[bsuvc]

It's definitely a gamble building your business on top of another, much larger company's product.

It's called platform risk, and while every company has it to some degree, if your business is solely dependent on a third party especially one that doesn't have (much) skin in the game (your game, not theirs), that risk becomes existential for your business.

I've seen it before where a company builds something cool, only to be shut down by the larger company who for whatever reason doesn't like what the smaller company is doing.

[georgemcbay]

It's also a gamble to build your business on top of user created content and then piss off the users.

I just used redact.dev to delete over 10 years of reddit comments and posts on my 125,904 karma account.

Honestly just kind of done with mass market social media in general at this point, so it wasn't that hard to push me over the edge here.

[waboremo]

Seconding the redact shoutout, although the UI could use a lot of work, it's certainly much easier than looking for an extension for the bunch of supported services or having to use an outdated script in tampermonkey.

The nice thing about redact specific to the reddit module is the edit before deletion, that way reddit can't keep monetizing your comments/posts. Useful for people who posted personal content as well, who thought their selfies or artwork or whatever got deleted with account deletion but remained up.

[add-sub-mul-div]

> Honestly just kind of done with mass market social media in general at this point

I've been saying, the current leaders are too big to fail or get disrupted by competition, but if there's a silver lining it's that in lieu of a better Reddit happening we may realize it's a good time to start being less online.

[willis936]

Reddit is not too big to fail.

[web11]

is not it in the top 5/10 websites in the world?

[willis936]

How does that make it too big to fail?

Are people worried about their deposits? Was Twitter too big to fail? Myspace? Digg?

[eric_cc]

Did Twitter fail?

[tough]

Could you request a backup of your user data?

Upload it to new reddit open source backend, offer that to the app devs at a resasonable price

Fork reddit

[teruakohatu]

This bookmarklet works very well with Chrome, is very easy to use and no need to install any applications:

https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite

It relies on old.reddit.com, which everyone assumes will be gone not long after the API changes. So use it while you can.

[mynameisvlad]

Does it? In the readme it says:

> There is NO NEED to use never ending reddit to load as many comments / submissions. This script uses the actual Reddit API endpoints to edit and delete instead of automating clicks on delete and edit buttons. ahem, reddit overwrite

My plan was to run it on June 30th since it claimed to use the API. I guess since it’s in-browser it could still be using the API and masquerading as the website.

[goolz]

This is awesome and I will be following suit, I urge others to do the same, great advice!

[flangola7]

Is Sync a business?

[kenhwang]

There's only a paid version or an ad-supported version, so yes.

[scosman]

I love my 3rd party Reddit app, but when their business model is either 1) don’t show Reddit’s ads and instead show their own ads, or 2) charge a fee to remove all ads (including Reddit’s) - it does feel like it was just a matter of time before this happened.

Reddit should have said Reddit premium users can use 3rd party clients / unlimited API calls. Messaging something like: If you want no-ads you have to pay Reddit (not someone else), but if you feel their client is better feel free to use it. The landscape for 3rd party clients would probably still dry up (who wants to pay 2x subscription fees), but it would have been better PR.

[robotnikman]

I would have rather settled for this than their current plan.

[aaomidi]

I can’t wait for Reddit to crash and burn because of this.

And no, I don’t feel bad for the workers because they can (and still have time to) unionize and stop the madness.

[wpietri]

I suspect it's too late to stop much of the madness. Reddit took $1.4 billion in VC money, and like mobsters, VCs like to get paid back without much regard to how it happens. Even if the Reddit workers unionized, I suspect that Reddit's execs would happily fire every union member rather than significantly jeopardize their IPO. After all, Twitter shows how you can fire the great bulk of your staff, treat the remainder horribly, and still have a content site limp along for quite a while without immediately dying.

[willis936]

Seems more like a tantrum than anything. Not making money fast enough? Better break it.

[wpietri]

Unfortunately, it's worse than a tantrum, because it's calculated.

[nullindividual]

Ran into a user who shared a screenshot of the mobile app (for unrelated reasons to the topic at hand). They admitted the mobile app 'sucked' yet didn't care.

Apathy is real, and most users have it. Reddit will be fine.

[andrewxdiamond]

Power users are the most affected here, and power users bring the most value to Reddit.

Mods specifically have always been Reddit’s golden goose. Free content moderation by volunteers is Reddit’s only advantage over other social media platforms. FB pays absurd numbers of humans to do what power users do for Reddit for free.

When the mods fall, the quality falls.

[nullindividual]

Do you have anything to back up your assertion that power users bring the most value?

Mods certainly don't sustain or bring the quality bar up. Reddit content quality has fallen over the years as it has gotten more popular.

[parineum]

Unions don't make business decisions.

[wpietri]

Unions can definitely influence them. E.g., that's a big part of the point of the German Betriebsrat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council#Germany

[parineum]

Unions can influence them only while they're in CBA negotiations unless they negotiate a seat at the table, as in your example, which is not something that is at all common in the US.

[wpietri]

Formally, that's true. But as we see in the writer's strike, unions definitely try to influence business decisions, and sometimes they succeed.