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At some level, people don’t want to pay for all the services they use. And while what Reddit is doing with it’s API charges is unreasonable, it shouldn’t come a

At some level, people don’t want to pay for all the services they use. And while what Reddit is doing with it’s API charges is unreasonable, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they want to monetize the data they have to make money somewhere. Charging everyone a usage fee is not going to work. I know this from working on a project like that in a social media company. The conversion rates from free to paid tier for social media is so low that it costs more to just build the payment system to support such a feature than the money you’ll bring in from paid subscriptions. And that is unfortunately the reality of things.

voisin 3y ago
Then segment your market and have an ad supported api and a for pay, ad-free api. Simple.
RC_ITR 3y ago
The problem with this line of thinking is the presupposition that Reddit owns the data on its platform. The users already paid for the service by looking at ads and buying prizes or whatever (not to mention all the free labor that the mods give). Now Reddit wants to have full monetization control of the data that their users created and moderated. The users and moderators are then choosing to stop creating and moderating that data for Reddit. No concern trolling needed. If this were Facebook and the “hook” was first-party moderation, algorithmic recommendation, not allowing posts to be indexed on the open web, etc. then it’s more understandable, but Reddit wants it both ways (free labor, open web indexing, and complete ownership).
- tracerbulletx 3y ago
  The problem is they see that and think, well that's at least partially true of Google and Meta too and yet they print money. They probably know their own history and culture makes it harder for them but that must obviously be their goal or they would make no sense as a large company, if they just want to be a good host for communities they could be a company of 10-15 people and live off donations and a low level of ads. That ship has sailed. This same growth pattern has killed almost every "cool" tech company in the last 20 years.
- mcmcmc 3y ago
  From the Reddit TOS: > You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content. Sure, Reddit doesn't "own" the data. But they can do whatever they want with it.
  - RC_ITR 3y ago
    Sure and users have the right to stop using the site. Like I said no need to concern troll.
    - williamcotton 3y ago
      That’s not concern trolling. They just disagree with you. And that is a standard TOS for every social media site and has been so for decades. Most people seem to be fine with the exchange as exhibited by the incredible amount of content on social media websites.
      - RC_ITR 3y ago
        >At some level, people don’t want to pay for all the services they use. Maybe you didn't read the whole thread, but that's what I'm referencing. Reddit users did pay for using the site, and now they're choosing to not use it. They are not choosing to use it and not pay.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  TPA users don't look at ads though. At least not for Reddit. I paid a one time fee for my app and never see _any_ ads. Before I paid the fee, the ads I saw were from the app and paid the app creator. It's clear that Reddit didn't want to come to a deal in this situation, but there was a hypothetical situation that looked very similar to what is actually happening that would have been completely reasonable. Reddit just chose not to go that route for some reason.
drumhead 3y ago
The deal with reddit is that the users contributions are their payment for using it. Without the efforts of the moderators (who work for free) and the contributors (who do it for free), no one would even bother using reddit. Anything on top of this is cream for management. A revenue sharing deal like Youtube would be a good idea especially for the more popular sites.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  Seriously, Reddit can't complain about "free products" when the single thing that makes them exist is the presence of many thousands of VOLUNTEER mods, and millions of users generating content. Without them Reddit is just another hole in the ground.
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    >many thousands of VOLUNTEER mods, and millions of users generating content. And of course reddit being used as an aggregator for third party content, which is reposted to their site,
    - LightHugger 3y ago
      Which they deliberately make difficult to download by making their own video player just to hide the default webm->right click->save as. You can still download it with some effort, but it gets silly. It's not like someone saw a metric saying "oh no the memes are getting stolen and reposted we need to shore it up or else we'll lose money" rather an out of touch exec used the website, saw it was easy to download videos and images, and started directing their devs to "fix it".
- williamcotton 3y ago
  Are you sure that there isn’t a sizable population that would be willing to moderate for free and within the constraints that Reddit wants to put in place?
  - 3y ago
tiffanyh 3y ago
As a comparison point: 2.70B MAU for YouTube (with ads) 0.08B pay for YouTube Premium (ad-free) When only ~3% of users historically pay for a service, you can’t fault the platforms for needing to control how ads are displayed to user. Note: I’m not saying I agree with Reddit’s recent actions, but I also understand why they are doing it. https://www.demandsage.com/youtube-stats/#:~:text=Youtube%20Statistics%20Top%20Picks%20(2023,active%20users%20worldwide%20in%202023 https://www.demandsage.com/youtube-stats/#:~:text=Youtube%20....
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- klabb3 3y ago
  There are numerous solutions, such as building better apps or acquiring and doing deals with them. Or you could serve ads in the api and require 3p apps to display them. Note that API charges were a red herring, they knew upfront that 3p apps couldn’t pay. So they’re killing off this part of the ecosystem without any attempt at salvaging its value, in any shape or form. Reddit as an ecosystem is remarkably tool-centric, especially for the minority that contributes the most. What’s happening is not that people demand free stuff (whatever that means in this case). They see Reddit make unreasonable demands, lie and argue in bad faith. So people like me, who didn’t use a 3p app, participate in the protest because we see the writing on the wall. I deleted my 12yo account and wiped all “my” content. It sucks, but I don’t want to be part of a value-extraction phase without a term-sheet. It’s our own fault for having assumed a “gentleman’s agreement” and thinking content we post will be accessible, when Reddit is well within their legal rights to gatekeep any way they want. To be clear, I believe the business model makes this inevitable, and isn’t unique to Reddit. In fact, Reddit was a temp refuge from the norm. Long term I think it’s good that this business model produces the same predictable results. That makes it easier to recognize (a certain kind of) failure earlier when looking for alternatives.
scrollaway 3y ago
I think it's absolutely hilarious. People kept repeating "If it's free, you're the product" and "You're paying with your data". Now Reddit's execs heard this and thought "what a great idea", tried to charge for the data, and are getting absolutely destroyed for it. Im sure one of these guys is currently biting his nails in his bubble, repeating "I don't understand why people don't want to pay for our users' data, or why our users aren't happy about us selling it!" I'm exaggerating but.. c'mon. Conspiracy theory time: Reddit and Twitter are participants in a large-scale study for how badly a social media website can be managed until it destroys itself. Facebook is the control group.
Semaphor 3y ago
Besides what others said, the issue is also the way they went about it. Besides their lies and insane timeframe, there was no talk about people already paying for premium being allowed to use the third-party apps. None.
stefan_ 3y ago
There is making money as any business should and then there is taking a bunch of VC money and 10xing the headcount so some failures can play startup once more. Meanwhile the actual site just languishes, no is actively made worse, because sooner or later those VC want an return on their investment.
unshavedyak 3y ago
I wonder when the breakdown happens? I'm on mastodon.art and overall the donations (monthly subscriptions on Patreon) cover hosting quite well. Obviously we're talking 10-20k users, not 100M or anything, but wheres the line between those two when costs start overtaking what users will cover? Of course type of users matter too, niche communities might be more likely to pay out than the average, but i think that's a bit besides the point. There's a line for any given community and it seems to scale poorly when scaled up to Reddit. How do we determine what that line is? Is there something unique about large businesses that make scaling costs difficult?
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  Personally I suspect it's when you grow to the point where you're no longer targeting enthusiasts who might be willing to pay, and instead you just want everyone. Once everyone's parents and children and dogs are using a platform, the free users vastly outnumber the paying to an unprofitable degree
  - hakfoo 3y ago
    An enthusiast community can self-sustain basically indefinitely on things like premium-supporter subscriptions, the occasional fundraising pitch, and well-targeted advertising. But it will never be more of a revenue generator than "it keeps the servers running and finances a couple of volunteer moderators doing some logo swag giveaways once a year." I'd expect that in a targeted community, though, the "drive-by" users are a lot lighter of a burden. You get the search spiders swooping in and archiving everything, but by and large, even the most passionate lurker on, say, VCFed or Audiokarma, is not going to be generating thousands of pageviews and complex queries a day. They might browse a few dozen pages to figure out exactly how to fix their doohickey and move on with their life. Maybe they eventually convert and become a content contributor. Conversely, when it becomes a sOcIaL pLaTfOrM, you intentionally are trying to corral many more low-engagement users. Notice the key metric is always Daily/Monthly Active Users, not any form of "Quality Participant". So they're eager to have as many people scrolling their site 24 hours a day as possible, even if they're adding no real value. This spikes your infrastructure cost without creating users who are necessarily connected enough to contribute back, whether with direct payment or content. I also suspect that the "social platform" tends to have a different economic drive than the enthusiast community. Nobody really says "I want to build a community for ALL THE THINGS" unless they have some grand vision of going public, grand monetization, or becoming some sort of new-media titan. They're going to be much more finicky when these dreams aren't met.

voisin 3y ago

Then segment your market and have an ad supported api and a for pay, ad-free api. Simple.

RC_ITR 3y ago

The problem with this line of thinking is the presupposition that Reddit owns the data on its platform. The users already paid for the service by looking at ads and buying prizes or whatever (not to mention all the free labor that the mods give). Now Reddit wants to have full monetization control of the data that their users created and moderated. The users and moderators are then choosing to stop creating and moderating that data for Reddit. No concern trolling needed. If this were Facebook and the “hook” was first-party moderation, algorithmic recommendation, not allowing posts to be indexed on the open web, etc. then it’s more understandable, but Reddit wants it both ways (free labor, open web indexing, and complete ownership).

tracerbulletx 3y ago
The problem is they see that and think, well that's at least partially true of Google and Meta too and yet they print money. They probably know their own history and culture makes it harder for them but that must obviously be their goal or they would make no sense as a large company, if they just want to be a good host for communities they could be a company of 10-15 people and live off donations and a low level of ads. That ship has sailed. This same growth pattern has killed almost every "cool" tech company in the last 20 years.
mcmcmc 3y ago
From the Reddit TOS: > You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content. Sure, Reddit doesn't "own" the data. But they can do whatever they want with it.
- RC_ITR 3y ago
  Sure and users have the right to stop using the site. Like I said no need to concern troll.
  - williamcotton 3y ago
    That’s not concern trolling. They just disagree with you. And that is a standard TOS for every social media site and has been so for decades. Most people seem to be fine with the exchange as exhibited by the incredible amount of content on social media websites.
    - RC_ITR 3y ago
      >At some level, people don’t want to pay for all the services they use. Maybe you didn't read the whole thread, but that's what I'm referencing. Reddit users did pay for using the site, and now they're choosing to not use it. They are not choosing to use it and not pay.
MostlyStable 3y ago
TPA users don't look at ads though. At least not for Reddit. I paid a one time fee for my app and never see _any_ ads. Before I paid the fee, the ads I saw were from the app and paid the app creator. It's clear that Reddit didn't want to come to a deal in this situation, but there was a hypothetical situation that looked very similar to what is actually happening that would have been completely reasonable. Reddit just chose not to go that route for some reason.

drumhead 3y ago

The deal with reddit is that the users contributions are their payment for using it. Without the efforts of the moderators (who work for free) and the contributors (who do it for free), no one would even bother using reddit. Anything on top of this is cream for management. A revenue sharing deal like Youtube would be a good idea especially for the more popular sites.

EA-3167 3y ago
Seriously, Reddit can't complain about "free products" when the single thing that makes them exist is the presence of many thousands of VOLUNTEER mods, and millions of users generating content. Without them Reddit is just another hole in the ground.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >many thousands of VOLUNTEER mods, and millions of users generating content. And of course reddit being used as an aggregator for third party content, which is reposted to their site,
  - LightHugger 3y ago
    Which they deliberately make difficult to download by making their own video player just to hide the default webm->right click->save as. You can still download it with some effort, but it gets silly. It's not like someone saw a metric saying "oh no the memes are getting stolen and reposted we need to shore it up or else we'll lose money" rather an out of touch exec used the website, saw it was easy to download videos and images, and started directing their devs to "fix it".
williamcotton 3y ago
Are you sure that there isn’t a sizable population that would be willing to moderate for free and within the constraints that Reddit wants to put in place?
- 3y ago

tiffanyh 3y ago

As a comparison point: 2.70B MAU for YouTube (with ads) 0.08B pay for YouTube Premium (ad-free) When only ~3% of users historically pay for a service, you can’t fault the platforms for needing to control how ads are displayed to user. Note: I’m not saying I agree with Reddit’s recent actions, but I also understand why they are doing it. https://www.demandsage.com/youtube-stats/#:~:text=Youtube%20Statistics%20Top%20Picks%20(2023,active%20users%20worldwide%20in%202023 https://www.demandsage.com/youtube-stats/#:~:text=Youtube%20....

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
klabb3 3y ago
There are numerous solutions, such as building better apps or acquiring and doing deals with them. Or you could serve ads in the api and require 3p apps to display them. Note that API charges were a red herring, they knew upfront that 3p apps couldn’t pay. So they’re killing off this part of the ecosystem without any attempt at salvaging its value, in any shape or form. Reddit as an ecosystem is remarkably tool-centric, especially for the minority that contributes the most. What’s happening is not that people demand free stuff (whatever that means in this case). They see Reddit make unreasonable demands, lie and argue in bad faith. So people like me, who didn’t use a 3p app, participate in the protest because we see the writing on the wall. I deleted my 12yo account and wiped all “my” content. It sucks, but I don’t want to be part of a value-extraction phase without a term-sheet. It’s our own fault for having assumed a “gentleman’s agreement” and thinking content we post will be accessible, when Reddit is well within their legal rights to gatekeep any way they want. To be clear, I believe the business model makes this inevitable, and isn’t unique to Reddit. In fact, Reddit was a temp refuge from the norm. Long term I think it’s good that this business model produces the same predictable results. That makes it easier to recognize (a certain kind of) failure earlier when looking for alternatives.

scrollaway 3y ago

I think it's absolutely hilarious. People kept repeating "If it's free, you're the product" and "You're paying with your data". Now Reddit's execs heard this and thought "what a great idea", tried to charge for the data, and are getting absolutely destroyed for it. Im sure one of these guys is currently biting his nails in his bubble, repeating "I don't understand why people don't want to pay for our users' data, or why our users aren't happy about us selling it!" I'm exaggerating but.. c'mon. Conspiracy theory time: Reddit and Twitter are participants in a large-scale study for how badly a social media website can be managed until it destroys itself. Facebook is the control group.

Semaphor 3y ago

Besides what others said, the issue is also the way they went about it. Besides their lies and insane timeframe, there was no talk about people already paying for premium being allowed to use the third-party apps. None.

stefan_ 3y ago

There is making money as any business should and then there is taking a bunch of VC money and 10xing the headcount so some failures can play startup once more. Meanwhile the actual site just languishes, no is actively made worse, because sooner or later those VC want an return on their investment.

unshavedyak 3y ago

I wonder when the breakdown happens? I'm on mastodon.art and overall the donations (monthly subscriptions on Patreon) cover hosting quite well. Obviously we're talking 10-20k users, not 100M or anything, but wheres the line between those two when costs start overtaking what users will cover? Of course type of users matter too, niche communities might be more likely to pay out than the average, but i think that's a bit besides the point. There's a line for any given community and it seems to scale poorly when scaled up to Reddit. How do we determine what that line is? Is there something unique about large businesses that make scaling costs difficult?

bluefirebrand 3y ago
Personally I suspect it's when you grow to the point where you're no longer targeting enthusiasts who might be willing to pay, and instead you just want everyone. Once everyone's parents and children and dogs are using a platform, the free users vastly outnumber the paying to an unprofitable degree
- hakfoo 3y ago
  An enthusiast community can self-sustain basically indefinitely on things like premium-supporter subscriptions, the occasional fundraising pitch, and well-targeted advertising. But it will never be more of a revenue generator than "it keeps the servers running and finances a couple of volunteer moderators doing some logo swag giveaways once a year." I'd expect that in a targeted community, though, the "drive-by" users are a lot lighter of a burden. You get the search spiders swooping in and archiving everything, but by and large, even the most passionate lurker on, say, VCFed or Audiokarma, is not going to be generating thousands of pageviews and complex queries a day. They might browse a few dozen pages to figure out exactly how to fix their doohickey and move on with their life. Maybe they eventually convert and become a content contributor. Conversely, when it becomes a sOcIaL pLaTfOrM, you intentionally are trying to corral many more low-engagement users. Notice the key metric is always Daily/Monthly Active Users, not any form of "Quality Participant". So they're eager to have as many people scrolling their site 24 hours a day as possible, even if they're adding no real value. This spikes your infrastructure cost without creating users who are necessarily connected enough to contribute back, whether with direct payment or content. I also suspect that the "social platform" tends to have a different economic drive than the enthusiast community. Nobody really says "I want to build a community for ALL THE THINGS" unless they have some grand vision of going public, grand monetization, or becoming some sort of new-media titan. They're going to be much more finicky when these dreams aren't met.