At some point he'll either be forced to back down or replace the mods of the big subs with people willing to cross the picket line, I don't see why he doesn't just pull the plaster off now either way rather than drag this out bleeding credibility all the while?
I think they should call it off, and announce that they will go back to the drawing board. Then restart talks with the API users and third party app developers.
What if they reduced the price of Reddit premium to $3/month and made API and third party apps only available for Reddit premium subscribers?
- Reddit would get many more premium subscribers
- App developers would be able to avoid managing subscription fee’s themselves and continue as before
- Users of the official Reddit app would not be affected
- Users of third party apps would have to pay for Reddit Premium - but maybe at a discount
Talking with regular non-techy people who use reddit regularly - nobody outside our bubble even knows about or cares about the whole API fiasco. Most people I've talked with shrug and say they'll just use the official app if that's what it all means. The others asked if they can just pay and use the same 3rd party app in the future.
Reddit has been, and is filled with drama. These public news pieces make the community appear extremely naïve, to a fault. When people hear some of these apps had tens, or hundreds of thousands of users that circumvented ad revenue for reddit - they mostly do not have sympathy for the 3rd party app developers.
Just being realistic. I like reddit as much as the next guy, and agree the leadership is terrible (reddit has a long history of terrible leadership).
If you drive the power users away, nobody is sharing content or engaging in the comments regularly enough for the 9% of casual commenters to stay engaged and they leave - then the 90% goes because there's nothing at all for them to lurk around.
I think being honest about their goal would've reduced a lot of the backlash. The issue is that they're claiming to be working with the community when it's blatantly obvious that they aren't.
Ideally they'd just go to more reasonable/free API pricing though.
The way he's described things, it seems like he could've done this or that hail mary thing, a quick gofundme round maybe, to see if the Apollo users wanted to get behind the app in order to keep it by providing the six-month cushion that Reddit will not, and see if they can work out a new, still-equitable pricing scheme. My guess is that as an app with a huge userbase and reputation, he probably could have pivoted this into better income, even. But it also looks to me like he's just taken a sober look at things and realized that the nature of the game has changed and he doesn't want to play.
People on here keep saying the mods are deluded, but I think the mods are something much more powerful: disillusioned.
An organization needs to make enough money to live, but it doesn't need quarterly RoI and growth. That is a demand of a public market. Reddit got greedy and sold out.
It's time to start building new communities outside reddit. It won't happen overnight, but it needs to happen.
- Extend the 30 day to apply the pricing to 6 months (at least) to let people figure it out their stuff ; - Give some leverage for the _existing_ 3 party apps that contributed to reddit till this point on the form of a smaller price;
GME / BBBY is able to raise money from a mountain of APEs by basically giving the crowd what they want.
Reddit needs more funding to turn into a profitable company. They also need these 3rd party apps and other such features (that they're cutting because they don't make enough profits yet).
Just be honest with the world. Reddit needs money, please support the IPO, lets see how much money is raised and where it can go. Promise to use the money to buy out Apollo or something.