tl;dr: They locked the original icon behind Reddit Premium.
Reddit promised to make their app better when they killed all the third party ones.
That’s what they meant. Holy shit.
How do you like the smell of despair in the morning?
I find it… Exquisite
Lmfao, they made the DEFAULT icon a paid option?? What the actual fuck?
They locked the original icon behind Reddit Premium.
Glad I’m on Android where I can just change the app icon for any app to anything I want at any time. As shitty as Reddit is for using this feature, the real shittiness is on Apple for allowing it to be a thing in the first place.
Do remember that Apple also gets their cut of the money
You can change any app icon on iOS as well, but it is a bit hacky and not as good as on Android.
Laughing. My. Mother. Fucking. Ass. Off.
All they had to do was say, “ok, third party apps can stay for premium users only” and I’d probably have Reddit premium now. Instead I deleted my ten plus year old account along with all my posts that weren’t mod announcements (so only two didn’t get deleted).
Instead I’ve fucked right on off to Kbin and Lemmy and all is well. Fuck Reddit and MOTHERFUCK Steve Huffman the stupid pig boy.
Same. I used to pay for premium even though I was an Apollo user. I paid because I liked Reddit and thought it brought me value.
Now I’m only keeping my account to ensure my posts and comments stay dead as best as I can.
Sure, fuck up your own branding Reddit, be my guest 😂😂👏👏👏
Seriously, what the fuck are they thinking here? It’s like branding 101 to not mess with it unless you’re looking at rebranding
They’re thinking if they don’t make every last cent today their IPO will be a catastrophe and this will all be for nothing.
This is basically like a old wooden ship trying to outrun a hurricane by jettisoning everything on board that can be lost. Right now, they are not thinking long term in the slightest. It’s solely about stopping that valuation from dropping, and they’ll do anything at all.
Imagine having to pay to edit an icon in your home screen
This post was made by the Android gang
These new ideas are exactly why they had to kill 3rd party apps. If they hadn’t, this sort of change would just push more people to adopt them.
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But that’s so much harder to do than simply taking away the options. Surely that’ll make them like Reddit more, right?
Jailbroken iPhone gang aswell
Technically you can use Shortcuts to set whatever icon you want but it takes some effort to set up. And I don’t think it can use transparency so it’d have to take up the whole square (or out more effort into making the background of the icon match your background). And it’ll take a second longer to load the app as it goes through Shortcuts first
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Agreed completely, it’s a workaround that requires some sacrifices.
I’m starting to believe that somebody could be bribing some Reddit managers to start destroying it from the inside.
They can’t just make so many negative decisions in so little time.
On another thought, they are trying to operate slowly like a Netflix or Spotify. But the content is from users who dont consider the app as “work”. Unlike singers and actors.
You know, I kind of agree. It’s almost like they’re trying to make people stop using it. They’re copying things from other companies that are already known to cause backlash in a community.
Suddenly end all outside developer access after years of allowing it? Check.
Removing things that users have already paid for the use of? Check.
Heavy content moderation? Check.
Poor treatment of mods and staff? Check.
Heavy amounts of ads mixed in with the rest of the posts/content? Check.
Powertripping admins doling out random site-wide bans? Check.
Creating and spreading easily disproved lies about a potential competitor to try to make them shut up about you screwing them over? Check.
I’m curious as to whether or not your theory about someone bribing managers from the inside is accurate. It could maybe be something political, or maybe someone is trying to innovate a new social media. It could also be someone who has no experience making these calls, or it could be someone just doing it for shits and giggles.
Part of me kind of wonders if this might be a scorned employee who worked their way up to the level of company decision-making. Spite and anger can cause a person to do and endure crazy things for a long time. Hypothetically, that person could be angry at Reddit, Spez, or another high-ranking person.
It could even be someone who has hated reddit for years. A lot of people have gone though hard times because of reddit. Situations like “We did it reddit!” come to mind, where people harassed the family of an innocent guy who was killed during the Boston bombings. That type of behaviour wasn’t a one-off, either. Multiple people have lost their jobs and/or families (justified or not) after people tracked them down online and doxxed them.
Do you remember the GameStop stuff that happened with the bond traders and Reddit?
There are lot of parts interested in taking down Reddit. And same thing will not stop at the fediverse.
I just hope fediverse is harder to control. If an instance grow so much like Lemmy world we could end up on a similar boat right?
There is a big difference between users that consider Reddit/Lemmy as a work place and users that consider it as a forum (expecting 0 money from the app. Just helping others or getting help from others).
Unhappy with the direction investors were taking Reddit, Spez secretly started working on an alternative to the website that he lovingly named the fediverse. However, he couldn’t figure out a way to drive traffic to the Fediverse - at least not without publically breaching his contract in a major way.
His distress grew and grew. His own company was a disappointment. He had the solution, but no way out.
On top of that, his favorite activity - doomscrolling twitter in bed for hours - had become a less and less satisfying experience, as well, since Elon Musk bought the company.
It was for that reason he typed into DuckDuckGo: “twitter alternatives” - and immediately, it dawned on him. He couldn’t help but say it out loud:
“Elon, you beautiful son of a bitch, you might have just saved the internet”.
Unmitigated greed in form of turning every visible pixel into little paywalled hellscape and then showing this as subscribtion model something to investors is what i guess is happening
chance of 4.5D tetris scenario is low, but never zero
The fact the original and classic icons are locked behind a paywall is fucking comical, how idiotic do you need to be to LOCK your ORIGINAL icon? lol
anyone who would want to use it would never use the official (cr)app anyway
The new ugly icon kinda matches the new content quality.
Underrated comment
I would have loved attending the meeting where they decided which were the most ugly icons possible.
It’s impressive how little self-respect they must have to block their own branding behind a paywall. I don’t even get how it could be a good business strategy, I feel like it would very badly affect the perception of quality for a new adopter.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Your platform is extremely popular, to the point where you’re worried you’ll hit saturation. Sure I get that.
But at what point do you decide “I SOMEHOW need more money, I’m running out of people.” instead of being like “we’re gonna make this service so good, everyone will have to go through us”
Netflix did this as well. When they hit a critical mass of subscriptions, they had really good shows. Instead of saying we’re gonna stay the best streaming platform out there, they went “NOO yOU can’T ShaRe youR PasswoRds yOu SILLY person”
It’s desperate and pathetic, and companies which fall this way will get no sympathy from me.
Who paywalls a damn app icon?
Greedy little money grubbers who can’t actually come up with good ideas.
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You might be missing quite a few points in general but I think, I can see where you are coming from…
Yet, there is, at least for me, a big difference in:
Apollo: oh we have some fun icons, people love them, maybe they would pay a little to unlock more and have fun with them, or even better, enjoy the premium subscription and have even more useful stuff
Reddit: well, other apps were selling shit like this and people loved it and payed money for it, we want that money, let’s block what we already have and see what will happen…
— yup, this sounds about right in my imagination
wait… you can actually buy and upgrade or customise the app icons on iOS if you pay?
They copied the same feature from Apollo
Every chance they get they do something to tell us “PLEASE HATE US MORE”
I haven’t looked at reddit in a couple of weeks. I’m done with them.
Can iPhone users not set custom icons? All of my homescreen icons are set to a custom theme on my android.
Only if the app allows it. Or if you jailbreak.
You can technically change icons with the shortcuts app.
Keeping in mind that you will only have the shortcut on the Home Screen, while the App Library still has whatever garbage Reddit decided.
Thats good to know. I’ve never actually set up shortcuts icons. This would be an even stupider use case considering you need a weird work around just to use an apps “default” icon.