5 ms·

> If they want more ads, they can change the APIs to inject them. Reddit wants freedom to arbitrarily change the design of their app and placement of ads, etc.

by raydev 3y ago

> If they want more ads, they can change the APIs to inject them. Reddit wants freedom to arbitrarily change the design of their app and placement of ads, etc. Ads are a huge (primary?) source of revenue for them. If they are tethered to supporting third party clients, it's harder to make reasonable estimates of how many captive users will see ads or new features. Reddit could enforce ad presentation in third party clients, but to appease advertisers Reddit has to make guarantees around visibility. It's not enough to check if third parties are calling the correct API, they will actually need to regularly audit all third party clients. It really isn't worth the time or effort if you can just charge third parties the cost to cover loss of ad views.

paulddraper 3y ago
Exactly. Same reason why Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. don't have alternative clients. Nothing unusual. Reddit is proceeding along the well-trodden path to monetization optimization.
- rvz 3y ago
  Yes. I don't see how this is a problem. It is their service which is subject to change at anytime. Either make money and pay for access to the API or shutdown. Realistically, it was only a matter of time. Also predicted here: [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34447084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34447084
  - pierat 3y ago
    > Either make money and pay for access to the API or shutdown. I agree. And I think people should also keep in mind that OSes also have APIs as well, and should be wary of systems that try to prevent user freedom. Then again, I've been running Linux for ages now. And I don't have to worry about anti-user garbageware on a forced update coming my way, or updates that de-feature my system.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- atraac 3y ago
  I feel like there's a major difference here. Services you mentioned never really had any third party clients, while Reddit has pretty much built itself upon them.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    "built itself upon them" is a stretch. The difference is really that Reddit was relatively late in a concerted effort to monetize. But it winds up at the same place regardless.
londons_explore 3y ago
It does seem fair to charge third parties approximately the same in ad revenue that you would have gotten from the same users on a first party app. Then the third party app can choose between adding their own ads, or charging a subscription.
- theturtletalks 3y ago
  Why not let users bring their own keys? I wouldn't mind paying $2-3 to use Apollo. Apollo has to also pay 30% of their revenue to Apple so their subscription fee will be way higher and not feasible for most users.
  - raydev 3y ago
    This also seems like the most reasonable solution to me, the guy who is generally supportive of Reddit trying to make money. But having worked on platforms like this, this solution opens up yet another support vector. A cost that works for the most potential buyers may not be high enough to actually pay for support requests.
    - theturtletalks 3y ago
      That's a good point. Apollo does charge a one-time fee to create posts. They also have a subreddit so the community offers support. I think Apollo should pivot into a feed app that connects to Reddit, Twitter, RSS feeds, Substack, etc. and lets users bring their own keys.
kodah 3y ago
There's an obvious solution here, which is to stop participating on platforms that are ad-funded. Charging user subscriptions and fees to businesses should be sufficient to cover costs. If it's not, maybe it shouldn't exist.
- qwytw 3y ago
  People generally tend to use the platforms which other people are using and it's virtually impossible to build an audience unless you're "free".
  - nologic01 3y ago
    An obvious way to fund ad-free platforms is as a public good / utility. Nowadays with the brain damage that has been inflicted by adtech social media over decades it is hard to imaging mass adoption of such a publicly funded outlet. People have become literally social media junkies. Unless you do a tiktok like race to the bottom you can't disrupt the incumbents. But establishing the principle is important even if its a small audience. 2% of billions is still a large population. Just like public TV being typically of higher quality (where it exists) such platforms could be really interesting, worthwhile places. If the experiment succeeds one can start thinking of introducing user fees and other funding mechanisms and eventually maybe restoring sanity and delegating the targeted adtech industry in the darkest corner of hell where it belongs.
  - FullstakBlogger 3y ago
    I feel like this is Conway's Law at play. People would create high quality paid apps if the users that want to pay for them could find them, but if somebody makes something that's perfect for you, how do you discover that it even exists? The organizational structure of the web is the problem. Google and social media platforms have shaped the web to be entirely advertisement driven. If they were capable of showing you things you wanted to buy, without the creators paying to be seen, they'd never make any money. Almost anything you ever want to do, someone else has already done well, but despite that, it's hard to find snippets of code you can include in your projects. It's easier to just write it all yourself. If the usefulness of ChatGPT is an indicator of anything, it should be an indicator of how much is out there that you never get to see. The sad part is realizing that that's intentional.
chongli 3y ago
you can just charge third parties the cost to cover loss of ad views Except that's not what Reddit is doing here. They're charging 3rd party clients ~21X what they lose in ad views, pricing them completely out of the market.
- raydev 3y ago
  A big claim like this requires a source and not handwavy estimates from the person who is impacted by this change (and upset for good reason!). Otherwise I will ignore this claim because we simply don't know what ad revenue per user is, and we don't know what Reddit's projected future revenue per user is, which I would also expect to be covered by this pricing.
- giobox 3y ago
  This is a story practically as old as the internet at this point. Grow with open API and third party client ecosystem, but ultimately shut the hatches and revert to single in-house client stacks to maximize control of the user experience and advertising opportunities. Mainly the 2nd part. To look to the Twitter example, even when I used a third party Twitter client before Elon came onboard, old Twitter were regularly playing silly games with issuing auth tokens to third party clients, for all of the same reasons. At this stage I view third party clients as nice to have for major free web service APIs, with the expectation one day it will probably stop working. Reddit doesn't owe anyone a public API, as much as I will miss third party clients (big Narwhal user here).
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    > Reddit doesn't owe anyone a public API. And maybe they will soon learn that they are not owed an audience.
    - giobox 3y ago
      Maybe, but I'd still take the other side of this bet sadly. Is there any data on usage rates for third party Reddit clients? Anecdotally, I don't know anyone outside of tech who would even notice this change, really.
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
> Reddit wants freedom to arbitrarily change the design of their app and placement of ads, etc. Ads are a huge (primary?) source of revenue for them. And they do. Over time they have become less and less distinguishable from post of humans. I wonder what's going to happen with Apollo. And what about my script to randomize my posts after a while? Yea, it doesn't do a lot, but still...
aaomidi 3y ago
> It really isn't worth the time or effort if you can just charge third parties the cost to cover loss of ad views. I really want to be the fly in the room looking at their grafana for monthly active users and see what happens to it in the coming months. I’m someone with ADHD and obsessive behavior is kinda one of the main symptoms of it. I think with this change, it’s not going to be hard for someone like me to drop it. I suspect that because of these changes, Reddit is also going to make it harder for search engines to index them - which is going to further reduce how useful Reddit is for information discovery. This is going to hurt reddit, and I personally don’t think the growth is going to be as strong as it has been once they take these actions. Social media sites depend on their users, and arguably only a small portion of their users create content. And a smaller portion that than create useful content. Once you’ve pissed off and pushed away that small %, you’re not recovering. I’m guessing this is some decisions made by MBAs who have learned some theoretical stuff, but don’t realize their courses haven’t really covered businesses like Reddit, Twitter, StackOverflow etc. They’re in for a rude awakening. Remember that Tumblr effectively died once they made some decisions.
- raydev 3y ago
  > Social media sites depend on their users, and arguably only a small portion of their users create content What evidence do you have that a majority of these users are not already using the first party app?
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    A gut feeling. I don’t have access to their internals. It’s just a guess from my side. I guess if they go through with it we’ll see what impact it has.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by raydev 3y ago

paulddraper 3y ago

Exactly. Same reason why Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. don't have alternative clients. Nothing unusual. Reddit is proceeding along the well-trodden path to monetization optimization.

rvz 3y ago
Yes. I don't see how this is a problem. It is their service which is subject to change at anytime. Either make money and pay for access to the API or shutdown. Realistically, it was only a matter of time. Also predicted here: [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34447084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34447084
- pierat 3y ago
  > Either make money and pay for access to the API or shutdown. I agree. And I think people should also keep in mind that OSes also have APIs as well, and should be wary of systems that try to prevent user freedom. Then again, I've been running Linux for ages now. And I don't have to worry about anti-user garbageware on a forced update coming my way, or updates that de-feature my system.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
atraac 3y ago
I feel like there's a major difference here. Services you mentioned never really had any third party clients, while Reddit has pretty much built itself upon them.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  "built itself upon them" is a stretch. The difference is really that Reddit was relatively late in a concerted effort to monetize. But it winds up at the same place regardless.

londons_explore 3y ago

It does seem fair to charge third parties approximately the same in ad revenue that you would have gotten from the same users on a first party app. Then the third party app can choose between adding their own ads, or charging a subscription.

theturtletalks 3y ago
Why not let users bring their own keys? I wouldn't mind paying $2-3 to use Apollo. Apollo has to also pay 30% of their revenue to Apple so their subscription fee will be way higher and not feasible for most users.
- raydev 3y ago
  This also seems like the most reasonable solution to me, the guy who is generally supportive of Reddit trying to make money. But having worked on platforms like this, this solution opens up yet another support vector. A cost that works for the most potential buyers may not be high enough to actually pay for support requests.
  - theturtletalks 3y ago
    That's a good point. Apollo does charge a one-time fee to create posts. They also have a subreddit so the community offers support. I think Apollo should pivot into a feed app that connects to Reddit, Twitter, RSS feeds, Substack, etc. and lets users bring their own keys.

kodah 3y ago

There's an obvious solution here, which is to stop participating on platforms that are ad-funded. Charging user subscriptions and fees to businesses should be sufficient to cover costs. If it's not, maybe it shouldn't exist.

qwytw 3y ago
People generally tend to use the platforms which other people are using and it's virtually impossible to build an audience unless you're "free".
- nologic01 3y ago
  An obvious way to fund ad-free platforms is as a public good / utility. Nowadays with the brain damage that has been inflicted by adtech social media over decades it is hard to imaging mass adoption of such a publicly funded outlet. People have become literally social media junkies. Unless you do a tiktok like race to the bottom you can't disrupt the incumbents. But establishing the principle is important even if its a small audience. 2% of billions is still a large population. Just like public TV being typically of higher quality (where it exists) such platforms could be really interesting, worthwhile places. If the experiment succeeds one can start thinking of introducing user fees and other funding mechanisms and eventually maybe restoring sanity and delegating the targeted adtech industry in the darkest corner of hell where it belongs.
- FullstakBlogger 3y ago
  I feel like this is Conway's Law at play. People would create high quality paid apps if the users that want to pay for them could find them, but if somebody makes something that's perfect for you, how do you discover that it even exists? The organizational structure of the web is the problem. Google and social media platforms have shaped the web to be entirely advertisement driven. If they were capable of showing you things you wanted to buy, without the creators paying to be seen, they'd never make any money. Almost anything you ever want to do, someone else has already done well, but despite that, it's hard to find snippets of code you can include in your projects. It's easier to just write it all yourself. If the usefulness of ChatGPT is an indicator of anything, it should be an indicator of how much is out there that you never get to see. The sad part is realizing that that's intentional.

chongli 3y ago

you can just charge third parties the cost to cover loss of ad views Except that's not what Reddit is doing here. They're charging 3rd party clients ~21X what they lose in ad views, pricing them completely out of the market.

raydev 3y ago
A big claim like this requires a source and not handwavy estimates from the person who is impacted by this change (and upset for good reason!). Otherwise I will ignore this claim because we simply don't know what ad revenue per user is, and we don't know what Reddit's projected future revenue per user is, which I would also expect to be covered by this pricing.
giobox 3y ago
This is a story practically as old as the internet at this point. Grow with open API and third party client ecosystem, but ultimately shut the hatches and revert to single in-house client stacks to maximize control of the user experience and advertising opportunities. Mainly the 2nd part. To look to the Twitter example, even when I used a third party Twitter client before Elon came onboard, old Twitter were regularly playing silly games with issuing auth tokens to third party clients, for all of the same reasons. At this stage I view third party clients as nice to have for major free web service APIs, with the expectation one day it will probably stop working. Reddit doesn't owe anyone a public API, as much as I will miss third party clients (big Narwhal user here).
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  > Reddit doesn't owe anyone a public API. And maybe they will soon learn that they are not owed an audience.
  - giobox 3y ago
    Maybe, but I'd still take the other side of this bet sadly. Is there any data on usage rates for third party Reddit clients? Anecdotally, I don't know anyone outside of tech who would even notice this change, really.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

> Reddit wants freedom to arbitrarily change the design of their app and placement of ads, etc. Ads are a huge (primary?) source of revenue for them. And they do. Over time they have become less and less distinguishable from post of humans. I wonder what's going to happen with Apollo. And what about my script to randomize my posts after a while? Yea, it doesn't do a lot, but still...

aaomidi 3y ago

> It really isn't worth the time or effort if you can just charge third parties the cost to cover loss of ad views. I really want to be the fly in the room looking at their grafana for monthly active users and see what happens to it in the coming months. I’m someone with ADHD and obsessive behavior is kinda one of the main symptoms of it. I think with this change, it’s not going to be hard for someone like me to drop it. I suspect that because of these changes, Reddit is also going to make it harder for search engines to index them - which is going to further reduce how useful Reddit is for information discovery. This is going to hurt reddit, and I personally don’t think the growth is going to be as strong as it has been once they take these actions. Social media sites depend on their users, and arguably only a small portion of their users create content. And a smaller portion that than create useful content. Once you’ve pissed off and pushed away that small %, you’re not recovering. I’m guessing this is some decisions made by MBAs who have learned some theoretical stuff, but don’t realize their courses haven’t really covered businesses like Reddit, Twitter, StackOverflow etc. They’re in for a rude awakening. Remember that Tumblr effectively died once they made some decisions.

raydev 3y ago
> Social media sites depend on their users, and arguably only a small portion of their users create content What evidence do you have that a majority of these users are not already using the first party app?
- aaomidi 3y ago
  A gut feeling. I don’t have access to their internals. It’s just a guess from my side. I guess if they go through with it we’ll see what impact it has.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]