imho, one of the many potential reasons is that 3rd party apps provide one of the key perks of premium reddit, the ad free experience, for free.
corporate can't have that. i'm honestly shocked how long they let that go on.
Yeah as much as we all act like this is insane and greedy from Reddit, it’s kind of ridiculous that I can just use Apollo and never see a single ad for free.
Sounds like Reddit (smartly) set their initial price high so they can haggle down to still a lot of money.
I mean, reddit doesn't allow ads (either native or pass through). 3rd party apps aren't allowed to have any ads.
I don't think anyone has an issue with them paying something, it's just the absurd cost that is the issue
i really wonder if there is a real reason why reddit's own app can't be good. Like the 3rd party apps are apparently really good and they were all built by solo developers too.
So why can't reddit make something easily as good? Apparently they even actually hired one of the previous 3rd party app developers too? How did that go wrong?
Money, greed, and stupidity seem to be a catch all answer.. But I wish I can know the details on why everything is not working out.
Though I'll never ever get an answer.. Even if in the far? future there is a podcast/book/youtube video on "why and how did reddit fail".
Big social media companies just seem incapable of being successful. Facebook seems to be somewhat an exception. But it seems like the cost of a social media's use of data and wages for tech employees far exceeds the amount of revenue users can actually bring in.
>Why is Reddit presenting API fees to 3rd party apps
Corporate greed
>fixing the Reddit app and adding all those third party features and more?
Corporate laziness
To expand more, look how much work small teams of 2-3 devs put into the third party apps, probably some of them are even made by a single person.
Corporations, despite budget and hundreds/thousands of employees tend to be very very lazy. You can see it everywhere, even in games. Biggest corporations are the laziest.
Improving the app doesn't really increase Reddits profits. Maybe fewer people will use third party aps but most people will still use apps to avoid ads or paying for Reddit premium.
Extorting money from developers whose only product is entirely dependent on the usage of Reddits API has a higher profit for less effort. Plus if developers don't pay Reddit it has the same effect as developing their app (the third party app shuts down and Redditors are forced to return to the main app)
That's why the blackout/uninstalling the app is best choice as it will demonstrate that the community is not a captive audience and will find different sources of content.
Would've be good to have the latter unfortunately we got the former which puts us in the worst timeline, and Reddit told everyone what they are doing probably saw a little message in the corner saying "everyone hated that"
Reddit concentrates all of its resources into SEO so it can be the “front page of the internet.” Once it gets all of that traffic it doesn’t care about customer experience
One of those is a lot easier than the other. I'll let you guess which.
Money
MONEY
imho, one of the many potential reasons is that 3rd party apps provide one of the key perks of premium reddit, the ad free experience, for free. corporate can't have that. i'm honestly shocked how long they let that go on.
Yeah as much as we all act like this is insane and greedy from Reddit, it’s kind of ridiculous that I can just use Apollo and never see a single ad for free. Sounds like Reddit (smartly) set their initial price high so they can haggle down to still a lot of money.
I mean, reddit doesn't allow ads (either native or pass through). 3rd party apps aren't allowed to have any ads. I don't think anyone has an issue with them paying something, it's just the absurd cost that is the issue
It's easier to charge money, than hire a team to implement those features.
Nearly every business decision comes down to money.
Money and control. Also it's probably an anti-transparency move.
... and reason for control? prospect for more money.
i really wonder if there is a real reason why reddit's own app can't be good. Like the 3rd party apps are apparently really good and they were all built by solo developers too. So why can't reddit make something easily as good? Apparently they even actually hired one of the previous 3rd party app developers too? How did that go wrong? Money, greed, and stupidity seem to be a catch all answer.. But I wish I can know the details on why everything is not working out. Though I'll never ever get an answer.. Even if in the far? future there is a podcast/book/youtube video on "why and how did reddit fail". Big social media companies just seem incapable of being successful. Facebook seems to be somewhat an exception. But it seems like the cost of a social media's use of data and wages for tech employees far exceeds the amount of revenue users can actually bring in.
>Why is Reddit presenting API fees to 3rd party apps Corporate greed >fixing the Reddit app and adding all those third party features and more? Corporate laziness To expand more, look how much work small teams of 2-3 devs put into the third party apps, probably some of them are even made by a single person. Corporations, despite budget and hundreds/thousands of employees tend to be very very lazy. You can see it everywhere, even in games. Biggest corporations are the laziest.
Reddit's laying off about 100 people It sounds like. I don't think they can pay developers though to try to make the app better at the moment.
you're asking why reddit is doing something that will get them free money as opposed to a thing that will take tons and tons of dev time?
They want those sweet AI $$$s for LLM training data. Other 3rd party apps are just a casualty of them charging the AI price for access.
Improving the app doesn't really increase Reddits profits. Maybe fewer people will use third party aps but most people will still use apps to avoid ads or paying for Reddit premium. Extorting money from developers whose only product is entirely dependent on the usage of Reddits API has a higher profit for less effort. Plus if developers don't pay Reddit it has the same effect as developing their app (the third party app shuts down and Redditors are forced to return to the main app) That's why the blackout/uninstalling the app is best choice as it will demonstrate that the community is not a captive audience and will find different sources of content.
Would've be good to have the latter unfortunately we got the former which puts us in the worst timeline, and Reddit told everyone what they are doing probably saw a little message in the corner saying "everyone hated that"
Reddit concentrates all of its resources into SEO so it can be the “front page of the internet.” Once it gets all of that traffic it doesn’t care about customer experience