Ask HN: Unhappy with Reddit - what revenue model works for you? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Unhappy with Reddit - what revenue model works for you?

3 pointsmynegation5 comments

Following the saga about Reddit, I am siding with Reddit. If your users get the value from unofficial clients, by passing the ads - your main revenue stream, it is only reasonable to ask them pay. I don’t use Reddit unofficial clients, but I appreciate the fact that I do not have to use Fastmail’s email clients and use my client of choice. Fastmail is ok with it as they get my money anyway, and I like this model. What would you rather Reddit (and other similar services) do?

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> What would you rather Reddit (and other similar services) do?

Acknowledge the value that these users provide? The quality of content on Reddit is entirely driven by selfless contribution. If you go out of your way to diminish the experience of power users, you're sabotaging the quality of content on your platform and basically driving it into the ground. I haven't had a Reddit account in years, but the community is right to get mad now. It's time for them to find a new home, clearly Reddit has a conflict of interests internally.

Thank you! You gave me an important insight that Reddit is more of a multi-sided market than service providers of open email infrastructure are. But to be specific what would Reddit (or its purported replacement) need to do? Revenue sharing with authors of poplar posts and comments? Admins of popular subreddit? A la YouTube?

> But to be specific what would Reddit (or its purported replacement) need to do?

To make money? It might be impossible. You can't just put ads up on text like you can with video and expect everyone to come anyways. Very little that Reddit does is unique, and they could easily be replaced by a community-maintained alternative. Nothing that users currently love about Reddit is impossible to find elsewhere.

So, the age of Reddit being monitizable may be over. It's already been "over" for traditional print media's transition[0], it wouldn't be surprising if Reddit discovered that making money off forums at-scale is a snipe chase.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/technology/new-york-times...

Reduce operating costs to the maximum extent possible. Look for radical solutions to the problems of moderation. (Possibly don’t let sites get too big, move the party someplace else once invaders get in, …)

I haven’t seen many folks who are opposed to the API for apps being a paid service. Even the Apollo dev said they’re fine with paying. The problem is that Reddit’s pricing seems to be basically set high enough to effectively make developing third party apps impossible, and then their communication about the change has been dishonest.

The pricing makes it seem like Reddit wants to ban 3rd party clients without doing so outright.

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