One of the worst unintended side effects of the protest is that it has changed the whole conversation into a “Reddit versus mods” thing, largely by writers that only had a cursory understanding of what was happening.
This wasn’t just about moderation tools, and it’s shitty how so many headlines have claimed it is by framing it as a mod protest.
What about us regular users? We who supported the protests because we like the 3rd party apps and didn’t want to lose them. Why is that not reason enough? Why does this have to be about accessibility or moderation tools?
Why do mods get concessions but not the users? How about us that don’t want to use your trash official app, huh? Where are your vapid promises to us?
Proof is in the pudding. There’s a reason we’re talking about this here instead of on Reddit.
The mods are getting concessions (if they get anything–it’s yet to be seen whether anything actually comes of any new promises) because the Reddit admins realize that they need the free labor. They don’t need users, because they believe–rightly or wrongly–that nobody else can get enough market share fast enough to actually matter. People will give up on projects like Lemmy and begrudgingly eat whatever ad-friendly shit Huffman feeds them. The users are the product Reddit has to sell to its advertises, and they think they can always make more of those. Mods, on the other hand–those are part of the infrastructure, and they don’t make money. They cost money. So Reddit really, really wants those mods to stay/come back and keep working for imaginary internet clout (and the occasional corporate bribe), and they’ll pitch whatever lies they can think of to make that happen.
Can’t wait to see Reddit Corporate deciding whether or not a particular post is really gonewildgrannies material!
For me it was also about the principle. Sure Reddit can make monkey and be a healthy business. But don’t pretend people are leeching of your data, because all the content is created by the users, not Reddit, even the mods are volunteers.
I really hate the attitude where they expect free stuff but don’t want to give anything back.
Exactly! There is absolutely nothing wrong for both third-party developers using Reddit and Reddit itself to be profitable. However, Reddit’s leadership has decided this absolutely cannot fly.
There’s general broad agreement that if Reddit wants to charge for API access, that’s fine, but the prices and timelines are absolutely not practical for any third-party developer. All existing third-party applications today get by because of an exemption (signed under NDA). The fact that Narwhal’s developer has not divulged the specifics of the agreement and has generally pussy-footed around it when asked speaks volumes about Reddit’s “transparency”.
There were so many ways to monetize this out of the users directly instead of going after third-party developers; instead Reddit decided that the third-party developers were a direct enemy and competitor, rather than a value-added component of their platform. It’s absolutely stupid.
Reddit tried to control the narrative by dividing and conquering users. They inflamed some valid criticism about bad mods but ended up ostracizing a lot of “internet janitors” who were blissfully doing the job for free. The mods thing also became an issue because mods keep subreddits clean so ultimately the impact to the mods impacts the users, regardless of the user’s app of choice.
Mods are unpaid “workers” that make it possible for Reddit to be appealing to advertisers and be potentially viable to go public. Framing the story around them gives outsiders a reason to think that admins are doing something that will make their unpaid jobs harder (which is true) and gives them someone to feel bad for.
Otherwise the story is a bunch of non-paying users of Reddit are upset that a company wants to regain control over the ad revenue 3rd party app creators take instead, either through ads on their own platforms or premium memberships. Which I do think there is more nuance because Reddit is only as powerful as their user base so maybe they deserve some concessions, but the average news reader who isn’t on Reddit won’t understand that.
Just to clarify, I’m annoyed as well and not saying we shouldn’t take our contributors and lurkers elsewhere. I moved over to Lemmy as a RIF user and refuse to use the app. Just giving the likely answer to the question!
As someone who modded, it’s because we did immense amounts of volunteer labor for them that they couldn’t function without. We had to be appeased because we were able to organize and shut everything down. But also I didn’t leave because of mod issues. I left because as a user apollo was so much better than the official app that I wouldn’t settle for it
I don’t even use third party apps, but it’s fundamentally bad for the internet for big websites to do shit like this to try to lock off their APIs to only paid users even though it’s a free website populated entirely by user generated content.
Considering that r/Blind is apparently having issues getting Reddit to listen to them when it comes to accessible tools, I’m not sure I believe Reddit on this.
Reddit literally made up their own definition of “Accessibility” in order to justify only giving a couple of particularly unpopular 3rd party apps exceptions. No shade on RedReader but we all know it wasn’t nearly as popular as RiF or Apollo
Elaborate
The only apps that are getting accessibility exemptions are apps that are only about accessibility, not apps that happen to have good accessibility and also do other things.
Not defending reddit’s decision here. BUT, their actions leading up to those exemptions mean it shouldn’t come as a surprise. They want to kill 3rd party apps without breaking any accessibility laws. So my guess is those exemptions will disappear as soon as the native app gets some half assed accessibility features.
Are they not still in violation of accessibility laws though?
The existence of a competent third-party solution does not negate the fact that they don’t have accessibility features in their product.
They just haven’t been sued over it (afaik) yet because blind people have found other solutions. Reddit is so far behind in accessibility compared to other social media- the official app doesn’t have:
- Any way to add alt text on images
- Accessible moderation tools
- Aria labels on the upvote and downvote buttons, the most basic feature of the site
It’s actually incredible how little thought was put into the redesign and the official app.
What was stopping them from bringing the tools first, let mods migrate and be comfortable with them and then apply the new pricing on the API? Greed and ego are having a field day it seems.
This whole API thing seems just so short sighted… there would have been much better ways to implement this, nobody had problem with the monetisation aspect/inclusion of ads to the API…
But it is what it is… and without this fiasco I wouldn’t have switched to lemmy/kbin! :)
They never had any intentions of building new tools.
What’s stopping them? Money and the prospect of making more
This is the question I’ve been wondering. The way they’ve gone about this makes absolutely no sense so something must have been going on behind the scenes to force it like this
I strongly believe they are just inept. They didn’t understand what value third party apps actually brought. None of the decision makers actually mod anywhere so they probably aren’t aware that reddits official tools are lacking.
There have been speculations that they wanted to throttle the API asap because of the AI revolution that has started. Reddit data is absolute GOLD for training large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. OpenAI definitely used data from both Reddit and Twitter in some capacity and for free and are making a ton of money. Tons of startups are now doing the same, training or fine tuning LLMs and for that data scraping is again required. Like Elon keeps complaining about increase in scraping attempts and doing idiotic things to handle that, Huffman just followed in his shoes.
After the shut down of 3rd party apps, the latest update to the official app broke accessibility for mod tools, so /r/blind mods now say it’s impossible for blind moderators to moderate their own sub.
If they come, it’s only because they we bullied into it and they will be half baked. They had years to add this on their own and they didn’t. So it will be rushed out because of the protest and even with all those thousands of paid devs will still somehow (spez) manage to be inferior to the third party tools they took away.
People still use reddit?
Reddit? Never even heard of it
They’ve been saying they were going to add/fix things for the last 6 years while actively ignoring mods lmao, I doubt they’re gonna change that.
Hello fellow Lemmings! It is I, thefloatingpoint from the future. I have traveled back in time to tell you the tales from Reddit.
The tools came 3 month after this announcement.
They didn’t work at all.
As of 2025 they still don’t.
Also Spez died in self strangulation while masturbating to a picture of Elon Musk. Who in turn died in a ball of fire after his latest patch for Twitter went online.
Goodbye Lemmings.
Even if they are coming, I don‘t think any of us which are already here will switch back. They should‘ve thought of this before they broke their platform.
Considering that r/Blind is apparently having issues getting Reddit to listen to them when it comes to accessible tools, I’m not sure I believe Reddit on this.
I feel like reddit has been saying this for years and yet… they implement useless shit like subreddit chats.
RPAN…
Lemmy really needs good moderation tools soon, they’re decent but lacking.
If they come, it’s only because they weee bullied into it and they will be half baked. They had years to add this on their own and they didn’t. So it will be rushed out because of the protest and even with all those thousands of paid devs will still somehow (spez) manage to be inferior to the third party tools they took away.
If they come, it’s only because they we bullied into it and they will be half baked. They had years to add this on their own and they didn’t. So it will be rushed out because of the protest and even with all those thousands of paid devs will still somehow (spez) manage to be inferior to the third party tools they took away.
