A refugee who likes technology, geopolitics and interesting videos.
I did the UI/UX for Memmy which you can find at [email protected]
Well, we’ve found it. Literally everything is wrong with this house in every possible way.
Looking at it from the view of Reddit, their original excuse for charging for API access was due to the usage of it for machine learning with training their models. LLM’s (Large Language Models), such as LaMDA (Bard, Google), GPT-4 (OpenAI), need an enormous amount of data inputted into them and Reddit has a large amount of high quality conversations, making it an invaluable source for them.
However, because Reddit’s API was free, they didn’t get a cent of this. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t like this and wanted to profit off of this in some way. So they decided to charge for the API data access.
However, there is a clear issue with this as the Reddit API was used by third party apps, that don’t abuse the API and use it to operate their Reddit clients.
It’s quite clear now that the intention was not purely based on LLM’s as there was a large number of solutions that Reddit could’ve used to charge for API access for those wanting the data and those who are simply operating third party apps.
Client developers were absolutely more than willing to discuss these options, yet they were thrown a ton of hurdles by reddit.
So why do they want you to use their app?
These are a few examples of reasons that Reddit want you to use their app and there are most certainly many more. However, their argument has a fatal flaw, in that the value of Reddit does not come from their platform, but it comes from the data within it.
Social media follows this rule usually, 90% are lurkers and 10% are contributors. However, it depends. You might have a 1% of contributors that are prolific contributors that produce most of the sites content, or you might have a very small portion of contributors, like 0.01%. Think of the number of YouTube users and how many actually post videos themselves, or even contribute to the comment section.
Reddit contributors will be more likely than the average lurker to use a third party client or adblock on their browser. The revenue from these users is net-loss on paper, however, in reality, they are contributing significantly to the content that the revenue-generators will be viewing. If this content didn’t exist, there would not be a lurker to view the content, they’d simply go elsewhere.
Reddit doesn’t see it this way, they see these users as revenue losers that need to be migrated to their official app so they can begin to generate revenue. However, as mentioned, the huge backlash indicates that this was a terrible idea. Especially considering that unlike a platform like Twitter, Reddit is divided into sub communities managed with volunteer labour. As with the contributors, these individuals are much more likely to be using adblock or a third-party client. The Reddit app is rubbish, Reddit themselves have admitted this. Power users are going to try and find an alternative method of browsing that they find is better, which they have done.
Reddit absolutely knows this. /u/spez made an indication in his main post for his AMA that old reddit is not going away. They likely have engagement data for this and know that many contributions are made through old reddit. However, old reddit still gives them revenue and it’s still their platform. They added advertisements a few years back. https://safereddit.com/r/changelog/comments/c5clgh/ads_are_now_in_feed_on_old_reddit/
TL;DR Reddit wants money, but those who don’t use their app don’t generate money, on paper. In reality, they do. But it’s hard to convince investors of that.
I was exited for it and then I saw Ubisoft. sigh…
So now I can summarise the game for you
I’m absolutely horrific with organisation, but I found a few ways of managing things. I never really managed to grasp notifications, eventually they just became an auto-ignore for my brain. What worked more for me was having hints of what I need to do in places that I would naturally look throughout my day.
For instance, with my iPhone, I use dynamic island to keep my current task in a persistent way. It’s not forceful and it doesn’t interrupt what I’m currently doing. I’ve also got a large widget on my home screen which shows me some things like weather, date, reminders and calendar events. I see it a few times and eventually I usually manage to enact on it. I unlock my iPhone more than 100+ times per day, so that’s 100 potential opportunities to see it and enact on it.
As for filling it with tasks, I usually do that just before I’m about to go to bed. Once I plug my phone in, I have shortcuts give me a notification that reminds me to fill out the tasks for tomorrow. This isn’t bulletproof of course, but it helps to try and make it habit somewhat.
Despite the deficiencies, we’re still brains of habit, so trying to make that habitual does help. It does help that it’s a task that doesn’t change.
It looks good in the marketing (it always does) but we should all remember that it’s Bethesda making this. Then again, I can’t even name a developer that I would say “hell yeah, this is gonna be awesome!” at this point. The very sad state of the industry.
How can someone put this up on a wall without noticing that Greenland has been annexed by Canada, Texas has annexed Canada and the Mediterranean has moved to India.