Reddit isn’t profitable, despite having more than 50 million daily active users. In preparation for an IPO, CEO Steve Huffman put the platform’s API

  • Dark Arc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The funny thing is… for me it wasn’t even the API changes, it was how Steve reacted to the community feedback. If you need to make your app profitable that’s fine by me, but don’t ignore your customers so bluntly. They could’ve easily worked politely with devs to find an agreeable API price, find alternative funding streams for those devs, etc. They did none of that, instead Steve acted like a jerk.

    • littlecolt@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      This is the business world in general. Consumers need to say to businesses in no uncertain terms that they cannot just do whatever they want and still remain profitable. Without users, there is no profit. Charging for the API would be completely acceptable and expected, but they decided to go the most cartoonishly villainous route possible. This is what a lot of companies are doing now. They have gotten far too used to the profits being free. We should teach them a lesson, collectively.

      I’m 43. I lived a good amount of my life without the Internet and even more of my life without smart phones. Even after gaining reliable Internet access, I remember the times when the Internet was not just a few big companies. I just rediscovered one of the old forums I used to hang out on is still operating. They have an active IRC channel as well. Don’t think we can’t go back, big tech. It would be so easy to go back. Don’t tempt me with a good time.

    • Historical_General@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, we all see his extremely punchable face. Simultaneously blond and ginger and rat-like. It’s a big reason I’m off reddit.

  • ECIN96@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The blatant astroturfing is what really icked me out. From day one of the API changes, it was clear that Reddit had spun up the spin machine and had begun to misrepresent the issues.

    The main one was how they tried to push the “they just want the API for free”, “we’re entitled to charge for our services” narrative.

    • biscuit@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      I legitimately would’ve paid for the reddit subscription if it meant keeping Reddit Sync. It’s nonsense. They just wanted the apps out of the picture.

      My Reddit use has declined 70% because I only access it from my computer or through Firefox for Android (which is damn near unusable).

      • ShortFuse@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You just reminded me to cancel my Reddit Premium subscription. It was $30/year. Not sure what to do with my 75K coins.

    • Randy_Bobandy@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I learned about catbox.moe recently. It’s pretty great. Simple interface, uploads up to 200mb, files are kept forever, and when you upload a picture, it gives you the actual direct link to the image; not like every other image hoster that gives you a link to the “image page”, then you have to right click on the image and copy the link address to actually get the direct link.

      Only thing that sucks is it doesn’t strip exif data from the pictures uploaded, but not a huge deal since I just use it for memes and random pics anyway.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Whatever they’ve lost, they still retain their hard-earned reputation as being a cesspit of trolls and bigots.