I’ll copy and paste the complete announcement. From u/spez (Steve “Greedy Pigboy” Huffman) to r/reddit, about a month ago.
Superscript numbers added for reference.
Addressing the community about changes to our API
Dear redditors,
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Steve aka u/spez. I am one of the founders of Reddit, and I’ve been CEO since 2015. On Wednesday, I celebrated my 18th cake-day, which is about 17 years and 9 months longer than I thought this project would last. To be with you here today on Reddit—even in a heated moment like this—is an honor.¹
I want to talk with you today about what’s happening within the community and frustration stemming from changes we are making to access our API. I spoke² to a number of moderators on Wednesday and yesterday afternoon and our product and community teams have had further conversations with mods as well.
First, let me share the background on this topic as well as some clarifying details. On 4/18, we shared that we would update access to the API, including premium access for third parties who require additional capabilities and higher usage limits. Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business³, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize⁴ commercial entities that require large-scale data use.
There’s been a lot of confusion over what these changes mean⁵, and I want to highlight what these changes mean for moderators and developers.
Terms of Service:
· Effective June 19, 2023, our updated Data API Terms, together with our Developer Terms, replaced the existing Data API terms.\
Free Data API
· Effective July 1, 2023, the rate limits to use the Data API free of charge are:
· 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id if you are using OAuth authentication⁶ and 10 queries per minute if you are not using OAuth authentication.
· Today, over 90% of apps⁷ fall into this category and can continue to access the Data API for free.\
Premium Enterprise API / Third-party apps
· Effective July 1, 2023, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-party app)⁸.
· Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their businesses and will close before pricing goes into effect.⁹
· For the other apps, we will continue talking¹⁰. We acknowledge that the timeline we gave was tight¹¹; we are happy to engage with folks who want to work with us.\
Mod Tools
· We know many communities rely on tools like RES, ContextMod, Toolbox, etc., and these tools will continue to have free access to the Data API.
· We’re working together with Pushshift¹² to restore access for verified moderators.
Mod Bots
· If you’re creating free bots that help moderators and users (e.g. haikubot¹³, setlistbot, etc), please continue to do so. You can contact us here if you have a bot that requires access to the Data API above the free limits.
· Developer Platform is a new platform designed to let users and developers expand the Reddit experience by providing powerful features for building moderation tools, creative tools, games, and more. We are currently in a closed beta with hundreds of developers (sign up here). For those of you who have been around a while, it is the spiritual successor to both the API and Custom CSS¹⁴.
Explicit Content
· Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed¹⁵. · This change will not impact any moderator bots or extensions. In our conversations with moderators and developers, we heard two areas of feedback we plan to address.
Accessibility - We want everyone to be able to use Reddit. As a result, non-commercial, accessibility-focused apps and tools will continue to have free access. We’re working with apps like RedReader and Dystopia and a few others to ensure they can continue to access the Data API.
Better mobile moderation - We need more efficient moderation tools, especially on mobile. They are coming. We’ve launched improvements to some tools recently and will continue to do so. About 3% of mod actions come from third-party apps, and we’ve reached out to communities who moderate almost exclusively using these apps to ensure we address their needs.
Mods, I appreciate all the time you’ve spent with us this week, and all the time prior as well¹⁶. Your feedback is invaluable. We respect when you and your communities take action to highlight the things you need, including, at times, going private. We are all responsible for ensuring Reddit provides an open accessible place for people to find community and belonging.
I will be sticking around to answer questions along with other admins¹⁷. We know answers are tough to find, so we’re switching the default sort to Q&A mode. You can view responses from the following admins here: // u/spez // u/KeyserSosa // u/Go_JasonWaterfalls // u/FlyingLaserTurtle
Steve
P.S. old.reddit.com isn’t going anywhere, and explicit content is still allowed on Reddit as long as it abides by our content policy.¹⁸
Irrelevant (and failed) attempt of emotional appeal towards the userbase. That’s on the same level as “I think that you’re a bunch of irrationals, I can smear whatever emotional appeal on your snouts and you’ll believe me!”
“I spoke” - it’s pretty much useless to talk with a lying entity that does the opposite of what it says… or to talk with its equally lying CEO.
Petitio principii - is Reddit not a “self-sustaining business”? A: we don’t know and the only ones who could confirm or deny it have a nasty tendency to be liars, so…
“Subsidise” my arse. The 3PAs didn’t make Reddit profit directly, but they aggregated value to the platform.
Calling it “confusion” is gaslighting per excellence. People understood rather well what those changes mean; to claim otherwise is the same as saying "you didn’t reach the irrationally gullible conclusion that I wanted you to reach, so I’ll treat you as a stupid confusing itself."
Here’s the one million euros question: is 100 queries per minute enough? A good way to test this would be to check how many queries that crappy official app does.
90% of which apps?
Disingenuously bending numbers so they fit your narrative. Check the maths done by 3PA devs and you’ll see that spez is, as usual, being a liar.
In Apollo’s case, perhaps the fact that you’ve been unjustly accusing the developer and then screeching when he proves his innocence may have something to do with this. “Perhaps”.
Translation: “we’ll continue bullshitting our way, until those fuckers learn that 2+2=5”.
Rather disingenuous euphemism. It was not a “tight timeline”, it was “too fast to reasonably react”. Likely on purpose, to get rid of them.
Or alternatively we could take a clue on how Reddit Inc. is handling the PullPush team (or at least what those assumers think to be the PullPush team), how Reddit handled PushShift in the past, and conclude that Reddit is bullshitting.
Spez showing that he’s ignorant on what “helping users” means, and posting whatever bot he remembers as example. Haikubot? Helping the users?
More empty blah blah.
This “think on the children!” argument is getting old, you know. I think that anyone can see what’s up - to make sure that the shitty official app has a built-in advantage, by crippling the competition on the type of content that it’s able to access.
This was such a bizarre move. You’d think if they bothered to make an ama, they’d use it to announce a compromise or something, otherwise why bother? What was accomplished by the ama on Reddit’s part?
No, you dont really. It was a bunch of angry Redditors asking pointed questions, and Steve giving boilerplate answers. All it would do is make you mad.
I think at one point there was even extra text in one of them which indicated that the answers were pre-written and copied/pasted in, which got edited later, of course.
I thought his answers said a ton. I was on the fence about leaving reddit before the AMA. Then his answers convinced me that there was no saving the place. His attitude towards the community and 3rd party developers was absolutely atrocious and very telling about how entitled he felt.
It was a bunch of stupidity where spez doubled down on the price hike, then lied about being unable to work with 3rd party devs and how much they were "costing" reddit.
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