5 ms·

This whole drama is very odd to me and feels like a (very) vocal minority of users incorrectly extrapolating their preferences to those of all Reddit users. Re

This whole drama is very odd to me and feels like a (very) vocal minority of users incorrectly extrapolating their preferences to those of all Reddit users. Reddit owns its API. It has every right to price access however they see fit. It is wild to think that will spend $10s of millions to support 3rd party apps. Or to expect that they would acquire third party apps. I predict Reddit will stick to their guns and that this entire brouhaha will have little to no effect on Reddit's user and engagement metrics over the medium term. If you're outraged and highly engaged with this controversy, do you think its possible you're in a bubble?

predictabl3 3y ago
[flagged]
hatsunearu 3y ago
I'm a moderator and poweruser on reddit and I have very mixed feelings about this. I think the truth is somewhere between the middle--reddit does genuinely not want to support 3rd party apps (shucks, but that's fine), but powerusers/mods want to use third party apps because the official one sucks ass and 3rd party apps want to, well, survive. I think a compromise must be reached. Also spez is a horrible CEO and should probably step down. I care more about reddit as a resource to me as an individual than what his feelings are.
plandis 3y ago
The part I’m outraged about is that the CEO of Reddit was caught in a lie about how 3P app developer tried to “blackmail” them and when said developer released the audio it’s clear that never happened and now Reddit is doubling down on dragging this developers name through the mud still.
Philip-J-Fry 3y ago
I just don't understand why the big app devs are so against making their apps subscription based. The Apollo dev even said they'd have to charge like $2.50pm for each user. Do it then? If you lose users, you pay less for the API anyway. Maybe less users means less income and less time to spend on the app, but I'm pretty sure most Apollo users would be willing to subscribe to it. It seems like all the 3rd party apps took this stance and are now just giving up at the first hurdle instead of adapting their business plan. Reddit's own site and app is so bad that people are boycotting them over losing third party apps, and third party app devs don't think they have any way of charging for their apps? Like, are they even listening.
- plandis 3y ago
  Reddit announced the pricing with 30 days for app developers to start being charged. That’s not a realistic timeline.
  - Philip-J-Fry 3y ago
    App developers can just close off their apps until they implement the subscription. I literally can't understand why the 30 days is an issue. Instead of inconveniencing users for a few weeks while the changes are made, they're inconveniencing users for a lifetime by discontinuing the app.
    - plandis 3y ago
      Well pretty much all the successful apps have decided to shut down but perhaps you know something they don’t and you can profit from their ignorance. Here’s Apollos developers thoughts: > Why not just increase the price of Apollo? > One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That’s $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days. > So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users. > I hope you can recognize how that’s an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice), after Apple’s fees that would just be enough to break even. > Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That’s a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it’s just not economically feasible. It’s much cheaper for me to simply shut down. > So what is the REAL issue you’re having? > Hopefully that illustrates why, even more than the large price associated with the API, the 30 day timeline between when the pricing was announced and developers will be charged is a far, far, far bigger issue and not one I can overcome. Much more time would be needed to overhaul the payment model in my app, transition existing users from existing plans, test the changes, and have users update to the new version. > As a comparison, when Apple bought Dark Sky and announced a shut down of their API, knowing that this API was at the core of many businesses, they provided 18 months before the API would be turned off. When the 18 months came, they ultimately extended it another 12 months, resulting in a total transition period of 30 months. While I’m not asking for that much, Reddit’s in comparison is 30 days. > Reddit says you won’t get your first bill until August 1st, though! > The issue is the size of the bill, not when it will arrive. Significant, significant charges for the API will start building up with 30 days notice on July 1st, the fact that the bill for those charges being 30 days from then is not important. If you hear that your electricity bill is going up 1,000x and the company tells you, “Don’t worry, the bill only comes at the end of the month”, I hope you understand how that isn’t comforting. > What would be a good price/timeline? > I hope I explained above why the 30 day time limit is the true issue. However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by half and providing a three month transition period to the paid API would make the transition feasible for more developers, myself included. These concessions seem minor and reasonable in the face of the changes.
TranquilMarmot 3y ago
I think for a lot of people, they _want_ to see Reddit not as a "company trying to be profitable" but more as "the de-facto community message board on the internet" where everything is free, open, and equitable. Shutting down third-party APIs makes the site less open in a lot of ways, which is rubbing people the wrong way. That being said, I do agree that they own the API and have every right to charge for it. I am going to be very disappointed that my preferred way of browsing Reddit is going to stop working, since the official app is not a great experience.
542458 3y ago
Sure, Reddit can do what they want with Reddit. That’s their right. And Reddit users (or a subset of Reddit users) can complain when Reddit makes product changes that they don’t like. That’s also their right. In this case, people find it frustrating that a) products that they like will stop being usable b) devs that they like will go out of business abruptly c) that communications from Reddit about this have been not great. Even if this is just a subset of users being mad, it appears to be the subset of users that also run many of the larger subreddits. If Reddit doesn’t want users like that to have the power to make highly visible demonstrations they should stop relying on them to do volunteer moderation.

predictabl3 3y ago

[flagged]

hatsunearu 3y ago

I'm a moderator and poweruser on reddit and I have very mixed feelings about this. I think the truth is somewhere between the middle--reddit does genuinely not want to support 3rd party apps (shucks, but that's fine), but powerusers/mods want to use third party apps because the official one sucks ass and 3rd party apps want to, well, survive. I think a compromise must be reached. Also spez is a horrible CEO and should probably step down. I care more about reddit as a resource to me as an individual than what his feelings are.

plandis 3y ago

The part I’m outraged about is that the CEO of Reddit was caught in a lie about how 3P app developer tried to “blackmail” them and when said developer released the audio it’s clear that never happened and now Reddit is doubling down on dragging this developers name through the mud still.

Philip-J-Fry 3y ago

I just don't understand why the big app devs are so against making their apps subscription based. The Apollo dev even said they'd have to charge like $2.50pm for each user. Do it then? If you lose users, you pay less for the API anyway. Maybe less users means less income and less time to spend on the app, but I'm pretty sure most Apollo users would be willing to subscribe to it. It seems like all the 3rd party apps took this stance and are now just giving up at the first hurdle instead of adapting their business plan. Reddit's own site and app is so bad that people are boycotting them over losing third party apps, and third party app devs don't think they have any way of charging for their apps? Like, are they even listening.

plandis 3y ago
Reddit announced the pricing with 30 days for app developers to start being charged. That’s not a realistic timeline.
- Philip-J-Fry 3y ago
  App developers can just close off their apps until they implement the subscription. I literally can't understand why the 30 days is an issue. Instead of inconveniencing users for a few weeks while the changes are made, they're inconveniencing users for a lifetime by discontinuing the app.
  - plandis 3y ago
    Well pretty much all the successful apps have decided to shut down but perhaps you know something they don’t and you can profit from their ignorance. Here’s Apollos developers thoughts: > Why not just increase the price of Apollo? > One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That’s $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days. > So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users. > I hope you can recognize how that’s an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice), after Apple’s fees that would just be enough to break even. > Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That’s a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it’s just not economically feasible. It’s much cheaper for me to simply shut down. > So what is the REAL issue you’re having? > Hopefully that illustrates why, even more than the large price associated with the API, the 30 day timeline between when the pricing was announced and developers will be charged is a far, far, far bigger issue and not one I can overcome. Much more time would be needed to overhaul the payment model in my app, transition existing users from existing plans, test the changes, and have users update to the new version. > As a comparison, when Apple bought Dark Sky and announced a shut down of their API, knowing that this API was at the core of many businesses, they provided 18 months before the API would be turned off. When the 18 months came, they ultimately extended it another 12 months, resulting in a total transition period of 30 months. While I’m not asking for that much, Reddit’s in comparison is 30 days. > Reddit says you won’t get your first bill until August 1st, though! > The issue is the size of the bill, not when it will arrive. Significant, significant charges for the API will start building up with 30 days notice on July 1st, the fact that the bill for those charges being 30 days from then is not important. If you hear that your electricity bill is going up 1,000x and the company tells you, “Don’t worry, the bill only comes at the end of the month”, I hope you understand how that isn’t comforting. > What would be a good price/timeline? > I hope I explained above why the 30 day time limit is the true issue. However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by half and providing a three month transition period to the paid API would make the transition feasible for more developers, myself included. These concessions seem minor and reasonable in the face of the changes.

TranquilMarmot 3y ago

I think for a lot of people, they _want_ to see Reddit not as a "company trying to be profitable" but more as "the de-facto community message board on the internet" where everything is free, open, and equitable. Shutting down third-party APIs makes the site less open in a lot of ways, which is rubbing people the wrong way. That being said, I do agree that they own the API and have every right to charge for it. I am going to be very disappointed that my preferred way of browsing Reddit is going to stop working, since the official app is not a great experience.

542458 3y ago

Sure, Reddit can do what they want with Reddit. That’s their right. And Reddit users (or a subset of Reddit users) can complain when Reddit makes product changes that they don’t like. That’s also their right. In this case, people find it frustrating that a) products that they like will stop being usable b) devs that they like will go out of business abruptly c) that communications from Reddit about this have been not great. Even if this is just a subset of users being mad, it appears to be the subset of users that also run many of the larger subreddits. If Reddit doesn’t want users like that to have the power to make highly visible demonstrations they should stop relying on them to do volunteer moderation.