this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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I think the real issue is that the protest coordinators were not able to succinctly explain why they had to protest to begin with. Charging third party app developers for API access is an esoteric topic. Most people don't even know what an API is. Most people don't use third party apps. Most people also don't care.
Yeah, I was going to mention that as well.
Longtime users and especially power users and mods have been on third party apps for ages. And because third party apps are the most "visible" examples of the API, that's what drew the attention.
As soon as they tried to explain "it's not only about third party apps, but also third party tools", that's when they lost people because explaining what those tools are and accomplish to users who aren't mods (or even familiar with tech at all) becomes a subject without much clarity.
To a massive portion of users, there is no "reddit.com", it's just the app. The fact that so many subs are still using titles like "save third party apps" is a bad sign. It's not "save Reddit from spam bots and other awful shit" (which is one of the things this is mainly about), but you're telling a bunch of people to "save" apps that they don't use or care about.
There's an added cog in the machine here. Every time someone tries (and succeeds) in explaining the issues, the astroturfing (or just regular bootlicking) begins and suddenly there's seeds of doubt.
One thing we can count on is Reddit fucking up again. And again. And each time, it'll lose the more active users. It's not ever going to be a mass migration, but waves over time. Even then, what can we say Reddit will be in another five years? Probably different from what it is now, with users who expect different things.
I am seeing many users (especially those who haven't been around for as long) asking people what the big deal is and why their favorite subreddits are down. Half of the people trying to respond aren't giving these people satisfactory and succinct answers. The protest is breaking down as soon as it began.
Most (60%) of Reddit users either use 3rd party apps (~30%) or old reddit (~30%)
You can't throw out an enormous number like that without further explanation or a source at least. The only post I found on my first Google search is from a reddit post (6 days ago) where it's said that reddit reports about 5% of its users coming from third party apps.
Apollo also reported having around 1.2M users while not being a small app at all.
So with 400M MAU as the lowest possible amount of users, somehow all others 3rd party apps have over 118M users between them?
I could believe 30% of users being old.reddit ones due to it not being deleted after all those years. But for mobile apps, that 5% quote seems the most realistic.