this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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Reddit insists on being “fairly paid” amid API price protest plans, layoffs (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by dylan@lemmy.ml to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Okay, what bothers me about this - they're so damn two faced.

Either:

  • 3rd party apps are a huge chunk of the userbase and just hemoraghing money because of all the API usage they drive (which from all usage charts seems unlikely)
  • They are not a huge chunk of the userbase and they could mostly go on not being charged

But their wording just says both and it bugs the hell out of me. "Not many users use these, but they're so much of our API that we're just dying under the pressure"

On top of that, they blame AI training. Well, if that were true why not.... classify the users of their API and make tiers of pricing, where 3rd party apps (who serve content directly to users) get to continue using for free/cheap, and users who train AI are charged. There, I solved the problem where everyone is happy, you can make the check out directly to me instead of paying your lawyers.

[–] Naatan@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Makes me think that they want to profit off of AI training but can't meaningfully differentiate between API use for AI and API use for third party apps. Solvable problem of course, but you gotta do the work.

[–] XLRV@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

If Reddit really wanted to not target 3rd party apps, they could do it, idk if they can see what kind of app are making the APIs calls, but they could've worked something with the 3rd party app devs, I'm not believing what they say.

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

That's a legal issue, it doesn't need a technical solution.

[–] setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

We are all performing a thought exercise with the presumption Reddit’s goal was to come to a mutually beneficial understanding with third party apps. The proposed solutions are fundamentally misunderstanding Reddit’s intent.

Reddit doesn’t want to find a way to be paid by the apps. They want to kill the apps. Any compromise measure is counterproductive to that goal.

The excuses that Reddit gives are not meant for people like us. The excuses don’t hold up to scrutiny but they were never meant to. The excuses are so that people who are only tangentially plugged in see a headline like above, scroll past without reading about it, and subconsciously just accept it.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Agreed, the arguments don't hold up to any critical thinking because they're not supposed to. This is just the most PR friendly way to funnel all users through the main app. Look on Reddit proper and you get tons of people saying "What's the big idea, it doesn't affect me, I use the main app" and scroll past

[–] sarsaparilyptus@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

More to the point, you get a lot of people who are just barely above the threshold of tech illiteracy who think reddit is an app and don't get the concept of a website having an API that multiple apps can access. There needs to be a better term for Eternal September.

[–] setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve seen people say there are people who think Reddit is just an app, but I’ve never seen people actually say that. I believe it possible, just have never seen it.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 1 year ago

People think "the cloud" is some mystical arbitrary thing never truly thinking about how much data they've handed over

[–] setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Something that a lot of “power user” types aren’t ready to hear is that a huge amount of redditors won’t be affected. Power users avoided r/all like the plague, and I’m sure that I’m not unique among power users in having a very curated feed, but that dismisses that there are legions of people who open the official app, browse r/all, and consider that the experience.

When power users say “but where will Reddit’s content come from if we leave?” I don’t think they understand the situation. r/all is the home of reposts, Twitter screenshots, and political ragebait. Actual quality content creators are not needed. If all personally made original content disappeared from Reddit, a huge chunk of redditors would never notice.

I count myself among such “power users” and like to think I made good original content, but I have to come to grips with the fact that Reddit Inc no longer has use for me.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same boat. There was a time I used to enjoy going there, but it's become an unhealthy addiction. Playing on my serotonin and dopamine, and I'm cutting it out, this is just a good excuse to.

The interesting thing is that they have critical mass and decided it was worth cutting off these users, but (and maybe this is arrogance), but the internet has always followed where the power users are. They are the ones who started back with MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (didn't say they were all successful but hey), Discord, Digg and Reddit.

Not all of them panned out, but all of the big networks started with core power users embracing a platform of dedicated users who evangelized their platforms to get other people to join.

The big social medias are seeing what happens when those dedicated users give up and start leaving, the content dries up, and you can only rely on shill posts for so long

[–] tangentism@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

but it’s become an unhealthy addiction. Playing on my serotonin and dopamine

The same with all those major sites: it stopped being about community at some point and became about engagement, because that drives data points which makes them money.

Reddit has been an unhealthy place for a long time with numerous incidents where the admins haven't acted out of moral choices but in the a way that is least damaging to engagement and the brand

[–] stoicandanxious@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Reading this whole comment thread felt therapeutic somehow. You all get it.

[–] narc0tic_bird@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At $0.24 per 1,000 API calls, this must be the most inefficient backend code to ever exist if that's "fair pricing" as opposed to ridiculous pricing.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

no no, it's the apps that are inefficient. I mean, I'm staring at my Lemmy instance and I'm pretty sure that the thousands of requests I've taken in have warranted...

Nope, it's cost me maybe a penny so far running it.

[–] andrew@radiation.party 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

To be fair, Reddit operates on a much larger scale even for small subs

Not playing devils advocate, but the burden of hosting lemmy is not comparable today

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 1 year ago

Totally fair, massive databases, multiple levels of APIs, hooks, events, thousands of CPU cores and thousands of gigs of ram. I was being snarky.

However, still doesn't even come close to justifying that cost

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If they just wanted to get paid, they'd restrict API access to paid accounts and be done with it. It's pretty clear they're specifically trying to kill third-party apps.

Edit: The irony is that I'm not using a third-party app with Lemmy. I don't need one here; the built-in web interface is already clean, efficient, and mobile-friendly.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Now replace "Reddit" with "Reddit mods" and see how it changes the dynamic instantly.

[–] bouncing@partizle.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Our pricing is $0.24 per 1,000 API calls, which equates to <$1.00 per user monthly for a reasonably operated app," the Reddit worker said.

This reminds me of the "average user" Comcast would talk about when they introduced ~~price discrimination~~ metered billing. Just include the long tail of lurkers and signups who almost never use the service, and you can claim that the Apollo users (who are power users) are just outliers who should pay more.

Ultimately for me this is a reminder that when there's a for-profit business ramping up to an IPO, it ultimately has to decide what the products are. Reddit tried to make itself the product with Reddit Gold, but clearly not enough people were paying for it, so it has to make users the product. It's hard to "monetize" users through someone else's app, so they've basically decided that for app users, if the developers figure out how to sell a very expensive service, more power to them, otherwise fuck 'em.

[–] Lowbird@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

It's not necessarily that "not enough people" were paying for Reddit Gold, but that subscription models like that tend to be great for making a stable profit but not so great for line-go-up-forever endless growth, which is what shareholders always, always want. It doesn't matter to them if reddit is profitable if it's not even more profitable than last year.

Either way, yeah, the reddit users are the product and the free labor and not the customer.