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If this had been handled differently, Huffman could have even won the support of redditors to help make the platform profitable.
I'm sure most reasonable people believe Reddit should be able to pay its bills so that we can have it as a resource. Spez just came out of the gate pissing everyone off and then doubled down at every opportunity to explain the move.
If it wasn't for the amount being much higher than most other companies charge, and what it costs Reddit itself to do the same, and a 30-day timeframe with which to get around those changes on top of it, I think that they would have been much better received. The third-party app developers didn't any problems with paying for things like Imgur APIs, and would have happily paid up for Reddit's, if they had the time to implement it, and didn't have to deal with the exorbitant cost.
However, I do think that Spez made things much, much worse. If Reddit didn't make a discussion, and just put out the announcement, people would have shrugged, and moved on. His AMA, and everything else after was just throwing fuel onto the fire, which was further boosted by Reddit admins suddenly wading into the fray, something that they had not done previously, even rom the perspective of moderator tyranny. The previous response tended to always be "we're sorry to hear that, but you can just go and create your own community if you have an issue with them", unless the problem was bad enough it got press attention.
I can’t blame reddit for wanting to be profitable,either. They just went about it in the worst, most confrontational way possible. They insulted the people who gave reddit all of its content, and alienated their core users.
Even if Huffman had been nicer about it, though, no amount of diplomacy would make up for the fact that their API pricing is ridiculous. Nor would it make their complete inflexibility and stubbornness more palatable. The arrogance and disrespect they’ve shown is astounding. Trying to “fix” that with pretty words, but without actually changing anything, would be like trying to polish a turd.
I think there would still be a massive protest. The only difference would be the tone.
I have not heard anyone, other than articles trying to lead the narrative, say that it should be free.
It was always how much and how long they had to adapt.
Plus all the lies
I definitely wouldn't be as upset as I am right now. I would consider paying to be able to continue to use the service.
However, right now, I wouldn't come back to Reddit even if they called of the whole thing and decided to leave free access to the API. I have zero trust in Reddit after all that happened. To be honest I'm kinda glad it all went down like this. At least we got to know their real colors.
I was the founder of a 73k sub API the API rules changed I used Apollo and rif the AMA came decided to protest from the 12th to the 14th came back after the day of the 14th my subscribers said shut it down. I shut it down then u/spez did that leaked memo then I decided to delete my 350k 6 years front page 5x account. It was tuff but I got kbin, Lemmy and Mastodon to help me fill the void. Yes I know I only need one account but it's a personal preference l!
I used the main Reddit app and was planning on going back after the protests were over but everything spez had done since then has made me uninstall the app
I think it is within the company's right to revenue increasing opportunities. That said I view the slandering of the Apollo creator as the turning point. It was very poor taste and their communication around this has been horrendous. It kick started the migration to the fediverse and a critical mass has adopted it. So now there is no good reason to go back to Reddit even if they reverse their decisions. Heck, had there been a different stimulant to fediverse adoption without any missteps from Reddit, I would still have transitioned my usage to a system where the users are more in control.
IMO the issue that people are upset about, and as a result all the publicity going on, is just related to how much they wanted to charge people for the API.
If they rolled out something reasonable for pricing, and allowed people to use their own individual API keys in third party apps on a free tier, I think a few would have complained here and there, but otherwise it would have been fine.
Obviously they need to make money to pay for costs of running things somehow, there's nothing wrong with that.
Nobody is against them making money, but personally it was just the iicong omn the cake. The censorship was my biggest issue, then they started requiring emails, etc....losing my apps and then threatening mods was it.
Reddit needing to make $ to maintain the resources is understandable.
There were other ways to generate revenue without being greedy.
For example, users pay for awards like gold etc on Reddit. This concept could have expanded to a marketplace for 3PA stickers. If 3PA apps have stickers that they were pushing as additional revenue for the developers, Reddit could have stepped in and developed a marketplace to host and promote them for the developers as well. It would be a similar model to the Google Play and Apple App stores taking a commission for in app purchases. It doesn't have to be in the vicinity of 30% either. It's not a perfect example by any means, so don't flame me or the idea.
I deleted all of my accounts, posts and comments after the clusterfuck of an AMA. The interviews Huffman gave the following week to The Verge and other media sites totally reinforced my decision not to go back. I still go back to get some tech resources that I need but it's through alternative addresses so I don't add to their analytics stats.
Stickers and Reddit gold are, by the wildest and most nonsensically optimistic estimates imaginable, not going to be even in the same state as the amount of revenue they’re looking for.
The option they should have gone for was to put the onus of 3PA on users: Either you pay for reddit premium or you use the app. This would have worked out more and I absolutely would pay a fair price to keep using Boost. This is what they should have done.
But, they didn't. And then offered a tight window, and that's why we're here.
I wouldn't have even hesitated to buy Premium if it was the only way to use third party apps. That seems reasonable. I paid more for a completely pointless Snoo bobblehead like a decade ago, at least Premium in that context would provide some actual benefit!
Well, that might have helped, but Paint Hufferman decided to insult us all and treat us as useless, even parasitic freeloaders when WE are the ones who, in concert, built that goddamned site. He was never going to show any respect for us or what we've accomplished... to him, we're livestock. Fuck him with a hot lead pipe.
I personally would be a paying subscriber to Apollo right now if Reddit had announced they were going to charge a reasonable amount of money for the API. I totally understand how a massive website like that and all the servers and storage required must have cost a fortune. Paying to avoid ads is cool with me… cutting off my access to the best way to use Reddit is not.
Didn't reddit used to be profitable? I think we should start by asking what decisions they made that reduced their profitability. Is it the video player that nobody asked for? Deciding to self-host images? Developing an app that nobody wants to use? It seems to me like they put themselves in this position.
I would be happy to pay a fair price to remove ads and gain access to 3rd party apps. They should just bake that into the Reddit Gold perks.
I'm not entirely sure why Reddit was going to charge outlandish fees for the third-party APIs. Looks like none of the apps are actually going to pay them, so he's not getting anything out of it. It's really a combination of pushing them out of the market and then being a smug little bitch that really nailed it in the coffin for a lot of people.
They don’t want the developers to pay anything. They want the developers gone so that all the users are monetizeable through ads.
Looks like none of the apps are actually going to pay them, so he's not getting anything out of it.
But that is exactly what his goal was. If he really was interested in working with the 3PA devs, this would have been handled completely differently. The fact that it was handled as it was, with essentially zero engagement between the company and the community, and with essentially zero flexibility on the part of the company on the implementation, is pretty clear evidence that their goal all along was to drive the 3PA's out of business.
That IS what happened, in april.
What happened this month is that the API users (aka 3rd party authors) expressed their dismay at trying to work with reddit's announced changes or getting any movement out of reddit that would allow them to continue.
In a nutshell:
Imagine if you own a nice Jaguar - keep it in your garage and let the neighbours borrow it to go to the shops. Now you need to do some maintenance, and make up for losses in your taxi service (which might cost $2 per km) so you wanna price this as a premium service. ... so you could charge them $5 takeout fee plus $1 per km, or (if you're greedy) just go for $5 per km.
What Reddit did is say 'Fuck you, you want to use it, you pay $100 per km or fuck off - we don't care'.
The amount of money Reddit makes for you getting advertisements is actually less than $1 per km... The same occurs with YouTube. If you actually click to donate, then you can pay enough to cover thousands of hours of advertisements in one small swipe.
What we need is MICROpayments spread across a wider user-base to balance the ad-supported platform, and then people will accept that small payments are better.