I’ve been a long time Redditor and an Apollo user for about a year. I even paid for it. The main draw for me was the lack of advertising. In the back of my head I kept thinking that it couldn’t last. Reddit is losing revenue from the lack of advertising views. It didn’t
To me, Reddit’s sky high pricing for the use of the API is intended to kill off apps like Apollo and for its users to move to the advertising filled web site or its own app, which I’ve never used.
If Huffman came out and said this was a revenue move right off would everyone be as upset as they are? Are people upset because Huffman completely mishandled the move or because they got their ad free experience turned off? If Reddit had an app the same quality as Apollo only with ads, would they be OK with it. I’ve only used Apollo so I can’t speak to the other apps.
I can’t blame Reddit for wanting to make money. It doesn’t make a profit. Investors have to keep pouring in money to keep it going. They’re going to want to see a return on their investment at some point. Usually they cash in on an IPO, but IPO’s are generally only successful if the corporation looks like it will be profitable or at least the stock price continues to go up. That’s how capitalism works.
In my case, I probably would have left regardless. I can’t stand adds in my feed. I probably wouldn’t have heard of lemmy or kbin if there hadn’t been such an uproar. So I’m glad it went the way it did.
It wasn’t what they did it was how they did it. If they wanted to I’m sure they could have worked out a compromise where everyone stayed happy.
A good way to foster resentment is to profit off a bunch of mods and devs donating time for love of community and then spit in their face by forcing them out. I think it’s one the most blatantly asshole things I’ve ever seen a corporation do, one for the history books.
I do wonder if it will really make a difference. I think it might be their undoing. Social media users are a somewhat fickle bunch and can move on to the next big thing, that’s historically been the case.
They weren’t going to make everyone happy. They want vastly more money, and every way of squeezing money out of a thing makes the thing suck more. They certainly could have fucked the PR aspect less severely, but no business in history has ever had anyone enjoy the part where VC investors try to get their returns.