I’m not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium

I’m not sure if this is well-known or not that they’re pushing it now, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it, especially on old.reddit.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The irony is that I was mentally prepared to have to pay for Premium to keep BaconReader. All they had to do was add an “API access” badge to that screen and none of this would have happened, plus they would have gotten a bunch more new sign-ups. I am at a loss to explain what Steve is thinking, nor why his decisions are better for profitability.

    • SeeJayEmm@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Same here. If they’d have just framed it differently and put the onus of paying for api access on the users (at a modest fee), almost none of the backlash would have happened.

      Then I’d still be oblivious.

      I prefer the world the way it was before all the consolidation. I like the ideals of the fediverse and want it to succeed.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Then I’d still be oblivious.

        I prefer the world the way it was before all the consolidation. I like the ideals of the fediverse and want it to succeed.

        Exactly, this is better overall I think, at least when it comes to the health of the internet as a whole.

    • SterlingVapor@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You underestimate the power of addiction.

      The official app isn’t a bad thing because it’s buggy and has ads, that sucks but I’ve used much worse apps that offer less. The amount of ads and how easy they are to click accidentally is ridiculous though

      It’s bad because it’s built to do what Facebook did - it always gives you something to see and a reason to keep going. Have a nice, curated mix of science and shit posts? Let’s throw some crap from the front page in there along with the ads! No one responded to your comments? We’ll make suggestions look like someone is interacting with you! Haven’t used the app in a few hours? Here’s some posts delivered in a notification to get you back in there

      I left Facebook for Reddit because I realized I didn’t really enjoy it and often ended up feeling worse after using, and when the experiments they were doing came out I payed close attention. It was a real slap in the face when I saw Reddit doing similar stuff, and I checked out alternatives like tildes but nothing else was scratching the itch so I put it on the back burner.

      For those of us who aren’t going back, this wakeup call was a blessing. It’s a strong reminder that corporations not only don’t care about us, they can’t - they might act friendly sometimes, but they wouldn’t hesitate to poison the water supply if they thought it would bring greater profits

      • dhork@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Thats an interesting point, all that shit just turns me off and makes me disengage. I avoid Facebook for precisely this reason.

        I have to interact with LinkedIn for professional reasons, but always do it from a PC and don’t install their app. When I get a LinkedIn message, LinkedIn helpfully emails me to let me know it’s there, but doesn’t tell me what’s in it. Then after I check on it, I get another email reminding me that LinkedIn is better on the app. They are constantly trying to get that app on my phone, which makes me wonder exactly what extra data these phone apps send that is worth so much.

    • TragicNotCute@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I paid for premium every month for at least 5 years. I would have probably even paid a little more to keep using Apollo. Just pure greed running the ship over there.

    • midnight@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Yep, I would have happily paid for the ability to keep using Sync, just like I happily paid for Sync Ultra. I’m probably not in the majority though

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I’d gladly pay the sub for Apollo if reddit had decided to charge a modest price for the API and Christian could make a buck off it and reddit could also make a few bucks off me.

      Reddit could’ve probably 5x’d or 10x’d the money they make off me that way, but now they 0x’d it.

    • AbsurdityAccelerator@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes. I was paying for reddit gold just to avoid seeing ads. I don’t understand why they couldn’t just have passed this kind of thing on to the end users.

  • mcc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I mean, if they say “you have to pay 3 bucks a month to use 3rd party client” I would be annoyed but I would understand, and I would still be on reddit.

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      exactly! so fucked and insidious and greedy that they’re trying to weed out competition as well

  • michikade@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Premium’s been a thing for a long time, it used to be Reddit Gold several years ago. It also used to be cheaper, $3.99/mo but it went up multiple years ago.

    They might be pushing it hard right now, though. Not sure. Maybe they’re trying to entice the people who were paying for 3PA features to pay Reddit instead or something.

    I currently have premium, ad free is the only way Reddit is palatable even before all this went down and I bought it ages ago when I wanted to support a thing I used every day and also have had a couple awards that extended it, it expires in August. I won’t be renewing.

    • justalyintometa@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s funny because if they did something like require Reddit premium to use 3rd party apps I would understand and honestly just pay it. Now I’m here.

      • TheGreyt@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This would have been such a good idea, quite literally a win/win for both reddit and 3rd party apps however that would require Spez to actually be clever and willing to work with others instead of role playing a dollar store version of Logan Roy.

      • TheGreyt@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This would have been such a good idea, quite literally a win/win for both reddit and 3rd party apps however that would require Spez to actually be clever and willing to work with others instead of roll playing a dollar store version of Logan Roy.

    • failsafe5000@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The other problem with Reddit premium, have multiple accounts because you want to keep something’s separate? Well you have to pay $50 a year for each account.

    • justalyintometa@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s funny because if they did something like require Reddit premium to use 3rd party apps I would understand and honestly just pay it. Now I’m here.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Not much that I could tell, I got gold a couple times and it seemed like people there were just the same except “oh it’s exclusive” but the memes werent any better.

      • baker@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        ngl I always assumed that was a placeholder sub without any content, just to sustain the meme that /r/lounge was a thing

      • New_account@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I was gifted Reddit gold a few times over the years for random comments I made, which gave access to the lounge subreddit. It’s mostly nothing but dumb memes roleplaying as gilded age oil tycoons and the like. Definitely not worth paying anything for access to it.

  • Alpacalypse@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Man, I signed up reddit premium in like April because I wanted to support the site that I’d been using for 13 years. Just two months later, I’ve got so much regret lol

  • croobat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Leaving that garbage website was the best decision I’ve made for my mental health since pot

    • zackwithak@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Did you only use third party apps and old Reddit? Because if you ever used their app or the new redesign, idk how you could miss it

    • gorkx@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      @tst123 This. It’s not because of a hissy fit over the worlds worst reddit app, or a bunch of honorless fucknuggets ruining shit for the rest of us. it’s that they are or were on a oldschool shareware-esk model: pay for the fucking thing your leaching from. Fact is weather or not anyone likes it even fedverse needs money to keep the lights on.

      @Cinner

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Those badge things people kept giving to comments came mostly from premium users, but I’m not sure premium gave you anything else.

      • Poiar@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Been on Reddit every day for 12 years, but have been using apps this entire time (RIP Sync for Reddit) so I might be a little out of the loop so:

        What badges?

  • ultimate_question@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “The suckers we talked into giving us money for our crazy salaries over the past decade+ want a return on their investment so cough up”

  • shandrakor@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I opened jerboa and this was the top of my feed. I was extremely confused for much longer than I’d like to admit.

    • grue@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I was similarly confused when I saw a screenshot somebody had posted of another post in Jerboa. It was hard to tell where the screenshot ended and the app UI began again.

      I think I ought to file a bug report/feature request that a thin border be added around images so they don’t take up the whole screen width and you can distinguish them as images better.

    • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      App icons were a big thing on Apollo. They were however designed by the users and added to the app as a quirky tribute to the community. The difference was that the users were glad to give their money to the dev, because the app you got for free was perfectly usable and awesome.

  • Annoyed_Crabby@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That’s not new, they add this a few years ago after changing “gilded” to multi-tier award, which cost spez-buck, which you can get from either buying it like pay2win game or get this premium, and they will give you some spez-buck each month.

    What infuriate me more is they didn’t have regional pricing, so reddit premium cost more than youtube premium in my country, which provide better content and all of what i subbed is OG content.

    I can’t find myself paying monthly for internet regurgitator.

    • Ben@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is the way.

      Reddit is so much an American business - screw that. But it’s not even doing a proper business model - screwing the stupid Yanks and giving a better deal to people who don’t feel the need to ‘pay more for quality’.

      You know, I bought a HP printer which takes HP cartridges which print out (officially) 1500 pages each, and they cost the equivalent of $8 - but only outside the USA… as an answer (I think) to well organised resistance to the ‘maybe 300 pages or less’ leading to people buying modified ink-tank cartridges locally made (in Thailand).

      My last cartridge (not heavily used) lasted for 5 years before being replaced… so HP gets my money with a smile.

      Reddit can go whistle.

  • chickenfish@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I thought they were introducing something new among all this other bullshit but as soon as I saw it I realized that yeah, thats been around awhile.
    As a fellow old.reddit user, none of this does me any good. My adblockers are sufficient, half the time I completely forget I have an avatar, and…i have no idea what the rest of that is. So thanks, but no.

  • solidsnake2085@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “exclusive avatar gear” I didn’t even know there are avatars on Reddit. I’ve been using Sync for so long I never knew they added them.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That exclusive avatar gear it probably NFT-based, so it can be traded independently of Reddit. (Alhough if you think navigating the Fediverse is hard, try navigating how to transfer and sell those NFTs on a marketplace).

      There are certain subs where they have crypto-based community points, like r/cryptocurrency, based on participation. I have posted there, and have been give some of their token, which is inexplicably worth something.

      Reddit’s foray into crypto has been interesting to watch, and puts me in the position that if I decide to leave Reddit for good, they have given me a severance package. I will be sure to sell every bit of it before leaving, except for one token , which I will carefully monitor to see what Reddit does with community points from deleted accounts.

      • toastedenough@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I think the avatars were somewhat of a cool idea, if it was just a character creator. Not a fucking NFT marketplace

    • TurretCorruption@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Id rather pay for a subscription for a forum site or something. I know echo chambers are dangerous, but sometimes you just need a gated community. Money makes it really easy to keep the lunatics out.

        • TurretCorruption@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The very same anonymity people use to get away with terrible behavior on free sites. I don’t see the downside here.

          • ghariksforge@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You can’t hurt anyone by saying things online. But you can be hurt if the government does not like what you are saying.