xray

joined 1 year ago

Do You Think There Would Have Been a Large Protest if Steve Huffman Just Said We're Charging to Use the API to Increase Revenue? in c/technology@beehaw.org

[–] xray@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

While essentially killing off 3rd party apps is disappointing, I could’ve understood and been willing to switch to the official app and maybe even pay monthly for no ads and more features.

What made me leave is how poorly Huffman and the company treated the developers, moderators, and users.

For developers:

Reddit went back on their word about no API cost changes this year
Lied about making the API cost reasonable
Gave developers very little time to adjust
Treated developers and their apps as freeloaders instead of as a source of growth for Reddit when they didn’t even have an app yet
Blatantly slandered Apollo’s developer

For moderators:

Reddit treated moderators as if their input didn’t matter despite providing free labor for the site
Framed them as being power hungry for disagreeing and protesting Reddit’s decisions

For users:

Reddit treated users as if their input didn’t matter despite Reddit being a user-generated content site
Treated their contributions to the site as Reddit’s property, not their own
Essentially said users are just a bunch of whiney babies who are powerless, have no willpower, and will visit the site no matter what we do

Also, even besides Huffman showing his true colors as being a total asshole, it just makes Reddit’s poor leadership SO evident. How do you become such a popular site with free content and free moderators, and still can’t make money? How do you manage to turn a great Reddit third-party app into a buggy mess of an official app? Why are you constantly prioritizing what you think users want instead of just listening to them? And now you essentially just told all of us: “fuck you, I own you and your content, and I am entitled to to make money off of you.”

The Internet Is Failing The Website Preservation Test in c/technology@beehaw.org

[–] xray@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah it’s funny how I always got warned about how “the internet is forever” when it comes to being care about what you post on social media, which isn’t bad advice and is kinda true, but also really kinda not true. So many things I’ve wanted to find on the internet that I experienced like 5-15 years ago are just gone without a trace.