4 ms·

Is anyone else really curious what's going on at Reddit HQ right now? At the end of January they were confident that the API would never be priced and within 4

Is anyone else really curious what's going on at Reddit HQ right now? At the end of January they were confident that the API would never be priced and within 4 months they completely changed their minds. But what truly baffles me is that this honestly does not seem like a move to price out third party apps. They genuinely thought he would pay out. How exactly did they think that was happening? Even if the pricing was reasonable, all communication with third party devs was through phone calls and pricing was discussed verbally. The RedReader app developer mentioned that he had to make rough calculations on paper to conclude that he'd have to pay close to a million dollars annually in fees[1]. There's no dashboard to show billing and API usage per client? How do they expect that will go when you're asking users to pay for your API? And especially in such a short time frame? There's also the whole business of NSFW content on the API being not allowed for "law enforcement" reasons but reddit JUST recently pushed an update that allows uploading NSFW content on the website[2]. These moves make me feel that reddit might be trying to cash in on the porn and capture the OF market that's brewing within the site and keep it to their official apps and this might require age verification. I'm not sure but it seems like the folks at reddit are actually floundering and not just making malicious moves. Their communication reeks of more than hostility. It seems to me more like desperation and a last ditch effort to do... something? Did their revenue numbers suddenly tank? Did they make some bad decisions and lost a lot of money? Did their ad buyers pull out suddenly? It's very possible we are watching the death throes of a website here [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/RedReader/comments/13ylk42/update_3_reddit_effectively_kills_off_third_party/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedReader/comments/13ylk42/update_3... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/13evueo/bringing_image_uploads_to_parity/ https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/13evueo/bringing_i...

johnnyanmac 3y ago
TBH I think it's relatively simple. Reddit had this planned for a while, and they didn't want to go on public record with this until the 11th hour. I highly doubt any accountant looked at Apollo and thought "yes, this app makes $20 million/year". Let alone thought "okay, let's ask for literally all that money ourselves. 100% platform rate". You may be right that something huge happened internally, but I don't think $20m would have solved it. Apparently most of their money is made off ads, and instead of working with 3p's, they thought it easiest to force more ads on users. So it's easier to turn off the API switch than to slowly integrate something with 3P's. as for NSFW: that's an issue every company with NSFW content has struggled with. It's a paradox where it's very lucrative and companies want that money, but also a huge pain in the neck to compromise with in a legal sense. when you need to pay some employees full time to fight these fights, you have to start wondering if that cash cow is even worth it? When credit card companies start to deny you based on that, that answer becomes very clear.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

TBH I think it's relatively simple. Reddit had this planned for a while, and they didn't want to go on public record with this until the 11th hour. I highly doubt any accountant looked at Apollo and thought "yes, this app makes $20 million/year". Let alone thought "okay, let's ask for literally all that money ourselves. 100% platform rate". You may be right that something huge happened internally, but I don't think $20m would have solved it. Apparently most of their money is made off ads, and instead of working with 3p's, they thought it easiest to force more ads on users. So it's easier to turn off the API switch than to slowly integrate something with 3P's. as for NSFW: that's an issue every company with NSFW content has struggled with. It's a paradox where it's very lucrative and companies want that money, but also a huge pain in the neck to compromise with in a legal sense. when you need to pay some employees full time to fight these fights, you have to start wondering if that cash cow is even worth it? When credit card companies start to deny you based on that, that answer becomes very clear.