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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 off 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.
Reddit killed internet fora. by being easier and cheaper. While making no profit.
If they suddenly do want to make profit,
The terms change, there are alternatives.
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.
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.
Every user they lose they'll replace with 10 bots.
This isn't about longterm thinking, this is a push to control how many "users" they can put on their IPO docs. Steve and the current board (VC monies) are going to cash out and what happens to Reddit after the IPO is the least of their worries.
Every fewer third-party app is one fewer datum that they are lying about the number of real, fleshy users. This has nothing to do with AI training or APIs or anything but legitimizing bot activity to pump up the numbers.
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.
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.
At the current price he wants? Yes. Because it would still represent an attempt to kill off all third party apps. Reddit wants to look like the good guys in having a price structure, but it is a transparent bit of trickery. Because the whole thing isn't about API costs to Reddit, but gathering all the data to sell about its users and to push ads. Reddit is attempting an IPO. And shareholders will demand a path to profitability, unlike Silicon Valley investors.
Would honesty and transparency made the protests smaller? On some fronts yes. But many Reddit users would have been pissed with the model they want to use (facebook). So maybe the protests still would have been as widespread. But we could have skipped the whole, "Reddit CEO disrespecting unpaid mods and Reddit users" phase.
To get rid of the promoted and ads on the reddit website I started using https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-ad-remover/cgipdekhdobcdhnobaimhlapmhpgdpjl
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, I think a few would have complained here and there, but otherwise it would have been fine.
And how little time they were giving. And quite frankly, the incredible entitlement spez has shown in the wake of the incident. As if he built the whole of reddit and all its content without decades worth of free hours from users and mods alike.
He doesn't want to build a platform for communities. He and his company want personal enrichment he already feels entitled to. He's making that pretty clear. Otherwise, IPO tomorrow and use it as a cash infusion rather than a liquidity event.
The app devs, including Selig, often, said they were perfectly fine and found it quite reasonable that Reddit wanted to charge for API access-- they even looked forward to it because the y believed it would. open up access to previously walled-off parts of the API such as chat, polls, and other features only available in the native app and the website. This was public info, and users also looked forward to this.
The problem came with both he outrageous pricing and the absurd 30-day timeframe. Then, further with spez's refusal to be flexible by listening to the reasonable complaints of the devs, slanderous accusations against Selig, profound and entitled disrespect towards the mods, and shitshow parade which started with his mind-boggling AMA and then continuing by taking interviews with any news agency that would talk to him, further spreading the lies, slander, disrespect, and disinformation-- ending by praising the king turd of tech: Elon Musk.
THAT is what provoked the outrage, protests, and overall "uprising". THAT is what is killing Reddit.
yeah. the protest was small but reddits response has been great and has lead to where we are at today. like you said it wasnt really the pricing but how reddit went about it and afterwards. hell if he had announced that their intention was to kill off third party apps but was more transparent about it and wasnt acting like an elon musk there might not have been any protest at all.
Two things would have done it for me. They could have offered a user token subscription that I could port to all my accounts. Sure there could be token sharing with that method, but for a "modest" user cost, I might have been tolerable of it. They would have had to open the third party apps at the same time, but it would have bought time. The second thing would have been extending advertising through the third party app. That might discourage users of the free third party app, but it would also have given time to readjust the market price. Maybe the compromise would be that the free app could still be free of Reddit ads, but it wouldn't be customizable or would be limited in the number of additional subreddits with certain ones that were fixed to those free accounts. The key in both cases would be to work at making Reddit still available to those third party apps via the API and not the way it was brought to those developers. Lose the third party support, lose the support of moderators who have learned to be efficient with their way of using the site, lose the site.