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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 2 years 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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[–] fupuyifi@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Reddit needing to make $ to maintain the resources is understandable.

There were other ways to generate revenue without being greedy.
For example, users pay for awards like gold etc on Reddit. This concept could have expanded to a marketplace for 3PA stickers. If 3PA apps have stickers that they were pushing as additional revenue for the developers, Reddit could have stepped in and developed a marketplace to host and promote them for the developers as well. It would be a similar model to the Google Play and Apple App stores taking a commission for in app purchases. It doesn't have to be in the vicinity of 30% either. It's not a perfect example by any means, so don't flame me or the idea.

I deleted all of my accounts, posts and comments after the clusterfuck of an AMA. The interviews Huffman gave the following week to The Verge and other media sites totally reinforced my decision not to go back. I still go back to get some tech resources that I need but it's through alternative addresses so I don't add to their analytics stats.

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[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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 on a free tier, I think a few would have complained here and there, but otherwise it would have been fine.

Obviously they need to make money to pay for costs of running things somehow, there's nothing wrong with that.

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