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137

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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[–] techno156@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

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.