zlacker

There’s no reason for $5/month to be what the average user pays. It’s for power users who spend way more time on the app.

Netflix has introduced ad-supported tiers where you pay less. That’s the same here, those users can use the website or first-party app.

>>jdminh+(OP)
My comment was mostly about the comment about developers underpricing their apps. If all apps would charge a minimum of $5 there would be a lot fewer app users.

According to Apollo's developer 80% of the users make less than 500 requests per day, so I'm guessing the proportion of power users making a lot of requests are in the single digits. I doubt enough of them want's to pay enough to subsidize the others.

There's also the point that using Reddit is a two way street. Reddit is made up of user created (or user stolen) content, and moderators are working for free. Reddit's whole value is made up of user interactions, allowing users to make those interactions is not just a cost.

Why should the app developer pay anything at all? The users are also Reddit's users, they authenticate and can use Reddit's resources in a number of ways, why not charge them directly? Will Reddit be sending a bill to Mozilla for my page loads?

>>sorenj+v4
> Why should the app developer pay anything at all?

Because Reddit makes money off the ads. They can't guarantee third parties will always show the ads in the way they've designed.

So now they are charging third parties the cost of losing ad views.

>>sorenj+v4
> My comment was mostly about the comment about developers underpricing their apps. If all apps would charge a minimum of $5 there would be a lot fewer app users.

Not all apps are worth $5/month, but this particular one that people apparently love enough to spend hours per day on certainly seems like it should be. A slightly nicer calculator app that you use twice a month? $0.99 is fine. A professional productivity app that saves a high-value worker hours of time? Way more than $5/month.

It's ok if not everyone can afford an app.

> Why should the app developer pay anything at all?

The app developer is just a proxy for the users, who are using Reddit without seeing any of Reddit's ads.

>>raydev+N5
So only allow Reddit premium users to use third party apps, like how Spotify does.

>>sorenj+V6
If the user is already paying reddit directly, it's even less likely they are using a third party client. All the benefits are in the first party app.

And then Reddit would have to audit third party apps to ensure paying users are getting what they pay for. Sounds more onerous than just making third parties pay up.

>>raydev+q8
I can log in with my Spotify premium account to a number of third party clients without expecting them to contain the same thing as the official one, no auditing by Spotify needed.

>>jdminh+p6
It’s a Reddit client. It’s marginally better than the official one but there is absolutely no way that it’s 5$ a month better to most user. I did purchase it and thought it was too expensive for what it is (it’s noticeably worse than most free Android client for exemple) and always refused to pay the subscription because, well, it’s a bloody Reddit client.

>>Wastin+cc
That’s fine, it’s not worth it to me either. But if it’s not worth $5 to anyone, then why is anyone even talking about it? If it’s not $5 of value, why would anyone care if it disappeared?

>>jdminh+yg
You can’t arbitrarily decide that being ready to pay $5 a month is magically an appropriate filter under which people are not allowed to care. This argument has no substance.

>>Wastin+cc
Oh it's far better than the buggy default official Reddit app, it's not even close, marginal is terrible descriptor.

>>jdminh+(OP)
> There’s no reason for $5/month to be what the average user pays. It’s for power users who spend way more time on the app.

According to the Apollo dev, the average user would cost $2.50/month in API fees. I imagine power users would be substantially more costly, so $5/month would not cover the API + apple tax for just themselves, let alone supporting the regular users.