I’m not trying to convince anyone to go back i promise, quite the contrary actually cause I think spez plans to just decrease the cost of the API and act like it was a bargain deal sacrifice while not solving any of the issues at all

But, when I think about it even if spez did actually listen and reverse all changes I don’t think i want to go back to Reddit cause from what Ive seen Lemmy is just friendlier and less :Be Corporate Friendly: I would honestly love it if Lemmy did a project like r/place one of these days so we could see what the internet is actually like instead of what happened in 2022 (I really did enjoy what a bunch of communities did but when the mods started abusing their powers to make it corporate r/place lost so much meaning) but i am curious since i’m not going back is there anything Reddit can do to make you go back to Reddit?

  • silicon_reverie@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    I’ll go back if Reddit:

    • Makes it feasible for 3rd party apps to continue on the platform. This could be a revenue-sharing agreement, a set price that’s not prohibitively expensive but still fairly compensates Reddit, a flat-out exemption from the Enterprising Pricing, doesn’t matter. These apps have been around far longer than Reddit’s own app, and provide tools (and general polish) the Official App has yet to match seven years in. They deserve to stay and to make a living off of their continued contribution to the community.
    • Restores parity access to NSFW content via the API. It’s essential for moderation bots to combat spam, it helps 3rd party apps stay afloat, and it serves a large part of the community. I get that Reddit wants to sanitize the site in preparation for an IPO. I get that advertisers are wary of NSFW posts. That’s not an excuse for removing it from the API. The official ad-supported Reddit app will continue to serve up porn, and the currently proposed API prevents 3rd party clients from using ads anyway. Reddit is making a bad-faith argument that harms moderation bots’ ability to do their job, and cripples any 3rd party app that isn’t driven from the platform based on price (including 2 “accessibility only” apps they were forced to allow during the AMA).
    • Apologizes to the Apollo dev for Spez’s libelous statements, and starts a good-faith negotiation with developers to open access for things like the enhanced query system that the 1st party app enjoys, usage statistics that will help devs improve API request efficiency, and revenue sharing where devs can monetize using ads or any other method they choose so long as Reddit gets a cut.

    Yes, these demands go further than a simple rollback of the new API policy, but at the same time they don’t. Reddit’s originally stated goal for this change was to keep 3rd party apps around because they add tremendous value to the ecosystem, while stopping the LLM training bots from getting off rent-free when they try to train their AI models off of our hard work. I love that goal. It’s something we can all get behind. I just wish they’d actually do it.

    But even if I go back, it will be with one foot out the door. The dam has broken, and I plan to campaign hard for alternatives and switch to whichever one hits critical mass first.

    • whofearsthenight@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      I agree with this but I’ll add in one more - it would have to come with spez resigning/being fired. Killing the apps was always the goal, and there is no way I would trust literally anything that is coming from reddit with him at the head. I don’t think it’s even a little hyperbolic to say flatly that he is a liar. Even if they reversed course 100%, I don’t see how it fixes anything because I don’t see how Christian or any of the other makers of those third party apps decide to continue working with this company.

      And even then I don’t think I’d trust reddit to do the right thing at all. Every change made to reddit basically since 2010 or later has either been bad, or their hands have been forced to do the obvious right thing by negative press. They’ve not proactively done basically anything positive for users in a decade, and this is more or less the story of what I’d call social media 1.0 (twitter, facebook, reddit, youtube, etc.) Especially with my experience moving from Twitter to Mastodon, I’m far more likely regardless of what reddit does to replace it with a federated option because the end goal of publicly traded social media companies just do not align with my values, and even more practically, do not align with an experience I want to have.