• @[email protected]
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    481 year ago

    It’s only weird if you think this wasn’t the result they wanted. They don’t just want the ad revenue. They want the user numbers for their IPO and the tons of sellable user data you can collect with a smartphone app.

    • Spaceman Spiff
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      251 year ago

      Thing is, the slow boil technique is tried and true. Each turn of the crank would only anger a small group, and would ensure the platform remains stable and popular.

      A better question is why is this happening all at once? It feels like the top brass had a meeting to discuss options to increase revenue, and just decided “Fuck it. Let’s just do them all”

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        My feeling is they looked at their user numbers, and the specifically those using the API and/or 3rd party apps, and did the calculation to decide that they wouldn’t lose enough people to cause a mass migration.

        I think whether that calculation was correct or not still remains to be seen.

        • @[email protected]
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          131 year ago

          A distant cause is likely the changes in monetary policy (rate hikes). The tech sector has been structuring their capital as if borrowing would always be cheap, and they were unprepared for a sudden flight toward sustainable cash flow.

          I think their only hope for “fuck you money” at this point is to cash out at IPO and watch it burn.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        I think it makes a lot of sense as a series of emotional reactions, mostly from spez. He won’t back down and no one can make him.

        They don’t want to serve ads through the API because ad buyers care about exactly how the ads will be presented. The apps would have to work very closely with Reddit to ensure consistent ad presentation, which is more work for them so they don’t want to do it.

        The API price was plucked out of thin air, presumably based on what they believed OpenAI/Microsoft/Google would be willing to pay. Third party apps were acceptable collateral damage.

      • @[email protected]
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        91 year ago

        My guess is their funding dried up due to recent financial system instability causing venture capitalists to stop blindly handing out money. That plus the NFT shit they were into suggests they might have had some exposure to the recent crypto fallout as well. The upcoming IPO and the way spez seems determined to see this through no matter what screams looming financial crisis.

      • manitcor
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        41 year ago

        because the commons is not sustainable as a profit entity, never was. The move to 5%+ rates is pushing every player to “make it” or “die”

        reddit is toast.

    • Prestron
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      171 year ago

      I’ve adopted the same IPO theory. Huffman thought this would drive more people to the official app, and he expects that increase to help the IPO so he’d make more money from it. If it works he’ll make a lot more money a lot faster than the approach in the screenshot. Then he can just serve everyone ads anyway, sell data etc.

      Also he probably thought we were all a bunch of spineless addicts who would cry really loud and eventually fall in line, and a lot of users have. Now let’s wait and see the quality of community and content he gets after pissing off the people doing the most to create it.

      • @zombuey
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        41 year ago

        It may be more likely people just engage less with reddit by waiting until they are at a computer.

    • @ritswd
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      131 year ago

      I’ve been part of a startup that was looking to exit shortly, and yeah they go through all kinds of long-term-destructive behavior just to make the numbers better on the short-term. I do also think a shrunk IPO timeline because of the tech VC market tightening is the cause of all of this.

    • @DeriHunter
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      51 year ago

      It sounds exactly right. They figured even if they got 20% of the third party apps users to start using theirs for the reasons you suggested, it’s better than keeping the users as is. The 80% they lost from 3p apps are probably a small change compared to what the 20% that did move get them at the ipo (this is a guess though)

  • @twistedtxb
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    231 year ago

    And so close to the deadline as well. It’s really weird

    • PsychoticBananaSplit
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      101 year ago

      If they had been nice about it and given just another month of deadline, probably only half as much people would be pissed.

      They didn’t even try to fake a “you asked and we delivered” and went “fuck you and your cat pics”

  • @[email protected]
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    201 year ago

    They don’t want some of the money. They want ALL of the money and they have nothing but contempt for their users. They don’t just want a small revenue stream that they need to share with other entities. They want to monetize every aspect of their service and they can only do that if they force users to use their app. They have big plans for the app to make it even shittier I imagine.

  • @[email protected]
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    191 year ago

    They did that not to (primarily) kill 3PA, but to get money from people who scrape data for AI datasets.

    Although I think they could’ve just specified this in their ToS…

  • Count Regal Inkwell
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    191 year ago

    Reddit corporate is not very smart. Never was.

    Spez and his mates had proven way back in the early 10s that they had the mindset and attitude of 4chan troll teenagers, despite being business-owning adults.

    • @[email protected]
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      91 year ago

      Maybe a jailbait mod who also secretly edits user comments with his admin privileges is not suitable to be CEO.

  • @GreasyTengu
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    161 year ago

    hell they could have bought the 3rd party apps and hired the devs

    • VitaMan
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      51 year ago

      That actually sounds like a great idea

      • @Dark_Blade
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        41 year ago

        They did that once. Bought the best app in town, butchered it, and now we’re here.

  • @WhoRoger
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    151 year ago

    It’s also a prime example of how no, the CEOs and highly paid bosses of large corpos don’t have to know any more than even an average user. Anyone with a brain could figure out this is gonna end terribly.

  • kratoz29
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    91 year ago

    I stopped trying to make sense of any step Reddit inc takes since the whole API shit show to be honest.

  • @ShakeThatYam
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    91 year ago

    Any of those methods would have gotten people off third party apps too. Which would have accomplished what they wanted to do from the beginning. If they were competent they would have unveiled the current unpopular API price. After the uproar they introduce one of these other plans as a compromise and achieve the same goal. Instead they double down and poisoned the well.

  • Shrek
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    81 year ago

    I think they view it as ripping off the bandaid now before their IPO. They probably figured they would lose some single digit % of users that would recover over time, and now they will have full control over the experience with no 3rd party apps, which they will want in order to squeeze more money over time.

  • @[email protected]
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    61 year ago

    I think one of the biggest issues that Reddit has with third party apps is that they don’t have control over the user experience.

    I think Reddit is experimenting a lot with their app to see what works and doesn’t work to get new users engaged. Note that I said new users. Reddit doesn’t care about old users. They only care about growing and getting new users engaged.

    Reddit implemented features like community chat, community voice/talk spaces, subreddit suggestions, NFTs etc.

    I think it’s harder for Reddit to keep experimenting and seeing what sticks when 3rd party apps won’t or don’t implement those features.

    So yeah, bottom line is, Reddit wants more control and Reddit wants new users that are engaged.

    I understand why they do it. I don’t agree with how they went about it. I’m mostly upset that they think 3rd party apps are riding on Reddits succes when Reddit itself is riding on free user content/moderation/voting. It’s our content and we should be able to consume it the way we want to.

    • @[email protected]
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      81 year ago

      when 3rd party apps won’t or don’t implement those features

      A lot of those features weren’t accessible through the API, so the 3rd party apps couldn’t implement them even if they wanted to.

  • 30021190
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    41 year ago

    I always thought requiring premium for 3rd party apps would have been the best and easiest move for essentially no actual work.

  • Captain Jimmy T Kirk
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    21 year ago

    Not to mention the less tangible costs too, like the company’s reputation and trust.

    Or starting a gold rush for reddit competitors that didn’t exist previously.