if you were wondering how well reddit is doing
if you were wondering how well reddit is doing
152 comments
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Pay a subscription to be fed ads. Reddit has become cable television.
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I wonder why there isn't an army of people in this thread telling us how it costs money to host a social networking platform and we shouldn't expect something for nothing a website has a right to charge users for access and if you don't like it then don't use it?
Like in the YouTube threads. 🤔
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I do think there's a bit of merit to that, but I think the way it was approached and leveled at the community was really what created the true problem.
There wasn't much tact or frank honesty about the situation, Reddit and Huffman bred a sort of hostile environment by setting the tone. I could sympathize with the logical reason, but not with the execution and true personality that it belied.
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Because the people complaining about YouTube ads are whiney, self righteous twats that deserve to be wound up.
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Wow that sucks, It just sucks even more that a good portion of the Reddit Fanbase doesn't want to even try other platforms such as Lemmy which give much better user experiences in the end.
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Lemmy not pulling in Reddit's general audience and Lemmy having a better user experience than Reddit are highly correlated.
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Someone should put together some lists of instances to block for new users. Only English for example. Lemmy seems like opposite reddit, you block communities not subscribe to them. It's taken me months to block enough that my feed has mostly things I care to look at. My blocked list is miles long, I think I've subscribed to 50 but I never browse it, it's so slow moving.
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Idk honestly. Lemmy is quite an echo chamber in terms of tech stuff especially. I think reddit having much more content of all different types can make it a better user experience for most people. I find it hard to suggest lemmy for the average user who just wants to see memes and discussions based on their hobbies and interests. Lemmy is a lot less diverse.
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yeah I wish we had more variety unfortunately I don't have time to commit myself to be a mod for a community here
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@Neve8028 I know I for one have been trying to fix it in the gaming sense talking about the games I enjoy on communities I rather find or make myself. Hopefully more topics get explored and filled in the near future.
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There's great lemmy apps too like Connect for Lemmy which has become my favorite. Handles multiple instances well and good filtering settings.
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Long before the APIcalypse, I was thinking of quitting Reddit. Now that everything went downhill, that decision became super easy.
I wasn’t really getting that much benefit out of Reddit, so it wasn’t a big deal. Spending time there was more like bad habit to me. The mere thought of paying for a bad habit sounds so absurd that quitting would have been absolutely mandatory at that point.
Fortunately though, Reddit already made the process so much easier simply buy kicking out my favorite client app.
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Same here, it had been several months where I felt that the general quality had been declining. As soon as the AMA was done and nothing was answered I deleted the app (RiF).
Sadly I still miss some niche communities, but I've been finding substitutes
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I missed the unexpected factorial sub, so I made a spiritual successor for it.
!unexpectedfactorial@sopuli.xyz
If you miss a particular sub, see if a replacement already exists somewhere in the lemmyverse. If it does, participate in it. If not, make one.
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I know, right? It was like a steady stream of assholes, habitual doom scrolling, and occasionally a few good topics or people chatting.
I made a pact to stop using Reddit as soon as Infinity stopped working for me. It worked for months, but when it stopped, I held myself to it. Not only did I deactivate my account, I used a service to overwrite all of my content, and also then delete it beforehand. My mental health has been recovering steadily ever since.
Even if I did get something positive out of it, I refuse to be part of an ecosystem run that treats it's users and volunteers with such open hostility. The whole saga with Spez lying and bullshitting to make other people look bad, and the pro-corporate bots that popped up from time to time turned me off it entirely. I miss it sometimes, but what's the point of having a sense of ethics or personal conviction if you shrug your shoulders and do what you want regardless of whether you know you should?
It's like someone claiming to be a vegetarian, but they eat meat whenever they feel like it because it tastes good.
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When I joined Reddit I noticed that it’s too easy to end up doomscrolling and arguing with idiots. That’s why I stayed away from r/all and any sub that’s all about news and/politics. The only exception was r/europe, because I think it’s good to know something about the region that actually influences my life.
In order to avoid wasting time on stupid idiont nonsense, I focused on science and technology subs along with some very specific niche subs. That way Reddit was actually able to provide some benefit from time to time.
I made a Lemmy account before the Reddit Blackout, and I’ve been here ever since. After the blackout ended, I visited Reddit every week at first, but now it’s more like once a month at most. In order to make the transition faster, I unsubscribed from everything except all the protest, blackout, API etc. related subs. So if I go to Reddit now, I’ll just see people complaining about Reddit. If I go to r/all it’s about as useless as it was years ago, so there’s no reason to spend time in there.
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Must be fucking tragic still developing for reddit ecosystem. All of your subscriptions go straight to Reddit, who graciously gives you access to user generated content curated by unpaid mods.
I checked out Narwhal 2, and the app is a goddam jewel. I'd have paid $30 or $50 for it (like I did with Bean for Lemmy). It almost convinced me to go and make a reddit account again, but then I saw reddit recently stopped letting you opt out of ad personalization anymore, and it was easy to run back to lemmy. Reddit does not want 3rd party apps. Eventually they'll look for ways to fully block access.
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Reddit has a lot more tracking and fingerprinting going on in their own app too that they obviously want you there for. Once you log into multiple accounts, it fingerprints you as the same user on all accounts. I had a few accounts; a work related one and a couple personal ones. Ended up with a temporary ban on one from a dick head mod, and ALL of them got banned together for 7 days because of that with a message (forget the exact wording so I'm paraphrasing) basically saying "don't try to make another account to get around the ban because we'll still know its you". They're mining the shit out of user data now, and also really starting to connect the dots on multiple account holders which I'm guessing will be to "deal with" people who detract from their IPO goals. Glad I left.
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I wonder if those devs, still playing along with Reddit Inc. outrageous prices, aren't coding access to other platforms behind the scenes. It would be a decent approach to retain their userbase, while gently encouraging it to migrate.
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That's what BOOST did. Basically a 1:1 transition from reddit to lemmy after the API died.
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Released Narwhal 2 right in time for most people to never use it.
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You can compile the infinity APK yourself with your own free API key and continue to use it. There are guides and automated scripts available that can do this for you.
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Thats cool to know. Thanks!
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But why
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i tried doing a packet capture in genymotion to get the redreader api key
headers had http bearer
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For those who don't know: Eternity (for Lemmy) is a fork of Infinity (for Reddit).
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Dangit that's literally what I'm working on haha!
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For some reason, I love forks who are named with a word that has a very similar concept to the original one.
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Infinity, it's Eternity but more science-y.
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Thanks for this.
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Is this an Antimatter Dimensions reference?
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For some reason, Spaz thinks he's Musk. It's funny that Spaz is destroying reddit the same way Mush destroyed twitter, well... not funny "ha ha", but funny 'odd'.
How stupid must they be?
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Well in the reddit case there's a payoff and then one gets to walk away from the sinking ship. They just need to get things pumped up for the IPO and then who cares what happens from there. It's time to cash out and it becomes someone else's problem to deal with.
This IPO is the only thing that going to give them anything remotely near Musk money and it's not going to anywhere near at much where one can crash and burn another social media site for the hell of it...
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And that's why it's so awesome that Reddit users got together and did a protest that dumped the valuation of Reddit stock just as Spez was trying to sell it
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This is their way of destroying global communication. We the people were organising using their sites. That obviously couldn't happen so they threw the toys out of the pram and its worked. There is less of a global forum with reddit and twitter fkd.
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Damn. I never thought about it like that. You're right, but at the same time I see Lemmy way more focused on important matters we should pay attention to. With actual discussion within, not just bullshit bots slinging nonsense to steer the conversations. Granted lemmy def leans a certain way depending on where you are but it's mostly what the majority is already thinking. They may have fucked themselves in that aspect. Driving us to be more centralized with less noise to interfere. Idk, but good point.
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That's gonna backfire because now we have alternatives that aren't owned by companies that can be coerced by any two bit dictatorship with profits. They're driving people right to.the fediverse with is way worse for them
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I'm happy to buy an app, but I will not pay a $3 subscription for just an app and access to a repository of user generated content. I know the Infinity devs don't really have a choice, but this pricing model is ridiculous!
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I don't even want to buy an app for social media. Since Reddit sells your data I just can't be interested in purchasing access to my info being sold.
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My favorite bit of irony is how spez was throwing shade at third party apps for having the audacity to "profit" off reddits's work for free, when that is reddits's entire business model.
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Narwhal prompted similarly. Haven’t even thought to look since. It’s dead to me now.
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Relay for reddit was my choice for years and years.
As soon as that subscription deal popped up I uninstalled.
Hated to do that.. but I'm not paying reddit to feed me user generated content.
Boost for lemmy is the way now.
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I could have written this comment word for word, except I'm on Sync now.
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First Apolo, then Narwal, Alíen Blue barely works, but not able to log in or search for particular sub, which was the main reason I was still using it. No longer a redditor, I identify Ada Lemmor
Edit- I’m going to leave it like that. You win auto correct
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Nice to meet you Ada Lemmor
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This is like seeing a photo of a friend that got murdered three months after they got killed just highlighting the corpse that is left.
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It's like reading the Kobe Bryant autopsy report. Yeah it's awful, but it happened a long time ago and he was instantly dead before the really awful stuff happened anyway.
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If I had been given the option to pay $3 or $5 a month in June to continue using Apollo to access Reddit with no restrictions (NSFW) I would have considered it. I trust Christian’s assessment that it wasn’t financially viable, though. The dev of this app admits at $3 they basically make nothing. If the app cannot be funded (aka dev make a living) Reddit is overcharging for what they provide and can go fuck themselves.
This basically still supports what Christian said in June…and still shows why Reddit was so stupid and toxic that they wouldn’t try to tweak the api dollar amounts to make it sustainable.
Fuck spez still. I admire what these devs are trying to do but Reddit does not want them to succeed, and Reddit does not want people using their apps…so it’s a losing battle
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I love the pattern of prices. Price goes down but the last option is the most expensive.
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It's a paradigm that defeats itself. Reddit is basically reselling access to shit that users freely submit. They start removing access from users who don't want to pay or use the official (bad experience) app, and they will necessarily have fewer submissions and less content.
If its a hassle to go there and use it, and the payment structure disincentivizes their young demographic from using it, it is no longer the "cool kid" corner of the internet, which further removes the reason why other people would want to pay for it.
Imagine I'm a hypothetical Reddit user under the new model - what would be my incentive to pay them for the privilege of posting links, quality text posts, my girlfriends tits, or anything else for that matter?
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I hope the people who are willing to pay a monthly subscription on reddit are a very miniscule portion of the user base.
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Here's the thing, reddit hopes so too. Reddit's goal isn't to make money on 3rd party apps, it's to price the api high enough to draw people to their free ad riddled dumpster fire of an app. It's the same reason you can't get nsfw subs on the api.
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You can get nsfw subs on RedReader because Reddit refuses to spend money on accessibility
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For once I'm with reddit (on people using third party apps but reasons are different where reddit wanted to no longer compete with third party apps, and I don't want people giving reddit money after the end of the protest). I'd prefer third party apps be dead for good if mobile plan type subscriptions are necessary to exist (by this I mean the third party apps need subscriptions to exist because of reddit's decision to charge for api which they aren't going to change because people were unwilling to quit during the protest, and showed reddit they are too addicted to stay away. So now the aftermath for users is either pay or don't, and I'd rather people not pay reddit money. Better off quitting mobile use than pay money is my stance.).
So the few hold outs now either give into using reddit app like reddit wants or go through the process of getting third party apps to work for free. Or use the website or preferably move to not contributing to reddit anymore through mobile, and just moving to lurker status through rss or accountless apps like Stealth for Android.
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Likely yes, because it seems most of the people use the atrocious official client instead of third party client. And access through that is of course still free, well, paid by ads obviously.
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I have noticed there are some people who love spending money on internet services. Like they genuinely enjoy it and flex about it.
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Honestly, I feel that way too but for independent creators, mostly open source things.
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Why did everybody have to close down if costs are fully covered with a $2.99 subscription? I probably would have paid for reddit is fun at that price for myself and my wife. Assuming it stays ad free.
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No NSFW content though
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Everyone couldn't have. The more users you have using a app the higher the API hits, the higher the number of API hits the more you'd have the charge. So the more popular apps with the most users couldn't survive
oddon just $2.99 a month and certainly not while continuing to update and upkeep that app (or those apps) because they wouldn't be making any money let alone enough to justify the work they'd be doing.Additionally this isn't an ad free version of Reddit you'll be getting with this sub. It's still Reddit with ads.
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Plus you need the $$$ before the API bill and there'll always be some amount of mismatch between the expected usage and actual usage of users
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Three dollars a month is a lot in some places.
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Every user pays the same for the app, but the app pays an amount dependent on how much its users are browsing and posting. So if your users are all lurkers who open Reddit once a day, then you can make an easy profit charging a small fee. But if your core userbase are power posters and mods and people who spend every bathroom break on reddit, you'll lose money unless you charge a huge subscription.
The power users moving to Lemmy actually made these app subscriptions cheaper and more financially viable, because it brought down the activity level of their average user. If things had stayed the same, apps would be more expensive to run.
Funny enough, the more reddit dies, the more profitable third party apps get.
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Yeah, I get that. But the devs know what their average API calls are per user, seems like they would have landed on those numbers here; less frequent users likely subsidize power users to some extent. Or, like reddit, they could price it dynamically based on your usage too.
But you also might be right that it's only affordable if ALL power users moved on. Probably fewer moved here than we'd hope/expect, but I'm sure it helped.
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Boy, now I really want to go back! 🤣
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Let's pack tonight we can be there by morning 😹😹
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Yeah, I hope this kind of business never thieves.
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As long as Redreader still works, other applications could just borrow the oauth key.
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Nope. For one thing borrowing the key would require the apps in question to provide the same accessibility options that allow redreader to be free in the first place. For another reason, it would be pretty obvious if it wasn't red reader because other 3rd party apps for Reddit are differently optimised and offer more features meaning more API hits meaning Reddit themselves would be able to easily tell the difference between redreader app users and other apps using the oauth key. They'd just blacklist those apps/users.
Further this could detrimentally affect redreader, making it harder on users who need those accessibility options. Don't ruin it for them just because Reddit is greedy. This isn't the user's fault.
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... and people will do it.
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To be fair, Infinity worked for me for months after the API bullshit went into effect; NSFW and everything. The dev seemed pretty cool in the one or two times I messaged them. It must suck they have to charge now.
Still, screw Reddit. Dropped it like a bad habit... Because it honestly was for me.
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Fuck reddit but also fuck pro-defederation safe space bigots.
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fuck pro-defederation safe space bigots
How is this even remotely related to the OP, or this comm at large?
If by "pro-defederation safe space bigots" you mean instances like lemmy.blahaj.zone and beehaw.org, that tend to defed a lot of instances to keep their own as "safe spaces", can you please explain what would make them "bigots"? And if you meant something else, could you clarify it?
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They probably mean Hexbear, which is a safe space for authoritarians and transphobes not to be called transphobic. I've documented their transphobic, homophobic, and ableist harassment at !dronerights@lemm.ee
Blahaj is also reactionary though: https://lemm.ee/post/12879395
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Reddit is doing better than Lemmy. Have you seen Lemmy statistics lately? 📉
Edit: Lemmy users mad about facts.
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I'd much rather have a smaller functioning social media than a larger, mainstream one that gets sucked dry for everything it's worth for capitalist gain
Growth is not everything
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A downwards tendency immediately after such a huge peak was to be expected, since retention will be never 100%. Some people arrive when they're overexcited, the "fire" inside them burns out, and then they leave for somewhere else. As such I wouldn't say that Lemmy is doing so bad.
And for Reddit, the very fact that this exodus happened - even if temporary - is already a sign that Reddit isn't doing so well. It means that some people actively fought against their inertia to avoid the platform, even if it's large and already well established.
Another factor to consider is who left Reddit. The APIcalypse and "landed gentry lol" fiasco didn't affect all cohorts of the userbase the same way.
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I like Lemmy; especially with a nice app or frontend (personally use voyager, and gives me that Apollo feel).
But, I don't consider Lemmy to be as enjoyable as Reddit was (It's enjoyable, but for shorter durations). Both have their pros and cons, but Lemmy doesn't have near the same level of user base, and I tend to see the same posts over and over, even if I reload 12 hours later.
Could be an activity problem, could be an algorithm problem, but it is honestly something that will get better over time.
Lemmy does have plenty of pluses though, depending on your instances moderation. It typically has a more pleasant community; and I'm looking forward to updates to for users to block/filter whole servers. Unlike Reddit, at least Lemmy is getting better over time.
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152 comments