I would venture a guess the more casual user’s window into this is only the handful of posts on Reddit that bubble to the top of r/all of third party apps shutting down. If they are uses of those apps, they probably scroll right on by and are none the wiser about the larger implications of all of this. And why should they care? If it doesn’t directly affect the way they use the platform, they will never even feel the impact of this.
Really gave me the push I needed to figure out Mastodon, and through Mastodon I found kbin and lemmy. These platforms have a long way to go, but it really seems like the big central platforms are losing more and more ground every day as users search for alternatives.
I did - this rings too reminiscent of Twitter for me. I really dislike the native app, and the desktop app is all but unusable on my devices (why? I have no idea, we’re talking recent MacBooks with the m-series processors and gaming PC’s…). I also really dislike ads, and while I think there were options available to pay Reddit for no ads (premium?) it didn’t feel like my subscription money was going to the right place since Reddit is all user generated content. Unlike platforms like YouTube, where the users who create the content openly discuss how their revenue is generated, I’m not even sure the money I would pay to Reddit for premium would benefit the content creators on their site. So yeah, I’m really not going to struggle to use Reddit anymore. RIP Apollo.
At this point in time, they have a lot to prove to get me to go back. The site itself has already felt like a lot of recycled content is coming up more and the conversations in some of my favorite subs have already become less deep and engaging. The recommendations and discovery have become kind of subpar and don’t even get me started on the native app and website. I work in the development field and the treatment of the third party developers has been garbage, unless there is a major overhaul of the leadership and some really sincere apologizing to those that have mistreated, I just don’t see an avenue back at this point.