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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2348 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 9, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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This is probably the best place to discuss the latest in the ongoing drama of the Reddit API changes. Short version is that Reddit's APIs used to be free, but they are rolling out a new scheme where they charge pretty substantially for them. The prices are high enough to make pretty much all of the third-party Reddit phone apps non-viable. This has made a lot of people quite upset, as the "official" app is reportedly significantly worse and is lacking a lot of moderator tools that many mods use to run their subreddits. There's a big "blackout" planned for June 12-14th in protest, where the mods of a bunch of subs will turn them private and users are encouraged to not use Reddit at all.

So lots of users are mad and claim that they're going to delete their accounts and/or stop using Reddit at all. It's not clear how many people overall are actually prepared to follow through on this long term. Personally I'm doubtful that it's enough to significantly hurt Reddit.

The developers of all the major independent mobile apps (Apollo, RedditIsFun, Sync, Relay, etc) say they're going to delete their API keys the day before charges start accruing, which will disable all of their installed apps at once. Apparently if they don't, they'll get a pretty hefty bill at the end of next month for everything all of the current users have been doing. Ouch. The Apollo link has a pretty long writeup of the dev's experience where he makes a good case that Reddit doesn't seem to have much interest in working with third-party app developers.

Probably the most significant part is the mod objections. Apparently a lot of mods of big subs do most of their modding on mobile using one of the third-party apps, and they say the mod tooling on the official app is so much worse that they won't be able to do their work. Every reddit sub relies on volunteer mods to keep them free of spam and abuse, and none of them are paid anything, so making their work more difficult will be very noticeable. If many mods follow through on this, it could be very significant indeed.

I have no reddit account, but if people are looking at alternatives, is it worth it for those of us who do to put up things directing them here?

With an accurate description, of course, since we would want people who fit.

Edit:Would the best place be a post in /r/RedditAlternatives, or one of the app-specific subreddits? We need to keep attracting users over time to make sure we don't gradually die, this seems like an unusually good opportunity.

I agree with the sibling - have you seen the quality of discourse on the average Reddit sub? We definitely don't want to be the next stop for the average Redditor. Growth is good, but we want a relative trickle of users who at least seem likely to be capable of obeying our rules, not a flood of people who want to post memes and cheap dunks.

I... mean... do we want to be reddit? Do we want more redditors?

You should probably post in places on reddit where people you want to join are present, not where everyone is, unless we want TheMotte to grow into a giant cluster of distinct interconnected interest groups that replaces Reddit.

TheMotte really isn't an alternative to reddit except for people exclusively using reddit for Motte adj subs.

Fair point, I meant with a fairly strong deterrent attached to whatever advertisement. (And we'd presumably have to stamp out fires here for a little anyway.)

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