I’m not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium
I’m not sure if this is well-known or not that they’re pushing it now, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it, especially on old.reddit.
The irony is that I was mentally prepared to have to pay for Premium to keep BaconReader. All they had to do was add an “API access” badge to that screen and none of this would have happened, plus they would have gotten a bunch more new sign-ups. I am at a loss to explain what Steve is thinking, nor why his decisions are better for profitability.
Yeah, I’d gladly pay the sub for Apollo if reddit had decided to charge a modest price for the API and Christian could make a buck off it and reddit could also make a few bucks off me.
Reddit could’ve probably 5x’d or 10x’d the money they make off me that way, but now they 0x’d it.
Same here. If they’d have just framed it differently and put the onus of paying for api access on the users (at a modest fee), almost none of the backlash would have happened.
Then I’d still be oblivious.
I prefer the world the way it was before all the consolidation. I like the ideals of the fediverse and want it to succeed.
Then I’d still be oblivious.
I prefer the world the way it was before all the consolidation. I like the ideals of the fediverse and want it to succeed.
Exactly, this is better overall I think, at least when it comes to the health of the internet as a whole.
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I have seen the same issiue with individual, niche forums: going down because of one person. It was just a matter of time for that to happen with a bigger site.
You underestimate the power of addiction.
The official app isn’t a bad thing because it’s buggy and has ads, that sucks but I’ve used much worse apps that offer less. The amount of ads and how easy they are to click accidentally is ridiculous though
It’s bad because it’s built to do what Facebook did - it always gives you something to see and a reason to keep going. Have a nice, curated mix of science and shit posts? Let’s throw some crap from the front page in there along with the ads! No one responded to your comments? We’ll make suggestions look like someone is interacting with you! Haven’t used the app in a few hours? Here’s some posts delivered in a notification to get you back in there
I left Facebook for Reddit because I realized I didn’t really enjoy it and often ended up feeling worse after using, and when the experiments they were doing came out I payed close attention. It was a real slap in the face when I saw Reddit doing similar stuff, and I checked out alternatives like tildes but nothing else was scratching the itch so I put it on the back burner.
For those of us who aren’t going back, this wakeup call was a blessing. It’s a strong reminder that corporations not only don’t care about us, they can’t - they might act friendly sometimes, but they wouldn’t hesitate to poison the water supply if they thought it would bring greater profits
Thats an interesting point, all that shit just turns me off and makes me disengage. I avoid Facebook for precisely this reason.
I have to interact with LinkedIn for professional reasons, but always do it from a PC and don’t install their app. When I get a LinkedIn message, LinkedIn helpfully emails me to let me know it’s there, but doesn’t tell me what’s in it. Then after I check on it, I get another email reminding me that LinkedIn is better on the app. They are constantly trying to get that app on my phone, which makes me wonder exactly what extra data these phone apps send that is worth so much.
It’s worse than that, because the official app spams your phone with tracking requests. I know most apps do some tracking, but users with apps that track the trackers have reported as many as 500k requests in 24 hours.
This is not only an invasive breach of privacy from a link aggregator forum, but also straight up murders your battery life.
I just got a brand new Pixel 7a before this nonsense started. I installed the reddit app because Baconreader is like twelve years old and I’d figured I’d see if their official app had gotten any better since I last used it. It hadn’t, of course, but I also noticed my brand new phone wasn’t holding a charge at all. Like, 20% battery left at 5pm while I’m still at work and barely using it.
Reddit was using over 40% of my battery while fucking IDLE. I brought this up over there and a few other people looked at it. Someone reported it was using 60% of their iPhone’s battery in the last week. It’s repugnant.
I paid for premium every month for at least 5 years. I would have probably even paid a little more to keep using Apollo. Just pure greed running the ship over there.
Why did you pay for premium?
I wanted to support something I liked. They are a business and I figured if I paid the way they were asking to be paid I’d be free to use the service as I pleased (via Apollo).
Yes. I was paying for reddit gold just to avoid seeing ads. I don’t understand why they couldn’t just have passed this kind of thing on to the end users.
Yep, I would have happily paid for the ability to keep using Sync, just like I happily paid for Sync Ultra. I’m probably not in the majority though
just reminded me to cancel premium, thank you!!
I mean, if they say “you have to pay 3 bucks a month to use 3rd party client” I would be annoyed but I would understand, and I would still be on reddit.
I would have paid $3 a month to use a third party client. I don’t want to pay $50 for bulk shit.
I would have gladly paid for a premium reddit experience, had it provided useful features. 3rd party app access is something I would have totally understood and paid for. RES features integrated, various styles such as old.reddit enshrined and protected, the option to opt in/out of various features, premium access to mod/admin subs that actually get a response, etc.
Instead they offered awards to give out. No value, no purchase.
Exactly. But they dropped exhorbitant cost on those apps and provided no runway for them to adapt their business model. So instead - I’m here on kbin and likely going to dive into an open source project to try to help get a mobile app for this out soon.
exactly! so fucked and insidious and greedy that they’re trying to weed out competition as well
Premium’s been a thing for a long time, it used to be Reddit Gold several years ago. It also used to be cheaper, $3.99/mo but it went up multiple years ago.
They might be pushing it hard right now, though. Not sure. Maybe they’re trying to entice the people who were paying for 3PA features to pay Reddit instead or something.
I currently have premium, ad free is the only way Reddit is palatable even before all this went down and I bought it ages ago when I wanted to support a thing I used every day and also have had a couple awards that extended it, it expires in August. I won’t be renewing.
It’s funny because if they did something like require Reddit premium to use 3rd party apps I would understand and honestly just pay it. Now I’m here.
This would have been such a good idea, quite literally a win/win for both reddit and 3rd party apps however that would require Spez to actually be clever and willing to work with others instead of role playing a dollar store version of Logan Roy.
It wouldn’t necessarily be a win for 3rd party apps because it still raises the cost to use them. $9 for Reddit is quite the ask already. 3rd party devs would need payment too and frankly social media ain’t worth anything over $5 to me
Same here, but not at $50/year.
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Yeah, I was an original buyer on reddit gold. Then I got 2 years free because of the Alien Blue shutdown, and I never reupped afterward, because it didn’t really add anything to the experience.
And by the looks of it “avatar upgrades” and “Custom app icons” ain’t really providing anything else of value still.
What about using old + an ad blocker?
I just use Firefox with the standard ad blocking extensions and I’ve never seen an ad on new Reddit.
Yep, except after two or three “pages” of scroll, the new Reddit UI becomes infuriatingly laggy.
The other problem with Reddit premium, have multiple accounts because you want to keep something’s separate? Well you have to pay $50 a year for each account.
Just put it all in one account and take a gamble when you’re browsing in public
Which is crap because Reddit knows which accounts are alts because of having the same IP address, device/app ID, etc.
It’s funny because if they did something like require Reddit premium to use 3rd party apps I would understand and honestly just pay it. Now I’m here.
Agreed. API access should be tied to the user anyway. 🤷♂️ And no issues with serving ads to 3p clients cause you pay to remove them .
$3.99/mo
Now that’s what I call inflation.
What’s so great about r/lounge?
Nothing.
I was gifted Reddit gold a few times over the years for random comments I made, which gave access to the lounge subreddit. It’s mostly nothing but dumb memes roleplaying as gilded age oil tycoons and the like. Definitely not worth paying anything for access to it.
ngl I always assumed that was a placeholder sub without any content, just to sustain the meme that /r/lounge was a thing
Not much that I could tell, I got gold a couple times and it seemed like people there were just the same except “oh it’s exclusive” but the memes werent any better.
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Reddit used enshitification. It was super effective!
“The suckers we talked into giving us money for our crazy salaries over the past decade+ want a return on their investment so cough up”
Man, I signed up reddit premium in like April because I wanted to support the site that I’d been using for 13 years. Just two months later, I’ve got so much regret lol
You can always donate that money Lemmy devs instead.
Reddit got greedy and arrogant. They forgot where their money came from.
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It was always there. Back in the day if you gave someone gold for a comment, you were giving them one month of premium.
Did you only use third party apps and old Reddit? Because if you ever used their app or the new redesign, idk how you could miss it
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Old Reddit when it was Reddit. Then rif on mobile only.
I mean, personally, yeah. I’ve been on Narwhal + old reddit for half a decade at least.
Those badge things people kept giving to comments came mostly from premium users, but I’m not sure premium gave you anything else.
Been on Reddit every day for 12 years, but have been using apps this entire time (RIP Sync for Reddit) so I might be a little out of the loop so:
What badges?
They’re probably talking about the awards (ex: gold, silver, wholesome, helpful)
@tst123 This. It’s not because of a hissy fit over the worlds worst reddit app, or a bunch of honorless fucknuggets ruining shit for the rest of us. it’s that they are or were on a oldschool shareware-esk model: pay for the fucking thing your leaching from. Fact is weather or not anyone likes it even fedverse needs money to keep the lights on.
Leaving that garbage website was the best decision I’ve made for my mental health since pot
Leaving pot or starting pot?
Yes
First one and then the other.
Pol Pot?
I actually -was- paying for premium for over 6 years… canceled now
Same - well, 3 years, but still. I never thought I would long for bland corporate speak, but better than narcissistic incompetence.
I wonder how many Premium subscriptions they lost over this, and whether it’s material to their business at all. If so, it could put Steve in hot water. Between losing ad revenue and losing paying members, he seems to be making awful decisions if his goal is to be profitable.
At what point does Reddit’s board step in and make Steve go away? I know he is using Elon Musk as his spirit guide, but it’s a poor move to suck all the value out of your company before you sell it to investors…
same
Same.
“Pay us and we’ll give you all this junk you never wanted in the first place”
I don’t want more stuff - I want less of it. That’s why I used RiF/old.reddit and that’s why I’m now leaving.
Honestly. Avatars? Coins? Awards? I just wanted to stay up to date with the world and have conversations with people about it every once in a while.
If I wanted avatars, I’d be on Gaia online…
Now there’s a throwback. I bet my kiki and Koko are worth their weight in gold now.
Exactly. They have zero awareness of their own product, I doubt they even use it anymore
I tried to look at a reddit link via mobile web browser and it said something really stupid like… we can’t show you this on the web you need to use the app.
Dafuq? Hell no. I guess I’m not looking at it then. Jumped the shark, well and truly.
I’ve used reddit for a decade and never once did I feel that paying for it would benefit me.
Every time I think they can’t go lower, they exceed expectations.
I canceled my premium a few days ago, I guess if they are charging apps millions for API access, why do I need to pay for premium to help Reddit.
