He’s right that Reddit’s “aggressive posture” is what’s annoyed a lot of users. When I first heard of them adding API costs, I didn’t care, because I didn’t use 3rd party apps. But their attitude since then is why I don’t want to use Reddit now.
They could have apologised for the inconvenience caused by their changes. They could have said something like “we recognise there are users who are not happy with these changes, and we apologise for the inconvenience, but we are in a position where we have to cover our server costs, or else Reddit may not survive into the future”. If they had put it like THAT then I bet most people would have understood where they’re coming from.
But instead they say things like “oh it’s only a small amount of users who are unhappy” and “this will blow over like all of these controversies do”. Basically saying “we don’t need to listen to you, fuck you, fuck your opinions, we assume you’ll use Reddit anyway”. AND didn’t they say they would respect mods protesting by shutting their subreddits? And then they’re like “no fuck you we’ll just force them open”.
So the impression they give off is not that they’re doing these API changes out of a financial necessity to ensure Reddit can survive into the future - instead, like many users have said, it seems like they are literally just trying to milk as many profits as possible in the short-term, so they can cash in as much as possible on the IPO, and then they can quit Reddit and retire to the Caribbean.
They assumed I would stay, they were incorrect.
Same here, 3rd party apps didn’t really affect me; but their treatment and attitude towards developers, users, and moderators got me to delete my 13yo account and walk away.
3rd party apps didn’t affect me either, but the mods of most of the communities I go on were affected, so I was pulled in by default. Then Spez started power tripping
I’ve been pleased with The Verge’s ongoing coverage of this and really respect them calling out this poor behaviour.
This is how far Reddit has fallen… To agree with the Verge and Nilay Patel… he was a qute a douche canoe about the infamous pc build video
Tim Rathschmidt (Reddit’s spokesperson) said this to The Verge earlier:
We’ll no longer comment on hearsay, unsubstantiated claims, or baseless accusations from The Verge. We’ll be in touch as corrections are needed.
I was shocked at how aggressive this response was, but it definitely made me appreciate how The Verge has been covering this whole shitshow.
Fuck yeah, looks like media is finally starting to learn they can earn money by pandering to actual news and people instead of corporate advertising dollars, did they forget who they are advertising to or is it just bribe money at this point?
Love this. That’s such a lame-ass move by Reddit, what a bunch of wads.
Reddit’s unnecessarily antagonistic approach to this provided the basis for my deleting my account. The messaging, the aggressive posturing, the intentional falsehoods…it’s all been very off-putting and there was always a much easier path here for Reddit to achieve what it wanted without alienating so many of its users and mods. I don’t need to hope they will fail…the odds are their failure will simply be a function of time, as has been the case for many other platforms. Turns out much like the world, the Internet is a big place and there’s no lacking for online communities.
