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reddit wants to kill the third party apps, straight up. Third party apps hurt reddit's ad revenue. The mobile website hurts reddit's ad revenue. Given that lis

by joecot 3y ago

reddit wants to kill the third party apps, straight up. Third party apps hurt reddit's ad revenue. The mobile website hurts reddit's ad revenue. Given that listing, I expect he talks about how they resolved all the other issues that were brought up with their API changes -- accessibility, mod tools, etc. They're going to work to not cause problems for those use cases. But they want to kill the third party apps, and it doesn't sound like they're budging on it.

amluto 3y ago
> Third party apps hurt reddit's ad revenue. …then charge for it. But don’t charge an order of magnitude more than the lost ad revenue.
- joecot 3y ago
  Making some amount of profit on it isn't enough. They want to lock down the user experience. Same reason Google started Google Talk with Jabber, then closed off their ecosystem. Same reason Facebook embraced third party apps, then shut them all down. Same reason Twitter is locking down their API currently. At a certain size companies want to decide the user experience without outside interference, and they don't want to share. If you read reddit on BaconReader or a similar app, when you pull up the app you will see 10 posts from subreddits you subscribed to. If you pull up the reddit app, you will see 2 posts, 2 ads, and 2 suggested posts you don't care about. Even if reddit charges for the API, the existence of these alternate clients that work way better makes reddit look greedy and bad, like they don't care about their users' experience. So they wanted to kill those alternative methods of using the site. In the process, they look extremely greedy and bad, and like they really don't care about their users' experience. Yet Facebook went through the same process, and they mostly kept their users. And shutting off the 3rd party systems meant they got to decide the entire user experience without having to compromise with anyone. They might end up backtracking because of the boycott, and charge a reasonable amount for the API to make a profit. That would allow the 3rd party apps to keep running while not losing money on them. But that is the compromise. The goal was to kill the apps.
whyenot 3y ago
> Third party apps hurt reddit's ad revenue. Not if you are a gold subscriber. Pay $5.99 a month, and viola! No ads.

by joecot 3y ago

amluto 3y ago

> Third party apps hurt reddit's ad revenue. …then charge for it. But don’t charge an order of magnitude more than the lost ad revenue.

joecot 3y ago
Making some amount of profit on it isn't enough. They want to lock down the user experience. Same reason Google started Google Talk with Jabber, then closed off their ecosystem. Same reason Facebook embraced third party apps, then shut them all down. Same reason Twitter is locking down their API currently. At a certain size companies want to decide the user experience without outside interference, and they don't want to share. If you read reddit on BaconReader or a similar app, when you pull up the app you will see 10 posts from subreddits you subscribed to. If you pull up the reddit app, you will see 2 posts, 2 ads, and 2 suggested posts you don't care about. Even if reddit charges for the API, the existence of these alternate clients that work way better makes reddit look greedy and bad, like they don't care about their users' experience. So they wanted to kill those alternative methods of using the site. In the process, they look extremely greedy and bad, and like they really don't care about their users' experience. Yet Facebook went through the same process, and they mostly kept their users. And shutting off the 3rd party systems meant they got to decide the entire user experience without having to compromise with anyone. They might end up backtracking because of the boycott, and charge a reasonable amount for the API to make a profit. That would allow the 3rd party apps to keep running while not losing money on them. But that is the compromise. The goal was to kill the apps.

whyenot 3y ago

> Third party apps hurt reddit's ad revenue. Not if you are a gold subscriber. Pay $5.99 a month, and viola! No ads.