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Comment by MuffinFlavored | Hacker News Reader

> If the blackout is only for two days then they're right

Yeah... I don't know the tradeoffs at play but 2 days is... extremely insignificant / probably a bad decision by all of the moderators? It sends a message sure but, it's a bunch of "whiny reddit mods" versus C-level executives in a "help us make API more affordable versus help us not lose a ton of money offering generous free API hosting/usage" negotiation.

How does the CEO + team not just ignore this two day spat? They are in the business of making money. Why should they foot the bill for the API calls? So they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off. Sucks but at the end of the day, will it really matter in 6 months?

Now, blackout for a week or two weeks to really hurt their ad revenue traffic, sure

But 2 days?... lol

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>Why should they foot the bill for the API calls?

You have a serious misunderstanding of how this works. They are footing the bill for API calls regardless. All reddit access by users is to external public facing API's. We are not on their internal network. They MUST have accessible servers + data costs. In all honesty the 3rd parties are probably more efficient as they are a lot less bloated which means LESS costs.

I'm just waiting to see third party apps that, in lieu of API access, work by scraping the website, and are a LOT heavier on the servers.

A major selling point of API's is to lighten the load.

These apps will then also be a lot heavier on the phone’s battery and the users patience. So I doubt they will retain the experience the users are accustomed to.

Not really, all you need is a server that does all the scraping using cron jobs/etc and creates a reddit api backend service that pushes up new content when new content is added. In this way all that extra load would be via some server on digital ocean or even serverless functions.

You could maybe even get away with the 100 calls/minute free tier if you were doing it that way. The problem is that the user can't vote, submit, comment, or check anything personalized then, which really limits the value of the third-party app anyway.

I wonder if Reddit will let arbitrary users generate their own API keys and then each user plugs their own key into a third party app as creds to stay within the free tier limits.

Right now the new "Dev Platform" (API) is waitlisted so hard to tell.

Well, there's also opportunity costs via lost ad revenue, which they're seemingly attempting to charge for.

What the 2 day blackout does is it nudges people to explore alternatives. With this, Reddit management has lowered the barriers to exit. When the next boycott comes, migration for many subreddits will be easier.

> When the next boycott comes, migration for many subreddits will be easier.

Which will be when all the third party apps stops working and people realize what hot garbage the official app is.

What alternate website can I tack onto a search to get an actual human's answer to a question that is otherwise only served by blogspam?

StackOverflow?

That works for a certain class of problem, but if I have a question about woodworking, home repairs, personal finance, a video game, or a bit of geography, it's not so comprehensive.

https://woodworking.stackexchange.com/

https://diy.stackexchange.com/

https://money.stackexchange.com/

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/

https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/

Perfection

It also demonstrates to Reddit management that the moderators are capable of a coordinated action.

> What the 2 day blackout does is it nudges people to explore alternatives

I don't think 2 days is significant enough for that slash I don't think an alternative to reddit exists given the fact that it has millions of users and millions of different niche subreddits

no it doesn't, I have barely even noticed there is a blackout because there is plenty of content from non blacked out subs. The only thing I've noticed is when I try to visit subreddits I like some of them are blacked out. A 2 day blackout does literally nothing, just virtue signaling

Exactly. I said the same on reddit and got downvoted (not that it matters, but indicates the mindset of people downvoting). They really thing virtue signalling is sufficient and impactful lol. 48 hours means nothing.

It's not 48 hours though. /r/AskHistorians has gone permananently dark, or protected. Existing content/comments will remain, but only as an archive.

No they didn't, https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/

but we're already commenting on the only good reddit alternative... :)

Correct. I’m here because of the blackout and find it a refreshing change

You won't be talking about stocks or NBA / NFL / NHL on HackerNews (for good reason :))

For my hobbies (vinyl, headphones, audio gear, android), the forums are still the superior way to interact with other hobbyists. Some of these forums have been around since early 2000s are still around and very active.

Fingers crossed braindead redditors don't migrate here and ruin this space.

> Why should they foot the bill for the API calls? So they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off. Sucks but at the end of the day, will it really matter in 6 months?

This would be all fine and well if their official app weren't garbage. They do everything in their power to push you to the mobile app, but they seemingly haven't improved it since its inception.

> This would be all fine and well if their official app weren't garbage

It's not garbage. I've used it for years. It's fine. Try not being dramatic online / feeding into the narrative that so and so app is garbage or not / parroting other things people say / being picky.

It is garbage. I've tried many times. Every time, my disappointment with the experience mirrored many of the complaints others have with it.

It may have been a "fine" experience for you, but that does not give you the right to attack ad-hominem others who did not have the same experience. If you want to attack their position, attack their arguments. Show us how the official app is at least barely usable. Or how navigation and search aren't like children's toys. Or how the iOS app actually got better instead of worse after Reddit Inc. bought it. Or how the Android app got any of the features the iOS app deigned to retain post-acquisition. Or how the YouTube-esque ad-pushing makes for a good UX. Or how comment scores and user karma aren't totally infuriating to look for.

If you can't argue on merits, you cannot participate in discussions of any kind except primary school 'no u'.

I agree, it's not garbage. It's designed and optimized to provide a primarily image/video experience, and focus the app more on the endless scrolling / low information density, skinner-box experience that has infected nearly all social media. The de-emphasis placed on comments and discussion is clear from the design. The app is indicative of the direction where Reddit would like to take the site.

Needless to say, there are many people (such as myself) who enjoy what Reddit is/was, and would prefer it to stay that way. Emphasis was not placed on posts themselves, but rather the discussion surrounding the posts. This design goal is clear in the layout of the old.reddit.com layout, which is optimized for information density, back and forth conversation, and parallel conversational threads (quite unique compared with modern social media apps).

So long as third-party apps and the old.reddit front-end exist, Reddit can still exist as a discussion-board focused site that (in the minds of some users) keeps the site unique. With the death of third-party apps, we are forced into the vision that Reddit has for the site instead. I'm sure that model gets more "engagement" (the skinner-box formula certainly makes a lot of money for other social media), but it also ruins what makes Reddit, Reddit.

Therefore for older users, it's not a matter of being "picky" that the app is "garbage". It's actually much worse than that. If the app was merely "garbage" there would be a holdout that the app could improve. Instead it's a fear that Reddit is changing the site dramatically to be more in line with modern social media. Those who like Reddit for being Reddit, and would rather Reddit stay Reddit than try to be Instagram/TikTok are obviously not happy with what they see as what Reddit is all about changing. There will be a similar outcry when old.reddit.com is inevitably sunsetted.

As a user who likes the old discussion board format of Reddit, I am obviously going to be unhappy when my personal favourite third party app (Sync in my case) dies. I don't need to doomscroll through skinner-box style feeds, getting a dopamine hit everytime a Twitter screenshot confirms my political biases, or strawmans opinions of those who believe differently than myself. Maybe I'll just go "touch grass" as the kids say these days.

This is my thoughts exactly. The app design and usability are fine enough, even pleasant in reference to using other modern social media apps. But what makes me sad is that I don't use any of those other social media apps for a reason. Specifically, I enjoy discussion and being part of a community, not just blindly consuming content and mindlessly scrolling. It seems like the era for that has passed though, at least in a centralized way.

I installed it today and uninstalled it. I also used 2 days a few years back, it was garbage so I deleted. Did that again today. It's not hyperbole to say the app is garbage.

Have you tried any third party app and compared the experiences? If you have not, you will not understand how crappy it is compared to third party apps.

You're in minority who enjoy garbage software. There's a good reason why people want to use alternatives and not reddit app and why so many Reddit users make so much fuss about it.

have you tried other apps ? Just try relay for reddit, for one day and tell me reddit's app even compares. Being able to just choose galleries, image views, or cards, and have many other aesthetical features is priceless. Reddit's app is hardly usable in my opinion, not the way I use reddit anyhow.

In the Android app, audio in GIFs (that have audio in the target link) have only infrequently worked for years.

> They are in the business of making money.

Sounds like they're pretty bad at it, then. 4 days ago, their CEO claimed that Reddit is not profitable.

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

Cause he 10x'd their headcount.

If he kept headcount low like craigslist, wikipedia, etc. They would probably be profitable

Minorly profitable, though, not "giant IPO" profitable.

Reddit has investors who clearly want their money back with a nice return on top.

2 days shows Reddit that the mods can organize. It's a warning shot.

Now, you can't entirely extrapolate from there to an indefinite blackout, but statements like this from the CEO seem like one of the best ways to make it more likely—especially given the average orneriness level of the stereotypical Redditor.

> they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off

I believe they aim for selling API access to AI companies, for (re)training data. Third party apps are just taking collateral damage.

If that were the case, they could offer exclusive deals to existing mobile apps that are NOT using it for AI/data-scraping. Reddit is also financed by the same VC's that finance OpenAI, do you honestly think they didn't know what was going on? They knew, this is not just about AI Companies, this is about control, and honestly maybe some Elon Musk fan-boyism by Steve Huffman.

I'm not saying anyone planned it this way, but it's no surprise to see this particular length of time. You can't accuse the mod of failing care since they did participate. But then again, pushing it much longer poses the risk that the mod loses their subreddit to a new volunteer when Reddit inevitably forces the subreddit open again.

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