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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? (self.technology)

submitted 1 year ago by curt to c/technology

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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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[–] patchw3rk@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (11 children)

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.

[–] ZealousIdeaPool@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Looks like none of the apps are actually going to pay them, so he's not getting anything out of it.

But that is exactly what his goal was. If he really was interested in working with the 3PA devs, this would have been handled completely differently. The fact that it was handled as it was, with essentially zero engagement between the company and the community, and with essentially zero flexibility on the part of the company on the implementation, is pretty clear evidence that their goal all along was to drive the 3PA's out of business.

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