This isn't reddit a specific problem... They're just the latest flavor of this news cycle. Other companies have gone through this same exercise... most recently twitter but also Google and Yahoo.

At the end of the day, the API costs money to run. If it's "free" (it should never be free) and someone builds and app off the free API they're essentially getting compute (and everything associated with running the service) for free. Maybe not a huge deal sometimes for small traffic sites but once sites reach a certain size it's a beefy chunk of money and that's extra not good if the company isn't not rolling around in profits. And, I ?think? Reddit is still losing money.

On top of that, if their api allows video/pics and the media doesn't have moderation then porn money will suck up a huge amount of bandwidth costs (traffic you can't generally monetize regardless if it's via a 3rd party through the api or served first party).

IMHO, it's a mountain made out of a molehill. If there's some amazing 3rd party app/feature the community wants then just pitch to have it added to reddit app.

Mr. Tact wrote on Jun 16, 2023, 12:57:
I wonder how long before a well educated user sets up a "new reddit" with better features?

A perfect purchase for e.musk

I wonder how long before a well educated user sets up a "new reddit" with better features?

I don't like this whole "Reddit should get money from AI companies" argument. Seems like a super reach. Reddit doesn't really have a business model other than: we have a website that is a front end for forum software, and that website mixes in ads, and we do some other things on the side to get people to give us money for virtual goods like badges and stuff. Reddit pretending like AI businesses are stealing from the data that they never owned in the first place (i.e. this is information willing made public by users) is a farce. They are not special. If they want to sacrifice all of their good will and thus their business, the next sane company will just take their place. The audacity of acting like they own what THEIR USERS CREATED AND MADE PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE FOR FREE.

smh

"never designed to support third-party apps," yet it took them ~10 years to buy out a third-party app and call it their own "official app" (they bought out Alien Blue in 2014 and just rebranded it as their own).

Relevent section from Wikipedia:

Mobile apps
In 2010, Reddit released its first mobile web interface for easier reading and navigating the website on touch screen devices. For several years, redditors relied on third-party apps to access Reddit on mobile devices. In October 2014, Reddit acquired one of them, Alien Blue, which became the official iOS Reddit app. Reddit removed Alien Blue and released its official application, Reddit: The Official App, on Google Play and the iOS App Store in April 2016.

I only use the r/AMD forum on Reddit, but I view it rarely these days. Most of the comments are the usual suspects complaining vociferously about things they obviously don't really understand at all. You know, guy buys first computer, reads posts on a forum by people who bought their first box the day before, and suddenly they are in position to lecture AMD on what the company "ought to do." On a more positive note, I do like the fact that the site never complains about my ad blocker, however, as some of the ads are atrocious.

Even if you're not a Reddit user, this will affect you. Already affected me. Reddit is a great source for tech solutions. I had some issue I needed to find a fix for the other day, and a google search led me to a Reddit forum that seemed to have the solution, but it was locked private for the protest.

Reddit (the company) kind of sucks. They don't produce anything of value. They completely failed at building out mobile apps and the website itself is creaky and almost fell apart from a simple protest. They don't moderate content. They have totally failed to produce usable modtools. They are completely incompetent at anything except operating as a webhosting company.

You have a company that doesn't make the content on its platform, doesn't moderate the content and provides almost no support in terms of apps or infrastructure for the community. The whole reason third party apps even existed is because reddit failed to make any mobile apps for almost a decade. This is while they were fucking around with Reddit Premium, NFTs and other bullshit. Now they're crying about profits after wasting money and treading water for ten years.

My suggestion for Steve Huffman - how about you do something that deserves money?

Tough luck if a few porn apps that leech 15 video clips a second off of Reddit's servers suddenly no longer have a free ride.

Reddit just announced free API use for apps that don't abuse the system.

Next up, Reddit needs to revise the TOS to boot any mod that takes a board black.

Mr. Tact wrote on Jun 15, 2023, 21:40:
I'm not a big reddit user, but I'm there occasionally. As a casual user I had never even heard of Apollo or Sync. Based simply on my experience with corporations, I would guess Reddit is at best overacting, at worse being true dicks. He seems to be implying third party apps are making money off Reddit. I have no idea if that is accurate. However, if it is, that would at least give him a sliver of an edge of reasonability to cling to...

When your website relies on millions of hours of free labor, it would be a good idea not to totally piss off that labor.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jun 16, 2023, 00:47:

Tom wrote on Jun 16, 2023, 00:34:
Seems like a classic case of management not having a clue how to make money without flushing their product/service down the toilet.

There's a phrase for that. It's called "enshitification" and, no, I did not make it up.

Cory Doctorow did I believe and has many, many articles on it. I suggest looking them up.

Mr. Tact wrote on Jun 15, 2023, 21:40:
I'm not a big reddit user, but I'm there occasionally. As a casual user I had never even heard of Apollo or Sync. Based simply on my experience with corporations, I would guess Reddit is at best overacting, at worse being true dicks. He seems to be implying third party apps are making money off Reddit. I have no idea if that is accurate. However, if it is, that would at least give him a sliver of an edge of reasonability to cling to...

The major issue is that large language models like ChatGPT require large amounts of content to train on. Reddit is particularly useful. Long and short format, moderated, with conversational threads frequently, it's an ideal language sample. The early generative AIs are trained on Reddit and a few other things. A lot of people who are angry at Reddit actually feel like the AI thing sucks and Reddit should get compensated for that.

From that perspective Reddit absolutely deserves a piece of the pie. There's a lot of cash sloshing around and Reddit is providing essentially the raw materials for these programs. However, in doing so, they decided to go Full Elon and charge insane rates for API access. This doesn't just put 3rd party browsers at risk, but a lot of mod tools are at risk and several accessibility apps for sight impaired and the ilk are going away. Reddit has promised repeatedly to work with these apps and even said that the API changes won't cover the accessibility apps but that was just on an AMA and didn't actually offer any solutions, and since then the devs of those apps have said that Reddit just isn't responding.

I think that's what pushes things from anger into real protest- Reddit is promising to help and take care of people, and then is doing just slightly better than auto-replying to them with a poop emoji by simply ignoring them. They're also yanking 3rd party support while their own app is *woefully* inadequate for daily usage. They're pulling alternatives while they themselves admit their solution sucks.

Reddit arguably works because the API allows the mods and devs to fill in inadequacies of the program and enhance the value that contributes to the network effect, which is where the real commodity of Reddit lies. Walling off an API is a big step in the enshittification of the platform and while I'm sure Reddit will continue it will become a worse product as time goes on.

Tom wrote on Jun 16, 2023, 00:34:
Seems like a classic case of management not having a clue how to make money without flushing their product/service down the toilet.

There's a phrase for that. It's called "enshitification" and, no, I did not make it up.

RIF on Android has been a stellar UX for many years. I never paid anything for it and it's never shown me any ads. That's the way it should be. Maybe if Reddit's official app didn't suck so bad, people wouldn't be so upset about them killing off third party apps.

Seems like a classic case of management not having a clue how to make money without flushing their product/service down the toilet.

Apparently, Reddit was also never designed to be profitable.

I'm not a big reddit user, but I'm there occasionally. As a casual user I had never even heard of Apollo or Sync. Based simply on my experience with corporations, I would guess Reddit is at best overacting, at worse being true dicks. He seems to be implying third party apps are making money off Reddit. I have no idea if that is accurate. However, if it is, that would at least give him a sliver of an edge of reasonability to cling to...

Keep digging, Steve.