This will be an unpopular opinion, but I think reddit is mostly in the right with these API pricing changes. It makes no sense from a business perspective to allow other apps to freely profit off their services. They only fucked up with the arbitrarily short timeline which Huffman has no reasoning for and the poor communication throughout the whole process. Even Apollo dev said he was fine with them charging if he had had more time to make the transition.
I haven't seen a developer of the third party apps complain about there being a price at all, just that the price is too high given how much a user costs reddit itself, and how tight the timeline is given at that price. And yeah he basically just said "well we were gonna do it at some point, so why not now?"
I think the issue is that he's saying that he is "willing to talk" but Christian said many times that he feels he's talking to a brick wall. So how can he feel comfortable having discussions when those discussions might not happen until after he starts getting charged prices that he wants to talk about?
For some reason spez doesn't get that and it's really annoying to see him talk about how they're the only company in town offering free lunch, no one is asking for that.
I think charging to use the API is fine, but it was definitely overpriced to the point that it was obvious they wanted to nuke TPAs. They need all that sweet user data to sell to others, and they can't get to that with TPAs.
I mean user data can very much be completely inferred from API calls. It's not about the user data itself, it's about being able to say to advertisers "all our users will see your ads".
Yeah, they could have worked with the 3PA devs to find a solution that was workable for everyone. Instead they just want to kick them to the curb and control everything. Fuck 'em.
I don't think charging for the API is inherently wrong, but they want to charge a ridiculous amount. It should be 1/4th of what it is, or less. The Apollo guy calculated it is 20x more than what the average user makes them, via Reddit's own previously posted user monetization stats.
Yeah it's hard to say what is a reasonable price without seeing the numbers across platforms. I know the apollo dev said it was an unreasonable amount to charge, but the relay dev said he thinks he'd be able to charge a subscription fee between $2-$3 a month and still make a profit after reddit and googles cut. He said his users average ~100 calls per day versus apollo saying ~300. Maybe there's an optimization issue there or just a lot of power users on apollo, idk. Either way, I feel like if the timeline was more like 6 months to a year transition and there would be no issue.
Christian made some excellent points in multiple interviews regarding API efficiency. One example is the difference in responsiveness by making one call to request 100 posts, vs the 4x shorter response time by requesting 25 for an immediate display, then queuing 100, resulting in a more responsive and fluid experience for the user.
I think Reddit grossly misrepresented Apollo’s “inefficiency” especially when comparing Apollo to their own application, which is objectively more burdensome to their own infrastructure due to its doubling of API calls over Apollo’s to deliver the same information.
He was given a boundary and worked within it, not knowing he’d be unfairly compared to less optimized applications that either delivered a more sluggish experience but used less API calls, or high usage applications that are also worse from a UX standpoint. No matter how you look at it, Reddit is in the wrong for usurious fees and outright lying, or by misrepresenting the facts in bad faith.
Everyone was ready to embrace monetary changes and support the platform.
I would agree, if Reddit were a service provided by Reddit for customers. But it’s not. It’s a social network where most of the value of the site is generated by the users contributing content. No users, no value. They have tens of thousands of moderators donating countless hours of free work to the site, too. So if we leave the morality to the side for a moment and just put on our business hats, if Huffman pisses off the community too much, he loses critical mass and a large value proposition for the site. He is betting that no major exodus will occur and he can continue turning the screws.
I think reddit is mostly in the right with these API pricing changes. It makes no sense from a business perspective to allow other apps to freely profit off their services
There's a middle ground between free and 20 million
It's frankly a bullshit excuse, the devs of a handful of apps don't make any sort of megabucks. The prices given were Fuck Off prices, the ones you give knowing they're exaggerated and unreasonable to someone you want to go away. They wanted to just kill them off. The fact that this happened after Reddit out and out neglected mobile access for years until 3rd party apps existed, then bought out one, stripped it for parts and threw it out to make their monstrosity is specially jarring.
Even if you think the pricing is fine, the time window the apps get to make changes is way too short. They kept asking when would we have to start paying, and the answer always been in the distance future. Now they have 30 days to get the funding for a huge amount of users.
That’s unfortunate. I understand your trying to IPO and his goal is to get his golden parachute afterwards. But you’d think the board and him would want to foster some goodwill with the community the depend on.
If he was gonna bullshit someone it should have been investors and advertisers, not users. Look at pre-Elon twitter, Jack Dorsey knew how to IPO on straight hedgefund money.
They‘re fine if anyone with some critical thought leaves and the only ones left behind are the master bootlickers who would eat a plate of shit as long as it got served by Reddit.
Could even be seen as an improvement to them considering that includes communities like r/piracy which the mere existence of could hurt their capitalist investors feelings.
“The blackouts are not representative of the greater Reddit community.”
Of course not. The vast majority of Reddit are lurkers that don't interact with anything and just mindlessly consume. Even bots add more value to a platform, than most lurkers. It's the content creators and people that interact with them through comments, that create value.
What a painful read… initially I would've been ready to pay to keep using my favorite reddit client – but hearing about the exorbitant pricing, then the deadline, and now about the way they're treating their own community? They couldn't pay me to stay.
I have to say, The Verge has had its ups and downs over the years, but I have to give them credit here. This interview is gold.
Spez comes across as such a child. Saying Apollo is their competitor and as such, should be shut down lol.
Also that because the announcement posts on different subreddits didnt have comments enabled, that must man the users are tired of the protests. Comparing it to a city that had protests drag on too long. The thing he misses is that cities that have protests usually want a change before they stop protesting.
All in all, he comes across as such a fucking child. And all his c suite associates seem like yes-men chuds that are just enabling his ego and agreeing with his hissy fit over Apollo. Reddit might get over this if they fire him, walk back the changes and actually implement plans that developers and moderators can get behind. But they won't. Fediverse is the future. Fuck Spez and Fuck Reddit.
He refers to reddit as a city and keeps mentioning democracy and communities. No city/community/democracy should be owned by one corporation and have it's main goal be profitability.
Good lord, this interview just solidified my decision to never return to Reddit. It seems Spez doesn't want me there anyway, despite how much time and money I've given them.
I also wish the interviewer had brought up Spez lying and mischaracterizing Christian so blatantly. Just pathetic behavior.
Wow, his answers and arguments are really bad. Doesn’t acknowledge that AI scrapers abused their system, not apps to access and interact with Reddit. Practically says they will imitate Apollo. Admits that they unreasonable timeline was a way to coerce deals.
one day I hope to count our users among our investors, but getting to breakeven is a priority for us
Yeah well, I'm already an investor on the fediverse, by donating to my instance admins, and the instances I support already break even. It pays back handsome returns on my investment not by extracting value, but by providing a community that respects its users instead of monetizing them. That is the only investment I'm interested in.
Yep. As soon as I set up my lemmy account I set up a recurring donation. I don't want anything for free I understand things cost money, spez is the one trying to monetize other people's unpaid labor
I mean, it sure makes sense. If they're getting the server costs and effort to maintain and moderate, happy to drop a few dollaridoos now and again. Less ads to block as well, which is always nice.
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