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Comment by 2Gkashmiri | Hacker News Reader

Yep. Reddit just pulled a twitter. .

Remember years ago when twitter pulled the same on clients. Slowly there weren't any third party clients left when back in 2010, there were many?

Yeah. Knew this day was coming so let's hope this kills reddit

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Twitter clients were free and were doing very well until February 2023, when Musk shut the API down.

You apparently don't remember 10 years ago when Twitter was killing all the most popular third party twitter clients with its stingy token limit

https://www.androidpolice.com/2013/02/23/falcon-pro-hits-100...

I haven't used third party clients on Twitter for about a decade because the API was so limited nobody could make a fully-featured app.

It did not kill twitter then, it will not kill Reddit now

Reddit is doing a good job of killing itself. Ive been a reddit user for at least 15 years and I have watch it turn from a smart, bright and informative community to a over confidently stupid cargo cultish, narcissistic dumpster fire. I rarely visit it anymore because it s just awful.

Since most Reddit communities are opt-in this is mostly a question of smelling shit everywhere you go: time to check your shoe.

I checked my shoe and it seems like I stepped in some reddit and it smells like you.

You clearly haven't spent much time on reddit or you are part of the problem, but unless you are in a super niche subreddit with 5 people there is no escape. "tourist" like to go to subs (like the tech subs for example) they know nothing about and with great confidence spew out snarky, condescending bullshit. It's no longer about sharing and debating information it is about being "right" even if they are incorrect. Maybe I have just grown up and moved on to more mature communities where these problems don't exist

Reddit was always this, you were just out of the know when you were underneath somebody else's shoe. There's a reason why all the communities Redditors reposted from grew to vehemently hate the site and its community.

But, that being said, I really have to agree that it has degraded. The last time (years ago now) I asked a question on a tech related subreddit, almost all of the answers I got were upvote farming in some way.

Some were commenting for the sake of commenting even if it didn't answer the question. Some were telling me outright lies and stories that were not possible with with both what I and they were describing. This attitude was always prevalent, but its spread to every part of the site except for the smallest and most policed communities, at which point you may as well just stop using it and speak to your friends.

Apparently a lot of us have shoe issue then. The average quality of Reddit is quite low. It’s upvoting/downvoting at its worst. I regularly go through phases where I question the value HN brings to me and that’s despite it having far better moderation. Reddit is a lost cause.

To be fair, since Reddit wants to go all in on "growth & engagement" as opposed to a sustainable, paid model where users pay for the service, there is always going to be a faint smell of shit (in the form of spam, dark patterns and optimizing for trashy clickbait instead of longform, thoughtful discussions) no matter where you go.

Pithy, but moronic. I fail to see how a community being opt-in supposedly prevents any of the things the original commenter listed.

I browse it on Teddit, which I suspect won't be for too much longer. Reddit took their success and got complacent with VC money, and the end users have to pay for it in the form of erratic policy change.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/23/4021380/falcon-for-androi...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/new-a...

so they leveleraged third party clients when they were unknown and suddenly they want those same apps to play by their rules and some years down the line completely pull the plug when their work is done. nice

Why would you hope this kills reddit? Wtf is wrong with you to think that a company charging for access to their resources warrants it being destroyed?

They seem to be acting in good faith and giving people plenty of heads up. If the pricing is reasonable, it’s more than fair to have third parties pay for access. Apps running on reddit itself will not have to pay.

I hope to fucking god this kills Reddit, because Reddit itself provides no value.

- It's a glorified PhpBB, there's nothing brand new about Reddit.

- The comments they're making you pay for are mine, are yours, put out for free on a publicly visible website. Reddit sits down and wants to collect money from being a database?

- Reddit wants to have its cake and eat it too. their content is valuable because people are out there being mods, for free.

- Warning people in advance isn't acting in good faith. It's telling them there going to get fucked anyways, but hey, now you can plan for it!

- Their app is utter dogshit. The mobile options will now be their dogshit app, for free, or quality third party apps that will soon start charging monthly to pay for the costs. This is a way to kill third party apps, make no mistake.

remember how a few short years ago reddit would guilt shame people into paying for "server costs" on a daily basis by buying awards?

People were literally paying to keep reddit afloat for their own use. Now they are reversing course and saying "well there are costs to pay".

the fuck is wrong with them. Users kept reddit afloat for all its life because they enjoyed it and got utility out of it. They paid for the access to all of reddit, api and all by awards and suddenly they want to charge money? what were people doing earlier?

No one asked reddit to selfhost images and videos. Remove that and you can get back to 10 year old reddit in an instant but no. They want to bring algorithmic video recommendations ala tiktok. utter shit

No user is paid to post content and no mod is paid to moderate content

shouldnt mods be paid to do the work of reddit, in moderating reddit subs?

Wouldn't this mean that all mods should be chosen by Reddit? They would also have to go through the usual processes (verify identity for taxation and age, ensure not a citizen of an embargoed nation, etc)

I know the argument is that content generates revenue for Reddit, but there's no shortage of subs where the mods actively suppress content that doesn't fit the subreddit's goals. In that case, the mods are working against Reddit's interests, and "working for" the subreddit.

i have been a mod for half a dozen for the past 8 years. the general expectation was "everyone is doing this out of passion and everyone is enjoying the result."

why should i bother now? i am doing unpaid labour for reddit and they are no less charging for the time i put in so why should i not be reimbursed?

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