site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2340 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.

21 days ago I got this message from Reddit when it auto-renewed my annual subscription:

Hi VecGS,

Thanks for being a Reddit Premium member!

Your yearly Reddit Premium subscription has been successfully renewed and you’ve been charged $29.99 (USD).*

You should expect a fresh delivery of 700 Reddit Coins every month.

If you have any questions about your subscription, feel free to contact us or check out the Reddit Premium FAQs.

Don’t forget, your subscription automatically renews each year. That means you can cancel your subscription at any time from your Subscription Settings. Just make sure you cancel at least 24 hours before your subscription period ends to avoid getting charged for the next year. You won’t be refunded for any remaining time on your subscription.

That $30 per year cost eliminates ads for me. That's around $2.50 a month. That's far smaller than the bill that the Apollo creator would be getting for my usage when I'm on mobile. I'm pretty sure that sets up a very convenient upper bound for what Reddit's costs are. Even with that, I would expect they make a profit on me.

This is nothing but a clear attempt to kill 3rd party apps in my opinion.

The provable lying that the CEO is doing is leaving a very bad taste in my mouth.

I guess it was a good run while it lasted.

That's far smaller than the bill that the Apollo creator would be getting for my usage when I'm on mobile.

Reddit's been saying that under their current pricing model the average Apollo user would incur about $2.50/month in API charges, and that Apollo is a particularly inefficient user of the API, with other applications like RIF incurring about a dollar per month per user in API charges.

However, it's not really clear what an "average" user is. Maybe it's diluted by a bunch of users who only use it for a few minutes per day.

Maybe it's diluted by a bunch of users who only use it for a few minutes per day.

I strongly suspect this is it. API requests are measured in exact numbers, so a reddit addict that spends 10 hours a day scrolling on Apollo will rack up roughly an OOM more request cost than a causal user that spends an hour or less scrolling on RIF. I'd hazard a guess that heavier users may prefer a different interface than casual users.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats