Reddit CEO: We're Sticking With API Changes, Despite Subreddits Going Dark
Reddit CEO: We're Sticking With API Changes, Despite Subreddits Going Dark
'Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable,' Steve Huffman says in defending the move to charge for high-volume API access.
Hey! This post is not specifically related to the lemmy.world instance. From now on, posts such as these will be removed, in order for the community to stay on topic. However, as this is a highly upvoted post, I'll just lock it for now.
Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable
It's their own fault. They didn't have to take hundred of millions of venture capital and hire thousands of people. They didn't have to go try to become a XX billion dollars company fighting with Facebook and Tiktok.
They could be profitable with a hundred engineers, a hundred support staff and reasonable ads. They could make delivering ads part of their API and have 3rd party apps serve them for them. They could let those 3rd party app handle the mobile markets since those solo devs are creating better apps than the hundreds of engineers at Reddit.
I'm really annoyed that they are changing a winning formula to build something that nobody wants
It blows my mind that Reddit can look at 90% of its communities going dark in some way and think, "yeah, this is fine."
EDIT (AGAIN): Thank you all for the comments on total subs. It's still clearly not 90%, but it still appears to be a significant portion of the active Reddit community. For the interested, check out the comments below for stats. :)
That's what Huffman was saying BEFORE the blackout. Now that 8476/8838 subreddits are currently dark, I wonder what he would say now? I don't really see how Reddit recovers from this. It's sad because I loved it and there's nothing else like it (yet), but there would need to be some major changes taking place before a lot of people consider venturing back.
It's not that you're charging for API access; it's that you're charging US pharmaceutical industry pricing levels ($12,000 for something that should realistically be $200) and then only giving devs such a short time to implement changes. This was designed to kill 3PApps outright and everyone can see it. What an ass.
Since I don't see a link to it in the discussion, here's an internal email from yesterday that has made its way to the Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman
They really should have just found out what the 3rd party apps -COULD PAY-. If it covered the cost of their usage and there was some profit on the top, it would at least bring in some money. Based on what I read by the Apollo dev, there was back and forth communication about pricing for a while until he broke the news.
It astounds me that they chose to cut them off entirely by offering impossible pricing. Isn't some money better than no money?
Had the subs gone off for longer (2 weeks) or indefinitely, the risk of Google bots dropping links may have shaken things up more. Personally, I don’t see Reddit going anywhere. There frankly is not enough backing for a sustained enough period of time. Reddit knows tomorrow subs who joined for 2 days will re-open.
Reddit & Twitter going crazy only few months appart, and with this attitude they deserve to vanish in trashbin of internet history
This is great news. I want federation
Yeah, at this point. All these big tech companies are succumbing to their greed.
Good that FOSS are being made to be the shelter for this wasteland that is big tech.
Well at least they'll be more "profitable" with so many less users coming to the site and using third party apps.
Glad I've found Lemmy.
The disrespect that the average person gets from corporations these days is fucking unbelievable. This current thing with reddit is something especially BS. ALL of the work in the various subreddits were done by the community, supported by third-party apps ALSO built by the community.
Then my friend is truly dead.
I'm sticking with lemmy then
Hey Lemmy gang. Just signed up after seeing this.
Of course they aren't going back. We saw how arrogant spez was. There was no doubt in my mind he is just going to rely on the fact that most people are rarely committed enough to do anything.
My expectation... Some will stay with the fediverse. Others will see the blackout as a "we did everything we could" and then go back, business as usual.
I for sure will not be back. I like RIF and it is the only way I browse. With RIF gone so too am I.
Oh, I fucking hate CEO's.
Fuck spez
What I don't get is who they're posturing for now.
They showed the developers that the game was fixed and there was no plan to negotiate in good faith.
They've shown the userbase they aren't responsive to strongly held concerns.
They've shown a potential IPO audience that they're capable of burning down the platform in record time and not even waiting until after they cashed out to do so.
They've shown everyone they don't even have the most basic understanding of corporate bullshit speak. It's not hard to put together "We hear your concerns and will assemble a committee of top minds who will proceed to ignore these concerns."
I guess they just want to say they didn't back down. That and $12.50 gets you a cup of coffee.
They absolutely detest their userbase :(
Common Lemmy Win
I'm so glad they're unwavering in their commitment to foster growth of the fediverse!
Shame they killed it like this, but fuck 'm! First comment on Lemmy 👌
I find it funny that a 3rd party app can be "profitable" but reddit cant be profitable without alienating a sizeable chunk of their userbase.
Reddit has increasingly become a cesspit of racism and bigotry anyways, and I find Im going there less and less.
I need to get used to how lemmy works and find my 3d printing people here.
Article from June 9, before the outages
I wonder if they expect to be able to have chatGPT supply all the memes.
Just a textbook case of not knowing the free labor was the product.
I won't argue against the need for reddit to be profitable, they're a business after all, BUT, all respectable software that is paid has different tiers of pricing, usually ranging from single-user to corporate-deployment.
spez is complaining everywhere that they can't allow corporate-level scraping of data to train AI for free, and that's fair, but why don't they differentiate "small" devs developing apps for users from "corporations" training AI?
I find it really hard to believe it's too difficult for them, other paid software/platforms do it all the time.
The only logical explanation to me is they don't want to, they just want to kill apps no matter what, that's why the unreasonable prices for everyone, they're just using the "no profitable" excuse to do that without a worse backslash than they're getting already, tho they're being quite stupid about it.
Yeah, this sounds like the reddit I've come to know 😒
Kbye!
First Lemmy comment lfg. Fuck you Spez and excited to help build this community!
Wow they’re really doubling down. Guess this means the end of Reddit.
Well, looks great for Lemmy!!
Fuck spez!
I never expected them to change their mind, they know what they want and they know what sort of people they want on their platform and frankly it is not us.
Plenty of people including me are very glad about being pushed in a more fedi direction, and genuinely enjoy it here. Probably most of those people are older like me and feel very much at home with a bit of jank, with Mastodon's topic-based following system, etc etc. Because that's what the internet was like when we were first exploring it. We will 100% stick around.
For younger or less techy people though, the only thing that really gets them to use services is how easy it is. And that's fine too. We can have our own corner of the internet here to be dorks in, and they can have their own corner over there, and we can all still be friends just...you know...from a distance.
Good, I hope it crashes and burns. They forgot their origins.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
F
What a jerk
Just shows how much reddit cares about it's users.
Fuck u/spez
What a clown show. Glad I'm gone.
Well of course not. their mistake is that they're trying to make profit on something that's not profitable. Musk made the same mistake. Unfortunately the general mass can't comprehend the complexity (!) of multiple instances of a same platform because no one uses emails so I don't actually believe Lemmy or Kbin will become mainstream. People will slowly trickle back to Reddit once they realize they have no alternatives.
Yep, lol