Hey! This post is not specifically related to the lemmy.world instance. From now on, posts such as these will be removed, in order for the community to stay on topic. However, as this is a highly upvoted post, I'll just lock it for now.

It's not that you're charging for API access; it's that you're charging US pharmaceutical industry pricing levels ($12,000 for something that should realistically be $200) and then only giving devs such a short time to implement changes. This was designed to kill 3PApps outright and everyone can see it. What an ass.

Of course they aren't going back. We saw how arrogant spez was. There was no doubt in my mind he is just going to rely on the fact that most people are rarely committed enough to do anything.

My expectation... Some will stay with the fediverse. Others will see the blackout as a "we did everything we could" and then go back, business as usual.

I for sure will not be back. I like RIF and it is the only way I browse. With RIF gone so too am I.

Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable

It's their own fault. They didn't have to take hundred of millions of venture capital and hire thousands of people. They didn't have to go try to become a XX billion dollars company fighting with Facebook and Tiktok.

They could be profitable with a hundred engineers, a hundred support staff and reasonable ads. They could make delivering ads part of their API and have 3rd party apps serve them for them. They could let those 3rd party app handle the mobile markets since those solo devs are creating better apps than the hundreds of engineers at Reddit.

I'm really annoyed that they are changing a winning formula to build something that nobody wants

It blows my mind that Reddit can look at 90% of its communities going dark in some way and think, "yeah, this is fine."

EDIT (AGAIN): Thank you all for the comments on total subs. It's still clearly not 90%, but it still appears to be a significant portion of the active Reddit community. For the interested, check out the comments below for stats. :)

That's what Huffman was saying BEFORE the blackout. Now that 8476/8838 subreddits are currently dark, I wonder what he would say now? I don't really see how Reddit recovers from this. It's sad because I loved it and there's nothing else like it (yet), but there would need to be some major changes taking place before a lot of people consider venturing back.

somebody else pointed this out, but it's honestly bizarre he's going in on the "we aren't making any money" ploy in preparation for the ipo

what's the pitch to the investors? "please by shares in this unprofitable company, in the hope that we can become profitable by pissing off our userbase"?

Guess I'm sticking with Lemmy, then.

Honestly fuck that guy. I'm glad that I don't need to continue supporting this person.

Cool beans. Thanks spez, for introducing me to lemmy.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

Well Steve, it's not profitable for me to be a moderator for free either. Feel free to let me know how profitable you think you'll be after hiring enough staff to replace all the mods that'll be leaving.

Since I don't see a link to it in the discussion, here's an internal email from yesterday that has made its way to the Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman

RIP Reddit! This was all I needed to see to delete my reddit shortcuts from my phone and computer. let's gooooo lemmy!

There is literally no new information in this article and the title implies that it is in response to the acutal blackout, and not the threat of one. Bad article.

I won't argue against the need for reddit to be profitable, they're a business after all, BUT, all respectable software that is paid has different tiers of pricing, usually ranging from single-user to corporate-deployment.

spez is complaining everywhere that they can't allow corporate-level scraping of data to train AI for free, and that's fair, but why don't they differentiate "small" devs developing apps for users from "corporations" training AI?

I find it really hard to believe it's too difficult for them, other paid software/platforms do it all the time.

The only logical explanation to me is they don't want to, they just want to kill apps no matter what, that's why the unreasonable prices for everyone, they're just using the "no profitable" excuse to do that without a worse backslash than they're getting already, tho they're being quite stupid about it.

I never expected them to change their mind, they know what they want and they know what sort of people they want on their platform and frankly it is not us.

Plenty of people including me are very glad about being pushed in a more fedi direction, and genuinely enjoy it here. Probably most of those people are older like me and feel very much at home with a bit of jank, with Mastodon's topic-based following system, etc etc. Because that's what the internet was like when we were first exploring it. We will 100% stick around.

For younger or less techy people though, the only thing that really gets them to use services is how easy it is. And that's fine too. We can have our own corner of the internet here to be dorks in, and they can have their own corner over there, and we can all still be friends just...you know...from a distance.

They really should have just found out what the 3rd party apps -COULD PAY-. If it covered the cost of their usage and there was some profit on the top, it would at least bring in some money. Based on what I read by the Apollo dev, there was back and forth communication about pricing for a while until he broke the news.

It astounds me that they chose to cut them off entirely by offering impossible pricing. Isn't some money better than no money?

Digg used to be king. People abandoned it in droves when they went a step too far and there was an alternative. Reddit is not immune to the same thing happening to them.

"We are not profitable"

Says the one who wants the money of 3rd party developers.

The alt-right is having a great time right now on Reddit. Tons of their posts from r/conservative on the front page.

I just want to point out that the article is dated 9 June, so before the actual blackout. Maybe they have changed their mind seeing the actual data

Obligatory fuck /u/spez.

I don't need reddit. Reddit doesn't generate content, nor does it prevent contributors from sharing the same content on other platforms.

What is reddit doing to win me back?

The world is ready to fully transition away from that cancerous company.

I really can't wait to see what's the fallout of Reddit going dark. Does the community really wield the power? Or does Reddit have another ace up its sleeve?

First comment here. Sad to Reddit go but also it's their own fault for pushing me away

Is anyone surprised? The "blackout" seems to have been a total flop most subs don't give a shit.

WE should blackout for longer, i own a very small subreddit, but 2 days is not enough!! im not backing down tomorrow, i ask over subs do the same. lets stick it to reddit

Just shows how much reddit cares about it's users.