How many of you use a 3rd-party app to browse Reddit?
When I had an iPhone 3+ years ago, Apollo was the only way I interacted with Reddit. Once I switched to Android, I cycled through the choices before settling pretty happily with Boost. I don’t intend to access or use Reddit on mobile at all once June 30th rolls around, and after the CEO’s public comments since the protest, I don’t really want to access it on desktop either.
It is relay for me on Android. Apparently, they are going to continue with a subscription version that won’t get NSFW content. Why would I start paying for a worse product? Not to mention that I bought the ad free version way back.
Relay and reddit are one of the two non open source stacks I rely on, with the other being windows and steam for gaming. And it has bit me in the butt. The lesson to be learned is clear- no more closed source anything from here on out. Steps will be taken.
Also a soon to be former Relay user, and it looks like dbrady is having trouble making the subscription numbers work too:
"I’m still looking into it, gathering data etc. Unfortunately the average call rates when broken down to the top 2, 5, 10% etc of users is painting a much different picture. This is the cohort of users I would expect to possibly convert to a subscription model and the average rates for those users can be 3,4,5 even 600 hundred calls per day just by the shear amount they use the app. Some of the top users are well over 1000 per day and sometimes over 2000.
So I’m not sure yet. It would probably have to be a usage based subscription model if it was going to be anything and I’m not sure that’s worth doing. I am still looking into it but unfortunately I don’t think my earlier price points will work." From r/relayforreddit pinned post
Yeah, I have been following it a bit, and I don’t think it is going to pan out. I was already planning on not subscribing simply because I hate subscribing to things and try to have as few subscriptions as possible. I would honestly gladly buy relay for like $60-70 rather than pay $3/month (Although honestly, I wouldn’t do that too). There is going to be no way to make that work if Reddit wants to position itself as a pay by usage, or conversation as a service company.
But I think it all goes to show is that this isn’t a business model. Talking on the internet isn’t a business model, and tracking people without their knowledge or consent (even if you technically have it on paper) isn’t working either.
