this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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I'm sure 3rd party app usage is low. It's probably only a tiny minority of users who even know they exist. They're betting they can drive however many of us do use 3rd party apps back onto the 1st party one, and increase ad impressions at a time where social media advertisers are pulling away from Twitter.
Ad revenue going up would mean stock valuation increasing, and that bag they're grabbing getting bigger.
Once they go public, it won't matter. They'll have already cashed out. They'll be playing with somebody else's money then.
Probably, but it'll be the power users, mods and regular contributors who are most likely to use the apps that need the API to operate correctly.
This, exactly this, 100% this. It's the 80-20 rule, except in Reddit's case it's probably even more extreme because of bots. Almost all of the quality content on Reddit comes from a very small portion of Reddit's users, and it's very likely that most of those users are using third party apps.
I think Reddit made a calculated decision here - and I also think they are terrible at math.
Yes, it's worse for Reddit
Yep. It's not necessarily the number of users being affected, it's which users.
I see what their calculation with driving 3rd party users to 1st party is, but I really feel like it’s such a suit decision. 3rd party users tend to be power users, so driving even a fraction of them away disproportionately affects content. I think the loss of that content is going to outweigh the hypothetical gain of them looking at ads, because everybody agrees, 3rd party users are a tiny percentage of total users.
I don’t think this will kill Reddit. At least not lights out instantly. People are being hyperbolic. The kinds of people who scroll r/all won’t even notice. That page is repost bots and corporate and political propaganda, it won’t change. What I think will happen is the quality and amount of content on competitors, like Lemmy, will rise as displaced power users settle. If enough power users settle in one place to create critical mass, that creates competition.
Of course this discussion is like talking into the wind, as neither you or I have the ear of people making the choices at Reddit.
No, it won't kill Reddit overnight. It might not even land a fatal blow, and Reddit could live a long life going forward. But it will make this place a truly viable alternative for the average (or maybe moderately above average) user.
In the other hand, if their API fuckery actually kills useful or entertaining bots...
Yes that was my meaning, it is less about Reddit dying and more about alternatives growing.
I browsed a little bit last night (getting my last uses from Apollo) and it does seem like more unengaged users are catching on that this will kill bots. The DeepRockGalactic sub is up in arms about losing their mascot bot.
@setsneedtofeed @Kichae so much this. I nutshell, it is important to attract as many people as possible that find Fediverse as idea attractive in first place. There is no point of having millions who do not care about platform.