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The controversy started when their API fees were astronomically high as to constructively end all 3rd party apps.
I think the real anger started when Steve Huffman lied about the Apollo developer and the dev started posting the recordings to prove that Huffman was lying through his teeth.
After that, Huffman stepped onto multiple rakes as he does a poor job of crisis management. They don’t know where the value from their product comes from.
It's not about the spoken message but just the "our way or the highway" attitude and blatant gaslighting. If I had wanted that I would have stayed with my ex.
I'm perfectly ok with paying to get rid of ads. I've had Reddit Premium. I use YT Premium. I have Spotify Premium (for free with my phoneplan). I pay for Twitch Turbo. All stuff I use a lot and for me worth the price to have them ad-free.
The thing that I've seen pretty consistently from both RIF and Apollo devs is that they're not disputing the fact that reddit needs to start making a profit. Nobody's (seriously) complaining about what was free becoming not free.
The fact is, if this was purely about money, they'd be willing to negotiate on price. The price they're asking is ~70x more than imgur, which hosts images WAAAAAY heavier to host than text, and links etc.
If it was solely about showing ads, they could have given 3PAs access to reddit ads via the api, and enforced showing them.
There are several ways this could have worked for everyone.
Reddit wanted to kill 3PAs. That's the only logical conclusion here. Hell, if they'd come out and said THAT, as well as fixing the problems with their own app first, I might even have been able see their side of it. I would still be pissed, but it'd be more understandable than this very blatant Twitter-esque death-by-pricing thing they're trying to do.
The price they’re asking is ~70x more than imgur, which hosts images WAAAAAY heavier to host than text, and links etc.
The apollo dev got a very discounted price for the imgur api. Still, general imgur prices are about 3-4 times cheaper than the amount reddit is asking for now. That is if you stay in your quota. Exceeding the imgur quota costs about $1 per 1000 read requests, though. The value talked about for reddit is a flat rate of $.24/1000 or ~$1/3000 requests, no discounted plans are known to me.
The fact is, if this was purely about money, they’d be willing to negotiate on price.
That still holds true, though.
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.
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.
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.
i don't think they were trying to make money off of the API changes. like others are saying, it has to do with AI and they figured they might as well take the chance and knock out 3rd party in the same swoop so that they can funnel more people onto the official app
they can data harvest much better that way
It would have been perfectly possible to charge a different rate for AI harvesting than for Reddit Apps.
If Reddit just charged the AI people for API access and left 3rd party apps alone I doubt anyone would have given a shit, but they had to go and two-birds-with-one-stone it. Then they insisted on digging their hole deeper by running their mouths and making the situation worse.
I suspect they have signed an exclusivity deal with some kind of third party to use the API. It could be for "AI" or it could be for more nefarious purposes.
That's why it's important to go back thru our comment history and replace them with linguistic garbage. To ensure Reddit can't profit off our donations. I'm not in the business of subsidizing Reddit, after all.
"Plonked up behind the radio them ready the plastic manuscript who observe Jerry's can." Or whatever.
If I were implementing this nefarious Reddit I probably wouldn't have edits wipe out the original data. It's certainly not necessary to implement edits that way.
We actually know for a fact they don't do it that way, since Reddit has already been caught undoing peoples "delete" edits after they've gone
They would have gone straight to scraping if they couldn't reach a deal. Sam Altman is on the board of reddit. He knows which way the wind blows there.
LLMs are already relying on web scraping and always have. They are getting data from the entire Internet, do people really think OpenAI is doing individual integrations with every single website throughout the Internet?! Are Google and Bing doing that, too?
It's complete FUD.
There may be some complexity with legality here though. Obviously Google and other search engines already have most of Reddit's content indexed, but there are some legal arguments as to whether they can use the content to create derivative works.
If Reddit opens up its API and specifically allows AI companies to use the content to create LLMs and other AI tools then from a legal point of view they may find this much more preferable to facing potential legal action further down the road.
The protest is not about the fact that they are charging for it. The protest is about the fact of how much they are charging for it. When compared to imgur the rates are absolutely insane.
I keep seeing this incorrectly reported and it drives me crazy. No developer is upset about Reddit charging for the API access. What they are upset about is the fact that Reddit has jacked the price of that API access up so high that no third party apps could ever afford to use it.
Notice how Reddit haven't engaged in any positive damage control at all? It's just been hit pieces against devs, an AMA with completely canned responses and unprecedented wide-spread hostile action against it's content creators/power users/mods?
Reddit is in full-blown sell out mode right now and nothing but money matters anymore. It's all down hill from here.
It does certainly seem like it, but what exactly are they trying to achieve? They don't have an IPO yet and even if they got one now it would be devalued over before the shit show. And with every new day reddit shows potential investors that they have absolutely no control of the situation, and just doubles down on idiocy.
How is it supposed to make money at this point?
Ad revenue should convince the investors. Who cares if there’s no real content besides automated reposts and bot spam, as long as there are some users who they can shower with an endless stream of ads.