I’m not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium

I’m not sure if this is well-known or not that they’re pushing it now, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it, especially on old.reddit.

  • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 年前

    The irony is that I was mentally prepared to have to pay for Premium to keep BaconReader. All they had to do was add an “API access” badge to that screen and none of this would have happened, plus they would have gotten a bunch more new sign-ups. I am at a loss to explain what Steve is thinking, nor why his decisions are better for profitability.

    • boonhet@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      2 年前

      Yeah, I’d gladly pay the sub for Apollo if reddit had decided to charge a modest price for the API and Christian could make a buck off it and reddit could also make a few bucks off me.

      Reddit could’ve probably 5x’d or 10x’d the money they make off me that way, but now they 0x’d it.

    • TragicNotCute@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      I paid for premium every month for at least 5 years. I would have probably even paid a little more to keep using Apollo. Just pure greed running the ship over there.

        • TragicNotCute@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 年前

          I wanted to support something I liked. They are a business and I figured if I paid the way they were asking to be paid I’d be free to use the service as I pleased (via Apollo).

    • SeeJayEmm@lemmy.oneEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      Same here. If they’d have just framed it differently and put the onus of paying for api access on the users (at a modest fee), almost none of the backlash would have happened.

      Then I’d still be oblivious.

      I prefer the world the way it was before all the consolidation. I like the ideals of the fediverse and want it to succeed.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 年前

        Then I’d still be oblivious.

        I prefer the world the way it was before all the consolidation. I like the ideals of the fediverse and want it to succeed.

        Exactly, this is better overall I think, at least when it comes to the health of the internet as a whole.

          • Eheran@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
            0·
            2 年前

            I have seen the same issiue with individual, niche forums: going down because of one person. It was just a matter of time for that to happen with a bigger site.

    • midnight@lemmy.oneEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      Yep, I would have happily paid for the ability to keep using Sync, just like I happily paid for Sync Ultra. I’m probably not in the majority though

    • SterlingVapor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      You underestimate the power of addiction.

      The official app isn’t a bad thing because it’s buggy and has ads, that sucks but I’ve used much worse apps that offer less. The amount of ads and how easy they are to click accidentally is ridiculous though

      It’s bad because it’s built to do what Facebook did - it always gives you something to see and a reason to keep going. Have a nice, curated mix of science and shit posts? Let’s throw some crap from the front page in there along with the ads! No one responded to your comments? We’ll make suggestions look like someone is interacting with you! Haven’t used the app in a few hours? Here’s some posts delivered in a notification to get you back in there

      I left Facebook for Reddit because I realized I didn’t really enjoy it and often ended up feeling worse after using, and when the experiments they were doing came out I payed close attention. It was a real slap in the face when I saw Reddit doing similar stuff, and I checked out alternatives like tildes but nothing else was scratching the itch so I put it on the back burner.

      For those of us who aren’t going back, this wakeup call was a blessing. It’s a strong reminder that corporations not only don’t care about us, they can’t - they might act friendly sometimes, but they wouldn’t hesitate to poison the water supply if they thought it would bring greater profits

      • Lockely@pawb.socialEnglish
        0·
        2 年前

        It’s worse than that, because the official app spams your phone with tracking requests. I know most apps do some tracking, but users with apps that track the trackers have reported as many as 500k requests in 24 hours.

        This is not only an invasive breach of privacy from a link aggregator forum, but also straight up murders your battery life.

        I just got a brand new Pixel 7a before this nonsense started. I installed the reddit app because Baconreader is like twelve years old and I’d figured I’d see if their official app had gotten any better since I last used it. It hadn’t, of course, but I also noticed my brand new phone wasn’t holding a charge at all. Like, 20% battery left at 5pm while I’m still at work and barely using it.

        Reddit was using over 40% of my battery while fucking IDLE. I brought this up over there and a few other people looked at it. Someone reported it was using 60% of their iPhone’s battery in the last week. It’s repugnant.

      • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 年前

        Thats an interesting point, all that shit just turns me off and makes me disengage. I avoid Facebook for precisely this reason.

        I have to interact with LinkedIn for professional reasons, but always do it from a PC and don’t install their app. When I get a LinkedIn message, LinkedIn helpfully emails me to let me know it’s there, but doesn’t tell me what’s in it. Then after I check on it, I get another email reminding me that LinkedIn is better on the app. They are constantly trying to get that app on my phone, which makes me wonder exactly what extra data these phone apps send that is worth so much.

    • AbsurdityAccelerator@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      Yes. I was paying for reddit gold just to avoid seeing ads. I don’t understand why they couldn’t just have passed this kind of thing on to the end users.

  • mcc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    2 年前

    I mean, if they say “you have to pay 3 bucks a month to use 3rd party client” I would be annoyed but I would understand, and I would still be on reddit.

    • _number8_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      exactly! so fucked and insidious and greedy that they’re trying to weed out competition as well

    • nude@kbin.social
      0·
      2 年前

      I would have gladly paid for a premium reddit experience, had it provided useful features. 3rd party app access is something I would have totally understood and paid for. RES features integrated, various styles such as old.reddit enshrined and protected, the option to opt in/out of various features, premium access to mod/admin subs that actually get a response, etc.

      Instead they offered awards to give out. No value, no purchase.

    • darkmugglet@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      I would have paid $3 a month to use a third party client. I don’t want to pay $50 for bulk shit.

    • jinno@kbin.social
      0·
      2 年前

      Exactly. But they dropped exhorbitant cost on those apps and provided no runway for them to adapt their business model. So instead - I’m here on kbin and likely going to dive into an open source project to try to help get a mobile app for this out soon.

  • Ben@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 年前

    Haha. This is where the Fediverse can take over if people don’t take the piss.

    Some years ago, my favourite tracker (The Box) went kaput - and I’ve known many others go down due to various issues - one of which is usually financial strains.

    So people can donate - for someone earning 300 a week, it’d be trivial to throw 30 in the pot just one time in a year…

    So sure, To be valued by Reddit, you must pay $50 per year - and if you don’t, then you’re not a customer, you’re a commodity. Creators do so because they feel compelled to create and share, Mods do so because they have a personal need to contribute whether they get paid or not.

    So the ONLY answer is to say ‘Sure, we’ll carry on - but it’s clear we aren’t valued by Reddit - so we’ll do it outside’.

    • jennwiththesea@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      Mods don’t contribute financially to Reddit, or at least they don’t have to. (I’d be less likely to trust a mod who did, actually, but that’s me.) Mods are used and abused by Reddit. They provide value/work for which they are not compensated.

  • solidsnake2085@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 年前

    “exclusive avatar gear” I didn’t even know there are avatars on Reddit. I’ve been using Sync for so long I never knew they added them.

      • Hotzilla@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        2 年前

        One of the reason why they are killing the api’s. They cannot push you this shit through them.

    • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      That exclusive avatar gear it probably NFT-based, so it can be traded independently of Reddit. (Alhough if you think navigating the Fediverse is hard, try navigating how to transfer and sell those NFTs on a marketplace).

      There are certain subs where they have crypto-based community points, like r/cryptocurrency, based on participation. I have posted there, and have been give some of their token, which is inexplicably worth something.

      Reddit’s foray into crypto has been interesting to watch, and puts me in the position that if I decide to leave Reddit for good, they have given me a severance package. I will be sure to sell every bit of it before leaving, except for one token , which I will carefully monitor to see what Reddit does with community points from deleted accounts.

      • toastedenough@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 年前

        I think the avatars were somewhat of a cool idea, if it was just a character creator. Not a fucking NFT marketplace

  • michaelcharles@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 年前

    The funny thing to me is that when Reddit Gold first became a thing, I happily joined because I wanted to help support the platform and help pay for the servers. They used to have a little meter on the sidebar showing how far we’ve gone towards paying server costs.

    Gone are the days when they had enough good will to get away with something like that.

  • investorsexchange@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 年前

    This is disrespectful to mods. I work for free, and Reddit makes money from gfs product? That’s not how capitalism works (anymore/yet).

      • Murais@lemmy.oneEnglish
        0·
        2 年前

        Fiduciary responsibility means maximum exploitation in all cases, all of the time.

        Capitalism would look really different if it were ever satisfied with some of something, rather than all of it.

    • Kichae@kbin.social
      0·
      2 年前

      You’ve paid rent to every employer you’ve ever had in the form of surplus value. Surplus value is just the name for the difference between what your paid, and the actual value of your work.

      Businesses call it “profit”.

      Every capitalist ever is trying to increase surplus value, both by increasing the value of your output, and also by paying you less. In the ideal form, you work for free making them, I don’t know, solid gold diamonds or something.

  • BioDriver@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 年前

    Could they be any more shameless? I know this has been a thing for a while but god they’re desperate. Granted I haven’t seen this yet since I’m riding Apollo for as long as I can

    • levochemist@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 年前

      Their social media ads trying to convince advertisers to pay for Reddit ads have grown exponentially. Our company tried running ads on Reddit but the ROAS was so shit we abandoned after a month and reallocated budget back to decent platforms.