Something like 40% of subs we’re going dark for a minimum of 2 days to protest Reddit’s new api policy. Seems Reddit is now totally down.
Reddit protest
- Thread starter simply1
- Start date
I'm pretty active on r/CFB and yeah can't do anything on there
I don’t expect anything to actually come of this, but I’ll certainly be following it to see.
- Mar 27, 2006
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I get where reddit is coming from, to a degree. The 3rd party apps aren't really at fault but they're catching the fallout. All of the api calls from some of these machine learning platforms, like ChatGPT, do cost reddit money, and they're not seeing any compensation for it, so I'm not opposed to them charging something for it, but it seems like they're swinging the pendulum too far. I wonder if they could sign individual deals with the 3rd party apps to give them a break while still being able to charge the machine learning platforms. Seems like a compromise is in order, otherwise the site will just wither and nobody will make any money
So 3rd parties are allowed to access the website and use it to make their own app through an API. Third parties have to pay to use the API. Recently, Reddit decided to increase API fees which is causing all these apps to shut down because they cannot afford the new pricing. Reddit wants to charge ~$12,500 for 50,000,000 million API requests. Imgur's API current charges ~$166 for the same number of requests.
Reddit's own app is hilariously bad for such a busy website. It's groggy, it uses way too much data, and the features, especially for moderators, suck.
There are third party apps out there that are way better. Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Narwhal just to name a few. They include a lot of moderator tools that are nifty, but they also include accessibility for users who are impaired which the official app does not include.
Reddit is going public - it's literally going on the stock exchange and will want to please stockholders. Stockholders will not be happy seeing all the traffic to these third party apps (these apps also limit advertisement rendering), and so now Reddit is charging much more for API access, which is essentially access to Reddit information for these third party apps.
The issue is, though, these higher API charges to the third party apps are hilariously overcharged. I heard it would cost Apollo (a free app) over $10M a month to continue operating as it does now - so that app is shutting down at the end of the month. In fact, all third party apps are. That's what is being protested - the blatant cash grab to please shareholders and kill the third party apps that have been here for over a decade.
I don't think anyone is upset about the API not being free, that's certainly not what the protest is about, it's all about the ridiculous pricing.
That and the adblocking features. I dont see ads on the Boost app so they're losing that revenue.
The problem is reddit got really greedy and the native app is HORRIBLE for ads (and just general use)
That is a little off. The creator was guessing $20 million a year. Still crazy high compared to what they were paying now.
Ah okay, my bad. Still really crappy by Reddit, a website that doesn't make its own content and relies on free labor to moderate its website. And yet the CEO admitted it's still not profitable.
I just want the "He gets us" ads to go away
I haven’t tried posting or commenting, but I can see r/cfb it is just very dead
Yeah, a company needs to be able to make money to be long term viable. However, charging reasonable prices and understanding your user base is just as important. I think they failed to find a middle ground. It’s like when I owned CF - I lost a lot of money every month for years out of our family budget (roughly $1K per month not to mention 40+ hrs/wk of effort). Without revenue, things can’t survive in their current form forever.
The blow back reminds me a lot of the Netflix password sharing crackdown though in that a lot of people will protest but it won’t end up hurting the company. Netflix reportedly signed up more members since cracking down than at any other point in their history.
Even if some people truly leave Reddit, I’m guessing they more than make up for lost content with the increase in ad views, API revenue from machine learning tools, and eventually charging for more features in a hopefully better App.
The blow back reminds me a lot of the Netflix password sharing crackdown though in that a lot of people will protest but it won’t end up hurting the company. Netflix reportedly signed up more members since cracking down than at any other point in their history.
Even if some people truly leave Reddit, I’m guessing they more than make up for lost content with the increase in ad views, API revenue from machine learning tools, and eventually charging for more features in a hopefully better App.
And their stock is back to super high levels. The people "protesting" weren't paying for Netflix anyways, since they were just password sharing - Netflix didn't care about them anyways since they weren't bringing in revenue.
This Reddit protest won't work, especially if it's only 48 hours. If it's longer, people who use the official app anyways will make new communities and it will probably be business as usual.