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Accusations of greed are funny things.

The drama follows an all too common pattern where people are accusing others of greed because they want something the other has.

Yeah, Reddit is so greedy for charging for providing its service, but *I demand their resources.*

It's not exactly taking a high road to describe someone as greedy while claiming those resources for oneself.

@volkris but that’s not the whole story is it. The whole story is third party apps are generally ok with it. It’s the high pricing plus extremely short change window that is disagreeable. Apollo would have to enter into a paid agreement immediately that would have him incurring charges beginning of July. If that seems reasonable to you I don’t know what to say. This not good community management from Reddit

@robarnold @volkris it would also be something crazy like $1-2 million a month in costs related to the api

@robarnold @volkris You are completely leaving out the fact that the cost of api-calls are ridiculously high (hence, greed) while reddit itself is leeching its content from the users, while not providing any moderation at all, building their profits off of the users. This is the definition of greed.

@newhinton @volkris 100%
So sure does seem to be a lot of actions in bad faith from Reddit itself here both in regards to how the company is acting towards its communities and developers. There was a comment from one of the admins - paraphrase “you need to pay to access our content”. Our content. Makes it very clear who they think provides the majority of value in this setup.

@newhinton

Yes I am leaving that out because it's not relevant.

If I am demanding your stuff then it doesn't really matter what terms you would prefer to provide your resources, I'm still demanding your stuff, greedily.

A whole lot of people are showing a real lack of introspection, and I think your comment is illustrating that.

@robarnold

@volkris @robarnold

No, you are completely ignoring that reddit is basically outsorcing a huge chunk of work to free volonteers. The content moderation, which is a legislative requirement in huge parts of the world AND from the ad-providers, is taken from people who do not get paid. They rake in the ad-money, while not paying the people who actually make the system 'reddit' work, AND then demand increadible prices for something they generate their value from. 1/2

@newhinton

I agree that I am completely ignoring that :)

It has nothing to do with people demanding Reddit's resources, demanding other people's stuff, greedily.

@robarnold

@volkris @robarnold

So it is okay that reddit demands other peoples work for free, greedily?

But not if the users "demand" stuff for free?

This is hypocritical.

@newhinton

Nothing to do with whether it's okay or not. You might think it's okay for people to greedily complain about greed while demanding other people's resources.

Whether that's okay or not is in the eye of the beholder.

Seems pretty upside down to me, though.

@robarnold

@volkris @robarnold

Ahh, now i get you.

The issue with your position is that the assumption is actually wrong.

Interacting with reddit (wa platform actually) is not one-sided. It is always a transactiom, usually users providing content, data and ad-views, and platforms providing server resources.

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@volkris @robarnold

In this specific case users also provide moderation, and in turn get api-access.

Here reddit is changing this transaction, while expecting the same price as before.

If a company selling bread reduces the size of the bread, and then upping the peice two or three times its market-value would be rightfully called greedy.

@newhinton

You can spill as many words as you want, but none of it changes the greed of demanding others resources while accusing them of being greedy.

@robarnold

@volkris @robarnold
This is not about the fact that they want money which was formerly free, it is about the fact that they way overprice it in a way which is not based on actual cost but the fact that they cannot properly control it.
They could have choosen a timeline which is reasonable (apples sundown of darksky gave nearly 30 Months warning) and a pricing that fits, but they basically forced the issue in less than 60 days, completely removing the ability of mods to properly to do their work.

@volkris as a longtime reddit user - it's much more the fact that the team provides a platform for wholly user-generated & moderated content, and has shown that they are not listening to said users in any meaningful way - eroding trust in them as a platform for that content.

The content creators & moderators are the most likely to jump ship, and that leaves reddit with no product worth selling. The dissatisfaction with their offering has been there for some time, just needed a push to leave.

@volkris to continue the thought - the feedback for far too long has been "the reddit app sucks, your mobile web interface sucks (and that gets you told "use the app"), and <insert third party offering> has things we'd really love to see in the official app."

They're now saying "use the official app" much louder to the user base. I'm not one of those users because I prefer the desktop web UI, but I can see a day soon when that becomes substandard as well. That's enough to get us moving away.

@veritropism

Sure that all makes sense.

My point is specifically about this argument, that comes up in far more places than just Reddit, that involves calling someone greedy while demanding their resources.

It's a much sounder argument to simply stick with the company not providing good service or listening to its users.

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