zlacker

I'm shocked that Reddit has done this mere weeks after Twitter destroyed their thriving ecosystem of bots and apps by introducing horrific pricing.

>>robbie+(OP)
What's funny is that Reddit's pricing is indeed more reasonable than Twitter's, but it's still too high to be make cheap third party clients feasible.

>>raydev+p2
It's probably the point, they want the official app to be the only choice, so they can control everything and show you more unblockable ads.

>>raydev+p2
any dollar amount more than 0 is too much for an open source app like infinity or redreader who do not charge any money from users

>>enlyth+l4
I can see revanced reddit becoming a lot more popular soon.

>>enlyth+l4
The day Apollo dies, the day I will stop using Reddit.

>>robbie+(OP)
It is not at all accidental. Elon Musk has given cover for other social media sites to imitate many of his moves, such as Facebook introducing a subscription tier.

>>TwoNin+g6
Fully agreed. Reddit without Apollo, Narwhal, RIF, Sync, etc is just plain unusable. The official site and app are so blatantly built around pumping "engagement" without regard to user experience and are engineered badly to boot.

>>TwoNin+g6
Along the same lines, once old.reddit.com stops working, it'll be the end of the line for me as well.

>>PaulHo+n6
Why would they want to imitate a failing business model?

>>raydev+p2
It doesn't matter. It is their service and the API terms are subject to change at any time. So either the API gets blocked for third-party clients, or you purchase access for a high price.

Discord, Instagram, Snapchat, Clubhouse and TikTok have decided to ban third-party apps. Twitter and Reddit decided to charge for it.

In this case with the developer of the third party Reddit client, unless he is making enough to cover the API costs, then it make no sense to build on someone else's API with little to no revenue. That is the risk.

It is no different to TapBots (creators of TweetBot) doing the same mistake.

>>izzyda+oc
It's not about being rational, instead it is a kind of "vice signalling" between billionaires.

It would be a better question to ask "Why did Mark Zuckerberg buy successful VR game companies and shut their games down?" (if you were having fun you wouldn't visit Horizon Worlds) or "Why did Zuckerberg damage a successful brand by renaming it?"

It's not about money, it's about power. The primary currency of power is deference and if one powerful person demonstrates they can take an action and get deference that action is appealing to other powerful people who want to prove they can to do the same.

>>enlyth+l4
Wonder if they'll be sensible enough to acquire some apps after they become worthless to replace official app.

>>rvz+Ud
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Discord, Instagram, Snapchat, Clubhouse, and TikTok all launched with first party apps.

Twitter and Reddit both allowed a thriving third party ecosystem to develop before they made apps. (And in both cases they just bought the most popular apps.) Hell, the word tweet was invented by Twitterific, a third party twitter app.

While it certainly is completely up to the platform to allow whatever they want, it's shitty to make a change that big and alienate many of your original most dedicated users.

>>TwoNin+g6
Same. I can’t stand their web version or their own app. It’s Apollo or nothing for me.

>>izzyda+oc
Now that's the question. Is it a failing business model if everyone is starting to do it?

>>TwoNin+g6
I just wish one of the countless Reddit alternatives in the past ten years had gained any significant amount of traction (outside of very niche groups or groups far on the political fringe).