Perfectly reasonable IMO. That said I’m still not going to use reddit again
Just sad that’s what the Internet has come to, microtransactions for using an app for a website that just aggregates links. Not to mention reddit has already gimped your third party access with the NSFW stuff and I’m sure more is on its way. Fuuuuuck off reddit
I guess the era of getting everything for free wasn’t entirely sustainable after all. Who would have thought.
We never got anything for free. That’s not how capitalism works my dude. We paid, and are still paying, with our data. Only now they want more
Many startup companies run mostly on VC money instead of actually making enough revenue.
Due to the way investor money works, you can keep your company running on VC money for many years. Making the company profitable in the early stages isn’t entirely necessary as long as the investors get their money back within a reasonable time period.
The idea is, that if you’re able to make your shiny new service very popular, that will be the valuable product you can eventually sell in a merger, IPO or whatever. In some cases like Skype, the intellectual property was also an important part of the deal; not just the userbase. After that, the new owners are free to enshitify the service as much as they like. It’s their problem to make the service actually profitable in the long run while the founders get to drive their Lamorghinis in Dubai.
That’s when the new owners really have to crank up the data leeching and ads, which will kick out a decent percentage of the previous users, but that’s ok as long as enough of them remain.
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The downvotes in our comments tell an interesting story. It seems that people don’t want to hear about the strange world of VC money.
Please tell me how it really is.
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It’s absolutely sustainable- but once you aren’t satisfied with sustainability and want it to produce an ever growing profit, that’s when things start going sideways and eventually downhill.
Late stage capitalism in action
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We never got anything for FREE.
Interesting side effect is Reddit is basically penalizing voting, since if you vote on most comments you end up doubling or tripling your API usage. The best way to pay less for this app is to stop voting altogether.
Reddit’s advertising is based on user engagement, so they’re shooting themselves in the foot for a few pennies in comparison.
Its just end-to-end-retardation. All the rage lately
Why is Infinity for Reddit still working fine? The Verge hasn’t reported anything about it.
No one wants to jynx it.
In all seriousness though, I expect reddit just hasn’t yet started invoicing for API calls. Meanwhile, they haven’t actually cut off access, because they want something to be able to charge for. However they may struggle to argue that continued use of the existing API access constitutes an agreement to start paying for it.
Reddits giving a grace period to Infinity since it’s getting a subscription model developed, so they haven’t even started charging Infinity yet
So is Comet and Narwhal. Something weird went on with this whole thing. It seems like reddit wanted to kill the popular apps that were actually being used by people, but the smaller ones are fine.
you can still use most third-party apps. All you have to do is be a moderator in a subreddit. for some stupid reason reddit then allows you to still use them because they probably need all help they can get from mods.
Joey as an example still works fine, you nust have to use a older version and block their versions check.
Infinity is working on charging people, and the dev has been fronting the bill to keep their userbase before they roll out a billing system. Obviously, they didn’t have time to rollout a new version before the changes went into effect because Reddit gave them a month.
Ooh. Anyway, I don’t open Reddit much, only the freegamedeals sub. When Infinity becomes paid, I’ll stop using it. Lemmy ftw!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The costs of a subscription will go up based on a user’s daily average number of API calls, essentially meaning that the more things a person does in the app, the more they might have to pay.
Here is the full list, from developer DBrady’s post, which appears to include Google’s take of the subscription and Relay’s expected revenues:
In the newest release of Relay, DBrady says they also added the ability for users to see their average daily API calls.
The plan is for a subscription to roll out in two or three weeks from the time of their post and they expect to charge a monthly cost of $3 or $4.
“This won’t cover the cost of ‘super users’ who use the app all day, but, on average, it should allow me to pay the Reddit API bill,” the developer said.
Many subreddits and users protested against the switch to the paid API in-party because of its effect on the third-party app ecosystem.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Original thread on Reddit, has some interesting insight into people’s patterns of API usage.
It seems that voting is a huge part of API calls, so users who want to fit into a certain API call tier will want to curb their use of voting. But that means that even if 3rd-party apps survive there will be reduced engagement from power users with the voting system, raising the question why pay if you’re going to be marginalized. Needless to say, Reddit has not thought this through.
Also, the cut of the subscription money that makes it to the Relay developer is ridiculous. They’d need tens of thousands of active subscribers to make any meaningful money.
If they charge more for access, they’ll pay more for contributing, right…?
If this is better then the official app, it could be an option
It shouldn’t be an option. Why should users pay to provide content for reddit?
Redreader still works for some reason.
It was specifically exempted from API fees due to it’s stronger accessibility tools and that it is open source and non-commercial.
Man, I was tempted to stay on reddit when RR got exempted. But, you know, “First they came for the proprietary clients. . .”
I am proud of QuantumBadger, though, for helming such an excellent no-nonsense app that even Spez couldn’t justify killing it.
Joey also still works. You have to use a older version and block the versions check though. Also you have to be a moderator on a subreddit. It’s stupid to pay a subscription to Relay if you can just use older third-party clients and block their versionscheck (otherwise they force you to update)
I have to warn that is is going to be harsh. Relay was my favorite app and I used it everyday for years. DBrady has sold out here in my mind by sucking up to Reddit - The authors of the other apps deliberately chose not to charge users a subscription and it has put us on a better path long term by taking influence away from Reddit and centralized social media. If Relay won’t flip to Lemmy or decentralized alternatives then I hope it fails.
