I’m going to predict that at the 11th hour they walk back the pricing to a reasonable number, as it attempt to 1) save face and 2) to be able to point to their investors and the media that they tried negotiating.
Yeah, I think that’s a possible way that this goes down. I also think that if they did that it’d be a mistake. I think Apollo, RIF, and the other 3rd party apps are gone. Even if reddit announced yesterday that they were going to keep the API free, let alone negotiate a middle ground, I think 3rd party apps are gone and not coming back. On the 3rd party level I don’t even really think it’s the cash grab that’s the problem, it’s the lack of communication and trust. Even if reddit were to bend over backwards to try to keep them, I don’t think there’s anything they can do to make up for the lack of trust this has created in reddit’s leadership. Same thing goes for the mods. The mods are arguably reddits most important users. They make the site usable for everyone else and if reddit was ever to become profitable I think the people spez would have to thank for that would be the mods who made the spaces that people wanted to come be a part of. They can’t trust reddits leadership either. It doesn’t matter what shiny new toys reddit may try to roll out to make their job easier, it doesn’t matter what exceptions they try to carve into their new API policy. Common thread here is noone wants to sink their time into something that might change as fast as reddit has shown it can. Being a 3rd party dev or a mod takes a lot of time out of your day. Faced with the choice of leaving or laboring for a company that clearly doesn’t respect the value you add to their service I think that most would choose to flee the sinking ship.
I think there are other motivations which will bring devs and mods back to reddit. Devs like the large user base and frankly I have no idea what motivates the volunteer mods other than a misguided sense of purpose.
Stop dreaming! Don’t get me wrong, I wish you’re right, but they’ve been too stubborn for too long to change course now. They’ll appear weak and loose the faih and support of their investors.
On top of all that, the corporate side of reddit want to gain control of the community. The way I think they see it is that it’s not a good thing that “mods work for free moderating their forums”. They do not have control of their own platform, and I believe that this doesn’t go down with investors - if I’m dumping my own money into a company, I want to feel confident that the company is moving in the right direction and they have the necessary controls to do so. Many of us will agree that that is what is unique about reddit and why we love it, but when you introcude investors, business and profits, you need to be able to control your own company to be able to make profit.
Yes, there are subtle ways to control the reddit community whilst still giving the impression that it’s free and fair (like what they did with the woman ceo a few years ago, remember?) , but really, all this bad press with the apis is stemming from reddit as a company not being able to control it’s own platform. Twitter did exactly the same thing and I for one hadn’t even noticed.
I’m going to predict that at the 11th hour they walk back the pricing to a reasonable number, as it attempt to 1) save face and 2) to be able to point to their investors and the media that they tried negotiating.
It’s too late.
Yeah, I think that’s a possible way that this goes down. I also think that if they did that it’d be a mistake. I think Apollo, RIF, and the other 3rd party apps are gone. Even if reddit announced yesterday that they were going to keep the API free, let alone negotiate a middle ground, I think 3rd party apps are gone and not coming back. On the 3rd party level I don’t even really think it’s the cash grab that’s the problem, it’s the lack of communication and trust. Even if reddit were to bend over backwards to try to keep them, I don’t think there’s anything they can do to make up for the lack of trust this has created in reddit’s leadership. Same thing goes for the mods. The mods are arguably reddits most important users. They make the site usable for everyone else and if reddit was ever to become profitable I think the people spez would have to thank for that would be the mods who made the spaces that people wanted to come be a part of. They can’t trust reddits leadership either. It doesn’t matter what shiny new toys reddit may try to roll out to make their job easier, it doesn’t matter what exceptions they try to carve into their new API policy. Common thread here is noone wants to sink their time into something that might change as fast as reddit has shown it can. Being a 3rd party dev or a mod takes a lot of time out of your day. Faced with the choice of leaving or laboring for a company that clearly doesn’t respect the value you add to their service I think that most would choose to flee the sinking ship.
I think there are other motivations which will bring devs and mods back to reddit. Devs like the large user base and frankly I have no idea what motivates the volunteer mods other than a misguided sense of purpose.
You wrote really good stuff, but please use paragraphs next time. Holy crap wall of text.
Stop dreaming! Don’t get me wrong, I wish you’re right, but they’ve been too stubborn for too long to change course now. They’ll appear weak and loose the faih and support of their investors.
On top of all that, the corporate side of reddit want to gain control of the community. The way I think they see it is that it’s not a good thing that “mods work for free moderating their forums”. They do not have control of their own platform, and I believe that this doesn’t go down with investors - if I’m dumping my own money into a company, I want to feel confident that the company is moving in the right direction and they have the necessary controls to do so. Many of us will agree that that is what is unique about reddit and why we love it, but when you introcude investors, business and profits, you need to be able to control your own company to be able to make profit.
Yes, there are subtle ways to control the reddit community whilst still giving the impression that it’s free and fair (like what they did with the woman ceo a few years ago, remember?) , but really, all this bad press with the apis is stemming from reddit as a company not being able to control it’s own platform. Twitter did exactly the same thing and I for one hadn’t even noticed.