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Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-filled AMA | Hacker News

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36264232

Based takes (all downvoted):

This whole drama is very odd to me and feels like a (very) vocal minority of users incorrectly extrapolating their preferences to those of all Reddit users.

Reddit owns its API. It has every right to price access however they see fit. It is wild to think that will spend $10s of millions to support 3rd party apps. Or to expect that they would acquire third party apps.

I predict Reddit will stick to their guns and that this entire brouhaha will have little to no effect on Reddit's user and engagement metrics over the medium term.

If you're outraged and highly engaged with this controversy, do you think its possible you're in a bubble?


Why does the Apollo guy see the API as his entitlement? Reddit ain’t a charity. Neither is HN.


You fill a site with communists who don’t want to work and think everything should be free and then you’re surprised when the reality of running a business outrages them? Stop trying to have it both ways.


The reality is that the Reddit users that actually care about this enough to show up and rage in the AMA are also the ones that are almost completely unmonetizable. So I doubt there was ever really any risk of major loss from this.

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Why doesnt reddit make an app worth using? Oh wait right they cant

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I mean, to seriouspost for a minute, of course reddit could buy out an existing 3rd-party app or hire enough codecels to make a good app.

But they don't really care. Reddit is a powerhouse of attracting users. Reddit has gazillions of addicted everyday users. Reddit doesn't need a better app to attract and retain users, because reddit has all the users, creating content that attracts new and more-addicted users. Improving the user-experience is a "nice to have", not a "need to have", for reddit.

What reddit needs is not a better user experience, what reddit needs is better ways to monetize the users it has. Because reddit is currently not profitable. Its owners are paying money every month to keep it afloat, in the hopes that it will one day generate enough money to pay for itself.

The smelly basement-dwellers who spend 16 hours a day on reddit, conducting multiple debates over various subgenres of RPG figurine-painting, while simultaneously modding various rule 34 subs related to underage anime characters...nobody cares about them. And those are the only people complaining.

The 10 million children and olds who check reddit for 10 minutes at a time and who click on sponsored links--those are the people that reddit dot com cares about.

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Reddit doesnt need to be profitable, its a great place for feds to churn out consensus.

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If you think that the feds care about building consensus among the terminally-online loli addicts on reddit, then you are the joke.

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Most of reddit is ai bot farms and federal agents of various stripes. Your insistence that there are gazillions of users is meaningless when the majority are shadowbanned into their own instance of reddit

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:marseymeds:

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Why would they risk letting anyone comment? Why not just let ai regurgitate content from the last two decades

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Mommy is soooo proud of you, sweaty. Let's put this sperg out up on the fridge with all your other failures.

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What reddit needs is not a better user experience, what reddit needs is better ways to monetize the users it has. Because reddit is currently not profitable. Its owners are paying money every month to keep it afloat, in the hopes that it will one day generate enough money to pay for itself.

they could have stayed operating it like they used to -- old.reddit.com style, 20 employees. no censorship beyond what the law demands.

of course then they might not have gained a billion dollar valuation. but in today's slightly higher interest regime nobody is willing to buy reddit anyway.

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>imagine using apps instead of old.reddit

cbm

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The day old. stops working is the day i stop visiting reddit for good

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Seethe.

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