I’m not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium

I’m not sure if this is well-known or not that they’re pushing it now, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it, especially on old.reddit.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    The irony is that I was mentally prepared to have to pay for Premium to keep BaconReader. All they had to do was add an “API access” badge to that screen and none of this would have happened, plus they would have gotten a bunch more new sign-ups. I am at a loss to explain what Steve is thinking, nor why his decisions are better for profitability.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      Yeah, I’d gladly pay the sub for Apollo if reddit had decided to charge a modest price for the API and Christian could make a buck off it and reddit could also make a few bucks off me.

      Reddit could’ve probably 5x’d or 10x’d the money they make off me that way, but now they 0x’d it.

    • SeeJayEmm@lemmy.one
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      2 years ago

      Same here. If they’d have just framed it differently and put the onus of paying for api access on the users (at a modest fee), almost none of the backlash would have happened.

      Then I’d still be oblivious.

      I prefer the world the way it was before all the consolidation. I like the ideals of the fediverse and want it to succeed.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Then I’d still be oblivious.

        I prefer the world the way it was before all the consolidation. I like the ideals of the fediverse and want it to succeed.

        Exactly, this is better overall I think, at least when it comes to the health of the internet as a whole.

          • Eheran@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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            2 years ago

            I have seen the same issiue with individual, niche forums: going down because of one person. It was just a matter of time for that to happen with a bigger site.

    • SterlingVapor@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      You underestimate the power of addiction.

      The official app isn’t a bad thing because it’s buggy and has ads, that sucks but I’ve used much worse apps that offer less. The amount of ads and how easy they are to click accidentally is ridiculous though

      It’s bad because it’s built to do what Facebook did - it always gives you something to see and a reason to keep going. Have a nice, curated mix of science and shit posts? Let’s throw some crap from the front page in there along with the ads! No one responded to your comments? We’ll make suggestions look like someone is interacting with you! Haven’t used the app in a few hours? Here’s some posts delivered in a notification to get you back in there

      I left Facebook for Reddit because I realized I didn’t really enjoy it and often ended up feeling worse after using, and when the experiments they were doing came out I payed close attention. It was a real slap in the face when I saw Reddit doing similar stuff, and I checked out alternatives like tildes but nothing else was scratching the itch so I put it on the back burner.

      For those of us who aren’t going back, this wakeup call was a blessing. It’s a strong reminder that corporations not only don’t care about us, they can’t - they might act friendly sometimes, but they wouldn’t hesitate to poison the water supply if they thought it would bring greater profits

      • dhork@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Thats an interesting point, all that shit just turns me off and makes me disengage. I avoid Facebook for precisely this reason.

        I have to interact with LinkedIn for professional reasons, but always do it from a PC and don’t install their app. When I get a LinkedIn message, LinkedIn helpfully emails me to let me know it’s there, but doesn’t tell me what’s in it. Then after I check on it, I get another email reminding me that LinkedIn is better on the app. They are constantly trying to get that app on my phone, which makes me wonder exactly what extra data these phone apps send that is worth so much.

      • Lockely@pawb.social
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        2 years ago

        It’s worse than that, because the official app spams your phone with tracking requests. I know most apps do some tracking, but users with apps that track the trackers have reported as many as 500k requests in 24 hours.

        This is not only an invasive breach of privacy from a link aggregator forum, but also straight up murders your battery life.

        I just got a brand new Pixel 7a before this nonsense started. I installed the reddit app because Baconreader is like twelve years old and I’d figured I’d see if their official app had gotten any better since I last used it. It hadn’t, of course, but I also noticed my brand new phone wasn’t holding a charge at all. Like, 20% battery left at 5pm while I’m still at work and barely using it.

        Reddit was using over 40% of my battery while fucking IDLE. I brought this up over there and a few other people looked at it. Someone reported it was using 60% of their iPhone’s battery in the last week. It’s repugnant.

    • TragicNotCute@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I paid for premium every month for at least 5 years. I would have probably even paid a little more to keep using Apollo. Just pure greed running the ship over there.

        • TragicNotCute@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          I wanted to support something I liked. They are a business and I figured if I paid the way they were asking to be paid I’d be free to use the service as I pleased (via Apollo).

    • AbsurdityAccelerator@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Yes. I was paying for reddit gold just to avoid seeing ads. I don’t understand why they couldn’t just have passed this kind of thing on to the end users.

    • midnight@lemmy.one
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      2 years ago

      Yep, I would have happily paid for the ability to keep using Sync, just like I happily paid for Sync Ultra. I’m probably not in the majority though

  • Alpacalypse@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Man, I signed up reddit premium in like April because I wanted to support the site that I’d been using for 13 years. Just two months later, I’ve got so much regret lol

  • croobat@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Leaving that garbage website was the best decision I’ve made for my mental health since pot

  • detwaft@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I tried to look at a reddit link via mobile web browser and it said something really stupid like… we can’t show you this on the web you need to use the app.

    Dafuq? Hell no. I guess I’m not looking at it then. Jumped the shark, well and truly.

  • michikade@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Premium’s been a thing for a long time, it used to be Reddit Gold several years ago. It also used to be cheaper, $3.99/mo but it went up multiple years ago.

    They might be pushing it hard right now, though. Not sure. Maybe they’re trying to entice the people who were paying for 3PA features to pay Reddit instead or something.

    I currently have premium, ad free is the only way Reddit is palatable even before all this went down and I bought it ages ago when I wanted to support a thing I used every day and also have had a couple awards that extended it, it expires in August. I won’t be renewing.

    • justalyintometa@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It’s funny because if they did something like require Reddit premium to use 3rd party apps I would understand and honestly just pay it. Now I’m here.

      • TheGreyt@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        This would have been such a good idea, quite literally a win/win for both reddit and 3rd party apps however that would require Spez to actually be clever and willing to work with others instead of role playing a dollar store version of Logan Roy.

        • FoxBJK@midwest.social
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          2 years ago

          It wouldn’t necessarily be a win for 3rd party apps because it still raises the cost to use them. $9 for Reddit is quite the ask already. 3rd party devs would need payment too and frankly social media ain’t worth anything over $5 to me

      • TheGreyt@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        This would have been such a good idea, quite literally a win/win for both reddit and 3rd party apps however that would require Spez to actually be clever and willing to work with others instead of roll playing a dollar store version of Logan Roy.

    • jinno@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      Yeah, I was an original buyer on reddit gold. Then I got 2 years free because of the Alien Blue shutdown, and I never reupped afterward, because it didn’t really add anything to the experience.

      And by the looks of it “avatar upgrades” and “Custom app icons” ain’t really providing anything else of value still.

    • failsafe5000@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      The other problem with Reddit premium, have multiple accounts because you want to keep something’s separate? Well you have to pay $50 a year for each account.

    • justalyintometa@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It’s funny because if they did something like require Reddit premium to use 3rd party apps I would understand and honestly just pay it. Now I’m here.

      • New_account@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I was gifted Reddit gold a few times over the years for random comments I made, which gave access to the lounge subreddit. It’s mostly nothing but dumb memes roleplaying as gilded age oil tycoons and the like. Definitely not worth paying anything for access to it.

      • baker@sh.itjust.works
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        2 years ago

        ngl I always assumed that was a placeholder sub without any content, just to sustain the meme that /r/lounge was a thing

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Not much that I could tell, I got gold a couple times and it seemed like people there were just the same except “oh it’s exclusive” but the memes werent any better.

  • mcc@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years ago

    I mean, if they say “you have to pay 3 bucks a month to use 3rd party client” I would be annoyed but I would understand, and I would still be on reddit.

    • nude@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      I would have gladly paid for a premium reddit experience, had it provided useful features. 3rd party app access is something I would have totally understood and paid for. RES features integrated, various styles such as old.reddit enshrined and protected, the option to opt in/out of various features, premium access to mod/admin subs that actually get a response, etc.

      Instead they offered awards to give out. No value, no purchase.

    • darkmugglet@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      I would have paid $3 a month to use a third party client. I don’t want to pay $50 for bulk shit.

    • jinno@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      Exactly. But they dropped exhorbitant cost on those apps and provided no runway for them to adapt their business model. So instead - I’m here on kbin and likely going to dive into an open source project to try to help get a mobile app for this out soon.

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      exactly! so fucked and insidious and greedy that they’re trying to weed out competition as well

  • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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    2 years ago

    “Pay us and we’ll give you all this junk you never wanted in the first place”

    I don’t want more stuff - I want less of it. That’s why I used RiF/old.reddit and that’s why I’m now leaving.

    • TurretCorruption@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Id rather pay for a subscription for a forum site or something. I know echo chambers are dangerous, but sometimes you just need a gated community. Money makes it really easy to keep the lunatics out.

        • TurretCorruption@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          The very same anonymity people use to get away with terrible behavior on free sites. I don’t see the downside here.

          • ghariksforge@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            You can’t hurt anyone by saying things online. But you can be hurt if the government does not like what you are saying.

      • withersailor@aussie.zone
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        2 years ago

        Lunatics also have money.

        A site you pay for has incentive to keep you on their site for ads and data collection. One way to do that is to keep serving data you engage with. So, keeping you in a bubble.

        Diversity your sources.

    • rjb@aussie.zone
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      2 years ago

      I don’t really understand this sentiment, I’d rather pay a subscription for a service like fb / insta / reddit than have ads and my identity sold to the highest bidder.

      Social networks are expensive to run, the idea they should be “free” is half the problem.

      Though of course the enterprises behind them make far more money through advertising and mining user data than they would through a subscription model.

        • hellequin67@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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          2 years ago

          YouTube has been shown recently to be sliding ads into premium user feeds so I can only expect the same, if not worse, especially from a company so blatantly caught lying.

      • dxxth@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Delusional to think a paid subscription would keep them from selling your identity to the highest bidder. Even if you sued them on GDPR bases they’d gladly take that loss if you somehow won so they could keep abusing you.

        It’s just another revenue stream to make people feel better about their poor financial decisions.

      • drlecompte@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 years ago

        The problem is that selling your data + targeted advertising is always going to be more lucrative than a subscription model. So even if you are willing to pay a subscription, it’s usually only a matter of time before the social media company in question changes tack. Especially if they have shareholders and/or venture capital investors breathing down their necks. If you run it like Wikipedia is run, I’m pretty sure you can operate a social media company on subscriptions/donations, but as a business model that doesn’t make sense as it is not the least effort way to make the most money.

        • rjb@aussie.zone
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          2 years ago

          Yup, agree totally. Only way it can work is if the org running it is a not for profit with great transparency, which hopefully is what we will see with the likes of Lemmy etc.

          There is an argument to make that things like reddit or even Facebook (original fb, not what it is now) should be publicly owned services. They CAN provide value to society, similar to how a town hall can.

      • hellequin67@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        2 years ago

        I have no problem paying an app developer to remove ads.

        But I’m not going to pay an organisation that has just hiked it’s API prices which means it’s now going to be earning a fortune from the likes of Google/Microsoft.

        Fuck u/spez

          • ghariksforge@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            I doubt you discuss your political opinions in the supermarket.

            Paying for social media would allow companies and governments to associate every opinion on the internet with a credit card.

            • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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              2 years ago

              And even if you did discuss those opinions, the only person who would see that discussion are security guards monitoring the camera.

    • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      App icons were a big thing on Apollo. They were however designed by the users and added to the app as a quirky tribute to the community. The difference was that the users were glad to give their money to the dev, because the app you got for free was perfectly usable and awesome.

  • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Paying an optional subscription fee is a great idea. It helps pay for servers and personal.

    Paying to give special rewards is a horrible idea. The wealthiest can now decide which opinion is best. Everyone wants to reply to the rewarded comments to be more visible for upvotes. It’s terrible.

  • PieBandit@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I canceled my premium a few days ago, I guess if they are charging apps millions for API access, why do I need to pay for premium to help Reddit.