Reddit Users Are Saying Goodbye To Their Favorite Apps With Tributes and Memes (theverge.com) 62
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Many popular third-party Reddit apps will be shutting down on Friday because of the platform's forthcoming paid API, and fans of the apps are sending them off with heartfelt posts and memes. The Apollo for Reddit subreddit, for example, is filled with posts celebrating the app. "So long and thanks for everything," said one post for an Apollo-themed version of the "was I a good boy" meme. This morning, someone posted a "Dawn of the Final Day" image. Even Carrot Weather seems to be mourning Apollo. Seriously, just scroll through them all.
Communities for other apps are memorializing, too. "Time to go touch some grass instead." A post in the Sync for Reddit community titled "Goodnight Sweet Sync" has more than 100 comments. "Thank you for being my most used app for nearly a decade," said a user on the BaconReader subreddit. And even though the reddit is fun for Reddit (RIF) community has been in a restricted mode for nearly three weeks, the posts you can see are nearly all tributes to the app. [F]or fans of apps like Apollo, RIF, Boost, and more, there's only a few more hours until the apps shut down for good. At least we'll have the memes.
Communities for other apps are memorializing, too. "Time to go touch some grass instead." A post in the Sync for Reddit community titled "Goodnight Sweet Sync" has more than 100 comments. "Thank you for being my most used app for nearly a decade," said a user on the BaconReader subreddit. And even though the reddit is fun for Reddit (RIF) community has been in a restricted mode for nearly three weeks, the posts you can see are nearly all tributes to the app. [F]or fans of apps like Apollo, RIF, Boost, and more, there's only a few more hours until the apps shut down for good. At least we'll have the memes.
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the third party apps were all either paid or ad-supported
False. I used Slide. [f-droid.org]
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Does that show Reddit's ads? Because it sure sounds like it was yet another app that was leeching of Reddit without providing anything in return. Given the donate link on that page, it sounds like they were still trying to make money off of Reddit's service without providing anything back to Reddit.
Re:Who decided to post this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ad blockers are a symptom of poor user experience. People used to tolerate banner ads, then came the pop under, pop over, the ones that open new pages, the ones that navigate your browser to unsavoury sites... that's what made adblockers a necessity. And even once tamed down, ads and the tracking that goes with it are still overly invasive. What makes a seller think that I might be interested in his wares if I am forced to watch through several seconds of loud drivel? If anything it makes me wish they went out of business, I'll definitely not support them. I fully expect adverts to become so inefficient over time that the practice as a whole will die a slow and painful death. Ad providers should start looking at a different source of revenue, because ads in their current form are not working and probably won't last long.
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And I will do without those works, doesn't worry me. It should worry the people buying overpriced ad slots that are not going to be seen by anything other than indexing scripts.
Re: Who decided to post this? (Score:2)
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I never said I made use of one, I only elaborated on WHY so many people do use them. I prefer to subscribe to the services I use.
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I have ADHD and I cannot concentrate with moving text/video/ads so I have to block everything to use most websites.
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Indeed. We're about 23 years overdue for another dot-com bust.
Re: Who decided to post this? (Score:2)
Other than a bunch of users, who attracted more users, which attracted searches, and more users. Luckily their product doesn't use other folks' content... otherwise they may have just fucked themselves trying to leech money from content that wasn't theirs. That's a bad thing after all, right? Well, unless it's the company doing it, then it's just "business", isn't it? So, if I do it, it's stealing and bad. Company does it and it's rewarded and defended at all costs.
What was the definition of a fascism again
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Does that show Reddit's ads? Because it sure sounds like it was yet another app that was leeching of Reddit without providing anything in return. Given the donate link on that page, it sounds like they were still trying to make money off of Reddit's service without providing anything back to Reddit.
The apps all showed all the ads provided to them by Reddit via the API. There weren't any, so noone blocked anything.
A more reasonable approach by Reddit would be to e.g. require users to have premium accounts to use the API, or add ads to it unless the user had a premium account. Not destroy the ecosystem of well-functioning apps to get them to use Reddit's train wreck of an in-house app,
I used reddit a lot, with a mix of web and Apollo, and would have paid. Now I've blocked it in my firewall to make
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This is one of those gray-area issues where neither party is 100% right.
Those 3rd party apps didn't "leech off" reddit, simply because the APIs were free of charge. Those apps didn't use some shady workaround or illegal / unethical action. They offered features which people liked. Legal? Sure. Ethical? Not so much.
Then Reddit decided to set some arbitrary API costs, knowing that those 3rd party apps wouldn't afford to pay. Legal? Sure. Ethical? Not so much.
3rd party app developers should have known this wou
Re:Who decided to post this? (Score:5, Informative)
There's no guilt on the dev side. You're making it sound like the 3rd party devs have done nothing or were willing to do nothing. Many of them were in talks with Reddit and negotiating in good faith. They didn't have a problem with passing on costs or showing ads for Reddit.
And the reason people are posting tributes etc., is because Reddit's own interface and tools suck. Particularly for moderators, who are unpaid, yet do the work that other social media companies pay for.
Huffman was making defamatory comments about the developer of the Apollo app, claiming he was trying to shake Reddit down for money. Too bad the conversation was recorded and that's a lie.
There's no view in which Reddit is even a little bit in the right. The devs knew that this time would come, and all they wanted was reasonable rates and *time to implement and switch over*, and Reddit gave them neither of those. What the users want is tools that don't suck, and Reddit has now eliminated most of those and apparently is incapable or unwilling to make their own.
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Well, 3rd party app developers (or at least some of them) put all their eggs in one basket, effectively rendering them at Reddit's mercy. They also expected (not all of them, but some) the APIs to remain free forever.
Re:Who decided to post this? (Score:5, Insightful)
And then if you read for even a fraction of a second more, you discover that part of the outcry is that 3rd party developers had been told that API costs wouldn't be going up for a year or two just a month ago, and they were in active talks with Reddit about how they could implement their apps to allow for Reddit to charge for API access.
And then you discover that Reddit has increased the API costs to astronomical levels, and by the way, the app developers have a month to implement the charges, which means they're fronting the cost until their users decide to get on board or not.
Reddit also gets all of its content for free (like most social networks) but ALSO gets all of its moderation for free, which other companies have to may millions of dollars for. It's rich talking about Reddit not wanting to give away their product for free (and you're right here--they don't have to foot that bill) but let's also be clear that their entire business model is profiting off the free labour of the users.
Reddit is just worse Usenet, and their tools are fucking garbage. That's why people use the 3rd party apps. What's clear is those apps had knock-on benefits for Reddit whether they understood it or not, because now they've got a user revolt on their hands, and if they actually want to make things better for the people doing the hard work (mods) they'll have to actually spend some money on app development.
(Also /u/Spez is an outright liar and he's lucky he's not being sued for defamation. He made several factually incorrect and slanderous comments and the developer of Apollo has call recordings that prove that Spez was lying.)
Re: Who decided to post this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Who decided to post this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Reminds me of when all the moderators began fleeing Usenet after Eternal September.
alt.politics.moderated and the like were great places with active/knowledgeable moderators -- until they weren't.
Re: Who decided to post this? (Score:1, Insightful)
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Sure we had a few people turn up here to say they were never going back. Whether they stick to that is another matter, but of course we weren't going to see many people claiming they were staying. If they were saying that to anyone at all, it was on Reddit.
Re:I was going to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I didn't have friends before it was cool!
It's the world they were born into. (Score:2)
I have a similar view about many things. As a reasonably talented guitarist I find Guitar Hero to be a terrible substitute that undermines thd growth of musicians. Some may think it inspires people to take up the real thing, but I think the instant gratification wrecks the ability to push through the frustration of trying to perform your first bar chord. Social media is the Guitar Hero of personal relationships.
However... I don't blame the participants. The world was gifted to them like this, and people.c
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I advocate for turning the whole consumer facing front of the internet off at 7:00 pm each day. Like when cartoons were restricted mostly to Saturday mornings.
You don't want any international interactions? That is not good...
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You mean like like the whole world lived until the 1990's.
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You want to turn back time? Afraid of going forward?
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Forward isn't inherently better, no.
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If you're in a bad path it's not a bad idea to back up a bit and see if there's a better way. Progress doesn't have to be perfectly linear.
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What an arrogant and disconnected thing to say. Ever thought that people may do this in addition to traditional social interaction? I would also like to point out that you are posting this to /., the huge irony of which apparently is completely lost on you.
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If you weren't too busy frothing up a rage, you'd have noticed that what I was talking about were people who used such systems IN LIEU of, or in preference to, "more normal" human interaction.
But please, continue your overreaction! It's very internet.
Reality check (Score:1, Troll)
It's
just
a
forum...
Stop the drama. It's ridiculous. Find a better forum, is all.
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Stop the drama. It's ridiculous. Find a better forum, is all.
Let me introduce you to "the Network Effect". The more people using a service, the more valuable it becomes.
If the userbase of the "better" forum doesn't have critical mass, it won't stick around.
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Yeah, let's go back to newsgroups, FidoNet, etc.!
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The founder of Apollo has a request (Score:2)
https://mastodon.social/@chris... [mastodon.social]
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this kid will be a ceo one day. the gall!
the lucky guys has made millions with his crap app. he doesn't stand to "lose $250k". he knows his public is so gullible that he can afford to play nonsense and simply not refund the $250k he rightfully owes for a service not delivered. ladies and gentlemen ... the king of the morons. you reddit on slashdot.
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Car analogy for good measure: If you buy a car, but suddenly the roads are blocked, do you get to return the car for a refund?
Did you sell a car? Or did you sell a means to get to those now-blocked places?
The app seller should have put something in the Ts and Cs that addressed possible future API access fees or blocks.
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yeah, well, he wasn't paying for that delivery. it was all net profit for him, and actually very good profit, which is why his playing the victim when the freeloading dried up (e.g. his lengthy farewell manifesto) was such a laughable display. after that it doesn't really surprise me that he now comes up with another creative reason to scam his own customers out of the leftovers. looks like he even thinks he's a celebrity.
and maybe he is. such is this crazy world :-)
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How do you know he has made millions of dollars?
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How do you know he is a kid?
in essence just just a way of speaking, but he did say (in his manifesto you didn't read) that this app was his first project after college (or sumthin). i think he was smart, proactive and lucky and hit the jackpot, and yeah, very young. it wasn't meant as a derogative either, to clear any doubts.
How do you know he has made millions of dollars?
he implied so with the figures he mentioned in said manifesto.
i would now say rtfm :-D but i can't for the life of me blame you for not digesting that litany.
Squabbles (Score:2, Informative)
A mobile app is being developed for them too.
It is *centralized*, in case you don't like "post in one place, post on other sites you never heard of"
Many of the discussion groups have the same names as many subreddits
The crowd is smaller, but friendlier, and less oppostional
Yeah but they're not saying goodbye to Reddit (Score:2)
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That remains to be seen. In cases like this people may hold a grudge for a long, long time.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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They can't find mods for huge subs? That's something I didn't expect. I would have thought astroturfers, spammers and state actors would jump on this immediately.
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The r/IAmA are engaging in their own action. They're going to do the standard "mod" work, but they're not putting in the insane levels of effort required for celebrity AMAs. (Nor are they going to verify identities.) I've read that a lot of Reddit's casual views come from r/IAmA; eliminating celebrities is going to reduce views.
(Info here: https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/... [reddit.com])
r/AskHistorians is still in open revolt, with submissions being restricted.
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And so Reddit's CEO won.
He won the battle, but may lose the war. Multiple sources (Google and AdWeek) have said that the blackout had an impact. Users and moderators now have an understanding of their value.
Secondly, there wasn't a -single- good replacement. Squabbles, Tildes, Fediverse, etc split the userbase. If there had only been one replacement, the exodus would've been more impactful. Only one of them may gain traction, or someone may build a Reddit clone.
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I think losing Google is a particularly big one. Reddit got big because Google searches kept returning Reddit links, as those posts generally were helpful. With Reddit going dark, Google search results turned way less helpful (Google noticed) and it's likely whatever boost Reddit got is now gone. Being #1 or #2 in the search re
The sad thing is... (Score:2)
even this isn't going to put a big enough dent in Reddit's user base to make a difference. United we stand, on the internet we lie, cheat, and steal and call it business.
Binary (Score:1)
Back to slashdot (Score:2)
Been a long time since I was active on here because I discovered reddit. But with the loss of Apollo and how utterly terrible the official app is, Iâ(TM)m done with reddit. The moderation and voting on reddit is terrible anyway as it produces group-think on wrong ideas. Not as much going on here on Slashdot but the moderation has always meant good comments hit the top.
So, Iâ(TM)m back. What did I miss?
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The switch to CSS. Otherwise...same old /. but with more Slashvertisements.
Don't say goodbye to your favorite Reddit app (Score:2)
Say goodbye to Reddit. The company has refused to be reasonable in both the lead time up to this change and the prices they intend to charge. The only way to communicate this grievous error seems to be for its users and revenue go away.
Fuck Spez (Score:2)
There is a workaround that I am reluctantly using.