• 0 Posts
  • 4 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 21st, 2023

help-circle
  • Every now and then, I try to browser without an ad blocker.

    That generally lasts until I encounter something that’s bad enough that I don’t really have a choice, and then I turn it back on.

    The page needs to actually function. It needs to be possible to click on something and actually be clicking on the thing that you’re intending to.

    And it can not have stuff that blinks in a manner that causes a segment of the population (which includes me at times, but not 100% of the time) significant neurological problems.

    That last one has been the driving force behind stuff getting reenabled a fair bit.

    Oh, and if it’s ads on video content, they need to be at least vaguely reasonable in regards to interruptions and length. Youtube is way past that at this point.




  • The really really sad thing is, Reddit could have done a half decent job and made a fair bit of money, but they decided on stupidity instead.

    Sure, it would have upset some people a bit, but… Not by anywhere close to the same degree.

    Alright, we’re sorry, but use of the API is going to have to start costing money for some kinds of uses.

    First off, people that just want to scrape everything get the following access, and a much higher rate limit, but it’s going to cost $x.

    Moderator tools will always be free, but the API will require that the tool be associated with a moderator, and it will only permit access to subs that the user is a moderator for.

    Community bots will generally be free, subject to the following restrictions.

    And 3rd party clients will be charged a minimal amount, calculated to be roughly equal to what we are making from similar users on the official clients, to make up for lost ad revenue. Alternate options involving profit sharing may be viable, contact X for details.

    By accepting the API agreement, you agree that use of the wrong class of API usage (for example, using the community bot or 3rd party client classes for data scraping) will be billed, retroactively, at $X * 10.

    There. That’s really not that hard. And people would have been much less upset at that, at least as long as the fees were actually as described, and not based on, say, how much they would like to make per user.

    You’d probably want a free tier for 3rd party clients for users of specific account types. If the user is paying for Reddit Premium, maybe 3rd party clients don’t get charged for API usage for that user account. Or if the user is a moderator for a given subreddit, API usage for that user on that subreddit is also free. With an API that the client can use to check the status of such things. If they were smart, they would also have a process for users with disabilities to have their accounts exempted from fees. That last one is hard, because you need a verification process, but it would get them a lot of good will.

    Again… This shouldn’t be hard. And it would have turned into a viable revenue stream!

    Hell, flatly disclose that the 3rd party cost is 30% more than the average cost of using the standard client, to support the effort required to maintain the API. (Largely bullshit, but it makes those users more valuable than those that use the official client, while not being expensive enough to make it impossible for anyone to offer a 3rd party client at an even remotely sane cost.)

    Yes, this would have very sadly been the end of free 3rd party clients… But I for one would have been… Okay with paying a small amount per month/year through the app store for a client that didn’t suck.

    Instead, Reddit decided that committing suicide was the better path forward.