[larrymyers]

It looks like Apollo is going to have to go paid only as well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12ram0f/had_a_fe...

I think the post about RedReader brings up the critical point: Reddit is dependent on its users to create and moderate content for every subreddit.

It would not surprise me moving to only paid access to the API starts a real declining spiral for Reddit. To me this is an implicit admission from the Reddit team that they are incapable of providing a better first party experience than third party clients.

[AlexandrB]

From the Apollo post:

> For NSFW content, they were not 100% sure of the answer (later clarifying that with NSFW content they're talking about sexually explicit content only, not normal posts marked NSFW for non-sexual reasons), but thought that it would no longer be possible to access via the API, I asked how they balance this with plans for the API to be more equitable with the official app, and there was not really an answer but they did say they would look into it more and follow back up. I would like to follow up more about this, especially around content hosting on other websites that is posted to Reddit.

I wonder if this is the real impetus to do this now. It feels like there's increasing pressure coming from somewhere (payment processors? advertisers? politicians?) to push NSFW content to the margins.

Edit: Another commenter mentioned them going public soon. That seems more likely.

[jjulius]

>To me this is an implicit admission from the Reddit team that they are incapable of providing a better first party experience than third party clients.

They essentially admitted as much in their discussion with RedReader.

[kitsunesoba]

> To me this is an implicit admission from the Reddit team that they are incapable of providing a better first party experience than third party clients.

Can’t, or more likely in my opinion don’t want to.

What users want is pretty simple: a feed of posts from subscribed subreddits that’s sorted by post score and recency. The problem with this is that it doesn’t offer much room to twiddle with UI, algorithms, etc to drive ad impressions, feature adoption, etc.

[croutonwagon]

Apollo basically did that a while back by shoving adds to paid lifetime users about subscriptions. I abandoned use of that app at the time while christian started only allowing "one thread a day" related to his change there and claiming he needs the subcription money to live (while having in the past begged for donations to buy ridiculous things like the apple apple and mount).

I am not a fan of subscription culture in general and I had paid a lifetime fee he agreed upon to avoid such ads but he simply changed the definition of an ad to be a "reddit ad". I also used to toss him tip jar donations occaisonally because the app was good. But he seemed to get greedy after his virtual tamogachi.

RedPlanet does well but honestly I use reddit for less and less every day, despite my account being 16y 11m old.