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Sorry, why do you think this is a hard question? They look around at the big clients, see anybody who has violated the API's TOS by removing ads without special

Sorry, why do you think this is a hard question? They look around at the big clients, see anybody who has violated the API's TOS by removing ads without special permission, and kill their API keys.

shagie 3y ago
Wouldn't it be easier for the app to pursue its own monetization and charge for API use? A headless program that does moderation actions (changing flares, approving or deleting posts, updating wiki) uses the same API that a mobile app would use - and ads would only get in the way of those tools. If the app is poorly behaved or you have a very heavy hitting backend service, then you pay more. If you (the app owner) wants to put advertisements in the user's view - that's up to you. If you want to do offer the app advertisement free out of the generosity of your heart, that's up to you. The API calls cost the same no matter how they're made - the API doesn't care where it's called from. Be it polling backend service, moderation tool, or mobile app - it's all billed the same with the exception of it being free for certain exceptional cases. That's much easier to work with for all parties involved.
- wpietri 3y ago
  I get what you're saying, but that's a bad approach for all concerned. For Reddit Inc, it's bad because they'll under-charge for things where they could capture more money, and over-charge for things that are helpful to their platform but not directly profitable, like moderator tools. It's bad for developers because it forces them to deal with having a revenue model well before they're ready to. A lot of people just like building things, and only worry about revenue once it's successful enough to matter. It's bad for users because all sorts of tools that would be free now have to charge them. Instead of somebody just hacking together a moderation tool suddenly has to find a way to pay for it. The headless case is easy enough; in each content blob you include an "is_ad" field. Tools that are user agents display that content. Tools that aren't are free to ignore it under the TOS.
  - shagie 3y ago
    The pricing for Reddit (as I understand it) is similar to the pricing for Imgur. https://api.imgur.com/#commercial https://api.imgur.com/#commercial > Your application is commercial if you're making any money with it (which includes in-app advertising), if you plan on making any money with it, or if it belongs to a commercial organization. Otherwise your app (for all users) would fall under: > Your use of the Imgur API is also limited by the number of POST requests your IP can make across all endpoints. This limit is 1,250 POST requests per hour. Commercial Usage is not impacted by this limit. Each POST request will contain the following headers. The pricing is https://rapidapi.com/imgur/api/imgur-9/pricing https://rapidapi.com/imgur/api/imgur-9/pricing (note that this is quite different than the pricing that Apollo claims to have) $500/month for 7.5M calls/month and $10k for 150M calls/month https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/reddits-new-api-pricing-will-kill-off-apollo-on-june-30/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/reddits-new-api-pric... > Selig says Reddit wants $12,000 for 50 million API requests, while Imgur, a similar social media photo site, charges $166 for 50 million API calls. Selig says even if users were willing to pay out of pocket for the API costs, Reddit announced the new billing plan one month before it would take effect, and Selig says that's just not feasible for developers. https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/comment/jmmptma/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/comment/... > Our pricing is $0.24 per 1000 API calls That puts it at about 3x more than Imgur's published rates. For someone hacking together a moderation tool, I have done this (wiki updates) It means that my run to get data on a few hundred subs would cost me about a quarter. When I was in testing, I was only doing about 5-10 calls though on a sub that I managed so that it wouldn't go haywire somewhere else. --- Consider the outrage where an API key is yanked (for whatever reason) with Twitter. Yanking an API key gets even more problematic if there is an existing business relationship. You're also proposing that someone periodically audits the different reddit clients to see if they are displaying enough / all the ads and that there aren't any uber style shenanigans where if it is found to be coming from the IP block that Reddit owns it shows ads while certain users (who subscribed with a private non-apple subscription) aren't getting ads. It is just easier to charge for an API. And for an app that already has a monthly subscription ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575 shows $5.99) available to it, to increase that rate to match the number of calls. If the average user is making 350 requests per day that's $10/month for the user, so update the subscription to $15/month ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213252 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213252 ). If the push notification server ( https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9l3ema/apollo_13_rejected/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9l3ema/apollo_13... ) is making an additional 600 requests per hour per user... that might need some scaling back or adding another tier (that's $15/day/user of API calls by itself).

Sorry, why do you think this is a hard question? They look around at the big clients, see anybody who has violated the API's TOS by removing ads without special permission, and kill their API keys.

shagie 3y ago

Wouldn't it be easier for the app to pursue its own monetization and charge for API use? A headless program that does moderation actions (changing flares, approving or deleting posts, updating wiki) uses the same API that a mobile app would use - and ads would only get in the way of those tools. If the app is poorly behaved or you have a very heavy hitting backend service, then you pay more. If you (the app owner) wants to put advertisements in the user's view - that's up to you. If you want to do offer the app advertisement free out of the generosity of your heart, that's up to you. The API calls cost the same no matter how they're made - the API doesn't care where it's called from. Be it polling backend service, moderation tool, or mobile app - it's all billed the same with the exception of it being free for certain exceptional cases. That's much easier to work with for all parties involved.

wpietri 3y ago
I get what you're saying, but that's a bad approach for all concerned. For Reddit Inc, it's bad because they'll under-charge for things where they could capture more money, and over-charge for things that are helpful to their platform but not directly profitable, like moderator tools. It's bad for developers because it forces them to deal with having a revenue model well before they're ready to. A lot of people just like building things, and only worry about revenue once it's successful enough to matter. It's bad for users because all sorts of tools that would be free now have to charge them. Instead of somebody just hacking together a moderation tool suddenly has to find a way to pay for it. The headless case is easy enough; in each content blob you include an "is_ad" field. Tools that are user agents display that content. Tools that aren't are free to ignore it under the TOS.
- shagie 3y ago
  The pricing for Reddit (as I understand it) is similar to the pricing for Imgur. https://api.imgur.com/#commercial https://api.imgur.com/#commercial > Your application is commercial if you're making any money with it (which includes in-app advertising), if you plan on making any money with it, or if it belongs to a commercial organization. Otherwise your app (for all users) would fall under: > Your use of the Imgur API is also limited by the number of POST requests your IP can make across all endpoints. This limit is 1,250 POST requests per hour. Commercial Usage is not impacted by this limit. Each POST request will contain the following headers. The pricing is https://rapidapi.com/imgur/api/imgur-9/pricing https://rapidapi.com/imgur/api/imgur-9/pricing (note that this is quite different than the pricing that Apollo claims to have) $500/month for 7.5M calls/month and $10k for 150M calls/month https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/reddits-new-api-pricing-will-kill-off-apollo-on-june-30/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/reddits-new-api-pric... > Selig says Reddit wants $12,000 for 50 million API requests, while Imgur, a similar social media photo site, charges $166 for 50 million API calls. Selig says even if users were willing to pay out of pocket for the API costs, Reddit announced the new billing plan one month before it would take effect, and Selig says that's just not feasible for developers. https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/comment/jmmptma/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/comment/... > Our pricing is $0.24 per 1000 API calls That puts it at about 3x more than Imgur's published rates. For someone hacking together a moderation tool, I have done this (wiki updates) It means that my run to get data on a few hundred subs would cost me about a quarter. When I was in testing, I was only doing about 5-10 calls though on a sub that I managed so that it wouldn't go haywire somewhere else. --- Consider the outrage where an API key is yanked (for whatever reason) with Twitter. Yanking an API key gets even more problematic if there is an existing business relationship. You're also proposing that someone periodically audits the different reddit clients to see if they are displaying enough / all the ads and that there aren't any uber style shenanigans where if it is found to be coming from the IP block that Reddit owns it shows ads while certain users (who subscribed with a private non-apple subscription) aren't getting ads. It is just easier to charge for an API. And for an app that already has a monthly subscription ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575 shows $5.99) available to it, to increase that rate to match the number of calls. If the average user is making 350 requests per day that's $10/month for the user, so update the subscription to $15/month ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213252 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213252 ). If the push notification server ( https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9l3ema/apollo_13_rejected/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9l3ema/apollo_13... ) is making an additional 600 requests per hour per user... that might need some scaling back or adding another tier (that's $15/day/user of API calls by itself).