this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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If they had charged API fees such that 3rd party apps would have had to charge a monthly fee to users....I would have probably just paid. And I know I'm not the only one.
But they priced it intentionally to kill 3rd party apps, because they wanted to channel access through their garbage app with its "promoted" ads all over the place.
It's not about "free vs. not free" it's about intentionally killing off the applications that made reddit likeable as a platform.
And that mods use to effectively moderate.
That's why this whole debacle is so mystifying to me. If they would have tried to monetize the 3rd party space by way of charging a reasonable API price to the devs, it's not hard to imagine that most serious Reddit users wouldn't have any qualms with parting with a few bucks here and there to keep the status quo. I can't imagine that Reddit is able to create a situation where they earn more from their advertising platform per user than having users simply pay to maintain the existing experience.
The only theory I've heard that makes a lick of sense is that if Reddit fundamentally changes the site experience to pursue other monetization options (Hello Reddit NFTs), then 3rd party apps would've been able to just ignore implementing those features entirely.
My speculation is that they want to charge LLMs like ChatGPT, especially for training. Those devs basically want to access every conversation on Reddit.
Is there anything stopping an organization with programming talent from accessing all of Reddit via http and bypassing the API fees?
I guess too. IPO might be for sale to AI big tech.
What's weird, it doesn't make sense even then. I feel like it started as a simple miscalculation by Spez which he took personally. I mean, the part he insulted the Apollo dev is clearly that, but maybe the whole thing as well?
My "make it make sense" theory is--this is entirely about the IPO and we need to look at the biggest issue from last years social media sale.
Musk sued Twitter for obfuscating/failing to disclose how much of it's activity was bots during negotiations. It was a legit point of contention. These social media services are incentivized to turn a blind eye to the problem. (eg The "impressions" number that Facebook and Google sell advertisers is all malarkey) You'll notice that now that Musk owns twitter he doesn't say a word about bots other than occationally patting himself on the back for shutting bots down (ok yeah sure elon).
I think reddit is in a similar predicament where they really want to inflate their user stats with bot activity for the IPO, but they can't because the app stores provide solid stats on users and user activity and they don't control that flow of information, the 3rd party developers do.
If they think 15%-30% of the sites activity is repost bots, they really don't care about alienating the 5% of users using third-party apps.
The AI learning angle is all smoke-and-mirrors.
And in reddit's case, rather than someone like Elon buying/fact checking the terms of purchase, for IPOs you have to get your disclosure documents past the SEC. Smart people, but hardly experts at how social media companies run.
Also, as a disabled internet user, those APIs are of value for the sake of accessability. Given Reddi'ts own app is, and forgive me to use technical jargon here, steaming pile of bullshit even for those with perfect vision?
Yea fuck you too spez.
I think there's a little more to it. If they're trying to go the Meta way where dwell times and other such evil metrics are used, they need to have their own app for that level of info. It might be a requirement for their IPO or requested by their advertisers.
Seems like those kinds of metrics could be collected by the 3rd party devs if Reddit requires them to include a bit of code in their 3rd party apps as a condition for API access.
Yup, if two months ago they said reddit premium members won't experience any changes, and started pushing ads to 3rd party clients and restricted NSFW posts on 3rd party clients without premium I bet there would have be considerably less push back. I know I probably would have ponied up to $60/year,but instead I have abandoned the site without any intention to return.
Even with the api fees, 3rd party apps are no longer allowed to show nsfw content. Would you still have paid a monthly fee?
their app is so ass and the response is to kill all other apps rather than improve their own
I mean, they could have just stolen the good designs from other apps and made theirs more user friendly, but fuck that, better to scorched earth the motherfucker
honestly, I was going to stick around reddit but after seeing all the bullshit he's spewing in these tech interviews I don't want to give him a penny of my time/data
Their app WAS more user friendly. This whole thing is them buying Alien Blue, deciding it wasn't monetized enough, and ruining it