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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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 roll playing a dollar store version of Logan Roy.
Same here, but not at $50/year.
If I remember correctly, when it first launched, it was a one time payment actually.
What’s so great about r/lounge?
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.
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.
Nothing.
ngl I always assumed that was a placeholder sub without any content, just to sustain the meme that /r/lounge was a thing
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.
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 the FUCK are “monthly coins”
Don’t answer that, I actually prefer not knowing.
That’s not new, they add this a few years ago after changing “gilded” to multi-tier award, which cost spez-buck, which you can get from either buying it like pay2win game or get this premium, and they will give you some spez-buck each month.
What infuriate me more is they didn’t have regional pricing, so reddit premium cost more than youtube premium in my country, which provide better content and all of what i subbed is OG content.
I can’t find myself paying monthly for internet regurgitator.
This is the way.
Reddit is so much an American business - screw that. But it’s not even doing a proper business model - screwing the stupid Yanks and giving a better deal to people who don’t feel the need to ‘pay more for quality’.
You know, I bought a HP printer which takes HP cartridges which print out (officially) 1500 pages each, and they cost the equivalent of $8 - but only outside the USA… as an answer (I think) to well organised resistance to the ‘maybe 300 pages or less’ leading to people buying modified ink-tank cartridges locally made (in Thailand).
My last cartridge (not heavily used) lasted for 5 years before being replaced… so HP gets my money with a smile.
Reddit can go whistle.
LOL byeeee
just reminded me to cancel premium, thank you!!
I was actually ok with paying them $50 a year for ad-free before they started de-modding people for protesting. Now they can go fuck themselves. I am sympathetic to their need to be profitable. But effectively taking over subreddits is totally unacceptable and Reddit is no longer Reddit.
This is fucking garbage.
Imagin paying for the privilege of generating free content for others to monetize.
Paying an optional subscription fee is a great idea. It helps pay for servers and personal.
Paying to give special rewards is a horrible idea. The wealthiest can now decide which opinion is best. Everyone wants to reply to the rewarded comments to be more visible for upvotes. It’s terrible.
What are the devs even doing at reddit, do they even do actual work? The offical app is so shit.
I feel like any software change reddit has made is the last decade just made it a worse experience. It succeeded despite their changes, not because of them imo.
Maybe it’s the problem of the higher ups.
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. In all my 10+ years on Reddit, I don’t think I ever remember them making a change that actually improved my experience or made me think anything other than “oh, good thing I can’t see this feature on old Reddit/RIF”. Reddit really has stumbled its way into success despite all its best efforts to the contrary.
They do “market research”
Lmao
Obviously just speculation, the past week demonstrated that Spez is disorganized and probably contributing to a hostile working environment. Does his recent AMA or interviews give an impression of a leader that would be easy to excel and create with?
He’s like a stubborn kid who does what he wants, not what is required to be done.
“He tells it like it is”
Our lead-poisoned parents may have bought into that crap. But we know all that is is stubborn arrogance. And solving problems requires open-minded thinking and chasing the problem, not the messenger/customer/employee.
I think reddit will turn into a authoritarian website, until and unless someone removes these stubborn idiots. But the question is who will remove them?
“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”
$50/yr and you get… Nothing i care about.
Avatars, coins, app icon im not interested at all. No ads isn’t necessary as none ever appear on my feed. Literally zero need for premium. But but you have access to r/lounge! < Wanking gesture>
I don’t think coins/gold ever really made money.
Reddit gave a shit ton out to mods to give to inflate the appearance people were buying them to give out. And when you’d receive gold, you got coins to give others gold.
It’s like a Ponzi scheme but without money…
I never paid a cent for gold, but had it at least 50% of the time on Reddit.
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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.
exactly! so fucked and insidious and greedy that they’re trying to weed out competition as well
I would have paid $3 a month to use a third party client. I don’t want to pay $50 for bulk shit.
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.
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.
