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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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[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

What this is really about and people are just starting to realize is: the interests of the shareholders and CEO who want to get rich is not compatible with volunteer content and a volunteer modded site. People aren't eager to do unpaid work just so the CEO can get rich. This API stuff is just exposing it.

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

The weird thing is that they ARE compatible. They could have charged slightly more per user than they make on the official app and everything would have been fine. This move reduced shareholder value and user value.

[–] maskapony@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Reddit makes $350m a year in advertising revenue, it is in theory a fantastically successful business that could make plenty of profit for its shareholders.

The problem is solely down to them raising more and more capital the latest at a $10B valuation. Because of this they need to increase the revenue even further to try and justify the inflated valuation and that is what has led to the latest situation.

[–] kingthrillgore@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

What really told me that reddit was squandering its revenue sources was when they shuttered redditgifts two years ago. Maybe there were issues behind the scenes, but they had commissions from the storefront and from elves, and something reddit has never been particularly good at: Good publicity. And instead of figuring out how to make it profitable, they just killed it.

They didn't even bother to answer questions why.

It was at that moment I knew the current leadership was rudderless, and now everyone's finally come around to it.

[–] MxM111@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I am sure they could use less drastic ways to rise revenue, clearly without spreading lies about Apollo creator and alienating moderators. There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. And than there is very wrong, Reddit way to do things.

[–] NeoSniper@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why not slightly less? That would make more sense to me.

[–] MagicShel@programming.dev 1 points 2 years ago

A user on a third party app isn't as valuable to the company. They miss out of all the valuable spying and tracking they can do by installing their own software on your phone. Plus just the presence of this party apps means you can't demands extra permissions on your own app and tell users to deal or suck it (in nice PR speak). So it makes sense to charge TP apps more for reducing the "value" of a given user.

Charging less is basically subsidizing third party apps out of your own pocket - which was exactly the complaint in the first place. Although it would've been better to gradually ramp up prices to less-subsidized and eventually to a profitable partnership.