Reddit’s unpopular decision to revise its API pricing in a move that’s forcing third-party apps out of business has taken a weird turn. In an AMA hosted today by Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman, aka u/spez on the internet forum site, the exec doubled down on accusations against the developer behind the well-liked third-party […]
I get that this largely an unpopular opinion, and ultimately, you have to do you, but whether or not an app is first party, third party, or a cobbled together black market party, software development for any service will have to be ongoing until the heat death of the universe or until the service stops functioning.
There’s no getting around that. Anything that realistically touches the web/internet will need to be maintained. It’s the reality of software and security. It may not always require a $10/mo plan, but things are not free. Where seeing the death of the web as a lot of us knew it because funding is finally drying up and companies have to show value, or all of it goes away.
To be clear - I think what Reddit is doing is catastrophically bad; there are ways they could monetize third party apps, they just don’t want to. But to a lot of people who don’t necessarily follow development, it’s difficult to understand how it quickly can consume all of your time. And you’re either paying for it, you are the product, or you’re paying for it with your time (volunteering on open source software).
I understand what you’re saying. Like I said, I have no problem paying for software, but the subscription model for EVERYTHING is getting ridiculous. I can’t keep track of the subscriptions I have now, let alone add more. I buy apps regularly. If I have to start paying a subscription to for all of my apps I’ll go back to a flip phone.
The problem is really the internet part of it. It’s one thing when you’re talking like “a calculator” app - it’s different when you’re talking about an app that makes api calls to a server. Both ends of that aren’t static.
I get subscription overload is a thing - but the biggest problem too is that the platform owners don’t even give you the capability as an app owner to “sell” an upgrade like in the olden days.
I think a solid question to ask, all of this said, is why every subscription has to be $10-20. They don’t, and certainly some part of that is definitely greed.
Agreed. I just honestly don’t know what the solution is.
Been asking myself the same question.
Even here, servers cost money or moderation takes time, something we’re all limited on.
It’s really rather depressing, cuz I fear the days of the “fun-ternet” is over.
Well as you mention the app platforms are not setting themselves up in a flexible way. They should have all matter of payment models available. The problem is monopolies.
Something i have wanted for a long time is that services/apps with overlapping user bases could have some sort of group deals where you get an overall discount by paying for a package. When i de googled i was looking around at all the paid replacement services and if i did a total replacement it would have been like $150/m due to high cost of individual services. These companies should collab because they all have overlapping user base. I ended up paying for only a couple of the most important because I am a casual user for other stuff. I would have been willing to spend more in total if i could have had low-use access to a diversity of services. Then who knows maybe i could have been upsold on something after a while.
I guess it isnt worth the transaction costs to take less than $10. But that is where platforms have the capacity to be useful.