy by killing all the third party apps.
They just handled it poorly. If the reddit app actually had the moderation tools they've been promising for years, I doubt the moderator outcry would be anywhere near this bad.
And if you watch you'll notice, even during the blackout, reddit's messaging is all about the things you can still do besides use the third party apps. They're making the API still free for moderation bots. They're working with apps that provide accessibility tools for reddit. They're working with the services moderators use for moderation. They're appealing to the moderators. They've made no mentions of working with: Apollo, BaconReader, or RedditIsFun. The point was to kill the third party apps.
> If the reddit app actually had the moderation tools they've been promising for years, I doubt the moderator outcry would be anywhere near this bad.
If the reddit app was any good, the 3rd party ones wouldn't even exist.
All their problems are because their users prefer to pay a 3rd party than to use the recommended, official app they keep pushing into them.
Instead of all this confusion, if they just made their app work on the high-latency that is common on mobile networks, they would get much better results. (No need to even make their video work.)
> Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you)
Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators that try valiantly to diver the tide of pure excrement of content that floods in to the various subreddits.
That content you want to be able to see would be buried and gone, or never put there in the first place if it wasn't for third party apps that are crucial to moderators doing their work. Reddit has consistently done an awful job on quality moderation tooling. They really don't seem to give a shit, and just do the absolute bare minimum. The only reason it has managed to survive in the state it is is because others have voluntarily picked up the slack and built the tooling Reddit hasn't bothered to build.
Just because you don't see it or use it doesn't mean it's not central to what you get to experience. Think bigger, beyond your direct experience and consider how that directly impacts you.
> Eh, even if we can agree on it being fair I still don't see anything wrong with what Reddit is trying to do. While the profit might be minuscule compared to what Reddit is looking for, its still currently more than reddit is making.
Reddit has also expanded its staff count (and therefore costs) dramatically to chase new product areas and has seen big jumps in revenue. They’ve clearly been chasing growth in revenue and user numbers over profit. It doesn’t meant they couldn’t be profitable based on what they have.
> I don't think a person using a third party app necessarily implies they are a power user or better at moderation. Hell, in the beginning reddit didn't even have a mobile app and the only options were third party apps.
Not every user of a third party app is a power user, but power users and mods are almost certainly using third party apps & tools. The shutdown statements made by so many sub moderators back that up.
> Hmm, I wonder how they can provide that with such low developer counts - maybe because Reddit as a service is subsidizing the majority of the value the third party apps are capturing.
That doesn’t make any sense. They’re not replacing the platform, they’re just an interface to it. The better point of comparison is to the official Reddit apps, which are much worse in almost every way than the third party equivalents despite being built by teams of engineers. They don’t even have proper accessibility.
> It’s entirely within reason for Reddit to want to capture that value instead of giving it away to free to third party apps.
Not if it results in a drop in engagement from power users and moderators, which would in turn result in less content, a worse experience for users, fewer users returning or joining up because of that, and thus less revenue over time.
> People who use third party apps are outliers. They do not make Reddit any money
I'd wager that > 90% of moderators use third party apps, and they indirectly do make Reddit a lot of money. Without the moderators the entire site goes to shit.
> I believe moderators on Reddit like to think that they're that important and integral to the site functioning smoothly, but I think the reality is upvoting/downvoting/reporting works perfectly fine in nearly every subreddit.
This seems very naive, since afaik the mods also deal (thru 3rd party apps or extensions) with the large amount of spam that reddit gets. And, of course, who is going to deal with those reports?
I mean, sure, Reddit could close everything but the top 20 or 30 most popular subreddits, hire some offshored mods, and start the content moderation speedrun[1] anew. But, why? And how bad will it get before the IPO? Reddit has spent the past two decades washing their hands of any moderation tasks, as their first party mod tools show. Starting now, with a pissed off power user base, seems suicidal.
> The very nature of the site is self moderating. Let people post what they want and vote on it.
This only works (mostly) for legal content. Unfortunately a lot of illegal content would be highly popular and upvoted if not moderated. It also doesn't really work when a subset of users engage with the system in bad faith or leverage bots.
Paid moderation is expensive - even if offshored - and I'm surprised that Reddit is willing to risk having to take on increased moderation costs. There's no way the lost potential revenue from 3rd party app users is enough to make up for that.
> I think it is a fair to say that if you use and especially pay for third party tools, whether that be a client or something like RES, you are more than likely a power user.
I've seen this repeated elsewhere but I've seen zero actual evidence of it.
And the counterpoint is quite easy: that people use these apps/extensions for a better viewing experience. Because on the creation side, typing into a text box or pasting a link is just typing into a text box. The apps/extensions are great for consuming.
Quick Google searches reveal that Reddit has something between 0.5 and 1.5 billion monthly users, while the Apollo app has 1.5 million monthly users. That's nothing.
The bigger question seems to be around moderators who use power moderation tools. Will Reddit keep allowing moderation tools? If not, will they improve their own? If they lose moderators, are there other moderators willing to take their place, or will they start investing in more ML-based moderation, etc.?
YouTube and Twitch are different beast all together due to their costs. They also do revenue sharing for the content users provide, something reddit is not doing.
> I feel like Reddit is getting attacked despite being the company that is trying the hardest to make this work.
If they are genuinely trying to make this work, why did they only give 30 days notice for third party devs to figure this out? Seems to me their goal was to kill third party apps and that they have already succeeded.
> The standard approach is just to ban apps that compete with the in-house app.
Sure, but something being the norm doesn’t mean people like it. With reddit being how it was for so long and having a genuinely terrible default app, it’s no wonder they are getting flamed as much as they are. The way they have handled this on the PR side doesn’t help.
I think if reddit wanted this to actually work, the smart move would have been to allow users to pay for API access and use their token through the app of their choice. This would be more viable than the per-app basis they went with, which puts all the third party devs in an incredibly tough spot and effectively forced them all to shut down.
Reddit users have Reddit to lose. A site that gives them hours of entertainment, allows them to access support groups, find out tips and tricks, get advice, and much more. It'll cost tens of millions a month to host another. Who has that?
VCs will get their money one way or another. Either they get their way with this and monetise users who previously were not monetised. Or they make profit other ways.
> and burning the 3rd party moderation
This here shows how out of touch you are with the reality of things. Third party moderation tools are staying. They're beneficial to Reddit, of course they're going to keep giving them free access.
> Reddit is not changing at all, so the vast majority of users will stay
Cutting off and/or driving up the cost of third-party apps through which users access Reddit is changing Reddit. The impression I get is that third-party apps are disproportionately used by the kinds of users that supply content more than average, so even if they are less efficiently monetized as eyeballs, they are large indirect contributors to Reddit’s revenue. Making their experience worse will, it seems near certain, cost content that brings the users that are purer eyeballs to monetize with ads, and thereby cost ad revenue. How much is, of course, unclear.
> Don’t forget that Reddit can and already did close a bunch of subreddits that they didn’t like, so it’s their community, not yours.
Sure, and they can take over the moderations, and the content creation, and the viewing for ads from the users that they chase off. Not sure how that will work out for them as a business plan, though.
In this case, the specific concerns were benefiting from third party developers for well over a decade to grow their business, and giving them a month of race before rolling up the carpet. The devs were working on code they thought they might have years to earn money back on, who sort of got screwed.
It was also the whole “poor us, we can’t make a dime, we need this money” routine Reddit was jawing on about when if they lowered that API pricing down to the point that the pricing was affordable for consumers, or locked it to Reddit Premium users, to me there seems a clear path to profitability or at least sustainability. Again even if they ultimately priced things high enough to slowly strangle these apps, I wouldn’t care as much.
It’s that Reddit fucking lied to everybody’s faces to push false public narratives to bolster its PR.
No doubt the admins, the freemium users, the paid users, the third party devs, and the moderators all contributed to what Reddit is today. However if the moderators don’t punish a decision by the admins thru gutting the profitability of this scheme they just pulled thru disobedience, in future conflicts the admins will be more empowered, and fuck everybody harder. So people collectively behave in this way in solidarity almost by intuition, at least for awhile.
> Third party moderation tools are staying. They're beneficial to Reddit, of course they're going to keep giving them free access.
This turns out to be much more of a mixed bag in reality. Many of the third party moderation tools are built into the third party mobile apps, which will not get free access.
In the AMA OP [0] they listed a few projects that will get free access, some moderation tools among it, but even just requiring registration for such tools will have a massive chilling effect on the existing and future ecosystem.
> the official app and will be served Reddit's ads, so Reddit will get the money.
It's not just about the ads. It's about the telemetry/etc and being able to link the user via other apps that collect data to correlate.
> How exactly is it not going to work in Reddit's favor?
- Reddit's official app is kinda trash. (I do use it, but it's so bad I usually just browse HN instead.)
- It's a reminder that Reddit has been getting more and more user hostile since Huffman took over as CEO again.
- Tying to above, I don't personally have confidence that Reddit will follow through on their promises of better mod tools in a timely fashion. This (along with recent developments) means a lot of dedicated mods are just going to give up, and the overall content quality will get worse still.
It might help their IPO but I doubt it will help the long term viability.
The unfortunate truth is that Reddit owns the platform and has an irrevocable license to the content that's already been produced.
Any protest that someone can think up will end up just getting Reverted as Reddit can just kick out the mods.
They'll get backlash, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone.
You know, they could just, you know, lower the cost of the API, create strict guidelines on how to get an exemption, and understand where the actual value of their platform is.
> Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators
This is simply not true. I moderate several subs. 3rd party mod tools are not critical. Mods who claim this is so are really misrepresenting the issue.
Power tools for mods are nice to have for some. I make use of automod extensively. The tools reddit provides are adequate to perform moderation tasks.
Also, since I guess it needs to be said, I'm not a shill for spez. I don't like the dude, but I'm not a sock puppet. This is all winding up looking like an epic toddler tantrum from a small proportion of the higher-power mod contingent.
This requires explanation. If they staff the moderation in-house, costs will rise significantly and there is no chance they can ever profit. The people with the time, expertise and patience necessary to mod will know of alternatives. Mods are niche niche.
But the bigger issue that you allude to for reddit here is that they aren't pulling off the band-aid in one go. Once the apps die, they still need to kill old reddit and RES, they still need to end NSFW. Each time they do this the federated clones will be stronger, and each time more and more will jump ship.
> Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators that try valiantly to diver the tide of pure excrement of content that floods in to the various subreddits.
With all respect, that's something we are about to find out.
I find it hard to believe that there are so many people who think that Reddit looked at the mountain of data they have on user and mod behaviour, and API usage, and decided to do the opposite of what that data indicated as a good option.
All the internet posters making the claims you have just made are working blind. They don't have a single iota of actual data to support their conclusions.
It's really dumb if the point is to keep all the third party applications that made your platform popular. It's much smarter if the point is to kill them all in favor of your first party app, that you are promising your VC investors will have tremendous growth leading up to an IPO, and you don't want your site to look like the bad guy by killing all the third party apps.
They just handled it poorly. If the reddit app actually had the moderation tools they've been promising for years, I doubt the moderator outcry would be anywhere near this bad.
And if you watch you'll notice, even during the blackout, reddit's messaging is all about the things you can still do besides use the third party apps. They're making the API still free for moderation bots. They're working with apps that provide accessibility tools for reddit. They're working with the services moderators use for moderation. They're appealing to the moderators. They've made no mentions of working with: Apollo, BaconReader, or RedditIsFun. The point was to kill the third party apps.
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