2y ago

Reddit mods are calling for an ‘affordable return’ for third-party apps

www.theverge.com Reddit mods are calling for an “affordable return” for third-party apps

They want Reddit to respond by June 29th.

Some of Reddit’s most popular communities have posted open letters to the company with a series of requests regarding many key issues at the heart of the recent protests on the platform. They want a response by June 29th.

165 comments

It's way past this point now. Had reddit done this back when the shutdowns were first planned that would be one thing, but at this point they've demonstrated they can't be trusted, they don't care about their users or mods, and they're only interested in anything they think will increase the their profit margins for the IPO. If you aren't an investment firm they don't give a single shit about you past whatever damage you might do to their IPO plans.
- I've already moved on from Reddit. I've deleted all of my content and unsubbed from about half of everything I cared about. My feed is completely pruned and even then only about a quarter of it is OC not posted by bots or click bait titles.
  Plex just recently reopened it's sub for another vote to reopen or go restricted and the amount of support to stay open is sickening. Everyone left has become so dependant on the platform that they can't see leaving it, which is exactly what Reddit was hoping for with this.
  
  I was curious so I went and looked. Wow.
  They’re inconvenienced so it should all end and we should all give up.
  Really hope they’re never part of any union I’m a part of.
  
  Also a poll at this point doesn’t make much sense since the people who are still there probably don’t care about everything that has happened so of course they’re going to vote to reopen.
  
  Same here -- I deleted my content twice. It's still there 🤷‍♂️. My accounts are gone though!
- Yep, that ship has sailed. Time for the mods to go make their own reddit, (with blackjack and affordable api) and leave that one to burn itself down.

I'm sure reddit will get right on that.

It's nice that they still have hope and still love their community enough to want to attempt to seek some sort of resolution, but imo reddit the company is never going to budge now. It's personal for spez now, and the company is simply going to barrel on and ignore all these letters and everything. They're committed to their stance now, and they're going to simply wait it out, until all the opposing people have left/been kicked out and all that is left of reddit the community are those who either still support them or who don't care. It's sad, but imo the reddit as we knew it is dead, and it's time to accept that and move on.
- It’s nice that they still have hope and still love their community enough to want to attempt to seek some sort of resolution, but imo reddit the company is never going to budge now.
  They never were. They have the numbers. They knew there was money to be made by killing off 3rd party apps. They knew they would piss people off. Really all they care about are the folks that subscribe to Reddit and/or use the native app. They view everyone else as a parasite. They made the calculation that killing 3rd party apps would have a small enough impact that it was worth it in the long run. That is all they wanted. They probably didn't count on the level of outrage they would create. They surely expected some, but definitely not this. They are in it for the long haul though. They will just wait people out to see what the damage actually is and then one day in a month or two they will talk about how minimal the impact was and how they saw very little loss of readership.
  
  They are not in it for the long haul. It's all about the IPO.
- It’s sad, but imo the reddit as we knew it is dead, and it’s time to accept that and move on.
  I'd pour one out for dear old reddit, but I'm already moved on.
- reddit the company is never going to budge now.
  It will be interesting to see what happens after Friday, I wouldn't be surprised if when the mobile apps stop working, it will have an even more significant impact than we have seen so far.
  imo the reddit as we knew it is dead, and it’s time to accept that and move on.
  It's been for a while IMO, I deleted my account a couple of years ago, and reduced my use to a couple of links to a few subreddits exclusively for lurking.

¯(ツ)_/¯
In the internal letter to their employees, spez said :
We absolutely must ship what we said we would.
The way I see it some promise has been done by spez and they definitely won't change their minds.
Third party apps are just dead that's just how it is.
- They're simply not going to be able to get that work done in the timeframe they said it'd be done. They're going to proudly claim that they've shipped it but when they release it it'll have the narrowest possible scope you can imagine - actually, no, it'll be narrower than even that. It's going to be missing major functions because reddit simply has no idea the things they need to put in, much less how to accomplish it.
  Plus it's going to be super-bug-filled. But they're going to declare "Mission Accomplished", and say that anyone who doesn't like the new app is just anti-reddit, doesn't know understand what they've released, doesn't understand how to work things, etc, etc.
  Fuck spez.
- "The Chinese that bought our company demand we track everything. They gave us until July first to close down 3rd party apps or they pull our funding and reddit is dead. " Probably what is going on.
- Sounds like the kind of thing you’d say with the expectation, and I dare say, hope that it would be leaked.

Dude reddit isn't for you. It is okay. It is a business and they have a right to do whatever they want with their business, but IDK how many more ways they can say "You aren't important to me" before people stop saying "But I should be important to you!"
- I don’t think that the people who provide the content and the people who moderate the content are wrong in thinking that they should be accorded some respect by a site that would be worthless without that content.
  
  They're not wrong at all, but Reddit aren't going to change their mind and grant them their due respect. Like with Digg before it, the userbase will slowly migrate away if this keeps up.
  
  Reddit has told them all to fuck off in a variety of ways for months.
  At some point you gotta take the hint instead of trying to make peace with the abuser.
  
  Yeah, I don’t think they’re saying that users aren’t important to Reddit; what they seem to wanna say is that Reddit doesn’t care whether or not users are important to them.
  The only thing you can do at this point is quit, because Reddit will only budge when it’s too late for them.
- What does the green tick next to your name mean?
  
  $8/month Patreon supporter

Just stop moderating them already. Don't go dark. Reddit will revert. Don't make it NSFW to stop ad profits. Reddit will revert. Just. Stop. Moderating.
Let it fill up with nudes and hate speech and then sure, let's have Reddit forcibly remove you. They'll pull in a new team of mods but if they're just picked out of the blue, they're unlikely to find the time and energy necessary to do it well because this takes passion and many teams were assembled carefully over time with votes and selection processes for a reason. It's often a team effort of passionate people. Moderating poorly risks putting the subreddit on collision course with the community but hey that is Spez and gang's problem, not yours.
I don't think there is any other language that Reddit understands than this. Mods -- take a breather and see what the world has to offer. It's not just all about Reddit.
- Exactly. Stop moderating and remove any auto moderating bots. That's it. Let Reddit self destruct.
  
  But they can't do it because Reddit moderators almost always have nothing else going for them. They cling to their moderator status so feverishly, if they gave it up they'd have nothing else going for them.
- Reddit will then replace them, as they've threatened and reiterated through all of this

Bad idea, this looks like Stockholm syndrome to me.
Reddit has already shown they will screw everyone over, and no amount of blowback so far has gotten them to change course.
Leave (and optionally try to give Reddit as much hell as possible on the way out). That's the only answer now.
I don't think there is any redemption either, even if u/spez is removed. He's not the first bad head of the company, if anything the company has never had any good heads.
- I made a script that changes all my old comments to gibberish, but I haven't used it yet. I can't decide if it's a good idea or not. I'm not saying that my old comments are extremely useful, but I wouldn't want to prevent people from reading or having context or any help I've given.
  
  If you want to do that you might try doing it very slowly as minor edits. Like swap, add, or delete a couple of words in several posts per hour, and just let the script run for long periods, gradually degrading the usability of your comments over time.
  I don't know if that would trigger whatever process Reddit is using to restore comments when users delete them, but there's got to be some detection algorithm they are using that could be avoided while also, eventually, nuking your content.
  
  They will simply roll your edits back.
  Dont give them the clicks
  Just move on
  Maybe delete your account

Even if reddit backpedals, many of these communities are now irreversibly fractured. From the ones that went dark and had moderation replaced, or creators left, to outright posting porn or shitposting John Oliver, all of these communities will take time to fix and go back to normal for every reason under the sun. Half of reddit is on fire and just as so, you can heal from a burn but it's never the same.
This abusive relationships has evolved again, and spez is still hitting you now he's burned you. To use Louis Rossmans words "it's not even about the api anymore. Look how the entire company acts when they're told they're wrong. Look how much they will do. How far they will go. Do you really want to invest your time or money as an investor in a company it's own users are actively trying to burn down?"
- These mods are in an abusive relationship with Reddit. Like abusive husbands / wives, they are not going to change. Leave

It’s too late. Hopefully Reddit dies.
- I see where you're coming from but I hope Reddit doesn't die. Yes this situation sucks, but there's a lot of valuable information on Reddit after years of indexing everyone and anyone's questions. Killing Reddit is akin to burning down the library of Alexandria (Not nearly as sever, but I'm sure you get the picture.)
  At least before Reddit dies, I hope we find a way to archive all of that user data.
  
  Idk, the pure volume of content could outweigh the library of Alexandra and Bagdad. Its not just memes, but every from text support, ask historians and pure input from people.
  
  I think there should be archives available until march: https://archive.org/details/pushshift-reddit-2023-03/
- Relevant username

RIF: Reddit Is Finished, move on.

I don't see the point. If we've learned one thing already, it's that the users must control the platform. And that can never happen with Reddit

Let’s see them deliver on those promised moderation tools by end of month. If they can’t or won’t hit that milestone then I have little faith in them doing anything else. (Not that I have any faith in them any more, just, you know.)

It's time to stop begging and start leaving.
- Agreed. I think we need to establish a better migration system for users. It's honestly extremely easy to get set up on, say, lemmy.world. it took me a couple minutes to make an account, download apps, and log in on my computer and my phone.
  I think a lot of redditors are afraid of having to learn a new thing and word on the street over there is that the federated communities are hard to understand. We need to let them know it's not that bad and provide easy steps to migrate. I think if they actually know how painless it can be, more would migrate.
  Not to mention, many users just look at /r/all anyway, so they won't even need to worry about subscribing or navigating away from their local instance. I've been trying to include some very basic steps to get started and then, if they are so inclined, they can learn more about how the federation works as they go.
  
  Gotta say, I thought it sounded a lil complicated at first. I’d heard ‘Lemmy.world’ mentioned a few times, so I came over and signed up…. And that’s it. There wasn’t anything complicated at all. Been here a few days now and loving it so far.
- Exactly... but at the same time, i like smaller communities, so if most of those people want to stay on reddit, let em.
  
  Yeah its really tough in that regard. There was a lot of small communities that were hands down some of my favorites. Takes years for those kind of things to build.
  Gotta start somewhere though.

Interesting how the first thing I felt when I read this was, "I hope Reddit doesn't".
Incredible how fast my fondness of Reddit went away in 1 week.
- It's a platform whose time to die has arrived. The corpos are getting their hands on it, and nothing punk can be done with it anymore.
  
  Fuck corpo shit. Burn corpo shit.
  My hope is that all this drama makes the IPO not happen.
- Agreed. Among many things, the whole debacle seemed to expose that no significant roadmap space was actually dedicated to improving the user experience. I saw the turn time on accessibility. Good luck actually developing all the stated improvements in the middle of summer. Even if they literally reversed on everything I still wouldn't good back.
  
  That's been obvious since new reddit was released. Nobody asked for that. And the video player has been broken since it was released too. The chat has been full of spam since day one.

Why do people want to continue working for free? making profit for a company who don't give a fuck about them
- Yeah. In the beginning I was like "sure mods, let's start with protests, maybe that'll do something and if it doesn't... well it was nice while it lasted". But to think that some mods are still trying to negotiate after Reddit admins smeared their snoo poo on everything they engaged with the past couple of weeks. Sheesh, some people really have no idea when to call it quits. How can they be this power hungry? It's just self degrading at this point.

It's too late, and the damage has already been done, and not just because of the pricing. Reddit's outright manipulative and malicious treatment of devs has already driven most of them to shut down their work with the company. I certainly wouldn't want to work with a platform that treats me like that, profitable or not.

From the article
Reddit didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. According to Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, “We’ll no longer comment on hearsay, unsubstantiated claims, or baseless accusations from The Verge. We’ll be in touch as corrections are needed.”
Fucking fuck me sideways
- Verge literally laughing at Reddit for that exact statement: https://www.tiktok.com/@verge/video/7248607902544448811

My answer was stopping modding, stopping posting and now a data takeout and GDPR deletion request (and a complaint because they will fail to honor it) on the way out. I would have done it years ago if there was a place to migrate to.

Couldn’t care less. Lemmy is already so much better than that cesspool. Reddit has been circling the drain for years.

Reddit can suck it, I'm not going back.
- Yeah, they've already shown us that they don't actually care about the communities, only the ad impressions.
  
  I feel for the mods, both here and on Reddit. Disrespected by both users and admins, but doing the important work even if sometimes they come across as power-hungry or capricious.
- Yes basically this. Whatever they do, I'm not going back either.

Too late, the Lemmy is out of the box!
- And getting shinier by the day

This feels very much like a “when someone shows you who they are, believe them” type scenario. Even if Reddit backtracks and courts 3rd party apps in their eco-system, they’ve shown themselves. They don’t care about communities, users, or mods.
When your abusive partner promises to stop beating you, you should not go back to the relationship. They will beat you again.
- Looking at a subreddit that I joined right now, there is a poll about the future of the subreddit and the protest and 53% are to stay open.
  MANY in the comments see the protest as useless and that it "hurts the community". While I agree with the point that it locks users out from the subreddit, especially for tech support, I can tell you that they all don't really care about this.
  I also have seen someone create a replacement subreddit for the private one just to fill the gap.
  And looking at all those Awards being given out in the posts about the AMAs and such, I have very little hope that something will change on Reddit's side.
  I think, all the mods of those subreddits just pack up and leave to the alternatives like lemmy and let the Subreddits rot.

Offer me money.
Spez: Yes!
Power, too, promise me that.
Spez: All that I have and more. Please...
Offer me everything I ask for.
Spez: Anything you want...
I want Apollo back, you son of a removed.

The open letters showed me those people only cared about their position in the first place. Otherwise they wouldn't be bargaining, knowing it's useless, they'd leave like the rest of us did
- How about the; CaN't yOu ThINk AbOuT tHe CoMMunITy?!?!?! crap they have been telling themselves.
- those people only cared about their position
  probably not. This ain't Star Trek, we don't know how to disintegrate a community, beam it down, and reintegrate it in the same shape in a different place.
  the fall of Reddit implies the demise of many communities that called it home.
  maybe it's fine in the long run, new communities form elsewhere and some of the people in the former end up in the latter, but it the short to mid term, it's traumatic for anybody that was emotionally invested.
  I see those open letters as last ditch attempts to preserve a status-quo where maybe people can pretend a little longer that everything's okay.
  in the end, everybody's gonna grieve this differently. I don't think it makes them bad people.
  
  I don't think it makes them bad people, either, but this letter is so vague it sounds like begging.

Reddit doesn't want third party apps. They will get more money with their official app, simple as that.
For reddit you are just a wallet full of money. Spez doesn't see you in any other way, just walking money.
- The official app isn’t much of moneymaker, they just don’t want anyone else profiting from/controlling the experience of their product.

Anybody trying to save reddit at this point is a fool.
- The scammers. Imagine being some dude at a sketch marketing firm who just bought a handful of high karma, organic accounts and were about to start advertising. I can't imagine the good quality ones are cheap. Turns out they're worth nothing now.

Yeah I don't think anything's gonna change at this point.

I didn't read anything in this thread, but I'd just like to give my opinion. I honestly don't care. Make it affordable if you wish, but if Lemmy keeps alive and well, I'm good at where I am.

According to Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, “We’ll no longer comment on hearsay, unsubstantiated claims, or baseless accusations from The Verge. We’ll be in touch as corrections are needed.”
So, this part, at the bottom of the article, tells me everything I need to know. Reddit is going to keep chugging along with their ridiculous plan.
- I haven't deleted my account on Reddit yet, still trying to delete my comments. Guess I should have used a tool.
  
  I found an article that uses RES to bulk delete comments. It worked well for me.
  https://www.alphr.com/how-to-delete-all-reddit-posts/
  I changed the interval to 500ms like the mentioned, and it wiped my accounts 12 year history in a couple of minutes.

Reddit wants to kill 3PAs. What I don't understand is why they're going through the whole act of pretending that the API is going subscription when they're making it prohibitively expensive and only giving them a month to put it in place. Why not just be honest and shut it down to third parties entirely?
- I mean Spez was ghost editing comments at one point and is trying to blackmail the creator of Apollo. He’s not a person of good character.
  
  Yep. Even if Spez rolled everything back, he destroyed all trust we had in Reddit. No going back from that...
- Simple, they hope some poor schmuck actually tries to make it work and instead of a reasonable split for the labour of the 3PA's dev they take basically all of it 🤪

Reddit has given several responses, full of contempt, belittlement, and insults. Oh, and threats. Can’t forget the threats.
Hey reddit mods: reddit doesn’t give a damn about you, your sub, or the community you built. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it hurts. Don’t be a fool and wait around for another response. The sooner you move on from reddit, the better off you’ll be.

Lol my guess is 0 response from spez until the normies start screaming about their apps not working.

These people invested so much time and effort into their communities, I understand why they are doing all this to keep them
- Mod of /r/homeimprovement here. I don't know that "keep" is the right word but we have built an amazing community over the years. The API changes rubbed us all the wrong way (as we all mod from third-party apps) but what really clinched it was the utter abhorrent treatment of us after we shut down. We are still shut down, and reddit continues to actively threaten UNPAID VOLUNTEERS. The free content and moderation is literally the only thing keeping reddit relevant. We are actively going to force reddit to replace us or backtrack. It will likely be the former, but at least we have made them work for it. It's sad really...I love the community but I'm not going to continue to be free labor for a company that simply doesn't give a single shit about us or their users.
  
  r/homeimprovement was one of my favorite subs and a topic I hope takes off over here. Glad you all are sticking to your guns.
  
  3 yous. a lot of people now on lemmy are like "whatever I don't even remember reddit what was it even" because their minecraft memes or whatever have moved here or elsewhere. personally I found reddit the most remarkable for the non-tech subs. I am not worried about being unable to post to a linux forum because there are a bazillion of them. I do really mourn the DIY subs and other niches and hobbies. /r/homeimprovement was a great sub along with the constellation of related subs. I doubt /r/askanelectrician or /r/hardwoodfloors or /r/redneckengineering will be reestablished here even if a general /r/homeimprovement could find a footing. And they mutually feed into each other as communities. /r/homeimprovement wouldn't be able to thrive in the same way without the smaller subs and vice-versa. The large numbers of users who can easily discover new forums once they get into things in some way. That's how I got involved anyway so just extrapolating. :D
  I noticed on the verge articles about reddit they have an open call for reddit mods to contact them. I would really love to see some coverage of non-tech subs and how this all is shaking out for them. I really do not think is is just OK to say "well, whatever" and just move on. I think people like you made reddit a fantastic place especially for the non-tech stuff. It is really really sad to see it all destroyed. I think at the very least the full carnage should be examined. Please pass tat thought to anyone else who might want to share. (There might be a better place to share than the verge; I don't follow tech news usually so I don't know it.)
  But either way 3 yous. thank you for your service

They should just abandon the site instead and leave Reddit to clean up the mess they've made.
- Don’t forget to delete your history before you delete your account.
  
  Idk man, I've asked a lot of questions over the years that have answers on them. I feel like I'd be doing the world a disservice by deleting those.

Why do the mods care so much? Can anyone point me to an explainer of how can mods monetize their modding? I also don't understand why I see people here on Lemmy modding dozens of communities or looking to be mods of communities their posting history says nothing of.
- Why do you think it needs to be able to be monetized for people to care about modding? I would imagine that most good-faith mods are passionate about the communities they're modding and the subjects they're about, and they care about them because they want to see them thrive and not be overrun by bad actors.
  
  My cynical perspective comes from seeing some power grabbing greed here on Lemmy. Since I joined 2 weeks ago. It's also that I'm curious about it, without having ever modded, here or on Reddit.
- I think it is more about moderators using 3rd party apps to do what the native Reddit app cannot. Reddit has dragged their feet for years on proper moderation tools on mobile.
  
  I agree. But looking over, it seems obvious the more protests and complaints the more Reddit gets the impression you will not be leaving. How's the idiom.. All bark no bite..
- I'm sure some of them like the power. But many of them just don't want to leave their community (because let's face it, a lot of communities won't leave and don't care about the drama). They feel like they're losing a friend group. It's the same reason why people stay in shitty friend groups even when they're treated like crap. They don't want to be alone or to have to start over.
  
  Thanks for the answer. That does sound like a pretty good motivation.

Just walk away, let them have their pile of turd and eat it too.

They're going to do a ridiculous price that is technically lower, but is still highway robbery.... You just wait.
- I think even that is generous, I doubt they will even bother responding

They should just do what I did. So being a mod and leave. Fuck em.

I want to go full lemmy but the interface/appearance is a real turn off with comment threads being visually hard to follow. What we need is RES for lemmy
- The interface is quite customisable; I'm sure if it gets traction people will provide in that regard.
- I thought the same. But now I got used to it. Also I moved to liftoff app and things work great. Things will get better.
  
  Same. On liftoff until Sync releases and then I'll really have to decide which I like more. It might be hard choice though, liftoff is really good (in its early state) but Sync has the benefit of aggregating information and seeing what users want (and knowing that many want what Sync offered for Reddit on Lemmy)

im confused why people a. think spez had enough control to make these decisions. b. that killing the 3rd party apps wasnt the point.
almost zero notice, exorbitant costs for stripped access...
there was never going to be a compromise. 'they' want to wall their garden, and thats all she wrote
- I don't think they're in denial. I think they're just hoping to save their community.
  
  I think some of their communities are still in denial. That there's a deadline of 6/29 for Reddit to make a response is a hint that the mods may come back on the 30th and say, "Reddit's not changing their stance. We're setting up a new community on X. "
- Because they don't want it to be true.
  They just need time to go through the stages of mourning.
  
  The RIF subreddit has been marking each post with its stage of grief since this began. Most were at acceptance last I checked.
- There's a lingering belief that Spez is the same Spez who criticized Digg as too corporate and described Reddit in terms of community. It's difficult, sometimes, for people to realize when fellow travelers are no longer fellows.
  There's also some satisfaction in knowing that in the end, you did all you could to avert a bad outcome. Even if it passes, you don't need to have regrets.

Can't imagine what they could deliver that would bring Apollo or RIF back.

too little, too late.

Spez:

It seems like this is the only way that Reddit can slow the rise of the Fediverse to me. All of their official access channels (web/official app) pale in comparison to the usability of third party apps.

Dorks.

never gonna happen

165 comments