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They know what they're doing, 100% they want to kill off 3rd party apps to get add revenue and user data.
The reason they won't reverse the decision is this is the intended outcome and honestly they don't care if a couple 100k people leave reddit over it.
It's more a question of who this forces to leave, and what they bring to the website.
Getting rid of third party apps is selecting for the older and most invested users. We have been here for years, and we clearly shopped around for the best experience. All they are going to be left with is the new users.
Imagine the eternal September, but instead of just lots of new people joining, all the grey hairs piss off for greener pastures at the same time.
This website is DEAD.
It won't matter much imho, because most of the content in popular (aka profitable) subs is already bot-driven reposts, with very little OC.
So from a casual user's perspective, not much would change, as most people just read the feeds, where all the ads are anyways.
The lack of quality content might be more visible when diving into comments, but even then that can be easily masked by reddit deploying their own ChatGPT-supported bot army to keep things interesting.
At the end of the day, it probably won't even make a dent, as any humans providing quality content will be replaced by some automated content generation. And most users being here for the rage bait and all that probably won't even notice?
It's the smaller communities who will suffer the most imho, especially tech focused, because those have the most power users.
Moderation, including spam/scam could become a bigger issue though, however maybe reddit already has volunteers waiting to take open positions, once the old brigade has either deleted their accounts or been replaced after going dark too long.
Admins can take over any sub at any point, so it wouldn't suprise me either if communities go back to normal, simply because those who made them private no longer are in control.
My point being that reddit is going to change drastically, giving much more control to site admins over basically every aspect, including what type of content is going to be around.
We will probably see much more censorship and sanitation attempts, combined with major SFW ad-friendly spaces that will be mostly reddit's internal bot network curating content aggressively to create the desired engagement and metrics.
Everything that is being done now is about making profits. You can't really control millions of humans, but you can do so with millions of bots.
Wild thoughts, I know, but I do believe reddit wants to turn into a dedicated money printer, and the only way to achieve this is to change the entire platform, including the way content is being generated.
I think we are about to witness a major transition from news aggregation/discussion to fully automated content farm.
Condensed version:
It doesn't matter because Reddit has become a container for reposted TikTok content.
Hey c'mon now, that's unfair. It's also a container for twitter screenshots.
Reddit gives more viewership to that Eric Clapton lookalike Jeff than the guy's own twitter account does.
Why?
Some: probably.
A majority: maybe, over time.
But all?
This would be such a weird decision. Like, we already know what this shit does to websites and apps who have the same AI-bot account issues. Yes, this may result in the retention of short term revenue, but this is going to have pretty major long-term impacts. To quote Spez himself (iirc), this reeks of VC bullshit. They want to get their money and get out. These vultures have zero interest in the long term success of the website.
The way I see it, bots are only an issue if you are not in control of what they are doing on your platform. But if - in theory - one would embrace it and determine the parameters, one could achieve quite sophisticated content generation that is being curated based on reddit's internal variables.
Problem goes away, as they would also drown out anything that is undesireable and imho it would actually be crazy profitable long-term, because the entire platform would be perceived as organic, even though every bit of content is basically scripted to cater to specific audiences to result in higher engagement.
Right now, reddit relies on its users to do all that. That's unreliable and introduces unwelcome risks (such as site-wide drama). Share value would be directly impacted. Automating that process, you could have mainstream subs always have profitable content with high visibility from the beginning, no need to rely on communities to upvote or generate discussion/controversy on their own.
I don't think this is about VC, but reddit making a long-term decision about what kind of platform they want to be and what tools they are willing to use to achieve that.
If this site became like 30% bots pretending to offer engagement in the comment sections, that would be a hotly public decision, and people would lose all trust in authentic discussion on this website, which is arguably what the entire site's foundation is built on, even stronger than the content aggregation itself.
If bots are driving the discussion on this website, then who is actually is giving these filthy executives ad views? It just sounds like a ponzi scheme to me. Offering companies a chance to advertise on a platform built on fake engagement driven by bots. It doesn't provide any value to advertisers. I don't get it.
I don't have that much insight, but we already have non-authentic discussions across a wide spectrum of subs, and a plethora of bots karma farming by submitting tons of stuff each day. You already can't tell if it's a bot you are talking to, especially if ChatGPT etc. has been used to create a reply.
Only few people are bothered by it because it simply provides consumable content to everyone's liking. At the end of the day, it's just stuff to look at and maybe spend a few minutes typing a reply. And as long as content is available, value is being generated because people will continue to consume content, regardless of its origin.
At least, that's the only scenario that makes sense to me (somewhat). Otherwise, why continously erode the very foundation that is reddit, its community? Again and again, we have seen changes being made that are not in the interests of users. Stuff like that doesn't just happen because VCs are forcing it, it's because there is an internal roadmap and a long-term vision.
Sure, maybe spez just wants to cash out and let reddit die, but that would be absolutely retarded, considering the true potential of this site (which is being squandered already). If they really wanted to turn reddit into the most popular community driven platform, would they really make all these decisions in the first place?
To add to this, I work in online journalism in a mid sized site. I’ve had to have the discussion about Chat GPT plenty of times. The scary thing is that Reddit could have 10 prompt engineers with a background in writing of any stripe and those engineers could run 50-100 bots worth of content each. Making it even harder to distinguish who is real and who isn’t.
At some point there won't be enough content to repost that isn't already beyond stale and over-posted. Then comes reposting from outside sites, at which point why would people not just use those sites or apps?
A large portion of content already is reposts from other platforms, entire subs are dedicated to that specifically and very popular. You go to all mainstream subs these days, almost all discussions revolve around that.
The amount of OC, including thought provoking discourse is very rare.
This place will become chive with more news.
I’m not smart enough. Is there a digital signature to tell you if content is ai driven?
Absolutely lol
Reddit is community driven, community run, and users are just waiting for a competitor to switch over to.
Reddit just went against its modus operandi.
And you will still use it? Lol what an idiot.
Use what? Can you be more specific?
Apollo is 700k users max according to the dev.
Reddit users are probably almost a billion.
Literally not even a % of users.
A billion is bollocks. There are not anywhere close to that many active users
This is deleted because I wanted to. Reddit is not a good place anymore.
If the biggest app is less than 1%... the user base affected is absolutely tiny
Sure. Let’s pretend it is less than 1%. (I’m supremely doubtful of the 1B user number; given how many sock puppets and inactive accounts there are I’d figure closer to the ballpark of 100-200M personally. There’s just no way that 1/8 of all the people on the planet use Reddit. This is obvious looking at Reddit’s interaction numbers vs other platforms that claim similar userbase figures)
Based on the traction posts about the subject have received, it should be easy to see that the “1%” of users who rely on API access represent the most engaged and active part of Reddit’s userbase. From moderators who rely on third-party tools to do their volunteer work, to the most prolific users on the site; it’s clear that third-party apps are popular among the power users that generate the majority of the website’s content.
Reddit’s entire business model is based on getting a few hyper-active users to do lots of free labour and drive traffic for the site. Community content moderation and curation are the things that make Reddit successful. Attacking the users who are best at those two key things just seems unwise from a business perspective.
They are the power users now but won't be thebpower users of tomorrow unless they change.
APIs to reddits dataset is the most valuable dataset that exists today by far for the most important thing of now... AI training and development.
These few small power users are dwarfed compared to AI training against a dataset of active conversations of all types and backgrounds.
Ohh no mr 3rd party developer no longer gets a free lunch everyday the world is ending! Tomorrows coming and the writings on the wall. Either nut up or shut up.
What makes you think it's older users using the mobile app? I think there is a range of users who are using the mobile app. I am an "older" user although my account does not show this but I was trying to use reddit before apps existed when I had an old microsoft touch screen phone back in 07-08. I've almost always used the old.reddit.com page. Only time I use mobile app is when I am not at my desk which isn't too often.
I think what you will actually end up with is a purge of the tablet generation. No more kids pushing content from school. It would only be accessible from desktop...it would be an interesting paradigm in that it doesn't get rid of bots but at least people at workstations are the only ones contributing.
Yeah, basically.
It's like with a gacha game. 10,000 F2P users leave? Not good, but also not really that bad.
10 whales leave? Now, that's a problem.
Reddit doesn't create content users do. And powerusers do so in larger amount. Posting things, sharing things, discussing and engaging. You're probably unlikely to get a third-party app when you're not that interested in Reddit.
Not to mention the mods who rely on the tools provided by the apps to moderate.
I want to believe but what "greener pastures" if there was a reddit alternative I'd be there in a heartbeat.
I honestly would be thrilled if a decent reddit alternative could develop, but I'm not sure how we could trust it not to turn into the same kind of mess.
I'm thinking that decentralized solutions like fediverse and mastodon are probably a promising solution, but I have no idea how we could prevent large portions of them from turning into racist echo chambers or bot-infested ad- and misinformation-riddled hellscapes.
Do those older users make the website money? I bet most don't see ads served by Reddit. Not sure about other revenue streams.
I mean that plus the fact that so many posts get locked shortly after posting, reposting is the norm and less people will be interested in engaging, they are going to have a rough future.
They will always have the repost bots, and based on how much I see them, the site was sort of dying already.
Might not be a ton of people, but the ones that bounce are gonna be the ones that mod /r/Seahawks, /r/Vinyl, /r/mechanicalkeyboards and countless other communities from sports to nerd shit. And for real if they go public all the NSFW subs are gonna get banned and that’s a fuck ton of people that won’t ever use Reddit again.
Trust me, I genuinely hope they get their ass kicked. I just wish there was an alternative to reddit we could flock to.
Me too. I’m gonna miss my communities both big and small. The best part about using Apollo is how easy it is to write a comment reply or make a new post in whatever sub you’re into. Sad day for everyone.
I never used Apollo, but what makes it easier/better than the website or official app?
(I use RIF Is Fun, and the only missing feature in that regard I see right now is saving drafts)
Yeah there's only going to be a couple hundred thousand of people leaving but those are the people creating all the content and the discussions and the spaces, and it will hit so many lower levels of users that only open memes or only read comments. Those lower impact users will now visit reddit once a week instead of once a day and that will hit their numbers like crazy
I really hope so, I want this so badly to bite reddit in the ass
Only those?
This isn't about 3rd party apps.
Reddit is a large source of training data for AI, like GPT-3 & friends.
Reddit as a company wants to make money off the massive amount of data they have available, and therefor priced their API access accordingly.
The problem is, the price they set is a price data aggregators are very much willing to pay, but 3rd party clients are not.
So as a result, 3rd party clients are going to get shafted, as Reddit is not going to drop the price on their real intended revenue stream, selling data for AI training sets.
Yep. Same thing as Twitter. They see the AI boom and want in.
Ignoring that OpenAI and the like already have a shitload of their data and could just scrape it anyway if they wanted.
If it is between two corporations it is easier to put a legal lid on it.
Fair enough, but they could just charge the fee for non-reddit uses of reddit data if you're going to trust the corporations to not illegally use data.
There are other ways to go about it, serve ads via API or share revenue from ads in 3rd party apps... and they would just be one competitor in app space, which would push them to make better app without losing ad money.
At least they could start with that, so they don't destroy ecosystem. But someone over there is in hurry to break it or make it.
Really, it's a lot more than "a couple of 100k"
First, a lot of subreddit moderators use 3rd party apps because of the moderation toosl reddit doesn't provide an app for.
Second, Apollo itself has 1 million DAU and isn't the only app.
Maybe, I genuinely hope so but I think you could be underestimating people's addictions
It isn't about how many users those tools have, but about how many are gonna leave.
If Apollo has more than 1million active users, than I can see more than 100k of them leaving, but I doubt it will, be over 75% after 1 month.
us power users are costing them a whole 12 cents too much
i wouldnt be surprised if this is tied to the rise of subs like antiwork and workreform allowing people to become more knowledgeable about how to improve their own work/life balance and the current conditions of the economy. once that kind of stuff started getting everywhere on twitter, twitter was bought out and destroyed. a similar thing seems to be happening to reddit. wouldnt be surprised if wall street and VCs are promoting and pushing for the destruction of any space that talks about anything like this to destroy the ability for people to organize and discuss it.
The people who might transition to the official app to generate more ad views might offset the amount of people they expect to leave, who already weren't giving Reddit any ad views. I'm interested to see in how many people actually leave, and if that number is any significant percentage over Reddit's own internal projections.
Every Apollo user (and other 3rd party apps) is costing reddit money in resource usage and opportunity costs (ads). This was bound to happen.
its gonna go to shit. they will lose a few 100k initially and a large chunk of the user base over the next few months. popular subs will not be recognizable anymore as moderation is gonna come to a halt.