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142

Do You Think There Would Have Been a Large Protest if Steve Huffman Just Said We're Charging to Use the API to Increase Revenue? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by curt@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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I've been a long time Redditor and an Apollo user for about a year. I even paid for it. The main draw for me was the lack of advertising. In the back of my head I kept thinking that it couldn't last. Reddit is losing revenue from the lack of advertising views. It didn't

To me, Reddit's sky high pricing for the use of the API is intended to kill off apps like Apollo and for its users to move to the advertising filled web site or its own app, which I've never used.

If Huffman came out and said this was a revenue move right off would everyone be as upset as they are? Are people upset because Huffman completely mishandled the move or because they got their ad free experience turned off? If Reddit had an app the same quality as Apollo only with ads, would they be OK with it. I've only used Apollo so I can't speak to the other apps.

I can't blame Reddit for wanting to make money. It doesn't make a profit. Investors have to keep pouring in money to keep it going. They're going to want to see a return on their investment at some point. Usually they cash in on an IPO, but IPO's are generally only successful if the corporation looks like it will be profitable or at least the stock price continues to go up. That's how capitalism works.

In my case, I probably would have left regardless. I can't stand adds in my feed. I probably wouldn't have heard of lemmy or kbin if there hadn't been such an uproar. So I'm glad it went the way it did.

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[–] Maxcoffee@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Notice how Reddit haven't engaged in any positive damage control at all? It's just been hit pieces against devs, an AMA with completely canned responses and unprecedented wide-spread hostile action against it's content creators/power users/mods?

Reddit is in full-blown sell out mode right now and nothing but money matters anymore. It's all down hill from here.

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I don't care about third party apps or API anymore. Their handling of it became very clear that they are headed in the direction of a Zuckerberg run type multi billion dollar company fully monetizing and extracting data from users, so I don't feel like using their sketchy app like I would never use a Facebook app or Tiktok app, or make an account for either of those two. And don't want to provide location based behavioral data they get from ip addresses and what type of interests I'm into so they can sell that type of demographic data to companies.

People share way more on reddit than they do to people they know because of pseudonyms, so yeah I don't want to directly provide anymore than I have to towards the profits of a large corporation.

[–] TehSr0c@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It does certainly seem like it, but what exactly are they trying to achieve? They don't have an IPO yet and even if they got one now it would be devalued over before the shit show. And with every new day reddit shows potential investors that they have absolutely no control of the situation, and just doubles down on idiocy.
How is it supposed to make money at this point?

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ad revenue should convince the investors. Who cares if there’s no real content besides automated reposts and bot spam, as long as there are some users who they can shower with an endless stream of ads.

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, and with ip logs and ad click throughs and people also providing comments that can form a personality type that type of data can be useful to marketers to see what people with certain interests go on to buy. Add downloading the official app on smartphones with the permission requests, and that's even more data to provide. Especially if the app is able to get info like your email address or phone to then connect to a public directory.

[–] norb@lemmy.norbz.org 2 points 1 year ago

Memory is short on the internet. Reddit are hoping for this to blow over "quickly" (i.e. in a month or two) because they know the bulk of their users will continue to show up (out of inertia or a lack of viable alternatives). If they can keep the front page showing decent posts, they think they'll make it through.

I think the knock-on effects of losing mods and "power users" will take some time to play out. The real long term effects won't be known until it becomes clear that the loss of those key users has effected the quality of the posts and therefor usage by your "average Redditor."