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Reddit wanted 2.50/month/app which is like $30 ARPU, Facebook is $200 ARPU in the US. The app they’re burning down Reddit over is already charging $1/month and

Reddit wanted 2.50/month/app which is like $30 ARPU, Facebook is $200 ARPU in the US. The app they’re burning down Reddit over is already charging $1/month and was ready to sell out and shut down for $10 million. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we usually don’t give out API keys to allow users to wholesale reproduce, redistribute, resell our data for free.

wilg 3y ago
> Reddit wanted 2.50/month/app which is like $30 ARPU And they couldn't figure out how to transition to it without causing a shitstorm.
- wpietri 3y ago
  I'd also point out it's not Reddit who wanted a $30 ARPU. It's a small number of Reddit execs and venture capitalists. Reddit, by which I mean its vast user community, does not give a shit about ARPU as long as the site stays up and things get modestly better over time. And I've seen no evidence that Reddit needs a massive bump in revenue to meet those goals.
- numpad0 3y ago
  If they can’t make $30 ARPU stick, what could ever be profitable on Web, other than by deceptively recovering damages through ads? Is the only value prop of Web that it’s free-beer?(my mental answer is nothing and yes)
Blackthorn 3y ago
> our content Tech people ought to think long and hard about whose content it actually is.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  I like that they went back and edited their comment to change that wording. Of course, given the edit, one must wonder who's data they think it is given who they're collecting it from...
- bredren 3y ago
  If it is the company’s content, it’s the company’s moderation and I know a lot of folks ready for due and past due compensation.
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  A curated set of links, rated, sorted, filtered, and discussion. That’s the content you want and are having a tantrum about not having free access to. You are free though to access the referenced content on your own if you can find out about it on your own.
  - Blackthorn 3y ago
    Who curated them, rated them, sorted them, filtered them, and discussed them? Not Reddit. They're just the landlord here.
    - bottlepalm 3y ago
      Yes and you rent the infrastructure needed to facilitate all those processes for millions of users. You’re free to setup your own, or rent somewhere else. Regardless it costs money.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - whyenot 3y ago
        I didn’t rent anything. Over 14 years, I provided Reddit with content and worked for free as a moderator. In more recent times, I even paid $5.99/mo for a premium membership. Users like me and the communities that we helped build, are what Reddit is throwing away. It’s sad.
        ipaddr 3y ago
        You built your dream castle in someone else's yard. You managed to get a bunch of visitors to come make the castle even better. The owner makes money on ads on the property so the more visitors the more income. Now they want to charge for some aspect that was free and you decide not hang around anymore. You say reddit is throwing it away when you are the one who is throwing it away because you have to pay if you want api access.
- Glench 3y ago
  If anyone else is interested in leaving Reddit I made a browser extension you can use to batch delete your Reddit posts and comments: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit... Let me know how it works for you if you try it! Still fixing bugs.
alangibson 3y ago
These subreddits disagree that this is Reddit's data
raincole 3y ago
> The app they’re burning down Reddit over is Lmao. Do you even realize what all these are about...? Reddit's pricing API policy is making ALL the apps unsustaniable. It's not "the app". > Facebook is $200 ARPU in the US. Yeah so? Only users and mods in the US matter and fuck the rest of the world? Plus Reddit is, surprisingly, not Facebook. I don't even understand why you're comparing them. Actually I believe many people use Reddit because it's not like Facebook.
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  If you ran a website, would you allow 3rd parties to reproduce and sell your data for free?
  - dude187 3y ago
    Users created, curated, promoted, moderated the entirety of the content for free. Guess that should stop
  - jeltz 3y ago
    Yes, I do. I give users access to the API for free and then I do not monitor their use of it. So it is almost certsin that some of our competitors scrape our site and use our data for free.
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    If all the content on my website was literally donated by 3rd parties for the explicit and practically only purpose of online dissemination, I'd definitely think twice before paywalling it.
  - Blackthorn 3y ago
    I ran a popular wiki for a decade and did exactly that, complete with API. Charging for it would have been insane landlord behavior because all the content on it was created by its users.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
jupp0r 3y ago
It's not Reddit's content, it's the community's. It's literally users wanting to access their own stuff in a different way. If Reddit thinks it's theirs, they will soon notice that nothing is left of their business when those communities have moved elsewhere. To even create this war against your own users is complete folly.
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  No it’s their content. You gave it to them in exchange for a platform on which people can find out about it. You also get from it the good feeling when people ‘upvote’ your content. It’s a pretty good deal in that you only pay for it by seeing some ads. You’re free to setup your own blog and send emails to your friends about the links you like.
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    Their TOS literally says otherwise
  - saxonww 3y ago
    I think you're missing the point. Reddit is not entitled to a user base. They have to provide a product users are interested in using. Right now, a lot of users are upset with Reddit and have decided to stop using it. It doesn't matter whether you agree with them or think they are being reasonable. We'll see who ultimately comes out ahead. I figure it will be Reddit, but that doesn't mean anything about this is difficult to understand. This is how being a consumer works when you're upset with a provider and can't vote with your wallet.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - 8note 3y ago
    I granted a license to the content; I retain ownership
    - bottlepalm 3y ago
CWuestefeld 3y ago
Reddit wanted 2.50/month/app I think the pricing model is per API call, and Reddit was claiming that a typical user, with the app using the data the way Reddit envisions, would use that quantity of API calls. This, of course, assumes that every app is designed similar to the way Reddit expects, i.e., Reddit is assuming that nobody will do anything to add any value on top of Reddit's own design. But isn't that value-add part of the reason these apps exist in the first place?
not_a_shill 3y ago
If it's that low they could have just locked 3rd party apps behind a reddit premium account with some reasonable rate limits for non commercial use. So similar to what Spotify does. Wouldn't have got nearly as much backlash.
kbenson 3y ago
This isn't over one app. Many (most?) the app makers have noted the change is unsustainable for them. One way to look at it is that Apollo, the app you're referencing that was able to charge $10 a year, would have to charge 2.5 times as much just to cover the access fees, and not any of their own overhead, much less allow for profit. The issue here is that the ARPU calculation and assumptions are wrong. Is reddit losing out on that entirely if someone comes to them from a separate interface but still is served through them? Also, it's just too optimistic. Reddit has revenue of less than a dollar per site user (or maybe slightly more than a dollar now?). Most references I'm seeing showed reddit with an ARPU of well under $1 in 2021, closer to half a dollar. Are we expected to believe there's been a 40x increase in a year, or that after all the years reddit has functioned they'll be able to achieve that in the near future?
- pests 3y ago
  > and not any of their own overhead, much less allow for profit. Is it fair for a third party app to be profitable before the service itself is? Reddit has to cover the access fees, its own overhead, and try to make a profit itself too.
  - _djo_ 3y ago
    Yes, it is. Why wouldn’t it be? Third party apps benefit the platform, especially in the early days. They result in more content from power users and easier moderation, so they contribute to revenue and aren’t only a cost. They generally have extremely low overheads though, with nearly all being the work of just one or two developers. The profit they bring in is minuscule compared to what Reddit is looking to achieve. Apollo’s profit from annual subscribers, once accounting for taxes and the App Store fee, appears to be just a couple hundred thousand dollars based on the numbers Selig has provided.
    - shagie 3y ago
      At "just a couple hundred thousand per year" and a $5/month subscription for "Apollo Ultra Monthly"... ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575 ). Apple's cut of that is 30% for the first year and 15% for all following years. 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... > Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I'd be in the red every month. That's half of what the subscription costs... though he could update the subscription. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213252 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213252 > Developers who offer subscriptions can increase the price of a subscription without interrupting service only under certain specific conditions. If the increase does not exceed approximately USD $5 and 50% of the subscription price, or USD $50 and 50% for annual subscriptions, and where permitted by law, developers may change the price without interrupting service. Developers may do this no more than once per year. > If the subscription price increase is above the thresholds, exceeds the annual limit, or occurs within territories where the law requires it, you must opt in before the price increase is applied. If you don't opt in to the new price, the subscription will not renew at the next billing period. You can subscribe again within the app or on the Manage Subscriptions page. He could have limited free use and turned off push notifications or drastically cut down on the polling rate ( https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9l3ema/apollo_13_rejected/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9l3ema/apollo_13... "The server polls Reddit approximately every 6 seconds, so that's 10 requests per minute per user, or 600 requests per hour per user") and increased the price. The full passage is: > For some quick math, Apollo has well over 100K active users. The server polls Reddit approximately every 6 seconds, so that's 10 requests per minute per user, or 600 requests per hour per user (assuming they only have one account and one device). At 100,000+ users, that's in the realm of 60 million requests per hour that my server would have to handle, not to mention parsing the results, coordinating tokens, etc. I really can't do that for nothing, so the plan was to offer push notifications with a small fee associated to cover these ongoing server costs. Note that the claim of the average user 344 requests per day and the polling rate of 600 requests per hour per user do not seem to be in agreement and may significantly contribute to the API pricing quote.
eshack94 3y ago
The entire goal of these API changes is to intentionally price third-party app developers out of the market without imposing a strict blanket-policy ban. And the goal of this is to attempt to further monetize the platform on the backs of other people's content by forcing them to see as many ads and upsell opportunities as possible. And the goal of this is to appear more appealing to current and future investors in order to drive up the IPO price and build demand. And the goal of this is to make those with significant equity stake filthy rich. The issue is that the changes they're trying to make are inherently hostile to the community whose free content and moderation has made the platform what it is today. And if the community decides to leave the platform and not come back, then regardless of potential for extra ad revenue, the inherent value of the platform will disappear because ads will be shown to less and less users. This is assuming people leave and actually don't come back, which remains to be seen. The whole "front page of the internet" idea was pretty neat, and is a stark contrast to the days where each internet community had their own niche forum somewhere. Maybe we'll see some other platform overtake Reddit as the new front page of the internet, or maybe an old platform like Digg will make a resurgence. But that's a tall ask when Reddit is now so entrenched in that space. Edit: technology -> platform, in the last paragraph above.
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  This is kind of like the Twitter fiasco where in the eye of the storm a lot of loud people are pressuring more people to make this seem a lot bigger than it is. Unless you have some alternative that has Reddit functionality, but can somehow operate without revenue, I'm just going to assume there isn't and Reddit will continue operating as normal. Just doing the math $2.50 seems reasonable if you're going to redistribute the data to users while bypassing the ads.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    If Reddit just cared about having the ads, they could have a free version of the API that includes the inline ads. Or otherwise work with API users to blend in the ads for user-facing clients. They could even kick back a share of that revenue to client makers. As far as I know they're not doing any of that. To me it looks like the goal is to wall off all the user-generated content in an attempt to extract maximum dollars from it while intentionally excluding third parties.
faangsticle 3y ago
Reddit has for years and years, and built their shoddy little website on that fact.
TX81Z 3y ago
“Our data”.
- Mystery-Machine 3y ago
  Unexpected communism
  - TX81Z 3y ago
    The internet is built on communism!
  - gremlinsinc 3y ago
    wait till you learn about Wikipedia.
    - TX81Z 3y ago
      Or how CERN and DARPA get their money.
Someone1234 3y ago
Reddit announced this price 30-days before they planned to enforce/charge it. If there was any doubt at all that Reddit wasn't trying to ban third-party apps with deniability, then that should settle it. That isn't reasonable. Plus $2.5 to Reddit, means that apps need to charge $3.60 before 30% App-Store fees. But the app developer also needs new infrastructure to handle the billing, payment, and tracking, between end-users & Reddit along with their existing overhead. So the current $1/month aka $0.70/month after fees they're operating on likely isn't sustainable. So now we're looking at $3.60 to Reddit + the existing $1/month = $4.6, but also all this new payment/billing infrastructure. Could easily exceed $5/month which frankly nobody is going to pay, and then get all this done in just 30-days even though that date is completely arbitrary from Reddit's end.
- not_a_shill 3y ago
  People would pay $5 a month. They do on discord for...animated emoticons. It's actually hard to believe people are throwing this big a fit over something they don't deem worthy of $5 a month.
  - opello 3y ago
    I think it's because Reddit came to a solution that put a rather large and sudden burden on the app developers. Had it been something like "starting next year only Premium users will get to auth to the API" (which is analogous to the $5/mo. of Discord Nitro) the lead time would have been greater and the users would have been able to solve the problem of access on their own. I imagine this being less desirable when individuals have multiple accounts.
    - symlinkk 3y ago
      No it’s because Redditors love being drama queens about things. Remember “net neutrality” and how every Redditor was acting like the sky was falling down? This is the same thing. In 2 weeks people will forget about it and move on.
  - kemotep 3y ago
dotnet00 3y ago
>ready to sell out and shut down for $10 million. He wasn't literally offering to sell out for $10 million. What he was saying was that if Reddit was being honest with the claim that Apollo was costing them $20 million per year in server costs, the obvious business decision would be to offer to buy him out first, thus bringing in those users with much less friction. The fact that they're instead choosing to be manipulative (unrealistically short period for apps to adapt, API prices far above what other services charge) indicates that the $20 million number is a lie made to make themselves seem less scummy. As it stands, Reddit hasn't even tried even simpler solutions like returning ads in the API requests and requiring that the 3rd parties include those for free usage.
- antonjs 3y ago
  I don't think he was even saying they were paying $20M in server costs. He was saying that if their claim that they're missing out on $20M in potential revenue from those users is correct, they should buy the app for $10M and make a 2x return on investment in one year.
Mystery-Machine 3y ago
You are right and everyone else is wrong.

wilg 3y ago

> Reddit wanted 2.50/month/app which is like $30 ARPU And they couldn't figure out how to transition to it without causing a shitstorm.

wpietri 3y ago
I'd also point out it's not Reddit who wanted a $30 ARPU. It's a small number of Reddit execs and venture capitalists. Reddit, by which I mean its vast user community, does not give a shit about ARPU as long as the site stays up and things get modestly better over time. And I've seen no evidence that Reddit needs a massive bump in revenue to meet those goals.
numpad0 3y ago
If they can’t make $30 ARPU stick, what could ever be profitable on Web, other than by deceptively recovering damages through ads? Is the only value prop of Web that it’s free-beer?(my mental answer is nothing and yes)

Blackthorn 3y ago

> our content Tech people ought to think long and hard about whose content it actually is.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
BaseballPhysics 3y ago
I like that they went back and edited their comment to change that wording. Of course, given the edit, one must wonder who's data they think it is given who they're collecting it from...
bredren 3y ago
If it is the company’s content, it’s the company’s moderation and I know a lot of folks ready for due and past due compensation.
bottlepalm 3y ago
A curated set of links, rated, sorted, filtered, and discussion. That’s the content you want and are having a tantrum about not having free access to. You are free though to access the referenced content on your own if you can find out about it on your own.
- Blackthorn 3y ago
  Who curated them, rated them, sorted them, filtered them, and discussed them? Not Reddit. They're just the landlord here.
  - bottlepalm 3y ago
    Yes and you rent the infrastructure needed to facilitate all those processes for millions of users. You’re free to setup your own, or rent somewhere else. Regardless it costs money.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - whyenot 3y ago
      I didn’t rent anything. Over 14 years, I provided Reddit with content and worked for free as a moderator. In more recent times, I even paid $5.99/mo for a premium membership. Users like me and the communities that we helped build, are what Reddit is throwing away. It’s sad.
      - ipaddr 3y ago
        You built your dream castle in someone else's yard. You managed to get a bunch of visitors to come make the castle even better. The owner makes money on ads on the property so the more visitors the more income. Now they want to charge for some aspect that was free and you decide not hang around anymore. You say reddit is throwing it away when you are the one who is throwing it away because you have to pay if you want api access.
Glench 3y ago
If anyone else is interested in leaving Reddit I made a browser extension you can use to batch delete your Reddit posts and comments: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit... Let me know how it works for you if you try it! Still fixing bugs.

alangibson 3y ago

These subreddits disagree that this is Reddit's data

raincole 3y ago

> The app they’re burning down Reddit over is Lmao. Do you even realize what all these are about...? Reddit's pricing API policy is making ALL the apps unsustaniable. It's not "the app". > Facebook is $200 ARPU in the US. Yeah so? Only users and mods in the US matter and fuck the rest of the world? Plus Reddit is, surprisingly, not Facebook. I don't even understand why you're comparing them. Actually I believe many people use Reddit because it's not like Facebook.

bottlepalm 3y ago
If you ran a website, would you allow 3rd parties to reproduce and sell your data for free?
- dude187 3y ago
  Users created, curated, promoted, moderated the entirety of the content for free. Guess that should stop
- jeltz 3y ago
  Yes, I do. I give users access to the API for free and then I do not monitor their use of it. So it is almost certsin that some of our competitors scrape our site and use our data for free.
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  If all the content on my website was literally donated by 3rd parties for the explicit and practically only purpose of online dissemination, I'd definitely think twice before paywalling it.
- Blackthorn 3y ago
  I ran a popular wiki for a decade and did exactly that, complete with API. Charging for it would have been insane landlord behavior because all the content on it was created by its users.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago

jupp0r 3y ago

It's not Reddit's content, it's the community's. It's literally users wanting to access their own stuff in a different way. If Reddit thinks it's theirs, they will soon notice that nothing is left of their business when those communities have moved elsewhere. To even create this war against your own users is complete folly.

bottlepalm 3y ago
No it’s their content. You gave it to them in exchange for a platform on which people can find out about it. You also get from it the good feeling when people ‘upvote’ your content. It’s a pretty good deal in that you only pay for it by seeing some ads. You’re free to setup your own blog and send emails to your friends about the links you like.
- raverbashing 3y ago
  Their TOS literally says otherwise
- saxonww 3y ago
  I think you're missing the point. Reddit is not entitled to a user base. They have to provide a product users are interested in using. Right now, a lot of users are upset with Reddit and have decided to stop using it. It doesn't matter whether you agree with them or think they are being reasonable. We'll see who ultimately comes out ahead. I figure it will be Reddit, but that doesn't mean anything about this is difficult to understand. This is how being a consumer works when you're upset with a provider and can't vote with your wallet.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 8note 3y ago
  I granted a license to the content; I retain ownership
  - bottlepalm 3y ago

CWuestefeld 3y ago

Reddit wanted 2.50/month/app I think the pricing model is per API call, and Reddit was claiming that a typical user, with the app using the data the way Reddit envisions, would use that quantity of API calls. This, of course, assumes that every app is designed similar to the way Reddit expects, i.e., Reddit is assuming that nobody will do anything to add any value on top of Reddit's own design. But isn't that value-add part of the reason these apps exist in the first place?

not_a_shill 3y ago

If it's that low they could have just locked 3rd party apps behind a reddit premium account with some reasonable rate limits for non commercial use. So similar to what Spotify does. Wouldn't have got nearly as much backlash.

kbenson 3y ago

This isn't over one app. Many (most?) the app makers have noted the change is unsustainable for them. One way to look at it is that Apollo, the app you're referencing that was able to charge $10 a year, would have to charge 2.5 times as much just to cover the access fees, and not any of their own overhead, much less allow for profit. The issue here is that the ARPU calculation and assumptions are wrong. Is reddit losing out on that entirely if someone comes to them from a separate interface but still is served through them? Also, it's just too optimistic. Reddit has revenue of less than a dollar per site user (or maybe slightly more than a dollar now?). Most references I'm seeing showed reddit with an ARPU of well under $1 in 2021, closer to half a dollar. Are we expected to believe there's been a 40x increase in a year, or that after all the years reddit has functioned they'll be able to achieve that in the near future?

pests 3y ago
> and not any of their own overhead, much less allow for profit. Is it fair for a third party app to be profitable before the service itself is? Reddit has to cover the access fees, its own overhead, and try to make a profit itself too.
- _djo_ 3y ago
  Yes, it is. Why wouldn’t it be? Third party apps benefit the platform, especially in the early days. They result in more content from power users and easier moderation, so they contribute to revenue and aren’t only a cost. They generally have extremely low overheads though, with nearly all being the work of just one or two developers. The profit they bring in is minuscule compared to what Reddit is looking to achieve. Apollo’s profit from annual subscribers, once accounting for taxes and the App Store fee, appears to be just a couple hundred thousand dollars based on the numbers Selig has provided.
  - shagie 3y ago
    At "just a couple hundred thousand per year" and a $5/month subscription for "Apollo Ultra Monthly"... ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575 ). Apple's cut of that is 30% for the first year and 15% for all following years. 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... > Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I'd be in the red every month. That's half of what the subscription costs... though he could update the subscription. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213252 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213252 > Developers who offer subscriptions can increase the price of a subscription without interrupting service only under certain specific conditions. If the increase does not exceed approximately USD $5 and 50% of the subscription price, or USD $50 and 50% for annual subscriptions, and where permitted by law, developers may change the price without interrupting service. Developers may do this no more than once per year. > If the subscription price increase is above the thresholds, exceeds the annual limit, or occurs within territories where the law requires it, you must opt in before the price increase is applied. If you don't opt in to the new price, the subscription will not renew at the next billing period. You can subscribe again within the app or on the Manage Subscriptions page. He could have limited free use and turned off push notifications or drastically cut down on the polling rate ( https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9l3ema/apollo_13_rejected/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9l3ema/apollo_13... "The server polls Reddit approximately every 6 seconds, so that's 10 requests per minute per user, or 600 requests per hour per user") and increased the price. The full passage is: > For some quick math, Apollo has well over 100K active users. The server polls Reddit approximately every 6 seconds, so that's 10 requests per minute per user, or 600 requests per hour per user (assuming they only have one account and one device). At 100,000+ users, that's in the realm of 60 million requests per hour that my server would have to handle, not to mention parsing the results, coordinating tokens, etc. I really can't do that for nothing, so the plan was to offer push notifications with a small fee associated to cover these ongoing server costs. Note that the claim of the average user 344 requests per day and the polling rate of 600 requests per hour per user do not seem to be in agreement and may significantly contribute to the API pricing quote.

eshack94 3y ago

The entire goal of these API changes is to intentionally price third-party app developers out of the market without imposing a strict blanket-policy ban. And the goal of this is to attempt to further monetize the platform on the backs of other people's content by forcing them to see as many ads and upsell opportunities as possible. And the goal of this is to appear more appealing to current and future investors in order to drive up the IPO price and build demand. And the goal of this is to make those with significant equity stake filthy rich. The issue is that the changes they're trying to make are inherently hostile to the community whose free content and moderation has made the platform what it is today. And if the community decides to leave the platform and not come back, then regardless of potential for extra ad revenue, the inherent value of the platform will disappear because ads will be shown to less and less users. This is assuming people leave and actually don't come back, which remains to be seen. The whole "front page of the internet" idea was pretty neat, and is a stark contrast to the days where each internet community had their own niche forum somewhere. Maybe we'll see some other platform overtake Reddit as the new front page of the internet, or maybe an old platform like Digg will make a resurgence. But that's a tall ask when Reddit is now so entrenched in that space. Edit: technology -> platform, in the last paragraph above.

bottlepalm 3y ago
This is kind of like the Twitter fiasco where in the eye of the storm a lot of loud people are pressuring more people to make this seem a lot bigger than it is. Unless you have some alternative that has Reddit functionality, but can somehow operate without revenue, I'm just going to assume there isn't and Reddit will continue operating as normal. Just doing the math $2.50 seems reasonable if you're going to redistribute the data to users while bypassing the ads.
- wpietri 3y ago
  If Reddit just cared about having the ads, they could have a free version of the API that includes the inline ads. Or otherwise work with API users to blend in the ads for user-facing clients. They could even kick back a share of that revenue to client makers. As far as I know they're not doing any of that. To me it looks like the goal is to wall off all the user-generated content in an attempt to extract maximum dollars from it while intentionally excluding third parties.

faangsticle 3y ago

Reddit has for years and years, and built their shoddy little website on that fact.

TX81Z 3y ago

“Our data”.

Mystery-Machine 3y ago
Unexpected communism
- TX81Z 3y ago
  The internet is built on communism!
- gremlinsinc 3y ago
  wait till you learn about Wikipedia.
  - TX81Z 3y ago
    Or how CERN and DARPA get their money.

Someone1234 3y ago

Reddit announced this price 30-days before they planned to enforce/charge it. If there was any doubt at all that Reddit wasn't trying to ban third-party apps with deniability, then that should settle it. That isn't reasonable. Plus $2.5 to Reddit, means that apps need to charge $3.60 before 30% App-Store fees. But the app developer also needs new infrastructure to handle the billing, payment, and tracking, between end-users & Reddit along with their existing overhead. So the current $1/month aka $0.70/month after fees they're operating on likely isn't sustainable. So now we're looking at $3.60 to Reddit + the existing $1/month = $4.6, but also all this new payment/billing infrastructure. Could easily exceed $5/month which frankly nobody is going to pay, and then get all this done in just 30-days even though that date is completely arbitrary from Reddit's end.

not_a_shill 3y ago
People would pay $5 a month. They do on discord for...animated emoticons. It's actually hard to believe people are throwing this big a fit over something they don't deem worthy of $5 a month.
- opello 3y ago
  I think it's because Reddit came to a solution that put a rather large and sudden burden on the app developers. Had it been something like "starting next year only Premium users will get to auth to the API" (which is analogous to the $5/mo. of Discord Nitro) the lead time would have been greater and the users would have been able to solve the problem of access on their own. I imagine this being less desirable when individuals have multiple accounts.
  - symlinkk 3y ago
    No it’s because Redditors love being drama queens about things. Remember “net neutrality” and how every Redditor was acting like the sky was falling down? This is the same thing. In 2 weeks people will forget about it and move on.
- kemotep 3y ago

dotnet00 3y ago

>ready to sell out and shut down for $10 million. He wasn't literally offering to sell out for $10 million. What he was saying was that if Reddit was being honest with the claim that Apollo was costing them $20 million per year in server costs, the obvious business decision would be to offer to buy him out first, thus bringing in those users with much less friction. The fact that they're instead choosing to be manipulative (unrealistically short period for apps to adapt, API prices far above what other services charge) indicates that the $20 million number is a lie made to make themselves seem less scummy. As it stands, Reddit hasn't even tried even simpler solutions like returning ads in the API requests and requiring that the 3rd parties include those for free usage.

antonjs 3y ago
I don't think he was even saying they were paying $20M in server costs. He was saying that if their claim that they're missing out on $20M in potential revenue from those users is correct, they should buy the app for $10M and make a 2x return on investment in one year.

Mystery-Machine 3y ago

You are right and everyone else is wrong.