Relay was (yup) one of the third party apps that survived the API-calypse. But this sort of model is unsustainable in the long run, given that the competitor (the broken native app) is free and unlimited.
The obvious future monopoly of the broken native app is bad for the platform in the long run, given that Reddit always sucked off ideas from third party apps; and now there’s no incentive whatsoever to make it better, after Reddit Inc. killed the better competitors.
Yeah, that was going to be the outcome of all the third party apps. I get the feeling a lot of people didnt understand that.
And theres nothing wrong with that. I mean, it sucks, but reddit wanting to make money from giving access to its APIs to third parties is fine. What wasnt fine was the ridiculous price they pulled out of their ass, and the lack of any real time for app developers to prepare for it (this was Apollo’s issue with the situation).
But had the API pricing been reasonable and a fair timeframe for app developers to implement it, this is what we would have seen, all the third party apps charging a subscription to access reddit. The other option would have been a higher initial cost for the app, to cover costs for the estimated average liftime of the app.
Yeah, that was going to be the outcome of all the third party apps.
Yup, it’s no surprise for me either. Still something to document about it.
And theres nothing wrong with that.
Besides being done in a scummy way (that you already addressed), it’s overall bad for the platform in the long term. Those third party apps didn’t generate direct profit, but they generated value - it was yet another “chain” keeping users in Reddit, as the official app is trash. And Reddit consistently picked features from those apps to actually improve theirs, now this is gone.
I never understood why reddit didn’t go to asking for a cut of the third party sales for a revenue sharing model over this api usage tier.
But then a look at the permissions asked of the official reddit app made me understand.
Reddit Is Fun actually had a revenue sharing agreement with reddit.
Spez ripped it up when he came back as CEO
Wow, they’ve really accelerated the enshitification, haven’t they?
Why would anyone use Reddit?
If the paid API wasn’t rolled out as a complete trainwreck I’d probably be paying. And probably wouldn’t be here, too.
Relay was my app for 12 years so I wish him well with this but I’m not planning on going back to using it or reddit.
A lot of people are “stuck” because of the content still there, like Psythik said; you either look for info in Reddit or you get to navigate through blogspam. (I do the later because I’d rather not give Reddit more traffic. Screw it. Complex websearching techniques alleviate the issue.)
Others are like this:
I use Reddit quite frequently. Spez (the Co-owner) ist just trying to be like Mark Zuckerberg. He thinks he can do whatever he thinks is necessary for profit. He could really care less about his fan base, or users on the site.
This is a great model!
It means I don’t have to pay anything, which I appreciate.
How addicted does someone have to be to pay to use reddit. Average reddit users is probably fine fine with the official app or moved to browser so would also see this type of reddit user as bizzare. Would like to know how much they rack up in fees using reddit.
Yeah it’s just crazy because if you’re into reddit enough to pay for it you’re probably producing value for them in the form of quality posts.
I checked out the relay subreddit and there was a thread of people trying to see what plan they would need to pay for. Was insane seeing smartphone type plans when it came to social media usage like it’s some monthly utility they need.
