or making it so you have to be a paid Reddit subscriber to have expanded API access.
Isn’t that what they’re doing? I’ve used Relay Pro via API until recently by paying for it.
The only reason I don’t use that anymore is cause I went de-googled, so no play store subscription and thus no API access anymore, and since I can’t stand the original app I came here.
That sounds tempting, but still won’t make me rejoin reddit.
For me it’s API usage for the most part.
When they locked the API, I was even fine with paying a bit, so I subscribed to Relay Pro. But now I got a degoogled phone, so I can’t use my play store subscription anymore, and don’t want to fiddle with cracked APKs or patching either.
The original reddit app is a nightmare to use so… that’s why I’m here lol
(Freedom, privacy and decentralization are awesome too, obviously. But I’m gonna be honest, I probably wouldn’t have switched - at least not fully - if it wasn’t for having an app that works well for me.)
I learned that Germany doesn’t have a state owned mail service anymore
It’s so dumb. We privatized all kinds of important infrastructure, then it became enshittified for revenue maximization and now it’s broken, shitty and expensive.
Some postal service, trains, telecommunication service, banks, airports & airlines etc have been government owned a few decades ago and worked so so much better.
Hmm I don’t know actually, but now I’m curious too. From quick search:
As the newspaper Handelsblatt explains, “angst about potential surveillance is rooted in Germany’s past.” The combined legacy of the Nazi Gestapo and the East German Stasi are thought to be part of the reason Germany has been a pioneer in data protection — with legislation dating back to the 1970’s.
https://www.codastory.com/surveillance-and-control/coronavirus-germany-privacy/
I’m probably quite biased being German myself, but I feel like that things like privacy and security tend to be more important to Germans than to other folks. And I don’t speak just about the tech bubble, it shows everywhere.
To give a random example, when a license plate has been blurred in a photo posted anywhere, chances are high it’s been posted by a German. Despite the fact that there is no license plate lookup (like carfax for US, finnik.nl for Netherlands, car.info for Sweden etc) so a license plate wouldn’t even reveal anything to anyone, yet we treat it like a secret on instinct. If you ask such a German why he blurred it, he probably won’t have a reasonable response, he just does it because he feels like it.
(Edit: Just look through the used cars here, most if not all will have their plates censored given they have plates on them lol)
Getting back to topic, this might not be the only explanation, but I’m pretty sure it’s a noticable factor why Germans are especially present on platforms like this, i.e. platforms that tend to respect the user’s privacy more than the big tech corporations.
Yeah, same. What a BS statement above lol
It’s disabled on mine too, that’s why it asks first whether I want to open it in the store.
It still goes to the play store (website) when I refuse to open it in the play store (app), as can be seen in the video.
One example I know is Instagram, here’s an example. Can’t click anywhere without being redirected to the play store.
I don’t use it, it’s just the first that came to my mind, but in the rare cases someone sends me a link to it I can’t really view what they sent me because of this. And I surely won’t make an account just to see a meme or some shit.
The worst are the sites that just redirect you to the play/app store when visiting on mobile.
I’m surely NOT installing your fucking app after you give me a bad experience (by not showing me the content I’ve received a link to) while I’m a “guest visitor” to your site.
It was always the same. They came in saying they’re looking for a small device. I showed them the small devices. They played around with them a bit, then slowly moved on to the bigger devices. No reason given, they just said they liked the smaller ones more and yet still bought the bigger ones.
Around 10 years ago I worked in an electronics store. You know, when actual small smartphones were still a thing (think S4 Mini and stuff like that).
Every day people came looking for a small phone. Always were very interested in the smaller devices. And yet most never bought one, they eventually decided for a larger one. For each new Samsung series during that time, I’d guess it was about ~50% of people interested in the Mini series, but only ~5% of our actual sales were the Minis.
It’s crazy and I learned a lot about people and their purchasing behavior back then. People often think they want something and never buy it and vice versa. It’s interesting, from a psychological view. In my current business it’s the same - people keep asking for stuff, and once you offer it, nobody cares about it.
That’s probably why Samsung kept on making these Minis until the S5 despite them not seeling. Customers kept just giving them feedback that didn’t reflect their behavior.
This feels like reverse psychology on a little kid.
“That’s it, I’m not tracking you anymore! >:(”
“Oooh nooo, what have I done! Oh how much I would wish to be tracked :(”
“No, you won’t convince me to change my mind >:(”
“Oh well, guess I’ll have to live without being tracked, what a shame that is.”
Hmm, it’s truly not ideal, but while I certainly don’t want to defend them (just playing devil’s advocate a bit here lol), IMO application-based payments do make more sense than user-based. I assume way more people use more than 1 account than there are people who use more than 1 client. If that assumption is correct, the current system is very much in favor of the majority of users.
But it’s indeed a bad solution for the 3rd party app devs to act as some kind of middleman for the payments. The only better alternative I can think of would’ve been to let users add their alts to their subscription, but that would need a system to detect and punish shared subscriptions.
That the fees are too high might be true, I don’t have any insight on that - but Relay Pro has tiers from (in Germany) €1.09 to €5.49 (+ optional higher tiers for application support), the 5.49 tier being with unlimited API calls.
This surely isn’t cheap, at least in the category of social media apps, which is 99% free (but usually ad-supported, which Relay isn’t), but not unfeasible. Generally speaking, i.e. regardless of category, ad-free usage (which is what API access is from reddits perspective) for €5.50 is actually cheap. Most apps and services charge around the same or more for that.
That being said, I was obviously not in favor of that change either. And Reddit sucks at communicating what specifically they’re gonna do. But I also gotta say, the way it turned out in the end wasn’t too bad/unfair - at least not in my experience as a paying API user. Might be (and probably is) a different story for the developers, as the amount of shut-down 3rd party apps indicates. Reddit should’ve just worked out something together with these devs, then I’m sure the backlash and outrage wouldn’t have been half as large.
Either way, I’m happy to be here now.