(Discussion) Would you pay for Reddit Premium IF it allowed you to continue using your favorite app?
(Discussion) Would you pay for Reddit Premium IF it allowed you to continue using your favorite app?
I keep thinking this would have been a much better sell to devs and to users. I have always used Sync, and Boost. I tried the official app a few times, but really only used it for the chat feature. I didn't want to pay for it, but (I am embarrassed to admit it) I would pay premium to keep my app. I think this would have worked out better for Reddit than the garbage they are pulling right now.
Would that have been a more reasonable solution in your opinion as well?
I would have considered that at the start, but at this point they've damaged their ecosystem so much, and correspondingly Lemmy has grown a lot, so I don't see why I would go back either way.
Yeah, the fact that he seems devoted to following musk's business practices leaves litte faith for Reddit to ever get back on the right track again. Besides, I'm loving my time here at the fediverse and will probably start selfhosting my own private Lemmy server soon!
Yeah exactly. My trust and relationship with reddit has been damaged. Even if they roll back all the API pricing changes the damage is already done.
At the very least they would need to fire spez for me to think anything has changed or is going to get better.
Hah, no. Are you asking if I want to pay for access to a platform that is already dependant on its users to create or aggregate content, while they are already making ad money off my eyeballs? Heck, no, never. If that site cannot make enough money on ads alone, while being one /were of the most visited non-porn sites on the internet, then maybe they should reconsider their other expenses. E.x. Is it really necessary to have a downtown office in an expensive us city, or pay out high CEO wages. I can only really conclude that they are being stupid about this. If they want me back, they are going to have to beg.
They took a 250m funding round and used it to build an nft site. reddit's problems are 100% self created. Think about how ama's used to be and how they managed to kill that. They could have had several revenue streams just based on ama's.
We are literally the product that Reddit offers. It’s not like they produce content like Netflix etc.
They’re literally trying to sell the product to the product.
But that is exactly the problem with third party apps ..they don't show ads so they make no add revenue on people using apps like Sync and Apollo or RIF.. The official app does. I understand why they are trying to push people to their app, but the route they took was worst case scenario.
Third party app users generate content that make adds possible. Get out of here with this pitty reddit problems.
You're ignoring the other effects of third party apps - which is to have significantly added to the number of users they have to show ads to in the first place.
Making their API free encouraged active development which increased user engagement. So it absolutely did increase their revenue because it helped to increase the popularity of their site in the first place.
Once upon a time, Reddit didn't even have ads.
They've showed extremely bad faith. That's hard to recover from.
Three weeks ago, I totally would have… Apollo was life! Now, I don’t think anything could lure me back…
With Spez’s comments about how Reddit has all this data, and “we’re not going to just give that away for free”, I think anyone left on that platform is going to get sold so hard to anyone with two nickels to rub together, that they will effectively have zero privacy or anonymity… no thanks, Spez.
Yeah, the problem rn is that Reddit is shitting on its users, sometime ago, I'd pay, but now I'm gone for good, even if they revert everything
Had they come out and said "hey guys, we really need to actually be making money here. We know it's not ideal, but itll allow us to further invest in the site and its community", there really wouldn't have been a fuss. Sure people would have been upset, but most would've gotten it.
Instead they have to act like petulant children throwing a temper tantrum when they don't get exactly what they want exactly when they want it.
If that had been the compromise, that users of this party apps needed to be premium, I'd have grumbled, but thought 50 a year is worth it to subsidize the costs of running the site without ads using the api.
Now, hell no. I'm transitioning the community I ran to lemmy, and trying to start communities here. Between lemmy, tildes, and royal road, I have everything I had on reddit.
If you had asked me a month ago, I’d have said absolutely, as long as it keep Reddit alive.
Now? Absofuckinglutely not. I’m a firm believer in putting my money where my mouth is. I haven’t accessed Reddit (intentionally) since the 11th. And my original plan was to see how it all played out, and still probably browse only when I’m at my desk, on my laptop. Watching it all unfold, I’m absolutely disgusted with the choices they are making, and more so with how they are treating everyone, privately, and publicly.
I won’t be going back to Reddit. And I’m ok with that. It was honestly already a bit too……money-grubbing anyhow, and all this last week just solidified that for me.
The intentionally part is my only difficulty. I’d not realized until last week just how many search results were Reddit threads. I need to start excluding Reddit from my search results.
Yeah, google search is a pain without reddit, I setup a WIndows VM to try Bing Chat, I'll see how it goes.
I don't use ChatGPT because I don't want to give them my phone number, Bing Chat only requires an email and that's fine for me (got a throwaway one just for that).
I’ve clicked a few links on here, not realizing they would go to Reddit. Only to immediately close the screen, when I realized.
And on the 12th, until I moved Apollo off my homescreen, I opened, and then immediately closed the app.
I’ve been a lot more careful now. I also agree that google is more shit without Reddit. Google had already become pretty useless, imo, anyhow. With all the sponsored shit. I also think there was at least a period of time on the 14tb that google excluded all Reddit responses. I searched for something, fully expecting Reddit to be at the top. I scrolled for a while, and there was no Reddit results. It was weird.
The fiasco has broke google results since the protest...I am not sure Google is going to keep prioritizing those results of it ends in a poor user experience.
Same, Google searching for anything has been a massive pain in the ass ever since the 11th. I should find a plugin to auto redirect from Reddit to the latest wayback machine snapshot of that post.
I was on board during reddits first year. I deleted my apps the moment sync announced it was ending service. I don't intend to go back - this post was just moreso me trying to see if this option would have been the "right" way to handle things.
No, the reason I left Reddit last week has little to do with with third party app issue. I left because the CEO has shown he isn't interested in listening or addressing community concerns.
This. He's just another arrogant authoritarian who doesn't understand where Reddit's value comes from. It's the users who will decide if Reddit survives or not, NOT the CEO's. We've seen this attitude before. Hollywood has been destroying franchises for years because they think they know better than the fans.
I wouldn't go back to reddit even if they paid me to do it.
Ok so, if they paid me, I might consider it.
They don't even pay their mods, imagine paying their users lol.
If Reddit want to settle this conflict peacefully. I want to do that. But, with recent news today I don't think so
Those are big ifs, but: if the API prices would have been reasonable and if the Reddit leadership hadn’t acted as they have, I think I might have been willing to pay for Premium. As it stands, Reddit leadership has destroyed a lot of trust, so for me that ship has sailed.
I was thinking more like ...3rd party apps only function when users have an account with premium. Skip the API pricing all together but reddit still makes money since 3PAs dont show reddits ads EDIT:typo
lmao fuck no. I was on reddit for 12 years until recently, but at this point, there's nothing they can do to win back my trust. Reddit is just another corporate giant these days, and has been for a long time. Huffman is the reason I no longer wish to support reddit in any form, and they can make promises all they want - I've happily jumped ship and will be staying here.
Lol, not anymore.
No way. I've lost all faith in Reddit as a company.
I can’t wait to see the market show this during their IPO.
No. They're allowing more and more spam outside of their ad platform. They're actively user-hostile. I already don't like it for free, why the hell would I want to pay for it?
No, bridge is already burnt.
I think if they'd framed it properly, in that by using Apollo I'm bypassing their ad revenue and costing them money, I'd see it as a reasonable compromise that I pay for Premium to support the company and carry on using Reddit in the way I preferred.
Now? Fuck u/spez
Yeah. Like two or three weeks ago if they said third party apps need to create a couple dollar per month subscription, then I probably would have bit. Now, with the current leadership? Nope.
Not anymore, they lost me with all these interviews, spez showed his true colors, he is a piece of shit and doesn't deserve my money. I rather support kbin or lemmy, I've always been a FOSS enthusiast.
I might have a week ago, but after hearing Huffman say he hopes to run reddit like Elon Musk runs Twitter - no.
Did he actually say that? What is it with all of these rich people and being brain dead. I make dumb decisions too, where's my money?
No
No. Even if they decided to do something to placate us today, they've shown their hand and demonstrated they don't give a shit about their userbase. I have no plans of going back. Period.
Absolutely not. If I learned something from Twitter and Facebook and Reddit fiascos then it is to never ever let youself be trapped into a closed-source, centralized for-profit platform. So NO, unless they make it completely open source and decentralised so anyone can setup their own instance. But then again we already have Fediverse and Mastodon and Lemmy... so why bother with that, let's improve what treasure we already have.
Maybe before spez dug his heels in the ground. But now he's said too much. He admires Elon? Fuck off.
Exactly...I think from the start it would have been an understandable approach. They want to make money but understand people like their apps l.
Maybe if the fediverse didn’t exist.
I am really working on making Lemmy work. It's slowly getting there for me...learning curves. I just miss the subreddits I had for my niche hobbies. It really bums me out.
yeah, it's a bummer. on the other hand, it's a nice reminder not to put all one's eggs in one, corporate-owned basket. what happened to Reddit can happen to Discord, too. or you can get your Google account banned without an option to appeal.
i think over the next couple of months/years it will definitely get better as the community here grows. in the meantime, start a community you miss and post some stuff there!
No.
I think before (say) a week or two ago, before Huffman showed us all what he really thinks of the people using his platform, I would have said yes to paying for Premium in order to use 3rd party apps. But now I don’t want to give him a single dime.
Yeah, especially since he's not trying to stop AI-related scraping from using API calls, he's just trying to turn them into an additional revenue stream. That's my content he's selling...
That was my initial suggestion and IMO the change wouldn't be the PR nightmare that it currently is. It would have been a fair middle ground: you don't make it financially devastating for the 3PA devs, the Premium users don't get ads so that would be fair that 3PA don't get shown ads through the API
At this point I kinda lost faith in Reddit. I don't expect them to honor whatever they say, so I won't be subscribing anymore.
Well said
Hell no.
If this was an option, Reddit would have done it.
But, their goal here is to completely deplatform 3rd party apps, and my assumption is that they are doing this so that their number of active users can't be verified and those numbers can be pumped up--by counting bots and all sorts of crap.
This is the same tactic Twitter used when they were negotiating with Elon. More "users" is more money.
If they had given us a heads up that we would need a subscription, early enough in advance.
If they didnt limit the content we could access.
If the price wasnt ridiculous - Im not paying Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Game Pass money to access a web forum.
Then sure.
But Spez fucked it up. Hes shown that he really doesnt care about the communities, the people that make it up, or even reddit itself. Hes too bent on making that IPO and bailing out as soon as he can.
No
With how spez is handling this? No.
At this point, no. I took June as a Lemmy test drive, and turns out I like it better. The API change doesn't affect me too much, as I primarily interacted with Reddit through a web browser, but generally things have been going downhill for Reddit. I found a viable alternative, I'm sticking with it.
Two weeks ago I would've honestly paid $5 per month to get full and unlimited access to third party apps. Sync was my most used app. After the shit they pulled, no fucking way. Reddit lost all their credibility the way they treated the third party app developers and the moderators
I had reddit premium although I used a third party app. I wanted to support the platform. I spent so much time on it and really liked the way reddit worked.. being centered around communities and giving them the power to have their own rules.
I canceled my subscription a week ago and will not go back. Needless to say, this isn't a company I want to have any of my money.
I felt the same, cancelling my subscription after 10 years on a 16 years account.
If we never had all this drama where reddit showed its true colours, I think I probably would have (as an alternative to the API being paid). It is fine by me that reddit has to pay the bills in some way.
But lol, holy shit has reddit been awful in the past few weeks. The way they went about with their changes has been completely disrespectful towards reddit users, third party devs, etc. I don't want to give them any money now. It's almost comical how dumb their actions were in that regard. This isn't the first or only thing I've disliked about reddit, but wow did it blow the others out of the water.
By comparison, I've already donated $20 to kbin, the instance I use. If reddit had treated its users nice, they could have had that money. I have no qualms about paying for my usage. But instead reddit makes me almost want to pay money to see them fail.
If you had asked me one week ago, I guess the answer would have been a yes. With the way Reddit and its CEO behaved the last few days, right now you would need to pay me to used Reddit again. Fingers crossed the feediverse will keep enough users to make it a real alternative for lots of people.
I wouldn't have paid for, but i would have accepted much better. "API usage is ad free hence only premium users can access it" is much better than "API users are freeloaders that take more than they are giving, fuck them!"
Lol no, fuck Reddit. Enough is enough. There's no salvaging that.
I mean, it's not a theoretical scenario, Infinity is going the paid route so you can do just that if you want. Except of all nsfw, which is exactly what I was using Infinity for. Anyway poor Infinity dev, putting their head into the lion's mouth.
No reddit is dead to me. Anything that is used by ceos to fuck over the people. Let it burn for all I care.
Actually scratch that. Let it pump to obscene levels and after all those rich riches have bought in. Dump that thing into the Earth's core.
Far too much money and corruption in this world.
I absolutely would have if things were handled differently, but at this point my only goal is to see spez get his ass fired.
It would depend on the price, and also we would need to live in a hypothetical world where Reddit hasn't done any of the stupid shit they've done in the past month. As of right now, I can't imagine giving Reddit my money knowing what a PoS spez is
Yeah this is the thing. I would have happily paid it before spez revealed himself to be an irredeemable piece of shit. Now, I've no interest in filling his coffers. Policy needs to change and he needs to go, no negotiation, I don't trust him and I don't think he's a good steward for the site.
No, once they showed what they're up to, this could happen again in some new kind of paywall. Really hope Lemmy continue it's ascension
Back at the beginning of all this I would have been willing to spend $1-2 a month or so. But at this point it's become clear that Reddit is completely untrustworthy, I wouldn't give them a dime.
It's funny, because that was the obvious solution from the start.
"Third-party apps don't sell our Awards or include any of the NFT/Vault stuff1, and we're not making money. So from June 30th we'll only be allowing Reddit Premium subscribers to use third-party apps. The official Reddit app will continue to be free for everyone."
I honestly think people would've understood.
But if they announced it now, it'd just make people even angrier. 🙃
--
1 As far as I knowYou're right, it would be too late...
But it would have allowed users access to awards and coins and chat features without stepping on the toes of Reddit. It's crazy that they didn't come up with that rather than this.
No i don't want another subscription. Never had a problems with ads as long as they are not abused
No, because the sudden API lockout of third party apps with yearly subscriptions shows they do not care about contractual obligations.
If it was a few weeks ago, I would be happy to pay 1$/month for RiF. Now I just don't care anymore
Reddit exists to make its investors money, that's it's only goal now. The userbase are a complication to deal with in order to appease the advertisers. It's not the platform for users any more.
I created an account just to emphatically say NO.
Not at this point. I don't want to give bad faith actors my business, and Mr. Huffman has shown himself to be a big ol' penis. At the beginning? With unadulterated access (i.e. NSFW content) and gentler rules for 3rd party apps? Sure, I would have been ok with that.
It's amazing how every time I think Huffman has destroyed every shred of credibility and goodwill he goes and digs the hole even deeper.
I personally don't think the API pricing was ever meant to be reasonable or cover their true costs. Between the absurd pricing, the short timing, their test that blocked mobile web browsers, and refusal to even negotiate, it's clear to me that they just want to kill 3rd party apps and force everyone on mobile into the official mobile app where they can enforce their monetization schemes.
Some time ago most likely yes. As for now I would never go back to reddit.
Not anymore. Not after how much of a shitbag spez has been. Im done.
10$ annually to login via api. Not a single cent more.
Now that reddit fucked it up and I've found a nice community, idk.
I’d be willing to pay for Apollo premium(I should have a while ago) to pay for API costs, but fuck Reddit! Seriously if Apollo/RIF came forward and said “Reddit is going to charge us for API, the price is high but reasonable” I’d have bought Apollo premium to help out, but 20mil? Nah, that’s Reddit crushing competition and fuck them.
Yes. One of the legitimate issues with 3rd party apps is the lack of ads. Paying for Reddit premium would solve that issue because premium is supposed to be ad-free anyway
Originally I would have. Like if they made it something reasonable, $1/month for the API access for example. And the app developer could make it a $2-3 a month subscription so they also get funding on top.
The way Reddit has acted though they burned all bridges. I nuked my 11 year old account and overwrote all my comments and posts for that time.
It absolutely makes sense why Reddit is doing this, but it will only get worse from there. This is not about ad-revenue (or it's only a small part of it). Reddit wants to get rid of third party apps for several reasons:
- User data, they can't track you as well and sell your data if you don't use their native apps
- NFTs: Third party apps are similar to old.reddit.com, there are no avatars, limited awards, new Reddit features are often ignored. Can't sell shit in your shop if your users can't see it
- Advertisement: Of course they could have pushed ads over the API, but at this point it's not enough for them
- Censorship: The API is also used for archiving posts, keeping a history of posts and comments and so on. Reddit wants full control over their content
Reddit is already making the mobile browser version of their site unusable (It keeps forcing you to the app, doesn't show some content, doesn't show NSFW and they even made a beta version for a few users that breaks the entire site). They want you on their app. old.reddit.com is next to go, I bet on it, it will take a while but it's 100% at this point.
The whole site is fucked :-/
Probably, yeah. Now I'm less enthusiastic since I don't trust Reddit at all and I'd be only willing to pay as a way to support them.
I'm not sure I would accept Reddit paying me to go back, let alone me paying to use Reddit. The API debacle has laid bare the problem with centralised, proprietary social media - the users who create the value of the platform ultimately have no control over the platform. If it wasn't APIs and third party apps it could by anything else.
Why invest time (and money) contributing to something that could be pulled out from our feet at any point, with no recourse?
Honestly, if they started with that and said the reason is that they need to up their revenue because they're losing money. I might do because it is only £29.99 when going through the Reddit app.
HOWEVER, because of what has gone on since.... f' them.
I paid for Reddit Premium. (have cancelled it now).
If the API would be full-featured (so including explicit content) and if I still don't get ads, I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable amount.
At least I would have before their CEO started burning bridges. Right now I'm done with reddit.
They're not getting my eyeballs nor my money anymore.
I told the Infinity dev that I would pay for access. But I somehow expected a reasonable price. And after the shitshow of the last days I am not interested in Reddit anymore. I think I will pay for a few months because I said so and that it is then.
I wouldn't go back if it stayed the same for free lmao
Sigh, I’ll get hanged for this, but probably. I really enjoyed Reddit, and the wide variety of content/information I could easily access. When I had my son, Reddit was invaluable, and frankly still is in regards to parenting advice. I’m excited to check out the Fediverse and is happily contribute to it growing into a large community and resource. But the gap is felt in the meantime.
Still, I hope Huffman is given his due for his obnoxious bullshit.
I would have
Initially I would have for like 5€/month I guess. But now, I'll just directly use the browser with ublock when I need something. For scrolling I'll stay here
In all honesty, maybe I would go back if I could pay a few bucks a month to use my own client that didn't show ads.
But that's because there are a few niche communities on Reddit that don't seem to want to migrate anywhere else.
I can 100% acknowledge that social media is damaging to my psychological well-being. So while I have an unhealthy addiction to it, I can luckily draw the line at paying for it. I will never pay to use any social media platform.
No, I'm done. My accounts are gone. Not interested in starting over
Nah.
I would have IF it had been the solution Reddit had came up with in the first place AND they hadn't destroyed my trust in them with their handling of the protests.
I have an issue with your proposed solution though: it does not address the use case of moderation / accessibility / utility tools and bots.
Not with how the site’s being run now, no
nope
(I am embarrassed to admit it)
Don't be embarrassed about being willing to pay for a service you find worth it. The same people who will chide you for this will turn around and spend their money on something you find dumb. It's your money.
As for the actual prompt, I don't think I would. Primarily for a few reasons. I already pay a few subscriptions and reddit does not provide enough value, for me personally, to overwrite other ones I'm paying for and I'm not interested in adding more. My wife and I also used to browse a lot, so we'd have to pay for two as there's no family plan or a convenient way for us both to benefit, such as yt premium or Netflix would.
I'll be the odd one out. Yeah. I'd pay $12 a year (I think thats the number spez threw out) to use sync as I do now: add free and access to all subreddits.