Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: Reddit 'Was Never Designed To Support Third-Party Apps' (theverge.com) 224
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says he is refusing to undo the company's decision to increase prices for third-party app developers, despite thousands of subreddits pledging to keep their subreddits private or restricted in protest. "It's a startling change for many members of the Reddit community, but it's one that Reddit CEO Steve Huffman tells The Verge that he's fine with making," writes The Verge's Jay Peters. "Those third-party apps, in his eyes, aren't adding much value to the platform." From the report: "So the vast majority of the uses of the API -- not [third-party apps like Apollo for Reddit] -- the other 98 percent of them, make tools, bots, enhancements to Reddit. That's what the API is for," Huffman says. "It was never designed to support third-party apps." According to Huffman, he "let it exist," and "I should take the blame for that because I was the guy arguing for that for a long time." Huffman now takes issue with the third-party apps that are building a business on top of his own. "I didn't know -- and this is my fault -- the extent that they were profiting off of our API. That these were not charities."
I asked him if he felt that Apollo, rif for Reddit, and Sync, which all plan to shut down as a result of the pricing changes, don't add value to Reddit. "Not as much as they take," he says. "No way." "They need to pay for this. That is fair. What our peers have done is banned them entirely. And we said no, you know what, we believe in free markets. You need to cover your costs," he says. Apollo developer Christian Selig recently did the math for us on The Vergecast, though, and suggested that covering Reddit's asking price with only 30 days' notice would have been nigh-impossible.
Huffman didn't have an answer for why the deadline was so short, beyond wanting there to be a deadline. "We're perfectly willing to work with the folks who want to work with us, including figuring out what the transition period will look like. But I think a deadline forces people, us included, to negotiate that." I also asked if Huffman truly believes that the blackouts haven't impacted his decision-making around the API pricing changes at all. "In this case? That's true," says Huffman. "That's our business decision, and we're not undoing that business decision."
I asked him if he felt that Apollo, rif for Reddit, and Sync, which all plan to shut down as a result of the pricing changes, don't add value to Reddit. "Not as much as they take," he says. "No way." "They need to pay for this. That is fair. What our peers have done is banned them entirely. And we said no, you know what, we believe in free markets. You need to cover your costs," he says. Apollo developer Christian Selig recently did the math for us on The Vergecast, though, and suggested that covering Reddit's asking price with only 30 days' notice would have been nigh-impossible.
Huffman didn't have an answer for why the deadline was so short, beyond wanting there to be a deadline. "We're perfectly willing to work with the folks who want to work with us, including figuring out what the transition period will look like. But I think a deadline forces people, us included, to negotiate that." I also asked if Huffman truly believes that the blackouts haven't impacted his decision-making around the API pricing changes at all. "In this case? That's true," says Huffman. "That's our business decision, and we're not undoing that business decision."
Spez (Score:5, Funny)
Spez is just pissy Reddit only sold for $10M and he's not rich.
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Eh...I think their position is reasonable:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/... [theverge.com]
Basically the only apps that are negatively affected by this are the ones who were making money off of reddit, and reddit wasn't seeing a dime of that. Apparently the
Apollo guy doesn't even deny that he's already made millions on that app, and he's just flat out refused to make any deals with reddit, basically saying that if he has to pay anything at all, then the app is going to shut down, period. I think that might have more to do
Re: Spez (Score:2)
Re:Spez (Score:5, Interesting)
basically saying that if he has to pay anything at all
Do you have a source for that? Because according to The Verge [theverge.com]:
"My hope at this point is that they listen to the feedback I, other developers, and the community have given them and try to come to an arrangement where both parties can be happy," Selig tells The Verge.
I'm sure he'd love to continue to make millions on his app if they could come to some reasonable price. Now he gets nothing.
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Reddit was going to charge him $20M a month [theverge.com] to continue his app. I don't think he's making $20M a month. I don't know if he's made $20M over the several years he's been developing the app.
Well, if you care to notice, I linked an article from the same source. Also, just so you know, the word "year" and "month" are not interchangeable. The first is much longer than the latter.
I'm sure he'd love to continue to make millions on his app if they could come to some reasonable price. Now he gets nothing.
There's no possible way he can do that. He'd be losing money hand over fist for the users that already paid for a perpetual license. At the very least, he'd have to charge everybody else extra to make up for them, probably an amount that none of them would be willing to pay. That's likely where this $20m over a year comes
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Sorry, not following you here. I'm illustrating how far away $20M per month is from the amount of money he's made so far. "He hasn't made X in a month. I bet he hasn't even made X in years" - does that make more sense? Sorry if I worded it poorly.
Might want to read your link again dude. Read the headline in particular.
My assumption was is that he has new subscriptions regularly which would pay for the ongoing API fees. If they could come to some reasonable agreement presumably new subscribers could pay for the monthly fees.
That's fine and all, but again, who pays for the users with a perpetual license? If nobody does, then the situation can't be helped.
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Might want to read your link again dude. Read the headline in particular.
Sorry, can you spell it out for me? I'm assuming that he has enough money coming in that he could afford some reasonable cost for API access for all his existing users.
That's fine and all, but again, who pays for the users with a perpetual license? If nobody does, then the situation can't be helped.
I think the answer is that they look at the financial model and say, look I, Apollo Developer, am only bringing in X per month. How about I pay you X-Y for my volume of API requests, so I have some margin?
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Sorry, can you spell it out for me? I'm assuming that he has enough money coming in that he could afford some reasonable cost for API access for all his existing users.
To wit:
A developer says Reddit could charge him $20 million a year to keep his app working
I think the answer is that they look at the financial model and say, look I, Apollo Developer, am only bringing in X per month. How about I pay you X-Y for my volume of API requests, so I have some margin?
That all is going to depend on just how many of those users paid for a perpetual license, in addition to whatever reddit's margin is. I have no idea how many have, nor do I have any ideas of what reddit's margin is, and any number I put out isn't even a guess, it's just arbitrary. So let's just say it's half. Well, suppose reddit is targeting a 25% margin. In order for the Apollo developer to break even in this scenario, reddit would have to take a loss. And for what? They didn't make any kind of agr
Re:Spez (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spez (Score:4, Insightful)
The amount the dev is making is less than the API fee they want to charge.
There's a critical element to this that's missing: The dev is contractually obligated to give many of his users free access, because per the contract they've already paid for it once and they're done. Obviously that doesn't work for the way he now has to adjust his business model, does it?
A question I'd like to ask the developer is this: For all of the users who have paid for a lifetime license, is he willing to refund their money and switch them over to a pay per month option? That is the least he could do. If not, he's going to kill off the app anyways, so why not still refund their money? They paid for a lifetime license, after all, and their lives have not yet ended, so the dev's customers aren't getting what they've already paid for.
Chances are, the dev has already spent that money, so there's no way he's going to give it back. Likewise, they'd be rightfully pissed if he suddenly started charging them a monthly fee anyways.
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Another thing as well, the dev has already sunk money and time into that app, so he does have another option that I haven't seen him explore yet, at least not publicly: Given the payment terms Reddit seems to want are usage based, he could simply say "ok guys, I have to charge $2.50 per month" (or whatever the number is.) If 100% of the users simply refuse to pay and thus stop using the app, he's lost $12,000 for the first 50 million requests that ultimately nobody used. Given he's already made somewhere in
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A question I'd like to ask the developer is this: For all of the users who have paid for a lifetime license, is he willing to refund their money and switch them over to a pay per month option? That is the least he could do. If not, he's going to kill off the app anyways, so why not still refund their money? They paid for a lifetime license, after all, and their lives have not yet ended, so the dev's customers aren't getting what they've already paid for.
Chances are, the dev has already spent that money, so there's no way he's going to give it back. Likewise, they'd be rightfully pissed if he suddenly started charging them a monthly fee anyways.
He's already refunded all of us.
He's already answered your questions, and that has been here on slashdot three times already, two of his update posts and one dupe.
You owe him an apology.
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"Lifetime" is basically meaningless in any legal sense. At best you could argue it was the lifetime of the app, and if it was discontinued a week after you bought that licence a court might find it to be unreasonably short. A few years after, and with the app shut down due to Reddit starting to charge API fees though... Well, I don't think arguing that the developer should either pay Reddit forever or refund every penny you gave them would fly.
The lesson here is that unless it says an exact number of years
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They paid for a lifetime license, after all, and their lives have not yet ended, so the dev's customers aren't getting what they've already paid for.
It's rarely if ever your lifetime they are selling you.
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Nevermind, looks like he's doing exactly that:
https://piunikaweb.com/wp-cont... [piunikaweb.com]
Though $7/month seems pretty far removed from the $2.50/month that he estimated based on user averages. My guess is that the disparity is to keep the lifetime users happy in addition to the users who have already paid for e.g. a year. At least, I can't see any other reason other than the developer simply wants to make an exorbitant profit for himself.
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He commented on this on this a few days ago https://old.reddit.com/r/apoll... [reddit.com]. This change was made before everything completely fell apart. I'm guessing that's a Canadian screenshot which would account for the price discrepancy vs what is discussed in the thread.
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Question, why are you so focused on the accounting for this one dev?
Because that's exactly the one people are talking about the most.
The truth is Apollo's accounting doesn't matter at all.
Then why the hell is he basically the only one that the papers are talking to? And why the hell are redditors making the biggest stink about that one? I rarely even use reddit, let alone know what apps they're going on about. Pretty much the only thing I ever do on reddit is occasionally read r/Ukraine, and the only app I use for that on mobile is firefox. Reddit is mostly a pile of shit otherwise. When I first heard about this topic, I was ho
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This change was made before everything completely fell apart. I'm guessing that's a Canadian screenshot which would account for the price discrepancy vs what is discussed in the thread.
What fell apart though? And why? I don't understand that. And $5 is more than $1.50 above the $2.50 that his own math said it would cost. And has he made any comments at all about the users who paid for lifetime service? I.e. what he's doing for them?
Re: Spez (Score:2)
Don't be so naive. Lifetime means lifetime of company not lifetime of customer. It's always been like that.
That's interesting, because Reddit is still there, and the developer, who published it under his own name, is also still there.
Re: Spez (Score:2)
He's already refunded all of us.
Link please. As far as I can tell, refunds were only issued through Apple, and only for purchases made very recently.
He's already answered your questions, and that has been here on slashdot three times already, two of his update posts and one dupe.
If that's true, you could save a lot of us a lot of time by simply linking to it. Either that or you're full of shit.
You owe him an apology.
No, I don't.
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OK, Spez...
Re: Spez (Score:2)
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I would ask people with that viewpoint to consider the demographic that is using 3rd party apps is also the demographic contributing higher quality content and actually enriching Reddit through quality discussion.
When you're running a business, which both this app developer AND reddit are doing, you tend to have to quantify everything. If you don't, your business won't last for shit. It's just basic accounting, and it's been a thing for over 500 years now. So how do we actually measure what kind of value these posters are adding, and are we certain that this makes it worth it?
I have no fucking idea. I don't think this app developer knows either. Reddit is almost certainly the only one who has any idea. I don't think
Re: Spez (Score:5, Insightful)
He was absolutely willing to work with them, just not at the prices they were asking. Anyone that says different is a liar, which is to say Spez is a liar. Selig recorded the conversations and kept the emails.
But really what's going on is that Reddit wants you to use their app and go through their API because LLM training scraped the site and is making money off of that now. Either 3rd party apps are huge and create an enormous amount of traffic and are therefore effectively indispensable, or they're a drop in the bucket, not much more costly API call-wise than the official app per user and they're irrelevant to the bottom line. It can't be that Spez thought the 3rd party clients were going to make or break profitability all on their own; he actually just wants them gone so there is never again a situation where someone can grab all that sweet content for free.
Never mind that you created that content and you get no say in it either way.
Anyway, fuck Spez and Reddit. It's just glorified Usenet but with a worse interface.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well Reddit could of course release their own app that does what people use Apollo for. And yes Reddit are profiting from it, even not directly - they get more users, engagement, and therefore audience for ads. Same for other tools that weed out spam bots and the like - a higher quality service with which to sell ads on.
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> in this case, because he's effectively on the hook for the long-term costs of the users that already paid for a perpetual subscription.
He could just discontinue that, or have the users supply their API key to pay reddit.
It's been done before with other apps, at least on the Apple app store.
The reddit website and app is a horrible UX. Apollo and many of the third party apps made it much better.
I used the Reddit App when it first came out and quickly dropped it. You were spammed with adverts, the feeds w
Re:Spez (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh...I think their position is reasonable:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/... [theverge.com]
Somewhat, the problem for me in that interview is that Huffman sounds a lot more emotional and combative than reasonable:
We see companies like Google or Apple giving, you know, three months, six months, a year for these sorts of deadlines.
Tell me, which companies were Google and Apple subsidizing for 10 years that you’re thinking of?
They weren’t subsidizing, but they work with their developers. They need apps for their platforms as well.
Was there like a Google clone out there where they take all of Google’s data and run their own ads on it, that Google let survive for 10 years? Does that exist? Another app store that Apple allows to exist?
I don’t know if I agree with the characterization that Apollo is a fully direct competitor of Reddit.
Okay, hold on, timeout. You go to the App Store, you type in Reddit, you get two options, right? There’s Apollo. You go to one, it’s my business, and you look at our ads, use our products. That’s 95 percent of our iOS users. The rest go to Apollo, which uses our logo, or something like it, takes our data — for free — and resells it to users making a 100 percent margin. And instead of using our app, they use that app. Is that not competitive?
It's a legit concern that the apps were using the API to serve Reddit users but not showing any of Reddit's ads (and therefore giving them zero revenue). But the important thing to remember is that the apps didn't really have another choice, ad-free access is what the API gave them so it's what they used.
But Huffman is acting like these devs were maliciously exploiting Reddit, and it really sounds like the API pricing (and deadline) is a punitive measure designed to kill these devs rather than a fair way to make money.
That to me is the biggest red flag, Huffman's decision making sounds very emotional and dug in throughout the interview, and that's not really how you want a CEO making decisions, and it's especially not how you want them interacting with users and the developers of your app ecosystem.
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Eh...I think their position is reasonable:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/... [theverge.com]
Basically the only apps that are negatively affected by this are the ones who were making money off of reddit, and reddit wasn't seeing a dime of that.[...]The other apps that offer accessibility and other whatnots have apparently already negotiated deals with reddit for API access, and reddit was willing to offer them discounted or even free access if it was entirely charitable.
No, that's not accurate. Couple things:
1) Reddit chose not to monetize their API and by extension 3rd party apps until this moment, and to go clear to 11 when they did so. They could have picked a sustainable dollar amount if they were actually interested in monetizing 3rd party app access but instead chose to price at a level that operated effectively as a ban. No app was generating income at a tenth Reddit's demand, and Reddit is at the same time removing their ability to deploy their own ads (income) an
fuck /u/spez (Score:2)
Reddit is digging its own grave (Score:5, Interesting)
Reddit's digg moment is finally here. Their own app is unusable.
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I've never used their app, but even their website is atrocious. I quit going there for quite awhile until someone told m
Re: Reddit is digging its own grave (Score:4, Insightful)
There has been a flurry of new users and activity on Lemmy and kbin.social.
Not sure if people will stay on those other apps, as you said, they don't quite feel ready, but it's been fun watching people figure it out.
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This is a sincere question. How could something possibly feel 'not ready' relative to reddit? Reddit is nothing but a bulletin board that went viral.
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Any Reddit user is only going to interested in a limited number of subjects. And there are massive numbers of forums and blogs scattered throughout the internet. So you just go to several different sites for your replacement, just like people did before Reddit.
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I’m on other forums and a lot of new users are signing up or old users are coming back. Honestly I hope a bunch of fuckers stay on Reddit but enough people that have long been sick of the site they have to use when they want to talk to the internet go out and breathe new life into other communities and avoid anything that feels like going back to facebook/reddit/twitter.
The kinds of people who stay will be all the ones who used to hang out on aol forums and yahoo answers and I really didn’t lik
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OMG, who could actually make an alternative...forum? Is there anything special about Reddit except the volume of users?
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Is there anything special about Reddit except the volume of users?
Is there anything special about Facebook except the volume of users?
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Why does it need an app? I use desktop mode on my phone.
Re: Reddit is digging its own grave (Score:2)
It doesn't (Score:3, Insightful)
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Their own app is unusable.
Its just a matter of what you're used to. I've been using Reddit for years and didn't know that third party clients even existed until this API stuff blew up recently. I'm still fine just using the default client.
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Lol! It's not. This protest is failing already as user backlash against them. If Facebook didn't go down over their far FAR greater crimes, then Reddit is going to be just fine.
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Because most people aren't activists and don't want to be inconvenienced by a protest by people they never heard of about things they don't understand which have no impact on them.
The problem is not charging for API access (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is charging this *much* for API access. Third-party apps have said that they're perfectly willing to pay reasonable API access fees. Even at levels that would make Reddit's API phenomenally profitable. But Reddit has decided it doesn't want any third-party apps. I'm frankly not sure why they're keeping up this farce instead of just announcing outright that they're getting rid of third-party API access.
Re: The problem is not charging for API access (Score:5, Interesting)
The proposed charges are 100x more expensive than AWS storage, 3-4x as expensive as Imgur, 5x cheaper than twitter, and something like 50x cheaper than google maps API.
I myself pay for other APIs (not social media ones). The Reddit pricing seems pretty reasonable, likely a true reflection of costs with moderate profit.
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their website is not buggy, slow or insecure. It's worked fine for almost 20 years.
Wait I thought we were talking about Reddit.
Re: The problem is not charging for API access (Score:4, Informative)
The Reddit pricing seems pretty reasonable, likely a true reflection of costs with moderate profit.
You think API calls from users wanting content was costing Reddit hundreds of millions of dollars a year from a single app, one of several on the market? Reddit isn't an API service provider. If those aren't API calls the users aren't just going to magically not use Reddit.
I do like how you mentioned they are cheaper than Twitter, as if this was some kind of validation of Reddit's plan rather instead of pointing out the huge uproar over Twitter's sudden insane pricing scheme.
Yeah I'll buy your "costs" argument when Reddit starts buying satellite time as part of their API service. Until then your comment is devoid of reality. Not all APIs are equal.
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Can you really compare Reddit and Google Maps fees directly?
Aside from the fact that you can't really compare a page view on Reddit to a map display on Maps, there is probably a lot more processing involved in delivering Maps features. Route finding is very computationally intensive, compared to grabbing some text out of a database, for example.
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I myself pay for other APIs (not social media ones). The Reddit pricing seems pretty reasonable, likely a true reflection of costs with moderate profit.
Assuming DAUs are a decent approximation of the total number of regular users, $22 per user per month is probably *not* a reasonable cost to pass on to the end user. Heck, a third of that is probably more than any user will willingly for an ad-free experience from a site like Reddit. After all, even YouTube charges only $10 when bought a year at a time. That's almost double the cost of Netflix, and you're paying for content.
Google Maps involves massive underlying expenses (buying satellite imagery, updat
Re:The problem is not charging for API access (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not even just that the price is unreasonable. A lot of the apps are billed yearly, and they're looking at huge API bills coming in 30 days. They don't have the finances to eat the losses until enough of their subscriber base renews at a higher price or leaves that they can start making that money back. More than the prices, the timeline makes it clear that the intent is to kill off these apps.
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It can all be translated to. (Score:5, Interesting)
So I figured out what he's up to (Score:5, Interesting)
They're going to sell user data. Like Facebook does. You can't have open APIs and sell user data, since you're literally giving it away for free. The plan is to use Big Data / AI / LLMs / whatever complicated algorithm shit to cross reference everything you've done on Reddit for marketing, law enforcement, stalkers, whatever & whoever pays. And again, you can't do that if the data's freely available.
That's why they're closing the ecosystem and shutting down 3rd party apps. It's not about forcing people to see the adverts on their apps, it's about taking 100% ownership of all the data on the site so they can sell it at a premium.
Re: So I figured out what he's up to (Score:3)
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Well, not for long they don't.
Yep, pretty much this ^^^^
By the time they finally decide to listen to reason, it might be too late.
We've seen it before, kind of a great Digital Diaspora.
The most obvious example is MySpace, although that was driven by different reasons, the example still holds. People left... and they didn't come back.
It's possible something like this will happen with Reddit but it's too early to tell.
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Disagree? The solution is simple (Score:5, Insightful)
If you disagree with Huffman, stop using Reddit. If you keep using it, then you're tacitly supporting him - plain and simple.
Let these sites lose enough value, show investors that the current leadership isn't making things better... and things will change. But it will take some sacrifice on the part of the end users, and most people aren't willing to put any skin in the game.
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I don't like Reddit either. Fuck it with a knife.
But there has been a trend of interest communities migrating to Discord, another platform I have zero interest in visiting or supporting.
I'd love it if discussions moved back to something like USENET or some kind of Mastodon implementation. General purpose discussion tools are just too important to leave in the hands of one big site with a single corporate owner.
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The problem with all the alternatives is that they have the same basic issue - someone else provides free infrastructure for the community.
Thats the basic issue here - not enough people pay Reddit to use Reddit, but enough people pay third parties to use Reddit that its opened some eyes.
Re: Disagree? The solution is simple (Score:2)
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Because Discord is horrible.
I'm on a few things there only because that's where they're setup. It's like bad IRC plus voice.
Another proprietary communication platform dying (Score:3, Interesting)
Graveyards are filled with proprietary communication platforms that eventually screw up and die. From ICQ to Digg to Google+ to Reddit to Vine to name it. Eventually Slack, Instagram, Facebook will all follow. I'm surprised Slashdot still exists.
Meanwhile, e-mail (1971), Usenet (1980), IRC (1988), Jabber/XMPP (2004) are still alive.
Maybe it's time we realize that unless no one owns the communication platform, it's going to die sooner than later.
Re:Another proprietary communication platform dyin (Score:5, Informative)
Graveyards are filled with proprietary communication platforms that eventually screw up and die. From ICQ to Digg to Google+ to Reddit to Vine to name it. Eventually Slack, Instagram, Facebook will all follow. I'm surprised Slashdot still exists.
Meanwhile, e-mail (1971), Usenet (1980), IRC (1988), Jabber/XMPP (2004) are still alive.
Maybe it's time we realize that unless no one owns the communication platform, it's going to die sooner than later.
Except ICQ and Digg are actually still around. Shadows of their former selves, but still alive.
Usenet, IRC and Jabber also also shadows of their former selves.
IRC currently peaks at about 350k simultaneous users across major servers. ICQ currently has about 7M monthly users. (data from wikipedia)
ICQ is less visible to us as their main ongoing user bases are in Russia and China.
While I ideologically prefer open platforms, I don't think your argument is actually correct.
Communication platforms evolve and the old ones fade away, as they should. Proprietary or open.
What are reddit alternatives? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's probably not long before old.reddit.com stops working and we all have to use the crappy new interface.
purpose of design (Score:2)
CEOs That Don't Understand the Business (Score:5, Informative)
Why do companies tolerate CEOs that don't understand the business? It seems so obvious that a social platform needs to respect its customers but more important is to respect those people helping make your platform great such as the moderators and third party players. Reddit absolutely needs to make a profit, but you don't do that by destroying what your customers like.
Apple is a good example. They tried to open up a third party ecosystem when they licensed clones. Upon Jobs return, he killed this. The reasoning was very close to Huffman's thought process - the third party wasn't helping the brand. The thing is, Jobs was right, but Huffman is wrong to think that third party apps aren't helping. Having a reasonable fee for API access would benefit everyone.
Jobs was still a pain in the a** after returning, but he was a much better CEO. I think Huffman would benefit with some time in the wilderness. He seems so sure of himself, like Nero as Rome burns. This is like Digg all over. Maybe he has IPO fever. If I was on the leadership team, I'd slap the guy silly telling him he needs to be conciliatory at this point.
Re:CEOs That Don't Understand the Business (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the CEO understands that he's never going to get his big IPO payday unless Reddit can show that it has a path to profitability.
Running an unprofitable "charity" forum for weird memes and porn isn't going to work towards this goal, he needs to show new sources of revenue.
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Right, so charge ridiculously high API prices to the point that no one pays them at all. Smart business move. Since certain things are exempt from paying, this isn't really a source of revenue. At best, it is a slight decrease to the costs, which if revenue stays the same might mean a profit. This pricing is clearly a scam meant for no one to actually pay, so he can sit there and pretend he isn't an extremely incompetent cunt.
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Uh, decreased costs is the same benefit to the bottom line as equally higher revenues.
Re: CEOs That Don't Understand the Business (Score:2)
Not when the only reason you are doing this is to attract investors. Investors who can easily see what would have been a much more lucrative move. He could actually make a nice profit on the API while not pissing off large portions of the community. But of all the choices laid out before this failure of a businessman, he chose the least profitable possible option. An option that has the possibility of hurting them in the long run. He is just not a competent person.
A niche can let you exist, escaping the niche .. (Score:3)
.. can kill your business.
"forum for weird memes and porn isn't going to work" .. and that is only one part of reddit ..
Well on one side that's what reddit users gather for, that are the current resource of interest and in an economy of interest that relates to income
".. he needs to show new sources of revenue."
Problem: He is drying up reddits old sources and revenue .. are already taken by the big ones.
and the new (re-)sources well
Why the need for an API? (Score:2, Interesting)
What would happen if the app just scraped via http and then displayed as needed?
Re: (Score:2)
What would happen is exactly what’s going to happen. The AI training too.
Re:Why the need for an API? (Score:4, Insightful)
What would happen if the app just scraped via http
More CAPTCHAs.
Reddit is terrible (Score:3)
The few times I've been on the site it felt like looking thru a straw extremely frustrating to use. Such low amount of information presented and it keeps requiring you to constantly click to see just a little bit more and ads everywhere. Unusable... Even using the "old" URL is not much better.
Sad that basic message boards are so lame and people put up with such garbage.
Well, Sort Of (Score:4, Insightful)
The apps do make it far easier for Reddit to acquire the free content that they sell. After all, they are not creating the. Intent that they sell. They are selling content created by others. Which they now claim as their own and feel that they should be paid for.
I mean, it is indeed their bandwidth, and server space. So it certainly costs them. It just would not be worth nearly as much without the efforts of droves of completely unpaid authors.
If they had to pay people even minimum wage to create it, I do not think their business would survive.
If goodwill, and the steady and continued acquisition of 100% free product was such an important part of my value, I might try a bit harder to placate the producers of said product, and if they liked to use these apps while generating my free product, I would not harm the apps.
But what do I know? I am not a CEO.
Charge the users instead? (Score:3)
Reddit already sells a premium subscription which removes ads, so they must already know that cost more than covers the ad revenue from a single user, the API costs for that user I have to imagine is far less than that. Just put 3rd party apps locked behind the subscription. That to me seems far more ethical and understandable.
That said it's probably the case that the other revenue streams like ads, sponsored posts and userdata that come from locking down the platform are more profitable which is pretty depressing but kinda expected at this point.
Re: (Score:3)
That to me seems far more ethical and understandable.
The ethical or understandable barrier here isn't *who* is being charged, but rather *how much*. The users are always the ones that bear the brunt of costs. Given the proposed pricing structure we're talking about users having to pay 100s of dollars a year to use a free app to use an otherwise free service.
That isn't understandable. Reddit is regurgitating user generated content, not developing highly specific datasets that make charging for API access sane. Above someone compared it to Google Maps. When Red
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, what? You want the users to pay to use a service?
Shocking!
If the people using the service don't even want to pay for it then maybe that free content is worth exactly what Reddit pays for it. Nothing.
stuff costs (Score:2)
In a way reddit is like a giant email server and everyone use it to communicate with each other within the "server." The people are mad because it used to be free to access reddit via the "mapi" interface for free but now in order to get access to mapi people will have to pay. I remember back in the day when you had to pay for Eudora and everyone I new either ran the "lite" or free version or they just found the cracked Eudora Pro version.
Now, instead of paying for the software, you pay for the platform, th
Re: (Score:2)
Eudora?
I used mh.
they didn't anticipate the API users (Score:2)
it looks like the APIs were ony intended to "add value to the platform", not to provide additional avenues of access.
The API bypasses two important revenue streams for them. The first being banners and banner clicks on their web page, and the second is the harvesting of valuable metadata that all sorts of people will pay them handsomely for. Third party apps cause a significant drop in both of those revenue streams.
So this sudden large charge for access is doing a combination of both discouraging the comp
Re: they didn't anticipate the API users (Score:3)
Games (Score:3, Interesting)
Video games were not designed to be modded by third parties but they were modded anyway and this extended their life spans much to the surprise of the nerds that made them.
I never tried a 3rd party 'app' for a website, I use browsers like a normal slob. This all reeks of greed though, maybe on all sides of the problem? /shrug
My theory was PR tactic... (Score:3)
...interesting they're doubling down.
I was figuring it was an "anchoring" tactic to ask for a preposterously exorbitant price initially, then drop it claiming "responding to our users" and "supporting our third party developers" for a significant PR boost as well as turning losses into profit ahead of their IPO.
Seems kinda' foolish to double down on sticking with it as it is when it could be turned into a huge PR boost. Now they've kinda' backed themselves into a corner as reduction would feel forced and PR statements would ring hollow.
Value? (Score:2)
Those third-party apps, in his eyes, aren't adding much value to the platform.
What is adding value? I care about 2 things. First, the content. Second, the user interface. Reddit isn't producing the content, the community is. And the interface Reddit provides isn't great, especially on mobile. If the community is pulling their content, I've got no reason to stick around.
But it does (Score:2)
And your users got used to it. Suck it up or face the fallout.
Leave Reddit (Score:4, Interesting)
If Reddit wants to stop moderators to use tools that clean up spam or do other chores then it's time to leave. Reddit doesn't value volunteers so stop giving them value. Move the sub somewhere or let some other sap deal with it. There is even a federated Reddit (Feddit?) called Lemmy [github.com] which provides more or less the same experience. Popularize that and you won't have to care about this CEO douchebag ever again. But if you *do* stay then shut down your sub frequently and hit them in the wallet for being dicks. Don't just protest for a day or two and go back to normal thinking it'll change their minds because it won't.
The protests affect me, the API rule does not. (Score:3)
So, I guess I'm on Reddit's side. It is useful for me, the API is not. Now, people protesting the API change have made it useless, and I don't like that.
"was never designed to support third-party apps" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I signed up for lemmy but even I will say it's just a hair too complex for 99% of the internet users out there. Just the idea that you can get "most" of the communities ("subreddits") and you have to sign up for the same thing on different servers. And get approved? Like where do I sign up? Not lemmy dot com, but lemmy.eatabagofdicks.virus?
I mean, reddit can go away for all I care and I went ahead and deleted every link I had to them and my account, but it's not like anyone is going to take their place, sam
Re: (Score:2)
> I'll just use it as motivation to surf and waste time less.
BINGO!
None of this shit is truly important.
Re: (Score:3)
/. had a few important differences.
I think the biggest mistake of Reddit (and also Digg, IIRC) was the naive "everyone can vote on everything, all the time. On /. you only get mod points from reading the site a lot, so only regular users, not everyone. Then you can only mod 5 or 15 posts at a time, not everything. And those mod points last for three days (from when you first see them), not all the time. Reddit's way encourages all sorts of abusive behavior including votes from bots and sock puppets. /. ma