Reddit CEO: We're Sticking With API Changes, Despite Subreddits Going Dark
Reddit CEO: We're Sticking With API Changes, Despite Subreddits Going Dark
'Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable,' Steve Huffman says in defending the move to charge for high-volume API access.
'Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable,' Steve Huffman says in defending the move to charge for high-volume API access.
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It's not surprising, but IMO the shutdown is still worthwhile. It's shaking people loose to start looking for alternatives, and giving those alternatives opportunity to shake themselves down too. We're not quite ready for a Digg-style implosion yet. It may come more gradually this time.
To be honest, if this doesn’t case an implosion I don’t know what will.🤷🏻♂️
I think it probably won't cause the site to collapse now, but will ultimately be a major contributor to it doing so later. The biggest problem for many people leaving reddit is that the various alternatives all lack the most important part of a social media platform: all the users creating new content to consume. Many people are okay with moving to tiny platforms of course, the growth of Lemmy in the past days is an example, but quite a few people on Reddit are not going to be, missing more niche communities or just not knowing much about these underpopulated places. Of those people that do leave, or move to using a new platform alongside reddit, many will probably end up eventually giving in an going back. But some people really will stay, and the alternatives will grow massively compared to their humble origins as a result. Some might die out and fail after awhile, but the ones that don't will become small but viable communies that have enough content and users to at least be usable, if not as developed as they could be.
Inevitably, reddit will, someday, do something to anger it's userbase again. But that time, or a few cycles of this down the line, when people start looking to alternatives, one or more will actually be big enough for the majority of redditors to actually be willing to move there. At that point, the site may collapse, the damage reddit does to itself with this incident will become apparent: motivating people to build it's own competition.
Very well said. This will eventually blow over, but for a lot of moderators and well known submitters, it's already too late. This will cause a death spiral where the quality of posts and moderation is way less because of said users leaving, causing more people to leave and there's less total users/income, causing them to make more decisions designed to placate VCs/investors (killing old Reddit/nsfw), causing more people to leave, etc.
The blackout won't, but surely the lack of porn on mobile after June 30th is going to cause a major shake-up. Reddit's mobile app is really unpopular, even among casual users. You can't view it in browser reddit (popover tells you to either use the app, or back out the page). Literally the only way to view it on mobile is in their shitty app, which is horribly optimised and chews data like nobody's business.
Humans are creatures of habit, they'll struggle to change or move on without sufficient deterrent. The announcement was deterrent for the principled, the blackout is deterrent for the casual consumer without their content; the lose of 3P apps will be the deterrent for the visually-impaired...
...but the June 30th NSFW changes will be the deterrent for the horny, and Reddit is nothing if not unrelentingly horny.