18 ms·

Addressing the community about changes to our API

290 points by kotaKat 3y ago

endisneigh 3y ago
[flagged]
- robin_reala 3y ago
  To be fair he only released it after Reddit started to effectively slander him about what had been said.
  - buildbot 3y ago
    Does u/spez not realize the bar for libel in Canada is lower than the USA? The dev is Canadian and could file there right?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - bgc 3y ago
      Maybe so, but regardless of the facts this would almost certainly not be worth pursuing… In the US, courts are generally prohibited from enforcing foreign libel judgements against US persons if the country in which the judgement was won has looser libel standards than the US.[0] (IANAL) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act
      - buildbot 3y ago
        Yeah no idea if that would apply or not. But Canadian code I was looking at was the criminal code - there might be a difference between civil and criminal libel here.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  Don't change the sequence of events around. He released it only after they completely misrepresented what transpired in that call.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - csmiller 3y ago
      what would you have done in Christian's shoes?
      - endisneigh 3y ago
        [flagged]
        someotherperson 3y ago
        It's not about the site at that point, it's accusations of blackmail. It is entirely acceptable to defend yourself, the other way to do it is inside a courtroom.
        endisneigh 3y ago
        So you agree it’s ok to record all private conversations just in case then?
        buildbot 3y ago
        In Canada, it legally is!
        endisneigh 3y ago
        Good to know
mmastrac 3y ago
I don't see where in this address they actually address the real concerns (eg: the mismatch between Apollo's statement and Reddit's).
- stephanerangaya 3y ago
  Me neither
- MicropenisMike 3y ago
  They don't
- jjcm 3y ago
  The top comment asks that directly, but very unlikely there will be any response. https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk260i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- kotaKat 3y ago
  Oh, spez just dropped a hot load of defamation. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk45rr/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... "His “joke” is the least of our issues. His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him."
  - hysan 3y ago
    I’m astonished by the blatant gaslighting.
  - dreadlordbone 3y ago
    At least /u/spez hasn't changed one bit.
pimlottc 3y ago
The poster (CEO of Reddit) has replied to a few comments so far but they've been downvoted to oblivion so they aren't visible in the main comments; you can see all his replies on his user profile page here: https://old.reddit.com/user/spez https://old.reddit.com/user/spez EDIT: links for replies from other reddit officials: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkd4t3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
- Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
  > The poster (CEO of Reddit) has replied to a few comments so far Fourteen. He replied to fourteen comments. In the space of four hours. It's not often that you see a platform implode in real time.
- colpabar 3y ago
  So all the top responses to the top comments in the thread are going to be “seriously, this” and nobody is going to see how spez actually responds. Classic.
  - minimaxir 3y ago
    It'll get around. That's how the infamous sense-of-pride-and-accomplishment comment did. Going into a user's profile for their comments is a paradigm older than Reddit.
  - sorenjan 3y ago
    You would think Reddit would have made an AMA sorting mode that surfaces OP's answers even when they're heavily downvoted by now, since it's been a thing for years, but it doesn't seem like a priority for them.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - operator-name 3y ago
      Reddit has a Q&A sorting mode.
trollied 3y ago
They’re editing & deleting comments frantically. Shambolic. It was never going to be anything other than a disaster, but this is just chucking fuel on the fire.
- elektor 3y ago
  Im backing up as many comments as I can using Wayback Machine
jjcm 3y ago
Some things I find interesting: 1. They're not backing down at all, and even explicitly mention that Apollo/RIF/Sync will be going down because of this. 2. It looks like they are backtracking a bit on the moderation tools that use the API. This makes sense as otherwise Reddit would have been a cesspool, but a lot of moderators do use tools like Apollo, so it will be interesting to see what happens to the quality bar over time. 3. Removing NSFW content from the API is interesting - I wonder if the main app will still have access to this?
- sosodev 3y ago
  They have said the main app will still have access to NSFW content. He just claimed in a comment that it's being removed from the API due to regulatory concerns. Which seems like total BS to me.
  - paddw 3y ago
    Maybe. Probably are a partial truth. Regulatory pressures to crack down on NSFW content of any kind are very real.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      It would be nice if whenever someone blamed their actions on vague "regulatory concerns" they actually listed the specific law/code that they were concerned with. For example, in this case, what specific law makes API access to this content risky but not regular web-based access to the content.
    - Mindwipe 3y ago
      > Maybe. Probably are a partial truth. Regulatory pressures to crack down on NSFW content of any kind are very real. Regulatory pressure to perform age verification is real. But Reddit already requires users to be logged in and their account to have gone to the website and clicked on an explicit toggle in order to access NSFW content. When (and sadly inevitably if) Reddit requires age verification to access adult content, then it will be on a per account basis - and hence the toggle would not be enabled without it. So at that point the status quo still fulfils the regulatory requirement the account has checked age. It is not clear at all to anyone who thinks about it for a second why third party clients would change anything here.
tedunangst 3y ago
Just from a technical perspective, what is Apollo doing that requires more than 100 queries per minute? (Okay, so apparently client ID isn't user ID, but app ID. Explains a lot.)
- tomrod 3y ago
  No idea. Also, I suspect Apollo made a judgment error in looking at their usage stats through the lens of the mean, rather than their median and 99% percentile, usage. They likely have power users greatly pulling that mean up that, in all cases, should probably be capped. EDIT: Ooof, people dislike this thought. Has the Apollo dev spoken out about their approach? I'll be the first to admit I haven't seen reddit's entire debacle, but thought I was reasonably following the play by play.
  - hysan 3y ago
    re: your edit: See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261736
    - tomrod 3y ago
      Thanks! The reddit post is what I was referencing by looking at mean vs. median/99%
- pimlottc 3y ago
  Apollo uses an average of 324 requests per user per day, according to the developer's farewell announcement posted yesterday [0]. I hadn't heard anything about the "Free Data API" limit of 100 qpm before this either, so I assume the issues is that the free API is filtered and does not include any "mature content". > Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed. This change will not impact any moderator bots or extensions. In our conversations with moderators and developers, we heard two areas of feedback we plan to address. 0: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...
MrThoughtful 3y ago
I don't understand why the apps in question (Apollo etc) care about the Reddit API and its terms at all. Those apps are basically browsers. Applications to browse Reddit, right? Why not use the "html over http" API which every other browser also uses? Yes, you would have to harden the code a bit so it gracefully deals with the structure of the html changing sometimes. And you would have to update the parser from time to time. But is that such a big problem? Also: When using the API, how is the free API limit not enough? In TFA it says "100 queries per minute per OAuth client id". That is per user, right? Why does it take more than 100 API requests per minute to use reddit?
- patwolfe 3y ago
  I think you are vastly underestimating the complexity and inefficiency of doing this for one of the most visited websites in the world.
  - MrThoughtful 3y ago
    How is the complexity of parsing html related to how much visits the website has?
    - Timon3 3y ago
      If Reddit doesn't want third party apps, just how long do you think the HTML will stay consistent?
- simlevesque 3y ago
  The html can change at any time, breaking things. An API must manage breaking changes.
- jaywalk 3y ago
  > Those apps are basically browsers. Nope, not even close.
  - MrThoughtful 3y ago
xdennis 3y ago
> Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed. Such a silly justification, as if children are using the API to find porn, which is so difficult otherwise.
- itake 3y ago
  Their mobile web app public feed lets you view NSFW content without logging in, but if you want to view the comments, suddenly you need to verify your age.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  Sounds more like they're trying to appease Apple's app store policy as they push further into app-first territory.
  - sosodev 3y ago
    How does that make sense? Apollo has been serving Reddit's porn to iOS users for years and Apple clearly supports it.
    - micromacrofoot 3y ago
      Maybe I'm wrong, but I strongly suspect reddit will crack down on adult content as they approach IPO (and is already being pressured to do so)... it's happened time and time again with community platforms and is one of the major dangers of monolithic app stores and investor driven decision-making.
      - Timon3 3y ago
        But why are they blocking porn content for third party apps? How does that affect their own app store entries? How does it help them with Apples guidelines? There is no connection here.
jimbob45 3y ago
Bit disappointing that we haven't seen a competitor pop up since the announcement. With the instant hardware access of AWS and the infinite money of Silicon Valley banks, it's a bit shameful that no one is rushing to fill the market need.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Like how the market rushed to Google+ after the Cambridge Analytica scandal? You underestimate the staying power of a network.
  - jimbob45 3y ago
    I'm old enough to remember Google+ being released. The limited beta is what prevented my friends from adopting it. Facebook had just released another garbage redesign and we were all eager to drop it like a rock. Actually now that I think about it, I would argue that the limited beta (and weird invite program) of GMail slowed its adoption as well.
  - M2Ys4U 3y ago
    Well the Digg to Reddit migration was quick and very successful. Once you cross the trust thermocline,[0] collapse is sudden and virtually irreversible. [0] https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-bi...
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  My thoughts as well. At least during the twitter drama we had Mastodon, and while instances did struggle with the traffic Mastodon was in a decent position to handle that. I'm not sure if any alternative exists for this scenario, though.
  - jacooper 3y ago
    Mastodon absolutely failed at being a twitter alternative.
paulddraper 3y ago
This is a quantitative disagreement. Not emacs vs vim. Straight numbers. Reddit says the API will cost less than a $1/month per user. [1] Apollo says the API will cost $2.50/month per user. [2] Moreover, Apollo claims that Reddit itself makes only $0.12/month per user, therefore the API charges are absurd. [2] What are the correct numbers? These are numbers, not opinions. EDIT: One issue...I suspect that Apollo users are significantly more active than the average Reddit MAU. Say, 4x more active. So the $0.12/month revenue estimate is like (for example) $0.50 per Apollo user. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
- itake 3y ago
  Just a shot in the dark, but maybe reddit is only counting logged in users whereas you don't need to be logged in to use apollo?
  - austhrow743 3y ago
    If they're not logged in then there's no reason to hit the Reddit api on a per user basis.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > Moreover, Apollo claims that Reddit itself makes only $0.12/month per user. [2] MAU are very different users compared to users making 200 reqs per day, and bring very different revenue.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    Agreed. I think this is an issue in Apollo's math. Enough to account for an order of magnitude? IDK
    - riku_iki 3y ago
wdb 3y ago
Too late, I think?
fwlr 3y ago
The rule that you shouldn’t build your business on someone else’s API obviously applies here and in the end Reddit is of course justified in choosing to shut out third party apps. But I must say it is simply hilarious that their exorbitant new price was so absurd that when devs quoted it back to them as a buyout rate, Reddit felt like they were being blackmailed. I mean that’s literally getting offended at your own number.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  > The rule that you shouldn’t build your business on someone else’s API obviously applies here Is there an alternative? If your business is an app around someone elses API, as it is in this case, Tweetbot, etc - it seems super reasonable no? Yea the API could change at any moment. So maybe don't over leverage yourself. Play it safe, knowing any day could be the apps last.. but beyond that "building your business around someone else's API" isn't bad here is it? I'd happily do it if it was going to make some money. So i'm kinda unsure where the distinction is for that phrase. When is it not a good idea? Seems a better phrase would be one that includes knowing what type of business you have.
  - vinyl7 3y ago
    It just depends on what your timeline is. Tech is very ephemeral, so anything that exists today will be gone eventually. So build an app using an api, but i would not rely on it to be a viable product for more than a couple of years. So its fine if you want beer money, but it wont be a career.
  - tensor 3y ago
    Personally, I think it's reasonable for a small 1-2 person shop, but if you are planning a larger company it's pretty irresponsible to build it around someone's API like this. If you can't feasibly replace a given API, then you're business is incredibly fragile, and I think it's unfair to employ a large number of people in a fragile business without clearly stating to them that they could all be unemployed in an instant.
  - fwlr 3y ago
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
dgellow 3y ago
100 queries by minute per openid for free is quite good. Doesn’t that cover the needs of the various 3rd party apps? Edit: oh wait, maybe I misunderstood. Do they mean PER APP? I read it as PER USER. If it is per app that’s ridiculous.
- detaro 3y ago
  per client id, i.e. per app. Not per user.
  - quenix 3y ago
    Why can’t users just register their own keys and paste them into various clients? This seems like an easy way to have avoided this situation.
    - sodality2 3y ago
      They literally suspended the website [0] where you can apply for an app. It's been a perma-waitlist that hasn't moved a bit. Several app developers [1, 2, 3] have reached out and gotten radio silence. [0]: https://developers.reddit.com/waitlist https://developers.reddit.com/waitlist [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2q0e/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2ewf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2pp3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
    - ink_13 3y ago
      The most obvious answer is that killing third-party apps is intentional. It would have been a reasonable compromise to cut off API access to users who don't have Reddit Gold, but that's off the table, because it doesn't juice the numbers for the IPO the right way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
headcanon 3y ago
I won't go so far as to say that this is Reddit's death-knell since they've been through a lot of controversies before, and I'm sure their business will do just fine in the future, but its clear to me at this point the direction they want to take the site is continually diverging from what I want it to be. To be honest, I'm a bit thankful that they are finally doing this. Shutting down Apollo is making me realize I'm the frog in boiling water as they try to turn it into TikTok. With this move, they turned up the temperature a bit too fast, and this is my queue to jump out.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  s/queue/cue/
- tedmiston 3y ago
  They're setting up for the forthcoming IPO. I guess it's a classic move out of the IPO playbook at this point to gain content and users via third party clients and then turn around and eliminate them by killing their API access entirely and/or making it prohibitively expensive. Seems like a weird move by someone who's been at Reddit since the beginning and presumably understands its users well to me though. We'll see how it works out for them...
- atyppo 3y ago
  This post screams classic Friday afternoon news dump to me. But at this point, it doesn't really matter. I'm beginning to grow very tired of Reddit. When I signed up almost 9 years ago, it felt like a community where I was surrounded by others who were genuinely curious, helpful, and smarter than me. Now it feels like a slightly better Facebook, even if you exclude the constantly interjected political comments. The HN community feels to me today what Reddit felt like 9 years ago.
  - macintux 3y ago
    I genuinely don’t know where I’d head next if HN shut down or otherwise jumped the shark. FB was never a viable option for me, Twitter got Musked, and Reddit never held much appeal. Guess I’d have to learn how to Mastodon.
tedmiston 3y ago
The reddit post title mirrored on HN is intentionally vague. For those not closely following the Reddit killing off third party clients via API price gouging drama, this is one of the Reddit co-founders and its current CEO u/spez (Steve Huffman) doing a live AMA.
sorenjan 3y ago
Huffman has been the CEO in charge of Reddit when they implemented both "New Reddit" and their mobile apps. I wonder if he's at least a little embarrassed that his team can't make something as well liked and good as some solo developers with only API access, not hundreds of millions of dollars. Nothing I've seen from Reddit the last years have been particularly impressive, they even used some third party company for their chat functionality which I don't think many users wanted or used. At least the uptime seems to have improved.
- jriggs 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - mostlysimilar 3y ago
    Totally wrong. Have you used Apollo vs the official iOS app? Night and day user experiences. The official app is buggy, ugly, difficult to navigate, and affords not even half of the amount of customization that Apollo does.
- thefourthchime 3y ago
  I'm not that surprised, a handful or even a couple of passionate skilled developers can out-produce a 40-team of mediocre architecture astronauts with offshore contractors any day of the week. I have no clue if that's what's going on, but I've seen it many many times
  - zmmmmm 3y ago
    Wouldn't surprise me if the "official" Reddit app is now weighed down by a metric tonne of compliance that none of the other apps have to do. Not that it explains shipping actively user experience degrading features, but it can explain how they can get stuck with them once those poor decisions are made, because there is so much process involved to fix them that you basically give up.
- Mindwipe 3y ago
  You say that but I had multiple "oww, you broke Reddit" messages during that AMA.
dejawu 3y ago
I feel like it's worth comparing Reddit to another thing that went from being free to paid - Dwarf Fortress. They built up a great rapport and trust with their user base, and in return their user base happily paid for a product they'd been using for decades for free. They made millions over the span of a few days. Someone asked in the forums if people really want to pay for this and the replies are just thousands of people saying "yes". Compare that to Reddit's adversarial history with its user base and the backlash they're getting now. It's completely possible to make money off Reddit without resorting to measures like these. I'm a better person today because of Reddit, which is something I can't say about any other social media. It deeply hurts my heart to see such a valuable and meaningful space possibly die due to just simple greed. That, to me, is a far greater loss than anything else mentioned in the threads about this impending disaster.
- apomekhanes 3y ago
  This is exactly correct. This is almost entirely a "management / PR debacle". A very easily avoidable debacle, I'm fairly sure, if they had simply brought in the right people or person (even) to help them through the process. A number of Huffman's statements, seemingly tinged with bitterness / resentment and broadcasting a sense of "unfairness" (i.e., that third party apps have been profitable but Reddit itself has not), have been laughably unprofessional. And I'm not even writing about the tit-for-tat potentially libelous completely lacking in understanding of relevant LAWS crap. This is not remotely 'C-suite' 'level' messaging / behavior. Particularly for a company that put in a target of $15 billion valuation back in 2021. Honestly, I will say, I feel a little bad for Huffman, at this point. He's clearly out of his depth. I suspect there is some pressure that has shown up / backstory that created a sense of serious urgency starting some months ago, and the management team at Reddit figured they could handle this process &/ want(ed) to demonstrate competence. So, they have been forging ahead w/ trying to line everything up. Some have cited "ChatGPT", and, of course, there's always the rising interest rates being a potential issue ... nevertheless, they've created substantial bad sentiment among some of the most important users & devs at a particularly BAD time. Of course, this may well not derail an IPO, the site too much, etc., in the short run. But, it's ludicrously bad management - examples more likely by the day to show up in future business courses. A SOCIAL MEDIA site bungling MESSAGING, possibly catastrophically, and pissing off some of the people MOST WILLING to contribute to financial health (almost certainly) and MOST INTERESTED in the site continuing to be viable! They really ought to consider, if they haven't done so already, getting some small team of 'crisis PR' or 'management advisors' or something in, with expertise in the various areas they are clearly having massive issues with right now. Simply doing that, and having Huffman indicate (externally) a degree of 'stepping aside' so that things can be righted, could defuse some of the serious negative sentiment they have now generated.
BoxOfRain 3y ago
Huffman's giving us all a masterclass in how to be absolutely atrocious at PR, seriously how on Earth did Reddit as a company allow this to go ahead? It's like the tech industry equivalent of a Liz Truss speech.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Because bad PR hasn't really hurt any company in decades? When is the last time "CEO did something awful but not illegal" actually significantly reduced a company's income? Twitter basically became a Nazi rally and they're still going to clear a billion dollars in revenue this year.
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    > CEO did something awful but not illegal Libel is actually quite illegal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - elonsrusks 3y ago
    > Twitter basically became a Nazi rally and they're still going to clear a billion dollars in revenue this year. What? No it didn't. If you're seeing that sort of content on Twitter it must be because you're following those sort of people.
    - krapp 3y ago
      I for one definitely have not been following those sort of people and I've seen a marked increase in their presence in my feed after Elon took over - many people have. Elon unbanned a ton of right-wing accounts and it seems like he's privileged their content to appear more often in people's feeds, likely anyone the demographics have tagged as "leftist" or "liberal." And Elon himself has been retweeting and responding favorably to racist content for a while. It's obvious there is an attempt on his part to normalize this stuff on the platform. He's basically a redpilled troll at this point.
    - jen20 3y ago
      What world do you even live in? Twitter was even full of right wing nut jobs and Russian bots _before_ the takeover, which they were more than happy to intersperse into my timeline of entirely technologists.
kevdev 3y ago
Funny how he keeps using the phrase “developers that want to work with us”. Clearly trying to suggest that some don’t (wonder which ones he thinks do not want to work with them /s)
wilsonnb3 3y ago
https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk9izp/?context=1 https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk9izp/?cont... Confirmation that these changes are at least partially due to LLM training using Reddit data, which many have speculated to be the case.
mastercheif 3y ago
https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk8m0z/?context=1 https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk8m0z/?cont... > I acknowledge it was a tight timeline. For what it’s worth, we are continuing to chat with many of the developers who still want to work with us. This is his worst answer, yet. A complete lack of respect for the developers of the affected apps, as well as their users. I’m genuinely shocked that he’s so willing to admit to the incompetence of Reddit’s decision-makers and their complete disconnect with the situation on the ground.
- hysan 3y ago
  Doubly so when he later apologizes to a 3rd party app developer who has been trying to get in contact with Reddit for the past 3 months over the changes: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnkd694 https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnkd694 > Apologies for the delay. We are responding now. > > If others have apps they would like to be considered for the paid API tier, please reach out here and select “This is a partnership request.”
  - mustacheemperor 3y ago
    The thread has at least two other examples developers of 10+ year old apps reporting this problem: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2pp3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
- tedmiston 3y ago
  Still, in terms of the normal transparency level of an AMA, this one reads to me like he has a crisis PR person sitting right next to him filtering his replies.
  - acrispino 3y ago
    It seems he may be pasting pre-written answers: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkcs6l/?context=2 https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
sidcool 3y ago
I wish Reddit goes out of business for a very selfish reason. I am addicted to it and want it gone.
- adhvaryu 3y ago
  I think this is a cheeky comment but I agree that it is very addicting. The karma system gets you hooked from early on and then 10 years go by and it becomes a part of your daily routine. An alternative without incentives to gain fake internet points might fare better. I've personally quit Reddit as of this debacle because it made me realise how much I used it everyday and this was a good enough excuse to look elsewhere.
soraminazuki 3y ago
At this point the Reddit CEO's numerous defamatory lies about the Apollo dev has been thoroughly debunked. If the CEO had the tiniest amount of common sense, he would've made an apology, however insincere it may be. So imagine my astonishment when I saw him doubling down with even more defamatory statements. https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk45rr/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... (Also an archive link here, just in case: https://web.archive.org/web/20230609180814/https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk45rr/?context=3 https://web.archive.org/web/20230609180814/https://old.reddi...) Some people just never cease to surprise you.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  I would expect counsel to discourage an apology in the context of potential liability, but they typically also encourage shutting one's yap.
TobyTheDog123 3y ago
Why is Spez so insistent on becoming public enemy #1? He's so obviously in the wrong here, yet is doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on what is an obvious screw-up. Frankly I think this might be a worse PR move than what Elon did when he did this with Twitter's API. Is it someone in panic over a potential large impact on the IPO? I dont even think it would have that much of an effect if he hadn't gone on the platform to make the problem worse.
drampa 3y ago
There's some commentary on this at the "Reddit drama" forum, if anyone here would enjoy reading some rather more ascerbic takes on the Reddit CEO's excuse-making exercise: https://rdrama.net/post/177376/spez-arrives-to-take-his-flogging https://rdrama.net/post/177376/spez-arrives-to-take-his-flog...
- SSLy 3y ago
  From the comments it feels like that site is worse than most of 4chan boards.
  - RAD-NEOCENTRIST 3y ago
    *4chan retirement community
prahladyeri 3y ago
They're testing the water it seems. They must have realized that those leaving Reddit for other pasteurs must have already left by now, so there will be little resistance in monetizing those on the platform. Either that, or they're deliberately wanting to lose their user base as part of some grand strategy as Digg did many years ago!
- zui 3y ago
  I agree. They probably have the stats to predict how much the "revolt" is costing them long term, compare to the upside of the IPO. But only time will tell whether this actually hold.
  - soultrees 3y ago
    Did their algorithm account for a CEO with major foot in mouth syndrome?
TheKnack 3y ago
What I don't understand about both this and Twitter's dislike of third party apps is why they don't just require third party apps display the same ads as their own app, and maybe support whatever paid features they have. It seems like that would be a win-win for both them and the app developers. More people use Reddit because of Apollo because the experience is so much better than their own app. They should take advantage of that by coming up with a mutually beneficial solution instead of killing it. They would make a lot more revenue by requiring that Apollo display ads than killing it and losing some percentage of users or traffic in the process. Are they that confident that all of the Apollo users are just going to switch to their own app on July 1st? (they won't) I understand why the status-quo isn't sustainable. Reddit has to figure out how to be profitable eventually, but this seems like a tone deaf way to try to get there which probably won't have the intended result.
taldo 3y ago
I wonder if this change will at least mean the end of those autogenerated TikTok/Instagram videos of Minecraft playthroughs with TTS-narrated content lifted from /r/amitheasshole or whatever.
skilled 3y ago
From the Reddit AMA thread[0]: >Premium Enterprise API / Third-party apps >Effective July 1, 2023, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-party app). >Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their businesses and will close before pricing goes into effect. >For the other apps, we will continue talking. We acknowledge that the timeline we gave was tight; we are happy to engage with folks who want to work with us. [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
- deely3 3y ago
  > less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-party app This types of generalization irks me everytime. "typical user send 20 emails every month, surely if you want to send more than 20 emails you will happily pay for it".
  - derefr 3y ago
    I don't think that's the expectation here, as that would imply that users who aren't generating much traffic per user would be free, while you'd only charge users who are generating more traffic. Which would be terribly broken in this case, as Reddit is a long-tail service where the users who each make few requests, add up to the supermajority of the traffic served. I think their expectation on Reddit's end is that these third-party apps "should" be charging a subscription fee to every single user that uses them, of something like $12/year, and passing most of that on to Reddit; where the heavy users will be negative-margin to retain, but where this doesn't matter because the users who don't use Reddit much will be subsidizing them. Like insurance. Which is also terribly broken, for classical insurance-economics reasons: just like healthy people generally don't care about getting health insurance unless they're forced to do so, people who don't use Reddit much certainly won't be willing to pay $12/year for it. So it'll only be those power users interested in paying; and so the average usage among that group will be much higher; and so you'll need to charge them quite a bit more than $12/year... and they probably won't be willing to pay that.
RedditTier 3y ago
[dead]
johnisom2001 3y ago
There won't be many redditors fleeing. The vast majority don't care about this. They just log into Reddit's website, or their official mobile app, look at cat pics, and continue on with their day. I'm guessing the money Reddit will make from monetizing their API will much more than outweigh the losses.
- fooker 3y ago
  The people posting the cat pics and the mods making sure it's just cat pics might care though
Kiro 3y ago
> Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use. Is there no merit to this?
- caranti 3y ago
  There's absolutely merit to this. If Reddit can't fund itself, and goes under, all users loses a valuable community resource. That Reddit have decided to end free access to their APIs isn't itself an issue. The way they're doing it, and the significant departure from the decade and a half long de-facto agreement that a large body of the user base believe themselves to be party trading user generated content and user sourced moderation in exchange for platform access does seem to have missed the mark though. It doesn't take much creative thought to conceive of a scheme whereby the paid Reddit Gold includes API access, for example. Which should be a bit like a YouTube Premium or Spotify Premium kind of deal - direct contribution as alternative to advertising to achieve per user monetization. It's not even a stretch to partner with third party apps and let them collect the user payments as an alternative to requiring users to pay for the app and Reddit Gold separately. But the very short notice period and seemingly unpalatable pricing, together with some of the reported questionable comments and actions from Reddit, don't come across as reasonable from any rational perspective.
- zmmmmm 3y ago
  It implies that the bare costs of serving the API requests are the issue (subsidising means, it costs us more to provide you something than you pay us for it). Reddit wants to charge $0.24/1k API calls. That doesn't seem to be reasonable. To calibrate this, consider what is charged for API access by say, AWS for S3 API calls: $0.005/1k API calls. So they are two orders of magnitude higher than AWS. Obviously it's hard to compete on infrastructure cost with an actual cloud provider, but I still think two orders of magnitude should be enough that an entity the size of Reddit can offer a much more reasonable price than that. They could also optimise their API layer to better match the needs of 3rd party apps if the pure number of calls is the issue.
majani 3y ago
They absolutely cannot budge, their investors won't let them. And by now, the investors probably own most of the company. Reddit is targeting LLMs as their main API clients and that will give a huge bounce on share price after the IPO. Right now, being firmly in the AI supply chain is probably the biggest driver of share price growth
- oldtownroad 3y ago
  LLM developers have no need for Reddit’s API: Reddit data is available through a variety of sources that don’t require usage of the API. The API they’re targeting are third-party clients used by humans. Apps like Apollo are the target. Reddit’s comment volume is high but not high enough to drive significant revenue if LLM developers were consuming comments via the API.
  - happycube 3y ago
    And even if they did need it, they won't need it nearly as much the way things are going now...
  - skilled 3y ago
    Exactly. I think perhaps the biggest value is actually the "links" that get shared on Reddit, as an aggregate. And you can totally get all that somewhere else, in OpenAI's case - that would be Bing.
- reaperman 3y ago
  How about a per-user API key that users can copy/paste into a third-party app (or use an OAuth solution) which requires a $2-5/month subscription fee (cough *reddit premium* cough) to make more money than they would from showing these users advertisements? This could also be used as a NSFW flag. Enough people use 3rd party apps that this would also cover the high fees that they wish you could charge to LLMs. Which, due to LinkedIn vs. HiQ -- they're just going to scrape publicly anyways. I build anti-captcha systems for bot scraping, it's trivially easy to bypass bot protection...there's no way around this without making logging in and agreeing to ToS necessary just to view comments. Hell they could even still include advertisements that come through the API as native posts and would not only be difficult to filter, but also be against API ToS to filter out. Yeah they wouldn't be as precisely-targeted but I mean, if someone is on a niche subreddit, how much more targeting do you need when you're already getting subscription fees from the same user you'd be showing additional ads to. Point is, they can still be extremely greedy while not kneecapping 3rd party clients that don't suck like their app does.
buildbot 3y ago
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-298.html https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-298.ht... u/spez is likely violating the Canadian libel laws... Edit - Note this is not civil libel, this is the criminal code.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  It's the guy that used privileged DB access to edit the content of other users' posts. Absolutely not trustworthy to any degree it blows my mind that he is still there.
  - buildbot 3y ago
    I mean that's shitty and unethical, but probably not criminal He's violating Canadian CRIMINAL code now!
- akiselev 3y ago
  > Canadian Who cares? I'm not being flippant: what jurisdiction - especially criminal - does Canada have here?
  - buildbot 3y ago
    The Apollo dev is Canadian
  - spiffytech 3y ago
    The Apollo developer is Canadian. Though Reddit is an American company, and I'm not sure what the rules are for cross-region lawsuits.
  - tenpies 3y ago
    I suspect that most Redditors just had rapid expertise emergence (REE) in the subject of international law, with a specialty in Canadian libellous extradition. Let's review the facts: Spez is an American citizen in the United States - a country famous for its Freedom of Speech. Good luck to anyone who wants to make the case that because he may have been slanderous to a Canadian citizen he should be extradited to face Canadian courts.
mikequinlan 3y ago
Overview: https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/ceo_spez_ama_overview/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/c...
torartc 3y ago
Steve is very clearly stuck in a position where he has to kill 3rd party apps, but you really have to think there was a much better way to go about doing this. His AMA right now is embarrassing.
- oldtownroad 3y ago
  Steve has always been the leader reddit deserves, not the leader it needs. The position Reddit is in is of his own creation. Even the most uninspired out of touch corporate leader would have avoided this entire clown show. Steve believes that his relationship with Reddit makes him the best leader but alas, it makes him the worst. Steve has finally said in his AMA today, that Reddit has to be a sustainable business to survive! Very true, and that alone is justification for making radical change that people may hate. Yet, he has been so resistant to saying it that it seems like he didn’t want to admit it to himself either… and so the decisions he’s made haven’t been founded in an embrace of that idea but rather in a desperate attempt to avoid it. Any competent business leader in charge of Reddit would understand that the reason Reddit only spends 100m/year on salaries is because they receive hundreds of millions in free labor from the small minority of Reddit power users who are fundamental to its success… any competent business leader would squeeze the 99% of users who have never delivered a single contribution to Reddit… and yet, Steve decided to target the smallest minority who actually matter to reddit’s future. Putting YouTube style unskippable video ads into the official Reddit app would have pissed off zero power users and 10xed revenue.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  With the top questions being well-formulated, respectful and most importantly, unanswered... Yes. It is embarrassing. Question is... Does it matter? Will it drive the users that create content away? If the answer is no, it the embarrassment is meaningless.
- basch 3y ago
  I cannot fathom why killing third party apps is the only solution. As if there cant be an ads api or api access allowed to paying accounts. If I were going to pay a reddit subscription, I want to be allowed to sign into any third party app, vs paying one developer for a portion of their api usage.
Apreche 3y ago
> “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” Huffman wrote. “Unlike some of the [third-party] apps, we are not profitable.” I don't think Reddit can be profitable. What business model is there that can work? Almost anything that generates revenue harms the user experience. Users will only tolerate so much. If they try to extract value with ads or paywalls, they lose the users. If they please the users, how can they make money from that? The amount users are willing to pay is not enough. I think the only way for it to carry on is without capitalism. They need to operate more like a Wikipedia or an archive.org. Put the profit motive aside and exist for and by the users.
mcphage 3y ago
This is what I don't understand about their API charges: Apollo (and other 3rd party clients) make API calls on behalf of a Reddit user. If I (as a Reddit user) don't pay money to use Reddit directly, why would Apollo have to pay to have me use Reddit through itself? It can't be a load issue, since presumably going forward I'd be making the same calls, just through Reddit's own app instead. Or if the load is reduced, then that means I'm using Reddit less, which doesn't seem like it's one of Reddit's goals here. Basically, why is Apollo paying Reddit for my Reddit usage, when I don't even pay Reddit for my Reddit usage?
- jmholla 3y ago
  Presumably, you are paying for your Reddit usage through Reddit's ads.
  - mcphage 3y ago
    Probably, but that can be part of the API as well.
lapcat 3y ago
Reddit is struggling to load under the traffic of the AMA, which isn't a good look. Another bad look is the series potshots taken at 3rd party developers: "His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place", "We’re continuing to work with folks who want to work with us. For what it’s worth, this includes many of the apps that haven’t been taking the spotlight this week.", "Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable." Spoken by a dude about to make bank on IPO, comparing his profits to little indie devs who he just put out of business. I do wonder, when will Reddit abolish its RSS feeds? That was actually one of the first signs of the apocalypse at Twitter, back in 2012.
- reaperman 3y ago
  https://old.reddit.com/user/spez/comments/ https://old.reddit.com/user/spez/comments/ still works well, of course.
buildbot 3y ago
This should not be flagged? @dang ?
symlinkk 3y ago
I support what Reddit is doing and I think the Apollo dev is in the wrong. You don’t get to make millions of dollars building your app on someone else’s platform with no agreements in place and then start crying when they start charging for the platform.
- wilsonnb3 3y ago
  Apollo’s developer has stated multiple times that he has no problem with Reddit charging for API access. The problem is that they are charging so much for it that it will kill all of the third party apps, which is likely one of reddits main goals with the change.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  So you also think RIF and Sync devs are wrong? They also have opted to shutter their apps due to the unreasonable pricing, without "crying" as you put it. And you think that Reddit handled this appropriately, to the point where you would "support" them? So you support the libel, alienating your userbase, moderators, and 3rd party developers, and straight up lying to the community? Not even getting into the actual API changes and how badly they were introduced, this whole thing was an exercise in how to permanently alienate their most vocal and engaged users. It's truly masterclass in what not to do in a PR crisis.
  - symlinkk 3y ago
    Yes they’re wrong. Raise prices if you need to.
    - mynameisvlad 3y ago
      I mean, you're objectively wrong, but that's like your opinion man. Gotta love that you didn't dare reply to the actual meat of my comment, either. I wouldn't be surprised if every single app shut down after this fiasco. I'm sure it's their fault too, though. Couldn't possibly be the giant corporation who doesn't know how to do basic PR and communications.
Mindwipe 3y ago
An almost textbook example of how not to do comms. Insincere, lazy, and easily proven wrong on several fronts, this has absolutely made things worse. There are several major subs on the fence now joining the blackout due to this performance. What were they hoping to achieve here? Seriously?
bastijn 3y ago
The real sad part is that I would hate to see Reddit go down. All my searches nowadays are with "site:reddit.com" as regular google results will just give you affiliate posts and sponsored top 10s. Reddit is my prime source of true reviews, opinions and content written for the content, not monetization.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
zmmmmm 3y ago
Whenever you see a smart person doing things that seem to make no logical sense you seek out missing information that would unlock a logical explanation. I am curious really here about Huffman's behaviour. He may be quite incompetent (I'm judging that primarily based on the observation that changes in the web site and app sit somewhere between willful negligence and active sabotage in terms of what they have done to the user experience). But it still doesn't explain some of the completely nonsensical aspects of his decisions. I feel like there's something behind the scenes here. For example, Huffman has been told he has until September to make money or he's fired and Reddit is being sold for parts to "big LLM". Probably because there's a concrete offer on the table by some private equity or something like that which dwarfs anything they could conceivably make another way. Possibly, in an alternative (similar) theory, they have a concrete offer from a player (say OpenAI) for LLM access that would make them profitable forever, but it requires exclusivity, and these API changes are designed to get 3rd party usage down to a level that would comply with that agreement. In any of these cases he's bound by confidentially not to talk about it so he's stuck with doing what seem like crazy non-sensical things in public to achieve these outcomes.
- stjo 3y ago
  As far as conspiracy theories go, this must be the most logical explanation of the events. Yet I see no evidence. Maybe one could try asking OpenAI?
ziml77 3y ago
I'm not even going to bother reading this. No one should be returning to Reddit at this point, no matter what they say or claim to be changing. They're still going to make user hostile decisions as long as they think it will make them more money. It's just that the next time they do that they're going to make the change more slowly so they don't end up with one big event that blows up on them.
stefanos82 3y ago
To me this reads like digg.com catastrophe, v2! Oh well...
radar1310 3y ago
[flagged]
Glench 3y ago
If anyone is interested I made an extension you can use to batch delete your Reddit posts and comments: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit-posts/nbfdoajmaaohkohdnbpjakamhcaaleco?hl=en&authuser=0 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit... Let me know how it works for you if you try it! Still fixing bugs.

290 points by kotaKat 3y ago

endisneigh 3y ago

[flagged]

robin_reala 3y ago
To be fair he only released it after Reddit started to effectively slander him about what had been said.
- buildbot 3y ago
  Does u/spez not realize the bar for libel in Canada is lower than the USA? The dev is Canadian and could file there right?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bgc 3y ago
    Maybe so, but regardless of the facts this would almost certainly not be worth pursuing… In the US, courts are generally prohibited from enforcing foreign libel judgements against US persons if the country in which the judgement was won has looser libel standards than the US.[0] (IANAL) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act
    - buildbot 3y ago
      Yeah no idea if that would apply or not. But Canadian code I was looking at was the criminal code - there might be a difference between civil and criminal libel here.
ComputerGuru 3y ago
Don't change the sequence of events around. He released it only after they completely misrepresented what transpired in that call.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - csmiller 3y ago
    what would you have done in Christian's shoes?
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - someotherperson 3y ago
        It's not about the site at that point, it's accusations of blackmail. It is entirely acceptable to defend yourself, the other way to do it is inside a courtroom.
        endisneigh 3y ago
        So you agree it’s ok to record all private conversations just in case then?
        buildbot 3y ago
        In Canada, it legally is!
        endisneigh 3y ago
        Good to know

mmastrac 3y ago

I don't see where in this address they actually address the real concerns (eg: the mismatch between Apollo's statement and Reddit's).

stephanerangaya 3y ago
Me neither
MicropenisMike 3y ago
They don't
jjcm 3y ago
The top comment asks that directly, but very unlikely there will be any response. https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk260i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kotaKat 3y ago
Oh, spez just dropped a hot load of defamation. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk45rr/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... "His “joke” is the least of our issues. His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him."
- hysan 3y ago
  I’m astonished by the blatant gaslighting.
- dreadlordbone 3y ago
  At least /u/spez hasn't changed one bit.

pimlottc 3y ago

The poster (CEO of Reddit) has replied to a few comments so far but they've been downvoted to oblivion so they aren't visible in the main comments; you can see all his replies on his user profile page here: https://old.reddit.com/user/spez https://old.reddit.com/user/spez EDIT: links for replies from other reddit officials: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkd4t3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
> The poster (CEO of Reddit) has replied to a few comments so far Fourteen. He replied to fourteen comments. In the space of four hours. It's not often that you see a platform implode in real time.
colpabar 3y ago
So all the top responses to the top comments in the thread are going to be “seriously, this” and nobody is going to see how spez actually responds. Classic.
- minimaxir 3y ago
  It'll get around. That's how the infamous sense-of-pride-and-accomplishment comment did. Going into a user's profile for their comments is a paradigm older than Reddit.
- sorenjan 3y ago
  You would think Reddit would have made an AMA sorting mode that surfaces OP's answers even when they're heavily downvoted by now, since it's been a thing for years, but it doesn't seem like a priority for them.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - operator-name 3y ago
    Reddit has a Q&A sorting mode.

trollied 3y ago

They’re editing & deleting comments frantically. Shambolic. It was never going to be anything other than a disaster, but this is just chucking fuel on the fire.

elektor 3y ago
Im backing up as many comments as I can using Wayback Machine

jjcm 3y ago

Some things I find interesting: 1. They're not backing down at all, and even explicitly mention that Apollo/RIF/Sync will be going down because of this. 2. It looks like they are backtracking a bit on the moderation tools that use the API. This makes sense as otherwise Reddit would have been a cesspool, but a lot of moderators do use tools like Apollo, so it will be interesting to see what happens to the quality bar over time. 3. Removing NSFW content from the API is interesting - I wonder if the main app will still have access to this?

sosodev 3y ago
They have said the main app will still have access to NSFW content. He just claimed in a comment that it's being removed from the API due to regulatory concerns. Which seems like total BS to me.
- paddw 3y ago
  Maybe. Probably are a partial truth. Regulatory pressures to crack down on NSFW content of any kind are very real.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    It would be nice if whenever someone blamed their actions on vague "regulatory concerns" they actually listed the specific law/code that they were concerned with. For example, in this case, what specific law makes API access to this content risky but not regular web-based access to the content.
  - Mindwipe 3y ago
    > Maybe. Probably are a partial truth. Regulatory pressures to crack down on NSFW content of any kind are very real. Regulatory pressure to perform age verification is real. But Reddit already requires users to be logged in and their account to have gone to the website and clicked on an explicit toggle in order to access NSFW content. When (and sadly inevitably if) Reddit requires age verification to access adult content, then it will be on a per account basis - and hence the toggle would not be enabled without it. So at that point the status quo still fulfils the regulatory requirement the account has checked age. It is not clear at all to anyone who thinks about it for a second why third party clients would change anything here.

tedunangst 3y ago

Just from a technical perspective, what is Apollo doing that requires more than 100 queries per minute? (Okay, so apparently client ID isn't user ID, but app ID. Explains a lot.)

tomrod 3y ago
No idea. Also, I suspect Apollo made a judgment error in looking at their usage stats through the lens of the mean, rather than their median and 99% percentile, usage. They likely have power users greatly pulling that mean up that, in all cases, should probably be capped. EDIT: Ooof, people dislike this thought. Has the Apollo dev spoken out about their approach? I'll be the first to admit I haven't seen reddit's entire debacle, but thought I was reasonably following the play by play.
- hysan 3y ago
  re: your edit: See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261736
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Thanks! The reddit post is what I was referencing by looking at mean vs. median/99%
pimlottc 3y ago
Apollo uses an average of 324 requests per user per day, according to the developer's farewell announcement posted yesterday [0]. I hadn't heard anything about the "Free Data API" limit of 100 qpm before this either, so I assume the issues is that the free API is filtered and does not include any "mature content". > Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed. This change will not impact any moderator bots or extensions. In our conversations with moderators and developers, we heard two areas of feedback we plan to address. 0: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...

MrThoughtful 3y ago

I don't understand why the apps in question (Apollo etc) care about the Reddit API and its terms at all. Those apps are basically browsers. Applications to browse Reddit, right? Why not use the "html over http" API which every other browser also uses? Yes, you would have to harden the code a bit so it gracefully deals with the structure of the html changing sometimes. And you would have to update the parser from time to time. But is that such a big problem? Also: When using the API, how is the free API limit not enough? In TFA it says "100 queries per minute per OAuth client id". That is per user, right? Why does it take more than 100 API requests per minute to use reddit?

patwolfe 3y ago
I think you are vastly underestimating the complexity and inefficiency of doing this for one of the most visited websites in the world.
- MrThoughtful 3y ago
  How is the complexity of parsing html related to how much visits the website has?
  - Timon3 3y ago
    If Reddit doesn't want third party apps, just how long do you think the HTML will stay consistent?
simlevesque 3y ago
The html can change at any time, breaking things. An API must manage breaking changes.
jaywalk 3y ago
> Those apps are basically browsers. Nope, not even close.
- MrThoughtful 3y ago

xdennis 3y ago

> Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed. Such a silly justification, as if children are using the API to find porn, which is so difficult otherwise.

itake 3y ago
Their mobile web app public feed lets you view NSFW content without logging in, but if you want to view the comments, suddenly you need to verify your age.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
Sounds more like they're trying to appease Apple's app store policy as they push further into app-first territory.
- sosodev 3y ago
  How does that make sense? Apollo has been serving Reddit's porn to iOS users for years and Apple clearly supports it.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    Maybe I'm wrong, but I strongly suspect reddit will crack down on adult content as they approach IPO (and is already being pressured to do so)... it's happened time and time again with community platforms and is one of the major dangers of monolithic app stores and investor driven decision-making.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      But why are they blocking porn content for third party apps? How does that affect their own app store entries? How does it help them with Apples guidelines? There is no connection here.

jimbob45 3y ago

Bit disappointing that we haven't seen a competitor pop up since the announcement. With the instant hardware access of AWS and the infinite money of Silicon Valley banks, it's a bit shameful that no one is rushing to fill the market need.

paulddraper 3y ago
Like how the market rushed to Google+ after the Cambridge Analytica scandal? You underestimate the staying power of a network.
- jimbob45 3y ago
  I'm old enough to remember Google+ being released. The limited beta is what prevented my friends from adopting it. Facebook had just released another garbage redesign and we were all eager to drop it like a rock. Actually now that I think about it, I would argue that the limited beta (and weird invite program) of GMail slowed its adoption as well.
- M2Ys4U 3y ago
  Well the Digg to Reddit migration was quick and very successful. Once you cross the trust thermocline,[0] collapse is sudden and virtually irreversible. [0] https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-bi...
unshavedyak 3y ago
My thoughts as well. At least during the twitter drama we had Mastodon, and while instances did struggle with the traffic Mastodon was in a decent position to handle that. I'm not sure if any alternative exists for this scenario, though.
- jacooper 3y ago
  Mastodon absolutely failed at being a twitter alternative.

paulddraper 3y ago

This is a quantitative disagreement. Not emacs vs vim. Straight numbers. Reddit says the API will cost less than a $1/month per user. [1] Apollo says the API will cost $2.50/month per user. [2] Moreover, Apollo claims that Reddit itself makes only $0.12/month per user, therefore the API charges are absurd. [2] What are the correct numbers? These are numbers, not opinions. EDIT: One issue...I suspect that Apollo users are significantly more active than the average Reddit MAU. Say, 4x more active. So the $0.12/month revenue estimate is like (for example) $0.50 per Apollo user. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...

itake 3y ago
Just a shot in the dark, but maybe reddit is only counting logged in users whereas you don't need to be logged in to use apollo?
- austhrow743 3y ago
  If they're not logged in then there's no reason to hit the Reddit api on a per user basis.
riku_iki 3y ago
> Moreover, Apollo claims that Reddit itself makes only $0.12/month per user. [2] MAU are very different users compared to users making 200 reqs per day, and bring very different revenue.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Agreed. I think this is an issue in Apollo's math. Enough to account for an order of magnitude? IDK
  - riku_iki 3y ago

wdb 3y ago

Too late, I think?

fwlr 3y ago

The rule that you shouldn’t build your business on someone else’s API obviously applies here and in the end Reddit is of course justified in choosing to shut out third party apps. But I must say it is simply hilarious that their exorbitant new price was so absurd that when devs quoted it back to them as a buyout rate, Reddit felt like they were being blackmailed. I mean that’s literally getting offended at your own number.

unshavedyak 3y ago
> The rule that you shouldn’t build your business on someone else’s API obviously applies here Is there an alternative? If your business is an app around someone elses API, as it is in this case, Tweetbot, etc - it seems super reasonable no? Yea the API could change at any moment. So maybe don't over leverage yourself. Play it safe, knowing any day could be the apps last.. but beyond that "building your business around someone else's API" isn't bad here is it? I'd happily do it if it was going to make some money. So i'm kinda unsure where the distinction is for that phrase. When is it not a good idea? Seems a better phrase would be one that includes knowing what type of business you have.
- vinyl7 3y ago
  It just depends on what your timeline is. Tech is very ephemeral, so anything that exists today will be gone eventually. So build an app using an api, but i would not rely on it to be a viable product for more than a couple of years. So its fine if you want beer money, but it wont be a career.
- tensor 3y ago
  Personally, I think it's reasonable for a small 1-2 person shop, but if you are planning a larger company it's pretty irresponsible to build it around someone's API like this. If you can't feasibly replace a given API, then you're business is incredibly fragile, and I think it's unfair to employ a large number of people in a fragile business without clearly stating to them that they could all be unemployed in an instant.
- fwlr 3y ago

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

dgellow 3y ago

100 queries by minute per openid for free is quite good. Doesn’t that cover the needs of the various 3rd party apps? Edit: oh wait, maybe I misunderstood. Do they mean PER APP? I read it as PER USER. If it is per app that’s ridiculous.

detaro 3y ago
per client id, i.e. per app. Not per user.
- quenix 3y ago
  Why can’t users just register their own keys and paste them into various clients? This seems like an easy way to have avoided this situation.
  - sodality2 3y ago
    They literally suspended the website [0] where you can apply for an app. It's been a perma-waitlist that hasn't moved a bit. Several app developers [1, 2, 3] have reached out and gotten radio silence. [0]: https://developers.reddit.com/waitlist https://developers.reddit.com/waitlist [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2q0e/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2ewf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2pp3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
  - ink_13 3y ago
    The most obvious answer is that killing third-party apps is intentional. It would have been a reasonable compromise to cut off API access to users who don't have Reddit Gold, but that's off the table, because it doesn't juice the numbers for the IPO the right way.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

headcanon 3y ago

I won't go so far as to say that this is Reddit's death-knell since they've been through a lot of controversies before, and I'm sure their business will do just fine in the future, but its clear to me at this point the direction they want to take the site is continually diverging from what I want it to be. To be honest, I'm a bit thankful that they are finally doing this. Shutting down Apollo is making me realize I'm the frog in boiling water as they try to turn it into TikTok. With this move, they turned up the temperature a bit too fast, and this is my queue to jump out.

paulddraper 3y ago
s/queue/cue/
tedmiston 3y ago
They're setting up for the forthcoming IPO. I guess it's a classic move out of the IPO playbook at this point to gain content and users via third party clients and then turn around and eliminate them by killing their API access entirely and/or making it prohibitively expensive. Seems like a weird move by someone who's been at Reddit since the beginning and presumably understands its users well to me though. We'll see how it works out for them...
atyppo 3y ago
This post screams classic Friday afternoon news dump to me. But at this point, it doesn't really matter. I'm beginning to grow very tired of Reddit. When I signed up almost 9 years ago, it felt like a community where I was surrounded by others who were genuinely curious, helpful, and smarter than me. Now it feels like a slightly better Facebook, even if you exclude the constantly interjected political comments. The HN community feels to me today what Reddit felt like 9 years ago.
- macintux 3y ago
  I genuinely don’t know where I’d head next if HN shut down or otherwise jumped the shark. FB was never a viable option for me, Twitter got Musked, and Reddit never held much appeal. Guess I’d have to learn how to Mastodon.

tedmiston 3y ago

The reddit post title mirrored on HN is intentionally vague. For those not closely following the Reddit killing off third party clients via API price gouging drama, this is one of the Reddit co-founders and its current CEO u/spez (Steve Huffman) doing a live AMA.

sorenjan 3y ago

Huffman has been the CEO in charge of Reddit when they implemented both "New Reddit" and their mobile apps. I wonder if he's at least a little embarrassed that his team can't make something as well liked and good as some solo developers with only API access, not hundreds of millions of dollars. Nothing I've seen from Reddit the last years have been particularly impressive, they even used some third party company for their chat functionality which I don't think many users wanted or used. At least the uptime seems to have improved.

jriggs 3y ago
[flagged]
- mostlysimilar 3y ago
  Totally wrong. Have you used Apollo vs the official iOS app? Night and day user experiences. The official app is buggy, ugly, difficult to navigate, and affords not even half of the amount of customization that Apollo does.
thefourthchime 3y ago
I'm not that surprised, a handful or even a couple of passionate skilled developers can out-produce a 40-team of mediocre architecture astronauts with offshore contractors any day of the week. I have no clue if that's what's going on, but I've seen it many many times
- zmmmmm 3y ago
  Wouldn't surprise me if the "official" Reddit app is now weighed down by a metric tonne of compliance that none of the other apps have to do. Not that it explains shipping actively user experience degrading features, but it can explain how they can get stuck with them once those poor decisions are made, because there is so much process involved to fix them that you basically give up.
Mindwipe 3y ago
You say that but I had multiple "oww, you broke Reddit" messages during that AMA.

dejawu 3y ago

I feel like it's worth comparing Reddit to another thing that went from being free to paid - Dwarf Fortress. They built up a great rapport and trust with their user base, and in return their user base happily paid for a product they'd been using for decades for free. They made millions over the span of a few days. Someone asked in the forums if people really want to pay for this and the replies are just thousands of people saying "yes". Compare that to Reddit's adversarial history with its user base and the backlash they're getting now. It's completely possible to make money off Reddit without resorting to measures like these. I'm a better person today because of Reddit, which is something I can't say about any other social media. It deeply hurts my heart to see such a valuable and meaningful space possibly die due to just simple greed. That, to me, is a far greater loss than anything else mentioned in the threads about this impending disaster.

apomekhanes 3y ago
This is exactly correct. This is almost entirely a "management / PR debacle". A very easily avoidable debacle, I'm fairly sure, if they had simply brought in the right people or person (even) to help them through the process. A number of Huffman's statements, seemingly tinged with bitterness / resentment and broadcasting a sense of "unfairness" (i.e., that third party apps have been profitable but Reddit itself has not), have been laughably unprofessional. And I'm not even writing about the tit-for-tat potentially libelous completely lacking in understanding of relevant LAWS crap. This is not remotely 'C-suite' 'level' messaging / behavior. Particularly for a company that put in a target of $15 billion valuation back in 2021. Honestly, I will say, I feel a little bad for Huffman, at this point. He's clearly out of his depth. I suspect there is some pressure that has shown up / backstory that created a sense of serious urgency starting some months ago, and the management team at Reddit figured they could handle this process &/ want(ed) to demonstrate competence. So, they have been forging ahead w/ trying to line everything up. Some have cited "ChatGPT", and, of course, there's always the rising interest rates being a potential issue ... nevertheless, they've created substantial bad sentiment among some of the most important users & devs at a particularly BAD time. Of course, this may well not derail an IPO, the site too much, etc., in the short run. But, it's ludicrously bad management - examples more likely by the day to show up in future business courses. A SOCIAL MEDIA site bungling MESSAGING, possibly catastrophically, and pissing off some of the people MOST WILLING to contribute to financial health (almost certainly) and MOST INTERESTED in the site continuing to be viable! They really ought to consider, if they haven't done so already, getting some small team of 'crisis PR' or 'management advisors' or something in, with expertise in the various areas they are clearly having massive issues with right now. Simply doing that, and having Huffman indicate (externally) a degree of 'stepping aside' so that things can be righted, could defuse some of the serious negative sentiment they have now generated.

BoxOfRain 3y ago

Huffman's giving us all a masterclass in how to be absolutely atrocious at PR, seriously how on Earth did Reddit as a company allow this to go ahead? It's like the tech industry equivalent of a Liz Truss speech.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Because bad PR hasn't really hurt any company in decades? When is the last time "CEO did something awful but not illegal" actually significantly reduced a company's income? Twitter basically became a Nazi rally and they're still going to clear a billion dollars in revenue this year.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  > CEO did something awful but not illegal Libel is actually quite illegal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- elonsrusks 3y ago
  > Twitter basically became a Nazi rally and they're still going to clear a billion dollars in revenue this year. What? No it didn't. If you're seeing that sort of content on Twitter it must be because you're following those sort of people.
  - krapp 3y ago
    I for one definitely have not been following those sort of people and I've seen a marked increase in their presence in my feed after Elon took over - many people have. Elon unbanned a ton of right-wing accounts and it seems like he's privileged their content to appear more often in people's feeds, likely anyone the demographics have tagged as "leftist" or "liberal." And Elon himself has been retweeting and responding favorably to racist content for a while. It's obvious there is an attempt on his part to normalize this stuff on the platform. He's basically a redpilled troll at this point.
  - jen20 3y ago
    What world do you even live in? Twitter was even full of right wing nut jobs and Russian bots _before_ the takeover, which they were more than happy to intersperse into my timeline of entirely technologists.

kevdev 3y ago

Funny how he keeps using the phrase “developers that want to work with us”. Clearly trying to suggest that some don’t (wonder which ones he thinks do not want to work with them /s)

wilsonnb3 3y ago

https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk9izp/?context=1 https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk9izp/?cont... Confirmation that these changes are at least partially due to LLM training using Reddit data, which many have speculated to be the case.

mastercheif 3y ago

https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk8m0z/?context=1 https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk8m0z/?cont... > I acknowledge it was a tight timeline. For what it’s worth, we are continuing to chat with many of the developers who still want to work with us. This is his worst answer, yet. A complete lack of respect for the developers of the affected apps, as well as their users. I’m genuinely shocked that he’s so willing to admit to the incompetence of Reddit’s decision-makers and their complete disconnect with the situation on the ground.

hysan 3y ago
Doubly so when he later apologizes to a 3rd party app developer who has been trying to get in contact with Reddit for the past 3 months over the changes: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnkd694 https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnkd694 > Apologies for the delay. We are responding now. > > If others have apps they would like to be considered for the paid API tier, please reach out here and select “This is a partnership request.”
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  The thread has at least two other examples developers of 10+ year old apps reporting this problem: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2pp3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
tedmiston 3y ago
Still, in terms of the normal transparency level of an AMA, this one reads to me like he has a crisis PR person sitting right next to him filtering his replies.
- acrispino 3y ago
  It seems he may be pasting pre-written answers: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkcs6l/?context=2 https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

sidcool 3y ago

I wish Reddit goes out of business for a very selfish reason. I am addicted to it and want it gone.

adhvaryu 3y ago
I think this is a cheeky comment but I agree that it is very addicting. The karma system gets you hooked from early on and then 10 years go by and it becomes a part of your daily routine. An alternative without incentives to gain fake internet points might fare better. I've personally quit Reddit as of this debacle because it made me realise how much I used it everyday and this was a good enough excuse to look elsewhere.

soraminazuki 3y ago

At this point the Reddit CEO's numerous defamatory lies about the Apollo dev has been thoroughly debunked. If the CEO had the tiniest amount of common sense, he would've made an apology, however insincere it may be. So imagine my astonishment when I saw him doubling down with even more defamatory statements. https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk45rr/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... (Also an archive link here, just in case: https://web.archive.org/web/20230609180814/https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk45rr/?context=3 https://web.archive.org/web/20230609180814/https://old.reddi...) Some people just never cease to surprise you.

mustacheemperor 3y ago
I would expect counsel to discourage an apology in the context of potential liability, but they typically also encourage shutting one's yap.

TobyTheDog123 3y ago

Why is Spez so insistent on becoming public enemy #1? He's so obviously in the wrong here, yet is doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on what is an obvious screw-up. Frankly I think this might be a worse PR move than what Elon did when he did this with Twitter's API. Is it someone in panic over a potential large impact on the IPO? I dont even think it would have that much of an effect if he hadn't gone on the platform to make the problem worse.

drampa 3y ago

There's some commentary on this at the "Reddit drama" forum, if anyone here would enjoy reading some rather more ascerbic takes on the Reddit CEO's excuse-making exercise: https://rdrama.net/post/177376/spez-arrives-to-take-his-flogging https://rdrama.net/post/177376/spez-arrives-to-take-his-flog...

SSLy 3y ago
From the comments it feels like that site is worse than most of 4chan boards.
- RAD-NEOCENTRIST 3y ago
  *4chan retirement community

prahladyeri 3y ago

They're testing the water it seems. They must have realized that those leaving Reddit for other pasteurs must have already left by now, so there will be little resistance in monetizing those on the platform. Either that, or they're deliberately wanting to lose their user base as part of some grand strategy as Digg did many years ago!

zui 3y ago
I agree. They probably have the stats to predict how much the "revolt" is costing them long term, compare to the upside of the IPO. But only time will tell whether this actually hold.
- soultrees 3y ago
  Did their algorithm account for a CEO with major foot in mouth syndrome?

TheKnack 3y ago

What I don't understand about both this and Twitter's dislike of third party apps is why they don't just require third party apps display the same ads as their own app, and maybe support whatever paid features they have. It seems like that would be a win-win for both them and the app developers. More people use Reddit because of Apollo because the experience is so much better than their own app. They should take advantage of that by coming up with a mutually beneficial solution instead of killing it. They would make a lot more revenue by requiring that Apollo display ads than killing it and losing some percentage of users or traffic in the process. Are they that confident that all of the Apollo users are just going to switch to their own app on July 1st? (they won't) I understand why the status-quo isn't sustainable. Reddit has to figure out how to be profitable eventually, but this seems like a tone deaf way to try to get there which probably won't have the intended result.

taldo 3y ago

I wonder if this change will at least mean the end of those autogenerated TikTok/Instagram videos of Minecraft playthroughs with TTS-narrated content lifted from /r/amitheasshole or whatever.

skilled 3y ago

From the Reddit AMA thread[0]: >Premium Enterprise API / Third-party apps >Effective July 1, 2023, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-party app). >Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their businesses and will close before pricing goes into effect. >For the other apps, we will continue talking. We acknowledge that the timeline we gave was tight; we are happy to engage with folks who want to work with us. [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

deely3 3y ago
> less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-party app This types of generalization irks me everytime. "typical user send 20 emails every month, surely if you want to send more than 20 emails you will happily pay for it".
- derefr 3y ago
  I don't think that's the expectation here, as that would imply that users who aren't generating much traffic per user would be free, while you'd only charge users who are generating more traffic. Which would be terribly broken in this case, as Reddit is a long-tail service where the users who each make few requests, add up to the supermajority of the traffic served. I think their expectation on Reddit's end is that these third-party apps "should" be charging a subscription fee to every single user that uses them, of something like $12/year, and passing most of that on to Reddit; where the heavy users will be negative-margin to retain, but where this doesn't matter because the users who don't use Reddit much will be subsidizing them. Like insurance. Which is also terribly broken, for classical insurance-economics reasons: just like healthy people generally don't care about getting health insurance unless they're forced to do so, people who don't use Reddit much certainly won't be willing to pay $12/year for it. So it'll only be those power users interested in paying; and so the average usage among that group will be much higher; and so you'll need to charge them quite a bit more than $12/year... and they probably won't be willing to pay that.

RedditTier 3y ago

[dead]

johnisom2001 3y ago

There won't be many redditors fleeing. The vast majority don't care about this. They just log into Reddit's website, or their official mobile app, look at cat pics, and continue on with their day. I'm guessing the money Reddit will make from monetizing their API will much more than outweigh the losses.

fooker 3y ago
The people posting the cat pics and the mods making sure it's just cat pics might care though

Kiro 3y ago

> Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use. Is there no merit to this?

caranti 3y ago
There's absolutely merit to this. If Reddit can't fund itself, and goes under, all users loses a valuable community resource. That Reddit have decided to end free access to their APIs isn't itself an issue. The way they're doing it, and the significant departure from the decade and a half long de-facto agreement that a large body of the user base believe themselves to be party trading user generated content and user sourced moderation in exchange for platform access does seem to have missed the mark though. It doesn't take much creative thought to conceive of a scheme whereby the paid Reddit Gold includes API access, for example. Which should be a bit like a YouTube Premium or Spotify Premium kind of deal - direct contribution as alternative to advertising to achieve per user monetization. It's not even a stretch to partner with third party apps and let them collect the user payments as an alternative to requiring users to pay for the app and Reddit Gold separately. But the very short notice period and seemingly unpalatable pricing, together with some of the reported questionable comments and actions from Reddit, don't come across as reasonable from any rational perspective.
zmmmmm 3y ago
It implies that the bare costs of serving the API requests are the issue (subsidising means, it costs us more to provide you something than you pay us for it). Reddit wants to charge $0.24/1k API calls. That doesn't seem to be reasonable. To calibrate this, consider what is charged for API access by say, AWS for S3 API calls: $0.005/1k API calls. So they are two orders of magnitude higher than AWS. Obviously it's hard to compete on infrastructure cost with an actual cloud provider, but I still think two orders of magnitude should be enough that an entity the size of Reddit can offer a much more reasonable price than that. They could also optimise their API layer to better match the needs of 3rd party apps if the pure number of calls is the issue.

majani 3y ago

They absolutely cannot budge, their investors won't let them. And by now, the investors probably own most of the company. Reddit is targeting LLMs as their main API clients and that will give a huge bounce on share price after the IPO. Right now, being firmly in the AI supply chain is probably the biggest driver of share price growth

oldtownroad 3y ago
LLM developers have no need for Reddit’s API: Reddit data is available through a variety of sources that don’t require usage of the API. The API they’re targeting are third-party clients used by humans. Apps like Apollo are the target. Reddit’s comment volume is high but not high enough to drive significant revenue if LLM developers were consuming comments via the API.
- happycube 3y ago
  And even if they did need it, they won't need it nearly as much the way things are going now...
- skilled 3y ago
  Exactly. I think perhaps the biggest value is actually the "links" that get shared on Reddit, as an aggregate. And you can totally get all that somewhere else, in OpenAI's case - that would be Bing.
reaperman 3y ago
How about a per-user API key that users can copy/paste into a third-party app (or use an OAuth solution) which requires a $2-5/month subscription fee (cough *reddit premium* cough) to make more money than they would from showing these users advertisements? This could also be used as a NSFW flag. Enough people use 3rd party apps that this would also cover the high fees that they wish you could charge to LLMs. Which, due to LinkedIn vs. HiQ -- they're just going to scrape publicly anyways. I build anti-captcha systems for bot scraping, it's trivially easy to bypass bot protection...there's no way around this without making logging in and agreeing to ToS necessary just to view comments. Hell they could even still include advertisements that come through the API as native posts and would not only be difficult to filter, but also be against API ToS to filter out. Yeah they wouldn't be as precisely-targeted but I mean, if someone is on a niche subreddit, how much more targeting do you need when you're already getting subscription fees from the same user you'd be showing additional ads to. Point is, they can still be extremely greedy while not kneecapping 3rd party clients that don't suck like their app does.

buildbot 3y ago

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-298.html https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-298.ht... u/spez is likely violating the Canadian libel laws... Edit - Note this is not civil libel, this is the criminal code.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
It's the guy that used privileged DB access to edit the content of other users' posts. Absolutely not trustworthy to any degree it blows my mind that he is still there.
- buildbot 3y ago
  I mean that's shitty and unethical, but probably not criminal He's violating Canadian CRIMINAL code now!
akiselev 3y ago
> Canadian Who cares? I'm not being flippant: what jurisdiction - especially criminal - does Canada have here?
- buildbot 3y ago
  The Apollo dev is Canadian
- spiffytech 3y ago
  The Apollo developer is Canadian. Though Reddit is an American company, and I'm not sure what the rules are for cross-region lawsuits.
- tenpies 3y ago
  I suspect that most Redditors just had rapid expertise emergence (REE) in the subject of international law, with a specialty in Canadian libellous extradition. Let's review the facts: Spez is an American citizen in the United States - a country famous for its Freedom of Speech. Good luck to anyone who wants to make the case that because he may have been slanderous to a Canadian citizen he should be extradited to face Canadian courts.

mikequinlan 3y ago

Overview: https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/ceo_spez_ama_overview/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/c...

torartc 3y ago

Steve is very clearly stuck in a position where he has to kill 3rd party apps, but you really have to think there was a much better way to go about doing this. His AMA right now is embarrassing.

oldtownroad 3y ago
Steve has always been the leader reddit deserves, not the leader it needs. The position Reddit is in is of his own creation. Even the most uninspired out of touch corporate leader would have avoided this entire clown show. Steve believes that his relationship with Reddit makes him the best leader but alas, it makes him the worst. Steve has finally said in his AMA today, that Reddit has to be a sustainable business to survive! Very true, and that alone is justification for making radical change that people may hate. Yet, he has been so resistant to saying it that it seems like he didn’t want to admit it to himself either… and so the decisions he’s made haven’t been founded in an embrace of that idea but rather in a desperate attempt to avoid it. Any competent business leader in charge of Reddit would understand that the reason Reddit only spends 100m/year on salaries is because they receive hundreds of millions in free labor from the small minority of Reddit power users who are fundamental to its success… any competent business leader would squeeze the 99% of users who have never delivered a single contribution to Reddit… and yet, Steve decided to target the smallest minority who actually matter to reddit’s future. Putting YouTube style unskippable video ads into the official Reddit app would have pissed off zero power users and 10xed revenue.
surgical_fire 3y ago
With the top questions being well-formulated, respectful and most importantly, unanswered... Yes. It is embarrassing. Question is... Does it matter? Will it drive the users that create content away? If the answer is no, it the embarrassment is meaningless.
basch 3y ago
I cannot fathom why killing third party apps is the only solution. As if there cant be an ads api or api access allowed to paying accounts. If I were going to pay a reddit subscription, I want to be allowed to sign into any third party app, vs paying one developer for a portion of their api usage.

Apreche 3y ago

> “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” Huffman wrote. “Unlike some of the [third-party] apps, we are not profitable.” I don't think Reddit can be profitable. What business model is there that can work? Almost anything that generates revenue harms the user experience. Users will only tolerate so much. If they try to extract value with ads or paywalls, they lose the users. If they please the users, how can they make money from that? The amount users are willing to pay is not enough. I think the only way for it to carry on is without capitalism. They need to operate more like a Wikipedia or an archive.org. Put the profit motive aside and exist for and by the users.

mcphage 3y ago

This is what I don't understand about their API charges: Apollo (and other 3rd party clients) make API calls on behalf of a Reddit user. If I (as a Reddit user) don't pay money to use Reddit directly, why would Apollo have to pay to have me use Reddit through itself? It can't be a load issue, since presumably going forward I'd be making the same calls, just through Reddit's own app instead. Or if the load is reduced, then that means I'm using Reddit less, which doesn't seem like it's one of Reddit's goals here. Basically, why is Apollo paying Reddit for my Reddit usage, when I don't even pay Reddit for my Reddit usage?

jmholla 3y ago
Presumably, you are paying for your Reddit usage through Reddit's ads.
- mcphage 3y ago
  Probably, but that can be part of the API as well.

lapcat 3y ago

Reddit is struggling to load under the traffic of the AMA, which isn't a good look. Another bad look is the series potshots taken at 3rd party developers: "His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place", "We’re continuing to work with folks who want to work with us. For what it’s worth, this includes many of the apps that haven’t been taking the spotlight this week.", "Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable." Spoken by a dude about to make bank on IPO, comparing his profits to little indie devs who he just put out of business. I do wonder, when will Reddit abolish its RSS feeds? That was actually one of the first signs of the apocalypse at Twitter, back in 2012.

reaperman 3y ago
https://old.reddit.com/user/spez/comments/ https://old.reddit.com/user/spez/comments/ still works well, of course.

buildbot 3y ago

This should not be flagged? @dang ?

symlinkk 3y ago

I support what Reddit is doing and I think the Apollo dev is in the wrong. You don’t get to make millions of dollars building your app on someone else’s platform with no agreements in place and then start crying when they start charging for the platform.

wilsonnb3 3y ago
Apollo’s developer has stated multiple times that he has no problem with Reddit charging for API access. The problem is that they are charging so much for it that it will kill all of the third party apps, which is likely one of reddits main goals with the change.
mynameisvlad 3y ago
So you also think RIF and Sync devs are wrong? They also have opted to shutter their apps due to the unreasonable pricing, without "crying" as you put it. And you think that Reddit handled this appropriately, to the point where you would "support" them? So you support the libel, alienating your userbase, moderators, and 3rd party developers, and straight up lying to the community? Not even getting into the actual API changes and how badly they were introduced, this whole thing was an exercise in how to permanently alienate their most vocal and engaged users. It's truly masterclass in what not to do in a PR crisis.
- symlinkk 3y ago
  Yes they’re wrong. Raise prices if you need to.
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    I mean, you're objectively wrong, but that's like your opinion man. Gotta love that you didn't dare reply to the actual meat of my comment, either. I wouldn't be surprised if every single app shut down after this fiasco. I'm sure it's their fault too, though. Couldn't possibly be the giant corporation who doesn't know how to do basic PR and communications.

Mindwipe 3y ago

An almost textbook example of how not to do comms. Insincere, lazy, and easily proven wrong on several fronts, this has absolutely made things worse. There are several major subs on the fence now joining the blackout due to this performance. What were they hoping to achieve here? Seriously?

bastijn 3y ago

The real sad part is that I would hate to see Reddit go down. All my searches nowadays are with "site:reddit.com" as regular google results will just give you affiliate posts and sponsored top 10s. Reddit is my prime source of true reviews, opinions and content written for the content, not monetization.

deleted 3y ago
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zmmmmm 3y ago

Whenever you see a smart person doing things that seem to make no logical sense you seek out missing information that would unlock a logical explanation. I am curious really here about Huffman's behaviour. He may be quite incompetent (I'm judging that primarily based on the observation that changes in the web site and app sit somewhere between willful negligence and active sabotage in terms of what they have done to the user experience). But it still doesn't explain some of the completely nonsensical aspects of his decisions. I feel like there's something behind the scenes here. For example, Huffman has been told he has until September to make money or he's fired and Reddit is being sold for parts to "big LLM". Probably because there's a concrete offer on the table by some private equity or something like that which dwarfs anything they could conceivably make another way. Possibly, in an alternative (similar) theory, they have a concrete offer from a player (say OpenAI) for LLM access that would make them profitable forever, but it requires exclusivity, and these API changes are designed to get 3rd party usage down to a level that would comply with that agreement. In any of these cases he's bound by confidentially not to talk about it so he's stuck with doing what seem like crazy non-sensical things in public to achieve these outcomes.

stjo 3y ago
As far as conspiracy theories go, this must be the most logical explanation of the events. Yet I see no evidence. Maybe one could try asking OpenAI?

ziml77 3y ago

I'm not even going to bother reading this. No one should be returning to Reddit at this point, no matter what they say or claim to be changing. They're still going to make user hostile decisions as long as they think it will make them more money. It's just that the next time they do that they're going to make the change more slowly so they don't end up with one big event that blows up on them.

stefanos82 3y ago

To me this reads like digg.com catastrophe, v2! Oh well...

radar1310 3y ago

[flagged]

Glench 3y ago

If anyone is interested I made an extension you can use to batch delete your Reddit posts and comments: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit-posts/nbfdoajmaaohkohdnbpjakamhcaaleco?hl=en&authuser=0 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit... Let me know how it works for you if you try it! Still fixing bugs.