The content of the reddit post:
Hey everyone, I just had another call with Reddit and wanted to share what I’ve heard, even though I haven’t made any concrete decisions yet on how to proceed. (Previous update
They confirmed to me the new cost of 3rd party apps accessing the site, which is exactly what the Apollo dev revealed – for every 50 million requests they want $12,000.
They won’t be making exceptions for free apps.
The Apollo dev (/u/iamthatis) estimated that the new pricing would cost him $20m per year. I raised this with Reddit – they said that his calculations were “totally wrong”, but they were unable to discuss why. Given that the Apollo dev literally just multiplied the cost by the number of requests, I have trouble seeing how this could be wrong.
I did some back-of-envelope calculations, and the equivalent cost for RedReader could be something like $1 million per year. Since I don’t track users it’s hard to get an exact figure.
Most of the conversation focused on the ridiculously high cost. They said that they didn’t think the costs were high, but were in fact “on parity” with the rest of the non-third-party-app userbase. This contadicts the public calculations by the Apollo dev, who estimates that they are charging more than 20x an optimistic estimate of their typical per-user revenue.
I raised the question of why paid API users will be unable to access NSFW content, whereas other users will have access to all content, meaning that those paying the most for access will be treated as second class citizens. They said that they were unable to discuss the reasons for this.
They reiterated that their goal “isn’t to kill 3rd party apps” – in fact, they said they were “confused” by claims that they want to do that, and that if they wanted to kill off those apps, there would be “literally nothing stopping them” just doing it directly. I pointed out that regardless of what their motives are, the end result is the same – the apps will be killed off.
Also, I have previously pointed out their dependence on the community doing free work for them (creating and moderating content), and how the users who contribute in that way are the ones most likely to be using 3rd party apps. I don’t get the impression that this bothers them – it all seems to come down to revenue.
I’ve raised the point of accessibility with them, as I’ve heard from many blind users that use RedReader due to how it’s optimised for screen readers (thanks in part to the excellent work by /u/codeofdusk and other contributors). I’m waiting to hear back from them about this.
It’s difficult to imagine any sustainable, official path forward with Reddit as a result of these changes, and personally I’m not at all inclined to invest any more of my time in their platform, or drive any more traffic to it.
Right now I’m considering the possibility of modifying the app to connect to a Reddit alternative such as Lemmy or Mastodon. There would be something very satisfying about some of the bigger Reddit apps driving their userbase to alternative sites too, and if this helped one of those platforms gain traction then that would be a step in the right direction.
Just a quick note on some of the other possibilities:
Charge a subscription to use RedReader: I have been considering this as a possibility, however due to the incredibly high pricing, and the fact that only the most dedicated (and costly) users with the highest usage would sign up, I think this would quickly become unsustainable.
Everyone uses their own personal developer key: It’s too early to know whether this will be a realistic option. From what I’ve seen, Reddit may be turning developer signups into a manual process where each user would need to message them and get approval. Also it’s likely they’d crack down on this if they knew it was happening.
Scrape the website rather than use the API: This is possible and there’s plenty of legal precedent that it would be fine, however it’s an extremely high-maintenance approach that means we’ll forever be playing a cat-and-mouse game with Reddit. I suspect that even if I don’t go down this route, someone else will eventually fork the app and do it anyway!
I haven’t made any concrete decisions yet, but I’ll keep you all updated. I read every message on the previous thread, and really appreciate all the support and feedback.
Make a metric fuckton of money from people who are using a third-party client specifically to protect themselves from Reddit’s increasingly-toxic attempts at monetizing their participation? The only thing I’d expect that to accomplish is to convince them all that it’s time to flee to the Fediverse.
And why do it this way? They could have limited API access (and therefore usage of third-party apps) to premium Reddit accounts. I can only assume that what they really want is to get people to install the official Reddit app, presumably to collect more data than is possible through a browser or third-party app. Exactly what they plan to do with those data, I can only speculate, but it can’t be good…
I think they are looking at all of the AI companies who will need massive amounts of data to train AI. Those companies are just getting buckets of money being dumped on them so they don’t care how much the API will cost.
The thing is I don’t even use Relay for Reddit to avoid the monitization. I use it because it’s the best Reddit experience out of all the apps I’ve tried, especially compared to the official offering.
If they wanted to make money off of me, they could just add a charge to use the API at the user level. I would pay $5/month to Reddit in order to use the API, including through third-party apps. Like, I get it, go have to keep the lights on and I get a lot of value out of the site.
They’re just going about it all wrong, and users like me are going to end up not using the site anymore.
The problem though is they don’t want you or I to use the API as a third party client - they want everyone using their first party app which is chock full of ads and I assume tracking as well. To them, that data is more valuable.
Otherwise they could charge a reasonable price for the API, like you mentioned whether at the user level or the developer level.
Yeah, I understand the underlying reason for doing this. I just think they’re killing the chicken to get the eggs. Rather than make a little less money on me (but still make money) they are going to lose a user completely who regularly comments and posts
Oh I agree for sure, unfortunately this is just one of those lessons that the higher ups will need to learn (they never really do though) through the “sink or swim” method. I know which one I’m hoping for, after how they’ve treated their developer community…
@zalack @argv_minus_one Agreed. Even if reddit backtracked now I wouldn’t go back. They’ve shown their hand. Also the fediverse rocks I should’ve come here a long time ago