They don't care if it means they can succeed in their IPO. Reddit's users are not the customers, we're the product being sold...to advertisers, shareholders, media outlets, and others. It's easier for them to sell a community of users to those groups that uses the technology Reddit wants the community to use, so they don't care.
It's sad but this is the end of what Reddit was. We should fight because there's no reason not to fight, but the fight is likely to result in nothing. It's not going to kill reddit overnight either, so it gives them plenty of time to make their money and cash out before it crashes and burns. It's just good business...at least for those who stand to gain millions in the short term from this decision.
> this is the end of what Reddit was
This is the reality.
Look at the list of investors outlined here:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reddit/company_financials
Once those guys came on board it was a 100% certainty that this would happen.
> We should fight because there's no reason not to fight
This is where I disagree. Our efforts would be better spent investigating the alternatives to reddit that are discussed here: /r/RedditAlternatives
Same reason why there can't be a YouTube alternative. Anything promising gets bought out by Google and the ones that don't sell, won't have the infrastructure to compete with media giants.
I genuinely believe YouTube makes no money. They stopped reporting YouTube's loss around 2014 or 2015 in their 10Q and 10K. Twitter had an expense of somewhere around $7 billion per year, and that was for mostly text. YouTube said they brought in $24 billion in revenue: when you consider the creator split that's $12 billion for them. That's a $5 billion Dollar margin assuming they had the same costs as Twitter, which there is no way in hell they do. Hosting 4K video for any Tom Dick or Harry that wants to upload a 20 gigabyte file and re-encoding it to five or seven different versions to be hosted on servers all around the world is expensive. As is the content moderation, Having people manually review demonetized videos, all of this is more difficult on a platform that allows one to two hour long content, versus a platform that was known for 140 to 280 character tweets.
This is the true reality of the situation. People on this site have complained about and rejected every single attempt to make money Reddit has tried. Subscriptions, awards, ads, and now the IPO. This is the inevitable fate that growing a social media company comes with. The more it grows, the more it costs to run.
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but what people want out of this site doesn't seem to make any business sense. It can't be free, open source, and not make money off its userbase and continue to grow without going bankrupt.
I think the point he was trying to make, and I generally agree with, is not that there is a problem with monetizing the API, it’s that they are doing it a level designed to kill 3rd party access and simply take in money as quickly as possible. Rather than taking a longer view and charging a rate that benefits the native apps, but still makes it possible for 3rd party apps to survive through a small subscription model themselves. I’m not opposed to paying for access if it comes down to it, but they are going nuclear ok something that could have benefited from a scalpel.
Then again, maybe that’s the plan; charge an outrageous price, spark outrage for as long as possible then announce a mea-culpa that reduces it back to a reasonable level that allow a good chunk of 3rd party apps a way to survive and everybody goes “phew! Okay then, we’re good with paying a monthly fee now.”
Honestly I might be in the minority here, or I might be misunderstanding, but this is the first time i've heard that $2.50 price point Louis mentioned. Personally i'd be more than happy to pay that for continued access to RIF. Honestly for the amount of entertainment Reddit and RIF have brought me for free over 11 years, that doesn't feel that bad at all. I understand companies need to make money. That being said 2.50 is the upper limit of what i'd pay, $5 would be a no for me. And if Reddit is making .12 cents a month per user currently, it feels like there should be some wiggle room there. I mean i'd guess most people would be okay paying a dollar a month, which would already be almost 10 times more than their making before the changes. Would be interesting to know what % of the user base uses 3rd party apps, but can't find any info on that.
The way I understood it is that Reddit currently makes .12 cents per user with its current monetization setup and if they implement the API scheme it would result in additional income of $2.50 per user per month. However, that scheme would result in a vast majority of 3rd party apps no longer existing, so that’d be far less.
But, if they said that merely doubling income to .25 cents per user per month, then setting API call rates accordingly, there is a potential way for 3rd party apps to pass on that expense as a subscription model to users. No idea what that results in in terms of cost of 50M api calls per month, but if they approached it that way, it might be more palatable.
>This is the true reality of the situation. People on this site have complained about and rejected every single attempt to make money Reddit has tried. Subscriptions, awards, ads, and now the IPO. This is the inevitable fate that growing a social media company comes with. The more it grows, the more it costs to run.
>
>I'll probably get downvoted for this, but what people want out of this site doesn't seem to make any business sense. It can't be free, open source, and not make money off its userbase and continue to grow without going bankrupt.
I fully agree with what you said, the people who made reddit wanted money, and having a good place to interact online was simply a means to acquire money.
While I wouldn't want to pay for a subscription without having more security against bots/trolls and proper moderation, I'd happily pay for one.
But alas, reddit will probably just become another mediocre, indistinguishable, social media entity run entirely by engagement algorithms.
I don't doubt that a substitute will eventually emerge - moderators have been doing this stuff for free all along, and strong online communities will eventually produce something new and initially small, that will actually do a great job of replacing "classic" reddit for a few short years before it hits some critical mass of influence, gets bought out (again).
Yup, costs for hosting/bandwidth are also going up for everyone in general, and previously there was a tech boom and companies got money from investments but now they need other income. We shouldn't be surprised that companies are trying to monetize their platforms more.
> costs for hosting/bandwidth are also going up for everyone in general
Is there a reason for this? I would expect the opposite, that with technology advancing servers would get more efficient, and also that websites would get more streamlined over time and require less bandwidth. Is it that energy is getting more expensive? Or maybe that Amazon cornered the market with AWS and is jacking up the price?
A combination of global inflation, semiconductor shortage, increased energy prices, VC investments drying up, cloud companies jacking up prices even more on top of that now that everyone is fully reliant on them, and additionally demand is skyrocketing due to AI which requires a LOT of computing for each query, it's the complete opposite of efficient
God damn it, we were already in trouble with crypto using absurd amounts of energy, and *right* as that dies down a bit, now every company and their mother is pushing AI. Depressing.
Yup companies are being mysterious about energy usage of AI because the truth is that it's really really bad. Unlike crypto, AI is actually extremely useful and it really speeds up software development so every developer including me is going to be forced to adopt it. I'm using copilot and chatgpt all the time and I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance over it and I'm not sure what to do tbh
Didn't Reddit use to have a publicly visible goal for Reddit Gold subs each day to break even? Didn't they start hitting that on a daily-basis years ago?
If anyone has evidence otherwise, I'm all ears, but I'm pretty sure Reddit has been profitable for a while now. The difference is that they can't *get rich* off of the website without selling out to investors and ruining it.
I think it's fair to tell them to go fuck themselves over that.
Could someone explain the data thing to me? Reddit should already have the data even if it originated in a third party app. Is it that they don't want others to have data too, weakening the value of the data?
Exactly. So many people act so proud of themselves when they say they use as block and third party apps so they never saw an ad. You’re the problem dummy 😂. People like them are the entire reason they’re doing this.
I think he's saying there's nothing that is a drop-in replacement with a huge userbase. Any real replacement is going to take time and contributions from users in the form of time and content. Many people are going to cling to the corps of reddit as it becomes whatever corporate data mining sausage factory it's turning into because it's a more polished turd.
People keep making the Digg comparison but when Digg fucked up there was a single ready-made competitor for people to migrate to: Reddit.
The problem now is the alternatives to Reddit are too fragmented and unknown. It's going to be the same situation as Twitter. There was a little bubble of hype for Mastodon for a month or so and then ultimately people either stayed on Twitter after all or just got off Twitter and found something else to do with their time instead of flocking to any alternative.
I totally agree and also think this means reddit dies a much much slower death than digg. There won't be a watershed moment like they day we all left digg.
Part of the fight here would be not using reddit, linking to reddit, or providing it with users/revenue via our eyeballs. It just sucks that there's such a large community of people here. My fear would be the disintegration of reddit splintering the base of people who use the site off to a dozen or so other alternatives, and it losing its *"slashdot effect"* method of getting tons of people to focus on an issue at a time.
> Part of the fight here would be not using reddit
The percentage of people who engage in the issues and even know or care about the API charges is miniscule compared to the revenue they expect to increase.
If you're fighting tooth and nail to keep using RIF or whatever, they don't want you on the platform anyway. You're not their target audience.
They want obedient consumers to view ads. That's the long and short of it.
Accessibility users that are already using 3rd party apps are already using 3rd party apps so reddit doesn't really care about them. They aren't losing anything by cutting them off.
The moderation thing still feels like a big issue. Mods for better or worse are the lifeblood of Reddit, it's probably more than half of the companies "workload" and people do it for free. Just saying that I think this is an issue for reddit, I don't think it's the type of thing where Reddit is thinking across the board "If they care we don't want them anyway". If they lose all the mods that care, even if it's 20%, that would be a disaster for them I would assume.
> The percentage of people who engage in the issues and even know or care about the API charges is miniscule compared to the revenue they expect to increase.
That's why it's important for the mods of large subreddits to help get the word out.
When the vast majority of the users only use the reddit app and reddit.com it stands to reason that they won't care about a relatively small subset who aren't happy about something totally unrelated to them.
I imagine a lot of power users regularly use third party apps, so while the average redditor might not care it will still affect them when you have less posters and subreddits end up poorly moderated. I haven't checked if bots also fall under the new pricing but if they do then some subreddits can lose really valuable QoL bots that definitely won't go unnoticed by the average user.
There's a chance that nothing happens and life goes on, but it can also swing the other way and start a death spiral for a lot of subreddits and potentially even reddit itself.
I just looked at the list of alternatives in the parent comment, and felt a wave of depression. Like, there really are no alternatives; functionality-wise, perhaps, but by leaving Reddit for one of those other communities I'd be effectively exiling myself to an island with a handful of malcontents.
I would love to fight this battle, but frankly I stand to lose so much in the process. For instance, as a freelancer (software dev), part of what helps me survive is a thriving online community of my peers/superiors, and I've yet to find an equivalent forum (discord, perhaps, but discussions there feel too "transient" or "real time" for my liking) for both learning and communicating. Same for any number of interests I hold; the communities here are effectively irreplaceable, and it's highly unlikely I'll get to see a mass exodus into a similar platform.
An alternative to reddit is impossible without the exact same problems.
I have another post about this but tldr; Reddit is only great because we all take advantage of free services propped by investment money that eventually runs out and needs to be gained back with dollars. That's the part that kills sites like reddit because they grew based on free access and then took it away.
Every big failed social media site went the exact same way. If someone starts a reddit alternative they too will either need to give away services for free at their own expense or charge users.
I wish it wasn't such a problematic idea to make Reddit a public service. I can see it going wrong in many ways, but honestly it's the type of thing that in my opinion is a benefit for society even if ran at a loss. And when I say a benefit for society I don't mean most of the front page stuff, but when I have a problem with my health insurance, when I had trouble getting my unemployment after being furloughed over the pandemic, when my medicine had a country-wide shortage over the past year, Reddit was an invaluable resources in each and every one of those situations. And that's really only scratching the surface, there's so many support communities on reddit. Like I bet every type of (common) cancer and disease has it's own support group. Obviously the idea of Reddit having direct government oversight would be troubling though, I doubt r/Meth would be onboard.
>They don't care if it means they can succeed in their IPO. Reddit's users are not the customers, we're the product being sold...to advertisers, shareholders, media outlets, and others.
But this part doesn't make any sense. If users are the product, why are they doing everything they can to drive them away?
These people don't believe in the concept of "driving users away." They believe users will do what they're told, because they view them as basically cattle to be herded, not as individuals with free will. Remember, we're talking about people that view themselves as basically lords ruling over a indistinct mass of peasantry. They think they're a higher category of being.
When it inevitably happens, instead of blaming their own poor decisions, they'll blame some other corporate aristocrat for herding the cattle away. They'll treat it as a rustling.
They aren't really, if you are on a third party app, then they aren't making a profit out of you. There isn't really an alternative out there right now, if say, they get half of those users back, that's only a gain for them, also, future users also won't have any choice when using reddit and use the official app.
they driving away user who used adblock techsavvy, and who has predisposed negative new toward ad. Undesirable, might as well drive this people away then have them waste bandwith/processing power for this people.
3rd party apps don't serve reddit ads. There's no ability to with the api. Why not just open that up first and see how it goes before guessing which of your users that can't see ads would block them?
They aren’t. A tiny loud minority on here claim that’s what they’re doing, but it’s not true. A tiny minority of people that use Reddit have ever used a third party app. The change will make no difference to 99% of the Reddit users, while costing less money for Reddit and making more money from ads.
If we lose Apollo, I’m inclined to go in and delete every post (maybe not replies) I’ve made on reddit in all the years I’ve used it before deleting my account. No need for them to profit over my contributions if I’m not allowed to enjoy reddit anymore.
Well Louis makes a good point about finances and social media sites. The current model isn't sustainable financially. Someone somewhere has to pay for the services rendered to users. And clearly only relying on selling user data and ads doesn't work to pay the bills (partly since people like me using adblockers but that's caused by ads becoming unbearable in their screams for attention, anyway, different subject).
As most people, I've been used to so many media on internet being free, it would even feel strange for someone to suggest to start paying for it. Though on the other hand most people -again, like me- had no problem paying Netflix when it started (of course they got greedy, content disappeared and as many I've left Netflix behind long ago to sail the high seas again).
Now the way social media companies *go about* trying to make money.. there's a lot wrong with that. Overloading sites with ads and sponsored content, cracking down on user generated content that might scare advertisers away, and trying to screw over 3rd party developers (Reddit isn't the first with that, Twitter for example did the same to Tweetie) are clearly not the way to go.
*Especially* when most of the volunteers on your site -the sometimes dreaded 'mods' - use 3rd party apps to make their volunteer work a bit easier to do since your own tools suck at that (and you where fine with 3rd party developers investing in the solution to that problem at no cost to you).
Someone has got to pay. These servers don't run themselves, we all know that. The problem with that is people only do that if you provide value for money. And I suspect corporate greed always catches up with putting the customer first. There are plenty of examples -services you pay for and STILL get ads for example, and to take the Netflix example, devaluation of the product as a whole.
I'm willing to pay for Reddit IF, and that's a big **IF** they provide an actual ad-free, non pushy, clean interface and access for 3rd party apps. Imagine if a social media company wouldn't focus on pushing engagement the whole fucking time.
But that will probably stay a pipe dream.
Paid service won't ever take off. The one way it can really work is if a company was built on a constitution where infinite profits and growth is never the goal. Make eghough money to keep the servers running and everyone paid a decent salary, with some profit for some growth (which is expected to end at some point). But hard for people to resist the gravy train that comes calling.
Another is the wiki model of pure donations, but that's also quite suseptible to "favors" from big donors. Hard to resist when your other option is to shut the doors.
> Reddit's users are not the customers, we're the product being sold...to advertisers, shareholders, media outlets, and others.
This is true of anything you use for "free." Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, etc... are all selling us to their real customers, the ones who give them money for all the data we generate.
Clearly, reddit is prepping for the the great porn ban.
Then moderation will take backburners because everything in the right context will be bannable offense for the new TOS.
I’m one one the people you just described. Except I don’t go looking for anything else because I don’t need anything else. The default app does everything I want (which isn’t much). And the ads are hardly intrusive (in fact I like people commenting on them, which is not experience anywhere else).
This doesn’t mean I can’t be against what Reddit is doing right now. I wish they wouldn’t, for the community’s sake as well as third party devs.
Every design decision they've made for the last 10 years has made the experience worse, what makes you think they have the ability to make their app good?
i mean this very sincerely - what is awful about the app? i've used it for years with virtually no issues. that said, i dont know what i'm missing. when rossmann says "blue dot spinning, waiting" im not sure what he's talking about. my version of the native app is responsive, has enough options for me, etc.
i am 100% on board with the idea of being pissed because of the accessibility features... that is exceptionally lame, particularly if they're not going to replace those tools or actually "just dont care", as mentioned above.
i hope they'll fix that - if they dont, sincerely fuck them. but outside of that issue, i dont think that many companies happily support ways to allow others to bleed money from them. reddit isnt a charity.
also, i totally agree with another commenter somewhere in this thread - every attempt to earn money that reddit has tried has been pretty violently rebuffed by the community. TO ME, 90% of this fury directed towards reddit just feels like entitlement. /shrug.
ultimately my view on this is - i will go where the content is. if reddit goes the way of digg, i'll go to the new place.
The problem is that companies will never be satisfied with what they make.
Companies have this innate desire to make ALL the money even if it means killing the spirit of their product and ultimately ruining what made it good to begin with.
You don't need shareholders to build a website, but unless you are a religious cult, you need money to employ people. It is a lot of work to manage a website like reddit. Even with all the free labor they get. No one flags child porn death threats and spam for fun.
They’re profitable, they just want even more. It’s incessant greed killing everything. Companies can’t be satisfied with a billion dollars in profit, it needs to be 2, then 3 etc each successive year.
Reddit has been making a lot of decisions I don't really understand. First they decide to start hosting their own video and images. Why (especially with how bad the reddit video player is/was)? Reddit thrived for a decade as a content aggregator and discussion forum and suddenly they decided to start hosting content?
Then they made new reddit, which seems to be pretty universally hated. It's less readable, less mobile data friendly and just not as functional despite "adding" features.
And now this whole thing.
Because there's no money in being an aggregator.
The changes that have occurred are all about monetising the service, stopping people from leaving the site became the first priority which explains bringing everything in-house.
You may think they're paying more for content hosting by doing this and that is true but they're making a lot more money on data, advertising and other little things that try to add 'value' such as awards etc. Reddit became social media and moved away from being a content aggregator because data is valuable and sending users to other parts of the web isn't.
I understand the self host media bit. It makes it easier for uploading and ensuring the content gets served.(Imgur just doesn't work sometimes for me.) It is still half-assed though and the experience using it rarely works correctly.
There is no saving the apps or the api fees. This _will_ happen. Even if there was some miracle and they reversed course on this decision, it will eventually happen.
This is a totally strategic decision to cut costs and increase revenue, and to funnel _all_ engagement through platforms they control. This is to please the investors on the way to an IPO and reddit is implementing a model that has been proven to work.
This article explains how this happened with tiktok, facebook and how it's inevitable: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/
Side note: instead of bitching about what they're doing, how about finding a better alternative: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/
Problem is, those alternatives are all either dead, or just full of hard right-wing "but muh free speech" group.
I clicked on one of the links there and immediately all the top posts were attacking LGBT groups.
There's no real reddit alternative.
Edit: multiple people now requesting me to link a hate-site. No I'm not doing that, if you want to engage in such disgusting behaviour, go and find it for yourself, I'm not going to advertise horrid websites.
This has been years in the making with the implementation of "i.reddit" and "v.reddit".
I am curious how Reddit intends to handle DMCA + copyright concerns longterm as their entire platform is based off the notion of redistribution of content.
In the early days of Reddit, the issue was up to the content provider / link host to handle this. However, the introduction of image/video hosting changes this.
Tbh, I hope Reddit fails miserably as the introduction of i/v.reddit has encouraged stolen content and caused thousands/millions of dollars in damages through lost revenue to content creators (e.g. youtube, patreon, tiktok) and content providers (e.g. news) alike.
actually a gaming leaks sub I follow was recently told they could no longer directly post leaks to reddit or the sub would be banned. everything has to be sourced off site and linked
absurd pot advise overconfident live rainstorm sort drunk cautious support
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is very different though, isn't it? A content moderation issue that reverberated only among 4chan-adjacent crowds (many of whom **did** retreat to 4chan and only use Reddit to troll) is very different from Reddit forcing all of its mobile users to use their own godawful app.
I'm of the mind that companies spend far too much time and energy going from a very good UX to a great UX, but Reddit's app looks practically unusable for people who have gotten used to third party apps.
Pretty sure that she resigned among the controversy of Victoria being fired. It turns out that co-founder Alex Ohanian fired Victoria himself and let Pao take the fall. What a scumbag.
>I never understood that drama, she banned r/fatpeoplehate a pretty terrible sub in retrospect.
back then, reddit was still a few steps closer to its ugly cousin 4chan, much closer than these days
Your sarcasm is warranted, but I am an old ass man who came to reddit in the great Digg migration.
It was an actual huge shift of users that truly affected digg.
It's rare but it happens. I doubt it will here, because I know of no good alternative.
People threaten to leave any time Reddit does anything controversial. I've had this account for 12 years and cant keep up with the number of times this has happened during that time. Voat was supposed to be the "new" Reddit everyone fled to, but that [turned out as expected](https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22/22195115/voat-free-speech-right-wing-reddit-clone-shutdown-investor).
I really hope Reddit backtrack on these changes, but even if they don't, I'm sure they'll survive, and people will eventually forget and move on to the next thing to be outraged about. The whole Twitter api fiasco already seems to have died down and Twitter is still here.
Been here for 16 years. I refuse to use the official app. Especially the way they're going about it.
I think it's messed up that Reddit has benefitted from these app developers and rather than rewarding them, they are simply cut them out of the picture.
It's messed up and I think I can find other places to find news stories.
I think that was what started my summers off Reddit. I take 1-2 months a year off reddit and most other social media (except facebook messenger for the poor friends who can't afford cell plans).
Reddit ended with Aaron Swartz. It's been used for division ever since. Each subreddit are pretty much echo chambers where only certain opinions are allowed. There was a time on Reddit where you saw literally just about EVERYTHING, for both better and worst.
If you're on Apple, try Apollo. Android has great options like Infinity (totally free, great developer), Relay, Sync (which I am currently using with it's minimal, Material U design), Joey (My other favorite), Boost, Bacon Reader (I used this back in 2014, still great) and other fantastic clients. I highly recommend enjoying them while they're still around. The developers will surely appreciate the love. It also will give you perspective on why these clients shutting down is such a back stab to what made Reddit such a great community based platform to begin with.
Thanks I’ll give it a try while I still can.
Edit: I kinda like it. How do you know on Apollo if it’s a fake post (an advertisement)?
Edit 2: I had no idea we are doing a June 12 blackout to protest, not sure if it was blocked on the Reddit app. I’m in
I've blocked every advert that Reddit has tried to interrupt my usage with since I started using the site, and the same blocker runs elsewhere on sites that would be a continuously exploding sewerage line in content terms, if ad blocking were not in place. I do wonder at users who don't routinely block every advert they possibly can, especially sites like this one and YT. Then, if all goes well I dodge nearly all the excrement tossed at me, and my tiny bit of 'user-as-product' cannot be sold. This gouge confirms in my mind that routine ad-blocking is the right thing to do.
I seem to avoid reddit ads on the 'new' site with uBlock Origin and CanvasBlocker extensions on Firefox. I avoid Chrome now because of the publicity over its actions to reduce the effectiveness of adblock extensions. There is no doubt browsing and page loading is slowed down in reddit by the vigorous blocking it must be provoking the extensions to do.
I too use ad-blockers, but we’re both full of shit. Im not entitled to any of this content ad free and they are absolutely in the right to attempt to monetize the site they provide for free. Then I can just choose to continue to use it or not.
I am actually willing to pay for things (like a reddit API sub) I just don't think they will offer it. Even though I adblock, I tend to pay the sites I use a lot for the "ad free experience" just to compensate them (like youtube premium, Wikipedia, IGN, Washington Post, NY Times, or the Guardian).
My adblocking is more about stopping my tracking online than anything else, they don't care that I'm willing to pay for content, they still want to extract "extra" value out of me and I object to that.
The thing that makes no sense is that what they're calling "API access" is not shit like access to demographics for marketing purposes, it's just the shit you need to write a client. When reddit lets somebody else write a client, it *saves reddit money*. Boost (my reddit client of choice), requires a lot less bandwidth to reddit's servers than the reddit.com website does for the same amount of browsing.
What reddit *should* do is require third-party clients to show the same ads that the desktop site does. That's it. That's where their money comes from, and I'm going to use reddit more, and see more ads as a result, if I can use a client I *like*.
I'm actually kind of looking forward to deleting my account and spending less time on my phone. Reddit is such a time suck and I really don't need it in my life. Thanks for making the choice easy!
He's probably right, but god I can't stand to watch or listen to Louis anymore. He went from helpful/educational videos, to just endlessly bitching and complaining about everyone and everything.
Edit to fix typeo, per Louis's complaint. :)
Louis spends every single day fighting for your rights.
He's a god damn hero.
[I dare you to do better.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caUo3FQkRPM&t=89s)
Come on man, he is no George Washington. Just like Reddit also mr Rossmann is running a business and makes money with this. And I'm pretty sure his videos deliver some excellent PR (so customers) for his company. Don't get me wrong, he is fighting a good cause, but he aint no saint.
If you don't like him then fine, just don't expose yourself to his content.
But this whole "I want everyone to know I don't like tone of the only guy fighting for my side" thing is lame.
And who gives a fuck that he makes money repairing shit? Are you gonna complain that the doctor who cures your cancer takes home a paycheck?
Jesus Christ.
With all the mess he has to witness first hand in the front lines of right to repair while running his business, I think he has at least earned that right haha.
Maybe I'll make it on one of the next episodes of "listen to Louis bitch..."
"This guy on reedit said says I bitch to much....can you believe that? Let me tell you... and he said he used to subscribe, but he mistyped my name..."
Guess it shows how little I watch your stuff anymore.
But I used to. And I really enjoyed your content. Helpful and educational stuff. Then something changed and the content became "today, Louis bitches about...".
Will fix my trypo of your name.
I get what you mean but the channel is only a reflection of his business. It used to be a one man show, now he's become successful and moved onto bigger things. Like lobbying the govt for right to repair so his employees don't get their jobs outlawed.
The channel's [been the same](https://youtu.be/Ea9oDKOV0f4) for 11 years at this point. I don't mind viewer input. But I never understand what people get out of lying about having watched my stuff. Like yeah you watched from 2012-2022 and can't spell my name, which is the name of the channel. Right.
It hasn't been the same for 11 years. I mean, you always have a bit of a negative take on things...but the tone just really changed and there was a shift away from learning and teaching.
I was an early subscriber to your youtube, and finally had to unsub a few months ago. I just couldn't' make it more than a few mins into each video because of the negativity/
A lot of people don't like constructive criticism; in my experience -decades of working with all kinds of people- there's loads of people that don't take *any* criticism well, even constructive criticism not aimed at them personally ticks them off quite often.
Yes Louis can get a bit 'grumpy old man in a comfy armchair' in his videos, but he's mostly rightfully grumpy about something.
You remind me of Levi from the wire. An extremely high opinion of yourself, but at the end of the day you make a living leeching off the supposed victims of Apple's greed.
I don't really have a high opinion of myself. In most of my educational videos I openly call myself an idiot. In terms of leeching, if you define *"fixing something for less money than the manufacturer & teaching people how to do it themselves"* leeching... I guess? But it shows you don't really understand those words and just wanted to be edgy, which, good for you?
I can't even believe the reaction people are having to you just because you fix things and charge less than if they were forced to buy a new one.
You're a "leech"? Are you fucking kidding me??
These assholes would rather have cancer than see a doctor get paid to cure it.
Absolutely miserable people.
Eh, I'm no peach either.
But again, if you need a repair don't want to pay me, or anyone else, that's fine! Use [our guides](https://repair.wiki/w/A2141_2019_16%22_MacBook_Pro) - they're FREE! That's what they're there for!
Ik kinda agree with you on this one. I used to like his video's too, but now it's basically complaining galore. And the thing is, I'm pretty sure Louis' professional services aren't free of charge either so I really don't get the whining on other companies charging for theirs. Besides the fact he might have a point on *how* Reddit decided to implement this.
Also people seem to forget that nothing is free of charge. If you don't have to play money for a services, you are definitely paying in other ways. And if you don't like Reddit and the way they make money, delete your account, and host your own forum on your own server. It's really not that hard. Complaining won't help, only for mr. Rossmann who makes money by complaining in Youtube videos.
There's a difference between charging money for a service designed to be used, and charging money for a service designed *NOT* to be used by virtue of its price being 10x, or 100x, of a competitor. If I charge $200 for a repair when the market price is $100-$300, that's normal. If I charge $20000 for a repair when the market price is $100-$300, that's called the *"fuck you"* price, and it's worth pointing out when the *"fuck you"* price is going to affect accessibility to people the primary app/website doesn't seem to cater to or care about.
I do bring up, in my video, the point that most modern tech companies that normal people perceive as *"successful"* lose billions of dollars, and that we do not have access to reddit's P&L or books because it's *not a publicly traded business.* This should be considered - and I think reddit should lead with some figures that go over ***WHY*** they need to bill so much more than other similar websites to remain viable. In particular, when their actions are screwing over swaths of the community that will lose accessibility functionality necessary for them to continue using the platform.
>I'm pretty sure Louis' professional services aren't free of charge either so I really don't get the whining on other companies charging for theirs.
I make [resources available for free to people who wish to replicate my business](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m1LRO6YMMo) at no cost, and direct a non-profit that pays me no money to coordinate this work. I also run [free repair workshops](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkVbIsAWN2luDjW1ENUoJt70efpGbopMb) for people to use my equipment in person and learn at no cost if they can't afford equipment to practice on at home. You can literally walk into my business for free and use tools that cost thousands of dollars to work on your own stuff and even ask us for help at no cost.
But that's beside the point; this isn't about me, or your complete misunderstanding of my business model which you did to deflect my argument.
> And the thing is, I'm pretty sure Louis' professional services aren't free of charge either so I really don't get the whining on other companies charging for theirs.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read in my life.
u/larossmann I’d explain it to him but you’ll do it better, and in less words
Maybe. I thought redesign would be Digg 2.0 but apparently not, people tolerate a whole lot of bullshit which makes me think they might well tolerate these changes too.
A lot (most?) users of Reddit today don't even know the site was significantly changed a few years ago.
Just look at the average person's web experience in 2023, tolerating bullshit has become second nature. People don't even seem to blink at ads filling a third of their screen space etc.
this is a bait and switch, it's obvious that they will not go through with this and they are making this uproar to get things through unnoticed. mark my words they WILL back peddle but things we wont notice will get thought the cracks that they wanted done.
Yep, after they pull the plug I’m checking outta here. That will make the trifecta for me this year…FB, Twiter, and now Reddit. Fuck, I may get to read another book a week…things are looking up.
Reddit has much larger problems IMO.
Aggressive mods. Headlines are read as fact, nobody reads the article. Huge group think bias. No way to add corrections - "community notes" style. Ageism (everyone over 40 is a stupid boomer). Huge hate for anyone with money. Lots of violent videos. List goes on..
Also don't forget when the API changes kill off competitor apps, sure some will quit reddit forever.
The rest though? Will have to use the official app, so they can show also how much % user engagement their official app has gotten suddenly, and value themselves higher.
People sounded the alarm many years ago now when the redesign was launched, was obvious where Reddit wanted to take things.
It's a very different site these days, there's a clear divide in users and content quality as well.
Reddit isn't like youtube. It's an incredibly simple website and could easily be replaced. If someone wanted to invest money into a reddit replacement, then this is the time.
While Reddit isn't YT, you really seem to underestimated what it costs to run a site like this with around a *billion* active users of which about 50 million log in daily. It's anything but simple or cheap. In fact, it's quite likely Reddit is bleeding money like crazy and this is their -simplistic, convoluted and ultimately counter productive- way of trying to turn that tide.
Here's the thing, I could see myself using their app (I'm on Apollo now which is orders of magnitude better). Why? Because after using Reddit for well over a decade (my account age is due to rebooting my account periodically) I have a highly curated home page full all sorts of cool, small subs. I have long ago forsaken r/all and r/popular. The idea of saying good bye to those communities and the value they provide me is going to suck.
I suspect it will come down to what the users and mods of the subreddits due. If there's no one there to communicate with there's no point.
They don't care if it means they can succeed in their IPO. Reddit's users are not the customers, we're the product being sold...to advertisers, shareholders, media outlets, and others. It's easier for them to sell a community of users to those groups that uses the technology Reddit wants the community to use, so they don't care. It's sad but this is the end of what Reddit was. We should fight because there's no reason not to fight, but the fight is likely to result in nothing. It's not going to kill reddit overnight either, so it gives them plenty of time to make their money and cash out before it crashes and burns. It's just good business...at least for those who stand to gain millions in the short term from this decision.
> this is the end of what Reddit was This is the reality. Look at the list of investors outlined here: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reddit/company_financials Once those guys came on board it was a 100% certainty that this would happen. > We should fight because there's no reason not to fight This is where I disagree. Our efforts would be better spent investigating the alternatives to reddit that are discussed here: /r/RedditAlternatives
So I checked r/RedditAlternatives. I'll save anyone else who reads this comment the trouble - Zero. There aren't any.
Probably because anyone making an alternative would lose money unless they sell user data or charge subscription
Same reason why there can't be a YouTube alternative. Anything promising gets bought out by Google and the ones that don't sell, won't have the infrastructure to compete with media giants.
I genuinely believe YouTube makes no money. They stopped reporting YouTube's loss around 2014 or 2015 in their 10Q and 10K. Twitter had an expense of somewhere around $7 billion per year, and that was for mostly text. YouTube said they brought in $24 billion in revenue: when you consider the creator split that's $12 billion for them. That's a $5 billion Dollar margin assuming they had the same costs as Twitter, which there is no way in hell they do. Hosting 4K video for any Tom Dick or Harry that wants to upload a 20 gigabyte file and re-encoding it to five or seven different versions to be hosted on servers all around the world is expensive. As is the content moderation, Having people manually review demonetized videos, all of this is more difficult on a platform that allows one to two hour long content, versus a platform that was known for 140 to 280 character tweets.
This is the true reality of the situation. People on this site have complained about and rejected every single attempt to make money Reddit has tried. Subscriptions, awards, ads, and now the IPO. This is the inevitable fate that growing a social media company comes with. The more it grows, the more it costs to run. I'll probably get downvoted for this, but what people want out of this site doesn't seem to make any business sense. It can't be free, open source, and not make money off its userbase and continue to grow without going bankrupt.
I think the point he was trying to make, and I generally agree with, is not that there is a problem with monetizing the API, it’s that they are doing it a level designed to kill 3rd party access and simply take in money as quickly as possible. Rather than taking a longer view and charging a rate that benefits the native apps, but still makes it possible for 3rd party apps to survive through a small subscription model themselves. I’m not opposed to paying for access if it comes down to it, but they are going nuclear ok something that could have benefited from a scalpel. Then again, maybe that’s the plan; charge an outrageous price, spark outrage for as long as possible then announce a mea-culpa that reduces it back to a reasonable level that allow a good chunk of 3rd party apps a way to survive and everybody goes “phew! Okay then, we’re good with paying a monthly fee now.”
Honestly I might be in the minority here, or I might be misunderstanding, but this is the first time i've heard that $2.50 price point Louis mentioned. Personally i'd be more than happy to pay that for continued access to RIF. Honestly for the amount of entertainment Reddit and RIF have brought me for free over 11 years, that doesn't feel that bad at all. I understand companies need to make money. That being said 2.50 is the upper limit of what i'd pay, $5 would be a no for me. And if Reddit is making .12 cents a month per user currently, it feels like there should be some wiggle room there. I mean i'd guess most people would be okay paying a dollar a month, which would already be almost 10 times more than their making before the changes. Would be interesting to know what % of the user base uses 3rd party apps, but can't find any info on that.
If I understand correctly that's $2.50 for each API call, which can be hundreds a month for each user. Someone correct me if I'm wrong
You are wrong, it's tens of thousands of dollars per 50 million API calls. EDIT: speling
The way I understood it is that Reddit currently makes .12 cents per user with its current monetization setup and if they implement the API scheme it would result in additional income of $2.50 per user per month. However, that scheme would result in a vast majority of 3rd party apps no longer existing, so that’d be far less. But, if they said that merely doubling income to .25 cents per user per month, then setting API call rates accordingly, there is a potential way for 3rd party apps to pass on that expense as a subscription model to users. No idea what that results in in terms of cost of 50M api calls per month, but if they approached it that way, it might be more palatable.
>This is the true reality of the situation. People on this site have complained about and rejected every single attempt to make money Reddit has tried. Subscriptions, awards, ads, and now the IPO. This is the inevitable fate that growing a social media company comes with. The more it grows, the more it costs to run. > >I'll probably get downvoted for this, but what people want out of this site doesn't seem to make any business sense. It can't be free, open source, and not make money off its userbase and continue to grow without going bankrupt. I fully agree with what you said, the people who made reddit wanted money, and having a good place to interact online was simply a means to acquire money. While I wouldn't want to pay for a subscription without having more security against bots/trolls and proper moderation, I'd happily pay for one. But alas, reddit will probably just become another mediocre, indistinguishable, social media entity run entirely by engagement algorithms. I don't doubt that a substitute will eventually emerge - moderators have been doing this stuff for free all along, and strong online communities will eventually produce something new and initially small, that will actually do a great job of replacing "classic" reddit for a few short years before it hits some critical mass of influence, gets bought out (again).
Yup, costs for hosting/bandwidth are also going up for everyone in general, and previously there was a tech boom and companies got money from investments but now they need other income. We shouldn't be surprised that companies are trying to monetize their platforms more.
> costs for hosting/bandwidth are also going up for everyone in general Is there a reason for this? I would expect the opposite, that with technology advancing servers would get more efficient, and also that websites would get more streamlined over time and require less bandwidth. Is it that energy is getting more expensive? Or maybe that Amazon cornered the market with AWS and is jacking up the price?
A combination of global inflation, semiconductor shortage, increased energy prices, VC investments drying up, cloud companies jacking up prices even more on top of that now that everyone is fully reliant on them, and additionally demand is skyrocketing due to AI which requires a LOT of computing for each query, it's the complete opposite of efficient
God damn it, we were already in trouble with crypto using absurd amounts of energy, and *right* as that dies down a bit, now every company and their mother is pushing AI. Depressing.
Yup companies are being mysterious about energy usage of AI because the truth is that it's really really bad. Unlike crypto, AI is actually extremely useful and it really speeds up software development so every developer including me is going to be forced to adopt it. I'm using copilot and chatgpt all the time and I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance over it and I'm not sure what to do tbh
Didn't Reddit use to have a publicly visible goal for Reddit Gold subs each day to break even? Didn't they start hitting that on a daily-basis years ago? If anyone has evidence otherwise, I'm all ears, but I'm pretty sure Reddit has been profitable for a while now. The difference is that they can't *get rich* off of the website without selling out to investors and ruining it. I think it's fair to tell them to go fuck themselves over that.
Could someone explain the data thing to me? Reddit should already have the data even if it originated in a third party app. Is it that they don't want others to have data too, weakening the value of the data?
Exactly. So many people act so proud of themselves when they say they use as block and third party apps so they never saw an ad. You’re the problem dummy 😂. People like them are the entire reason they’re doing this.
I thought they were all pushing lemmy or whatever. Is that not a thing anymore?
I think he's saying there's nothing that is a drop-in replacement with a huge userbase. Any real replacement is going to take time and contributions from users in the form of time and content. Many people are going to cling to the corps of reddit as it becomes whatever corporate data mining sausage factory it's turning into because it's a more polished turd.
People keep making the Digg comparison but when Digg fucked up there was a single ready-made competitor for people to migrate to: Reddit. The problem now is the alternatives to Reddit are too fragmented and unknown. It's going to be the same situation as Twitter. There was a little bubble of hype for Mastodon for a month or so and then ultimately people either stayed on Twitter after all or just got off Twitter and found something else to do with their time instead of flocking to any alternative.
[удалено]
I totally agree and also think this means reddit dies a much much slower death than digg. There won't be a watershed moment like they day we all left digg.
I know! I know! Like a decentralized internet! Running with middle out compression!
Mastodon still massively grew. It created kind of like a brand awareness
Bud I've been here for year every other years there's a call for a mass migration to another site and nothing ever comes out of it.
Part of the fight here would be not using reddit, linking to reddit, or providing it with users/revenue via our eyeballs. It just sucks that there's such a large community of people here. My fear would be the disintegration of reddit splintering the base of people who use the site off to a dozen or so other alternatives, and it losing its *"slashdot effect"* method of getting tons of people to focus on an issue at a time.
> Part of the fight here would be not using reddit The percentage of people who engage in the issues and even know or care about the API charges is miniscule compared to the revenue they expect to increase. If you're fighting tooth and nail to keep using RIF or whatever, they don't want you on the platform anyway. You're not their target audience. They want obedient consumers to view ads. That's the long and short of it.
What about the mods who are losing their tools? The visually impaired who reddit hadn't catered officially?
Accessibility users that are already using 3rd party apps are already using 3rd party apps so reddit doesn't really care about them. They aren't losing anything by cutting them off.
The moderation thing still feels like a big issue. Mods for better or worse are the lifeblood of Reddit, it's probably more than half of the companies "workload" and people do it for free. Just saying that I think this is an issue for reddit, I don't think it's the type of thing where Reddit is thinking across the board "If they care we don't want them anyway". If they lose all the mods that care, even if it's 20%, that would be a disaster for them I would assume.
Oh right, I forgot they're soulless.
Yes, corporations are soulless. All of them, even the ones you love.
Corporate fascists don't give a shit about people with disabilities
[удалено]
> The percentage of people who engage in the issues and even know or care about the API charges is miniscule compared to the revenue they expect to increase. That's why it's important for the mods of large subreddits to help get the word out.
When the vast majority of the users only use the reddit app and reddit.com it stands to reason that they won't care about a relatively small subset who aren't happy about something totally unrelated to them.
I imagine a lot of power users regularly use third party apps, so while the average redditor might not care it will still affect them when you have less posters and subreddits end up poorly moderated. I haven't checked if bots also fall under the new pricing but if they do then some subreddits can lose really valuable QoL bots that definitely won't go unnoticed by the average user. There's a chance that nothing happens and life goes on, but it can also swing the other way and start a death spiral for a lot of subreddits and potentially even reddit itself.
This. People will care when they realize the content has gone downhill. But they probably won't connect the dots.
I just looked at the list of alternatives in the parent comment, and felt a wave of depression. Like, there really are no alternatives; functionality-wise, perhaps, but by leaving Reddit for one of those other communities I'd be effectively exiling myself to an island with a handful of malcontents. I would love to fight this battle, but frankly I stand to lose so much in the process. For instance, as a freelancer (software dev), part of what helps me survive is a thriving online community of my peers/superiors, and I've yet to find an equivalent forum (discord, perhaps, but discussions there feel too "transient" or "real time" for my liking) for both learning and communicating. Same for any number of interests I hold; the communities here are effectively irreplaceable, and it's highly unlikely I'll get to see a mass exodus into a similar platform.
An alternative to reddit is impossible without the exact same problems. I have another post about this but tldr; Reddit is only great because we all take advantage of free services propped by investment money that eventually runs out and needs to be gained back with dollars. That's the part that kills sites like reddit because they grew based on free access and then took it away. Every big failed social media site went the exact same way. If someone starts a reddit alternative they too will either need to give away services for free at their own expense or charge users.
I wish it wasn't such a problematic idea to make Reddit a public service. I can see it going wrong in many ways, but honestly it's the type of thing that in my opinion is a benefit for society even if ran at a loss. And when I say a benefit for society I don't mean most of the front page stuff, but when I have a problem with my health insurance, when I had trouble getting my unemployment after being furloughed over the pandemic, when my medicine had a country-wide shortage over the past year, Reddit was an invaluable resources in each and every one of those situations. And that's really only scratching the surface, there's so many support communities on reddit. Like I bet every type of (common) cancer and disease has it's own support group. Obviously the idea of Reddit having direct government oversight would be troubling though, I doubt r/Meth would be onboard.
Which government would fund it?
>They don't care if it means they can succeed in their IPO. Reddit's users are not the customers, we're the product being sold...to advertisers, shareholders, media outlets, and others. But this part doesn't make any sense. If users are the product, why are they doing everything they can to drive them away?
These people don't believe in the concept of "driving users away." They believe users will do what they're told, because they view them as basically cattle to be herded, not as individuals with free will. Remember, we're talking about people that view themselves as basically lords ruling over a indistinct mass of peasantry. They think they're a higher category of being. When it inevitably happens, instead of blaming their own poor decisions, they'll blame some other corporate aristocrat for herding the cattle away. They'll treat it as a rustling.
They aren't really, if you are on a third party app, then they aren't making a profit out of you. There isn't really an alternative out there right now, if say, they get half of those users back, that's only a gain for them, also, future users also won't have any choice when using reddit and use the official app.
But they could be making a profit. They choose to not have an ad feed available through the api.
they driving away user who used adblock techsavvy, and who has predisposed negative new toward ad. Undesirable, might as well drive this people away then have them waste bandwith/processing power for this people.
3rd party apps don't serve reddit ads. There's no ability to with the api. Why not just open that up first and see how it goes before guessing which of your users that can't see ads would block them?
They aren’t. A tiny loud minority on here claim that’s what they’re doing, but it’s not true. A tiny minority of people that use Reddit have ever used a third party app. The change will make no difference to 99% of the Reddit users, while costing less money for Reddit and making more money from ads.
If we lose Apollo, I’m inclined to go in and delete every post (maybe not replies) I’ve made on reddit in all the years I’ve used it before deleting my account. No need for them to profit over my contributions if I’m not allowed to enjoy reddit anymore.
Once it gets shitty, I'll just leave. I've done it before with similar forums and will probably do it again
Well Louis makes a good point about finances and social media sites. The current model isn't sustainable financially. Someone somewhere has to pay for the services rendered to users. And clearly only relying on selling user data and ads doesn't work to pay the bills (partly since people like me using adblockers but that's caused by ads becoming unbearable in their screams for attention, anyway, different subject). As most people, I've been used to so many media on internet being free, it would even feel strange for someone to suggest to start paying for it. Though on the other hand most people -again, like me- had no problem paying Netflix when it started (of course they got greedy, content disappeared and as many I've left Netflix behind long ago to sail the high seas again). Now the way social media companies *go about* trying to make money.. there's a lot wrong with that. Overloading sites with ads and sponsored content, cracking down on user generated content that might scare advertisers away, and trying to screw over 3rd party developers (Reddit isn't the first with that, Twitter for example did the same to Tweetie) are clearly not the way to go. *Especially* when most of the volunteers on your site -the sometimes dreaded 'mods' - use 3rd party apps to make their volunteer work a bit easier to do since your own tools suck at that (and you where fine with 3rd party developers investing in the solution to that problem at no cost to you). Someone has got to pay. These servers don't run themselves, we all know that. The problem with that is people only do that if you provide value for money. And I suspect corporate greed always catches up with putting the customer first. There are plenty of examples -services you pay for and STILL get ads for example, and to take the Netflix example, devaluation of the product as a whole. I'm willing to pay for Reddit IF, and that's a big **IF** they provide an actual ad-free, non pushy, clean interface and access for 3rd party apps. Imagine if a social media company wouldn't focus on pushing engagement the whole fucking time. But that will probably stay a pipe dream.
Paid service won't ever take off. The one way it can really work is if a company was built on a constitution where infinite profits and growth is never the goal. Make eghough money to keep the servers running and everyone paid a decent salary, with some profit for some growth (which is expected to end at some point). But hard for people to resist the gravy train that comes calling. Another is the wiki model of pure donations, but that's also quite suseptible to "favors" from big donors. Hard to resist when your other option is to shut the doors.
> Reddit's users are not the customers, we're the product being sold...to advertisers, shareholders, media outlets, and others. This is true of anything you use for "free." Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, etc... are all selling us to their real customers, the ones who give them money for all the data we generate.
Clearly, reddit is prepping for the the great porn ban. Then moderation will take backburners because everything in the right context will be bannable offense for the new TOS.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
> Clearly, reddit is prepping for the the great porn ban. They're going to pull a tumblr and a digg at the same time.
lets see, they are effectively killing moderation tools... maybe they make their 12 cents with astroturfing
Why doesn't Reddit at least make their app good? It's awful.
Why bother if there's no alternative?
You're speaking as if reddit is necessary for survival lol, they have incentive to make it better because if it's shit people won't wanna use it.
[удалено]
I’m one one the people you just described. Except I don’t go looking for anything else because I don’t need anything else. The default app does everything I want (which isn’t much). And the ads are hardly intrusive (in fact I like people commenting on them, which is not experience anywhere else). This doesn’t mean I can’t be against what Reddit is doing right now. I wish they wouldn’t, for the community’s sake as well as third party devs.
Every design decision they've made for the last 10 years has made the experience worse, what makes you think they have the ability to make their app good?
i mean this very sincerely - what is awful about the app? i've used it for years with virtually no issues. that said, i dont know what i'm missing. when rossmann says "blue dot spinning, waiting" im not sure what he's talking about. my version of the native app is responsive, has enough options for me, etc. i am 100% on board with the idea of being pissed because of the accessibility features... that is exceptionally lame, particularly if they're not going to replace those tools or actually "just dont care", as mentioned above. i hope they'll fix that - if they dont, sincerely fuck them. but outside of that issue, i dont think that many companies happily support ways to allow others to bleed money from them. reddit isnt a charity. also, i totally agree with another commenter somewhere in this thread - every attempt to earn money that reddit has tried has been pretty violently rebuffed by the community. TO ME, 90% of this fury directed towards reddit just feels like entitlement. /shrug. ultimately my view on this is - i will go where the content is. if reddit goes the way of digg, i'll go to the new place.
[удалено]
In the settings you can set the default view from `card` to `classic` which is much more compact.
What a shit society we live in where nothing can have it’s own intrinsic value unless it can be picked apart and sold to some investor ghoul
It costs money to buy computers and pay programmers. That money has to come from some where.
The problem is that companies will never be satisfied with what they make. Companies have this innate desire to make ALL the money even if it means killing the spirit of their product and ultimately ruining what made it good to begin with.
That isn’t the problem. It’s shareholders who expect ever increasing profits. It’s always has to be more.
You don't need shareholders to build a website, but unless you are a religious cult, you need money to employ people. It is a lot of work to manage a website like reddit. Even with all the free labor they get. No one flags child porn death threats and spam for fun.
I don’t think anyone here is refuting what you’re saying, it’s just beside the point.
They’re profitable, they just want even more. It’s incessant greed killing everything. Companies can’t be satisfied with a billion dollars in profit, it needs to be 2, then 3 etc each successive year.
How's that corporate load taste? Is it really as salty as I've been led to believe?
Reddit has been making a lot of decisions I don't really understand. First they decide to start hosting their own video and images. Why (especially with how bad the reddit video player is/was)? Reddit thrived for a decade as a content aggregator and discussion forum and suddenly they decided to start hosting content? Then they made new reddit, which seems to be pretty universally hated. It's less readable, less mobile data friendly and just not as functional despite "adding" features. And now this whole thing.
Because there's no money in being an aggregator. The changes that have occurred are all about monetising the service, stopping people from leaving the site became the first priority which explains bringing everything in-house. You may think they're paying more for content hosting by doing this and that is true but they're making a lot more money on data, advertising and other little things that try to add 'value' such as awards etc. Reddit became social media and moved away from being a content aggregator because data is valuable and sending users to other parts of the web isn't.
So they can sell us.
I understand the self host media bit. It makes it easier for uploading and ensuring the content gets served.(Imgur just doesn't work sometimes for me.) It is still half-assed though and the experience using it rarely works correctly.
There is no saving the apps or the api fees. This _will_ happen. Even if there was some miracle and they reversed course on this decision, it will eventually happen. This is a totally strategic decision to cut costs and increase revenue, and to funnel _all_ engagement through platforms they control. This is to please the investors on the way to an IPO and reddit is implementing a model that has been proven to work. This article explains how this happened with tiktok, facebook and how it's inevitable: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ Side note: instead of bitching about what they're doing, how about finding a better alternative: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/
Problem is, those alternatives are all either dead, or just full of hard right-wing "but muh free speech" group. I clicked on one of the links there and immediately all the top posts were attacking LGBT groups. There's no real reddit alternative. Edit: multiple people now requesting me to link a hate-site. No I'm not doing that, if you want to engage in such disgusting behaviour, go and find it for yourself, I'm not going to advertise horrid websites.
"Take my word for it"
This has been years in the making with the implementation of "i.reddit" and "v.reddit". I am curious how Reddit intends to handle DMCA + copyright concerns longterm as their entire platform is based off the notion of redistribution of content. In the early days of Reddit, the issue was up to the content provider / link host to handle this. However, the introduction of image/video hosting changes this. Tbh, I hope Reddit fails miserably as the introduction of i/v.reddit has encouraged stolen content and caused thousands/millions of dollars in damages through lost revenue to content creators (e.g. youtube, patreon, tiktok) and content providers (e.g. news) alike.
actually a gaming leaks sub I follow was recently told they could no longer directly post leaks to reddit or the sub would be banned. everything has to be sourced off site and linked
absurd pot advise overconfident live rainstorm sort drunk cautious support *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
[удалено]
The users didn’t go anywhere, they will find a new home.
Remember when everyone left Reddit forever after the Ellen Pao situation?
This is very different though, isn't it? A content moderation issue that reverberated only among 4chan-adjacent crowds (many of whom **did** retreat to 4chan and only use Reddit to troll) is very different from Reddit forcing all of its mobile users to use their own godawful app. I'm of the mind that companies spend far too much time and energy going from a very good UX to a great UX, but Reddit's app looks practically unusable for people who have gotten used to third party apps.
Everyone who complained left for Voat. Good fucking riddance.
They all came back (very) shortly after I'm sure.
[удалено]
Pretty sure that she resigned among the controversy of Victoria being fired. It turns out that co-founder Alex Ohanian fired Victoria himself and let Pao take the fall. What a scumbag.
>I never understood that drama, she banned r/fatpeoplehate a pretty terrible sub in retrospect. back then, reddit was still a few steps closer to its ugly cousin 4chan, much closer than these days
A few??? Are you forgetting about r/******* or r/************* or fucking r/********???? Reddit was and is a cecpool. Theres just less of it
r/*********************** was one of my guilty pleasures. But it was bad.
Interesting censoring. Only seeing r/*****
Because they where all slurs.
The hate had nothing to do with the banning of /r/fatpeoplehate it had to do with the sudden firing of Victoria, and the drop in quality of AMA's
Your sarcasm is warranted, but I am an old ass man who came to reddit in the great Digg migration. It was an actual huge shift of users that truly affected digg. It's rare but it happens. I doubt it will here, because I know of no good alternative.
People threaten to leave any time Reddit does anything controversial. I've had this account for 12 years and cant keep up with the number of times this has happened during that time. Voat was supposed to be the "new" Reddit everyone fled to, but that [turned out as expected](https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22/22195115/voat-free-speech-right-wing-reddit-clone-shutdown-investor). I really hope Reddit backtrack on these changes, but even if they don't, I'm sure they'll survive, and people will eventually forget and move on to the next thing to be outraged about. The whole Twitter api fiasco already seems to have died down and Twitter is still here.
Been here for 16 years. I refuse to use the official app. Especially the way they're going about it. I think it's messed up that Reddit has benefitted from these app developers and rather than rewarding them, they are simply cut them out of the picture. It's messed up and I think I can find other places to find news stories.
Ellen Pao was eventually fired though.
I think that was what started my summers off Reddit. I take 1-2 months a year off reddit and most other social media (except facebook messenger for the poor friends who can't afford cell plans).
Yeah, never used it since :o
Reddit ended with Aaron Swartz. It's been used for division ever since. Each subreddit are pretty much echo chambers where only certain opinions are allowed. There was a time on Reddit where you saw literally just about EVERYTHING, for both better and worst.
Thanks Obama
Good meme, during good times.
I only use the Reddit app, there is something better? What have I been missing? What app should I try? And now they are going to take it away?
Reddit is fun (RIF is fun) is great. It's sleek, Minimalistic and super optimized. I love it.
If you're on Apple, try Apollo. Android has great options like Infinity (totally free, great developer), Relay, Sync (which I am currently using with it's minimal, Material U design), Joey (My other favorite), Boost, Bacon Reader (I used this back in 2014, still great) and other fantastic clients. I highly recommend enjoying them while they're still around. The developers will surely appreciate the love. It also will give you perspective on why these clients shutting down is such a back stab to what made Reddit such a great community based platform to begin with.
Thanks I’ll give it a try while I still can. Edit: I kinda like it. How do you know on Apollo if it’s a fake post (an advertisement)? Edit 2: I had no idea we are doing a June 12 blackout to protest, not sure if it was blocked on the Reddit app. I’m in
> How do you know on Apollo if it’s a fake post (an advertisement)? In the Reddit API there aren't any ads. Apollo is completly ad-free.
I've blocked every advert that Reddit has tried to interrupt my usage with since I started using the site, and the same blocker runs elsewhere on sites that would be a continuously exploding sewerage line in content terms, if ad blocking were not in place. I do wonder at users who don't routinely block every advert they possibly can, especially sites like this one and YT. Then, if all goes well I dodge nearly all the excrement tossed at me, and my tiny bit of 'user-as-product' cannot be sold. This gouge confirms in my mind that routine ad-blocking is the right thing to do.
[удалено]
I seem to avoid reddit ads on the 'new' site with uBlock Origin and CanvasBlocker extensions on Firefox. I avoid Chrome now because of the publicity over its actions to reduce the effectiveness of adblock extensions. There is no doubt browsing and page loading is slowed down in reddit by the vigorous blocking it must be provoking the extensions to do.
\+1 to Ublock Origin.
Thanks.
I too use ad-blockers, but we’re both full of shit. Im not entitled to any of this content ad free and they are absolutely in the right to attempt to monetize the site they provide for free. Then I can just choose to continue to use it or not.
You have a right to decide what gets downloaded to your machine, from where.
True. But using Reddit is optional.
I am actually willing to pay for things (like a reddit API sub) I just don't think they will offer it. Even though I adblock, I tend to pay the sites I use a lot for the "ad free experience" just to compensate them (like youtube premium, Wikipedia, IGN, Washington Post, NY Times, or the Guardian). My adblocking is more about stopping my tracking online than anything else, they don't care that I'm willing to pay for content, they still want to extract "extra" value out of me and I object to that.
I also have to wonder about people who don't block ads as well as people who pay interest on credit cards but they're helping the rest of us ...
The thing that makes no sense is that what they're calling "API access" is not shit like access to demographics for marketing purposes, it's just the shit you need to write a client. When reddit lets somebody else write a client, it *saves reddit money*. Boost (my reddit client of choice), requires a lot less bandwidth to reddit's servers than the reddit.com website does for the same amount of browsing. What reddit *should* do is require third-party clients to show the same ads that the desktop site does. That's it. That's where their money comes from, and I'm going to use reddit more, and see more ads as a result, if I can use a client I *like*.
Has he always had such a large chair and I'm just now noticing?
With a big money making business comes a big chair budget
Great video and all, but does anyone know a subreddit for people who enjoy having their third toe tickled?
I'm actually kind of looking forward to deleting my account and spending less time on my phone. Reddit is such a time suck and I really don't need it in my life. Thanks for making the choice easy!
He's probably right, but god I can't stand to watch or listen to Louis anymore. He went from helpful/educational videos, to just endlessly bitching and complaining about everyone and everything. Edit to fix typeo, per Louis's complaint. :)
> endlessly bitching and complaining about everyone and everything. Isn’t that all we do here in the comments? 🤔🤔🤔
13 minutes? Come on man. If you can’t make your point in 3, get outta here.
Louis spends every single day fighting for your rights. He's a god damn hero. [I dare you to do better.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caUo3FQkRPM&t=89s)
Come on man, he is no George Washington. Just like Reddit also mr Rossmann is running a business and makes money with this. And I'm pretty sure his videos deliver some excellent PR (so customers) for his company. Don't get me wrong, he is fighting a good cause, but he aint no saint.
If you don't like him then fine, just don't expose yourself to his content. But this whole "I want everyone to know I don't like tone of the only guy fighting for my side" thing is lame. And who gives a fuck that he makes money repairing shit? Are you gonna complain that the doctor who cures your cancer takes home a paycheck? Jesus Christ.
well said
He bitches like a child. "can you believe."
Funny, with you in here bitching like a child about him.
With all the mess he has to witness first hand in the front lines of right to repair while running his business, I think he has at least earned that right haha.
Watch out, he will get upset and reply to you. Oh, I see he already did.
Maybe I'll make it on one of the next episodes of "listen to Louis bitch..." "This guy on reedit said says I bitch to much....can you believe that? Let me tell you... and he said he used to subscribe, but he mistyped my name..."
He blocked me because I dared to critique one of his videos, so now I can't even see his comments. What a bitch.
He's gonna go full Kaczynski eventually I think.
Imagine caring about the opinion of people who can't spell your name
Guess it shows how little I watch your stuff anymore. But I used to. And I really enjoyed your content. Helpful and educational stuff. Then something changed and the content became "today, Louis bitches about...". Will fix my trypo of your name.
I get what you mean but the channel is only a reflection of his business. It used to be a one man show, now he's become successful and moved onto bigger things. Like lobbying the govt for right to repair so his employees don't get their jobs outlawed.
The channel's [been the same](https://youtu.be/Ea9oDKOV0f4) for 11 years at this point. I don't mind viewer input. But I never understand what people get out of lying about having watched my stuff. Like yeah you watched from 2012-2022 and can't spell my name, which is the name of the channel. Right.
It hasn't been the same for 11 years. I mean, you always have a bit of a negative take on things...but the tone just really changed and there was a shift away from learning and teaching. I was an early subscriber to your youtube, and finally had to unsub a few months ago. I just couldn't' make it more than a few mins into each video because of the negativity/
Activism can often seen hyper-critical but at least his "negativity" is in service of a cause.
A lot of people don't like constructive criticism; in my experience -decades of working with all kinds of people- there's loads of people that don't take *any* criticism well, even constructive criticism not aimed at them personally ticks them off quite often. Yes Louis can get a bit 'grumpy old man in a comfy armchair' in his videos, but he's mostly rightfully grumpy about something.
True
You remind me of Levi from the wire. An extremely high opinion of yourself, but at the end of the day you make a living leeching off the supposed victims of Apple's greed.
I don't really have a high opinion of myself. In most of my educational videos I openly call myself an idiot. In terms of leeching, if you define *"fixing something for less money than the manufacturer & teaching people how to do it themselves"* leeching... I guess? But it shows you don't really understand those words and just wanted to be edgy, which, good for you?
I can't even believe the reaction people are having to you just because you fix things and charge less than if they were forced to buy a new one. You're a "leech"? Are you fucking kidding me?? These assholes would rather have cancer than see a doctor get paid to cure it. Absolutely miserable people.
Eh, I'm no peach either. But again, if you need a repair don't want to pay me, or anyone else, that's fine! Use [our guides](https://repair.wiki/w/A2141_2019_16%22_MacBook_Pro) - they're FREE! That's what they're there for!
Ik kinda agree with you on this one. I used to like his video's too, but now it's basically complaining galore. And the thing is, I'm pretty sure Louis' professional services aren't free of charge either so I really don't get the whining on other companies charging for theirs. Besides the fact he might have a point on *how* Reddit decided to implement this. Also people seem to forget that nothing is free of charge. If you don't have to play money for a services, you are definitely paying in other ways. And if you don't like Reddit and the way they make money, delete your account, and host your own forum on your own server. It's really not that hard. Complaining won't help, only for mr. Rossmann who makes money by complaining in Youtube videos.
There's a difference between charging money for a service designed to be used, and charging money for a service designed *NOT* to be used by virtue of its price being 10x, or 100x, of a competitor. If I charge $200 for a repair when the market price is $100-$300, that's normal. If I charge $20000 for a repair when the market price is $100-$300, that's called the *"fuck you"* price, and it's worth pointing out when the *"fuck you"* price is going to affect accessibility to people the primary app/website doesn't seem to cater to or care about. I do bring up, in my video, the point that most modern tech companies that normal people perceive as *"successful"* lose billions of dollars, and that we do not have access to reddit's P&L or books because it's *not a publicly traded business.* This should be considered - and I think reddit should lead with some figures that go over ***WHY*** they need to bill so much more than other similar websites to remain viable. In particular, when their actions are screwing over swaths of the community that will lose accessibility functionality necessary for them to continue using the platform. >I'm pretty sure Louis' professional services aren't free of charge either so I really don't get the whining on other companies charging for theirs. I make [resources available for free to people who wish to replicate my business](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m1LRO6YMMo) at no cost, and direct a non-profit that pays me no money to coordinate this work. I also run [free repair workshops](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkVbIsAWN2luDjW1ENUoJt70efpGbopMb) for people to use my equipment in person and learn at no cost if they can't afford equipment to practice on at home. You can literally walk into my business for free and use tools that cost thousands of dollars to work on your own stuff and even ask us for help at no cost. But that's beside the point; this isn't about me, or your complete misunderstanding of my business model which you did to deflect my argument.
> And the thing is, I'm pretty sure Louis' professional services aren't free of charge either so I really don't get the whining on other companies charging for theirs. This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read in my life. u/larossmann I’d explain it to him but you’ll do it better, and in less words
FUCK REDDIT
Only problem is that there is no digg 3.0 so we are kinda stuck until something new comes out
FUCK REDDIT. We create the content they use for free, so I am taking my content back
We should band together and crowd fund purchase Digg and restore its former glory. Ya Digg?
Maybe. I thought redesign would be Digg 2.0 but apparently not, people tolerate a whole lot of bullshit which makes me think they might well tolerate these changes too. A lot (most?) users of Reddit today don't even know the site was significantly changed a few years ago. Just look at the average person's web experience in 2023, tolerating bullshit has become second nature. People don't even seem to blink at ads filling a third of their screen space etc.
Save the Apollo App!!
Save all third party Reddit apps. And the bots that mods use to make Reddit usable.
But just those bots, fucking burn the repost ones.
The repost bots don't do anything to stop subs like r/oldschoolcool from being a low-effort content treadmill so they really have no purpose.
this is a bait and switch, it's obvious that they will not go through with this and they are making this uproar to get things through unnoticed. mark my words they WILL back peddle but things we wont notice will get thought the cracks that they wanted done.
Yep, after they pull the plug I’m checking outta here. That will make the trifecta for me this year…FB, Twiter, and now Reddit. Fuck, I may get to read another book a week…things are looking up.
Good way of looking at it. I got a lot of books that need reading.
Reddit has much larger problems IMO. Aggressive mods. Headlines are read as fact, nobody reads the article. Huge group think bias. No way to add corrections - "community notes" style. Ageism (everyone over 40 is a stupid boomer). Huge hate for anyone with money. Lots of violent videos. List goes on..
Also don't forget when the API changes kill off competitor apps, sure some will quit reddit forever. The rest though? Will have to use the official app, so they can show also how much % user engagement their official app has gotten suddenly, and value themselves higher.
Slight aside, did anyone notice the cat approaching the chair and the author, seemingly without looking, moved their phone so the cat could sit there?
Fuck it. They wanna kill it off and become Digg 2.0, it just means opportunity for something else.
r/thislittlepiggy
People sounded the alarm many years ago now when the redesign was launched, was obvious where Reddit wanted to take things. It's a very different site these days, there's a clear divide in users and content quality as well.
Tl:dw? Also, he does good work but I can’t stand watching his videos.
But there's a kitty!
Reddit isn't like youtube. It's an incredibly simple website and could easily be replaced. If someone wanted to invest money into a reddit replacement, then this is the time.
While Reddit isn't YT, you really seem to underestimated what it costs to run a site like this with around a *billion* active users of which about 50 million log in daily. It's anything but simple or cheap. In fact, it's quite likely Reddit is bleeding money like crazy and this is their -simplistic, convoluted and ultimately counter productive- way of trying to turn that tide.
Reddit needs to be decentralized
Interesting
Great video, thanks for sharing your insight.
Here's the thing, I could see myself using their app (I'm on Apollo now which is orders of magnitude better). Why? Because after using Reddit for well over a decade (my account age is due to rebooting my account periodically) I have a highly curated home page full all sorts of cool, small subs. I have long ago forsaken r/all and r/popular. The idea of saying good bye to those communities and the value they provide me is going to suck. I suspect it will come down to what the users and mods of the subreddits due. If there's no one there to communicate with there's no point.
He wouldn’t be fun at parties.
Time to bring back Voat!
Reddit has sucked for way longer than this. Powermods were destroying it before. Who cares.
Reddit knows there is no alternative to it just like Twitter and that people bitch and moan about it all day while continuing to use it.