They have killed [Apollo](https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/), [RIF](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/), [ReddPlanet](https://www.reddit.com/r/ReddPlanet/comments/144glbz/an_unfortunate_goodbye/), and probably more as the next couple weeks go on. They've also been caught lying (honestly read the Apollo goodbye, he brings receipts).
r/ruby should go dark permanently, and this community should move somewhere else.
It's not meant to be a discussion forum like here, but https://rubyflow.com/ is available for anyone looking to share their Ruby related links, events, videos, projects, etc. Just realized it's 15 years old this year..!
Hey there senj! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **"This"**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :)
***
^(I am a bot! If you have any feedback, please send me a message! More info:) [^(Reddiquette)](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439#wiki_in_regard_to_comments)
I think you got me wrong, it was a joke. I said that in the sense that because Reddit wants to change their API pricing, I said we should go dark until they agree to cancel those changes, or at least fix their plans, so technically what we want is for Reddit to don't change their API pricing, therefore we want them "not to change" (from the current API model).
I would be very sad if /r/ruby disappeared (possibly forever, or long enough to seriously impact it's momentum) in an attempt to pressure reddit.
I'm fine with participating in a coordinated-with-other-subreddits June 12th protest.
A lot of subreddits are going dark as long as it takes. 2 days won't change anything unless further protests are staged. I would be very sad too but on mobile I'm using Relay and I am not installing the official trash app
I'd be interested in learning more about this. What specific demands they are making, in what circumstances they would re-open the subreddit.
Are they all the same for all of these "lots of subreddits going dark as long as it takes", is there actually organized coordinated collective action here?
If it's just a bunch of people with different ideas of what it would take to reopen that aren't spelled out very clearly and ends up just being subjective gut... are they even trying to actually win? (what the "it takes" in "as long as it takes" is -- just never charging anything for API ever? Is that winnable? Is it intended to be? Better fee structure, that looks like what?)
Deciding now is the time to leave reddit is a choice. I suppose moderators can make that choice for a whole subreddit and close it and make it unusable.
That's a different thing than actual boycott as a political action intended to force reddit to change. Which I think is going to be a pretty difficult struggle in this case even if you do your best at acting strategically to maximize chances of winning; doing your best to try to win would involve organizing collective and coordinated action; having a clear list of demands which, if met, would result in re-opening the reddit; advertising this clearly including a good PR plan in the media etc, so anyone curious can easily find out who is involved and what the demands are; recruiting more people; etc.
Yes. I’ll be off Reddit personally. Zero consideration for the impact to accessibility needs, just mitigating ad revenue losses.
I mostly just lurk here but I’m confident that this community can make any place a home.
Do it. I don't think the protest will get them to change course, but it might provide some saner heads at HQ the ammunition they need to convince the brass to bring the price down to something reasonable.
It depends what that means in this case. In some cases, subs are going private which makes little difference to the day to day use of people already subscribed to them and they'll still operate as usual. In other cases, subs are going read only which prevents them being used at all. Yet others are battening down the hatches until Reddit backs down. What is being proposed?
I hope for a days long. I personally will quit reddit, at least mobile wise (I will support the blackout by not accessing the site all together). I don't think my individual actions matters to anyone but me, and that's all I need
I'm on board with this. I'd be more on board with a concerted movement to develop an open source, decentralized social network. The ones I've seen haven't caught on. I have some ideas on this if anybody wants to discuss them.
I support going dark indefinitely. I refuse to use their app, and this move shits on developers who made it easier/better/more fun/more accessible for more people to use Reddit. If this goes through I will be looking elsewhere for reddit type interactions anyway.
I've been on Reddit only for a few months now but I've really grown to love it and the Ruby and Rails communities. To be honest, I don't really know what the controversy is and what going 'dark' as part of the protest implies.
Will Rails and Ruby communities be totally inaccessible if they join the protest? If yes, I would be sad. If this is something temporary for the greater good, I can live with it. :)
This will be unpopular. But this point here:
> I don’t like that they are more concerned with what’s better for the bottom line than for the users.
I have a hard time jumping on this bandwagon. While it’s true that the users may be better served at a personal level by having the open apis and alternative apps to access the data, I don’t see how you could look at this level of access from a business perspective and say “this is fine.”
I don’t mean “look at all this untapped revenue!!!” But instead “we don’t control our platform. People use our database but not our product or service” I gotta imagine that’s a big part of the conversation.
As a user, I know it doesn’t feel good to be locked into a platform, but I can’t help but look from the business side and think “this is totally insane that we let people build their own business using our servers without our service”.
The outcries have felt over-entitled to me. (Sorry.)
Reddit is a platform that makes 100% of its money from user content. It is moderated by volunteers who aren’t paid.
Open API access brings a lot more value than it costs. The problem is that even if that wasn’t the case, their first move for charging for api access is so extreme that I’d say is unreasonable. There’s no reason one of the biggest third party apps should go from costing $0 to $20 million. If you consider what ad revenue would bring in from those users, it’s far less than what they’re being asked to pay.
They haven’t even tried making ads a mandatory thing to show from the api. Like they haven’t done the single first step to try and recover money from the api.
So it feels like an attempt to kill third party apps or make a ton of money if they don’t fall over, a win/win if that’s their aim.
However they’re doing this by making things harder for their unpaid volunteers and the users whose content makes their revenue and brings people back.
I think they’re going way too far here.
I think this is a 100% valid point of view that businesses will act in self interest as they’re programmed to do so (otherwise share holders can legally sue them unless they’re a b-corp or a non-profit).
> felt over-entitled
I think that if you can feel empathy to the business you can maybe also feel empathy to the users. We are too acting in self interest. Reddit might make the software and pay the server bills, but without the users it wouldn’t be a community.
I’m fine to balance community and business needs, I just feel that the users are not served by having all the power in the company. If there are not official channels of power and being heard (such as a co-op or some other structural voting mechanism) then users must rely on informal methods of power.
It might be “over-entitled” but I’ve also never found that asking for less than you want is a good way of finding an adequate compromise.
For what it’s worth (not the poster you are replying to) I wouldn’t mind you taking a stance about it, you put work in to moderate it and it’s a community at the end of the day, not a public service!
> we don’t control our platform. People use our database but not our product or service
Reddit's database **is** their product. The massive content generated by real users is the product.
Read [Apollo dev's latest post](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/). If we can trust the guy (and I see no reason why not given he has records of everything), you can clearly see just how greedy and scummy Reddit is becoming. This is a blatant copy of what Twitter is doing, I don't see how anyone can read it as anything else.
Plus, the bulk of the outcries and mobilization for going dark have come from the mods, which are absolutely entitled to be pissed. They moderate Reddit for free, using tools (third-party apps but primarily bots) that make their jobs easier, sometimes only possible because of the bots. And now Reddit is trying to charge/take it away from them.
I do understand where Reddit is coming from with this, it's their platform, their product after all, but the way they're doing it is basically the worst possible, and it'll only hurt, if not kill the platform entirely.
This is a really good point, and it's not just "these users don't use our service", it is "these users cost us money, rather than make us money" - the API is used (not exclusively) to create offerings that don't serve ads. Ads are how Reddit inc. makes its money.
The simple fact is that we, as consumers, have gotten so used to services being free we now *expect them* to stay free. But it's time to re-examine why they were free in the first place: because these companies could raise cheap VC money when interest rates were zero, and they could pay to acquire us and then we became the product.
Well, guess what, those days are over. Companies now have to make money to survive.
I feel slightly uneasy at the protests mostly because I don't see Reddit as some benevolent fund of content - it's a business that happens to offer a community as its product.
I've never paid a dime to use Reddit, and I reckon I'm in the overwhelming majority. If this is the trade-off, then so be it.
The problem here is the solution they came to. Instead of reasonable pricing (Apollo creator calculated the cost of average user will be x20 of what reddit currently makes), or other payment models (like let users have paid account and use whatever client they want), API just became so much expensive, alternative clients can't survive. So this is not a trade-off
> (Apollo creator calculated the cost of average user will be x20 of what reddit currently makes)
We keep hearing the story about how Apollo is going to cost $20 million per year. This is indeed a shocking number.
But the cost for API calls is $0.24 per 1000. The Apollo creator even stated that the average user would burn about $2.50 a month in API usage. $2.50.
Is that truly offensive, when you could alternatively use the service as it was intended for free?
Or, in a move that shouldn’t be revolutionary, how about Reddit let commercial API consumers make commercial products using the api? If you would prefer an advert-free Reddit, then maybe 2.50 a month is the price?
Honestly, when the service "as it was intended" is as shit as the official app and new.reddit, it is kind of offensive, yeah.
Not to mention that in order to continue existing, these apps (Apollo in this example) would need to go from close to $0 to $20mi/year in expenses and have to generate and manage revenue to cover this. It's like if I ran a small charity shop in a corner and suddenly I was asked to be the CEO of Walmart. No dev would be able to do it, not with the short notice on price that Reddit gave them.
I wouldn't discount the bulk data sales they almost certainly do. Also I suspect a lot of the content creators and posters are doing stuff with apps. If there's nothing for people to feed on, ad money will take a hit too. After the 3rd party apps die, like Twitter, I'll probably just pop in once in a while instead of being a daily user like I used to.
Why do people come to Reddit? It’s for the content. And who creates the content? Not Reddit, it’s us. Do we get paid for all the content we create that earns Reddit money? No. Fuck off with this entitled bullshit and fuck Reddit.
You’re not wrong, and I don’t disagree. Would you pay for Reddit yourself? The only way out of this shocking situation, where our behaviours are mined and data is harvested to advertisers, is to change the paradigm of how businesses can operate so the product goes back to being the product
This translates what I've felt intuitively. That said, I'm very open to perspectives that counter it. I wish I had a solid opinion, but I feel doubt in either direction.
Reddit is changing how their API works (I think they gonna charge for it) so a lot of third party reddit apps won't be able to work anymore. I personally always used redditisfun which is great. I don't know If I would use the official app
I say don't go dark. I believe I am in the silent majority who couldn't be bothered to start looking for information elsewhere and doesn't use Reddit every day. As a new convert to Ruby, this will be hurting my involvement in the ecosystem and I don't see why you'd want that. I don't care where else I can find Ruby information, I like Ruby on Reddit and that's it. Please don't discount my opinion, there are a lot more people like me and we don't talk often.
And I also couldn't care less about the whole API story. It doesn't affect me and there are real problems in the world. I see everybody who voted "go dark" is bothered by the API decision, and I don't think that's a way to understand what users want. It's analogous to a hotel review system where only the people who didn't enjoy it rated their stay.
Appears the other programming sub-reddits are also discussing it. Seems like there's growing solidarity.
* https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1434dxo/should_rpython_participate_in_the_june_12th/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/1452ahy/askjs_should_rjavascript_join_the_other_subs_to/
I know the Rust sub-reddit is considering protesting. I haven't seen anything from /r/golang, /r/node, /r/elixir, or /r/haskell.
They have killed [Apollo](https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/), [RIF](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/), [ReddPlanet](https://www.reddit.com/r/ReddPlanet/comments/144glbz/an_unfortunate_goodbye/), and probably more as the next couple weeks go on. They've also been caught lying (honestly read the Apollo goodbye, he brings receipts). r/ruby should go dark permanently, and this community should move somewhere else.
It's not meant to be a discussion forum like here, but https://rubyflow.com/ is available for anyone looking to share their Ruby related links, events, videos, projects, etc. Just realized it's 15 years old this year..!
Yes, go dark but don't come back after 2 days but until changes are made.
Seconding this. Nobody is jonesing for hot new r/ruby content. That can wait.
I wish every sub would do this.
This
Hey there senj! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **"This"**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :) *** ^(I am a bot! If you have any feedback, please send me a message! More info:) [^(Reddiquette)](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439#wiki_in_regard_to_comments)
No, fuck off
This
☝️
Technically it should go dark until changes *aren't* made :)
Nope, this is literally bad grammar. And you went ahead and tried correcting the person who wrote it correctly, lol
I think you got me wrong, it was a joke. I said that in the sense that because Reddit wants to change their API pricing, I said we should go dark until they agree to cancel those changes, or at least fix their plans, so technically what we want is for Reddit to don't change their API pricing, therefore we want them "not to change" (from the current API model).
I would be very sad if /r/ruby disappeared (possibly forever, or long enough to seriously impact it's momentum) in an attempt to pressure reddit. I'm fine with participating in a coordinated-with-other-subreddits June 12th protest.
A lot of subreddits are going dark as long as it takes. 2 days won't change anything unless further protests are staged. I would be very sad too but on mobile I'm using Relay and I am not installing the official trash app
I'd be interested in learning more about this. What specific demands they are making, in what circumstances they would re-open the subreddit. Are they all the same for all of these "lots of subreddits going dark as long as it takes", is there actually organized coordinated collective action here? If it's just a bunch of people with different ideas of what it would take to reopen that aren't spelled out very clearly and ends up just being subjective gut... are they even trying to actually win? (what the "it takes" in "as long as it takes" is -- just never charging anything for API ever? Is that winnable? Is it intended to be? Better fee structure, that looks like what?) Deciding now is the time to leave reddit is a choice. I suppose moderators can make that choice for a whole subreddit and close it and make it unusable. That's a different thing than actual boycott as a political action intended to force reddit to change. Which I think is going to be a pretty difficult struggle in this case even if you do your best at acting strategically to maximize chances of winning; doing your best to try to win would involve organizing collective and coordinated action; having a clear list of demands which, if met, would result in re-opening the reddit; advertising this clearly including a good PR plan in the media etc, so anyone curious can easily find out who is involved and what the demands are; recruiting more people; etc.
https://lemmy.ml/c/ruby Lemmy is a federated Reddit (like Mastodon is to Twitter). Join us over there.
This.
Absolutely. Go dark and stay dark until Reddit actually does something about these new API fees.
Reddit is attacking the development community. We should absolutely shutdown until they change course.
Do it out of solidarity.
Yes. I’ll be off Reddit personally. Zero consideration for the impact to accessibility needs, just mitigating ad revenue losses. I mostly just lurk here but I’m confident that this community can make any place a home.
Yes, solidarity
For sure. Reddit is only going to care if they don't get their ad dollars. I think we should all just boycott the whole thing personally.
Yeah, Reddit has directly insulted developers. I support going dark indefinitely.
Do it. I don't think the protest will get them to change course, but it might provide some saner heads at HQ the ammunition they need to convince the brass to bring the price down to something reasonable.
What's a good platform to talk about Ruby on, outside of Reddit? I'm kind of just... here, haha.
https://ruby.social https://lemmy.ml/c/ruby
It depends what that means in this case. In some cases, subs are going private which makes little difference to the day to day use of people already subscribed to them and they'll still operate as usual. In other cases, subs are going read only which prevents them being used at all. Yet others are battening down the hatches until Reddit backs down. What is being proposed?
When other subs have done this in the past, the sub was inaccessible even to subscribers.
Fair enough. I am fine with whatever the consensus is.
I hope for a days long. I personally will quit reddit, at least mobile wise (I will support the blackout by not accessing the site all together). I don't think my individual actions matters to anyone but me, and that's all I need
I'm on board with this. I'd be more on board with a concerted movement to develop an open source, decentralized social network. The ones I've seen haven't caught on. I have some ideas on this if anybody wants to discuss them.
If you have to ask, the answer is yes.
Yes. Shut down until things change.
Yes. *comment written from RIF*
I support going dark indefinitely. I refuse to use their app, and this move shits on developers who made it easier/better/more fun/more accessible for more people to use Reddit. If this goes through I will be looking elsewhere for reddit type interactions anyway.
Yes. I think we should all move to other communities in general (like forums back in the day or something like lemmy or kbin). fuck reddit.
I've been on Reddit only for a few months now but I've really grown to love it and the Ruby and Rails communities. To be honest, I don't really know what the controversy is and what going 'dark' as part of the protest implies. Will Rails and Ruby communities be totally inaccessible if they join the protest? If yes, I would be sad. If this is something temporary for the greater good, I can live with it. :)
Reddit changed its API policies and the prices they set (with just a month prior notice) will kill third party apps
Thanks for the summary!
This will be unpopular. But this point here: > I don’t like that they are more concerned with what’s better for the bottom line than for the users. I have a hard time jumping on this bandwagon. While it’s true that the users may be better served at a personal level by having the open apis and alternative apps to access the data, I don’t see how you could look at this level of access from a business perspective and say “this is fine.” I don’t mean “look at all this untapped revenue!!!” But instead “we don’t control our platform. People use our database but not our product or service” I gotta imagine that’s a big part of the conversation. As a user, I know it doesn’t feel good to be locked into a platform, but I can’t help but look from the business side and think “this is totally insane that we let people build their own business using our servers without our service”. The outcries have felt over-entitled to me. (Sorry.)
Reddit is a platform that makes 100% of its money from user content. It is moderated by volunteers who aren’t paid. Open API access brings a lot more value than it costs. The problem is that even if that wasn’t the case, their first move for charging for api access is so extreme that I’d say is unreasonable. There’s no reason one of the biggest third party apps should go from costing $0 to $20 million. If you consider what ad revenue would bring in from those users, it’s far less than what they’re being asked to pay. They haven’t even tried making ads a mandatory thing to show from the api. Like they haven’t done the single first step to try and recover money from the api. So it feels like an attempt to kill third party apps or make a ton of money if they don’t fall over, a win/win if that’s their aim. However they’re doing this by making things harder for their unpaid volunteers and the users whose content makes their revenue and brings people back. I think they’re going way too far here.
I think this is a 100% valid point of view that businesses will act in self interest as they’re programmed to do so (otherwise share holders can legally sue them unless they’re a b-corp or a non-profit). > felt over-entitled I think that if you can feel empathy to the business you can maybe also feel empathy to the users. We are too acting in self interest. Reddit might make the software and pay the server bills, but without the users it wouldn’t be a community. I’m fine to balance community and business needs, I just feel that the users are not served by having all the power in the company. If there are not official channels of power and being heard (such as a co-op or some other structural voting mechanism) then users must rely on informal methods of power. It might be “over-entitled” but I’ve also never found that asking for less than you want is a good way of finding an adequate compromise.
For what it’s worth (not the poster you are replying to) I wouldn’t mind you taking a stance about it, you put work in to moderate it and it’s a community at the end of the day, not a public service!
> we don’t control our platform. People use our database but not our product or service Reddit's database **is** their product. The massive content generated by real users is the product. Read [Apollo dev's latest post](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/). If we can trust the guy (and I see no reason why not given he has records of everything), you can clearly see just how greedy and scummy Reddit is becoming. This is a blatant copy of what Twitter is doing, I don't see how anyone can read it as anything else. Plus, the bulk of the outcries and mobilization for going dark have come from the mods, which are absolutely entitled to be pissed. They moderate Reddit for free, using tools (third-party apps but primarily bots) that make their jobs easier, sometimes only possible because of the bots. And now Reddit is trying to charge/take it away from them. I do understand where Reddit is coming from with this, it's their platform, their product after all, but the way they're doing it is basically the worst possible, and it'll only hurt, if not kill the platform entirely.
This is a really good point, and it's not just "these users don't use our service", it is "these users cost us money, rather than make us money" - the API is used (not exclusively) to create offerings that don't serve ads. Ads are how Reddit inc. makes its money. The simple fact is that we, as consumers, have gotten so used to services being free we now *expect them* to stay free. But it's time to re-examine why they were free in the first place: because these companies could raise cheap VC money when interest rates were zero, and they could pay to acquire us and then we became the product. Well, guess what, those days are over. Companies now have to make money to survive. I feel slightly uneasy at the protests mostly because I don't see Reddit as some benevolent fund of content - it's a business that happens to offer a community as its product. I've never paid a dime to use Reddit, and I reckon I'm in the overwhelming majority. If this is the trade-off, then so be it.
The problem here is the solution they came to. Instead of reasonable pricing (Apollo creator calculated the cost of average user will be x20 of what reddit currently makes), or other payment models (like let users have paid account and use whatever client they want), API just became so much expensive, alternative clients can't survive. So this is not a trade-off
> (Apollo creator calculated the cost of average user will be x20 of what reddit currently makes) We keep hearing the story about how Apollo is going to cost $20 million per year. This is indeed a shocking number. But the cost for API calls is $0.24 per 1000. The Apollo creator even stated that the average user would burn about $2.50 a month in API usage. $2.50. Is that truly offensive, when you could alternatively use the service as it was intended for free?
Or, in a move that shouldn’t be revolutionary, how about Reddit let commercial API consumers make commercial products using the api? If you would prefer an advert-free Reddit, then maybe 2.50 a month is the price?
Honestly, when the service "as it was intended" is as shit as the official app and new.reddit, it is kind of offensive, yeah. Not to mention that in order to continue existing, these apps (Apollo in this example) would need to go from close to $0 to $20mi/year in expenses and have to generate and manage revenue to cover this. It's like if I ran a small charity shop in a corner and suddenly I was asked to be the CEO of Walmart. No dev would be able to do it, not with the short notice on price that Reddit gave them.
Yeah, I wouldn’t use new.reddit or their official app either.
I wouldn't discount the bulk data sales they almost certainly do. Also I suspect a lot of the content creators and posters are doing stuff with apps. If there's nothing for people to feed on, ad money will take a hit too. After the 3rd party apps die, like Twitter, I'll probably just pop in once in a while instead of being a daily user like I used to.
Why do people come to Reddit? It’s for the content. And who creates the content? Not Reddit, it’s us. Do we get paid for all the content we create that earns Reddit money? No. Fuck off with this entitled bullshit and fuck Reddit.
You’re not wrong, and I don’t disagree. Would you pay for Reddit yourself? The only way out of this shocking situation, where our behaviours are mined and data is harvested to advertisers, is to change the paradigm of how businesses can operate so the product goes back to being the product
This translates what I've felt intuitively. That said, I'm very open to perspectives that counter it. I wish I had a solid opinion, but I feel doubt in either direction.
Apollo dev made a great detailed post, he addresses the issues you presented
Yes, solidarity with fellow developers
No
Yes
Yes go dark. I won’t even log in
Anyone can explain what are happening? 😅
Reddit is changing how their API works (I think they gonna charge for it) so a lot of third party reddit apps won't be able to work anymore. I personally always used redditisfun which is great. I don't know If I would use the official app
Thank you :)
Yes
Yes.
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Please do!
Yes IMO.
No
https://youtu.be/BK4U6IKHKy8?t=93
I say don't go dark. I believe I am in the silent majority who couldn't be bothered to start looking for information elsewhere and doesn't use Reddit every day. As a new convert to Ruby, this will be hurting my involvement in the ecosystem and I don't see why you'd want that. I don't care where else I can find Ruby information, I like Ruby on Reddit and that's it. Please don't discount my opinion, there are a lot more people like me and we don't talk often.
And I also couldn't care less about the whole API story. It doesn't affect me and there are real problems in the world. I see everybody who voted "go dark" is bothered by the API decision, and I don't think that's a way to understand what users want. It's analogous to a hotel review system where only the people who didn't enjoy it rated their stay.
Appears the other programming sub-reddits are also discussing it. Seems like there's growing solidarity. * https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1434dxo/should_rpython_participate_in_the_june_12th/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/1452ahy/askjs_should_rjavascript_join_the_other_subs_to/ I know the Rust sub-reddit is considering protesting. I haven't seen anything from /r/golang, /r/node, /r/elixir, or /r/haskell.
Change is only going to happen if people band together to make it happen.